Omnomicon

Everyone knows those people who rants and raves about their Italian/German/Czechoslovakian/Whatever grandmother, her incredible cooking, and the totally amazing recipes that have been handed down for generations. Sadly, I have little to counter with. While the French French are celebrated the world over for their epicurean heritage, the French Canadian are not. Case and point: French Canadians eat frog legs, though on second thought, the French French eat snails, but they have the sense to do it with a lot more panache. My family hails (on both sides, originally) from farms outside of Three Rivers, that I cannot imagine were particularly profitable, seeing as my ancestors cascaded down to work long-ass hours for practically nothing in textile mills in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Our culinary traditions reflect this reality, and we eat pauper food.

I have two Memeres. The differences between the two are easy to list: Memere Dubois grew up on a Quebecois farm, the daughter of mill workers; Memere LeBlanc grew up in Maynard MA, the daughter of a butcher. Memere LeBlanc has replaced her complete Pfaltzgraff set three times; Memere Dubois uses her oven to store boxes of Little Debbie. While they both can, by memory, trace roots back to Quebec, you can see how perhaps maybe their perspective on food might vary. Ever so slightly.

Okay, a lot.

But they, and everyone else in my family for that matter, can agree that Pork Pie is excellent, must be served at Christmas, and is properly consumed only with ketchup.

While Memere Dubois is a lot closer to the heritage, Memere LeBlanc is clearly the cook, which made it difficult to determine what recipe to use. Memere Dubois always buys frozen pies from some little old lady in Pinardville, and these have potato in them, which makes sense seeing as it’s a nice cheap filler. But Memere LeBlanc’s preferred recipe, naturally, called for two pounds of unadulterated pork. I decided to go with this version because it is based on an actual family recipe (the potato-pie version was definitely NOT the one Memere LeBlanc knew from memory), and pork is only $2.99 a lb, so really, it is modern-day pauper food, and thereby even more appropriate.

This is the recipe as written, though by the time this was handed to me, I already had the same pie in the oven. Boggle your mind on THAT, (or don’t…Memere gave me the recipe over the phone).

That size is a mite too small to read, but if you had crazy vision, you could see that it calls for pork butts ground twice, which is frankly unsurprising from someone who grew up around lots of meat. The tool I’d procured to follow this exacting direction really didn’t work out, so I had to settle with regular old supermarket ground pork. And the trick, she was done. Along with an onion, that pork is pretty much the only significant ingredient.

Saute ‘em up.

End up with this.

Drain off the grease. Since I won’t be saving the fat for the War Production Board effort, the easiest method I’ve found is using a sieve—it is MUCH more convenient than spooning the stuff out one teaspoon at a time. I have this convenient sieve that sits in my sink.

Hhokay, so. Here we hev our meat now covered by ze water.

And then you simmer that business for an hour, mixing it up frequently to try to break up all the meat wads. If you change your mind and want to make goetta instead (which is German but somehow Memere Dubois grew up on the stuff), you can boil for an additional hour. No word on when you add the oatmeal, however.

Another strain and now we’re going to use your treasured stand mixer. This will accomplish three things:

1. It will break up the meat into uniform little granules.
2. It will mix up the spices and milk with the pork.
3. It will cool the mix much more quickly than letting it sit out.

Finally, after like, an hour and a half, you’re ready to start assembling a pie! Go you! I’ve discovered that refrigerated pre-made pie crust comes out tasting just as good as homemade and also doesn’t make me want to shoot myself in the face, so I’m pretty much never making a pie crust by hand ever again. Just sayin is all.

For some reason, pork pies are always topped the same way: a crust with about a 1″ hole in the middle to allow venting. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off freehand, I found a trick for cutting the hole.

(you’ll notice I can’t even position a glass in the middle of the pie on my first try, which is exactly the reason why freehanding it was such a terrible idea)

Then I attempted to protect the edges of the crust with aluminum foil.

It got a little toastier than I would have liked anyway. But at least the edges weren’t burnt, those are the best part!

And of course, as any Charbonneau, Levesque or Savoie will shout at you, you have to at least try it with ketchup. Even if you don’t think you’ll like it, that’s the right way to eat it.

