Potlikkery

sweet potato pancake brigade

Who knew that sweet potato pancakes could cause such consternation in the kitchen? Not I. The recipe for sweet potato pancakes in the Tupelo Honey cookbook I reviewed last week is misleading. It wasn't until I landed near the bottom that I read the part about letting the batter sit for an hour before you throw the batter into your frying pan.

My fault, completely. But I'm not one of those cooks who reads the recipe through before cooking. I'm one of the by-the-seat-of-her-pants types. Or in writing, when it comes to plot and planning, I'd be referred to the organic type.

I'm not the kind who gets her mis en place in place, either. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I compensate. 

A warning near the title about prep time would be nice. Otherwise, the sweet potato pancake was lovely in the mouth. Tasted like autumn crunching and crackling and warming the tongue. Didn't go to all the trouble of making the accompaniments like peach butter and pecan all the rest. I'm just not that fancy. I needed my sweet potato pancake now, Now, NOW. Forget the rest. I dressed mine with my favorite light corn syrup because I'm not a fan of maple anything.

Doubt I'd make it in Vermont a season at all.

So here's the real problem that they don't mention either. And maybe when you have professional griddle/cookstove, this isn't a problem. When you add sweet potatoes to batter, it changes the consistency to such an extent that your pancake makin', booty-shakin' flipping and cooking skills are thrown out of whack.

I prepped the batter and turned the cooking over to Ian. Our division of labor in the kitchen goes like this: As to breakfast foods he cooks pancakes and waffle cooking and I make the batter. When we eat french toast I make it all. I'm the Queen biscuit maker/baker as well. However, I let him make my eggs over-easy because he cooks them better than I can 2 out of 3 times.

He burned the first batch of sweet potato pancakes because he poured it batter into a dry non-stick skillet. Dur. Yeah. Told him to pour a bit of oil in there. He did, and still had a bit of trouble because the tell-tale bubbling he looks for that alerts him to flip it over didn't happen. 

The pancakes burnt on the outside but were uncooked on the inside. Perhaps it was our error. Or perhaps a bit of cooking instruction could have helped. Also, I mentioned to Ian that he should pour out 1/3 a cup of batter into the pan per pancake. It looked as if our pancakes were larger, perhaps.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Oh well. Better luck next time. 

Elsa watched from her standard seat at the gathering table in the center of our kitchen. I broiled toast for her. She won't touch pancakes or waffles. French toast, either. Picky, picky.

urban pantries, tips and recipes

Amy Pennington set out to solve the answer to the perennial question "What's for dinner" with her book Urban Pantry: Tips & Recipes for a Thirty, Sustainable & Seasonal Kitchen. Mostly it started because she had this one friend, Marcus whose pantry was bare and she and all her other friends schlepped pantry items over to his bare pantry and stocked it for him. That was years ago. Now his pantry is well-stocked, and he cooks for himself.

If only Pennington ran an intervention program. Well, she does. Sort of. It's this book. It's another one published by Skipstone, my new favorite publisher. They did Fat of the Land, too. I hope they develop their food line because their titles in this area are impressive. Okay, no more plugging Skipstone, and back to Urban Pantry. In setting up your pantry remember that organization is key. Especially since space is limited.

This is the perfect book for your friend moving to a small space in the city. Or the recent graduate living in a loft on her own for the first time because Pennington's run down on the essential flours, oils, sugars, chocolates, fruits, fats, and ready-to-eat goodies, plus what fresh items you should have on hand will not worry your mother when she calls to ask about the contents of your cupboard. Yeah. You can report back with this laundry list and Mom won't send care packages for at least three weeks.

At first glance it seems like a starter book, but then the further along you read, the more sophisticated it gets, so maybe keep it yourself and send your cousin packing with another intro to single life 101 cookbook. Simple but tempting dishes like vanilla quinoa pudding and peanut soba noodles will undoubtedly become household staples. 

And I love her ode to eggs. I agree with Pennington that eggs are by far too neglected. She devoted chapter five to cooking with eggs and develops aioli variations, ravioli, bread pudding, and pavlova. Sure, there's more one can do with eggs, but this is enough to get a body started on a lifelong love afraid with everything ovoid. 

