Pineapple Coconut Cake

I recently had occasion to bake a cake. And what a fun cake I baked! It was only the second cake I’ve baked in my whole adult life. The last one was a modification of the same original recipe.

Because I don’t bake cakes often I didn’t want to bake one totally from scratch. I was doubtful I could get it moist and perfect on a first try, and I didn’t want the left over ingredients - when would I use cake flour again? But I didn’t want to just open a box and not really contribute to the deliciousness process either. So I started with a recipe that starts with a boxed mix, but with lots of add-ins. I changed the recipe to better suit my tastes and the ingredients I had. Like the pineapple-coconut layer: I had the ingredients available so why not? And why use pecans when I could use almonds?

Pineapple Coconut Cake

1 box white cake mix

1 stick butter, softened

1 cup fat free milk

¼ cup fat free plain yogurt

3 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp almond extract

¾ cup crushed pineapple, drained

¾ cup sweetened flake coconut

2 cups chopped almonds

2 cans cream cheese dressing

Preheat oven to 350. Mix the first seven ingredients really well. Mix in ½ cup pineapple, ½ cup coconut, and 1 cup almonds into the batter. Pour into two 8 inch cake pans, sprayed with oil. Bake about 30-35 minutes.

Let cool. Cut each cake in half, flatways to make 4 disks.

In a small bowl mix the remaining ¼ cup pineapple, ¼ cup coconut and ¼ cup super fine ground almond, set aside. In another bowl mix the frosting with the remaining almonds.

Put a few pieces of wax paper on your cake plate. Put a slice of cake in the center, cut side up. Spread some frosting on it. Place a cake slice on it, cut side up. Spread on the pineapple mixture. Place a cake slice on it, cut side down. Spread some frosting on top. Place the last cake slice on it, cut side down.

*Place a round plate on top as a guide, and use a large serrated knife to trim the cake sides. Remove plate and excess cake.

Using not too much icing, ice the side and top of the cake and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. Once well chilled and set, use the rest of the icing to ice the whole cake. Sprinkle with some of the remaining coconut.

Carefully pull the pieces of wax paper out from under the cake, to instantly clean the whole thing up.

*This trimming step is only necessary if you have a wonky oven such as myself and end up with a very over-cooked on the outside, perfect on the inside cake.  If your oven heats evenly, this step is only necessary if you want a smaller cake.

CSA 21: Herb Roasted Potato

Want to cook something delicious?  Something fresh, flavorful, and impressive… yet easy?  I’ll give you the secret: fresh herbs.  Herbs are an amazing food.  First off, they taste good.  They also smell good and they add an appealing sprinkle of color to food.  But mostly, first and foremost herbs taste good, especially when fresh.

Herbs are also nutritional powerhouses.  Don’t ever forget that green leafy vegetables are green leafy plants – that means eating herbs is right up there in responsible healthfulness with eating your spinach or your turnip greens or kale or any of the other green leafy recommendations you’ve heard.  Most herbs are loaded with nutrients including vitamin C, calcium, folic acid, iron and all sorts of flavinoids.

You can buy fresh herbs year round in most grocery stores, or you can easily grow your own if you have a sunny window and can remember to water them.  If you have a sunny yard, most herbs will grow like weeds – delicious aromatic weeds, but yeah… watch those suckers because they will take over (of course you can just prune them back aggressively by way of eating them).  If you don’t want to kill your plants though, try to never harvest more then 30% of a plant in a week.  Personally I grow basil (two varieties), rosemary and mint on my window sill.  I’ve tried dill, chives and a few others, but don’t get enough sun to truly sustain them.  I also recently noticed some marjoram growing as a weed in my aloe vera pot, which as of yet has not molested the aloe in any way, so it remains.  And of course my CSA share often includes a bunch of fresh herbs.

Add herbs to anything you cook – chop, tear, wilt or puree them.  Add fresh herbs to salads, to marinades, to soups and to sauces.  Drop some into poaching liquid.  Use one herb, or a mixture of whatever you have on hand – almost all green leafy herbs compliment one another.  Herbs themselves can also be the main highlight of a dish – for example pesto, or try making a salad using assorted mixed herbs as your greens (you won’t even need dressing!)