French Canadian Pork Pie
Coming to you straight from Memere LeBlanc’s memory

2 lbs pork butts, ground twice (plain old ground pork seems to work as well)
1 small onion, finely diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2-3.5 c water
1/2 tsp sage powder
1/4 c milk
pinch nutmeg
pinch allspice
another 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
pie crust for a covered pie (refrigerated, frozen or your own—you decide!)

Brown pork and onions in a large skillet, breaking up meat as much as possible as it cooks. Drain grease, return to pan, and add just enough water to cover the top of the pork (this has varied for me from 2 c to 3.5 c). Simmer, uncovered, 1 hour, making sure to stir regularly (keep on breaking up the meat with your spatula). Do not let the meat dry out, though it does not need to be covered in water the whole time.

Preheat oven to 400^o. Drain meat and onions again, toss into a bowl and beat with remaining ingredients (don’t forget the extra 1/2 tsp pepper!) until almost cooled. This will take the 5-10 minutes you’ll need to prepare your double pie crust, so if you happen to have a stand mixer, it’ll come in handy.

Bake for almost an hour, or until the top looks done. Let cool 5-10 minutes before serving with a side of ketchup.

The end!

nutrition summary: 180 calories, 11g fat, 0g fiber; ~7 weight watchers points

ENLIGHTENING FEEDBACK

mizike agrees with me, which is enough to be edited in, BUT he also gave me the name of this pie.

Nothing says christmas in Quebec like Tourtiere. Serve it with a side of poutine and a bowl of split pea soup for the maximum french-canadianness possible in one meal.

The Wiki on Tourtière is enlightening and dead-on, we just always called it pork pie. My family never did the poutine thing, but split pea soup is ALWAYS on the stove just after Mom and Dad have made a ham. I salute you, mizike, fellow Franco!

Also, I totally earned some cool points from Adam, and just wanted to point out that I am always accepting cool points. Not that I need them or anything. I may even give them to charity.

The mimosa. A delicious blend of fruit & alcohol that transforms even the most mediocre of brunches into an experience nothing short of magical. But alas, there are times where maybe perhaps a little bit of drinking might not be in the cards. Perhaps your hangover dictates brunch, but the thought of another drink, well, let’s just say you don’t want to think about another drink.

The solution is simple: Faux Mimosa. In addition to the dilemma above, it can be applied to a number of other problems as well. Perhaps you have that teetotaler friend, or worse, a decidedly non-teetotaler friend who gets whiny and annoying. Maybe you have a sister or niece *just* shy of 19 and you want to be the cool older sister (or cool aunt) without all the baggage of being arrested for serving alcohol to someone underage. How cool would you be to have her pals over, as you bemusedly observe the pitch and slurredness of their gossip rise over the course of the evening, so sure they are that this is the real deal. I would warn that you might end up providing crash space.

So imagine my delight in finding this recipe:

Side note: while the Fish House Punch looks like it might be pretty good, you’d think they could come up with a better title. Really. Or just run with it and garnish with fish heads.

This gem comes to us via that 1977 classic Sharing Our Best, a collection gathered by the Devil Worshipping Green Mountain Deputies Association of Vermont. The Devil Worshipping part isn’t explicitly addressed, except for THAT HUGE UPSIDE-DOWN PENTACLE ON THE COVER, which couldn’t possibly be a gross oversight.

We begin our Champagne Mocktail odyssey.

I like to buy local whenever possible. Turns out Polar makes its soda, like, 10 miles that way, so it’s extra fresh and better retains its vitamin content. That’s how that works, right?

I decided to squeeze my own orange and grapefruit juice, since I really don’t drink these things anyway and didn’t want to surrender the fridge space. These are also locally-grown oranges and grapefruit. I just love going orange-picking, they have this great farm right in Westborough.

I’m just kidding. Citrus plants don’t grow in New England.

In an awkward proportion, to get a cup each of orange and grapefruit juice, it took 3 oranges and 1.5 grapefruit. I think this probably changes depending on season, specific varietal and origin of your oranges, though the grapefruit proportion seems as though it would be a little more reliable. As a frame of reference, 1 orange = 1/3 c juice and 1 grapefruit = 2/3 c juice.

The easiest way to get juice out of citrus is with a citrus reamer. They’re cheap, extremely effective, and feel like way less of a pain in the ass than one of those little cup things. Also, you can strain the juice as you make it, which is convenient. Just poke it in your fruit there, mess up the insides, then let the juice drip into the sieve, and presumably the bowl underneath. Last step is to squeeze the orange/grapefruit around the reamer and rotate.

