On icebox cakes

The allure of the ice box cake lies in its assembly.  It is more than the some of its parts.

It isn’t necessarily quick to put together.  And it sits overnight in the fridge to soften, so it isn’t something that can satisfy a sweet tooth instantly.

But once one gets into a rhythm - layering the cookies or crackers, spreading the cream, arranging the fruit, an inelegant flick of the wrist to drizzle on the chocolate, and then starting the whole thing again - the time can pass rather quickly (admonishments to Max to stop eating all the ingredients, not withstanding).   The cookies.  The cream.  The fruit.  The chocolate.  

And all that repetition lets your mind wander.  Back to those days when an icebox cake would sit in my mom’s fridge.

It was the kind of cake that necessitates sticking a fork right into the pan and taking a bite.  Just one.  And then enjoying that bite so very very much that you need another one.  And another.  Until you realize that you should have just cut a piece of it out, but really, this way feels so much naughtier.  Those surreptitious bites taken when no one was looking brought such joy. 

And eventually my reveries and my assembling come to an end.  Then the whole thing sits in the fridge and melds together into cake, it becomes so much more than the cookies, the cream, the fruit, and chocolate.  Try the ingredients on their own, and you may find the cookies to be not super flavorful, the cream perhaps too flavorful, and the fruit – well, you know fruit.  But together, they sing.

27 chocolate wafer cookies ( I made my own, but feel free to use store bought)

6 ounces blueberries

16 ounces strawberries

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 cup whipping cream

1 tablespoon dried lavender buds

1 cup whipping cream

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup dark chocolate chips

1 tablespoon heavy cream

8x8 pan

In a bowl, gently mix together the berries and lemon juice/zest.  Over gently heat, warm the 1 cup of cream with the lavender buds.  Once warm, take off heat and then refrigerate. Once that cream is nice and cold, whip that lavender cream with the remaining cup of cream, sugar, and vanilla until it holds together and is wonderfully fluffy.  With either a double boiler or carefully in a microwave, melt the chocolate with the 1 tablespoon of cream.  

Cover the bottom of the pan with cookies ( I got about 9 on each layer).  Then assemble - a layer of cream, then a generous sprinkle of berries, then a drizzling of chocolate.  Repeat until the pan can't hold anymore layers.

On gelatin

We sometimes get it in our heads that a certain once loved food is no longer fit for consumption.  Perhaps reminding us of finicky childish palettes that we want to appear to have outgrown, perhaps it falls too much under the rubric of "processed," a most vague word indeed, and as we all know now, we are supposed to embrace also-vague-descriptor of "natural." Perhaps it we truly devoured too much of it that we no longer can stomach the thought of eating it.  Perhaps we associate it with a bout of sickness.  Sometimes, sadly, our taste buds truly no longer welcome the taste. But I suspect this happens less often than the former scenarios.

I think jello fell under the first reason for me, I am ashamed to admit.  A food that was once beloved, relished for its fun shapes and molds, an edible expression of the love of my mom (and Grammy!), a festive treat to be fit and cast into any possible celebration. And I abandoned it under the guise of being too grown-up for it.

But eventually our cold hearts thaw.  A gap forms in the landscape of our food palates.  We acknowledge that we are missing out on one of life's precious gifts.

And so I found my way back to the patient, waiting, loving embrace of fruity gelatin.  Here I basically turned a fruit smoothie - with mangoes, strawberries, citrus, and either a banana or another mango, sweetened with just a bit of agave  - into a delight of my childhood.  it may have taken awhile to return, but I'm now here to stay.  A fact that pleases Max and Molly.

1 mango
1 cup strawberries
juice from 1 tangerine
juice from 2 small meyer lemons
1 large banana or second mango
1 1/2 - 2 tablespoons agave nectar
1 packet unflavored gelatin

Remove flesh from mango and hull strawberries.  Blend the fruit and juices together with an immersion blender. Then bring to a gentle boil in small pot.

