Three holidays: Cinco de Mayo, Derby Day, LCM 5th Anniversary

What a difference a year makes. Today is Derby Day, the running of the Kentucky Derby horse race, and if I were in Nashville as I was last year at this time—which, thankfully, I am not—I would feel compelled to wear a big hat and make something Southern, and likely a mint julep. But I am in Tucson now, hard by the Mexican border. And today is also Cinco de Mayo, a holiday celebrated throughout America and becoming as popular as Halloween, not least because it is a great excuse, as if one were needed, to eat Mexican food. So Mexican it happily must be.

But the real reason I am surfacing after so much absence from this space is that today is the 5^th anniversary of Little Compton Mornings. I am supposed to be grading final papers and getting in my final grades. But really, if I missed posting something today, wouldn’t that mean that May 5, 2012 had become the first anniversary of LCM’s death, rather than the fifth of its life?  I am not quite ready to let that happen. We all have trouble letting things go.

It is possible that what I have to let go is the really time consuming part of the blog—the insistence on recipe writing.  It would be so much easier and faster to just write about and photo what I cook and eat, or carp about the declining this or that, something I am congenitally good at. Or use other people’s recipes rather than develop and codify my own or spend a lot of time testing out the sketchy instructions from heirloom New England cookbooks.

In fact, using someone else’s recipe is what I have done today, and it is, yes, so easy!  Especially when you know the cookbook author has been conscientious in making her recipes reliable. Like Fany Gerson with My Sweet Mexico.  Below is a slightly altered version of her Gorditas de Piloncillo. Why these? Well, this is LCM’s anniversary, which you could argue really demands a plain, old-fashioned dessert (the subject of every other anniversary post (here, here, here, and here), and the gorditas come as close to New England as Mexican can get. Actually, they are like nothing so much as a thick, East-of-Bay johnnycake. So although they are in Gerson’s dessert book, they are, I think, more suited to breakfast, with a cup of cappuccino. You do see the little “5” in the cappuccino foam in the photo, don’t you? Happy 5^th, LCM. May you have a long life, and a productive summer in Little Compton.

Gorditas de Piloncillo

I met Fany Gerson at the Tucson Book Festival recently, having been a fan since her book came out. She has a little place in New York that you should seek out.  These gorditas are nice just sugared, but honestly, I found them delicious dunked in—a la jonnycakes—maple syrup.  Serves 2.

5/6 c masa harina

½ c hot water
1 oz grated piloncillo (or light brown sugar, dried)

)

1 ½ oz queso añejo, ricotta salata, or cotija, crumbled
½ tea ground cinnamon

Lard for frying (or Crisco®)

Pure cane or turbinado sugar

Pure maple syrup

Mix and knead together the cheese, cinnamon, and piloncillo. In a small bowl, mix the masa harina and water lightly together, then knead with the cheese/sugar/spice mixture just until smooth. Form into six balls and keep covered.

Heat the lard  to 365F to a depth of a few inches in a deep 9” frying pan.  Pat the masa balls out to about 1/8” thickness. Fry the gorditas two or three at a time; they should be covered with the fat. Like a good tortilla, they may puff slightly. Cook til golden brown, and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with sugar while warm, and serve for breakfast plain or with maple syrup for dunking. 

Beets for Dessert

I often write about my love for beets, and they’re due for a reprise on the blog again because they are so truly wonderful. And they are cheap and available. They were waiting for me when I arrived in Little Compton, and they continue to wave at me from their bin at the farm stand, signaling their suitability for a match with corn, or that they would make a very good cold soup.
As a reminder from my post on beet taquitos, this little known fact: beets are considered to be an aphrodisiac. So though I was thinking of making some Red Flannel Hash, a traditional New England dish, with the nice plump beets I bought, I started thinking about beets for dessert. My first thought was to pair the beets with another aphrodisiac, chocolate. A cake would be nice, I mused—and I will definitely experiment with that when I have both more time and access to my baking equipment; the LC cottage kitchen is rather sparse in that department. But the dessert idea persisted.
I’m not really sure what possessed me to switch from homey hash for breakfast to the idea of a seductive sauce for after dinner, but I decided beets would make a beautiful, and interesting, topping for ice cream. They are, of course, super sweet. When cooked, they bleed tons of brilliant purple color and become as smoothly tender as a ripe mango. Why not? And it fits nicely with one of my mottos: keep them guessing.



