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Yesterday my son's kindergarten class had a secret ballot where they "voted" for president by coloring pictures of their chosen candidate - and Barack Obama won by the landslidiest of landslides, a unanimous vote. Perhaps not such a shock when you consider it's a public school in the District of Columbia - we're 100% blue, baby, and the 3 or 4 McCain supporters (like the current residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW) do NOT send their kids to DCPS schools. My son's class is the junior rainbow coalition of the school, though, with 9 African-American kids, 2 African-African kids (Senegal and Burkina Faso, plus the teacher, who is Liberian, and the classroom aide, who is from the Cote D'Ivoire), 4 Caucasian kids (one of whom is half-Swiss and another is half...I forget, maybe Russian), and 5 "other" (a girl from India, a half-Vietnamese, half Caucasian boy, a Puerto Rican girl, an African-American/Caucasian/Fi lipino boy, and my Caucasian/Mexican/Apache/Afri can-American son). We also have a fairly high proportion of single-parent kids - the girl from India was adopted by a single mom, the half-maybe Russian girl's mom and dad divorced when she was about two, the half-Vietnamese boy and his twin brother (who is in another class) were born locally and then adopted by a single dad and my son's dad and I were never married and he's back in Denver - haven't seen him for over 4 years. So anyway, needless to say, the Obama story resonates with all of us, and as a result today was kind of like Christmas. A new holiday, Obama Day, complete with presents (my son insisted we give his teacher her Christmas present about 6 weeks early, and I said sure since I should really learn not to shop ahead of time anyway) and lots of candy (which I used to bribe the 4th graders to do a library research project on presidential trivia).
Okay, now that I have achieved my quota of run-on sentences, parenthetical asides, and blathering about my son and my job (since I work at his school, this is an automatic twofer), I'll now get to the recipe, which is for Soon-To-Be-President Obama's favorite (according to one interview) dessert, pumpkin pie. Which is also what I call my son, as he is too young to be particularly embarrassed by this.
Pumpkin Pie
*Single pie crust, baked almost all the way through
*16 oz. canned pumpkin
* 1 c. packed brown sugar
* 2 tsp. ground ginger
* 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
* 1 tsp. fresh grated nutmeg
* 1/2 tsp. salt
* 2 c. (16 oz. or 1 pint) whipping cream, divided
* 2/3 c. milk
* 4 large eggs
* 3 tbsp. powdered sugar
* 1 tbsp. rum or brandy
Mix the canned pumpkin with the brown sugar, ginger cinnamon, nutmeg and salt - it is best if you can blend the ingredients in a blender for about 1 minute so it becomes very smooth. Then transfer this mixture to a saucepan and simmer it very gently for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Then stir the milk and 2/3 c. of the heavy cream into the pumpkin mixture, and again heat until simmering. Turn off the heat, beat the eggs well, and thoroughly mix them into the pumpkin. It is best if you can be baking the pie shell while you are heating the pumpkin, so you can fill the crust with the pumpkin mixture while both are still warm. (Pre-baking the crust assures that it will stay crisp instead of becoming soggy.) Pour the filling into the pie crust - if the crust fills up too quickly, let the filling settle for 5 minutes, then pour in the rest of the filling. Bake at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes, until the filling appears a bit puffy and dry around the edges but is still a bit jiggly in the center when you shake it. Let the pie cool on a rack for at least an hour before serving.
While the pie is cooling, whip the remaining 1 2/3 c. whipping cream, gradually adding the powdered sugar and finishing off with the rum or brandy. Serve the pie topped with a big old mound of this stuff.
Happy Obama Day. I'm tired from staying up late last night waiting for those west coast polls to close (darn 3-hour time delay); I'm going to bed.
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Summer vacation is officially over tomorrow morning, even though it's still the middle of August. It wasn't a vacation vacation in the sense that I still had to work, I just didn't have to report anywhere at any particular time dressed in any particular way (or dressed at all) in order to do so. But much as I like my freelance semi-career, the fact is, I am way too chicken to live on spec in the middle of a recession, so when my part-time job at my son's school upped me to full-time, I said sure, I'll do it. Plus keeping up with whatever freelance work comes my way, plus an additional part-time afterschool gig nannying for one of my son's former classmates who will now be attending private school courtesy of the Canadian embassy. Heck, if I was Canadian, and worked for the embassy, I'd take them up on the offer. Our local public school system stinks on ice, and all of its employees (and most of its parents) are just as disgruntled as I am. But they are promising me a paycheck, gobs of which I've already spent, so hi hi, hi ho, etc.
