One Small Voice.MPG

Happy New Year from Blue Heron Kitchen and my many small nine year old voices.
peace, love and my other passion, music,
jane

Bread Pudding and the flue

It's cold in my house this morning.  I'm hoping the fireplace person comes tomorrow. (where's dick van dyke?) My flue won't shut and it's 24º F. outside.  

A fine antidote is bread pudding (and a sweatshirt).  Here's this morning's creation, a sourdough country bread pudding, with sautéed golden delicious apples, studded with golden raisins. I'm bringing it to a party we're having at work for a woman who's going to have a baby.  I've already wrapped up some cream cheese pound cake I had in the freezer, but my freezer is bursting with bread. (Is it just me?)

It's easy and it makes the place smell like apple heaven.  And now it's warm in here!

 

Golden Bread Pudding

Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients:

8 oz. firm, good quality bread, such as 'country' sourdough, baguette, just about anything from Balthazar, Bread Alone, Orwasher's, Grandaisy Bakery, Amy's Bread - you get the idea, right? - cut into approx. 1" cubes.  Stale is good.  Toast it for about 6-8 minutes.

2 Golden Delicious Apples

1 oz. (2 Tbsp.) unsalted butter (I used 83% European style - Cabots or Plugra are two brands you can find in the supermarket - Fairway carries both.)

1-2 Tbsp. sugar + a few drops of fresh lemon juice for the sautéed apples

6 Tbsp. (additional) granulated sugar 

3 cups whole milk (I use organic)

3 eggs + 1 egg yolk, size large, room temperature

1/2 c. golden raisins

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg

cinnamon sugar for the top

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Set oven rack to the lower third of oven.

Butter and dust, with granulated sugar, the inside of a 2 quart Pyrex casserole.

Have a roasting pan that the casserole will fit comfortably inside to use as a "bain-marie" (a water bath - you're going to pour hot water about 1/2 way up the side of the casserole so it's warm and cozy while it bakes and so it turns into a lovely pudding instead of a brick.)

Place toasted bread cubes in a large bowl.

Sauté diced apples  

in butter, adding sugar and lemon juice to taste, until cooked, but still firm.  Remove from heat.

Add apples and raisins to cubed bread.

In a small bowl, add the 6 Tbsp. granulated sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, whisking it together. Add to the bread/fruit mixture.

In another bowl, whisk together milk, whole eggs, egg yolk (freeze the egg white for another use in a small plastic bag) and vanilla extract, creating a 'custard'.

Pour dry bread/fruit/sugar and spice mixture into the prepared baking pan and pour the custard over the bread.  Press the bread down into the custard, making sure to soak it all.  

Sprinkle the top with some cinnamon sugar.

Place the casserole in a roasting pan and place in the oven.  Carefully pour hot water into the roasting pan about 1-2 inches up the side of the casserole

and bake the bread pudding for approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes, give or take, until a sharp knife comes out clean.

Remove from the bain-marie and cool on a rack.

This is best served the same day, warm.  Serve it 'plain', with some crème anglaise or some yoghurt for breakfast! 

peace, love and warmth,

jane

69, Mussels and Eggs

Late at night, a middle aged man nudges his wife.  He whispers, "Honey, how about a little 69?".  Shocked and taken aback, her only response is , "whaddya mean, 69?"  


"Lobster cantonese!".  


this is my 69th posting.


I felt like I was Julie of Julie and Julia tonight, trying to poach an egg.  Not so easy (until you get it).  Some trucs:  Add white vinegar to the boiling water.  Crack the egg very close to the water.  Don't mess with it.  Don't overcook it.  If someone ... like your son ... does it perfectly, let them do it for you.  But, the world is a perfect place when you eat a poached egg over some asparagus ... with some shaved parmesan on top.  Next time, I'll add an anchovy.  


Oh, the mussels ... my daughter makes perfect moules. So I figure I'm covered: my son, the eggs, my daughter, the mussels and me, 69.