Caramelized Beet Topping
1 bunch (3-4) medium beets 
1 c water
½ c sugar
¼ c maple syrup
3” piece stick cinnamon
Few drops lemon juice
Preheat oven to 400 F. Follow the directions for roasting beets here, except cook them for only about 15 minutes, until a knife will go in but does not automatically slide out  when the beet is lifted. Cool the beets in the foil. (You can refrigerate them at this point and finish the sauce at any time over the next few days.)
Peel the beets and then, with a very sharp thin-bladed knife, cut the beets cleanly into 1/4” dice. Set aside.
Bring the water, sugar, maple syrup, and cinnamon to a boil in a medium saucepan and boil for about 5 minutes; it will be a light caramel color. Add the beets, reduce the heat to medium, and cook until beets are very tender but begin to caramelize and acquire a slightly chewy bite. The syrup will remain fluid and become very purple. Add a few drops of lemon as you take it off the heat. Let cool, and serve over ice cream. If you don’t use it the day you make it, this should be refrigerated and used within a few days.

        

Rhode Island Red Fruit: Currants and Raspberries

I stopped by the fruit lady’s this weekend, timing my visit from long experience with the hope of catching, not just the fruit before it was gone, but the farmer herself and her husband. It was nearly the 4^th, which means: time to negotiate the delicate dance of acquiring a share of the sour cherries. Over the years I have come to realize that one reason that this is so tricky is that they want some too. The nerve.
Fortuitously, the fruit lady was driving out in her golf cart from the field just as I got out of my car; when I pulled up, there was no fruit on the stand, and no one in sight, and I had determined to risk offense by venturing out behind the house. This is not always prudent, as, of course, neither am I. So I was glad to see her coming toward me.
We (her husband soon buzzed up on his little tractor) had the first of several conversations (negotiations) about the cherries that would culminate a week or so later in my securing, with great difficulty, two quarts of fruit, about which more next week. For now, there were the currants and the first raspberries, and I thought how early July truly is the time of red fruits in Rhode Island. Hence, the little in-joke of Rhode Island Red Fruits, and Rhode Island Red muffins. Couldn’t resist.
As you know from prior rants, I truly cannot stand the common bakery muffin—cake-like, sugary, huge. The one I offer below is an old-fashioned muffin of the non-mutant, non-cake type. It has a nice balance of crisp outside and tender, crumbly inside—as it should.
Rhode Island Red Muffins
No, not muffins made of chickens, or muffins for chickens—just a little play on words. These are all currants, but you could use half currants and half raspberries; I just happened to eat all of mine. Makes 12-15, depending on your pan.
Topping 1 c bread flour
½ c lt brown sugar, packed
5 T unsalted butter, melted
½ tea cinnamon
Big pinch (about 1/8 tea) baking powder
Small pinch salt
Muffin batter 2 c a-p flour
½ cup RI jonnycake or other white stoneground cornmeal 
4 tea baking powder
½ c sugar
½ tea salt
6 T unsalted butter, melted
¾ c half and half
2 T pure maple syrup
1 lg egg
1 cup, generous, currants or half currants and half raspberries

Preheat oven to 375F. Generously butter a standard muffin tin.
To make the topping

Blend the flour with the cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Dump in the packed sugar, pour the butter over, and use a fork in a chopping motion to combine the sugar with the flour until the flour the mixture is moistened and crumbly. Set aside.
To make the batter
Stem and pick over the currants and put them in a small bowl.
Mix all dry ingredients in a 2-qt bowl. Remove a large handful of the mixture and add it to the currants, tossing gently with your hand to coat.
Pour the milk into a measuring cup; add the maple syrup and the egg. Beat with a fork til blended. Add to the dry mixture, stirring just long enough to combine, with a wooden spoon. Pour the currants and any excess flour mixture into the batter; fold it in using your hand.
Drop the batter into buttered muffin tin, filling about ¾ full. Sprinkle each muffin with some of the crumb mixture to reach the top. Bake about 18-22 minutes, rotating the pan once, until the tops of the muffins (a little will show through the crumbs) begin to turn golden and the fruit starts to ooze a little; the currants, though, will mostly hold their shape. Remove to a rack; let cool for 5 minutes; then turn out on the rack to cool ‘til warm enough to handle. Break with your hands and serve with butter. If you freeze the extras, be sure to re-warm either in the toaster oven of, if in the microwave, at low power as briefly as possible.