Get out your finest $5 Ikea pitcher.

And pour your non-alcoholic champagne.

Looks like a nice witbier, eh?

But mimosas are for girls. Girls with names like Kelli and Brittany. Let’s girl this up a bit, shall we?

Well, that’s nice, but Kelli and Brittany would kinda feel like you aren’t trying. Put some fruit in there, bitches love that shit.

Okay, we’re getting close. Let’s just go all out.

Drink on, ladies, drink on.

This was a bit sweet for my tastes, so I recommend excluding the extra sugar—it just felt so sticky sweet, it was much more refreshing after I diluted a bit with seltzer water. I also think there’s a little room for experimentation here down the seltzer water path, it makes for a dryer-tasting “champagne.” This inordinate sweetness is why you’ll notice I went from making Mock Champagne to Mocktail Mimosa. It just describes it better.

Faux Mimosa
from Sharing Our Best by the Green Mountain Deputies Association (1977)

Feel free to make this low-sugar or sugar-laden according to your preference. Serves 8.

1 liter ginger ale
1 c grapefruit juice (1.5 grapefruit if fresh-squeezing)
1 c orange juice (3 oranges if fresh-squeezing)
1 c water

Mix. Chill. Text Kelli and Brittany and see if they’re doing anything.

nutrition summary (1 serving with diet ginger ale): 23 calories, no fat, no fiber; about .5 weight watchers points

Weeks 2 & 3 of our CSA harvest were pooled with everyone else’s share because we were in California. But week 4 we had all to ourselves, as Heather & Jon (our share partners) were still in California on pick up day, so that’s almost like only missing the one share, hooray! Here’s what it looked like:

WE HAVE (roughly left to right)

• 1 bunch dill
• 10 radishes (1/2 lb), with leaves
• 2 pints peas
• All the nasturtiums I cared to pick (did not find out they were edible flowers until they had been wilting in a vase for awhile)
• 1 head bibb lettuce
• 1 lb bok choy
• 8 garlic scapes,garlic chives, or whatever your farmer’s market or CSA calls them
• 1 bunch cilantro
• a big old buncha collard greens
• 1 bunch scallions
• 2 kohlrabi
• 1 head red lettuce

Our cost for a half share is $14.20. Half of the above is worth about $15.03, or $17.53 if you count the flowers, which I do because I buy flowers for the house regularly. It should also be taken into consideration that these are organic vegetables (which drives up the price of the share) and I’m comparing to conventional vegetables at grocery store prices (which is what I’d most likely be buying if I didn’t have a share). We haven’t yet broken even, as I miscalculated the last share, but I think we’ll get there.

This week’s harvest brought a few new veggies to my kitchen, which was the real draw of this little experiment, and I suspect I’m not alone in this. I’d been itching to get my hands on garlic scapes ever since our farmer mentioned them at the orientation two months ago (those weird circley vine-looking things at the top . . . just to the right of the center . . . don’t see them? Yeah, they don’t really stand out) and they are incredible! They taste pretty much like chives, except with a garlicky bite that doesn’t even leave an aftertaste. Totally refreshing! I tried cooking with them here and there, but I found that no matter how much I added, their flavour seemed to wash out. Moving forward, these are being used like regular chives—chopped and sprinkled atop.

The other new veggie was kohlrabi. This is a funky-looking veggie, and I had high hopes for its flavour to be equally funky, but alas, it works like water chestnuts or cucumber or other bland veggies. Still, one cup has like 35 calories, 5 g fiber and 140% of your vitamin C. So whoah, it’s good for you.

Lettuce is lettuce, but yay for fancy lettuce!

We’re finally starting to get some herbs and I’m so excited about this. I love love fresh herbs. Love them. So much. Mmm!

And though radishes aren’t the most flavourful of vegetables ever, the purple ones had this beautiful sheen on them, like a purple satin with a golden sheen as it moves. Really, so beautiful.

But the biggest surprise were peas. Now anybody who’s known me any length of time knows I hate peas, but as it turns out, fresh-from-the-vine peas out-of-the-pod are incredible. They taste, not like the mushy gross woody-tasting crap I remember from my childhood, but unbelievably sweet, like fresh sweet corn. It was, to reuse a word, unbelievable. Of course, in like, two days, they’d become gross woody-tasting crap I remember.

