In The Kitchen: Orange Cake

I posted a photo of this on Facebook after I baked it and several people requested the recipe. Easiest to put it here rather than there. I'm not sure where I found this recipe (I've had it for years). Gourmet, perhaps? Anyway: the original recipe identified it as St. Louis Orange Cake. At our house, it's known as Christmas cake, and as Bill's Favorite Cake. The great thing about this cake is that it's light. There's nothing heavy or rich about it, but it's bursting with flavor.

The secret to that flavor is the final step: soaking the warm cake with glaze. It keeps well (in the frig, if you think it'll hang around for a few days) and makes a great breakfast cake, too.

• 1-3/4 c. flour
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1 t. baking soda
• 2 sticks buttered, room temperature
• 1 c. sugar
•  3 t. finely grated or chopped orange zest (two oranges worth)
• 3 eggs, room temperature, separated
• 1 c. PLAIN  yogurt (not sweetened!)
• 2 t. vanilla (use the real stuff, folks; it's worth the money)
• pinch of salt
• GLAZE:
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. orange juice  (squeeze the heck out of the two oranges you zested)
• 3 T. lemon (roughly the juice of one lemon)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly butter and flour a bundt pan (10 or 12 cup) or a tube pan. Tap out the excess flour.

In a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking  powder, and baking soda three times.

I use a stand mixer (you could it all by hand if your shoulders and wrists are up to it). Beat the butter on high speed until light and fluffy, roughly five or six minutes. Gradually add the sugar and orange zest, beating until the sugar is fully dissolved  and the mixture is light. This takes about eight minutes.

Add the egg YOLKS one at a time, beating until fully incorporated. Add the yogurt and vanilla and continue beating until light and fluffy, another couple of minutes.

Using a large wooden spoon, gently fold in the dry ingredients. (You could use the mixer, but if so, keep the speed low and don't overdo it. Overmixing makes for a tough cake.)

In a different bowl, using medium speed, beat the egg WHITES and the salt until firm. (Dip and lift the beaters. The whites should just stand.) Using a spatula, gently fold the whites into the batter until just blended. Again, don't overdo it. Spoon the batter into the pan and smooth the surface.

Bake 50 to 60 minutes. In my oven, it's done at 5o minutes, so keep an eye on it and a tester handy. Cool on a wire rack for ten minutes.

While it's cooling (or just before the cake is due to come out of the oven), combine the glaze ingredients in a small pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce to low heat, and simmer until the syrup has reduced to about a half cup. This will take ten or fifteen minutes.

Use a knife to loosen the cake from the pan. Invert it onto a serving platter. Brush or drizzle the glaze over the cake. There's a lot of glaze and this will take several minutes. You want the glaze to saturate the entire cake. And do this while the cake is warm! Otherwise the cake won't absorb the glaze as easily or fully.

Enjoy!

And It's That Time of Year Again (No, Not "the Holidays." That Other Time)

I gather from my Twitter stream that it's "Repeal Day." Seventy-nine years and counting. And here's what I had to say about it (among other things) on the 75th anniversary.  Oh, and this and this, too. (That last piece was written on the anniversary of the return of legal beer, which was not the same date as the end of Prohibition.)

Please: DO NOT complain that I'm "self-plagiarizing." (How is such a thing even possible?) Jonah Lehrer I'm not, okay? (*1) (*2)

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*1: On Jonah Lehrer and the cautionary tale thereof, see this, among many possible pieces.

*2: Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing you are: "Man, is it possible for this woman to get through ANY blog entry without a bunch of footnotes?"

Hmm. Where IS That New Grinch?

I was about to post the following on Facebook, and thought, "Oh, screw it. This is short, easy, etc. Just blog it." (*1) So.

This is "what's on my mind":

You know those "old" holiday specials? Charlie Brown? The '66 version of Grinch? (RR) That Rudolph stop-action? They seem "old" now, but they're amazing examples of their genre. 

For example, the 1966 Grinch is brilliant. Author, narrator, music, songs, images, "direction." All of it: brilliant. It's hard to imagine anyone topping that.

That's what inspired my thinking: I want someone to top that. And I know that someone can, because every generation, every moment, has its own artists. The person who could re-think, re-invent those classics is someone who appreciates the art of the earlier versions and wants to achieve the same wonder.

(God knows there's plenty of precedent: we're living in a spectacularly golden age of visual narrative, design, etc. What's on "the tube," for example, has never been better than it is right now. In terms of "television" art, we've moved waaay beyond the mundane.)

So: it's time for new versions of those classics. Those were truly high tech at the time, and given the [digital] age in which we live, new interpretations would surely involve creative use of  "technology."  Anyone know of any projects in the work?

