A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

St. Lucia Day: St. Lucia Saffron & Raisin Wreath

 

St. Lucia Day is celebrated throughout Scandinavia and in Italy where St. Lucia was born and died a martyr under the Roman Emporer Diocletian, circa 300 A.D.  The story goes that while she was carrying food supplies into the catacombs to hiding Christians, she needed her hands free so she fashioned a wreath of candles in her hair to light her way.

That story, combined with Medieval superstions about the winter solstice being a night of evil lurking in the dark giving way to the light and goodness of morning, transcended into a celebration of St. Lucia, the girl with the lighted wreath in her hair leading the people out into the literal and philosophical light, freedom, and goodness, by having the oldest daughter of the family dress in a long white dress with a red sash and a wreath of candles in her hair serve saffron buns and coffee to her family on the morning of the holiday.

The story has always appealed to me.  As the oldest daughter, I like the idea of serving my family and if part of that is cooking, then I'll be there with bells on.  Or candles on. Or a mag flashlight or anything that won't burn me alive in the process of the fun.

To mark the day two years ago I made individual swirled saffron buns. They were lovely tasting but I wasn't crazy about the way the raisins looked. No big.  This year, though, I went for a different presentation method and loved the results!

Fruit Cake IS Good...if you do it right

All my life I've thought fruit cake, even my cake baker Mother's, was the nastiest food on the planet.  It's dry, it's got GREEN pineapple in it, poisonous maraschino cherries (okay, just because they're approved by the FDA doesn't convince me that soaking cherries in formaldehyde, and then recoloring them with red dye and chemical flavors, makes for something good for the body), it's dry, it's tasteless, it's dry... well, you get the idea. You've all been tricked into taking a bite of the stuff at least once in your life. And I bet your swore off it too.

When I started blogging I noticed that all the English bloggers got all excited and into Christmas Cake each October/November and spent the next couple of months "feeding", nurturing, and dreaming out loud of their Christmas cakes.  I wondered what this wondrous stuff was.  I mean, come on, I grew up in a cake decorator's household and grew up to be a baker for a while too.  Was there possibly some divine cake I'd never heard of or made myself?  I looked more closely at those cakes on those blogs and was shocked, shocked I tell you!, to see that Christmas Cake was that other awful "F" word--Fruit Cake!!!

At first I thought it must be the seventh sign of the Apocalypse that a whole country would enjoy making AND EATING such a repulsive cake but then I started looking at the recipes and methods more closely and saw my favorite "B" word, as in "booze".  It was my Oprah "AHA" moment heard 'round my house!  The answer to good fruit cake was laid out in front of my eyes.  Our Puritan forefathers had obviously screwed the pooch on this one when they denied me alcohol in my fruit cake.

Okay, seriously, I think part of my problem with fruit cake is that I always expected fruit cake to be  "cake" and to Americans, cake is light and fluffy. I think it should be called "Fruit Bread"  because, honestly, it's much more of a fruited bread in texture and density than it is a cake, although the cake designation may come from the idea that a lot of non-Americans bake theirs in round cake tins, where we're used to the long square log of nasty.  So once I wrapped my head around the idea that it's really a bread, then I took the recipes that I'd been playing with this summer and combined them with my own baking knowledge to come up with my personal fruit cake/bread recipe that not only tastes great but doesn't require a cup of coffee or tea to wash down the sawdust aftertaste. It comes out a dense, moist bread with a sugary, fruity taste and a pop of smokiness from the whiskey.   It's good straight out of the oven but really something special after being fed for a month or two.  Give this one a try and you might change your mind about fruit cake like I did.

Breakfast Starts the Day off Right. Right? Right! Cornbread Frittata

 

One of the things I've been changing about the way I eat since I've been following the Mediterranean Diet path is the way I approach breakfast.  Like a lot of people I either tend to skip breakfast or eat all the wrong things.  For example, I work the night shift so when I get off shift in the morning I'm starving and ready to eat pretty much anything and everything. Technically, for nightshifters, the a.m. is our dinner time.  We eat breakfast when we get up around 4pm, lunch at 1am, and dinner for breakfast, but I've really been trying to get back into a more traditionally routine eating pattern even when I work, especially since working 12 hour shifts, we don't work a five day work week.

What I've found through experimentation is that when I choose wholesome whole grained foods for breakfast that also contain a serving of fruit and/or veggies I have a much better day over all whether I'm up or sleeping for the day.  We all know basic nutrition.  Whole grains and fresh produce last longer in our systems because they're nutritionally dense and take longer to break down, creating a more even supply of glucose instead of the normal sugar/caffeine high and low of Krispie Kremes, Cocoa Puffs, and Caramel Mocha Coffee.  Weight Watchers call these nutritionally dense foods simply "filling" foods.  I'm experimenting with a lot of different things but I'm finding, so far, that egg dishes with fresh veggies and cereals like Irish oatmeal or Grapenuts with a side of fruit hit the spot and last all morning.

Rose Levy Beranbaum's Prosciutto Ring

 

 

I can sum this recipe up in one sentence:  Pepperoni Bread for Adults. 

Okay, I'll add a second:  I'll be making this AGAIN and AGAIN!

