The First Tea Klatsch

I.e. 'you need to crack a few eggs... to make oefs en cocotte'

The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.

Euenus

How exciting it is to start out fresh!

This Tea Klatsch is another first, following on the heels of the Literary Tea, and I am totally jazzed about these initial successes!

Since I usually document the cooking and baking process with photos but can't do the same for the event-planning process, I will weave in the event steps here, alongside the I'm-sure-tantalizing food photos.

Who doesn't need maple-oat scones?

1) Identify the need

Having kept my ear to the ground during discussions with friends, I noticed that many of us were going through transitions, and were feeling the need to talk about it, get advice about it, vent about it, and/or hear about others' experience. So, how 'bout a party?

2) Come up with Idea to Pitch to Serve the Need

Since people are busy, and people going through transitions usually more so, I needed to come up with an idea for a gathering that would be fun and inviting, not just a happy hour or brunch in DC. Being me, I like themes, and this one was easy to see: transitions!

3) Organize and Invite

I chose to twist the traditional coffee klatsch idea to my purposes, creating a 'Tea Klatsch," and promising to bake some goodies. This turned into brunch as I let my imagination run away with me (usually a good thing). I used Google calendar for the email invitation again, even though it created some non-gmail address problems last time...

4) Prepare!

I combed my spreadsheet of waiting-list recipes the night before, honing in on the tab for breakfast, and easily landed on the Maple-Oat Scones from Smitten Kitchen. I followed her recipe almost exactly, except that I substituted an extra 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour for all-purpose, and didn't have space to roll out dough, nor a cutter to cut (plus I'm not good at this), so used the (patent-pending) ball-and-squash method for shaping.

Next I found a couple great resources online for how to plan a brunch, one at Smitten Kitchen itself, and a similarly witty one at A Dinner Party, a favorite blog. From the former I took the idea for latkes, but neglected to take her suggestion to make them ahead, since I was struggling with a cold and hoping it would go away. Oops. 

From the latter I struck on eggs for a balance of protein-- baked eggs seemed the least fussy. Found that recipe (also called 'oefs en cocotte' for those who like to get fancy) here. Didn't change anything except the cooking time, which was foiled by two late arrivals, hence 'shirred eggs' became basically hard-boiled. Ah well. Also, for those who have crappy baking pans like me: I couldn't make a bain-marie of 1 1/4 inches, so I set the timer for every 3 minutes to check if I needed to refill the water in the shallow pan so it didn't go dry. That worked out well.

The Latkes: Having gotten the idea for these from Smitten Kitchen, I was immediately drawn to making them because:

1) I never got my annual fix of latke fever last Hannukah and was still craving it

2) I had a sack of premium Dutch yellow potatoes rarin' to go (thanks, Trader Joe's)

3) they were not bread and not protein, so seemed to offer some balance to the brunch spread (if pressed, I would include them in the vegetables group)

My one hang-up? When I Googled the how-to's for latkes, starchier potatoes were recommended for crispiest results. Where the heck were Dutch yellows on the scale of starchiness? More Googling ensued. It turns out the company which produced the potatoes, Melissa's, had a recipe for latkes on their site. Bingo! I went back to following SK's approximate recipe, approximately doubling the ingredients. My ingredients included:

1.5 lbs dutch yellow potatoes, rinsed and grated (held in water-and-lemon-juice while preparing the rest)
1 large yellow onion, chopped finely
2 small fall apples, peeled and grated
the beaten egg from the scones plus another medium egg, + flour

salt and pepper

The teas chosen were again from Capital Teas, a purveyor now available in Dupont Circle: Caramel Toffee Pu-Erh, Love Affair (a rooibos), South Pacific (a flavored black tea), and Lemon Basil Oolong. No complaints, except that I need more tea strainers for this kind of thing!

The results?

 I think they speak for themselves.

Or at least the smiling faces might.

