since eleven half-posts ago....

if you are wondering just how many times during the past few months i started to compose a post, only to abandon it halfway through the process, the answer to that question is eleven. hopefully this one will not end up being not-quite-lucky number twelve. i may eventually get around to finishing one (or more) of those drafts, but for now they will continue to exist as what my people in the knitting world refer to as WIPs, because what i clearly need right now is even more works-in-progress to ignore. speaking of which...

it was my intention to have that stupid-bright-green sweater from last time completed when i got around to composing my next post, but i have barely touched that thing since eleven half-posts ago. my interest/attention was drawn elsewhere, and i decided to go with that flow. my crafting energy has been (mostly) focused on spinning and dyeing yarn, because the thirty storage cubes full of yarn i already have is clearly not enough to get me through the apocalypse. makes perfect sense, no?

we have also been eating lots of super-yummy food, which is always a wonderful and scary thing. i lost my zeal for cooking earlier in the year, so this has been something of a reunion with a long-lost friend. 

i had lunch today followed by a mid-afternoon scoop of rum & raisin ice cream... which i made completely from scratch! feel free to applaud. i totally deserve it. 

i should point out that rum is a major commodity in the economy of most of the Caribbean, and wherever the diaspora may take us, we always regard our rum as a near-sacred ingredient... which is my attempt at justifying what may be the booziest rum & raisin ice cream in recorded history. 

no exaggeration, i soaked the raisins in rum for about three days before getting started, then i tossed in an extra glug—for good measure—before adding the raisins to the contents of the ice cream maker.

the chief danger with using a large amount of alcohol in ice cream is that it lowers the freezing point (meaning that it requires more coldness for the ice cream to become solid). use too much booze, and you can easily end up with a mixture that insists on acting like a milk shake. 

my rum & raisin ice cream, however, is well-behaved. it has a lovely, silky texture that borders on sheer perfection. if you squint a bit you can see tiny specks of ground cinnamon in the mix. so ridiculously tasty!

the animator was less excited about the end product. as i have probably noted (countless times) in the past, he is not a fan of the taste of most forms of alcohol, and this stuff is definitely not shy about its alcohol content. he enjoys boozy eggnog between December and January, then he spends the rest of the year making faces if i offer him anything that contains a noticeable amount of alcohol... like when i asked him to taste the ice cream for a second time.  

me: you want to try it again?
him: i don't know. it was pretty strong the first time. 
me: it's been sitting in the freezer for a couple days now, so the rum has had a chance to equalize and mellow a bit. those pockets of raisins should taste less intensely boozy than when you tried it right out of the ice cream maker.

so he took another taste... and he made a face that i know all too well. 

him: it tastes very good, but it's still way too strong for me. use a lot less rum next time, then i can have some.

then i just looked at him with as much pity as i could muster on such short notice. 

me: you poor thing!

i should note that this sudden urge to make ice cream came about after i went digging around in the fridge one day, looking for some random thing at the back of a shelf, when i discovered that we had three cartons of eggs... in a household of two people who only occasionally eat eggs. so, i did the breakfast-for-dinner thing a couple-few times before deciding that i never want to see another egg (i was too lazy to get myself a larger plate from the cupboard). 

i used up the last of my precious reserved duck fat in what has to be my tastiest attempt to date at making a French classic, cassoulet... which is just a posh-sounding term for a stew of white beans and whatever bits of meat you happen to have hanging around. 

purists would probably insist that a proper cassoulet absolutely must contain duck confit. i keep promising myself to make a truly authentic cassoulet one of these days. however, i was not about to venture out mid-pandemic in search of a duck (which you can also find already-confited in most supermarkets around here), so i had to make do with the last of the fat from a duck we roasted a few months before. if you have never eaten food cooked in duck fat, you have not lived. and, yes... i have officially been living among the French for way too long. 

in addition to the duck fat, this cassoulet also contained a few sausages, whole cherry tomatoes, chunks of butternut squash, and speck (which is a prosciutto-like smoked pork belly that shows up a lot in the Croatian food the animator has introduced me to). the combination of the starch from the beans and the gelatin from the speck gives a rich, velvety texture to the sauce in this stew. this was a seriously enjoyable meal. 