        

LCM 4th Anniversary Today: Reflections on my blog-child

Like everything with children growing up, this 4^th blog birthday snuck up on me. Four years old! It seems like yesterday when I wrote the first post about morning in Little Compton—time to wake up and start thinking about what’s for dinner while drinking coffee, ideally while strolling outside, followed by a piece of pie for breakfast (and then for lunch…).

Naturally, I devoted motherly attention to my blog during its first year, learning as I went about how to make it work (getting the photos right, for instance). The doting continued well into the second year, but then the blog entered the metaphorical terrible twos (and threes). But I can’t really blame the blog for this; it’s more like I became a neglectful mother. A guilt-ridden one, of course, but neglectful nevertheless. Busy working (Moving! So many papers to write! Courses to teach! Grading!). I really wonder if people realize that the vast majority of consistently updated blogs are written by people who don’t work—or for whom the blog is their work. Maybe I’ll get to that point some day.

Of course, there are also those bloggers, including many fine ones, who do work, but are still so young (let’s say, under 40 or so) that they have the energy to do their cooking and blogging at night. I was like that once, but alas, no more—I do fade at the end of the day. So until I retire (ha), or am able to work from home to allow cooking-in-between (ha), a neglected, on-again, off-again blog it will be. I do try to compensate for all the silences and weak-sister posts during the summers when I have more time (and when there is more fruit and veggies and other bounty for inspiration), and for the most part, I think I’ve done all right on that score. Thank you for your patience.

Which I hope will be rewarded. For better or worse, I am one of those people for whom hope springs eternal, in a Pollyanna kind of way, so I expect the blog, as it enters its 5^th year, to smooth out a little, and to return to a more regular rhythm. I may not match the nearly 5 posts a month of the first couple years, but I am not ready to give up my child yet. I don’t at all mind not having lots of comments on my posts; while I’d like more because I think it would mean I’d be reaching a more diverse reader group, I get lots of emails instead; that’s the kind of reader I have, and I like the friendliness of it and the fact that people feel a personal enough connection to actually write. In fact, I’ve made friends through my blog, and good ones: who knew? I want to return not just to cooking for you, but to writing for you, well. I still have lots of New England specialties to cover. And pies to make before I sleep, and pies to make before I sleep.

Speaking of which:

New England-y Shoofly Pie

This is for you, racheld, as promised. Shoofly pie is one of the pies my Pennsylvania German grandmother used to make; I have made it a little more New England with maple syrup, completely consistent with its general genre of “syrup pie.” There’s lots of room for variation here, in both the sweeteners used and the spices. Shoofly pie is a classic pie-for-breakfast kind of pie, right up there with fruit pies, possibly because of its strong flavor that goes well with coffee. Serves 8—because it is rich.

Pastry for a 9” pie prepared according to your favorite recipe, or this one. Use a glass pie plate if you have one.

1 c flour
½ c firmly packed light brown sugar
4 T unsalted butter, softened
½ tea cinnamon
¼ tea cardamom
1/8 t freshly ground nutmeg
big pinch ground cloves
Pinch salt

½ c unsulphured molasses (mild or strong, to your taste)
¼ c pure maple syrup
¾ c boiling water, cooled slightly
1 large egg
1 tea vanilla extract
½ tea chocolate extract (optional, but nice)
1 tea baking soda

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Roll out the pastry and fit it into a standard 9” pie pan; crimp the edges, and chill the crust while you make the crumbs and filling.

Lightly mix the flour, sugar, and spices and work the butter in with your hands to form crumbs. Set aside.

In a small bowl or large glass measure, mix the molasses, the maple syrup, extract(s), baking soda, and hot water. Beat the egg and stir it into the syrup mixture. You can either pour this into the pie shell and top with the crumbs; layer it, beginning and ending with the crumbs; or about half the crumbs into the filling as I remember my grandmother doing. Doing this or layering makes for a slightly “dryer” versus “wetter” pie, as shoo fly pies are often described.

Bake the pie for 10 minutes; it will puff up (and some of the filling may rise above the crumbs as in the picture; that’s OK). Reduce the heat to 325 F and bake for another 20-25 (likely) minutes, until evenly brown and lightly firm but still springy in the center. Remove and cool on a rack to warm room temperature. You can serve it with whipped cream, ice cream, yogurt (which is good), or on its own.

