Back--With Apple Cobbler

As you may know, we've been away for several weeks. First, it was our vacation to Santa Fe and Telluride

to sleep late, enjoy some great meals, and witness the glorious change in the aspens in the high-elevation passes.

Then we were a week in California, doing publicity events and shooting Thanksgiving videos for chow.com. (More on those soon.)

And then we were in New York for a week on a photo shoot for a celebrity book we ghost-wrote. (Can't say a word more on that one--sorry.)

Whew. Poor Dreydl doesn't even know where he lives. But we're back--and it's apple season for sure in New England. A ripe apple right out of the orchard will almost unfit you for apples the rest of the year. A treat indeed.

So we need to do something with these babies. How about an old-fashioned cobbler with a brown sugar/pecan biscuit topping? Sounds good? Then let's do it.

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Apricot Rhubarb Crisp with an Oat/Pecan Topping

I've betrayed my Southern roots. Well, in so many ways. By not having heirloom china, for one thing. But also because I prefer--get this--crisp to pie.

Yep, all too true. My ancestors are rolling over in their Pea Ridge and Lookout Mountain battlefield graves. But so be it. I'm too in love with that crisp topping, the fruit down in. I like the crunch, the luxurious softness, all together in one spoonful.

You know that's how we experience satiety, right? By a greater range of textures, even more than tastes. It's all in our seven-step plan to get off processed food, the book for which this blog was named (here).

So all said and done, I want more crisp. And now that fruit is coming back into our lives after this long winter, I want one now. Particularly with a pecan crunch topping. Ready?

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Goat Cheese Brownies

It's here: the official publication date for the first-ever, all-goat book--meat, milk, and cheese! If you want to know the butchering schematics for goat and then a whole heckuva lot beyond--like how goat cheese is made, how goat milk differs from all other mammal milks, why it's considered the "universal" mammal's milk, how there's a whole cheesy world beyond creamy chèvre--this is the book for you.

Bruce and I are so thrilled. And thrilled so much is in the works for the book. Crazy. We'll be teaching at Central Markets across Texas in May, introducing my fellow Lone-Star-ites to the pleasures of all things goaty. We're heading out to California in a few weeks to be a part of the Third Annual Goat Festival at the Ferry Terminal Market (4/16) and do a signing at Omnivore Books--as well as shoot a few TV episodes and some tips for CHOW. And much more to come.

Such a reaction is probably inevitable. Goat meat is the world's most consumed meat. And goat milk is the world's most drunk dairy. (Although more cow milk is drunk per annum in sheer poundage, more people drink goat milk than cow milk.) Yet this global animal has escaped factory farming. If you want to go local, go goat. Or if you simply want to experience a whole new culinary horizon--and how many times can you say that?--go goat. Click here to get your copy of this first-ever book--with perhaps the best introductory line I've ever written for a cookbook: "I lied while wearing make-up." I'll just leave it there and let you imagine what comes next. (By the way, it's being simultaneously published in Canada, Great Britain, and many other countries. Check your local booksellers' websites--or the amazon site for your country.)

But for now, I wanted to celebrate with a blog-only goat recipe: fudgy, buck brownies made with creamy fresh goat cheese.

I realize I'm on a bit of a brownie kick as of late (see here and here and here), but I can't help myself. I wanted to give the readers of this blog an exclusive, something not found in the book, a thank-you as it were for being one of the hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of daily subscribers and unique visitors to this site. I realize I don't garner a lot of comments, but I see you in the stats--and I wanted to thank you in some way. So here goes.

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Whole Wheat Pear Upside-Down Cake

As you may know, Bruce and I have begun working on a whole grain book--all main-courses, quinoa to barley, tritacale to buckwheat. It's not due to the publisher until later this year--and not out until next year. But if you've followed this blog for a while, you've seen the beginnings of the idea for that book in the wheat berry and quinoa salads that have made frequent appearances here.

