12 weeks until the Ride to Montauk century

Today’s mileage: 1.5 miles (sad face)

Total mileage: 1.5 miles

Diet: Carb worship

Feeling: Pear-shaped. My shoulder meat is trying to abscond with my chin.

Well, at least I got on the bike today. I spent the morning shlepping groceries from the store in preparation for our 25-person brunch (unaffiliated with St. Patrick’s Day). (Tangent: F this winter. F THIS WINTER. I am so, so, so over it, as are my poor, gloveless digits, which nearly fell off during my five-block journey to the supermarket.) La Doug did most of the cooking for this one. I was happy to nosh myself into a totally unearned carb coma. When Doug first told me the menu, I was like, there’s no way we are going to need all that food. However, we managed total high glycemic decimation. We’re awesome?

Menu:

• Doug’s mormor’s Swedish buns
• Make-your-own-waffle station
• BLT station
• Bundt pecan coffee cake
• Bagels, lox, cream cheese, with cucumber and peppers
• Lots of fresh fruit
• Jello-ed pineapple slices (not kidding)
• A cheese and charcuterie plate
• Bloody maries (marys?)
• Tea and coffee
• Fresh-squeezed orange juice

Like really fresh-squeezed orange juice. My tender legs hauled probably 30 lbs. of oranges in my trusty Ortlieb panniers, so that’s got to count for something. Doug wanted the oranges for fresh-squeezed orange juice, which is the kind of thing that I would NEVER think to do. I love fresh orange juice, I do. But you haul 30 lbs. of oranges into your house and squeeze maybe 4 lbs. of juice out with a five-piece contraption that needs to be cleaned by hand; then the skin and pith and pulp fill the trash bin, which means you have to take the trash out at least once before your guests even arrive. My lazy preference is to buy Odwalla or something like it, because that tastes perfectly fine to me — especially with a chaser of all-that-time-I-saved. (Even better than that would be getting fresh-squeezed orange juice from one of the Mexican grocers in our neighborhood, where you can often get a gigantic foam cup filled for only $5.)

But this is precisely why Doug and I make such a good kitchen team. His idea of a dinner party is an elaborate, plated, 11-course orgy with themed tablecloths and placecards; my idea of a feast at home is one in which all cooking happens in one pot, and guests are free to serve slop a scoop onto their plates their own damn selves. In real life, here’s how our kitchen personalities play out: when he has to turn his attention to a white chocolate habanero ice cream that refuses to set, I can swoop in and improvise a simpler salad to serve to patiently waiting guests; and my participation in his culinary choreography teaches me that I am a lot more capable of fancy timing and service than I think I am. He drags me along for the extra ten miles when all I think I’m capable of is five, and I push him forward with practical tactics when his ambition has surpassed his energy.

Back to my sad face cycling — the only reason I got my mileage up to 1.5 instead of 0.8 miles is that the orange haul left no room for milk, and I had to go back to pick up Rice Krispies for the waffles. Rice Krispies?, you are asking, intrigued. Yes! It’s the special ingredient in one of the many ingenious recipes in the Cook’s Country Cookbook, which is Doug’s absolute favorite go-to book. (There’s a newer edition available through Amazon here, but I don’t know if this recipe is in there.)

Light and Crispy Waffles from Cook’s Country: The recipe calls for beaten egg whites, nothing unusual there, but it requires milk, not buttermilk, eschews butter for vegetable oil (a common Cook’s trick), and uses 3/4 cup of cornstarch “to combat excess moisture.” But the totally brillso bit is that you add a cup of Rice Krispies to the batter. Doesn’t matter that they get soggy in the batter — through some awesome alchemy, they add secret pockets of snap, crackle, and pop, but don’t at all mar the deeply caramelized, perfect grid exterior. (Okay, I nearly burnt the one in the picture, but it was still delicious.) We use a Cuisinart Round Waffle Maker, which we set to 3. Nonstick surface and a well-oiled batter means we didn’t have any problems with sticking, even when one of the guests overfilled the grid, spilling batter down its sides. We also doubled the recipe without any problems.

God, I love cake. And I love baking when the weather is bad. I followed this classic Gourmet recipe, which is probably the cake recipe I have made the most in my life. I swapped the raspberries out for dollops of fresh applesauce made from the mystery mix of CSA apples in my refrigerator crisper. No cinnamon – sometimes you want to eat apples without cinnamon, you know?

It reminded me of this amazing warm, applesauce-filled muffin I bought once from Magnolia Bakery years ago – it must have been an off-the-menu special because I never saw it there again. The tangy, unsweetened applesauce and buttermilky batter are just lovely together.

I figure I’d better bake now in case the power goes out and I need to eat cake at 11pm.

My birthday cake, bitches. Recipe from Cook’s Country, subscription required (full recipe available here). The secret to the tunnel is a batter that includes confectioners sugar and cocoa, which separate out in the bundt cake. The oomph in this particular rendition came from Hersheys Special Dark cocoa and a little extra salt. And I got three wishes because I was celebrating with a Mexican.

These are the pastries I was telling you about. Holy moly. Ben Mims tested these at least three or four times, and each time he tweaked the recipe, it got better. Editors would stand around the kitchen island moaning and picking at the Pyrex pan, then turning around and stuffing leftovers into Ziploc bags. One Sunday morning, after a week or two of breathing in the scent of orange zest, butter, and brown sugar at the office all week, I woke up with a really intense craving for the buns. But I was like, it’s crazy to make an entire 13×9 pan of buns because I know I will EAT THEM ALL. I better just go to the Doughnut Plant instead. So I did. And I bought four doughnuts. That’s right, FOUR DOUGHNUTS. And I ate them all. And I still wasn’t satisfied, so I went and begged Ben for the recipe so I could bake (and eat) a whole pan the following weekend anyway.