And those are vegetables! Dano really liked this shot, but I thought it was harder to make everything out than the one at the top. My compromise was to include it at the end.

So tell me, which veggie shot do you like better?

Metrowest CSA season has officially commenced! We are in the green:

I took photos of the entire share, but are splitting down the middle for each. Pictured, roughly left to right (thought difficult to pick out where one ends and the next begins):

• a fistful of beet greens
• 8 oz mixed salad greens
• fistful of turnip greens
• 10 Easter egg radishes (so named for their colourful variety)
• 2 heads lettuce (not sure on the type)
• 8 oz arugula
• 8 oz bok choy
• and in the very center there, baby turnips, which we already went over last Friday.

Beside the enjoyment of delightfully fresh veggies, one of my intentions with this stuff is to get an idea of its worth. Our half share costs about $14.20 for each weekly pickup from June through October, assuming we continue to harvest through then.

So as it turns out, baby turnips are priceless (in the literal, you can’t buy them way), and you have to buy the beet to get the beet greens, and radishes don’t come with tops. But my estimate is around $18.19 for similar amounts of conventionally-grown (the farm is organic, you see) veggies at Stop & Shop. S&S didn’t have enough of an organic variety to make a reliable estimate. So my return this week was about -$5.11. This is still VERY early season, and I’m quite optimistic for the rest of it!

The end!

I’ve been hinting at my first CSA season, which officially commenced last night. While things are still lean around here (lots of leaves, not much in the way of solid vegetables), there are some interesting perks that come with the early season. The first would appear to be these baby turnips, which are nutty and quite delicious raw, if a little difficult to clean and therefore sandy.

I recently learned that veggies like turnips and beets must be thinned out early in the season, or they will crowd out one another and reach deeper into the soil, looking more cylindrical like carrots than nice plump turnips. Interesting, I thought to myself, I must remember to share this on my website. And though I am a complete spacecase, here I am, remembering to do so. Success!

When you thin your turnips you end up with these cute widdo fings, awwww, and why let them go to waste when they make such a nice little snack? Coo chee coo chee coo, etc etc.

If you’ve been following along, you’re probably aware that I collect cookbooks. Specifically, cookbooks created by New England civic organizations between 1950 and 1980 for fundraising purposes. With yard sale season in full swing, I find myself solvent with new recipe ideas, among them one I found in this vandalized and water-damaged collection.

The picture on the cover somewhat suggests the architecture of Calvary Baptist Church in Easthampton, but I bought the book in Millbury and it has no date (I’ve never been to that Church, I just tried to do some due diligence in my googling). Nevertheless, it *does* include a chocolate cake recipe with a secret ingredient: ice cream.

And hey, no cake flour or fancy measuring required, because we’re using cake mix.

I let my ice cream soften by scooping it up into small chunks and letting it sit a few minutes. At teaspoon size, your mixer will take care of any further softening required right quick.

The recipe calls for greasing & flouring a tube pan. Since I’m making chocolate cake, I dusted with cocoa powder instead of flour so my cake won’t look dusty. In fact you can do this with any chocolate cake, with the added bonus of a little extra kick of chocolate, and hey, that’s the name of the game, right?

After 4 minutes of beating, the batter kinda just looks like . . . well, melted ice cream.

This is one of those situations where a process shot gives a much clearer picture of the character of the dish than the final picture can. Connie Aubuchon, the contributor of this recipe, assures that the cake is “very moist, rich and chocolatey.”

She was right. This is about as moist as a cake gets without being outright wet, and it even has this spongy noise as you cut into it. In short, it is the most delicious chocolate cake you ever had.

I wanted to see just how chocolatey I could make this, so I stayed true and made a chocolate cake mix with chocolate ice cream. But I was *thisclose* to trying chocolate cake with mint or ginger ice cream, and other combos that come immediately to mind are vanilla mix with mango ice cream, yellow cake mix with strawberry ice cream, and funfetti with pretty much any ice cream. What combo would you make?

Chocolate Ice Cream Cake (but not like you think)
with thanks to Connie Aubuchon

1 box chocolate cake mix (or any other flavour)
1 pint chocolate ice cream, softened (again, any other flavour)
3 eggs
1 c water

Preheat oven to 350^o. Grease a tube or bundt pan, then dust with cocoa powder.