A great way to make a really impressive meal is to simply take a large handful of mixed green herbs, chopped very well, mixed with a touch of salt and pepper and some olive oil to make a gooey paste and rub it on a whole chicken.  Try if you can to actually get the mixture between the meat and the skin, although on top of the skin works ok too.  Get every last corner of that chicken coated in the herb paste.  Toss some chopped root veggies in whatever is left of the herb-oil.  Then just go ahead and bake the chicken in a roasting pan surrounded by the veggies.  Voila.  One of the tastiest meals you’ve ever had, I promise.  And really, can it get much easier then: chop herbs, mix with oil, rub on chicken, bake?  Not really when you are talking about actual ‘from scratch’ cooking.

Of course you don’t need to be so elaborate.  Herb roasted potatoes are an easy, always pleasing dish.  They are simple to make yet have a flavor intensity that suggests true culinary prowess.

Herb Roasted Potato

6 small potatoes (red, golden, fingerling, or a mixture)

1 small handful of fresh herbs (I used parley, rosemary, basil, mint and one I couldn’t identify)

1 clove fresh garlic

Olive oil, salt, pepper

Preheat your oven to about 375.  Chop the herbs as finely as you can.  With a garlic press, squish your garlic clove and mix with the chopped herbs.  Mix in some salt and pepper and add a splash of olive oil.  Cut your potatoes into quarters or 6ths, trying to get them to about even size chunks.  Toss with the herb-oil and bake in a single layer about 30 minutes until golden brown and fork tender (large pieces need to cook longer, smaller pieces shorter).  If you think of it, about 2/3 of the way through baking, give them a good stir to flip them for more even browning.

CSA 20: Tomato Ice Cream (aka Epic Fail)

People have made various comments to me about my cooking: “you must be a great cook!” or “wow you know so much about cooking!” Comments of that nature. The best is “you must eat so well!”

The truth is… plenty of my cooking attempts result in epic fails. I just don’t generally share the fails. Tomato ice cream for example: ick. Which is not to say I’m giving up on tomato ice cream; But my first attempt, was, well in a word: bad. Perhaps one could even say very bad. When I leave ¾ of my ice cream untouched, you know it’s pretty darn bad.

As I was making it two popular clichés were rolling around in my head: Necessity is the mother of all invention and ice cream makes everything better. I had over a dozen tomatoes and one day left until a new batch of vegetables, and surely more tomato. I needed a way to make tomato better… and I had a brand new ice cream machine just begging for experimentation.

Tomato ice cream certainly works on a basic level – it looked delicious and was a nice creamy texture. But it failed in the most important of areas – taste. The first and most major problem was entirely my fault and preventable. I should have peeled the tomatoes. And the sad thing is I knew that. I thought it through; I planned to peel the tomatoes. And then I got lazy. And you know what kids? Laziness rarely pays off. I simply de-gooked the tomato and put it in the food processor, skins and all. The skins were also the second problem, in that they only ended up chopping to about ½ centimeter bits, and therefore made for a weird texture within the otherwise smooth ice cream.

I used my recipe for strawberry ice cream, simply substituting tomato for the strawberries and omitting the vanilla. I also added an extra tablespoon of sweetener, to make up for the less sweet tomato in comparison to super sweet berries. For sweetener I used half sugar and half Xylitol, but certainly only sugar would work (or if your intestines can take it, only Xylitol would be fine. Alternately I’m sure other sugar substitutes would be fine as well). And while I keep calling it “ice cream” I actually did not use any cream, but rather skim milk* and yogurt, for a fat free treat.

I will be trying it again (why not? I still have at least 8 tomatoes, and I haven’t even seen this week’s veggie haul yet) but with some tweaks to the recipe. Certainly I’ll first and foremost peel my tomatoes. I’ll try using whole milk next time too, to add a bit of tasty creamy fat to it. And I’m thinking some apple sauce might do the trick of cutting the acid flavor better then just straight sugar/sweetener.

