I enjoy a kitchen challenge. My favorite variety of challenge is when I don’t have the necessary equipment for what I want to accomplish and I have to make do with what’s on hand. I think problem solving in the kitchen makes us smarter cooks.

Recently a special someone and I had a hankering for biscuits, but the oven was broken. The situation was made all the more urgent because there was a big ‘ole jar of hand-made, slow-cooked sorghum syrup that had traveled all the way from Sneedville TN to San Francisco, CA and I badly needed to convey some of it into my mouth on a hot, crispy biscuit. It was suggested by a smarter cook than I that we try the stovetop.

We figured if we could make biscuits on a home stovetop in a cast-iron pan then biscuits in the campsite would be in our future. All the more reason to make a go of it.

But first: the sorghum syrup. If you’ve never tried it, it’s kind of like molasses, only more edible. It’s overall milder, and shares some of the characteristics of molasses. It has a similar flavor—pungent, minerally, and sweet, but less bitter and with a (for lack of a better word) bright aftertaste that’s missing from molasses. It’s gorgeous, reddish brown and thick. It’s made the same way as molasses, but from sorghum instead of sugar cane. If you’re interested in the process, here’s a video by Whole Foods Market about a small producer called Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill.

Oh, yeah, there was no rolling pin or biscuit cutter either. But a Straus milk bottle and champagne glass worked just fine.

Bonus points if you’ve recently made the Cultured Butter (page 121) from DIY Delicious and you have some buttermilk to use for your biscuits. So much better!

Buttermilk Biscuits

Makes about a dozen small biscuits

1 3/4 cup all purpose unbleached flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat a dry cast iron skillet over medium high heat.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Whisk together. Add the butter and cut it into the flour with a pastry blender or your hands (if you can work fast), distributing it evenly and stopping when the chunks of butter are the size of peas.

Pour in the buttermilk and mix with a spoon, just barely. You want to stop messing with the dough well before you think you should because this is the secret to flakiness. The dough will still be crumbly and wet and not at all a neat mass. Get over it and dump it on a clean, floured surface. Working quickly, push and pat it together with your hands. It will still be awfully messy. That’s ok. Messy dough=better biscuits.

Roll it to a one-inch thickness. Cut into small circles.

Put a tiny knob of butter in the skillet and swish it around. Put in the biscuits. Feeling free to crowd them. Slap a lid on ‘em. (it doesn’t have to fit tight).

Cook them until you can see they are cooked halfway up the sides. Flip them and cover them back up.  Take the lid off after a few minutes to let them crisp up.

Remove biscuits from skillet, and turn that mother off before it explodes, and then eat.

Every year, my brother-in-law’s family descends on my sister’s house the morning after Christmas to consume large amounts of pork, poached eggs, and bread fried in pork fat. Even the mostly vegetarians join in for what’s become known as Porkmas.

My sister gets up early and arranges the house so as to fit the whole family in chairs around the living room, and my brother-in-law goes out to the summer kitchen and begins boiling the pork. Everyone arrives at once in a flurry. The younger adults poach the eggs, people drink coffee, fill their plates, talk all at once, and eat with gusto. Then it’s over as fast as it began. Two hours later, the place is cleared out and we don’t know what hit us.  Everyone goes his or her separate way, marking the official end of Christmas. This year, I got in my car to drive home, my brother-in-law’s mother went to the casino, and the late-20 and 30-somethings went on a hike. I’m pretty sure my sister took a nap.

The recipe has been prepared by the men of the Rogers family for at least 100 years, since the family arrived here from the island of Madeira. Nobody knows how the dish may have changed since its days in the old country. If you look at the stews of Goa, in Southern India, and the escabeches of the Philippines, you might notice that vinegared meats are common in countries that were once colonized by the Portuguese. (Although in the case of escabeche, the word is Arabic, and the culinary influence could have come from Portugal via China). Either way, the Portuguese are big on vinegar. Maybe because it cuts the pork fat? I’ve been told that my brother-in-law Nick’s grandmother drank a cup of vinegar a day for her heart.  And yes, she lived a long time.

I’m a little late blogging the recipe. But of course you can make pickled pork any time of year, or bookmark this one for next year. It freezes well too.

