Sonoma Country Life

Torte di Mora - Italian Blackberry Tart

Ever since I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I've made a concerted effort to steer myself away from unseasonable produce in the grocery store. You know how hard it is to resist those lovely, juicy looking strawberries, busting out at the front of the fruit section, beckoning the buyer with a false promise of juicy wholesomeness when they really have had no bearing whatsoever on the present seasonal bounty here in agriculturally abundant Sonoma County. We shouldn't be scoffing strawberries for at least another six weeks or so, by which time the fields surrounding us will be positively teeming in the little red, locally grown beauties.

Anyway, seeings as I've likely peaked your appetite with the sweet snapshot above, I'll get to the point. Whole Foods had a sale on the berry aisle this weekend, making it absolutely, wantonly irresistible not to succumb to the promise of a couple pallets of two-for-one blackberries under three bucks. Unheard of at this time of year, though the global footprint of the unseasonal berries making their way to Nor Cal and subsequently into my cucina is not truly very commendable.

So, I'm going to post the recipe for this delicious Italian Blackberry Tart, on condition that you promise me you won't attempt to reproduce it in your SoCo kitchen until the bushes on our highways and byways are dripping with berries of their own. Or, at least until you spot a 'grown locally' sign on the blackberry tubs in the stores in town and at the farmer's market. 

Torta Di Mora (adapted from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italy)
Shortcrust pastry:
4 1/2 ounces of butter
3 1/2 ounces of powdered sugar
9 ounces plain flour
drop of vanilla
Zest of 1/2 a Meyer lemon
2 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons of cold milk or water

Filling:
I small tub of mascarpone cream
3 1/2 fluid ounces of heavy cream
3 tablespoons of sugar
3 tablespoons of grappa
11 ounces of blackberries (or, seasonal fruit to be more environmentally correct)
2 tablespoons of blackberry jam
Fresh mint leaves

To make the shortcrust pastry, grease an 11", loose-bottomed tart shell with a little butter. This is very important, as I discovered, as I had a bit of trouble prizing the shell from the base to serve. After putting together such a perky looking masterpiece of a winning Italian tart you really don't want to serve up a crumbled slop of a slice. I'm not one to fuss over my pastry making endeavors, which generally results in a pastry not nearly as perfect as that of my Mouse in the Pantry baker pal, Mel's, but I am sure she'd agree, it quite palatable in its simplicity! So, in short, mix butter and sugar until creamy, add in lightly beaten eggs and vanilla, lemon zest and liquid and work into a dough. Wrap in plastic and give it an hour or so to firm up before rolling out and lining the tart shell. Bake at 325 F for about 15 minutes.

For the filling, take a bowl and whisk mascarpone, cream, grappa and sugar until fluffy, but substantial enough to spoon into the cooled shell. Add three or four tablespoons of water to two tablespoons of jam and melt into a syrup. Dip the washed berries into the syrup to coat before pressing lightly into the cream filling in the tart. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint from the yard. Chill for an hour or two before serving with a shot glass of grappa and a nice, little cup of espresso.

Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday - whatever it is known as in your neck of the woods, the Tuesday which falls before lent begins on Ash Wednesday will forever be pancake day for me.

For Pancake Day in the UK means American breakfast for dinner. Sort of. As pancakes in Ireland, England, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand are traditionally a cross between a French crepe and a thicker, silver dollar U.S. version.

Shrove Tuesday being the first day of the season of Lent officially marks a big, honking X on the rich pantry staples of eggs and butter, milk, sugar and the sorts of foods which should, in accordance with the Christian church, be avoided completely in order to be absolved of our sins by this act of virtuous penance.

If that sounds like a load of old tripe, then omitting one or two regular dietary treats from daily intake may be a more modern approach to acknowledging the opportunity to purge! In short, the teaspoon of sugar in your morning latte, choccie bar in the afternoon, glass of wine with dinner. Could you do without, for a whole 40 days?

Pancake day isn't all about being pious. Quite the opposite, for the Brits have a ball on Shrove Tuesday with traditional games of mob football (although this has died out in most parts of the UK, several historic, high-profile community games take place to this day in the middle of the local highway) and more commonly still, pancake racing on the village green.

Aprons flapping in the February winds, pancakes are tossed as original desperate housewives dash to the finish line, pan in hand, in an all-out pitch to prove they've not lost their mettle in the midst of the family laundry pile! Maybe I should suggest we resurrect Pancake Racing down by the river outside of Aqus Cafe. I'm sure the lovely Lesley will lend us some frying pans! (By the way, if you are a British reader in the Petaluma area, mark your calendar for Aqus Cafe's first annual Saint George's Day Pot-Luck party, April 23).