Beat all ingredients together for 4 minutes, pour into pan and bake 45 minutes. Serve with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar, a thin icing, whipped cream or the frosting of your choice.

approximate nutrition summary (will vary depending on the brands used): 230 calories, 6g fat, 1g fiber; about 5 weight watchers points

Speaking with a gardening-enthusiast work colleague last week, I found out that radishes are one of the quickest things to grow—and usually the first edible plants of the season (along with rhubarb). Unsurprisingly, this bunch was plucked from Berberian’s Northborough fields in the first week of May.

So it would appear that the rest of the country has easy access to local produce for more than 3 months of the year. Must be nice, assholes.

Okay, I lied, nobody’s an asshole, I’m just super jealous. I was raised in the classic suburban white girl tradition of New Hampshire. And to us, the concept of vegetable seasonality was . . . simplistic. We had corn on the cob once a year, my mom made zucchini breads in August (and froze about a dozen), we went apple picking in September and in October we’d choose a pumpkin to carve as a family. The rest of the year we enjoyed carrots, potatoes, apples, oranges and frozen vegetables. My  mom and dad will no doubt read this and lay the guilt on how I make them sound like SUCH bad parents who never fed their kids ANY vegetables, which is not the case, the point here is that seasonality just never stuck with me.

So last year it occurred to me that maybe corn doesn’t get harvested on a single day of the year, and also, what is that day anyway, and hey, plants *do* grow in Massachusetts, so logic would dictate that some of them are edible, right? Perhaps this . . . what do you call it . . . agriculture? thing?? had made its way from the Midwest to our humble corner of the country? This must make me sound horrifically stupid, but really, I’d never seen a well-stocked farmer’s market (they have terrible hours around here, like middle-of-the-afternoon-on-a-Wednesday hours), and the most local veggies I’d seen were singly sold on the side of the road. After much searching, I found Berberian’s Farm in Northborough (no site, no link) and caught up with everyone else that the freshest food is local and that fresh really does make a difference.

This summer I’d like to document an answer to the question that popped up for me only last year: so what’s in season?

On May 13th, it was this junk:

(I do use the term “junk” loosely) We’re looking at radishes, arugula, asparagus, rhubarb and mint.

Needless to say, I did try to think of some clever recipe using only these ingredients, but you know, they really just don’t go together very well, and what’s more, the way I eat them isn’t very interesting. For example, I steamed the radish.

And while its Barbie appeal was heightened significantly, it didn’t taste like much of anything other than maybe overboiled summer squash, so I salted and peppered and ate it on the side with this.

And you can see how I couldn’t in good faith make an entire blog post about this because it’s like cheating . . . wait, what’s that, Bitten Word? Martha had a recipe for poached eggs on asparagus? Wow, either I’m next in line to wear that lady’s heavy crown, or she’s out of actual recipes, because “place poached egg upon steamed asparagus” is not exactly what I would describe as a “recipe” so much as “an idea I came up with on the fly and I’m sure I’m not the first.”

Still, it was really good. Recipe: toss your ’spargus with 1 tsp olive oil, roast at 500^o for 5 minutes while you fry an egg, then salt & pepper & sprinkle with lemon juice if desired and place the egg on top. The end.

Alright, so I did manage to get these big ole honkin rhubarbs though, and I did manage to come up with a recipe for them, and it’s not even strawberry-related! I know, I’m so original, right? First though, check out how huge they were!

The length of my arm, they were! This was the only way I could think to fit them in my lens, as it does not zoom and I’m sick of that overdone depth-of-field bullshit. Anyway, then I chopped ‘em up.

Add a healthy dose of sugar because these things are as sour as lemons.

Then stew them for a few moments, make some oatmeal, and enjoy as follows. This makes an excellent breakfast or dessert, complete with vegetable, protein, and fiber. There’s no fat unless you want to add some, it’s easy to make vegan with some yogurt substitution action, and even if you don’t give a shit about any of that diet stuff, you will still like it. The rhubarb tastes just like pink lemonade, there’s just enough oatmeal to make it feel like a real dessert and the yogurt offers a neutral contrast in flavour and texture. I have to say, it far exceeded my vision!

Healthy Rhubarb-Parfait-Cobbler-Type-Thing
This dessert (or breakfast) has a rosy blush that can aid a young lady in her pursuit to maintain her girlish figure. In other words, it looks nice and ain’t bad for ya!

