“People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, about love, the way others do?. . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it. . . “

~M.K.F. Fisher

This week will mark the 21st anniversary of the death of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher who died in her cottage home in Sonoma California on June 22nd, 1992.

Fisher is considered to be one of the greatest food writers of all time.  She has been called a culinary giant, a pioneer of food and memoir writing, and a pre-eminent American food writer.

When she died, the Los Angeles Times said of her, “M. F. K. Fisher [was] the peripatetic author whose crystalline prose and keen observations raised food writing to the high art of literature.” The Chicago Tribune said,  poetically, “Her voice was deep, knowing and hovered somewhere near the soul.”

Fisher had two daughters that she parented for the most part single-handedly, despite her three marriages. She travelled widely and wrote 27 books. She was known for being sensuous, charming, and witty. She wrote eloquently about food and love and longing. A few of my favourite topics. I love this about her. 

I was reminded recently of MKF Fisher when my mother and I were invited to have afternoon tea at the home of two of my mother’s dearest friends.  Her friends live off-grid in a house they built themselves from stones they gathered on their own property. Both their beautiful home and their extensive gardens are works of art. For a couple of exquisite hours, we sat in the garden in the sunshine eating MFK Fisher’s Tomato Soup Cake and drinking tea and coffee from china cups whilst amongst other things, we paid homage to Fisher.

If you haven’t tried Tomato Soup Cake – don’t let the tomato soup put you off. It tastes like a cross between a fruit cake and a spice cake. The recipe came from Fisher’s 1941 book, How To Cook a Wolf.  (For the record – the wolf refers to the metaphoric wolf at the door.) The recipe, which uses no eggs and minimal butter or shortening, was devised to circumnavigate war-time shortages and rationing.

“This is a pleasant cake, which keeps well and puzzles people who ask what kind it is. It can be made in a moderate oven while you are cooking other things, which is always sensible and makes you feel rather noble, in itself a small but valuable pleasure.” MKF Fisher

This is MFK Fisher’s original recipe – my adaptations are included in bold. The cake, minus the icing, is easily made vegan by using vegan margarine.

Tomato Soup Cake

• 3 tablespoons butter or shortening or margarine
  
• 1 cup sugar (I used 3/4 cup sugar and 1 tbsp molasses)
• 1 teaspoon soda
• 1 can tomato soup
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg, ginger, cloves mixed (I just used 1 tsp ground ginger)
• 1 1/2 cups raisins, nuts, chopped figs, what you will (I used 1 1/2 cup of combined raisins, chopped dates and chopped crystallized ginger)

Cream butter, add the sugar (and molasses), and blend thoroughly. Add the soda to the soup, (there is great chemical reaction here) stirring well, and add this alternately to the first mixture with the flour and spices sifted together. Add fruit, stir well, and bake in a pan or loaf-tin at 325 degrees F. (I used three mini loaf pans and cooked them for about 40 minutes.) Ice when cool.

Icing – if you feel like it….

• 1 cup cream cheese
• 1/4 cup icing sugar
• 1 tbsp rum (or vanilla – but I used rum)

Beat the icing ingredients together and spread over cooled cake.

Filed under: baking, dairy-free, desserts, dinner party worthy, Vegan Tagged: Food, food photography, food writing, MKF Fisher, MKF Fisher's Tomato Soup Cake, recipes, To Cook a Wolf, tomato soup cake, vegan ]]> http://lindymechefske.com/2013/06/16/m-k-f-fishers-tomato-soup-cake-revisited/feed/ 20 011 lindymec 011 151 152 154 http://lindymechefske.com/2013/06/07/piece-of-cake/ http://lindymechefske.com/2013/06/07/piece-of-cake/#comments Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:59:55 +0000 A Taste of Wintergreen http://lindymechefske.com/?p=1627 ]]> I’m a huge fan of rhubarb. It’s such a useful and tenacious plant – thriving in all sorts of conditions, requiring next to no maintenance, and coming back faithfully year after year. Plant it once and you have a lifetime source of free food. The leaves are one of nature’s most potent natural pesticides. The red stalks are a cheerful harbinger of spring – generally one of the first edible things up in the garden every year. And best of all, it’s so tasty. Rhubarb just makes good sense.