        

 

And here, made with the re-rolled pastry scraps, is a jelly tart, just like my grandmother used to do, made with last summer’s seedless raspberry jam. Eaten hot out of the oven as the cook’s treat—delicious.

Pineapple: Sinful Pancakes

Every March 1 the International House of Pancakes hosts National Pancake Day when they give away free pancakes. I’ve never been, but it’s a nice idea. National Pancake Day coincides, roughly, with Shrove Tuesday, a day of indulgence prior to atoning for one’s sins, by fasting, during Lent. Or so I’ve heard, being pretty much of a heathen myself. Fasting is not part of my moral outlook.

Nevertheless, I do like the idea of indulging in pancakes, so on March 1 I joined the party by making pancakes at home. Yes, it’s taken me that long to get around to writing this. It’s not that I’m not thinking about it, or not cooking and taking photos; it’s the sitting down to put it together that takes so much time. Thankfully, photos will wait.

I love pancakes, as other pancake posts on this site attest. I just counted them, and there are four: here, here, here, and here. (And that doesn’t even include the posts on thick and thin johnnycakes.) Since I try not to repeat myself too much (this gets harder as we get older, as we all know), that tally of posts is an indication of just how much I do love the fried little disks. I’d eat them every day, occasionally interspersed with French Toast (I really should do an entry on that) if I could. Or rather, if I didn’t think it would be better for me if I didn’t. Because of course, one could, and has. When I make pancakes, I eat them for days in a row, in part because the batter improves as it ages in the refrigerator. I confess I have gone through some periods where I ate pancakes every day for months. But yes, I did gain weight. Time to stop.

The run-up to National Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday also happened to coincide with a discussion I was following on the wonderful food forum, e-gullet, in which was described something I had never heard of before: a casserole made of pineapple and cheddar cheese. This sounded disgusting to me at first, and chemically suspect, from a food science standpoint. But I became persuaded from various comments that this was a combination worth trying. I also happen to be in the South at the moment, and since this casserole seemed clearly to be one of those Southern aberrations and I am very much a when-in-Rome sort of person, the deal was sealed. I bought the ingredients.

But then National Pancake Day came along to distract me, and the casserole idea went out the window, at least until the next time I make a ham (the dish to which the pineapple-cheddar casserole is purported to be a traditional accompaniment). Why not pineapple-cheddar pancakes instead? Indeed.

Pineapple-Cheddar Pancakes

These are a bit like my favorites made with farmer’s cheese. Like them, they contain very little flour, need to be cooked slowly and thoroughly, and are very moist inside. This  particular batter will not keep; it would ferment. Serves 3-4.

1 cup fresh cored pineapple, cubed
½ cup 2% cottage cheese
1 large egg
1 T firmly packed light brown sugar
½ cup packed shredded very sharp cheddar, such as store cheese
½ c a-p flour, approx.
1 tea baking powder
¼ tea baking soda
¼ tea salt

Pulse the pineapple in the food processor with the cottage cheese until smooth (there will be some pineapple shreds remaining). Stir in the remaining ingredients in the order given, adding enough flour to make a soupy, thickish, but not stiff, batter.

Heat a griddle to medium (about 350F if you are using electric); you may need to lower it a little as you cook. Butter the griddle and drop or pour the batter into small rounds,  about 3-4” in diameter. Cook for 1-2 minutes, checking by sliding your spatula underneath; if too dark, lower the heat. Do not try to turn until the spatula slides easily across the bottom. Turn, and cook until the second side is brown and completely cooked. Serve with maple syrup.

                                          

Rhubarb, Maple Syrup, Eggs: Spring At Last

 

 

No one who lives in Rhode Island needs to be told that winter, and early spring, was record-breaking cruel and unusual this year. And while it’s not exactly summer yet, there’s reason to hope that, with May around the corner, there really cannot be another devastating storm—at least not until hurricane season. Four whole months away! Let’s eat!