As usual, summer was way too short to do all of the things we'd planned, although we did get in a good number of baseball games - major league, minor league, independent minor league, and collegiate league. We also had a half-week at the beach, ate out a lot, and I finally, finally got to have that elusive culinary experience I spent June and July chasing after with no luck - in a diner on the eastern shore, staffed by some big friendly guy who's a fellow Ravens fan, I had a soft-shell crab sandwich. The crab season was a dismal one this year, evidently - and the evidence became all too clear when I went crabbing a few times with my son and all we saw were floating dead ones. Plus a few tiny living ones, some of which we caught (and released), others of which weren't in the mood for chicken neck. Crabs are, after all, oportunistic cannibals, and they were probably full from feasting on the aforementioned floaters.
And doesn't that appetizing little image just put you in the mood for crab? Crabcakes are okay (or not so okay, if made with too much bread), hardshells steamed with plenty of Old Bay are grand (especially with Natty Bo and my beloved O's), but the cream of the crab crop, as far as I am concerned, is the softshell.
Soft Shell Crabwich a la Eastern Shore (aka Downy Ocean)
4 soft-shell crabs
1 egg
1/2 c. milk
1 c. crushed cracker crumbs or flour
Salt, black pepper, Old Bay and/or cayenne to taste
4 c. oil for frying
DIRECTIONS
Heat oil to 375 degrees F (180 degrees C). Mix egg with milk, and season your cracker crumbs or flour to taste. Dip the crabs first into the dry mixture, then into the egg/milk mix, then once again into the dry mix. Place crabs into the heated oil and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, or until they are golden brown on one side. Turn them over and cook until they are golden on the other side. Let them drain on paper towels, and eat them while they're warm. You can serve them sandwich-style on white bread or a hamburger bun with mayo or tartar sauce, or you may serve them plain with a squeeze of lemon. Enjoy them while you can, as they have a fairly short season and they're tricky little guys to locate, even here in crab country.
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We go to Ikea every so often (since there's one maybe 5 miles up the road) just to eat. Well, I do buy stuff there, just really cheap stuff like laundry baskets and usually some sort of stuffed toy for my son. I know the furniture is really cheap, too, and I'm actually in the market for a few pieces when we move since a few of my old pieces are almost literally falling to bits and realy not worth hauling anywhere new. As for now, though, Ikea is just a place to get a cheap meal and eat it right next to a play area. I know that some fast food restaurants offer this as well, but not in our neighborhood they just want you to grab your burger and go knock off a liquor store somewhere else. 5 miles north in Ikea-land, though, is a whole 'nother world - well, probably because of this little thing called the University of Maryland which is just a bit south of Ikea. I guess they sell a lot of dorm furnishings. The really weird thing is, there are these new condos going up practically in the Ikea parking lot, and they start at $500,000. Haven't they heard that A) we're in a bit of a housing slump here and B) this is Prince George's county, folks, it ain't that gentrified. Try for $300,000, you might get it, but there still won't be a stampede to the door. Well, I guess if whoever buys the condos has to stretch to make the payments, they can furnish on the cheap, and without having to drive, even.
Anyway, last Sunday was my lucky day, Ikea-wise, since they finally had the blueberry cake I've been wanting to try ever since they had its picture in last year's catalog. It was really pretty good, too, a layer of blueberry jelly over a cream filling on an almond crust. And for $1.49, you can't beat it. I was wondering if I could find any copycat recipe approximating it, and no, I couldn't. What I did find was a whole bunch of people desperately seeking Ikea's apple cake recipe, and that's not actually in the public record either. I did find an "Ikea Friends" website, though, which confused me no end - the prices for the food items were given in dollars, but were slightly higher, and I'd never heard of Ikea Tampico and wondered why they'd have such a highly localized discount program. Well, it turns out the website is Singaporean - the fact that Seafood Hor Fun and Nasi Goreng were on the menu kind of sort of tipped me off. There is a distinct lack of "vinegar marinated green chilli on the side" at my local Ikea, that's for sure. This website did include a few recipes, though, and one of them was for an apple cake. It doesn't really look as if you'd get anything resembling the one they sell at Ikea, but it is an apple cake and is from an official (Singaporean) Ikea website (translations into US measurements and terms by me), so här du gå:
Ikea in Singapore looks pretty much like Ikea anywhere else
"Skånsk äppelkaka" (Apple Cake from Skåne)
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups grated dark rye bread
1/2 c. plus 3 tbsp. butter
2 apples
1 1/4 cups) sweetened applesauce
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 400°F. Grease a 9" round cake pan.Fry the bread crumbs in small batches in 1/2 c. butter. Grate the apples. Put half of the bread into the tin pan, spread with the applesauce and grated apple. Sprinkle the rest of the bread evenly on top.Dot the remaining 3 tbsp. of butter on top. Bake the cake for half an hour.Serve lukewarm with vanilla sauce or whipped cream.
