It would look decent

Dear Reader, hello –

How are things with you? I got a little bit distracted from here, as you can see. Since my temporary return to the bakery, I’ve been laboring there four consecutive days a week (as opposed to three days spread throughout the week before). Seeing that for most job-bound a working week would usually be comprised of five days, I feel I have no legitimate right to make a fuss now. I’d just say my only beef would be not to pass all my after-work hours in the vacuum of a deep slumber, which is what I’ve successfully been doing lately. I’m not a sloth, really. I’m rather confident my having to wake up for work before the birds – at 5 a.m. on a weekday, at 4 a.m. on weekends -- has a lot to do with my recent fondness of the pillow. Reader, I’d like to do much better than counting sheep before my usual bed time around 11 p.m, so I’m working on it. My latter-day strategy, of which I’m going to tell you in a jiffy, is working remarkably well. It keeps me from falling asleep soon after I get back from work in the late afternoon, which, in turn, raises my morale up a notch, which, in turn, makes me a better-ish person overall.

The afore-mentioned strategy is…cake-making. It’s brilliant. All this whisking, beating, and mixing have me skip around my kitchen area shooing hibernation away. Then it’s (usually) an hour wait for a cake to bake which has the same effect on me as a shot of inky espresso, only it’s milder and more considerate towards my heart rate. And of course it’s the eating of a cake itself that takes the edge off my tiredness completely. (Some irony: baking at work tires me, baking at home perks me up.)

I made my first cake when I was fourteen or fifteen of age (I was a late bloomer). It was an apple cake known in Russia as sharlotka (not to be confused with charlotte Russe). Growing up I was not really encouraged to cook. Reason being, tap water was a pleasant surprise rather than a 24/7 attribute in our household back then (brilliant post-Soviet reality). It’s well understood cooking goes hand-in-glove with washing up, but the latter in our situation was a rather dire endeavor to accomplish, what with the limited water stored in vats and buckets kept in the bathroom. In other words, no need for unnecessary whisking, whipping, and mixing, thank you very much. But I saw that cake on a Russian cooking show, and it seemed an easy one-bowl affair. All the domestic encumbrances be damned, I was so making it. The simplicity of the said confection laid in its use of all the ingredients in equal measure, the ingredients being flour, sugar, eggs and apples. You beat one part sugar with a few eggs, introduce one part flour to the mixture, and round the deal off by mixing in a few apples. The lot was baked in a frying pan, and regardless of one half of the cake going lopsided and the other burnt, my parents and I had a piece each with tea. We all agreed that theoretically it was a good no-nonsense cake, and that I shouldn’t be making it again.

Nigel Slater’s apple cake reminds me of my first baking affair, sharlotka. Similarly to the latter, it also calls for the equal quantities of the ingredients, only in addition to flour, eggs, sugar and apples it also cordially invites butter to the premises. Besides that, another difference is that nobody in their right mind would ever think of not making it again. You cream the butter with the sugar first, nudge the eggs in second, fold in the flour and baking powder third, and lastly, once the mixture is scraped in a baking tin, put spiced apples on top. At first you’ll most likely think that the cake batter is a dud, on the account of it being too thick, almost cookie dough thick. But go on notwithstanding -- the heat will take care of everything. The apples will surrender and sink in the batter, their juices trickling down and moisturizing the crumb. And the crumb, it will spring up a bit, carefully closing in around the apple pieces. The result is a loveable slim, tender, open-crumb apple cake that stays moist for a few days, no assistance of aluminum foil needed (as I accidentally discovered). It’s not overly sweet, with a quiet tart voice coming out from a little bit of lemon juice used with the apples. Last time I baked it I subbed whole wheat for plain flour. That is not necessary at all for the taste enhancement -- the cake is good as it is; I just think apple and whole wheat together make a fine autumn treat. In case if apple pies start to rub you the wrong way by now, give a chance to this apple cake. Some whipped cream on the side, it would look decent on your Thanksgiving table, that.

Happy Thanksgiving, Reader!

Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake

Adapted from The Kitchen Diaries
Yield: 8-10 servings

Slater calls the afore-mentioned sweetness English Apple Cake, but I’m not sure whether it’s because he uses local English apples for the recipe or because it’s originally an English recipe. I tend to think it’s the former, for the recipe is included in an entry christened A Basket of Apples. On the grounds that I’m not using the English fruit here and, generally, for the sake of clarity, I’ve taken to call this cake quite simply as Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake.