And then her chapter on small patch preserving was spot on. Who needs to preserve in bulk? Admittedly, when I'm at the farmer's market, I go whole hawg and want to buy a bushel of everything and stock up for the winter, but I have storage concerns and I tire easily. I don't want to spend the next four days canning food. Pennington breaks down the steps for beginners and her recipes deal with quantities in the four pound and under range, which depending on what you're preserving, net you between four and five pints for all your work.

The photos are few--okay, maybe a dozen, but I wanted more-- but gorgeous and taken with natural light, which infuses the book with that overcast Seattle feel, by Della Chen who also freelances for Edible Seattle.

peachberry pie + secret weapon ingredient

Cake used to be my favorite dessert. But maybe the past five or so years, pie beats cake's fancy pants in my book. In my kitchen, too. Oh, I love to bake a cake, but I love to bake and eat a pie.

Normally I shy away from making a pie crust from scratch. I'm still working up to it. I use the pre-made Pillsbury pie crusts, but this time I tried the all-natural kind found at EarthFare. I forget which brand they sell. But, I didn't love them. Don't get me wrong. They were flavorful. But, they were wimpy. Didn't hold the pie's contents in as well as the artificially flavored/colored and preservative-packed Pillsbury brand that I'm accustomed to. Then again, this pie was ultrajuicy.

White peaches and blueberries I bought at our farmers market. Super yummy. Super sigh. My mother's pies were standard apple pie. Or possibly plain peach. She wasn't the mashup type when it came to melding the fruits and berries together.

My first job out after graduating from high school was as an historical interpreter at Rocky Mount (lookie, it's the eighteen year old me!). It's one of those pioneer log cabin places that demonstrate fireplace cooking. That's where I learned all my fireplace cooking skills, too. One of my co-workers there, Anna Jane, inculcated me into the ways and means of dutch oven cooking, as well as the sweet combination of peach and blueberry baked together in the juiciest of pie forms. I learned well at her elbow. When we run out of fossil fuels and revert back to campfire cooking, I won't be starting at square one.

I'm one of those cooks I read about last night. Creative Nonfiction has a food issue and one of the articles is an interview with Ruth Reichl wherein she talks about the difference between women cooks and men cooks. Men are about gadgets and measurements and finished products; women are about process. So rather after I threw my pie together and decided I'd blog about it I figured I should deconstruct my process in a receipt.

Peachberry Pie inspired by Anna Jane

Preheat your oven to 350-375 depending on how your oven heats (hot or cool).

You'll need two nine inch pie crusts.

Sprinkle a teaspoon of all purpose flour in the pie pan before lining your pie pan with one pie crust. This eases removal of your pie from the pie pan after it bakes and cools.

Rinse and pick through your blueberries and cast off any weepy ones or unripe ones or stems.

1 quart of blueberries less about 1 1/2 cups (sorry this is imprecise)
4 white peaches peeled, pitted, and sliced
2 T crystalized ginger (the secret ingredient I add to most every fruity pie I make)
4 T butter, sliced into small pieces
3 T all-purpose flour
1 C sugar (you could add more if you like a sweeter pie, I don't)
1/8 t salt

Combine fruits in a medium bowl. Add the flour, sugar, salt, butter, and ginger, and fold gently into the mixed fruit. Pour this into your pie crust. Place other pie crust on top of this and pinch together the two crusts. I don't have the best technique, so I can't give you any pointers here. Pop into your oven and bake approximately 45-55 minutes.

remedies for the hungoevr

As I enter my fourth decade on planet Earth I'm glad to say that the only hangovers I'm party to these days are the kinds portrayed in theaters and in books. There were a few dangerous years between nineteen and twenty-two when hangovers were a regular thing and so a book like The Hungoevr Cookbook, while very appealing to me now, would fall under my twenty-year old radar for several reasons. First, in the throes of a hangover, I had no appetite the next morning. Sips of cold water and a few crackers were all I managed to keep my stomach settled. Stumbling to class was a feat, opening a cookbook sporting eye-assaulting gold and red pages (ACK!) and assembling a meal with a throbbing headache, cottonmouth, and fuzzy brain, was beyond my ken.