Strawberry Ice Cream

6-9 frozen strawberries, chopped

¾ cups (combined total) of plain fat free yogurt and skim milk

3 tablespoons sugar (or sugar substitute)

A few drops vanilla extract

Mix ingredients well so all the sweetener is dissolved. Add to ice cream machine and follow the directions for your machine. Enjoy.

*In the interest of full disclosure – I use the ultra pasteurized, extra protein skim, the stuff marketed as tasting like whole milk. Skim Plus is one brand, Hood Smart Balance is another, but I’m sure local markets vary. Extra milk solids/proteins are added to the skimmed milk making it slightly thicker and creamier tasting. It has higher calories then regular skim milk, as well as more protein, but remains fat free.

CSA 19: Tomato, tomato, tomato

Aka: A Tomato (or Two) a Day, is the CSA Way

Or perhaps an alternate title, No Tomato Left Behind

Or maybe, Attack of the Organic Tomatoes

Or the most fitting, You Say Tomato, I Say Please for the Love of All That’s Holy No More Tomato!

I thought the zucchini’s were bad in July. Oh geez, how I long for the days when I was obligated to eat 5 zucchinis a week, now that I’m faced with 8 full sized tomatoes and a pint of cherry tomatoes a week (that's just an average - last week I got 14 - that's right 14 tomatoes in one week!) My two tomato a day habit is wearing on my patience (I probably wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t despise tomato seeds and tomato gook, which means the cutting of a tomato involves a lot of work, wet messy work, to remove these bits… my dish rag, left in the sink for day, damp, actually sprouted – SPROUTED. Can you imagine my surprise coming home from work, glancing in the sink and seeing something growing?) Its been weeks now that I've been getting at minimum 5 or 6 full size red tomatoes and a pint of golden cherry tomatoes.

I have made tomato sauce, tomato & beans, sauteed tomato, tomato and chard, tomato salad (more then once my lunch has consisted of various cut tomatoes and some cheese) and tomato salsa. All of which were lovely meals individually, but collectively they are bit much.

I’ve spoken before about how I often wonder about the origins of recipes, how the very first incarnation of certain food combinations came about. The more I entrench myself in eating locally and seasonally the more I come to realize many of the modern recipes we have and love probably have less to do with certain foods going well together and more to do with certain foods being seasonal together. Tomatoes and peppers for example. Sure who doesn’t love a tomato sauce with some bell pepper cooked into it? Or a lovely tomato and pepper salsa? Or even just a big salad full of greens, fresh tomato and chopped bell pepper? But phooey to the idea that these recipes started due to their deliciousness. These combinations came about because tomatoes and peppers ripen at the same time. After all rhubarb would probably taste wonderful with peaches or apples, but who ever heard of peach & rhubarb pie? No one. Because strawberries and rhubarb ripen together, a full month or two after peach season is over and 3 months before apples make an appearance.

Tomato and Chard, with pork

1 pint cherry tomato, halved

6 chard leaves, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic

1 [boneless] pork chop, cubed

Olive oil, butter,

Salt & pepper

 Melt the butter in the oil in a large skillet.  Add the garlic and cook about 2 minutes (be careful to not let it burn).  Add the chard and cook another 2 or 3 minutes until it wilts and brightens in color.  Add the tomato and the pork and season with the salt and pepper.  Simmer for about 6-8 minutes until the pork is cooked through.  Enjoy as is or over rice (or any grain).

Salsa

1 large tomato

½ pint cherry tomatoes

1 [sweet] pepper (either bell, or long)

1 hot pepper

½ onion or 3 shallots

Handful of cilantro or parsley (or a mix)

Salt

Wash and prepare the veggies (pull the outer layers off the onions; remove the stems from the peppers and tomatoes, etc).  Put everything in a food processor and pulse about 4x for about 5 seconds each time.  Let sit for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Week 15: The Non-Tomato Story

This is not the tomato blog.  I have written it, but this is not it.  The tomato blog is not a very happy piece.  And I didn't want to come across as ungrateful for the recent bounty of nutritious, delicious tomatoes.  So I took a break from tomatoes.  There had been so many that I found I'd been neglecting some of my other vegetables.

Today, for the first time in the 15 weeks its been going on, I picked up my own vegetables.  I was confident I could make it out of work on time, and I did, and I took the express bus, which is twice the price of the subway, but twice as fast as well.  I made it to my car by 6:48 and to APEC by 7:00.