In medium bowl, sprinkle 1/2 cup cold water with a packet of unflavored gelatin.  set aside for 5 minutes.  Pour fruit mixture over.  Stir to dissolve.  Pour into 8x8 baking dish and refrigerate.  Cut into squares or get fancy with some cookie cutters!

On spaghetti bolognese

So often,  I rush through everything.   I have never been one of those people who are "mindful" and in the moment.  Instead of savoring and enjoying the present, I am checking off items off my to do list.  Sadly, this can even happen with food.  I will find myself quickly shoveling food into my mouth so that I can go on to the next task of doing to the dishes, as opposed to appreciating each delicious bite of the meal in front of me.  

Yet I am a different person when it comes to this dish.  I find myself lingering over this dinner. Each bite is enjoyed instead of hurried through.  

During the bustle and chaos of the day, I sadly find myself losing enthusiasm for food.  For trying new things, for making and creating exciting new meals to enjoy.  The rhythm of checking off things on the to-do list squeezes out that lust, I suppose.

But this dish - this is something special.

It is a dish to love and rather than getting though dinner so that I can clean it up, I go back to the pot for more - enjoying the sensation of dipping leftover noodles into the sauce and surreptitiously squirreling them away in my stomach.  

Ever since being pregnant with Molly, I have lost the desire to eat garlic and onion.  So I make this bolognese without them, a heresy to my former self.  Yet somehow it is flavorful enough that you don't notice the missing alliums.  Or at least I don't think you do.  Its meatiness makes up for it.

We have been enjoying this with spaghetti, as the long strands are caressed by the sauce and wrap themselves around whatever they can find - a mushroom piece, a spiced bit of meat slathered canoodling with a carrot - creating a delicious pasta cocoon for the sauce. and a restoration of my love for food and life.

olive oil

4 celery stalks, diced

2-3 carrots, diced

8 ounces cremini mushrooms, chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground dried porcini mushroom

1/4 teaspoon soy sauce

salt and pepper

1 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground clove

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

generous grating fresh nutmeg

1 pound ground beef

1/2 pound ground pork

6 ounces tomato paste

28 ounces crushed tomatoes

1/3 cup beef broth

1 cup red wine

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Cover the bottom of a large pot or dutch oven with a coating olive oil.  add the celery and carrots.  Over low heat, allow them to soften - about 20 minutes.  Meanwhile, heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a skillet.  add the mushrooms.  Brown them, sprinkling them with the dried mushroom powder, salt, and pepper.  once brown, remove from heat and splash with the soy sauce.

Once the celery and carrots have softened, add the cinnamon, clove, bay leaves, italian seasoning, and nutmeg.  Stir.  add the meats and turn the heat to medium-high.  Once the meats have cooked stir in the tomato paste.  Add the crushed tomatoes, beef broth and red wine.  turn to high, and reduce.  Once the wine has reduced, simmer for 1-2 hours.  add cream and cheese then serve with spaghetti.

On breakfast rice

What follows is a discussion of our breakfast rice.  Though we would eat it for lunch or dinner as well.  Perhaps it is better titled anytime rice?

There are supposedly two kinds of breakfasts - the every day kind and the kind you serve to guests.  I'm not exactly sure where this would fall.  We would most definitely serve this to guests.  But not just any kind of guest.  Those not-fussy kind of guests.  The kind we can be ourselves around.

Those guests who require us to be a different version of ourselves? A stiffer kind, a more pretentious kind, a kind that only obscures and obfuscates the feelings and emotions and thoughts simmering just below the surface?  For those people, a different breakfast will have to do.  And perhaps, a hotel room.

I suppose this feels like a major cop-out of a recipe.  Just rice with butter, nori goma furikake, soy sauce.  And some chile paste, if we are feeling fancy.  

So often rice is served as an afterthought, served on the side to round out a meal of stir fry or curry, used to plug in the gaps between bites filled with spices, herbs, proteins, and vegetables.  Or else it carries all these goodies as a whole dish, with the grains of rice acting as a vessel of conveyance, carrying the flavors of the dish upward and onward from fork to mouth.