Without further ado, the recipe:

3 pounds bone-in, untrimmed pork shoulder

4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

2 bay leaves

3 or 4 small, hot dried chiles, broken in half

Leaves from 3 or 4 sprigs of thyme

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Approximately 1 1/2 to 2 cups apple cider vinegar and an equal amount of water

Cut the meat into 1- 2 inch cubes. Put it in a large bowl and add the garlic, bay leaves, chiles, thyme, and salt. Add equal parts cider vinegar and water, to cover. Mix well. Marinate the pork in a non-reactive food safe container or in heavy-duty plastic zip-lock bags for at least 10 days and up to three weeks. Mix every two days to distribute marinade evenly over the pork.

To cook: Put the pork and all of its marinade in a heavy, non-reactive cast-iron or enameled cast-iron Dutch oven or skillet. Turn heat to medium high and bring to a boil. Cook at a vigorous boil until most of the liquid has cooked off, stirring occasionally (about 45 minutes to an hour).

Lower heat to medium low and cook, stirring occasionally, until all the liquid is cooked off and the fat begins to render, another 20 minutes or so.

Turn the heat to low and continue to cook until the pork becomes brown and crispy, stirring often.

PS: I’m teaching an indoor microfarming class through the Biofuel Oasis with Nishanga Bliss on January 23rd.

This bread is something my mom’s Serbian family made for holidays. Even my mom, pretty much a non-cook, felt duty bound to make it at Christmas time. Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be much information on the Internet about the origins of this bread. I have no idea if it’s still made today in The Balkans.

My aunt’s typed recipe says,  “the Slavic Catholics call it Potica.” My family was Christian Orthodox. I knew a Catholic Slovenian whose family made a similar bread that they called Potica. If you do a Google search you will see references to Potica. However, Orevnitza seems to be completely unknown outside my own family. All references to Orevnitza on The Internet that I can find originated with me, with the exception of this site.

It’s the site for a self-identified Byzantine Catholic Church (Orthodox customs, Catholic beliefs) in Indianapolis that sells baked goods (including Orevnitza) I’ve never heard of anyone but my family eating or making a bread by this name with these ingredients.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the dates are a Middle Eastern influence like many of the other foods in the Balkans. But that’s all I know. Someday, I’ll go on an Orevnitza vision quest. Until then, here’s the recipe:

We like to eat this for breakfast, toasted and slathered in butter.

Orevnitza
makes 2 loaves

4 1/4 to 4 3/4 cups flour
1 package active dry yeast
1 1/4 cups whole milk plus approx. 2/3 cup for the filling
1/4 cup granulated sugar plus 1 cup for the filling
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs (1 for brushing the loaves)
1 pound ground walnuts
2 cups dates, pitted and ground fine in the food processor

In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups of the flour and the yeast.

In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, warm the 1 1/4 cups milk, the 1/4 cup sugar, butter and salt, stirring occasionally, until just warm, but not boiling, and butter is melted.

Add warm milk mixture to flour. Add 2 of the eggs. Using a handheld electric mixer, beat on low for 30 seconds. Turn mixer to high and beat for 3 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as you go. Using a wooden spoon, stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes, adding the remaining flour as you go until the dough is soft and not sticky.

Shape dough in a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled. (My aunt doesn’t say how long. Inside my preheated and then cooled oven, it took about 2 1/2 or 3 hours) Punch dough down.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Combine the ground dates, walnuts and sugar and mix together with your hands to combine. Add milk until the mixture is spreadable. Set aside

On a floured work surface, divide dough into two equal parts. Roll one out into a rectangle about 12 in. x 18 in. and between 1/4 in. and 1/8 in. thick. Spread half the filling evenly over the dough, being careful not to tear the dough. It’s easiest to use your hands. Leave about 1/2 inch around the edges of each piece of dough bare.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Break the remaining egg into a small bowl and beat lightly with a fork. Brush the edges of the dough lightly with the beaten egg.

To shape, beginning at one of the wide edges of the rectangle, roll up fairly tightly, jellyroll style. Press the edges gently to seal. The egg should act as “glue.” Pinch the ends shut. Gently bend the loaf into a snail shape and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.

Roll out, fill, roll up, and shape the second piece of dough, in the same way, reserving the remaining egg for the top of the loaves. Cover both with a clean towel and let rest for 30 minutes.

Brush the surface of each loaf with the remaining beaten egg and bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until golden brown all over. Cool on a rack before slicing.

My friend Ellen’s underground restaurant took an interesting turn last week. Instead of dinner, the meal served was brunch and, instead of Ellen being the sole cook and bottle washer, we partnered up on the menu, with the invaluable help of Leila for shopping, prep and clean-up duties.