I did get more tomatoes.  Six more, plus a pint of golden cherry tomatoes.  But I also got 2 kinds of peppers, chard, arugula, dill and a spaghetti squash.  But more then just that, I had vegetables left.  I still had some beet greens, half a bunch of chard, parsley, garlic and shallots (not to mention potatoes and roasted beets).  This made for a lot of greens, in addition to a lot of tomatoes.  And I'm not sick of greens.

I didn't make anything new or special, I just used what I had on hand to make something familiar.  I decided on greens pie. Mid-way through I realized my filo dough had pretty much dried out and I could only eek out 2 pies.  I figured I could use the remainder as empanada filling... but that was just me being optimistic - the reality is I diced up a tomato and mixed it with the remaining sauteed greens and feta as lunch. At least its better then yesterday's lunch with was just a cut up tomato and some diced shallot.

In a day or two, perhaps I'll make up a big pot of slow cooked tomato sauce to enjoy with my spaghetti squash.  While its not particularly exotic, and I am in general a squash fan, I don't know that I've ever had spaghetti squash - I'm looking forward to it.

CSA 18 - Tomato Sauce

Sometimes when I cook I think about how cooking came to be.  Humans started off as foragers eating what they found, as they found it.  Then with tools and fire basic cooking was brought into the mix.  But recipes, putting certain food combinations together, determining how long to cook things for, all those details, how did they come about?

I cooked for myself such a basic, classic dish the other day.  I was tired, uninspired and had a fridge full of tomatoes.  Tomatoes are the zucchini of August; there are just too darn many.  But I also had onion, pepper and garlic and I always have a few boxes of pasta on hand, so there we go, dinner.

Pictured are almost all the ingredients.  Missing from the photo are only the olive oil, butter and salt… and the basil because I add the basil at the last minute so I forgot to cut it off the plant in time for the picture.

Really this isn’t even a recipe.  It’s just so basic.  But don’t the simplicity fool you, it was delicate and complex and fresh and tasty. It’s the kind of sauce that as you make it, and eat it, you start to understand the history of cooking, of how and why.  I took a bunch of seasonal vegetables that have been seasonal for a few weeks now so I’m bored of their individual flavors, chucked them in a pot together and voila, a new flavor.  Surely this is how and why cooking came about.  As a way to not only stretch food and spread nutrients amongst the tribe – if you mix it all together everyone gets some of everything – but because it makes foods you are bored with fresh and new again.  It’s the kind of sauce that probably would taste just as good had it been cooked in a clay pot over a campfire as it did cooked in my dutch oven over a stove.

Tomato Sauce

2 large tomatoes, diced

Handful of grape tomatoes, quartered

1 bell pepper, diced

½ onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

Olive oil

Butter

Salt

Fresh basil

Melt the butter in the oil and add the onion.  Cook for a few minutes until soft, and add the pepper.  Cook about 2 minutes and add the garlic.  Cook about 1 minute and add the tomato.  Season with salt.  Simmer for as long as it takes to boil a pot of water and cook pasta.  In the last 2 or 3 minutes of cooking, add the fresh basil, roughly chopped.

Serve over pasta, with fresh grated cheese.

Simple and perfect.

Restaurant Club

not shown: David

What's in a name? I tried to find some famous quotes but all the good "name" quotes I could think of conveyed the wrong sentiment. Sometimes what you call something is as important as the thing itself.

Restaurant Club. Giving our alternate month dinner party plans a title changes everything. Well ok, no it doesn't change everything, but it did change the dynamic for the better, almost instantaneously. In fact giving the group a name, a "restaurant club" changed my perspective on my social life. As we defined the perimeters of our club I came to realize I've been a part of a few restaurant clubs over the course of my life, we just never formalized ourselves.

Last night we went to Half Moon in Dobbs Ferry. It was an excellent choice. There were 6 of us, so we got a great selection of food, and being the bunch of foodies we are, our bread plates saw some serious sharing action... After we'd finished using the bread plates for the awesome artisan bread and homemade chili infused olive oil and fresh Parmesan cheese, that is.