That said, Milton Crawford's book is a perfect remedy for the high-functioning social drinker or alcoholic with a well-stocked pantry. Based on P.G Wodehouse's six hangovers, Crawford concocts a bevy of appetizing breakfast fare to drag the addled brain from its dehydrated fug. But before embarking on the recipes, hangover sufferers face a barrage of optically and logically challenging tests that measure the true level of their cognitive dysfunction. That's the fun part, then the heavy-duty cooking begins.

No, actually, that's where Hungoevr breaks into breakfasts and drinks categorized according to the type of hangover you're experiencing. They are: The Broken Compass, The Sewing Machine, The Comet, The Atomic, The Cement Mixer, and The Gremlin Boogie. Further, Milton rates each recipe by star as to its level of difficulty so that you might gauge whether you should chuck it all and head for your favorite brunch place, or simply return to bed for another few hours.

The breakfast dishes, and drinks--mostly lassis and soda-water based citrus mixtures--are sure to soothe trembling tummies. Japanese, Indian, Turkish, and Mexican-inspired dishes appear, but the most appealing collection fell into the Sewing Machine chapter: The Elvis Presley peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich. 

Because when it comes down to it, nothing makes me feel better than channeling the King:

A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation aint satisfactioning me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Satisfy me baby

So while at first glance you might dismiss this book as a novelty or gimmicky thing, it's actually a tight treatise on breakfast. Oh, there was the disappointing Perfect tea and toast on page 102. For toast you have a packet of bread mix and make and bake the bread. It's very Sandra Lee. Seems easier to use the bread on hand you brought in from Whole Foods, right? That's my only complaint. Otherwise, it's a smart book with clever breakfast recipes sure to impress any number of persons who might wake up in your home after a night's debauch of the liquor cabinet. 

tupelo honey cafe (three berry cream cheese pie)

Each time I visit Asheville, NC I peer down College Street to see whether there's a line of folks waiting for a table at Tupelo Honey. Naturally it's usually Saturday morning and there's no way, no how, there's a table to be had for hours and hours, anywhere in downtown Asheville at THC or my favorite alternate Early Girl Eatery. So I starve.

Luckily Elizabeth Sim and Chef Brian Sonoskus published the Tupelo Honey Cafe cookbook earlier this year for those whom love the cafe but can't get a foot in the door to eat there anymore do to its popularity with tourists. That's not a bad thing at all. Asheville is known for its eclecticism as has been called both the Paris of the South and San Franciso East. Probably been called a lot more things as well. And, it was named a Beer City in 2009 for its ten microbreweries.

I love driving over Sam's Gap for a day trip visit; it's a short hours' drive and the scenery on I-26 boasts some of the finest mountain views east of the Mississippi. I've often said I'm too conservative for my hometown, but not progressive enough for Asheville: I wear leather, eat meat, and shave my legs and pits. Anyway, Asheville is an awesome town boasting a vibrant food scene, film scene, and outdoor's enthusiast cabal. Did I miss anything? New Age. Lots of spiritualism and artsy stuff happening there as well. 

But, back to the cookbook. Actually, it's as much as a social and cultural tour of Asheville as it is a cookbook. Elizabeth and Brian give readers a mess of insight into the city's various scenes as well as its literary and architerctural history, which makes Tupelo Honey Cafe: Spirited Recipes From Asheville's New South Kitchen the perfect souvenir for visitors to the city. Its photos capture the essence of the restaurants, the cityscape, the peoplescape, and the verdant Smoky Mountains abutting Asheville. 

Its nine chapters follow standard cookbook organization and offer items from the larder, appetizers and soups, sandwiches and salads, fish, poultry, the smokehouse, vegetables, brunch dishes, and desserts. My favorite Elvis-inspired sandwich that I recall from my first-ever visit to THC some ten years ago gets second billing "Fit For the King Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich." But missing are their beet mashed potatoes. Guess those are dated and gauche these days, no reason to include them in a cookbook, even though they tickled my fancy and I'd love another taste of them. 

Admittedly, most of my meals at THC are breakfast/brunch, so that's the section that resonated with me most. Don't get me wrong, the other dishes/recipes are divine creations, but I have no context for those. I'm part of the way to making the sweet potato pancakes with peach butter and spiced pecans. I baked my sweet potato the other day and now its in the fridge. Wednesday might be the morning I'll make those.