The goal of the brunch was to finally give people enough damn bacon. You know what I mean. No matter how many slices of bacon are on your plate, one more is always better. So we set out to make sure nobody left feeling deprived of porky goodness.

Besides pigging out on bacon, our other mission was to taste the offerings of our excellent local bacon producers side-by-side and find out how the slices stack up. Yes, we served bacon flights. The results were, if not exactly surprising, interesting and porkalicious.

The 4 Contenders:

Highland Hills

Prather Ranch

Marin Sun Farms

Fatted Calf

The guests were split down the middle between choosing Marin Sun Farms and Fatted Calf as their favorite.

Us kitchen folk unanimously liked Marin Sun the best for its perfectly fatty mouthfeel and appealing subtle smokiness.

All three of us have commented in the past that the Prather Ranch bacon is too sweet…tasting mostly of maple syrup. This tasting didn’t exactly change our minds but, to me, the bacon seemed less sweet and overall more appealing than I remember.

The Highland Hills….well, it was just wrong. As in, something went wrong with the batch. It was blackish-gray in color with a hard, unyielding texture and completely devoid of the succulence and crispy fat one expects in bacon. There was absolutely no flavor of salt, curing, spices, or anything. To be fair, we tried another package of Highland Hills that had better color, but the flavor was still lacking. There’s definitely a consistency problem there, but if the better package is the best they can do, it’s still not good.

The menu—all vegetables and eggs purchased from local producers

Appetizer:

Smoked Salmon with Homemade Crème Fraîche on Anna’s Daughter’s Bread

Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice

Blue Bottle Three Africans

Black Tea

nice looking table eh?

First Course:

Winter Greens Salad with Spiced Pecans and Persimmons

Second Course:

Frittata with Chard, Dry Farmed Tomatoes and Homemade Goat Feta

Potatoes Roasted in Duck Fat

Bacon Flight accompanied by palate cleansing Homemade Sour Plum Sorbet

Main Course:

Oat and Rice Flour Pancakes with Homemade Crème Fraîche and Temescal Foraged Plum Sauce

Platters of Plenty of Bacon, Bacon, Bacon

Dessert:

Raw Truffles from Coracao Confections

I bought one of Annabelle’s magic white pumpkins on her recommendation. She said they were the best for pie. I always believe her. Even though I never make pumpkin pie (I always have the Thanksgiving guests bring it so I can concentrate on the savories) I thought I might as well give it a whirl.

I cut into it and I couldn’t believe the otherworldly day-glo quality of the flesh. And the beautiful line of pale green between white and orange. I couldn’t stop gazing. But into the oven it went in a glass casserole dish with a half-inch of water, covered in foil. I baked it until soft (about 30 minutes). It looked stringy but I scooped it into the food processor and gave it a whirl and it became a flawlessly smooth puree.

 
Then I made pie from the Jimtown Store Cookbook. It’s a wonderfully robust pie, not at all insipid. Filled with dark brown sugar, molasses and spices, including black pepper. Fantastic!

Then I froze some of the puree until this week and decided to make pumpkin bread. I’ve never made pumpkin bread before either, but I’ve eaten a lot of it. I like the kind with a cream cheese layer, so I Iooked around for recipes and found this one. But I wanted the quality of my bread to be robust, like the pie, so I made the recipe my own by adding more spices, molasses, dark brown sugar and a pecan streusel on top. It turned out great.

Here’s my version:

Pumpkin Bread:

1 cup pecans

1 cup butter , plus more for pans

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Pinch of allspice

A few grindings of black pepper

4 large eggs

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed (divided)

1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree

1 tablespoon molasses

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Filling:

8 ounces package cream cheese

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and toast the pecans for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile, melt the butter and set it aside to cool. Butter and lightly flour two  9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pans. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and black pepper. Set aside.

In another large bowl, whisk the eggs until lightly beaten. Add the granulated sugar, 3/4 cup of the brown sugar, and melted butter and whisk until blended.  Whisk or stir in the pumpkin puree, molasses, and vanilla extract.

Make the cream cheese filling:
In a food processor, process the cream cheese until smooth, add the sugar and process until blended and smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, processing just until incorporated, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.  Add the flour and vanilla extract and process briefly.

Add the flour/spice mixture to the pumpkin mixture and stir just until the ingredients are combined, without overmixing.