2.5 c (about 1/2 lb or 4-5 feet) rhubarb stalks
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c dry oatmeal
3/4 c water
1 c yogurt (fat-free, Greek, full-fat, your pick!)
1/2 tsp sugar (in addition to the sugar above)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Rinse the rhubarb, then chop into 1/2″ chunks. Toss with 1/2 c sugar. This is easiest to do in the saucepan you’ll be cooking in—lid it then swirl it around til the chunks are coated. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring every minute or so. You’ll notice that even though you started with no extra water in the pot, suddenly all the rhubarb surrenders its water and you’ll have a kind of stew. Whenever you stir, give one of the chunks a fork to see if it’s tender; as soon as that happens, turn off the heat. It should happen within ten minute or so (if not, try medium heat for a little while, but keep an eye out for burnt bottoms!).

While that’s cooking, prepare the oatmeal. I microwaved mine because um, the stove was kind of already taken. 1/2 c oatmeal to 3/4 water. The oatmeal package will say otherwise; tell it to take a hike. Microwave 2.5 minutes.

Also, mix the yogurt with the vanilla and remaining sugar.

To assemble, we’re really just dividing everything into rough fours: 1/4 c rhubarb, top with a generous tablespoon of the oatmeal, then finish off with 1/4 c yogurt.

nutrition summary (for 1 serving of 4): 185 calories, 1g fat, 2g fiber; about 3 weight watchers points

A few months back I thought it would be cool to experiment with sprouting mung beans and share the process. It’s a pretty simple one: soak beans for about 12 hours, drain, then keep in a jar in the dark for a few days, rinsing every 12 hours or so, until—tada!—bean sprouts.

This method is foolproof only if you possess an innate ability to plan ahead and are able to couple that with a daily attention to detail.

Unfortunately, I possess neither. I am, however, completely in love with this specific colour.

So I tried to sprout these TWICE, and each time made it to the point where things were looking promising.

And then both times, I forgot about the damn things in my cupboard until they were oversprouted and bitter and not very edible.

And even though they weren’t edible, they were so pretty.

Good news, though! Steph of ::steph chows:: did a nice little writeup of her far more successful experience with mung beans, which echoed much of the research I had done in sprouting my own.

Here’s hoping I’m a better farmer in my CSA’s fields this summer, eh?

So if you’re not the comment-reading type, you may have missed this awesome comment from Jasmine, who, rather than pontificating from the opposite side of the globe about how to sprout mung beans, actually hails from that side of the globe and shared some excellent knowledge:

Hi! Here in asia we call these mung beans “green beans”, and use them to make sweetened, ‘cooling’ soups to ward off the heat of summer. Job’s tears (we call them “barley”) and mung beans, together with sugar and some fragrant pandan leaves, put into a pot and on a slow boil will make this humble beverage.

We also sprout mung beans until they are about 2 inches long — they are called “beanstalks” and added into clear soups or sauteed (you may have seen them in “chow mein” or fried noodles). Although you can buy these from your local Chinese grocer’s, I imagine. We sprout them by getting cotton wool (the kind you use for your face will do), soaking it in water and putting those little beans in them, near the sun. Water daily and they’ll grow!

Addendum
Oh, sorry to mention — I’m from Singapore … and here are some local dishes where mung bean sprouts are used!

http://www.noobcook.com/2008/03/11/bean-sprouts-with-salted-fish/

I love reading Omnomicon because I really see what people on the other side of the world is eating! (sorry if all that I’ve said is super ass-vicey)

Jasmine, your comments are not only welcome, but TOTALLY appreciated! And it goes without saying that Omnomicon loves having you for a reader, much of my aim is to gather all kinds of different perspectives on the food I present!

I have an interest in food cultures outside the US (and even outside my little corner of the country), but unfortunately it’s difficult for me to know that the info I am able to gather is even remotely accurate. Next time I’m whipping up a batch of Pho, I’m totally going to try Jasmine’s suggestion. Thanks again, you’re a doll!

I don’t have much to say about the Daffodil Cake other than it appeared in my What’s Cooking in Massachusetts! 4H cookbook, and a quick Google is telling me that it is an Eastery-Springy-type of cake. So I guess I just missed Easter, which is fine because something in me still resists holiday seasonality. My guess is I still haven’t outgrown that jaded teenager phase, where family stuff is stupid and cheesey.