Pancakes have been historically served with Lyle's Golden Syrup (a golden colored, super-sticky version of North American maple syrup with a molasses texture), a squeeze of lemon and sugar, or homemade jam. Though the popular daily press promotes a more adventurous approach to today's Pancake Day, with British families experimenting along the savory pancake filling line.

However you like to eat your pancakes, why not whip up a batch this Pancake Day?

Best of British Pancakes

Serves 4 (large) or 8 (small)

1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups of milk
3 tblsp melted butter
2 tsp sugar

Thoroughly blend all of the ingredients into a smooth paste. Heat skillet, add a little additional melted butter between pancakes. Delicious served with your favorite pancake filling!

 

Book Group Butterscotch Pudding

Charene's Old-Fashioned Butterscotch Pudding

(Adapted from Bon Appétit | March 1998)
Begin making this treat a day ahead.
Yield: Makes 6 servings

2 cups whipping cream
1 cup milk (do not use low-fat or nonfat)
1/4 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

6 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Combine cream, milk and brown sugar in heavy medium saucepan. Whisk over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves. Set aside. Combine 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water in heavy large saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat; boil without stirring until mixture turns deep amber color, brushing down sides of pan with wet pastry brush and swirling pan occasionally, about 10 minutes.
Slowly pour cream mixture into caramel (mixture will bubble vigorously). Bring to boil, whisking frequently to dissolve any caramel bits. Remove from heat.
Beat yolks in large bowl. Whisk in caramel mixture. Stir in vanilla and salt. Strain custard. Skim any air bubbles from surface. Refrigerate custard until cold, about 3 hours.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Divide custard among six 3/4-cup custard cups. Place cups in roasting pan. Add enough hot water to pan to come halfway up sides of cups. Bake pudding until set in center, about 45 minutes. Remove cups from pan. Cool at room temperature 2 hours. Cover; chill overnight. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled.)
Beat yolks in large bowl. Whisk in caramel mixture. Stir in vanilla and salt. Strain custard. Skim any air bubbles from surface. Refrigerate custard until cold, about 3 hours.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Divide custard among six 3/4-cup custard cups. Place cups in roasting pan. Add enough hot water to pan to come halfway up sides of cups. Bake pudding until set in center, about 45 minutes. Remove cups from pan. Cool at room temperature 2 hours. Cover; chill overnight. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled.)

Although we had a pretty decent discussion on last month's book pick: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and unanimously agreed on selecting the great, though sadly, recently deceased, John Updike's classic Rabbit, Run for February's read, dinner was so darn delicious, Charene's dessert recipe takes priority on this post!

Ration Book Recipes

During World War II and for quite some years after peace was declared, the Brits were heavily rationed in order for the bare necessities of home grown domestic food products to feed an entire nation.

Just as in the American Great Depression Era of the 1930s, self-sufficiency was the key to the kitchen front.

The phrase 'Dig for Victory' became one of the second world war's most famous slogans in the UK, as civilians dug up back yards and gardens to grow veggies and keep chickens and pigs. Lots of the great parks in London were turned over to productive land. Even the world-famous moat of the Tower of London was transformed into a highly productive, vegetable patch for a period during the war!

Ration books with cheery veggie cartoon-character recipes were issued to everyone. Kids had their own ration books and received half of the adult ration, which did not include sausages, bread, potatoes and other vegetables, though these basic edibles were hard to lay hungry hands on.

With just one egg and three ounces of cheese per person, each week, four ounces of bacon, three pints of milk, a pinch of butter and sugar, a tiny portion of meat, two ounces of candy, a blob of jam and another two ounces of tea, no wonder the Dig for Victory campaign was a big success. Veggies and freshly laid eggs were the mainstay of many a war-time dinner.

Even the glossy gourmet magazines of today are talking comfort food, and banquets for bankrupts. Though the majority of us are certainly not in nearly as dire a straights as our fellow American citizens of the 1930s, or the blitzed Brits of World War II there's a Waste Not, Want Not, Make Do and Mend movement sweeping the nation's kitchens in this current economic climate.

Time then to look back to our grandmother's recipe books. Nostalgia, home cooked meals around the kitchen table and not a dollar more to waste on extortionate imports.

Here's the first of my Ration Book Recipes. I hope you'll give it a try at home.

Toad in the Hole

2 oz butter
6 sturdy sausages of your choice (bangers taste best)
4 oz plain flour
pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 pint of milk

Grease roasting pan with butter. Prick the sausages. Roast in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 15 minutes until half cooked. Sift flour and salt and mix in egg. Add milk and beat until smooth. Take the sausage pan out of the oven and pour batter over the sausages. Cook for a further 25 minutes, or until the batter has risen and golden brown. Serve with green beans, broccoli or peas or baked beans.