I started off with my typical cocktail, a scotch and soda.  But Johnny could keep walking this time; I went for a smokey, peaty Talisker scotch, since they had it.  And I was not disappointed.  Scotch without smoke is like... Coke without cola.

Jennifer had read somewhere that the duck tacos at Half Moon were a star of the menu so of course we got a few orders for the table.  The duck was moist and flavorful and the freshly fried taco shells were delicate enough to practically melt in your mouth yet strong enough to hold up to the several bites it took to eat the whole thing.  Topped with fresh vegetables and a generous dollop of guacamole, I have to agree with past reviews and claim the duck tacos to be divine, a "must taste" indeed.

The chipolte caesar salad  was generously sized and full of fresh shaved cheese.  I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that for a restaurant with such a seafood-heavy menu, my salad did not come topped with anchovies, but the chipolte dressing was pretty darn flavorful, so I guess I can forgive the transgression.  Its getting harder and harder to find a proper caesar salad these days, but I am happy that salad in general is becoming a more focused course instead of the after thought is has been in the past.

I'd chosen my entree before even arriving at the restaurant.  I think in fact I'd chosen my entree before we'd even crossed the bridge.  Jennifer was on the restaurant's website getting us directions (they have excellent, detailed directions) and got distracted by the menu which she was reading aloud to me as I drove.  Once she said "skate" I interrupted and said "ok you can stop reading out loud now, I know what I'm getting." The only thing that could have derailed that plan would have char, but thankfully I was not put in a position of having choose - I really don't know what I would have done had I been faced with that choice. (Yes I do, I would have chosen the char since its more ethical... but dang I do enjoy skate.)

The skate was pan fried and topped with bacon crumbles and served on a bed of julienned zucchini.  A perfect dome of cilantro seasoned rice accompanied it.  Half of my dinner companions refused to try it upon hearing it was the wing of a sting ray (well a member of the sting ray family, actual sting rays are poisonous).  They were the same people who were more shocked then amused when I declared I wasn't sure if I liked the taste of raw oysters but I do enjoy the god-complex I get from eating something that is still alive.  But Jennifer and Marian tried it and loved it (and they laughed wildly at my oyster declaration).  I had to remind Jen she'd tried it (and enjoyed it) once before, when I'd ordered it at Bar Americain.

Jennifer shared with me some of her seared halibut - it was like butta;  melt in your mouth, perfectly cooked - just golden on the outside, a perfect smooth white inside.  And Annette shared a generous serving of her lobster macaroni and cheese, full of hearty pasta swirls and fresh mushrooms in a delicate cheese sauce.

As per usual I was in charge of the wine list (I'm not sure how I've become the sommelier amongst my friends, but I've gotten pretty good at it) and I was very happy with the selection available, and the prices.  There were several pages of wines, and they were all very affordable.  I chose for us a bottle of Michel Torino “Don David Reserve” `07, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Argentina (my apologies to my Facebook friends, to whom I announced I'd had a Chilean wine).  It delivered on its promise of being robust and it took on a slightly spicy flavor in conjunction to the meal, and at only $32 a bottle, we didn't even blink an eye at ordering a second.

Although full to near capacity, one simply cannot stop such a meal as we were having without a bit of dessert.  In for a penny, in for a pound - if you're going to feast, feast away!  Jennifer and I decided to share the peach and blueberry crumble, topped with vanilla ice cream.  I didn't try any of the flourless chocolate tortes ordered by Marian & Annette, and David, but I will say they looked wonderful.  The fruit in our crumble was obviously fresh and the oatmeal topping was the perfect temperature barrier between the steaming hot fruit and the ice cream.  Between the two of us we ate every last scrap off our dish.

It was a wonderful meal, with wonderful company, and now with a formalized agenda.  Our restaurant club meets every other month, with the restaurant choice being a rotation amongst the group members.  And although we established the guidelines while at this meal, it still very much qualified financially.  I suggested the price gauge be we must be able to order 3 courses, 1 cocktail and split a bottle of wine for under $100 per person (including tax and tip).  Our meal at half moon came to $85 each - not bad for a 4 hour feast paired with great conversation.