Going forward, I would:
1) do the latkes ahead of time as suggested and reheat in a medium oven
2) ditch the individual baked eggs and go for one big cheese souffle

In terms of non-food results, some of them remain to be seen, but it was oh-so-energizing to get such positive vibes and unconditional support from other gals facing their own tough decisions.
I look forward to checking in with them about the steps they are taking to reach their goals, and expect them to be checking in on me with mine as well!

Oatcakes and Orange Flower Water

Greetings, Friends.

The ship may no longer be going Full Steam Ahead, BUT it is not idling away in dry-dock, either.

For all you non-nautical types out there (including me), please refer to my disclaimer about overworked metaphors. While I do have a broken right arm, I'm planning on sneaking my way around that obstacle at least a few times over the course of the next 3-5 weeks. Probably with the help of my friends.

As for my two main goals for the beginning of 2012- training for the 10-miler and increased pace of writing- they will both be put on hold. Tuesday I get fitted for my cast, and I plan to pepper the orthopedic surgeon with questions about what I can do to promote healing and what I shouldn't do to prevent further problems. I dunno, team, do we think I can ramp from nothing to 10 miles in 5 weeks?

Since I am right-handed, typing cack-handed severely slows down the flow of words. I suppose I could still invest the same amount of time and just get half the anticipated output, but I kind of don't want to slog through that. Or am I really just scared that nothing will come if the spigot isn't all the way open? Could be.

I guess we'll find out in the coming weeks!

But now to think back to a time when I had two working arms, when I could multitask like nobody's business, when I could pump out three recipes a night... 

That's right, more Scottish food! I actually made these the week before Christmas, as a balance to all the Cookie Swap sweetness. I found a link to the Leftover Queen's recipe, and found that she was quite the blogging queen, coming much belatedly to that party. The dough was quick to come together, easy to manage, simple to scale. The oatcakes' texture was nubbly, toast-y. The flavor was mild and wheat-y and heartland-y, if that makes sense. Pretty great! It made me think more on what a culture's food says about its people... fascinating speculative exercise...

The same day, I thought I'd better get my mojo going on the cookie swap recipes I'd bookmarked. Two that I was closest to having all the ingredients for shot to the top of the list: HungrySquirrelCakes' Chocolate Orange Chunk Cookies and Mrs. Galvan's Dark Chocolate Cafenelas. Here I've got the first one, which got more oooh's and ahhh's from the officemates (even though they were both fab, I think this one was more unique).

Standard mix-and-drop cookie, with one out-of-the-ordinary ingredient (orange flower water, which can be found in Middle Eastern/ Lebanese groceries or near syrups and jams in a Whole Foods), and the need to keep a close eye on the oven exposure- you want to nab these guys before they're fully cooked to avoid going to the Crispy Side.

**Helpful Note for Americans looking to convert this recipe from metric measurements: 225g = ~3/4c butter; 200g = 1 1/4c sugar; 175g = 5/6c sugar; 350g = 3c flour; 175g = ~5/6c dark chocolate; 170 deg C = ~338 deg F ** I think.
Yum. Next up: Cafenelas and what to do with Black Radishes!

Scottish dumpling, not your dim sum variety

Scottish Food, Installment 2 of 3
The last post was mostly food in Edinburgh, so here we'll progress on to other places and experiences.

First up (and making a grand impression) was the breakfast set-up at my B&B in Inverness. (highly recommended!)
Keep in mind, this was just the COLD breakfast. Gorgeous cereals, fruits, yogurt,etc. Add to that your choice of eggs, meats, and my favorite, tattie scones. They might be a bit of work for one who is not accustomed to having mashed, or in fact any, potatoes on hand, but they were tasty enough to give it a try nonetheless.

Next is the food at the cafeteria of the Culloden Battlefield Memorial site. Now I've heard that there is a fancy guest house and gourmet restaurant nearby, but you're off your rocker if you think I could afford to go there. As it was, I had to check at the bus station for where to pick up the city bus to visit the memorial site, as it was not obvious from their website. After an inside talk, a self-tour of the museum, and an outdoor guided tour, I scoured the gift shop and settled into the cafeteria to stave off a food-headache. I saw these crisps, which amused but did not entice!