 

Cookies for Santa

 
We have a little baker's circle in our neighborhood - and we know just who to go for in a pinch for a cup of canola oil, a spot of sugar, a drop of vanilla! It's one of the nicest ways to keep in touch in the midst of the whirl of holiday shopping, parties, work and all the mountainous domestic duties!

Because I know she loves to bake, I picked out the cutest patchwork apron for my sweetest little neighbor, whilst browsing downtown for vintage ties for the boys.

Not only was my pint-sized baking buddy sweet enough to have her Mommie send me over a photo of herself in apron-clad cookie-making action, she's lending me her favorite recipe perfect for Santa's cookies:

The Looper’s Classic Spritz Cookies
1 ½ cups butter                  
 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup granulated sugar                  
 ½ teaspoon almond extract
1 egg                           
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons milk                   
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 375º.  Thoroughly cream butter and sugar.  Add egg, milk, vanilla and almond extract; beat well.  Stir together flour and baking powder; gradually add to creamed mixture, mixing to make smooth dough.  Do not chill.  Place dough into cookie press and press cookies onto ungreased cookie sheet.  If you desire, add colorful sprinkles.  Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned around edges.  Remove cookies from sheet; cool on rack.

Makes 7-8 dozen cookies.  Enjoy!

Italian/American Pecan Tart

Pecan pie is a staple of the American Thanksgiving table, though the Bourbon version adds a touch of the cosmopolitan approach to tradition, don't you think?

Ramsacking the liquor cabinet (which hasn't had much of an airing since last year's holidays) I failed to lay my hands on a bottle of Bourbon, but came out a winner with a brand new bottle of imported Italian Vecchia Romagna brandy which begged to be tippled into my half assembled pecan tart interpretation.

Italian/American Pecan Tart

 1 9" pastry shell, baked
1 1/2 cups pecans
4 large egg yolks
1/3 cup Lyle's Golden Syrup (non high fructose)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
4 tblsp butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla
3 tablespoons of Vecchia Romagna.

Preheat oven to 350. place pecan halves in pie shell. Combine egg yolks, cream, golden syrup, brown sugar  & salt and heat gently, stirring constantly for 10 minutes. Add brandy. Stir. Pour over pecans, and place tart pan on a cookie sheet to avoid spillage in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes and cool for three quarters of an hour before serving with vanilla ice cream. 

 

Pre-Thanksgiving Sweet Potato Fries

Could not wait for Thanksgiving to get the sweet potatoes sizzling. Stood in line at Trader Joes this afternoon and wondered at the toppling stack of instant mashed potatoes. Do people really serve that stuff with a holiday meal? Pretty mind boggling, but I guess I'm a big old spud-snob having been raised in that part of the world where supersized, white, fluffy potatoes have always been a-plenty and not to mention one of the cheapest items of winter-weather, carbo-charged, whole food fortitude available.

The sweet potato deal took a while to make a dent in my American transplant culinary repertoire. Orange potatoes? Seemed a bit suspect. But then again, so did the humble pumpkin pie. Never having ever been so much as offered a bite of pumpkin-anything prior to my arrival from the proverbial 'boat' of ex-pat edible discoveries, it took about four or five subsequent, tentative Thanksgiving tastings to take it on board as a new found fav!

So there we have it: sweet potatoes, pumpkin, all officially A OK in the vineyard kitchen, although I really only do think to cook these peculiar-looking amber-hued gifts of the earth at this very specific time of year.

Tonight's Oven Baked Sonoma County Sweet Potato Fries

10 small sweet potatoes, peeled & sliced fry-shaped
olive oil
parmesan cheese
kosher salt
pepper
fresh, chopped rosemary

Preheat oven to 400. Mix all of the above ingredients in a bowl. Place on cookie sheet, bake for 40 minutes, turning regularly.

Note to the Cook: Still deliberating on your Thanksgiving menu? Pick up a copy of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat on Wednesday November 19th for Petaluma's always-amazing Kay Baumhefner's feature recipes Check out Kay's tasty new Come Home to Cooking website. 

Ginger Cake Revival

The minute the clocks go forward and the nights draw in early the natural instinct is for me to turn to the cookbooks of the British Isles for wintry sustenance. Not sure this is a good move for the figure, but a fine way to bring on the comfort foods of the darker months and make-merry-meals with whomever is fortunate enough to be seated around the table!