The edible signs of spring are late, but they are there. The maple syrup is in, there is nice rhubarb at the market, and the hens are laying eggs. Either one alone is cause for celebration. Rhubarb has become one of my late-in-life pleasures; pretty as it is (and I am a sucker for eye-appeal), I would not touch it despite being surrounded by rhubarb fanciers in my youth. I love it, as did my grandmother, stewed with sugar and eaten plain from a bowl, or stirred into yogurt. Maple syrup, in contrast, is a life-long friend; in the “don’t leave home without it” view of an essential item, I have small bottles of it in my glove compartment, my purse….have syrup, will travel. In Rhode Island it goes over countless johnnycakes, naturally, but also into countless sweet and savory dishes and my maple syrup whiskey sours. And eggs, a perfect food in its own right, are a sign of resurrection from the dead of winter like no other.

Choosing one over the other is too hard, and I’m one of those people who believe that playing favorites is unjust, so: equal time for all. Fairness is very satisfying, as this little tart attests. Of course, fair does not necessarily mean low-cal, low-fat, or low-carb, or low anything. In other words, fairness in baking is a universal good: it’s a delicious treat, one you deserve after the most brutal winter and early spring in 200 years. Restitution on a fork.

Rhode Island Maple-Rhubarb Tart

You can make this over a few days if you wish, making the dough and/or the purée the day before. The tart shell must be pre-baked blind. Makes one 9” tart; serves 6-8.

Rhubarb Purée

3 generous cups fresh rhubarb (about 1 lb of medium-size stalks, washed and trimmed)
¼ cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
¾ cup sugar
¼ tea cardamom
1/3 cup Grade B maple syrup

Cook the first 4 ingredients for 5 minutes; add the maple syrup and cook about 5 minutes more, taking care not to scorch, until thick and coherent. Put it through a strainer. You will have a scant cup of purée. You can refrigerate it for making the curd later, or proceed.

Rhubarb Curd

1 cup rhubarb purée
Zest of 1 lemon
3 large egg yolks (reserve whites)
1 large whole egg
1 T maple syrup
2 drops red food coloring (optional)
12 T unsalted butter
2 T heavy cream

In a chef’s or other heavy pan with sloping sides, stir together the purée, lemon zest, egg and egg yolks, and maple syrup; I like to use a wooden spoon but you may prefer a whisk. Over low heat, stir/whisk the mixture continuously until thick and it just begins to bubble. Be careful not to curdle it; you may wish to do this over simmering water in a double-boiler. Check the color; if you don’t like it, you can add a drop or two of red food coloring; stir completely to incorporate.

Remove from the heat and beat the butter in, tablespoon by tablespoon, stirring until it disappears; put it back over low heat from time to time if needed. Stir in the heavy cream.

Pâte Sucrée

4 oz (1/4 lb, or 1 stick) unsalted butter, partially softened
¼ cup sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 ½ cups a-p flour
¼ tea salt
1 T heavy cream

Place the softish but still cool butter in a standing mixer and beat a minute or two till soft; scrape down the bowl and add the sugar, beat a minute, and then add the yolk and beat until incorporated. Add the flour and salt, beat until it comes together (it will still be a bit crumbly), then add the cream and beat a few seconds until smooth. Wrap in plastic and chill for several hours or overnight (dough can also be frozen).

Remove the dough and soften enough to roll by cutting it into several pieces and kneading them with your hand, then forming them back together into a disk. Tap the disk with your rolling pin, then roll it out quickly on a floured surface; once soft, it gets really soft. Lift the dough carefully into your tart pan, trimming the overhang to about ½”, and turn this overhand to the inside against the edge. Chill again for 15 minutes or so. Preheat the oven to 375 F while it chills.

Remove the pan and flute the edge or press it with a fork. Prick the bottom with fork, and line the pan with foil and some weight (beans, rice, etc.) or a smaller-size pan. Bake 10-12 minutes; remove the foil/weight or pan, and bake another 5 minutes or so, until golden. Cool on a rack.

Finishing the Tart

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Pour/spread the rhubarb curd into the baked pastry shell. Bake the tart for about 12-15 minutes, until firm. You could now serve this with maple whipped cream made with good heavy cream, or finish it with:

Maple Meringue

3 egg whites, reserved from making curd
¼ tea cream of tartar
2 T Grade B maple syrup
1/2 cup sugar

Beat the whites at medium speed with the cream of tartar and the syrup until thick and foamy. Raise the speed to high and beat, gradually adding the sugar, until the mixture forms marshmallow-fluffy, shiny peaks.