there was also a bit of culinary disaster involving a dish of chicken and potatoes in what was supposed to be a rich, herby cream sauce. it tasted great, but the texture of the sauce was all wrong. 

this is a dish that he usually makes, but i decided to give it a try this time around. turns out, he forgot to tell me one critical step, which he remembered after i had just finished screwing it up... for the second time... that week.

him: i can go to the store and get more stuff if you want to make it again soon. you know what went wrong, so it'll be perfect next time. 
me: i already stopped caring, because i am never making this dish ever again. 

i used a couple eggs from our surplus in the production of this wonderous thing. 

the was the latest variation of my go-to upside-down cake. the fruit changes with the season, and the sponge cake is very forgiving, making for an ideal template for improvisation. 

this cake is especially easy if you use an ovenproof skillet. it begins with brown sugar melted with butter, this will become the sticky topping on the cake.

i had some bananas hanging around, so i decided to use that as the fruit.  

next came the batter, which i put together in a separate bowl while waiting for the sugar to melt. i use about half of the sugar that was called for in the original recipe, as there is plenty of sweetness in the gooey fruit topping. i included a bit of freshly grated ginger and lemon zest in the batter this time around, and i poured it right over the banana pieces. 

then into the oven it went...

i used a darker brown sugar this time around (because that is what i had, because... pandemic) , and i was nervous that it might be burnt on account of how dark the caramelized sugar was around the edges. [random aside: that bit of red is an oven mitt slipped over the handle of the super-hot skillet while it sat for a bit after coming out of the oven, because i do not want to lose the skin from the middle of my palm by accidentally grabbing a hot pan handle... again. true story.]

ten minutes later, and it was time to flip if out of the pan. tada!

it may look a bit overdone, but it was perfect. 

the fruit keeps the sponge layer moist, and the ginger and lemon zest is a delicious counterpoint to the caramelized banana. and, it happens to be totally wheat-free, so i can eat as much as i want without resorting to a week of taking antihistamines. best of all, that is two less eggs cluttering up my refrigerator. 

executive bad-girl decision...

someone had a birthday. i made a German apple cake to mark the occasion.

it was not my birthday, i should add, as my parents had sense enough to see that the celebration of my arrival in the world would not fall in the dead of Winter. and, before i forget... let us just chat a bit here about the dead of Winter.

you know all those groundhogs everyone tends to make a fuss about at this time of year? well, according to the majority of said creatures, Spring is supposed to come early this year. meanwhile, we are expecting something in the range of fifty centimeters of snow... FIFTY CENTIMETERS... (TWENTY INCHES, to us Yanks)... before the day is through.

so, basically... groundhogs lie!

where was i again? oh, yes... a birthday has been celebrated.

he has been super-busy of late, so the festivities consisted of the aforementioned cake... and leftovers from the day before. and, before you go thinking that it sucks to be eating leftovers, i should point out that we made a huge batch of sarma (the subject of my first ever post).

while most people's Wednesday meal probably consisted of bits left over from the meals they ate on Tuesday, Monday... and probably Sunday too... we were whipping up a fresh batch of mid-week Croatian cabbage rolls. so that is what we had for his birthday meal the following day.

i had one with a bit of smoked meat...

and he had two with half a kielbasa... because he excels at being absurd.

we made quite a few adjustments to his father's basic recipe, which will probably result in my favorite animator being kicked out of the family when his dad finds out. the four biggest changes were 1) using a combo of ground  pork and lamb (his dad uses pork and veal), 2) the addition of some barley to the rice and ground meat filling, 3) ditto for a grated zucchini, and 4) copious amounts of gochujang (Korean chili paste) mixed into the simmering broth. the first bite was indescribable.

him: i may get disowned... but it will be totally worth it. 

i cannot begin to explain how delicious this was. i love the taste of lamb, and gochujang makes everything better—we put it in most things we cook around here—but the inclusion of the barley turned out to be the best decision of all. not only does it bring a slightly nutty taste, but the chewy cooked-barley texture is fantastic in the filling. there was no discernible taste from the zucchini, as it has very little to offer on that front, but i like knowing that it was there.

we were practically pausing after every bite to comment about how good it was. my empty bowl speaks for itself.

then there was that cake.