I don’t mind the apple-cinnamon flavor combination as such, but I personally prefer fresh vanilla as a spice for an apple. If cinnamon would be your choice, disregard my call for half a vanilla bean and use ½ tsp ground cinnamon instead, or use both, perhaps.

Slater uses a 24-cm square tin for this cake, but since I don’t own one I utilize a 24-cm round spring form here. It seems to work just fine too.

3 medium-size apples (I used Santana)
juice of ½ lemon
seeds from ½ vanilla bean
2 Tbsp demerara sugar
130 g (4.4 oz.) butter
130 g (4.4 oz) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
130 gr (4.4 oz) whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
a little extra sugar (optional)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (355 degrees Fahrenheit). Place a rack in the lower third of the oven. Butter and flour a 24-cm (9 1/2-inch) baking spring form; shake off excess flour.

2. Cut the apple into small chunks, removing the cores as you proceed and dumping the fruit in a small bowl with the lemon juice. Add the vanilla bean seeds and demerara sugar and toss well. Set aside.

3. Sift the whole-weat flour and baking powder together, set aside. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold the flour mix gently into the butter mixture (the mixture will be very thick). Scrape into the prepared baking form and smooth out. The cake mixture will be very shallow in the form. Put the spiced apples (together with the lemon juice, if you wish) on top of the cake mixture and scatter a little bit more demerara sugar, if desired.

4. Bake for 55-60 minutes. The centre should be firm and the edges should be nicely browning. Cool for 10 mins, still in the baking tin. Run a sharp knife around the cake and take off the side of the spring form. To remove the bottom of the spring form, you might want to run a long serrated knife under the cake. This cake is best eaten warm – reheat in a gentle oven before serving. Keeps well for two days.

There it was

What is there to say about carrot cake? I don’t have much, except that it frequently makes me wonder why it’s so named if carrots can only be found through a magnifying glass. Some say it’s for the moisture that the carrots are drawn into the business, but I’m not into buying that. Plus, it’s always cinnamon or ginger or allspice or whatever that steals the show, or rather, takes the cake (note: I’m not anti-spices, I just find it rather confusing when carrot cake is pulled into gingerbread’s dress, that’s it). All in all, I like cake and I like carrots, but should I see a carrot cake in my vicinity, most surely I wouldn’t reach for it.

Not so long ago I attended one potluck party. Actually, it was a goodbye bash for me and a few of my colleagues at the bakery. I don’t quite know how to better explain this, so here goes nothing: a while ago I decided it is time for me to learn and try new things, so I quit my job this past September; got a collection of farewell gifts; remained unemployed for a few weeks; and as October started, came back for a tad longer, until this year’s end, to be precise. More about that in due time, for now there is another thing to tell. There in one corner of the long white-clad wooden table set with the edible provision sat one carrot cake -- and I was going to lay my hands on it. It wasn’t an impulse. I knew the cake would be there. I couldn’t wait to try it.

Months before the party, in truth, months before anybody would start talking about the party at all, I was given this recipe. I got it from Marijn. An official paper would describe Marijn as a retiree, but I don’t want to go down that route. I like to think of Marijn as a life volunteer. Having reached a certain age, she refuses to sit at home and do “nothing”. She would volunteer at the bakery every Wednesday for years making tartlet shells in numbers that on a given day would exceed a hundred, whisking lemon cream to the point you don’t remember you have arms and they can move, doing the dishes, grinding and sieving kilos of nuts, sorting out the macarons, and the like. We would be in that boat together, elbow to elbow. And despite being on the opposite sides of the age road, we sometimes called each other “sister”. One Wednesday past summer, Marijn came and gave me the recipe, a reaching gesture of her hand accompanied by the words, “This cake is so sticky, so full of carrot. It is so good – make it!”, or something very similar. I took a ruled piece of paper with the hand-written recipe, brought it home, studied the text very carefully, put it in a plastic sleeve, and forgot all about it. I don’t know what I was thinking, I don’t remember now. One thing is certain: I would not be writing about this carrot cake now if Marijn wouldn’t have brought it that evening, a farewell party for her too.