If you do not have a kitchen torch, heat the broiler. Lightly oil the inside and rim of a flan ring the size of the tart pan or an inch smaller, and place it, oiled rim down, on the tart. Spoon the meringue into the ring, spreading it neatly and evenly out to the edges with a rubber spatula. Dip the spatula into the center and around the circumference to pull soft peaks out of the meringue. (If you don’t have a flan ring, just pile the meringue on.) Place the tart under the broiler until lightly brown (or use your torch). Put the tart in the freezer for 30 minutes (or up to 4 hours) before serving). Cut firmly and cleanly (do not saw) with a sharp knife.

       

Elegy—and Ode—to the Lost Muffin

 

Not one
bakery
in this or any other
city
makes a muffin
like your grandmother:
plain
crumbly
ready for butter
and small

Not one
person
in this or any other
fine town
has yet tasted
a gem that's not cake:
fatted
floured
sugared for toothache
and huge

But two
reasons
in this or any other
season
let us forsee
cake muffins undone:
obesity
and scarcity.
Forsake the bakery
for home

 

LCM Jonnycake Muffins

Plain, crumbly, ready for butter. . .and small. One of my favorite gems, with a crisp exterior and softer, crumbly interior. Makes 8.

½ cup RI white cap flint cornmeal
1 cup a-p flour
3 tea baking powder
¼ tea salt
2 large eggs
¼ cup pure maple syrup, grade B or lower
1/3 cup milk
6 T butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Grease 8 cups of a standard muffin tin, starting at the center. Place paper muffin papers in the remaining cups.

Put the cornmeal in a bowl, and sift in the flour, salt, and baking powder. Into a 2- or 3-cup measuring cup, measure the maple syrup and milk; add the eggs and the melted butter, and beat well. Pour over the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Divide the batter evenly into the 8 greased cups of the muffin tin, and bake for about 22 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to cool about 5 minutes in the pan before turning out and serving with butter or butter with a little maple syrup beaten in. In the unlikely event there are any left over, these freeze and reheat beautifully with 25 seconds in the microwave.

 

           

Indian Meal

I was rearranging my cookbooks recently and as usual, got sidetracked. It is always my collection of old pamphlets and antique cookery books that draws me in the most. Inside one I found some notes I had taken at the Brown University archives in Providence a few years ago. I was supposed to be working on something else at the time, but of course I got sidetracked again—to their own collection of old cookbooks. That’s one of the lovely problems with libraries.

The notes I found were all on various recipes using corn and Indian meal, which is the old term for stoneground white-cap flint cornmeal, or jonnycake meal, discussed in this blog in the context of Portuguese bread and thick and thin jonnycakes. The recipes came from books with titles like The Indian Meal Book: Comprising the Best Receipts for the Preparation of That Article (1847). I’ve yet to try many of them, but looking them over reminded me of how long it had been since I’d made Indian Pudding.

Indian pudding, like jonnycakes, is a bit of an acquired taste. It’s old-fashioned enough that it has disappeared from the majority of restaurant menus, but, for the same reason, remains firmly on the menu of many a Rhode Island and Massachusetts country or traditional restaurant. It is made with cornmeal, so has an unusual, slightly grainy texture. Some versions are strongly flavored with molasses, to which some people are partial, some are not; and some are very (I think overly) sweet. All versions qualify as nursery food—soft and comforting.

Here is a version of Indian pudding that is a little less sweet and more delicate than some, as it is made with a modest amount of maple syrup and only enough molasses to give it a good color and characteristic flavor. It uses the trick of pouring cold milk over it partway through cooking to create a softer texture—and a more authentic one—than those puddings that more closely resemble a baked custard. Both types are good. Vanilla ice cream is more often than not the accompaniment, with whipped cream a fine alternative.

Indian Pudding

If you like raisins, you can put some in with the milk when you scald it, or you can stew some in a little brandy or rum and pour them over the ice cream when you serve. Serves 6.

3 cups whole milk
2 T butter, lard, or chopped suet
½ cup Grade B pure maple syrup
2 T molasses
1 ¼ tea ground ginger
generous dash cinnamon
½ tea salt
½ cup RI stoneground white flint cornmeal
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup cold whole milk

Preheat the oven to 300 F. Butter a baking dish, about 9” square or about 2 quarts.