I could have saved my belly from four doughnuts, people. Do yourself a favor and just make these orange buns instead. And don’t be surprised if they become your next recipe obsession.

Yesterday morning I woke up to WNYC and heard Evan Kleiman raving about a fresh blueberry pie recipe. 30 words, maybe 15 seconds, and then the segment was over.

But it stuck in my head. A pie with fresh, succulent blueberries! Not indigo glop! Perfect for this time of year when the farmers market is awash in plump, pincushion New Jersey bluebs.

I went to bed last night and had air conditioner noise-induced dreams about this pie. Fresh blueberry pie….fresh blueberries…in pie…plump and juicy…quit it with the pie and fucking go to sleep already…fresh blueberries….

So when I woke up, I knew I had one task for the day and one task only – find that recipe and make that pie.

I googled “Evan Kleiman fresh blueberry pie” and found it: Dorothy’s Fresh Blueberry Pie from the blog Shockingly Delicious. And I’m telling you, it IS genius. You cook a little less than half the berries with some sugar and cornstarch, then you fold in bucketfuls of fresh blueberries and put the mixture into a blind-baked crust. Refrigerate for a few hours, then serve with a little whipped cream.

ZOMG SO GOOD. Huge hit at the barbecue I went to tonight.

This magical recipe solved my general problem with pies and cobblers in the summer, which are:

1. My kitchen is not air conditioned so I don’t want to have the oven on for an hour

and

2. It’s really hard to beat the texture and flavor of ripe, raw summer fruit. It’s one thing to make jams to preserve that flavor for the bland winter months, but it feels somehow audacious to think one can improve on the summer’s ripest fruit.

That’s why I love love love this recipe. It’s the best of both worlds – a tiny bit of cooking (blind baking the crust and making a sort of blueberry jam as a binder) and scads of juicy local blueberries, just as nature intended them to be enjoyed. The slices actually hold together much better than traditional goopy blueberry pie. It’s such a pleasure to take bite after bite of bursting, sweet-tart, raw blueberries which are slicked and sugared and spiced just enough to sex them up the tiniest bit. It’s like the difference between a little lip gloss and mascara vs. Glamour Shots spackling.

Also, it’s dead simple! Really, you must try it. Low LOE, high ROI. Thank you Dorothy Reinhold (and Evan Kleiman) for introducing me to my new summer standard.

A few notes:

• Get the best locally grown blueberries you can find. I got my fruit from the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket where pints were 2 for $7. I used about 6 pints for two pies. Rinse well and pick them over for stems and leaves.
• I used Smitten Kitchen’s all butter pie crust recipe (go easy on the water). Blind bake at 375 degrees with parchment and pie weights for 20 minutes, poke with a fork all over, then continue baking another 10 minutes without the parchment and pie weights.
• And if you, like me, don’t have room in your kitchen for a stainless steel counter, I have one of these nifty Roul’pats for easy rolling.

My co-workers know that second breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.  And yogurt with fruit and granola is my favorite second breakfast. 

I often wind up buying pots of yogurt from Pret downstairs from the office, but I have to eat it with the distaste I have for its price.  Granola is cheap and easy to make. 

This is a riff on the recipe The Amateur Gourmet posted for Baked’s granola.  Adam’s right, it’s a wholesome, everyday granola with a good dose of salt to balance the brown sugar.  It’s crunchy and just clumpy enough (thanks to the honey).  You can add whatever nuts and seeds you have on hand.  Just make sure you don’t add the fruit until the granola has cooled completely — the dried fruit turn into chewy dogbone bits if you bake them.  I also dialed the salt down by 1/4 tsp.

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It’s been a busy few weeks.  I had a setback in my writing schedule when I got ill with some flu-like thing again. Maybe next year, I get the flu shot.

I never feel more alone than when I am ill.  I hear that mothers always feel this way — that there’s no one to take care of them when they are sick.  Knowing I’d be in no state to cook when I got home, I picked up some cupcakes on the way to the train.  I like stocking up on crack snacks when I’m ill because they’re easiest to get past the killed tastebuds.

So when day 1 of my illness turned into day 2 and I’d plowed through my two cupcakes, I needed more simple carb sustenance.  My neighborhood offers very few delivery options, and I was not about to walk more than a block from home in my state, so I figured I’d have to pull something together from the cupboard.

Everybody needs an arsenal of pantry-ready recipes.  I searched for something simple and found this Chocolate & Zucchini recipe for Yogurt Cake.  It’s my favorite kind of recipe — barely measured, simple to follow even when the flu has turned your brain to mush.

But in a feverish moment of inspiration, I decided to add those stewed apricots.

It still sucks to be alone when you’re sick, but what am I going to do?  Sometimes it’s enough to stuff my face with this cake and watch Jerry Springer for an afternoon.

 Apricot Cardamom Yogurt Cake

The pan pictured here is one of those floppy silicone jobs which La Doug got for Christmas one year.  Worked well for popping the cake out at the end, but you have to put the pan on a baking sheet or you won’t be able to carry it into the oven.  Such a weird design.  I haven’t figured out what they would be best for yet.

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