Happy Fat Tuesday! --- King Cake w/cream cheese & cherry filling

 

My first King Cake!  Not only do I love this cake, which is much more like a pastry than a traditional cake, I have to pat myself on the back and explain that not only did I start this at 5pm tonight (and finish about 8:30pm), that was AFTER finishing up a two day very stressful certification course for work called PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support).  I came home with a fried brain, took a nap, and got up in such a good mood that I don't have to recertify for two years that I decided to not only make stuffed pork chops and twice baked potatoes with steamed zucchini for dinner, I made this cake too.  No.  I don't know where the energy came from but I'm really glad I made it. Gene will enjoy it with his coffee for the next few mornings and there will still be plenty to share with the neighbors. 

By the way, the meanings of the colors of Mardis Gras are Purple = royalty, Green = friendship, and Yellow = Purity.

Moving on into Lent...what are you sacrificing?  Personally, I've chosen to give up all words that DON'T start with "F" and all foods whose main ingredients AREN'T sugar.  It's worked well for me in the past.

Quick Note about the Pullman Loaf Pan

Since I've gotten a few comments about this, thought I'd share a little more personal experience with this pan.  Get this. So frustrating but back when I had a bread machine, a normal 2 lb recipe of dough went into the pan, raised perfectly, and was easy as figurative pie.  But then when I started making the dough by hand, I either had too little or too much. What I've found is that the one direction in Rose's recipe that you MUST follow is to leave the top cracked during rise time. So many times, I've had the whole thing covered and then pulled it back a smidge just to deflate the entire loaf never to get full volume back. I assume this is because white bread is so much lighter than heavier breads and there's so much more yeast in this recipe to make it a quick rise that it's a little more touchy. I've also found that  a full rise sometimes depends on the day, the humidity, the temp in the kitchen, etc, which is normal for all bread but especially for this one.  Usually if it doesn't turn out perfectly, it's on the shy side but it still "eats the same" as Gene says.

If you decide to make this, let me know what kind experience you have with it, okay?

Pullman Loaf Sandwich Bread (Pain de Mie)

 

One of my favorite kitchen gifts I bought for myself was this Pain de Mie pan. I love it.  So does Gene. With it's perfectly square body and sliding lid it makes for just the right sized sandwich bread with more flavor and less glue-y ickness than store bought white bread.  I use this pan and Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe all the time.

Liza Ashley's Angel Biscuits

 

  One of my favorite little regional cookbooks is this one, Thirty Years at the Mansion by Liza Ashley, the former head chef/cook for the Arkansas Governor's mansion.  The cookbook came out in '92 when Clinton was elected and through my job at Dairy Hollow House in Eureka Springs, I was fortunate enough to work on a brunch on the inaugural line-up. The brunch primarily featured the food of Crescent Dragonwagon, the cookbook/children's book author who owned DHH.   Liza was also in attendance at that event.

In person she's just the sweetest little old lady you'll ever meet, someone whom you immediately want to hug and sit down in her kitchen and ask her to tell stories.  Like a substitute mom and grandma all wrapped up into a sassy little person.

The cookbook is available as a reprint on Amazon.com.  Click here:  Link to Ashley

Bread Baking Babes: Country-style Whole-Wheat Pita

Because of a huge snafu on my part, I wasn't able to bake Ilva's wonderful-looking pita breads in time for this challenge.  However, don't miss out on my fellow Bread Baking Babes and their Pita bread efforts:

Bake My Day - Karen

Breadchick - Mary

Cookie Baker Lynn - Lynn

Grain Doe - Gorel

I Like To Cook - Sara

Living on bread and water - Monique

Lucullian Delights - Ilva

My Kitchen In Half Cups - Tanna

Notitie Van Lien - Lien

Thyme For Cooking - Katie

Bread Baking Babes: The Poilane-style Miche

   

For our May project, Sher from What Did You Eat chose the incredibly worth-every-day it took to constuct it, Poilane-style Miche.  Not only was this fun to make, it was a great reminder that instant gratification isn't always as gratifying as really working to get a wonderful end result. 

Although it should have taken something like seven days from wild yeast starter to golden brown house-perfuming perfection, because of my work schedule and MIchelle's party, I think I tapped in at an incredible ten days to make this bread!

And you know what? It was worth every minute! Thanks, Sher, for such a lovely May selection. I'll be making this one again.

I did have one small grin-worthy event along the way.  I'm the epitome of the saying that "the only bad thing about instant gratification is that it's too damn slow!"  One night in the middle of all that when I had my firm starter retarding in the fridge, I needed a bread for a casserole dinner I'd made for Gene and decided to see how close to the real dough the firm starter was.  Not bad.  Pretty "wild" in it's sourdough-ness, but not bad.

But of course the real boule came out great. Much better than I thought it would.  My seed culture seemed a little retarded (ha!) and then my barm didn't seem to want to rise ... but I was wrong. What I thought would bake like a brick turned out to be a lovely, dense loaf with bubbles even!  (Where did those come from? :-)  )    I'll be taking some of that to work tonight.  I owe it all to you, my fellow Bread Baking Babes who advised and encouraged me through those seed culture and barm days!

Our group:  The Bread Baking Babes:

Our host kitchen for May: Sher of What Did You Eat who picked this lovely miche for us and tooks us on a grand baking ride.

Notitie Von Lien (Lien), My Kitchen In Half-Cups (Tanna), Bake My Day (Karen), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn),I like To Cook (Sara) , Lucullian Delights (Ilva), Grain Doe (Gorel), The Sour Dough (Mary aka Breadchick)