this was my second time using this recipe from a food magazine (which i will talk about next time around, as this is already too long), and it is far less complex than it looks. the secret is the use of frangipane (almond paste) in an otherwise basic butter cake batter. that goes into a springform pan, and is topped with fanned out slices of Granny Smith apple.

i made a some minor changes to the recipe (added some ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the mix) and a few less-minor ones. we tend to like our baked goods on the less-sweet side, so i used about two-thirds the recommended amount of sugar (especially as there would be powdered sugar sprinkled over the top, plus a bit more sugar sprinkled on the apples).

if you squint a bit, you can see the sugar crystals on the fruit before the cake went into the oven for about an hour.

the biggest change of all was to reduce the oven to 350°F, instead of the suggested 375°F. i was skeptical about so small a cake being in so hot an oven for so long a time, but i decided to be a good-girl and do as i was told the first time i used this recipe. i will not be making that mistake twice, as the batter expanded so rapidly that first time, the apple slices were mostly covered up.

had i not made the executive bad-girl decision to reduce the heat halfway through, the cake would probably have been burnt long before the cooking time was up.

so, i used the lower oven temperature this time around, and it was perfect... if i do say so myself. i left it cooling while we ate sarma and watched the newest episode of Death in Paradise.

[random aside: i am rather fond of Ralf Little, so i may have done a bit of fan-girl swooning over him being added to the cast.]

it should be noted that my favorite animator is like a small child where cooling baked goods are concerned, so we had the same conversation several times.

him: how long do we have to wait to eat cake?
me: until it's done cooling. 

and, eventually it was. he insisted that it had to go on one of the plates he... uhm... "borrowed" from his parents place when he first moved out... like twenty years ago. those plates are older than him. this one has a chip on the edge, which i cleverly positioned just out of the frame.

the last step was to add a bit of powdered sugar. he did that part.

i skipped this step the first time i tried this recipe, because i did not want the extra sweetness, but we were celebrating this time around, so the powdered sugar is a nice final touch. i was afraid the apple slices would be covered up, but they were still visible.

it was still his day, so he did the slicing.

now, if it was my birthday, i would be eating cake with some sort of adult beverage. however, he absolutely despises the taste of most forms of alcohol (he makes an exception for boozy eggnog during the holiday season), so we opted instead for geriatric-adult hot beverages.

that last bit reminded me that i also added a healthy splash of vodka infused with juniper berries to the cake batter. he may hate drinking alcohol, but he has no problem with it as an ingredient in cooked items.

the most important thing i should note about this cake is that it was entirely wheat-free, so i did not have to resort to taking antihistamines at any point.

i used a combination of roughly three parts oat flour to one part Bob's Mill Gluten-Free baking flour. i used straight oat flour the first time i made this cake, but the GF flour was a surprisingly excellent addition this time around, especially as i only included it because i wanted to get rid of the stuff. i usually hate the grainy texture of those GF flours, but this one was absolutely undetectable when combined with the oat flour, so i will most likely use this combination in other wheat-free baked goods from now on.

a great time was had by all.

immersive apple experience: almost-naked pie...

the apple-tasting adventure left me with a bunch of fruit rolling around the countertop, half of them missing a chunk, so it made sense to do a bit of baking. my go-to apple dish of late is the humble crumble, however, there are only two of us, and making enough crumble to use up all that fruit would leave me hating apples by the end of the week. so i split the difference and made apple crumble... two ways! i made a regular apple crumble, and an apple crumble cake... because everything is better with cake.

a crumble is one of the easiest desserts to bake. in short, you fill a baking dish with almost any kind of fruit and a bit of sugar and maybe some spices (if you want to get "fancy"), then you sprinkle over some sort of crumbly topping, and you shove the whole thing in the oven for a bit. a crumble is basically an almost-naked pie, and that is what we are talking about today.

i did a bit of searching to find a couple recipes that i could offer for reference, should you feel a sudden urge to start baking. problem is, i suck at following directions—shocking, i know—so i made some alterations to both recipes. i will include the link to the base recipe, but i will highlight the changes i made with each dish. i am using the Joy of Baking's cranberry, pear & apple crumble recipe as the starting point for the crumble, and i will save the crumble cake for next time.

i mapped out the changes i was going to make to each recipe in advance.

the crumble begins with fruit (apples and a couple pears in this case). i intentionally left some traces of peel on the apples, because i like the subtle bit of texture it adds to the finished dish.