I also tried Clootie Dumpling, a traditional fruitcake-type dessert, which turned out to be fabulous, 'smoored' as it was in custard. SO good, especially on the misty, rainy, chilly day that we had that day. But once again, there's a challenge to make it-- where on earth does one get suet in the States?
Third, we have the famous visit to Leakey's Bookshop & Cafe. I loved this bookshop, not least because it had a cafe upstairs where one could procure delectable baked treats and a warm beverage to best accompany the reading material at hand.
On my first visit, I had a pot of tea. And I didn't look closely at the menu because I was busy observing and then speaking with a young Swiss mother traveling with her young son (but not too young- he was old enough to talk excitedly about where they'd been and what they'd seen, about 11 or 12 years old). Did I mention we spoke in French? It was AWESOME!

 The second time I returned however, I tried a baked good (a caramel shortbread, I believe) with my tea. And perused the menu details, which included a historic bit.  I'll wait while you read.

Good bit of cheeky humor there, eh? And another connection back up to that Diana Gabaldon and her fictionalized version of the Culloden Battle- really fascinating!

Fourth and finally, we leave Inverness to include the day trip to Stirling Castle, in a metaphorical middle of Scotland: between the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow (E-W), and between the cultures of the lowlands and the highlands (S-N).
At Stirling, I had a very informative tour which encompassed different ages of the castle, famous architectural elements, rituals of life, changes for military needs, etc. But the one place the guide didn't take us to but strongly recommended was seeing the exhibit on the Renaissance kitchens.
There were very lifelike mannequins/models pictured at work, and everything looked so busy! There was sound piped in to mimic the hubbub of a feast in the making. It was really well done.

This shows a servant slowing down in the course of serving all the courses (hehe) at a typical 16th century banquet, which included:

• pottage (soup)
• roasts
• small pies and pastries
• tarts or fritters
• fresh or preserved fruit and sweetmeats

I guess they didn't go in for salads, hmm...

Here was my favorite- all raise a cheer for the bakers! Rough men's work at the time, because it took a lot of bread to feed the people, who didn't have much of a varied diet unless they were high-fallutin'.
Don't they look real? Better than a wax museum, though; those are just creepy.

The last photo from Stirling kitchens was an oven that was used before the expansion for the palace's guests, when it was more of a fort stronghold. These kids were around and I felt a strong urge to be the witch pushing them into the oven for getting in my shot...

Next up will be the final installment of Scotland food (Glasgow) and some preamble about the New England road trip, where Produce, and not Preparation, turned out to be King (a-ha-ha, we were just talking about the Castle, get it?)

Scottish Food, and I don't mean McDonald's

I've got a request for "More Scotland, while it's still fresh!" but there are a host of other things going on too, which I'll try to capture in a logical and pleasingly readable fashion.
First, an installment of food-related pictures from the Scotland trip.

Here is the first place in Edinburgh I plunked down for something to eat- it took a lot of thought. I would have been ill-equipped to make the decision had I not spent all morning wandering up and around Calton Hill's fresh air. It was a quite respectable pub-looking place that turned out to be a cut above: The Conan Doyle. This is their Cullen Skink.
No, it doesn't involve skunk like it sounds, skink is a word for a style of soup, and this one came from a place called Cullen. Simple enough, right?
Amaaaaazing. Smoked haddock, potatoes, and onions, a creamy soup but not over-heavy like some chowders here in the States can be. Mmmmmm, next time I get my hands on some smoked Finnan haddie (haddock), watch out!

 

This was the smoked halloumi salad I got to go with, which was unnecessary because 1) I was full and 2) the smoked halloumi cheese was the only worthwhile part. Oh well. Win one, lose one.

 Breakfast setting at the B&B in Edinburgh- pretty glassware can make a big difference. Who knew? (Well, I guess Stewarts are an ancient clan...)