Put one-quarter of the pumpkin batter into the two loaf pans, spreading it evenly. Top each one with one-half of the cream cheese filling.  Top the cream cheese with the remaining pumpkin batter.

Chop the nuts coarsely and toss with the remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar. Sprinkle evenly over the top of each loaf pan.

Bake the breads for about 60-80 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Place pans on a wire rack and let cool for about 10 minutes before removing breads.

Give one away and keep one! Or freeze one.

I wake up ready to go. Day one wasn’t so bad. I’m working at home in the morning and going into the office late. I take that time to make Vietnamese rice porridge. This is a brilliant dish involving a very small amount of white, long grain rice, a lot of chicken broth, a few coins of ginger, and two green onions. So few ingredients to make a magical dish that is intensely satisfying. It’s like alchemy with rice. I learned this dish from Andrea Nguyen’s Book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.
It’s one of my favorite cookbooks and I’m deeply appreciative that I have the time to make this at home before heading off to work.

Breakfast:
Oatmeal with a little brown sugar and milk; 2 slices of melon

I’m noticing that I’m eating my breakfast with great concentration. Seems I’ve banished mindless eating in one day.

Lunch:
A bowl of the above porridge with a little cilantro and sliced green onion. I also threw in just a bit of the shredded chicken I’d cooked a few days before.

I was really hungry after work so I had a piece of bread with peanut butter and went off to yoga class. I felt a bit weak during the class and came home famished and ready to throw together a quick rice noodle pasta dish.

Dinner: I used half the bok choy that I bought for $1 and some rice noodles from my Food Bank pantry list. In addition, I sauteéd the other half of the onion from the soup broth, a bit of ginger, and a bit of garlic. I also used just a few shreds of chicken and some soy sauce from the pantry. I garnished the pasta with cilantro and green onion (I’m now thinking these two items are some of my smartest purchases).

I notice that I’m taking no pleasure in cooking. I just want to get it done and into my mouth. I usually take my time and listen to music and relax. I just want to eat. I find this interesting. I eat really fast and somewhat resentfully. I realize that I’m only about 80% full. Funny, this is a habit I’d been trying to master and finally I’m doing it. There's a bottle of wine in the house so I decide to have a glass. My cushion right? I'm also drinking one cup of coffee a day. I tell myself my cushion allows that too and it actually does, depending on what else I need the cushion for.

I’m hungry again before bed so I have a piece of toast with butter.

Not one to do anything drastic like ingest nothing but lemon juice and maple syrup for days on end, I decided to figure out a way to eat for a week that I thought would make me feel better.

Mostly by instinct, I came up with a recalibration diet. Luckily my cohort was game too or it would have been more difficult. We even went out once. To Café Gratitude, natch.

Here’s what we ate/didn’t eat:

Any whole grains and legumes we wanted (except wheat)
All the fresh fruits and vegetables we could eat
A good balance of raw vegetables to cooked with some fermented vegetables
No bread or anything, not completely whole (except almond milk I made myself)
No alcohol, dairy, or animal products of any kind (except bonito flakes for dashi broth)
No sugar
1 cup of coffee a day

(soba noodles in dashi broth)

Meal Plan:
Breakfast: We alternated three items: whole grain porridge (pictured above) with fresh fruit, almond milk and honey; dashi broth, soba noodles, seaweed, and mushrooms; and fruit smoothies made with homemade almond milk

Lunch: We alternated beans and brown rice and seasonal vegetables with lentils, brown rice and seasonal vegetables. Some raw, some cooked, sometimes drizzled with tahini dressing. Sauteed okra, steamed greens, raw carrots, lacto-fermented beets, and avocado, etc.

Dinner: Same as above

Snack: lots of peaches anytime we wanted them

(my own dal, with cucumber relish from the book, and leftover curry red rice bowl from Cafe Gratitude)
It was interesting to see what kind of cravings came up on such a diet. As I said I don’t deny myself anything I want so I was bound to yearn for something. I thought it might be the yogurt I eat almost every day. Nope. Or the wine I love with dinner. Nope. Or the afternoon nubbin of chocolate or scoop of ice cream. Nope. Or the cheese I love dearly. Nope. Here’s what I wanted most intensely: Bread and Eggs. I craved eggs like crazy and realized how often, when I’m hungry, I’ll reach for a piece of bread or make toast or something. The carbs I think are a habit and the eggs maybe a need for animal protein. It was interesting. And on the last day I started daydreaming about pizza. And that’s how I broke the cleanse, with pizza from Flour & Water. It was fantastic!