Their banana pudding rocks though. I took an order away once and their recipe looks easy enough though most of my forays into that area were debacles. Saturday I made the Three-Berry Cream Cheese Pie (page 212) and was pleased by it. I substituted vanilla crisps for vanilla wafers and used organic valley (I'm gearing up for making some of Jeni's ice cream and that's the brand she suggests plus I had it on hand) cream cheese and organic cornstarch as well.

It's rather an easy-peasy twenty minute bake cheesecake and I can get behind that rather than the laborious hours-in-the-oven cheesecake I usually make. Oh, and this pie is assembled in the food processor, which was new for me. I am food processor challenged. It's rare I get all its parts aligned properly, so having the thing work and crunch everything to bits is miraculous. 

THC cookbook is both lovely and practical; it's not something you'll be too afraid to smear a drop of honey between its pages. Recipe ingredients aren't inaccessible or difficult to find in most grocery stores. Techniques aren't advanced for the average cook. This is a solid entry in the southern cookbook genre that goes beyond the simple regurgitation of southern standards for Sims and Sonoskus' tweaks and reinterpretations of the New South kitchen delight eaters and cooks and those who just want to look on in awe. 

kitchen daughter

Jeal McHenry writes an Asperger's character like I've never known, seen, or read before in The Kitchen Daughter. Ginny Selvaggio rocks in the kitchen. Sure, she's really annoying in the rest of her messed up life, but aren't we all? It's terrible now that I can't recall how old Ginny is, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties? She's the eldest of two sisters, though Amanda, the younger who is married with three children and lives elsewhere bosses Ginny around.

Ginny needs a bit of bossing at times because she doesn't cope well when the sticky bits of life swoop in and tackle her. Or, maybe not. Ginny still lived at home in Philadelphia with her parents. She never graduated from college because she couldn't pass that darned speech class. Her darling mother blamed her problems on her strong personality and resisted the establishment's need to label Ginny.

Now that Ginny's parents died Amanda returned to Philly to make the funeral arrangements and having all the relatives in the house sent Ginny into a cooking frenzy. She pulled a cookbook from the kitchen's shelves, cut into onions, and soothed her frazzled nerves the only way she knew how by crafting a batch of her Nonna's best Ribollita soup. As she follows the directions she reads from Nonna's handwritten recipe cards and the aroma of the soup's scent drifts up through the kitchen she notices her Nonna sitting next to the refrigerator.

The trouble is that Nonna is dead. Has been for twenty years.

Is Ginny crazy? Or, has she stumbled onto a secret? Does she possess cooking skills so powerful that they call forth the dead from their graves?

Well, it's a lovely mystery which unfolds as one reads through to the last page, especially as Amanda and Ginny battle it out over selling the house. Ginny plans to remain and care for herself and Amanda thinks Ginny should move in with her family because she cannot care for herself. McHenry's novel is filled with complex characters dealing with weighty issues.

Especially lovely are Gert, the woman who comes to clean once a week, and her son David, who she asks to deliver groceries to Ginny after her parents die. Seeing Ginny open up to the world after her parents death extends a lovely message of hope for her future. And watching her blossom when Gert asks her help with cooking at her temple for the burial society, the chevra kadisha. First she works with hard boiled eggs, then checks lentils for bad beans or stones. GInny decides she prefers the Jewish mourning process because she's thinking about it constantly.

I love the Normal book Ginny pasted from newspaper stories and comforts herself by reading when she feels especially low.  Recipes accompany each of Ginny's cooking adventures  with the spirit world so that readers might sample them and the handwritten fonts lend an air of authenticity.

But, the book's true strength lies in two parts. First, with McHenry's depiction of Ginny's undiagnosed Apserger's. The author takes us for a ride inside Ginny's mind and shines a light into the closets where difference or "peculiarity" hides. Secondly, McHenry infuses Kitchen Daughter with a cornucopia of sensuality; of aroma, of texture, of vision, and of taste. All food lovers will revel in this novel and find an kindred soul in Ginny Selvaggio who finds her balm in cooking.

blackberry ooozy cake from bon appetit

Blackberries are ubiquitous. I haven't picked any. I'm not taking any chances of tussling with a snake or getting poison ivy picking them myself so I bought pints the last two weeks at the farmer's market. Last week the berries frickin fermenting in the plastic bags before I made my blackberry shrub.