 Breakfast surroundings at the B&B in Edinburgh. That is, I believe, one of the reputed Aga stoves? Or am I completely wrong? It looks like I'm wrong by the Google images, but it did look exactly like the stove in the one-room hovel (a 'single-end') exhibited in the The People's Palace (in Glasgow).

And just in case we were wondering, this is the state of beef in Scotland:

 Moving on quickly now to safer topics...
this is a Bedfordshire Clanger: meat pasty with 3/4 mincemeat/ savory filling and 1/4 marmelade/ sweet filling. Too good not to give it a go, right? Definitely the most interesting thing on the menu here at The Dogs in Edinburgh, although in practice it was very heavy and I didn't get half through it. Cool decor, though. This is a huge mural behind the bar just visible in the mirror.

Other updates:

• I took the recommendation of Heidi of 101 Cookbooks and used the Magic Sauce with scrambled eggs this evening for a light dinner. It didn't look too hot, but it tasted good.
• The Lemon Rosemary Zucchini bread? First loaf tasted great, but second had disturbing pockets of what I can only call acridness. A lump of something like sand in texture, but tasting like... well, the word pustule came to mind. Rather than risk other coworkers besides Catherine and me experiencing this, I threw the rest of the second loaf out. If I was a superstitious person, I would be spitting up a storm here to ward away the bad luck. Yeuch.
• Cooking adventures at home since Scotland, including my own Millionaire Shortbread, a rice FAIL, treats at the work retreat, my first ever, of-any-kind, kugel, and a girls' night out for a 7-course meal at Thai X-ing in DC, which was absolutely heavenly.
• Oh yeah, and a solo road trip from Philadelphia through upstate New York to Vermont and back to DC. That was pretty awesome too. :-)
• All this... and more! Coming soon...

Many Things in a Big City Day

One of the great things about Big Cities of the World is that they present so much variety. If it is a true Big City, that is (this is why Cleveland, even with its 2.5 million inhabitant, doesn't qualify; it's too one-dimensional). Here, for example, is a sunrise:

A sunrise you can get anywhere, of course, but different places have their own kinds of sunrises. There are sunrises over fields of wheat, sunrises over dramatic stones, sunrises over skyscrapers. Each place takes the experience and makes it unique.

It's the same with buildings. There are books upon treatises upon tomes about different types of buildings, varying with function, era, architect, materials, but I'm highlighting location as a key variable here. Some buildings you look at and think, "San Francisco," or "Home."

This one makes me feel at home because it has many of the characteristics of the home and neighborhood I grew up in: Victorian era, color, craftsmanship, greenery. But it also has those stairs, which make it different, and that narrow citified look, which makes it take on a completely different personality as a building. (I love how the people here have put up fabric in the glass part of their door for extra richness of palette). So to recap, we have sunrises, buildings...

And I can't visit anywhere without sampling the baked goods, can I??
No, the answer is no.
I stopped at a delightful [chain] bakery called La Boulange on my long walk from the Mission to Downtown. I had poked my head in one or two before this one, but they were both too expensive and not cheery enough. This place hit my expectations on the mark. I had planned to walk leisurely from where I was staying in the Mission up through Hayes Valley and zigzagging up Market St. to meet my mom and a friend of the family at Samovar for lunch.

I adored the homey, folksy, clunky yet cute style of the bakery, and enjoyed 'un bol' de chocolat chaud, avec un croissant magnifique. I wrote a bit, observing, listening to a French family at one of the round tables, not unlike the one I sat at growing up.

Here's a bit of the character of the place- the small type at the bottom of the functional yet whimsical service sign says, "We have decided to be happy because it is good for our health." It's like a kick of cowboy boots for fun. So now we have seen a sunrise, some buildings, the bakery,it must be time for some culture.
I had singled out the small Museum of Craft and Folk Art on my itinerary because they had a Corita Kent exhibit that would end the day I left, so I figured it was meant to be. Corita was an interesting 20th century American artist, especially since she started out as a Catholic nun.
She bucked a lot of trends.
Here is an excerpt from a page that has the 10 Rules for the art classes she oversaw at the Immaculate Heart College Art Department:

An important lesson, and one which is a good reminder at certain times.

