THE EASIEST CAKE I KNOW

Friday, October 21, 2005

Last weekend, I went to a fall party for my department. We were assigned dishes to bring, based on our rank in the program; first-year PhD's were assigned dessert. I had a lot going on that day, and I didn't need the stress of trying something new, so I made this pound cake. It is simple, fast, and unfailingly good. I've never messed up this cake, and I've made it a lot. It turned out perfectly, as usual, and when I arrived, I was immediately glad I made it.

Graduate students in English are apparently not known for their culinary skills. The other desserts there were small and in plastic wrappers: Little Debbie Snack Cakes! The side dishes consisted mostly of chips and some sour cream dip, although one other southern girl did bring a hot green bean casserole. I have occasionally been accused of food snobbery, but come on. Little Debbie? The moral to this story is: when you go to an unknown social function, always take something you don't mind eating for dinner. I had three pieces of cake and some red wine. All in all, not a bad night.

Here's how you make the cake:

One Bowl Pound Cake

3 cups sugar

1 cup butter

6 eggs

3 cups cake flour

1 cup buttermilk

2 t. almond extract

1 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cream butter and sugar in the mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add flour and buttermilk alternately, with the mixer on low, until the mixture is thoroughly combined. Stir in flavorings. Pour into a greased bundt pan. Bake for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, but check frequently towards the end. The only trick to this cake is making sure you don't cook it too long. When a knife comes out almost-clean and the top is beginning to brown, it's done. Turn out onto a rack to cool, and dust with powdered sugar.

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THE EASIEST DESSERT I KNOW

Thursday, October 20, 2005

You know that feeling you get when it's about an hour after dinner and you just NEED something sweet? Whenever that craving strikes at our house, I usually ransack the pantry, knowing all the while that I'll not find anything. But, if, by some chance, I happen to have a banana and some ice cream, my night gets a whole lot better.

Aunt Jennifer, for whom I was named, gave this recipe to me in the Aunts' Recipe Book when I got married. On the recipe card beside the title--Bananas Foster--she wrote in parentheses: our favorite dessert! After I made it the first time, I knew why. She and I share that love of very, very sweet things, and this dessert fits that description perfectly. If you don't like your treats ultra-sweet, this is not the dish for you. But, if you do, here's the easiest dessert I know how to make! I copy the recipe verbatim from Aunt Jennifer because it has not once failed me:

Bananas Foster

bananas, split lengthwise

cup of brown sugar

1/2 stick butter

dash of cinnamon

Melt butter in pan. Add brown sugar and stir until smooth and un-grainy. Put bananas in gently and heat through. Sprinkle cinnamon on. Serve over really good vanilla ice cream.

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MEET THE WINE LADY

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Everybody has her favorite grocer and liquor store. Lucky for me, both of mine are in the same place!

When I first moved to Baton Rouge, a friend who’s lived here for several years asked me where I was doing my grocery shopping. She knows how much I love to cook, so she recommended Calandro’s, a locally owned grocery just down the street from my house. “You’ll love it,” she said. “And, that store has the wine lady.”

Eileen Bonemery, apparently known around town as “the wine lady,” has worked at Calandro’s on and off for about four years, but she’s been learning about wine and food for, as she says, “as long as I can remember.”

She grew up in Istanbul, the daughter of a Turkish mom and American dad, and came to the States for college in Massachusetts, where her dad’s family lived. She wanted to go to the Culinary Institute in New York, and was accepted, but her mother wanted more for her daughter than to work long, hard hours in a kitchen. Instead, Eileen got a degree in industrial engineering.

She lived and worked as a caterer in California until 1999—never as an engineer—and then made her way to Baton Rouge, so her son could be close to his father. She was looking for a low-stress, low-pressure job that would allow her to focus most of her energy on parenting. She worked for a while as a caterer for an antiques business, but when they had to cut back on expenses, she asked her friend Charlie Calandro if he had anything she could do. She first worked at the store on Perkins Road, and one of her first responsibilities was to cook for the Taste of Baton Rouge, an annual food and wine showcase featuring cuisine from area restaurants and vendors. Over the course of three days, with the help of only a dishwasher, she made appetizer-portioned food for 2,000 people. Calandro was apparently impressed; he and Eileen have been collaborating on food and wine ever since.

Eileen says that her responsibilities at the store include “anything and everything.” The business is a team effort: she and Calandro taste every new wine that comes into the store, usually on Friday afternoons, and then decide whether to stock it or not. Their decision has a lot to do with whether they like it, whether customers will buy it, and whether they have a need for another wine in its category.