But here we offer an alternative. We are championing rice, simplifying it.  Honoring it.  And urging everyone to embrace this grain as breakfast.  A relatively stripped down rice dish - an underlying hint of butter, with a generous drizzle of soy sauce, preferably the thick kind, to strike that umami note, a sprinkle of nori goma furikake to give a salty spark to it all.  And depending on the mood, some Sambal Oelek for sweet heat.  

In this breakfast rice, the rice is not an afterthought, but the raison d'etre.  The only thing that can possibly pull you out of bed on that bleak, dreary morning.  That morning when not enough sleep was had.  That morning that starts a day that holds nothing but stresses and problems, that morning when the body craves comfort and a warm a blanket for the soul.

I submit to you that this rice dish, a bowl of rice all piping hot and loaded up with these favored condiments, is a supremely superior warm breakfast when compared to oatmeal.  Nourishing, and warming to the body.  Stimulating the senses in order to embrace the coming day.

It isn't technically a complete meal.  There isn't any protein.  Nary a piece of produce in sight.  But it is a meal, nonetheless, and it is one of our favorite meals for breakfast.  It may not have all the food groups, but it hits all the right flavor notes.  And we will proudly serve this to those special people.  

Cooked calrose rice ( we use our rice cooker for this)

Unsalted butter

Nori goma furikake

Soy sauce, preferably thick

Sambal Oelek, optional

Sesame oil, optional

Scoop the cooked rice in a bowl.  Then have fun with the condiments.  Add a small pat of butter, sprinkle the nori, drizzle the soy sauce and sesame oil, scoop some Sambal Oelek.  

On liverwurst

On some days here in Hamburg, the clouds are so thick that they appear to be a suspended grey sea hovering over our heads.  One can't help but look up, nervously wondering when they will release their waters on the ground, necessitating the donning of a ridiculous but practical polka-dotted rain poncho to protect myself and the baby from becoming drenched.  A rain poncho, instead of a rain coat, because my adorable but large baby enjoys being worn instead of strolled and a poncho allows room for both of us.

And just when it doesn't seem possible that these dense, thick clouds can allow for the existence of a sun, a hole opens up and sunbeams announce their presence, and that threat of becoming a walking, talking polka-dotted Violet Beauregarde (after she becomes the blueberry) no longer seems so imminent.

Liverwurst is an unfortunately named food.  We don't often like to be reminded of vital internal organs and of their consumption.  In English, it is as though we are saying "worst."  So "worst liver" is right there in the name.  Its appearance generally ranges from a sickly pink to a sickly grey. Liverwurst does not give the best of impressions, to say the least.

However, liverwurst isn't the grey looming cloud of foods.  No no no.  It is the sunbeam.  just when you think the worst is going to happen, you realize that you were mistaken.  The sun is there, the clouds are actually passing overhead, rain is no longer imminent, the sky is actually quite beautiful with the contrast of the grey clouds and sun peeking through, you don't have to wear the rain poncho, and that the bite of liverwurst, the bite you had to brace yourself for by closing your eyes, you have taken is absolutely delicious.

It is so moody, so umami, with a taste of salt that your taste buds absolutely cannot get enough of.

To enjoy liverwurst to its fullest, we have taken to making breakfast tartines.  I know, I know, there should be a photo, but alas, the imagination will have to suffice.  A smear of butter on warm toast, followed by a generous spreading of liverwurst then with slices of cucumber topped with freshly ground black pepper and a sprinkling of sea salt and lemon zest.  One must be sure to use a bread that gets some crunch when toasted, something solid for your teeth to get through, as that contrast of the bread with the soft spread is important.  A bit of sun to start the day.

To make, you will need some

farmers bread

butter

liverwurst

cucumber slices

salt

pepper

lemon zest

Toast that bread, that butter it.  Spread on some liverwurst.  Add cucumber slices.  Sprinkle salt and pepper, then finish with some lemon zest.  Guten appetit!