Möhn River

Möhn Kichel is in the oven at Blue Heron Kitchen.
peace, love and poppy seeds,
jane

Möhn Kichel

Möhn Kichel

Möhn or "Moon" are poppy seeds, and kichel are little cakes, crackers or cookies.  My Grandma Rae made these.  Often.  Grandma's cooking was, well, very basic.  She wasn't an adventurous or even fabulous cook, but she knew how to make a few things extraordinarily well.  These cookies were one of those things.  Grandma Rae was simple, loving, and if you didn't eat enough, she was simultaneously insulted and forlorn.  Kind of a cliché, but she was my cliché. Her fingers, gnarled by arthritis, were forever shoveling homemade (greasy) noodles, latkes and applesauce, chicken fricasee, the best matzo brei, Passover nutcake, sponge cake and other Eastern European Jewish delicacies into my little mouth. If it wasn't open, she'd pry it open. All the while, my Grandpa Julie would be sitting in 'his' armchair smoking his cigar (he called them "Smell-o-mile-o's"), oblivious to everything except whatever ball was being played with on the television set.  I grew up loving the Bronx, the smell of incinerators and the Jewish cooking smells of tenement buildings. My Grandma Rae died over 14 years ago, and I miss her all the time.  I can still hear her voice.  And now, for my confession:


I had dinner with a friend the other night, and I think I freaked him out.  I told him that I had, in my freezer, cookies, möhn kichel, that my Grandma Rae had baked, probably more than 25 years ago.  I've simply kept them.  And I take them with me wherever I move (and I move often).  I whisper, "Come on Grandma, we're moving to ______".  And I stick those cookies in my pocket book, and off we go!  


Now, you may think this is sick stuff.  And it may well be.  But, it's no different than keeping other stuff from dead people.  Kind of like her ashes. They just happen to be perishable and rather then being stored in say, a Folger's can, they need to be kept in the freezer. I'll write about my cinnamon sugar and my other Grandma - Bessie - another time. Maybe.


Here is her recipe for möhn kichel.  I use corn oil, because she did.  It says on the label that there's zero trans fat.  I believe them. Corn oil is so lovely and sweet. Her recipe calls for "a box" of poppy seeds, so I looked in the market at what McCormick considers a small container (no more boxes - now they have round plastic containers) of poppy seeds, and it's 1.25 oz.  You can buy one of those.


I buy my poppy seeds from Penzey's.  You can buy all kinds of great stuff from them, mail order(they have the absolute best storage jars at the absolute best price). They have stores too - one is in the Grand Central Terminal Market.  There's another on Rte. 110 in Huntington, LI. FREEZE those seeds after you've opened them.  Poppy seeds turn rancid very quickly.


These are very simple cookies.  Don't expect the moon.  They're peasant cookies ... and they are addictive.  I just had about 3 dozen for my dinner.


Happy Chanukah, y'all!


peace and love,
jane

Möhn Kichel

Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients:

3 eggs, size large, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup corn oil

¼ cup tepid water

1 Tbsp. baking powder

4 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1.25 oz poppy seeds

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350º F., line 4 cookie sheets with parchment or Silpat

In the bowl of a Kitchen Aid, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the eggs, oil and sugar until thick.  Add the water, mix, and then, the poppy seeds. Mix.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the baking powder and flour. 

Add dry to wet ingredients. Mix until incorporated.

On a flour coated surface, with a floured rolling pin, roll dough out between 1/8”-1/4” thick and cut, with a pizza cutter into squares or rectangles. (In the true Grandma Rae tradition, no two should be alike.)

Place on parchment lined cookie sheets and as Grandma Rae wrote: “bake until brown”, about 10-15 minutes.

Yield: abut 10-12 dozen 1”-2” squarish/rectanglish cookies

Store in tins. 

These will keep for weeks, or in my twisted case, for decades, in the freezer ;-)