So there it was, resting on a glass cake stand, observing the ignorant me. It was impossible to see through the snowy cap of its cream cheese icing, but it looked different from the carrot cakes I’d seen before. It didn’t have the height or the volume of a normal, leavened, carrot cake. The one I was looking at was rather short, stubby almost. It didn’t seem cake-y at all. It didn’t taste cake-y either. Lugging no flour nor butter, the cake had only three vitals -- carrots, nuts and raisins. It was like a moist carrot granola bar, if there is such a thing, but only without the brick-like density of the latter. I think I want to say that the cake was nubbly, what with all those shreds of carrot and studs of nuts and raisins poking out from the cross section. In one swift brushstroke, it was what it’s called: carrot cake. It wasn’t a piece of beauty, but one bite had me like it quite a bit, so much so that I decided right there, almost a month too early, to make this sweetmeat for Anthony’s birthday, which I did this recent week.

I grated carrots; ground nuts; simmered raisins in some wine; beat egg yolks with lemon zest and sugar, and a dash of flour. I then whisked egg whites; combined the whole lot; and finally consigned it to the oven, waiting for it to emerge beautiful and graceful, ready to be coated with a sleek vanilla seeds-dotted cream cheese frosting. A few hours later, when the clocks were striking midnight, Anthony was Happy Birthday-ed with a manly piece of the confection. We had a friend visiting for a game night/pre-birthday drinks (hello, Charlie!), and with them two nibbling the cake all night long the said baked good was nearly gone by the early a.m. When I pulled out two remaining pieces from the fridge to be had with our late morning coffee, I was met with ferocious exclamations, Where is my cake? Why did you throw away Anthony’s cake? Yes, why did you throw away my birthday cake? My foot!

Nubbly Carrot Cake
Adapted from Marijn
Yield: 10-12 servings

Marijn’s recipe uses trail mix, the kind that contains four or five sorts of nuts and dark raisins. I prefer to choose for myself what nuts will go into the cake, so I use only two types – almond and walnut. I find dark raisins too sweet, which is why I sub white raisins for dark ones. I don’t grind them together with the nuts. I want the dried fruit plump and juicy, so I simmer the stuff in just enough white wine over lowest heat for about fifteen minutes. If there is any liquid left after that, I drain it.

Contrary to the original instructions, I didn’t add hot water to my cream cheese frosting, and I cut back the amount of sugar used. I also used fresh vanilla bean seeds in place of vanilla extract.

Lastly, don’t use a cake form smaller than 24- or 25-cm (9- or 10-inch) in diameter. This cake is meant to be short. There is just a smidge of flour, almost nothing to hold the stuff together, so if it’s tall it wouldn’t hold its own under the knife at all.

For the cake:
150 gr (5 oz) walnut, coarsely ground
150 gr (5 oz) almond, coarsely ground
200 gr (7 oz) coarsely grated peeled carrots
80 gr (2.8 oz) white raisins (see headnote)
zest of one medium lemon
120 gr (4 oz) sugar (divided use)
3 eggs, separated
50 gr (1.8 oz) flour

For the icing:
125 gr (4 oz) cream cheese
30 gr (1 oz) butter, softened
120 gr (4 oz) powdered sugar
seeds from ½ vanilla bean

1. Position a rack in the bottom third of the oven and preheat to 200 degrees Celsius (390 degrees Fahrenheit). Liberally butter a 25-cm round cake form. Flour and shake off any excesses.

2. In a large bowl, combine the nuts, carrots and raisins together.

3. In a medium bowl, rub the lemon zest into 60 gr sugar (use your fingertips), until the sugar is fragrant. Beat in the egg yolks until the mixture is pale. Mix in the flour. Add the egg-flour mixture to the carrot-nut mixture and stir well (the mixture will be thick and dry-ish, so use your hands, it’s faster).

4. In a separate bowl and at high speed, beat the egg whites to the consistency of shaving cream. Add the remaining 60 gr sugar, and continues beating until stiff peaks form, 2-3 minutes. Using a rubber spatula and working in two or three additions, carefully fold the egg whites into the carrot batter.


5. Pour in the prepared cake form and gently smooth out the surface. Slide into the oven and immediately turn to 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). Bake until the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the form and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45-50 minutes. Let cool in the form for 10 minutes, after which turn out onto a rack to cool completely.