Scald the milk together with butter, syrup, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, and salt. Add the cornmeal and stir constantly until it is about as thick as a thin cake  batter, about 10 minutes. Pour a little of the hot cornmeal-milk mixture into the eggs to temper them, then stir the eggs into the cornmeal-milk mixture in the pan. When well combined, pour into the prepared pan and bake for about a hour. Open the oven door, stir the pudding (which will be quite firm), smoothing the top with the back of the spoon, and then pour over it the cup of cold milk. Continue baking for another hour. You can serve the pudding warm (cooled for 20 minutes or more) or cold.

          

Sweet Potatoes: They’re Not Just For Thanksgiving

As the growing season winds down along the East Coast, some crops are at their peak in other parts of the country, and are available now in the market. The sweet potato, not widely grown in New England because it likes reliable warmth, is cultivated throughout the South and right now the sweet potatoes you see in the market from down South are as close as you may get to freshly dug.

So there’s no reason to wait until Thanksgiving, and good reason not to. They’re at their best, and they have many uses beyond the sweet potato casserole that you may not even like anyway if the one you know is sicky sweet or gloppy with marshmallow. It is just such casseroles, sampled at the homes of friends when I was a child, that put me off sweet potatoes for many years. Only when I finally tried a plain, buttered, salt-and-peppered sweet potato (at my grandmother’s insistence, I recall; she used to eat them on their own for lunch) did I come to appreciate their particular natural charms of rich taste and fluffy texture.

Sweet potatoes are a member of the morning glory family, native to South and Central America; they are not related to the white potato we New Englanders know—and love—so well, nor are they related to the yam, a tuber grown only in tropical regions. Sweet potatoes are essentially the edible root of a vine. They are a really outstanding source of vitamin A and beta-carotene, and a good source of vitamin C, fiber, complex carbohydrates, and several B vitamins. Buy firm potatoes with no signs of softness at the ends, and store them in the driest part of the refrigerator; they will keep for a couple of weeks, and should probably be baked rather than boiled after they have been stored. Sweet potatoes are thin-skinned, and if you find new ones, their skins will rub or scrape off as with any other new potato. If you boil or bake with skins on and want to peel them afterward, do so while they are still very warm.

Because of their nutritional value, sweet potatoes have become more popular in recent years and are becoming relatively common in restaurants, often in the form of sweet potato fries or chips. In addition to frying them, you can bake, boil, grill/sauté, or stew them, and in general treat them as you would a potato: roasted wedges with olive oil and herbs; mashed, buttered sweets; plain boiled sweets; sautéed or hash-browned sweets. Just take care because of the high sugar content, and use slightly lower heat, including for frying or sautéing, than you would for regular potatoes.

The high moisture content and natural sweetness of sweet potatoes make them nice candidates for items you might otherwise use pumpkin for, such as sweet  potato pie, pickled sweet potato, sweet potato pancakes, sweet potato butter (the reduction of sweet potato and sugar or brown sugar and spices to a jammy consistency), or sweet potato cakes and quick breads. Because cooked sweet potatoes keep well in the refrigerator and can be very successfully frozen after cooking, it is relatively easy to pull out a leftover baked sweet potato or two, or a cup or two of leftover mashed sweets, and transform them into a dessert or, as here, a morning muffin. Just make sure that if you freeze mashed sweet potatoes for later use, you do not season them first. Baked potatoes kept in the fridge do not, of course, have to be thawed; they can be mashed on demand right in the measuring cup. The perfect tool for this is the tamper from an espresso machine.

Sweet Potato Pepita Muffins

You can make these with either boiled or baked sweet potatoes. Makes 12.

1 cup packed mashed sweet potato
½ cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
¼ cup melted sweet butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 tea spice (nutmeg, cinnamon, clove), mixed to your preference
½ cup buttermilk

1 ¼ cup a-p flour (or substitute half whole-wheat for half the a-p)
2 tea baking soda
1 tea baking powder
pinch salt
¼ cup pepitas or nuts of your choice (optional)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease a standard muffin tin.

In a medium bowl, stir the syrup, butter, egg, and spice into the sweet potato with a wooden spoon. Stir in the buttermilk until incorporated.

Sift the dry ingredients together, toss in the pepitas, and blend into the sweet potato mixture.

Quickly distribute the batter into the muffin cups with the spoon. Bake about 18 minutes; watch that they don’t overbrown. Serve warm with butter.