Well, that's not exactly correct. I misread the directions and added the blackberries, vinegar and sugar all at once because I wanted to go the cold-process route rather than the hot process route. And I'm not the best follower of directions, unfortunately. My excitement gets the best of me. That concoction went in the trash.

This week I decided to make a blackberry buttermilk cake. Did you see the cakes bloggers made from the Bon Appetit recipe posted? First, anything made with buttermilk piques my interest from the start. Buttermilk is my favorite baked goods ingredient bar none. And blackberries are most likely my favorite friut. 

And cakes, not of the cheesecake type, made in a springform pan do it for me too. I used the 10 inch springform, and given my oven, it baked in about 45 minutes. I make an apple cinnamon cake in a springform pan that's a standard in my house, and I can't believe I've never blogged about it before. Sheesh.

This cake batter almost made me not want to bake the cake, but just pour the whole thing down my throat. Must have been those organic eggs I picked up at the farmer market. Still haven't put them in the fridge. Hoping to use them up before they go bad. Refrigeration is a necessary evil. Yet still, evil. The process of creaming sugar and butter together and alternating the flour with the buttermilk reminded me of my favorite pound cake in its consistency.

Actually, going with my first instinct and drinking it rather than baking it would have been best, really. Because the finished product didn't deliver the boom boom pow I needed from a blackberry buttermilk cake. The 2 1/2 or maybe it was 2 1/3 cups of blackberries the recipe called for was scanty. I need MORE blackberries ooooozzzing from my cake. 

Should I make this again I'd go for broke and double, maybe triple the amount of berries. As it was, this was barely enough to bruise the top and make it look like it got in a bar fight after a spending a late night at the laundromat washing out dungarees for the next days work on the line. Yet, the cake intrigued me because I imagine you could incorporate any number of fruits.

About the only dessert my Mamaw Marie made from scratch, so I heard, because I don't remember ever eating it, was a Pineapple Upside Down cake cooked in a cast iron skillet. I'm pondering re-working this recipe with pineapple and seeing how it flies, but not in cast iron. Got to dig through my pans and see if any are seasoned enough to handle PUD. 

sweet no. seven, a garden & gun mention

I was tickled an unnatural shade of pink yesterday when I saw that Garden & Gun's Jessica Mischner named Potlikkery as one of her top ten Best Southern Food Blogs in the land. Landing on her list is the best news I've had in weeks, and it's been a real downer lately, except for having spent a week in New Orleans, and I'll be blogging about that soon.

If you don't know G&G, well shame on you. From the moment I spied the inaugural issue on the newsstand a few years ago, I subscribed, even bought gift subscriptions for my Daddy and a BFF. And for myself, of course. But I let mine lapse because I have this ongoing struggle with my mail carrier. I took it up with the postmaster, of course. 

We have an oversized mailbox because I receive large parcels, and being a librarian I'm particular about the state my journals arrive in. I don't like dog-eared, tattered, or creased covers and my mail carrier persists in creasing magazines down the center and using them as a tool to carry my small bits of mail inside.

G&G is a lush celebration of the better aspects of southern living. Lots of jaw-dropping food, fashion, guns, and hunting dogs. The photos make my fillings pop loosen onto my tongue and dribble onto the linoleum. Plus the articles are informative, well-written, and feature the best mixture of regional writing available.

And when it first appeared at my local big box bookstore's newsstand, they were confused about where to place it. The word gun threw them off, so they place it in with all the men's magazines. Actually, they're still confused about where it belongs, and it remains with the men's magazines. 

Naturally, I'm not shy about shouldering past the menfolk to pluck a copy off the shelves. Nor would I be shy about getting a girlie magazine should I be so inclined.

You'll be pleased to learn of G&G's Made in the South Awards. Entries are due by August 1, 2011. And categories range from food to sporting to fashion to home and each winner receives $500 plus being part of the Made in the South online boutique at taigan.com. For more information visit gardenandgun.com/madeinthesouth