There have been some mighty strange sightings of traditional English baking ingredients on the shelves of local supermarket baking sections of late, one such particularly peculiar item being Lyle's lovely, gooey, Golden Syrup. Sort of a super-sticky maple syrup if you've never had the pleasure of sticking the back of a warm spoon into a tin of Lyle's in your illustrious life (except now it comes in nifty, plastic pourable squeezy jars).

This being the case, there is no excuse not to whip up a batch of Ginger Sponge Cakes, ideal for winter puds with a dollop of whipped cream, scoop of vanilla ice cream or best yet, a bountiful helping of warm vanilla custard. Otherwise, cool and slice with a pot of tea.

Ginger Sponge Cake

4 oz self raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3oz butter
6 tablespoons of golden syrup
2oz soft brown sugar
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift flour, ginger, baking powder and salt and rub in butter until mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add the syrup, eggs and sugar and beat well. Turn into a greased and lined 7" square baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Lamb Shanks Braised in Que Syra & Last of Season's Tomatoes

What to do with those last few, brave little tomatoes, hanging on the vine for dear life before we yank them out of the chilling earth for the winter?

Something soulful and comforting, that's what. Leafing through my sauce-splashed stack of favorite vineyard recipes stuffed into a binder I keep on the kitchen counter, I came across an old beauty which calls for a cup of chopped tomato & a glass of full-bodied red wine for braised lamb shanks. Now what could be better on an early winter's Sunday evening? Yum.

Timo's Que Syra is ideal for these sorts of delicious Dutch-Oven slow cooked dishes, and a quarter full bottle sitting on the side from last night's dinner sealed the deal.

Off I went in search of suitable lamb shanks, for which I subsequently set Timo the task of trimming. A butcher I was not in any past life. Once I'd given him an inch in the prepping of this delicious dish he, being the alpha Italian male that he is, took a mile and made off with the rest of the browning, sauteeing, simmering etc. 

Slow cooking in the oven as I write, there's an intense aroma of gently roasting lamb in a medley of veggies and wine, stock and aforementioned backyard tomatoes. We'll serve it up with creamy polenta, the sauce pureed to pour on top of the meat and the polenta.

Lamb Shanks Braised in Wine

6 lamb shanks, well trimmed
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 parsnips, peeled and chopped
4 large garlic cloves, minced
1 cup of full bodied red wine such as Timo's Que Syra
1 cup chopped tomatoes with juice
6 cups beef stock
2 tsp rosemary
1 tsp thyme
2 bay leaves

Preheat oven to 400. Season meat with salt and pepper and brown in oil in a Dutch Oven over medium heat. Remove and pour off any fat. Sautee onions, carrots, celery, garlic and parsnips in the oil. Add wine, simmer about 5 minutes, add tomatoes, stock, herbs and meat and bring to a boil. Cover and bake in oven for 2 hours until meat falls off the bone. Transfer shanks to platter and puree veggies after discarding bay leaf and any surface fat. Pour over meat and polenta or mashed potatoes. Serve with green beans or roasted root veggies.

Pleasant Street Blackberry Plum Donut Cakes

Nothing compares to a pot of Petaluma-made, wild-blackberry, plum jam, and thanks to Sonoma Country Life reader Trisha, a great big pot of it made its way into the vineyard kitchen a couple weeks back. Too delicious for words, or mere toast, I took a notion in the middle of an already hectic morning to take a break from the laptop and launch my glistening stash into a jammy donut cake baking session.

The photo shows the jammy donut cakes half way through production - the remains of the batter goes on top and after baking, these little beauties must be dunked in a spot of melted butter and then dunked again in fine sugar.

Do you think they lasted very long when the boys made it back from school?

Pleasant Street Blackberry Plum Donut Cakes (15)

1 cup of non-fat milk
12 tablespoons organic canola oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 2/3 cup flour
3 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup superfine bakers sugar
15 tsp jam
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup superfine bakers sugar
15 paper liners for cupcake pan

Heat oven to 375. Thoroughly beat together oil, eggs, vanilla, flour, baking powder,  2/3 cup sugar. Drop into bottom third of paper liners in pans. Add dollop of jam. Cover each with remaining batter. Bake for 20 minutes. When slightly cool, dip into melted butter - twizzle a bit to make sure it adhers, then dunk into sugar to coat. Using the best ingredients, such as organic oil, fresh local eggs, good qaulity flour such as King Arthur or Whole Foods own baking brand and most importantly, delicious and delightful homemade jam like Trisha's will make all the difference in the world to flavor and melt-in-the-mouth ability! Highly calorific despite the attempt at wholesomeness, this is a recipe best made when there are loads of kids over.