Dunk & Crumble

mollygilbert520

Pumpkin Ginger Cake with Salted Maple Glaze

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It’s coming on Halloween, and we all know what that means: ill-fitting outfits and candy hustling.  Also, more romantically, monster mashing and pumpkin carving, costume making and apple bobbing.  I prefer the latter, though candy hustling is something I think I could get into.

Halloween!  I find myself oddly excited about this holiday.  I think it’s because, since I’m well out of college, I don’t have to worry about finding a slutty costume to wear or avoiding that sickly orange frat house jungle juice.  This year I can just focus on watching spooky movies (like Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic, of course), and making creepy-crawly-themed baked goods.  Getting older is fantastic.

Are you ready for Halloween?  Do you have your costume picked out?  Your snack-sized Snickers bars stocked?  Do you have a spider-webbish pumpkin cake made and ready for spooking?  I mean, snacking?

I do.

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Roasted Fennel Panzanella

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Excuse me?  Yes, um, hi.  Sorry to bother you, but there seems to be, um… there’s bread in this salad.  Also, there’s no lettuce.  In the salad.

Yep.  It’s true.  There is bread, and I mean hunking cubes of baguette, not measly croutons, in this salad.  Also there’s nary a leaf of lettuce.  In the salad.  Nobody panic.

This, my friends, is called panzanella.  Hi.

Contrary to popular belief, panzanella is not the last name of the newest cast member of the Jersey Shore.  Rather, it’s salad of bread and tomatoes, and it is genius.

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Chicken Barley Soup with Kale

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Rainy fall days are here, and they are forcing my windows open.  After a heavily air-conditioned summer, it feels good.

It feels cheerful and familiar, the chilly air of fall – that telltale nippiness that signals the yearly return of football, hot coffee, and the Northeast cable knit mafia.  Welcome, all.

And then there is the soup.  As the cooler months stake their claim around us, we can do nothing but eat soup to be happy.  This is an old Chinese proverb.  Probably.

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Cinnamon Everyday Cake

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I’ve found a quiet spot in this churning, babbling city; it’s called the Poets House, and it’s only two blocks from mine.  There are windows here, big ones that look down onto the green park below, and wooden floors and cushy seats and rows and rows of books.  They make the whole place smell like what I imagine parchment must smell like.  I can bring small slices of cinnamon cake and paper cups of tea inside, and sit by the windows and the rows of books, nibbling cake and burning my tongue with tea, trying to think of what to write.  I like it here.

Today I paraded down a row of poetry books and stumbled upon a section entitled “Cooking.”  I spent the better part of an hour reading from this section — I bet you didn’t know how many bizarre poems about food there are in the world.  Lots.  Poems about peas (I eat my peas with honey,/I’ve done it all my life,/They do taste kind of funny,/But it keeps them on the knife.  – Anonymous) or pies or ketchup, songs against broccoli, odes to Irish stew… I think next time I’ll stick with Robert Frost.

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Summer 2011

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A recap:

Zach and Jeannie got married in June.

There were sour cherries in July, and other pretty things, too.

There were coffee and crumpets in Seattle.

And the requisite fried clams in Montauk.

Then Aaron and Julie got hitched, in August.

So did my parents, thirty years ago.

Cute.  Nice mustache, Dad.

It’s September now, so, there you have it.  My 2011 summer.  One for the books, I think.  Family and sunshine, and plenty of good things to eat.  Lucky.

Peanut Butter Pie

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I’m all out of sorts lately, and my socks don’t match.  I think it’s because I’ve spent much of the summer living out of a suitcase.  Not knowing where to find bobby pins and clean pajama pants can really out a girl’s sorts, you know?

Between moving apartments, starting a demanding new internship, and fleeing the city every weekend for a wedding/anniversary/shower (apparently everyone‘s getting married now; didn’t you know?), I haven’t had time to think, let alone do a load of laundry.  The past few weeks have been spent planing and flying and deplaning and hauling and driving and loading and unpacking and training and detraining and life, it’s exhausting sometimes, people.

Except, you know, it’s actually not.  I mean yes, life can be stressful and frantic and droopy-eyed, but all these things I “have” to do?  These family weddings and bridal showers and anniversaries?  They are life at its finest.  They are life.  They’re times I get to spend with my family and friends, and for that I am entirely grateful.

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Farmer’s Market Gazpacho

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Well, there it went.  The first week of my new internship.  I don’t think I’m legally allowed to tell you what exactly I did all week, so I’ll just say that, among other things, my week as test kitchen intern was spent sampling various whiskeys, thinking up ways to use up 10 pounds of leftover cheese, searching frantically for rutabaga in July, attempting to cut through a raw beef bone with an antique bone saw (nothing makes you feel more like a Civil War surgeon than the act of hacking away at bones with an old-timey metal bone saw.  Except maybe the act of growing a wicked mustache/mutton chops combo.  I don’t know.), and inheriting fifteen pounds of charmingly mismatched yet unwanted antique dishware.  So far, it’s been quite fantastic.