Rhubarb is native to China and Tibet. The Chinese began harvesting rhubarb, primarily for medicinal purposes thousands of years ago. There are also references to rhubarb in early Arab, Persian, Greek and Roman culture. But it was thought to be Marco Polo who brought dried rhubarb roots back from China in 1271, that initiated the widespread cultivation and use of rhubarb throughout Europe.

The early settlers brought rhubarb to North America, where it was a particularly useful source of vitamins after long hard winters when nothing much else was available. Technically a vegetable, in 1947 a New York court deemed rhubarb a fruit for the purposes of regulations and duties.

The health benefits of rhubarb are numerous. A good source of both Vitamin C and potassium, it has anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties. It’s also an excellent source of dietary fibre and a potent digestive aid. The leaves are poisonous but are safe for the compost bin. If you don’t have a garden, you can grow rhubarb in a large container. Rhubarb benefits from bedding down with manure in the fall but will survive happily without it.

Over the years I’ve experimented with a number of rhubarb recipes. I’m very fond of rhubarb pie. I freeze rhubarb for fruit crumble and a fabulous tart fruit pie made with cranberries, rhubarb and apple. I’ve also made rhubarb chutney, rhubarb cobbler, and stewed rhubarb. But this rhubarb coffee cake is my favourite. It’s great for dessert and even better for a weekend morning breakfast with coffee. Yes, cake for breakfast. In bed. Preferably with the sun streaming through the windows and the birds singing.

Rhubarb Coffee Cake with Crystallized Ginger and Dark Chocolate

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
½ cup butter, melted
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups rhubarb, chopped into ¾ inch pieces, you can use fresh or frozen
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
¼ cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped (you could be generous here and use more. I LOVE ginger but sadly, not everyone else in my family does…)

Topping

¼ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 350º F. Butter a 9-inch round coffee or bundt cake pan.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, melted butter, and vanilla together. Add the flour mixture and blend lightly until just mixed. Gently fold in the rhubarb, chocolate chips, and ginger pieces.

Spread the cake mixture into the prepared pan.

Combine the topping ingredients, working until crumbly. Spread over cake. If you’re using a bundt cake pan and want to serve the cake inverted – you can try putting the crumble mixture in the middle of the cake instead of on top.

Bake 45 to 50 minutes I think this is too long – or perhaps my oven temperature needs checking. Try cooking this for 40 minutes. I like my cake nice and moist – so cook it until the top bounces back slightly – but not long enough to dry it out.  Cool on a wire rack.

Serve with Greek yoghurt, whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream. Although the cake is perfect all by itself.

It was Victor Hugo who said, “There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

Victor Hugo was all kinds of things. A poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist. A statesman. A human rights campaigner.  A talented visual artist.  A Catholic at odds with his faith.  A sexually charged egomaniac.  A man with a complicated and at times, incredibly tragic personal life.  And above all, a Frenchman, even though he lived for some time in exile in the Channel Islands.

Hugo said a lot of intelligent, enduring and endearing things. And this week – when I had an idea whose time had come and felt that power – I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I had invited a couple of friends in for a kind of impromptu, pot-luck, appetizers-only dinner. We started with berry infused vodka before moving on to wine and a feast of appetizers.  All night, we sat outdoors, on the back patio under the stars. It was a perfect early summer night. We devoured a platter of sushi, black olive and garlic tapenade with pita crisps, a mountain of vegetables and spinach dip, a fresh bean salad, a cranberry and almond salad, and a spicy, baked cheese dip with French bread.