After I met with my mom and Gayle and had a delightfully modern concoction of teas and amuse-bouches (see the commentary on the tea vintage above for a comparison with bombastic wine connoisseurs), it was time to journey on to another feature of the Big City: community gatherings.

Now, as I said in my last post, I've never actually lived in San Francisco (yet), but I had heard about a local organization that does urban foraging for edibles, home cooking, and promotion of local food artisans, all causes which I can get behind. I had signed up for their newsletter, hoping that I could go on a food walk the one day that I would be in town (talk about trusting to fate). It turned out there would be no walk, but there would be a foraged dinner. Well.
I signed up.

It was pretty great. There was a many-coursed meal lit by candles, served by volunteers, foraged from city neighborhoods or local producers. Much of it was very good, and the few things that weren't settled for being fascinating. And as I had come on my own, I met the 4 people on my right and talked with them for the several hours that the meal lasted, making some new friends in this City that contains so many worlds of interest.

Random bakery goods and an occasion for rhubarb

Here is that rhubarb-butterscotch sauce I was telling you about, in the making. I'm leading with the pretty photo, and the result you can see at the bottom of the post.

Baked goods! This was a first experiment in pizza dough. The first one was cooked up the next night, and the second one frozen for later use. It was the 'next night' instead of 'that night' because it's really difficult around here to get much done in one night. These days work is pretty busy, so I have a window of about 3 hours at home in the evening before I start thinking about sleep! So: crust one day, topping the next.

And here is the result of the rhubarb butterscotch! Most of the rhubarb available was greener than red (nothing to do with ripeness, just variety), and so it doesn't pack a visual color punch, but let me tell you, even cooked down with sugar, it packs a tart wallop! Hence all the Greek yogurt lurking under the granola- doing battle with the tart topping!

Finally, another baked good: sodabread! After much perusing of recipes and articles arguing about traditional (no seeds, nuts, fruits, or other) vs. new-fangled (caraway seeds, raisins, sugar, eggs and other luxuries) added, I decided to go traditional. This isn't the first time I've made Irish sodabread, but it had been a long time. It was delicious: dense but not too crumby, toothsome (whatever that means to you), and heartily satisfying, epecially with a pat of good butter on top. Also good toasted. How resourceful Irish women were!

What I Eat, when left to my own devices, Part III

Continuing with the breakfast theme...
Here I splurged on the "Irish bacon" from Whole Foods, and it was pretty good, with maple syrup, fried grits, and sweet potatoes, but not enough on its own to warrant the price.
That pot roast again (from a chuck roast cut, btw), with German red cabbage, a good standby recipe.
A picnic lunch when I went on a solo daytrip to Frederick, MD: ciabatta, pasture butter, farmers' market radishes, and sea salt- scrum-tiddly-umptious on a fine day in a green park.
A recipe I had longed long to make: Pumpkin Five Spice Cinnamon Rolls (4/5/10), from Coconut and Lime, a Baltimore-based blogger. They were a bit unwieldy to make and serve, but tasted pretty good.
A nice tidy dinner: boiled egg and inventive sauteed chard with sauce and raisins and what looks like pine nuts....
A gift from Trader Joe: a mache salad with my own vinaigrette, topped with TJ's arancini balls- basically fontina cheese melted inside a bread crumb crust- perfect hot atop the sweet greens.
My first foray into frying! I used Love and Olive Oil's recipe for Panko-Coated Chicken Schnitzel, and with a little experimenting it turned out great, even reheated as leftovers. (Now what to do with the panko?) It is accompanied here by Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Beets, and Asparagus, which was okay-- sauce was good, asparagus not cooked enough though. It all comes down to timing...