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*1: There is something about Facebook that causes a brain-jerk reaction: "Facebook is faster. I'll just dump it there." But is it really? Yes, this takes much more time to type (I get more serious on the blog) but I also will just "quit" my site and go do something else. If I were at FB, I'd keep scrolling and reading --- and there goes an hour. Yes! "Social" media is just that: hanging out in a big agora/plaza/whatever.

"Fresh-Pressed" While Squeezed [For Time]

Get it? Fresh-pressed? Squeezed? Fresh-pressed lemons for juice?

Never mind.

This post is directed to the kind people who are now following the blog after hearing about it from WordPress's Fresh-Pressed page: THANK YOU for stopping by to read and for following.

Alas, there won't be much action here for several more weeks. I'm just finishing the new book I'm writing and the blog is on hiatus (I love that word!) until I finish. I only took time for the drive-by posting about craft beer because I was afraid I'd forget it. I had no idea someone at WordPress would find it interesting.

Anyway: I'll resume blogging just as soon as I finish the manuscript of the meat book. Meantime, there are over a thousand other posts here to read. So. Have at it!

See you soon. And again: many thanks. (Especially to the folks at WordPress.)

A Slight Bummer As I Peddle to the Finish Line

Yes! The finish line lies straight ahead. I've written a big chunk of that pesky new chapter my editor asked for, and I expect to have a polished version of it by the end of December. And because that's going so well, I'm also aiming to have the conclusion and introduction finished by then as well. I've gotta say --- again --- I'm SO glad my editor insisted on this new chapter. She was right:  the book needed it. And researching it has helped me think about my next book. And researching and writing it has clarified my opinion about, and where I stand, on various topics related to meat. 

That last is the most important: as I've noted here before, when I start a book, I don't know where I and it will end up. The object of the exercise is to learn about a topic so that I can express an opinion on it. Because there's nuthin' I dislike more than an uninformed opinion.

And working on this last chapter has been instrumental in putting the entire book, and the complicated, truly messy subject of meat in America, into perspective.

So. I'm off again to finish this sucker once and for all. (Unless, ahem, my brain has another fit and I get sidetracked by writing an unrelated blog entry.)

And speaking of that, the "slight bummer" is that for reasons known only to themselves, the folks at WordPress decided my recent rumination on craft brewing was worth featuring on the WordPress home page. According to the WordPress powers-that-be, that'll mean new traffic to the website. Where .... Neither I nor new posts will be found because I'll be off finishing this book.

But. Whaddya gonna do? Answer: Put first things first and FINISH THIS BOOK. Because no one but me knows just how weary I am of this particular marathon, which has now gone on for six, count 'em, six years.

Okay. See you on the flipside.

In the Kitchen: Easy Peezy Meat and Veg

I like the colder weather months for a number of reasons (not least of which is that they go much faster if I like rather than just tolerate them). One of those reasons is the food: "Winter" food typically requires more time over a stove or in the oven. (Not me. The food, silly!) And sometimes I don't have time to cook so --- I go with the easy stuff. Like last night. About as basic as it's possible to get: steak and roasted root vegetables.These are two dishes that work best with a whole lotta heat: From trial-and-error, I've concluded that the optimal oven temperature for roasting vegetables i 425. For meat, a HOT pan or broiler.

Usually when I cook steak (and that's not often), I do it stove-top: I heat a pan, add a thin drizzle of oil, and sear. But last night I wanted to try something different, so I consulted Bittman's How To Cook Everything (on my iPad. TOTALLY worth the money). One of his suggestions was as follows:  

Heat a heavyish pan (cast iron is best, but I used an old, beat-up Calpholon pan) until it's smoking. No oil. Sprinkle some salt in the pan. Add the meat, and sear for three minutes. Turn and sear the other side for three minutes. Don't do as I did, cough cough, and sprinkle more salt in the pan before you flip it. It'll be too salty. The piece I cooked was a New York Strip, about an inch thick. Three minutes a side rendered a perfect medium rare. And the char was fabulous. I doubt I'll go back to my old method of using some oil. Sublime. (Yes, I know you vegetarians/vegans are now busy gagging. What can I say? I didn't eat meat for 25 years, so been there, done that.)

As for the vegetables: PRE-HEAT THE OVEN. You need the oven to be hot before the vegetables go in. I had a parsnip and a beet. They were fairly large, but there are only two people in my house, so that was plenty. I chopped them into largish chunks, put them in a bowl (for easier mixing). Drizzled olive oil over them and tossed gently. Sprinkled salt and pepper. Tossed. Chopped a tiny (emphasis on tiny) bit of garlic. Tossed. Transferred them to a baking sheet (aka a jelly roll pan) and into the oven they went, for about 40 minutes. Also perfection. Lots of crunchy, not-quite-burned bits with each bite. Yum!

Pour the red wine or hearty beer and you're set.