Somewhere in the middle of a mouthful of baguette and baked cheese dip – I had an idea.  An idea whose time had come.  In fact, probably a long overdue idea.  It was an idea about taking control of a situation in my life and like so many really good ideas – actually a very simple, obvious idea.  And there was power in finally getting there. Hugo was absolutely right.  Perhaps it was the berry infused vodka, or the wine, or the company, or the warm summer night, but I’m going to give the cheese dip credit. It deserves it.

I like cheese. A lot. Almost every kind of cheese. I could easily give up meat so long as I could still have cheese. But if I became a vegan – I’d have to be one of those cheating-cheese-eating vegans.

I expect a cheese snob would turn their nose up at this dip. Never mind. Their loss. I think this dip is insanely delicious. It’s one of my favourite party things. And I love eating the leftovers cold the next day.  In fact – I spent all day the day after the appetizers-only party looking forward to coming home  from work and pouring myself a glass of cold white wine and eating up the leftover baked jalapeño and cheddar dip for dinner. It did not disappoint.

Baked Jalapeño and Cheese Dip

454 grams (1 lb) cream cheese
1 cup mayonnaise (I use Hellmann’s)
1 200 gram can jalapeño peppers, drained
1/2 cup grated cheddar
1/2 cup grated parmesan

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Mix all ingredients together in the food processor, pulsing until desired consistency is achieved.

Spoon into an 8 x 8 inch glass or oven-proof pottery serving dish.

Bake 15-20 minutes or until hot and bubbly and lightly browned. Let stand 10 minutes before serving with a sliced French stick.

For all kinds of reasons, I’ve had a couple of humdinger weeks. Stuff has been going wrong. All kinds of stuff. Stuff that normally goes right. Stuff at work. Stuff at home. Even running – I’ve been limping through my runs. I just can’t get motivated.

And I’m having a series of cooking flops too. COOKING. The thing I always resort to in all times of duress – the thing that never lets me down. At least usually.

Yesterday I made a pair of rhubarb custard pies. I harvested and prepared the rhubarb and rolled out my own pastry. I made my standard recipe and cooked the pies exactly as per usual. I took them out of the oven – all puffed and gorgeous with deep golden brown pastry – and set them on the counter to cool. Twenty minutes later I came back in the kitchen and there they were. Flopped – concave – soggy, weepy-looking.

I feel kind of soggy and weepy too.

So I was browsing through food on Pinterest – admiring the food photography and seeing what might inspire me. And in the midst of all the food, I found this quote – or song title – or whatever it is – “Forget the ones that forgot you.” Yes – apt. Forget those that forgot you, indeed.

And if you need a little help forgetting – here’ s the ticket. Berry Infused Vodka.

It takes a few days to infuse properly – but don’t let that let stop you. There are no hard and fast rules about early sampling. Use at your own discretion….

Wild Berry Infused Vodka

3 cups frozen mixed wild / organic berries (mine were wild blueberries and organic raspberries and blackberries)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
750 ml of vodka (any vodka will do)

Bring the sugar and water to the boil, stirring and cooking until the sugar dissolves. Add the frozen berries (cut any really large ones in half) and add to the simple syrup solution. Cook for a minute longer. Remove from the heat and pour the berries and solution into a large glass jar. Add the vodka. Leave the vodka infusion for a few days in a spot out of the sunlight. The colour will begin to leach out of the berries. After 4 or 5 days – strain the infusion carefully removing the fruit and bottle the vodka. Refrigerate or freeze. Chuck the fruit. Or stir it into vanilla ice cream. It’s lethal.

Some serving suggestions:

Berry Infused Vodka Martini

1 oz berry infused vodka
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
lemon twist or fresh raspberry and ice

Berry Infused Vodka Lemonade

2 oz berry infused vodka
4 oz lemonade
ice and fresh mint

This was a week of losing and finding things.