                                                                               

Farmer’s Cheese: Endangered Species

I would not normally have written about farmer’s cheese, something I buy at the market, except that over the past few years I’ve noticed it has been harder and harder to find. And recently, almost impossible. After a while it occurred to me that the stores were not simply out of stock temporarily, but perhaps permanently. I decided to ask.
As I had begun to suspect, most stores have stopped carrying farmer’s cheese. You may well ask, why? Because it has a short shelf life, I’m told—it doesn’t last. Oh no: it doesn’t have preservatives—the nerve! It’s a real product—let’s get rid of it and just carry the processed stuff with a half-life of a zillion years! There’s no demand, they say, without irony to a person who is standing in front of them asking for it.
So naturally I am inclined to ask, which comes first, the lack of demand, or the unavailability? And  also, to be fair-minded, does it really matter if there’s no more farmer’s cheese?
I say it does matter, and that there would be more demand if there were greater availability and awareness. (Fresh mozzarella, I’m thinking, another not-so-long-lasting cheese, had little demand in the supermarkets until you could, like, buy it there.) Farmer’s cheese has some special qualities. First, it’s a fresh cheese. Fresh cheeses are great for, among other things, spreading on a piece of bread with a little salt and pepper, or accompanied by a sweet or spicy condiment, or mixed with garlic and herbs. Very similar to fresh mild goat cheese, or chevre, but cheaper. (It’s usually made from cow’s milk, not goat, in this country.) Second, it’s light and low in calories and fat as cheeses go: about 50 calories and 2.5 grams of fat per ounce, which is less than cream cheese or soft goat cheese. It also has about 5 grams of protein.
But mainly, I need it for certain things. Chief among them is the making of blintzes or the little farmer’s cheese pancakes below—I call them blintz cakes because they use many of the same ingredients as blintzes, but they are actually an old New England griddle cake. I’ve tried well-drained cottage cheese and ricotta as alternatives, but they’re just not the same. And for decades I’ve used farmer’s cheese as a near-perfect substitute for queso blanco, a Mexican cheese that can be hard to find outside of urban neighborhoods or Mexican markets, and that is a must for garnishing all kinds of tortilla-based dishes, especially tostadas. And while I don’t make the Russian Easter specialty paska too often, when I do there is nothing else that works so well, or is so authentic. Ditto for cheese pierogi.
If you go looking for this cheese, therefore, you are most likely to find it in a neighborhood populated by those who use it for traditional cooking: Jews, Russians, Polish, Portuguese. But it is disappearing even in those neighborhoods where, increasingly, the markets that serve them are large chains that deal with equally large distributors of generic goods. So if you find it, get it while you can. In more ways than one, this cheese is not going to last.
Blintz Cakes
These are best complemented by something sweet, like maple syrup or a fruit sauce. I like both together. Serves 2, for about 12 3” cakes.
1 cup Farmer’s cheese 
4 T sour cream
4 T flour
2 large eggs
Generous ¼ tea salt
Butter
Pull the cheese apart loosely with a fork. In a small bowl, beat the egg lightly then stir in the cheese, sour cream, and salt until just combined. Heat a griddle medium-hot. Butter it, and drop the mixture into small cakes with a tablespoon. When they begin to dry at the edges and you can slide your spatula below, turn them; they should be light brown on the underside; if too dark, lower your heat. Cook on the second side until light brown. The total cooking time, if your heat is correct, should be about 4 minutes; the cakes should be slightly puffy and airy. Serve with butter and syrup and/or blueberry sauce (below).
Blueberry Sauce
Frozen blueberries from inventory are perfect for this. Makes about 1 cup.
½ cup sugar
½ cup water
2 tea cornstarch dissolved in 2 tea cold water
½ tea vanilla
1 cup blueberries
A few twists of the nutmeg mill and a dash of cinnamon
Pinch salt
1 drop pure orange oil or 1 tea lemon juice
Heat the sugar and water to dissolve; turn up the heat, add the cornstarch/water, and boil for a minute or so until thickened to a sauce. Add the blueberries, vanilla, and seasoning and cook another minute, or until the blueberries have mostly broken down; strain or leave the sauce as is, which will be a bit textured (this is what I do for something like this). If you want the blueberries whole, add them at the end a few seconds before taking off the heat.