I also got to spend some time at the farmer’s market this week, which I always enjoy.  This time of year, the market is colorful and sun-drenched and lovely.  If you can get to one nearby, do.  And then make gazpacho.

 

Farmer’s Market Gazpacho

There are few summertime lunch or dinner recipes more refreshing than chilled gazpacho.  Gazpacho is like salad, only better — because it’s not salad, it’s soup.  Except you won’t need to turn on your oven even once to whip up a bowl.  You just need to chopchopchop, and glugglugglug, and voila!  Lunch.  Light, cool, ridiculously easy to make lunch.  This is my Aunt Lissie’s recipe (which means it’s also probably Jane Bursky’s recipe, which means it’s definitely a good one).

 

Ingredients:

  • 2 large stalks celery, finely chopped
  • 1 red or orange bell pepper, finely chopped
  • 1 English hothouse cucumber, finely chopped
  • 4 scallions (white and light green parts only), thinly sliced
  • 2 avocados, chopped
  • 3 large, ripe tomatoes, peeled and finely chopped
  • 5 cups tomato juice (aunt Lis swears by the Sacramento brand)
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 5 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • dash cayenne pepper, to taste
  • sour cream and croutons, for serving

Directions:

Combine all of the chopped vegetables, except for the avocado, in a large glass or plastic bowl (do not use metal, which will chemically react with the acidic tomato juice and leave your soup tasting funny).  (Also, please note that a food processor makes quick work of all that chopping.  If you have one, use it).  Add the tomato juice, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper, and stir to combine.  Add the avocado and gently incorporate so everything is all mixed together.  The gazpacho can be eaten immediately but does best after a day or two in the fridge, once the vegetables have become friendly and all of the sharp flavors have melded.

Serve gazpacho chilled, with a scoop of sour cream and a handful of fresh or packaged croutons on top.

This recipe makes about 10-12 cups of gazpacho, which is a lot (though it keeps well in the refrigerator for about a week).  Feel free to halve the recipe, if you’re not up to bathing in gazpacho.

Strawberry Not So Short Cake

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Ch-ch-changes!

Seems to be lots of them around here.  New site.  New apartment.  I got my haircut yesterday.  Tomorrow, I start a new job.  A new job!  Sort of.  It’s an internship.  But haven’t you heard?  Internships (especially ones that are unpaid) are the new black.

Like, totally.

Mine is an internship at one of the coolest magazines on the block, one that features food and drinks and travel and food and food.  I’ll be working in their test kitchen, fiddling with recipes and sourcing ingredients and measuring things so precisely you’ll want to slap me in the face.  I couldn’t be more excited.

Changes like these, I think, call for cake.  Don’t you agree?

Strawberry Not So Short Cake

This cake is simple and to the point.  It’s a beautiful way to use up the 4 cartons of strawberries you bought at the market because they looked like gems and smelled like heaven alive.  Yellow cake, sweet cream, strawberries.  Repeat.  Not a bad change, if you ask me.

This is Deb from Smitten Kitchen’s yellow cake recipe.  It’s fantastic.

Ingredients:

For cake:

  • 2 cups cake flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon table salt
  • 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 cup buttermilk

For filling:

  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 3 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 4 cartons fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced lengthwise

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9-inch round cake pan.  In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated.  Next, add the vanilla and scrape the bowl to make sure everything is mixed well.  Add the buttermilk, mixing slowly, until just incorporated (batter will look curdled).  Add the flour mixture in two batches, mixing until everything is just combined.

Spread the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake until golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 25-35 minutes.  Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert the cake onto the rack and cool completely, about 1 hour.

While the cake is cooling, slice your strawberries and prepare whipped cream.  In a large bowl, begin to whip the cream with a whisk or electric mixer, until you can see it begin to thicken.  Add the sugar and vanilla and continue whipping until it holds medium peaks.  Be careful not to over whip your cream, or you’ll get little chunks of butter in what you want to be a smooth and creamy filling.

Use a large serrated knife to carefully slice your cake in thirds.  (For a good cake-slicing demo, check out Zoe Francois’ excellent tutorial).  Transfer one of the cake rounds onto your serving plate, and then spread one third of the whipped cream on top.  Arrange a layer of strawberries on top of the cream.  Repeat with the next layer of cake, and work your way up to the top.  To make a pretty strawberry pattern, lay overlapping slices in concentric circles, starting from the outside of the cake and working your way to the center.

Serve immediately.  Possibly with lemonade.

Dunk This

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Welp, here it is!  Big reveal!  You my dears have just witnessed what we in the biz like to call a blog makeover.  Or a blog face lift.  A blogover.  A faceblogliftover.

Yeah.

 

Out with the olivejuiced, in with the doughnuts.  And the totally awesome background which was drawn (drawn!  how good is she?) by my friend Val.  Who is awesome.  Obviously.  What do you think?