Image from WIkipedia
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The first (and possibly only) time I've ever had a fine dining experience as written up in Gourmet magazine is when I got one of my exes to take me up to Maine on the back of his motorcycle (we lived in Massachusetts at the time, so it wasn't that far) so we could eat at this lobster shack up in Kittery (I think). Can't remember the name of the place, and it was a long way to go for one small sandwich, but it was a very good sandwich. And, as I recall, I didn't have to share as that particular ex didn't care for seafood - one of the twelve billion and six reasons he's been exed for years and years. Ha, more seafood for me and everyone else who does like it.
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This past weekend I took my son to meet Cal Ripken, Jr. at a book signing down in Virginia. Earlier in the week we had gone to see the pope (just doing a drive-by in his Popemobile - we didn't score tickets to the mass at Nationals Stadium or anything), but Cal Ripken was a much bigger deal. We even exchanged a few words - my son said told him we had a dog named after him (we do, Cal Ripken the dog has been with me since before Frankie Joe was born), he asked what kind, I said Chow-Husky mix. And we got a picture, too, and I've been going around saying "wow, I met Cal Ripken!" for the past two days. I mean, he is the whole reason I love baseball, and he is everything that is good about it. And probably a much nicer person than the Pope, too.
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I'm not even going to bother apologizing for infrequent posts anymore - if this were a paid gig I'd make time, but it's not so I can't. But right now I'm watching some ridiculous movie about Barbie the Butterfly Fairy and I can't stop until I see how it all turns out (I'm sure Barbie is going to die a horrible death any moment now, probably when some giant hand grabs her and pulls her wings off) so I might as well make semi-productive use of the time.
Anyway, before the Barbie Fest we were playing whack-a-mole, which of course put me in mind of chicken mole. And of course I am SO not about recipes with zillions of ingredients where you have to make a special trip to more than one store, so my version is a somewhat (okay, quite a bit) simplified one
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I hate February. Not just the weather (way sick of winter by this point...after Christmas I'm kind of tired of it, actually), but for the past few years I've had all kinds of minor crap that hits about this time of year...Anyway, the result of which, this year, is that I've had to concentrate on the paying gigs (in order to pay that annual government nonvoluntary tithe), no time leftover for this blog. But I would be remiss in not sharing this recipe I found for using up leftover Valentine candy, for those of you who are either uberpopular (and still have time to bake) or, like me, are inclined to hit the post-holiday candy markdown sales (well, I finally finished up my post-Christmas stash). Anyway, here it is:
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Burns Night is a somewhat big deal in certain parts of the US - well, mainly in North Carolina, I think, as that's where the "undiluted" Scots immigrants settled and stayed, as opposed to the ones who spread out all over the US, intermarrying and generally mixing and mingling and making the mutts that most of us are today. I'm about 1/4 Scottish on my mom's side, but I have been to a few Burns night dinners (in North Carolina, and one in California) and found them notable mostly because my ex and I were the youngest people in the room by 3 or 4 decades. Still, where else are you going to go to see people set fire to sheep's bladders? Wyoming, perhaps, they do all sorts of weird stuff with sheep there, or so I've heard.
Anyway, my favorite part of the whole dinner had to be the dessert, especially when we got to have cranachan instead of stale shortbread. (Is there such a thing as fresh shortbread? Well, yes, I have actually baked it myself, but there seems to be some sort of cachet to the "imported from Scotland" variety, and of course importing takes time.) I've never actually had it with raspberries before, but I can't imagine they wouldn't improve it immensely, and it was already pretty darn good when it was just sweetened, boozy whipped cream with crunchy toasted oats. Raspberries make just about everything better, even though it may be tough getting fresh ones in January
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You put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning...and just what is THAT supposed to mean anyway? Anyone remember that movie with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as these witch chicks who got smashed to this song? Hmmm, I think they had a little more than lime in their coconut.
Lime and coconut is a a tasty combo, though, even without the rum (or whatever they were spiking theirs with). I really love those coconut milk-based, lime-flavored Thai soups, but I'm not supplying one of those for the recipe du jour. They tend to call for things like kaffir lime leaves, galangal, or at the very least, lemon grass, and as you can't easily come by any of these in my neighborhood (although Caribbean groceries are all over the place) I tend just to cheat and use a powdered mix. And what kind of lame-o recipe would that be? I guess a "just follow the directions on the back of the box" blog would be a unique idea, but the joke would tend to wear thin pretty soon
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Comment by MariaMaria
on Feeling Crabby
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