I lost a silver charm bracelet loaded with sentimental value. It felt like a metaphor for all kinds of other things I’d lost over the years – people I’d loved,  people I’d trusted, my father, my longest term friend who died much too young of breast cancer, places I’d lived and left behind, a gold box-link bracelet that slipped from my wrist while I was riding my bicycle to university years ago, beloved books that ran away and never returned, the only piece of designer clothing I ever owned – a long flowing sheer black shirt – that mysteriously disappeared from a hotel room in Copenhagen, and memories of things that I can no longer fully retrieve.

I know that material things are just that – things. I know that while I was turning my house upside down, stripping beds and looking in teapots and gumboots and other unlikely places for my bracelet – that people were being diagnosed with cancer, or dying, or being born. That relationships were breaking down or being formed. That tragedy and horror and miracles would be unfolding somewhere else on the planet. That life goes on. That a charm bracelet is an insignificant little thing in the grand scheme. I know that.

But still, my mind turned over and over wondering when I’d last actually seen the bracelet on my wrist. I backtracked though the days that preceded – through all the places I’d been – trying to remember some detail that might be a clue. I chastised myself for my carelessness. I heard my father’s voice, reprimanding me, oscillating between anger and frustration and care.

I kept thinking about my father. In my memories he is almost always in the kitchen – wearing an air-force blue wool pullover, standing at the sink, looking out the window – eating a bowl of muesli. Or if not this memory – one of him carrying our huge ginger tabby cat around like a baby, telling it utterly ridiculous things – like Very Important Scientific Facts  or reciting “the Owl and the Pussy Cat”. These things stand out for me. If I delve a little deeper there are a million other memories – but these are the immediate ones.

Then, the night before last, I woke in the dead of night, hot and sweaty, my throat sore, tears rolling down my face. I’d been dreaming about my friend, the one who died of breast cancer. I’d had a crystal clear memory of us – 40 years before she died. We were six years old and at Brownies. We were running hand-in-hand, full-tilt, round and round the church hall, screaming with joy, our long hair – hers auburn, mine blond – streaming behind us. Our Brown Owl was the first adult I’d ever met who seemed not to mind noise nor care what we did. So we ran and screamed with complete abandon. Week after week we did this. And it was one of the most joyful things I’d ever known.

This is why losing something is hard. Because it triggers the layers of memories of past losses.

But while I spent my week searching, I found things. I found memories that reminded me of great joys, I found missing socks, and on the floor of my car – an ancient hair barrette that I’d assumed was gone forever. Then, on Friday, at the closing ceremony for a First Nations event, I found a lovely, young teenage girl, who stood in the sunshine reciting a traditional blessing in her own language. And for those few moments while she spoke everything else ceased to exist. Later, standing together in the kitchen, I asked her what the blessing was about – “It’s about thankfulness – for the earth – for each other – all that kind of stuff,” she said, with a beautiful, carefree smile.

All that kind of stuff indeed. I felt as though, in her presence, I’d found a bit of my younger self. I wanted to interview her for a story. So she wrote out her name for me – and told me to look her up on Facebook. I did – and the first thing I found was the Henry David Thoreau quotation above.

This morning, just after I ate my muesli, standing at the kitchen sink, looking out the window, lost in a week of reveries, I found my bracelet.

Here in memory of father – is my recipe for muesli. It’s insanely healthy, a lot less expensive than the packaged kind, and seriously addictive. I eat it with rice or almond milk and a swirl of honey or maple syrup. I think it is the best muesli ever. My dad would have loved it.

Homemade Muesli

2 ½ cup large flake oats
1 cup rye flakes (I buy organic rye flakes at Tara, my local health food store. They’re surprisingly inexpensive and very healthy.)
1 cup unsweetened coconut chips – like large flakes (I also buy these at my local health food store – but you can use whatever kind of coconut you like. Some people like this toasted – but honestly – the whole point of this exercise is that it’s fast, easy, and RAW)
1 cup trail mix (or make your own – nuts, raisins, currants, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, etc.)
1 cup dried fruit – I like cranberries and dried sour cherries
¼ cup ground flax seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt

Toss all the ingredients together and store in a glass jar. Voilà perfect homemade muesli!