cut the fruit into bite-size pieces, adding a squeeze of fresh lemon juice every now and then to keep them from turning brown.

then just repeat until you have enough for the recipe, or in this case, until the bowl is overflowing. i did not measure/weigh the fruit. i just peeled and chopped till the bowl was full... and then i added another apple or two just for good measure.

next, add a bit of light brown sugar to the fruit. i prefer my crumbles on the "barely sweet" side, so i used about the same amount of sugar as the original recipe. however, i had roughly twice as much fruit as the recipe called for, so my fruit mixture was less sweet overall. i also added a healthy dose of freshly-grated ginger at this point, and some cornstarch. the cornstarch will turn the watery juices into a rich syrup that clings to the pieces of fruit so you do not end up with a puddle of liquid in the bottom of the bowl. this is the secret to preventing the dreaded "soggy bottom" when you are dealing with a pie crust. i always include a bit of cornstarch, even with a crust-less crumble.

full disclosure: i did not peel the ginger before grating it. life is far too short to waste time worrying about a bit of ginger skin.

because i overfilled the bowl, i had to dump everything into a roasting pan to be able to give it a proper mix without making a big mess. i have exactly zero regrets about using that much fruit.

i took a look at the assembled ingredients at this point, and i realized that i had to go searching for a larger baking dish than the one i originally planned to use.

one larger pyrex dish later, and it was time to start assembling.

first add half the fruit mixture.

this is when i realized that something was missing. one quick search through a cabinet later, and i returned with the dried cranberries.

sprinkle on a handful of cranberries.

then repeat both layers.

now it is time to make the titular "crumble". this is the bit where i go nuts with the ingredients.

i will draw you a literal picture of what went into that mixture.

1. chopped walnuts
2. rolled oats with the zest of a lemon grated on top 
3. oat flour (more about that later) topped with salt and a pinch of freshly-grated nutmeg
4. ground ginger and ground cinnamon
5. light-brown sugar

next comes the butter, right from the fridge to keep it cold until the last minute.

this recipe requires the most basic kitchen tool.

a bit of pinching is all it takes to make a crumbly topping.

this gets sprinkled over the fruit.

check out that side-view. yes, i did get a bit carried away with the amount of fruit i used. luckily, that mountain will shrink in the oven.

this gets baked until the top is brown and toasty.

i let it bake until the whole place smells delicious, then i check to make sure that it is bubbling away at the sides, which usually means that the fruit is cooked enough to suit my taste. i do not like super-mushy fruit in this kind of dish.

notice the considerable amount of shrinkage. there is a joke in there somewhere.

as i noted, i used more fruit than was called for in the original recipe. i also cut back on the sugar content in the topping mixture, using roughly two-third of what the recipe suggested. as a result, my crumble was on the less-sweet side, which is how we tend to prefer that sort of thing. it can be 'desserted up' by adding a scoop of ice cream or you can have some for a light meal. that first image was  my breakfast on Sunday morning. it has fruit and a granola-ish topping. that is practically a health food when you think about it.

one of the things i like most of all about a crumble is that i can avoid using wheat flour without tormenting myself with one of those gross gluten-free alternatives. unlike a traditional pie, which has a crust on the bottom, the starchy part of a crumble is on the top. it does not bear the weight of the fruit filling, so there is zero need to worry about replacing the gluten if you are omitting the wheat flour. i like the taste of oat flour as a baking ingredient, so it has become my go-to substitution for recipes where the flour is not responsible for holding the whole thing together. i also use it in my favorite brownie recipe, and i do not miss the "regular flour" in that one either.

i also like that a crumble holds up pretty nicely in the refrigerator for a few-several days. because the starchy part is sitting on top of the fruit, it tends to resist going soggy. this is what was left of my crumble after almost a whole week in the fridge.

the topping still looks like it just came out of the oven.

he uses the microwave to warm up a serving, but i prefer to scoop some into an oven-proof bowl, and heat it in the oven with the broiler turned to low, just long enough to reassert the crunch in the crumbly bits.  not bad for something that has been hanging around in my fridge for the better part of a week, eh?

unfortunately, i cannot same the same about the apple crumble cake, which disappeared in less than two days. but i will save that bit for the next time.