(blurry, but I could live on raw carrots, lacto-fermented beets, and mashed avocado with salt)

Do I feel better? Yes, a bit lighter, more energetic. Most importantly, I think limiting the insane number of food choices we have every day is a really good way to start eating mindfully again and enjoy everything even more intensely (I say this as I eat breakfast at the computer while blogging). The whole experiment was sort of comforting, fun, and predictable (in a good way). I felt like I had more headspace for other thoughts besides food. I looked forward to every meal because I was really hungry and because it was tasty food. I think it’s a good idea for me to do this every few months or so.

(ugly-tasty-dal over brown rice, steamed greens and roots with tahini dressing and turnip-kohlrabi pickles from the book)

Was it hard? Not for the most part, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t absolutely tortuous to stop by Omnivore Books to see our friend Celia moments before the Fried Chicken Taste Off . One of the succulent, fragrant entries had already arrived and the aroma was driving me wild. Then I had to torture myself further by looking at cookbooks!

Ok, so the book is pretty much done. All that remains is copyediting, galleys, and other little details. Directly on the heels of turning in the manuscript, we went right into shooting the photos.

We did it with a crew of 4 plus me over 5 long days right here at the house. It was fun, intense, and a very exhausting. Kind of like catering a 5 day party.

But it paid off and we got some gorgeous shots. Here's a little photo essay of mine documenting a few of the moments. These, of course, are not Sara Remington's photos but mine on my little Sony Cyber-shot. But my photos do benefit from the food and prop styling of Nani Steele and Kami Bremyer respectively. Props also go to Sara (of course) and Stacy Ventura, fab photo assistant. Thanks Ladies! While I'm thanking. Thanks also to Emunah, Rachel, Haven, and Susan for all your help during the shoot and to all the parents and kids who modeled at the picnic. You know who you are.
Sourdough Buckwheat Pancakes with Caramelized Apples

Donut Run from Dynamo Donuts. Oh Yeah!

Tofu Soup with Homemade Kimchi

Kami with Root Beer Day 5

Sustainable Seafood Stew with Meyer Lemon Parsley Aioli (not pictured)

Sara and Nani valiantly trying to make brown cookies with browner filling look appetizing

Let's celebrate! It's a wrap!

Awhile ago I made one of the many sambals in the book, Javanese Sambal. It consists of dried shrimp paste, lots of shallots, garlic, red chiles, and palm sugar. It’s a cooked sambal, so it’s fiery, but mellow. It seems to go with everything and lasts forever. The day I made it we ate it with rice and steamed fish, but there was a lot left and it keeps finding its way to the table as a condiment.

This was a quick breakfast of leftover, lovely, and local Massa Organic Brown Rice, and a fried egg. I tossed in the sambal, and stirred in the Indonesian soy sauce (pictured), then topped it all off with a fried egg, a few leaves of cilantro, and some cool cucumber slices. Memorable. If I were you, I’d buy this book. You can’t find food this good and authentic-tasting in any restaurants I know.

Photo Credits: Susan Fleming

I'm rarely compelled to blog about a product, but here's an exception. I found this at The Pasta Shop in Berkeley just as they were building the new display. They found it at the Unfancy Food Show in Brooklyn. I was smitten by the packaging first and that's about as far as it would have gone if the nice man hadn't offered me a taste. (they make beautiful pickles too but at a higher price point). As it was, $6.99 was my gateway to a brand new addiction. The brothers McClure do indeed know what they are doing, which puts me in a pickle because now I need to figure out how to make my own version. How hard can it be? cucumbers, vinegar, water, salt, peppers (jalapenos?), garlic, dill. I think it will take awhile before I can make such a perfect relish, but I'm going to try.

And what have we adorned with this lovely little relish? Crazy sounding, but we put it on salami pizza. It works to cut the richness in the same way that pepperoncini works on a salami sandwich. What other plans do we have? Lots! Hot dogs, sausages, chicken salad and tuna salad sandwiches, bowls of pinto beans, tacos, pulled pork sandwiches. I don't know. It kind of sounds like I'm going to have to up my meat consumption temporarily or think of some vegetarian ideas. Send yours along please. 'Scuse me, I've got to go buy some Mc Clure's pickles now.