6. When the cake is cool, prepare the icing. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, vanilla seeds, and the butter until smooth. Sift the powdered sugar, and beat on low speed until incorporated. If the sugar starts forming lumps, increase the speed and beat until smooth again. Spread the icing all over the top of the cake.


7. Store in the fridge, but bring to room temperature before serving.

It's not a drag

After a long and thorough think I came to a conclusion that it’s time for me again to say something about potatoes. Frankly, the frequency with which blurbs about potatoes pop up here just goes to show that it wouldn’t be irrelevant at all if this site bore a different name, say, Potatoes&Company, or P&C for short. But Reader, hold on if you think are in for a drag. You are not. Today the potato is going Indian way, and, may I suggest, we all should tag along.





A question: does it happen to you, too, that some cookbook title brushes past your memory and your antenna goes up and you think, I would really like to have this book. But that fleeting moment arcs and goes off, and years already start flocking in a sizeable group, and suddenly something random reminds you about your old intentions, making you think, Holy spice, why don’t I yet own that book? In short, that is me and 5 Spices, 50 Dishes, a book of uncomplicated Indian recipes using only, as the name suggests, five accessible spices (in varying combination), a book I’ve been intending to acquire for four years, an absurd and unnecessary long wait that was over this past summer when exasperated with my own inaction I finally went to a book store to get the publication.
A sign of a promising cookbook, as we all would peacefully agree, is that its many pages get dog-eared or bookmarked by the selective hand of a reader. The book in question is one such thing, and it’s exciting. Besides, and I’m ready to admit that it is my thing, if at least one page of a book sports a potato recipe that doesn’t call for drowning them in cream or butter which this book has, I get excited some more. And when such recipe, after just one bite, makes me worried that it’s going to be particularly difficult to stop eating it, and when quite a few -- alright, three -- people, irrespectively of each other, say that “these potatoes are good”, I feel I’ve been given the green light to start talking.
There are dozens of ways to make a potato tasty. But of all the ways, I personally like best what Indian cuisine does to it, those exhilarating spices and the overall respect to the potato’s form – I have yet to find an Indian recipe that would mash the life out of a potato -- being the reasons. On a related note: it is rather remarkable what a restorative effect Indian cooking has on a cook (and those near one). In times of uncertainty and self-doubt, a wobbly soul should fire up the stove, pull out a cooking vessel, and get going: a whiff of turmeric, a trace of toasted black mustard seeds, a swatch of incendiary chili tickling the senses, the raucous sizzling of onions and potatoes. I feel good already.
Reader, commit to memory these simple steps. Toast black mustard seeds in well-heated oil. Add ground turmeric. Toss in sliced potatoes and onion. Round off with salt and cayenne. In ten minutes you will have got yourself squidgy, fragrant, oniony, spicy potatoes that will challenge your people skills, because, may I just say, lest you are stuck in company of another soul for dinner, these are not easy to share. Although originally titled Railway Potatoes, so named on account of the author’s, Ruta Kahate’s, childhood memories of her mother’s “travel food” prepared for the family train journeys hither and thither, the dish, in my opinion, should go into the world’s annals under the name Spicy Feel-Good Potatoes. It’s not a drag. It’s not a hoax. Believe me.

Railway Potatoes (Spicy Feel-Good Potatoes)

Adapted from 5 Spices, 50 Dishes, by Ruta Kahate
Yield: 2 servings as a main course or 4 as a side dish

700 gr (about 1 ½ pounds) medium red-skinned potatoes, scrubbed
60 ml (1/4 cup) non-fragrant vegetable oil
½ tsp black mustard seeds
¼ tsp ground turmeric
1 large yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
½ to 1 tsp sea salt
¼ to ½ tsp cayenne
a generous handful of roughly chopped fresh coriander or flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
Quarter and cut the potatoes lengthwise into thin slices.
Over high heat, warm the oil in a wide skillet. When the oil starts to smoke, add the mustard seeds, and cover the pan. After the seeds stop sputtering, add the turmeric, and stir for a few seconds. Immediately dump in the onion, potatoes, cayenne, and salt. Stir well; cover. Turn the heat down to medium-low and cook until the spuds are tender, stirring occasionally, about 10 mins. Taste and add more salt, if needed. Mix in the fresh herb. Serve warm.