Sometimes distributors will drop off samples; sometimes Eileen will set aside a new bottle for them to try. The staff tastings take place in the climate-controlled wine room at the back of the grocery store. Shelves of dusty bottles line the walls of this cool, concrete-floored room. A richly covered cloth covers the table in the middle of the room, surrounded by heavy, wooden chairs. In the center, a silver ice bucket marks the table as the tasting spot, and big oak barrels tower in the background. The wines are divided by region—California wines occupy most of the space with a small selection of French wines at the front of the room. Eileen doesn’t have a collection herself, except for two bottles of Italian wine bottled the year her son was born. She plans to give them to him one day.

The front of the store, where the wine is sold, is also divided by the winery’s locale. Boxes of bottles staggered at different heights display colorful tags that draw customers’ eyes to certain wines. A fluorescent orange one reads, “New! Featured in Advocate! Non-oaked Chardonnay.” Another one comments on the 2003 Fleur petite sirah: “Yummy! My fav grape. Eileen.”

One customer, new to the area, asks where to find the French wines. “Well, you’re standing right in front of some of them, and then the others are over here,” Eileen tells the silver-haired gentleman and his high-heeled companion, gesturing towards the bottles at the end of an aisle. He says he’s from New Orleans and has had a hard time finding the selection he’s accustomed to; a friend recommended Calandro’s. She asks how long he intends to be here and assures him, “Anything you want, we’ll write it down and order it for you.”

With wide bottle-green eyes behind oval glasses, and short, brown curls framing her face, Eileen leans forward slightly when talking to customers, demonstrating her intent willingness to help. She moves quickly between the rows of bottles, deftly maneuvering her way to the bottle she’s looking for. She asks a few standard questions to help her make a good selection, but there are no hard-and-fast rules. Anyway, “all rules are meant to be broken,” she says. Customers usually know if they want red or white, and they usually have a price range in mind. A few details about the herbs and flavors they’ll be eating helps guide Eileen to the right selection.

The best way for a novice to learn about wine, according to Eileen, is to “read, read, read.” She recommends Saveur magazine for both its food and wine content and says she also sometimes reads The Wine Enthusiast. She warns against trusting one source completely, though, as every wine connoisseur has her own particular taste. Ultimately, every wine drinker has to decide what he likes, according to Eileen.

She started forming her own taste as a child in Turkey, and then sharpened it during her tenure in California. There, she had a group of friends who shared her interest, and they would get together to test different food and wine combinations. She also traveled a lot to wineries, especially in the Santa Barbara region, tasting for fun.

She values different characteristics in different grapes: in a pinot noir, for example, she likes big fruit. She has learned the combination of traits—sight, smell, and taste—that make a particular wine good or bad through years of reading and tasting. Sotheby’s Encyclopedia of Wine, The Wine-Lover’s Cookbook, and other resources stay tucked behind the store’s glass counter, and she consults them as she works to meet a customer’s need. If a customer has his heart set on a sweet rosé with barbecue chicken, though, Eileen won’t talk him out of it. “Ultimately, it’s your own taste that matters,” she says.

Apparently, the thirty-five or so years or so that Eileen has been honing her taste for wine has rubbed off on at least one person. When her son was about nine, Eileen overheard him telling a customer at Calandro's about the "earthiness" of a particular Cabernet. The woman leaned down and said, "Son, how do you know so much about wine?" Since then, Eileen is the only one in the family who's allowed to talk to customers about the wine, at least until he's legally allowed to drink, she says, laughing.

Another customer asks for a rosé to go with seafood his wife is cooking: "some sort of pasta with shrimp." She recommends one from California. “Isn’t it a nice color?” she asks. He nods. “We just got this one in. It’s dry, not sweet,” she says, picking up another bottle. “And I love this one.” He chooses from her selections, and they chat some more about the pale pink wines.

The customer requesting the French wine returns to ask about pinot grigio for his companion. Eileen quickly picks out several bottles. Upon inspection, he adds them all to his collection. The couple moves on, their buggy loaded down with a dozen bottles or so, and he thanks Eileen profusely. “We look forward to seeing you again very soon.”

He turns to his companion, and says softly, “This is definitely the best so far. We’ll come back.”

For my dinner of catfish with lemon-butter sauce, Eileen recommends either a buttery Chardonnay to complement the sauce or a Viognier, a French wine perfect for fish. The Viognier is out of my price range, so she picks up three bottles of chardonnay, and displays them for me to look at. “At this point, it’s up to the customer to decide,” she explains. Some people will go with the label they like; others will compare prices. I choose the Mark West, which I've not tried before.

When I get home, Eileen proves her mettle: the smooth, buttery flavor of the wine is a perfect match for the subtle flavors in the fish and citrus butter. What she lacks in formal training, Eileen clearly makes up for in studied practice.

Calandro's also holds monthly themed tasting events at Avoyelles on the River on Third St. Last month's theme was Santa Barbara; in November, they'll be tasting wines fit for a Thanksgiving feast. Maybe one of these months David and I will go to a tasting, and I'll tell you about what I learn. Until then, look for recommendations about what wine to serve with the meals I'm cooking; they will all come from Eileen!