In line with the Spring theme we accidentally have going here, this cake is EXTREMELY light—for cake. It’s similar to an angel food cake, except that you are not left with an inordinate amount of unemployed egg yolks. In this cake, the egg yolks are used to make a second batter, this one all yellow, naturally, and the result is a little two-toned cake that is not as cool a surprise as say, a rainbow cake, but still pretty neat! It can be served in a manner similar to angel food cake, and in that vein would be quite delicious with some strawberries and whipped cream!

I made this bad lawrence twice in an attempt to fix major problems from the first go at it. I cite as evidence:

You can see how including that particular photo might counter any culinary abilities y’all might have thought I had. The good news is that I only had to try this one more time to get much more satisfying results, and I identified my major issues here. The first:

Let me just say up front that is not meant to be a dick joke.

The terminology in the original recipe says “beat until stiff.” Now I’m going to venture that, in this case anyway, stiff does not imply stiff peaks, because the first time around it took me damn near 45 minutes with a handmixer to attain stiff peaks, which even then were passable at best. And then my cake exploded out of my pan and burnt to the bottom of my oven in a smelly mess (see above).

The other big hint that something was wrong was when I tried to remove the cake from the pan and then had to kind of grope it out with my fingers. It was embarrassing.

Perhaps in 1962, they had nonstick tube pans they don’t make like they used to, but my nonstick bundt could not handle that baby, and as you can see, this time around I was plenty generous with my cooking spray. That cake might be soggy coming out of the pan, but it’s coming out of that pan on its own, goddammit!

Here’s a rare Omnomicon action shot.

And the bottom was the most delicious part of this. If you aren’t big on presentation, I recommend eating the entire crust off the bottom, because the cake is moist and fluffy and once you flip it onto the bottom and leave it that way for a few hours, the delicious crunchy almost-meringuey texture becomes the texture of just . . . regular cake. Not as magical at all.

Interestingly, though you pour the yolk mixture on TOP of the whites mixture (which would logically put it on the bottom of the cake once flipped out of the pan), the yolk mix is denser and therefore sinks to the bottom of the pan. In this particular piece, it looks like a funky ying yang.

But when I overbeat the white mixture, the yolk stayed right where one would expect it to—to the top of the pan and bottom of the cake. I have to assume this is due to the increased firmness in a longer beat time for the white.

So then I took some literal shots with a daffodil, which really don’t complement the visage of the cake very well, but I bought those flowers and by golly they’re gonna be in my pictures!

The best way to describe the plush airiness of these, however, is with this shot, wherein I tore a piece of cake in half. Verily, I rent it asunder for the visceral pleasure of it.

And then one more picture of daffodils. Just so I can get my money’s worth.

Daffodil Cake
adapted from a 60s era 4H fundraiser book: What’s Cooking? In Massachusetts

6 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c sugar
1/2 c cake flour
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325^o.Beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and salt, and beat until the mixture can hold a little bit of shape, but not until stiff peaks form (it should take you about 5 minutes to reach this consistency with a mixer on medium). Briefly beat in vanilla. Sift sugar and flour four times (seems like overkill to me, but just to be safe I went ahead and did it), then fold into egg white mixture. Pour into well-greased tube or bundt pan and set aside.

Now it’s time for the egg yolks!

6 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 c boiling water

Put about 2 c water on the stove to boil. You’ll want to measure your boiling water after it’s come to a boil instead of before (what with evaporation and what have you). Beat egg yolks 3 minutes, add salt and vanilla, then gradually beat in sugar. Sift the flour and baking powder four times (again, it couldn’t hurt) and add alternately with hot water. Pour atop the white mixture in the pan.

Bake 50 minutes, let cool completely (at least an hour) before removing from pan.

Serve by itself for a cottony delicious treat, or with fruit and the whipped topping of your choice for a more full-blown sort of dessert.

Fun variation:
So some versions of the daffodil cake include a lemon icing, and this one in particular calls for either vanilla or lemon extract in the yellow batter. My awesome idea is to dye the white part with lemon extract and the yellow mixture with vanilla. It will taste the same, and 90% of people won’t notice which is which, but it’ll be really funny for that one person with the particularly sharp tastebuds.

nutrition summary (for 1 of 8 servings): 260 calories, 4g fat, 0g fiber; 5 weight watchers points