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RASPBERRIES & MASCARPONE, DRESSED IN LACE

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

After experimenting with the lace cookie recipes used for the sherbet dessert (below), I tried a few other recipes and came up with my own. This one I like because the cookies are pliable when they're warm, so you can form them into different shapes. For this dessert, I made a filling with mascarpone cheese and raspberries, and shaped the cookies into little cups.

They are more caramel-y in texture and flavor than either of the other two recipes, probably because they're mostly butter and sugar. The nuts add a nice layer of flavor too. These cookie cups could easily hold ice cream or other custard-based desserts; they make a lovely presentation and taste good too. I think of this dessert kind of like a grown-up ice cream cone.

The inspiration comes from Paula Lambert's The Cheese Lover's Cookbook & Guide. This recipe is a simpler variation of her Lace Cookies with Orange-Mascarpone Filling and Raspberries. Here's my version:

Nutty Lace Cookies

1 cup pecans

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 T. flour

1 t. salt

1 stick butter, melted

1 t. vanilla

1 egg, beaten

Mix the pecans and sugars in a food processor until the nuts are finely ground. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until well-mixed. Refrigerate the dough for an hour. Drop spoonfuls onto a greased, foil-lined cookie sheet. They will spread like crazy, so make sure they are very far apart (I only get about 5 or 6 on a cookie sheet). Bake at 325 degrees for about 7 minutes per batch. When the cookies are done, let them cool until the foil is cool enough to handle (I have to use oven mitts). Tear the foil between cookies, and form each one into a cup shape. You can set them in ramekins or muffin tins to help them hold their shapes. When completely cool, peel off foil.

Raspberry-Mascarpone Cream

4 ounces mascarpone cheese

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

3 T. framboise or other raspberry liqueur

1/2 cup raspberries, plus more for garnish

1/4 cup sugar, divided

Toss the raspberries with 1/8 cup of sugar; set aside. In a mixer, beat the whipping cream and mascarpone cheese until soft peaks form. Add the liqueur, 1/8 cup of sugar, and 1/2 cup raspberries.

To assemble: In shallow dishes, place cookie cups. Top with a scoopful of the mascarpone mixture and a handful of raspberries.

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IN THE PINK

Monday, October 17, 2005

Grandmothers are delicious treats. My dad's mother has always been a huge part of my life--in grade school, whenever I had to write an essay about who I most admired, she took top honors. A few weeks ago, I was at her house to celebrate birthdays for two of my aunts, and the dessert you see above is what Aunt Prissy served in Grandmother's beautiful crystal, which she has collected over a lifetime.

Although I am a little late in joining, I recently read about a food blogging event called "In the Pink." Emily at La Dolce Vita invited food bloggers to create pink food and write about it, in honor of breast cancer awareness. When I read Emily's story and the inspiration for the event, I knew I wanted to join. Knowing my paternal grandmother so well all these years has always had a tiny edge of bitterness to it: I didn't get to know my mom's mother, because she lost her life to breast cancer when I was only two years old.

I am grateful for the chance to have such a sweet grandmother in my life, and saddened at the same time to have lost another so early. My hope is that the spread of breast cancer awareness can prevent other women from losing their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters to such an ugly disease.

Here's a pink dessert with delicate lace cookies, dedicated to both of my grandmothers, whose lives I cherish. Thanks to Aunt Prissy for making such a lovely dessert, which I think accurately represents the delicate sweetness of grandmothers everywhere.

Amaretto Pink Sherbet with Lace Cookies

Raspberry Sherbet, 1 generous scoop per serving

Amaretto, about 1 tablespoon per scoop (more or less to taste)

Lace cookies, 1 per scoop

Aunt Em's Lace Cookies

Aunt Prissy used Paula Deen's recipe for the cookies in the picture but says she likes Aunt Em's recipe better, so I'm giving it to you instead. Aunt Prissy also recommends parchment paper instead of foil.

1 cup quick oats

1 cup sugar

3 T. flour

1/4 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

1 stick butter, melted

1 t. vanilla

1 egg, beaten

Mix the oats, sugar, flour, and baking powder in a large bowl. Add the melted butter, and mix well. Then add egg and vanilla; stir to combine. Refrigerate the dough for a few hours. Drop spoonfuls 3 inches apart onto a foil- or parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake at 325 degrees for 7-9 minutes. Watch carefully until they are light brown on edges. Cool slightly and peel off of foil. Makes about 2 1/2 dozen.

To assemble the dessert: scoop sherbet into long-stemmed glasses. Drizzle the amaretto on top. Break cookies in half, and stick one half into each side of the glass. Pretty and easy to do for a lot of people.

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