While there will be no sweets or breads in that book, I've lately become obsessed with desserts made with whole grains. Admittedly, I'll never get the soft, luxurious texture of a cake made with all-purpose flour. But I am getting something else: a big hit of whole grains, something every single one of us needs in our food choices.

As we said in REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, always go browner, whenever you have a choice. To that end, I'm baking up a storm.

One note before we get going: this recipe calls for whole-wheat pastry flour, a very finely ground whole grain flour. It's sometimes known as "graham flour." Bob's Red Mill makes a good one--click here. Do not use whole-wheat flour--which is too coarse. You need a fine-ground soft wheat with the bran and whole-grain goodness intact. If you must make a substitution, use half cake flour and half regular whole wheat flour.

OK, on to the recipe.

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Whoopie Pie Cake, Part 2

Last time, we did the two layers for our Whoopie Pie Cake, a big ol' layer cake modeled after that Southern favorite, whoopie pies. If you want to check out that post, click here.

In this second post, we'll finish the cake with a luscious layer of Italian meringue. That is, a cooked meringue (as opposed to a Swiss meringue, an uncooked meringue, the sort that often goes on top of meringue pie in North America). Professional pastry chefs love an Italian meringue--it's that sticky white meringue you sometimes find on top of lemon tarts in France and in French bakeries stateside.

No, we're not filling this behemoth with marshmallow fluff. We're doing it old school. I assure you, the effort will pay off.

So on to the meringue!

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Whoopie Pie Cake, Part 1

You may know that I lead--more like, corral--the book group discussion at the Norfolk, Connecticut, library on select Fridays. Here's our room, ready for the group last week, the fire roaring for these cold winter days. Sort of a New England dream, no? We were set to discuss David Mitchell's THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, an utterly sublime book, to be savored slowly. (If you want to know more about the group, check out our website here.)

Every time, I bring a treat of some kind. This time, a Whoopie Pie Cake, one of Bruce's original creations for THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK, our 900-recipe tome. That's the cake right there on the table. It's a layer cake designed to mimick the Southern favorite--dense layers of chocolate cake with a creamy, luscious Italian meringue (no, not Marshmallow Fluff) center.

It was such a hit that I thought I'd share the recipe with you. I wish I could share the cake-- it was certainly a show-stopper. But here goes. I'm going to do this one in two posts. The chocolate layers first.

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Cardamom Gelato

One thing that I'm thankful for these days is that the food world has expanded exponentially in my lifetime.

And for a second thing, oddly related to the first: that Bruce has taught me over the years that the secret to great cooking is the same as the secret to a happy life--to embrace the mess.

We're back in Dallas, visiting my parents. I grew up in the '60s and '70s. Convenience ruled. I'm not sure we cared about real food back then. I'm pretty sure we dumped things out of cans. (But, as you know, canned things can be real. There's certainly real canned broth out there. I'll bet a lot of us Americans will be using it in the next couple of days, as Thanksgiving approaches.)

These days, there's a new flavor, a new food, a new way to do things always on the horizon. There's a new mess just ahead. Fantastic!

For me, lately, it's all about cardamom: warm, better than cinnamon, a little earthy, quite complex. Sure, I've known about the spice for a while. But I've only really gotten into it lately. I want it in soups, in stews, in sweets--and in gelato.

So as a Thanksgiving treat, I'd like to share my latest passion with you. Let's get to it:

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Roasted Pears

OK, brace yourself. I warn you: I wasn't prepared for this.

Roasting? Pears? I know about poaching. And just eating them raw. But roasting?

Apparently, Bruce got this idea from Chanterelle, the long-lamented, there-forever-but-somehow-goon-too-soon, five-star restaurant in New York City. Chef David Waltuck was kind enough to give us a quote for the back of our HAM tome. And these were apparently quite the hit in the restaurant. I wouldn't know. I just know Bruce's morphed version. And wow, I wasn't ready.

Hope you are. . . .

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Banana Upside Down Cake

OK, tell me you don't want it: a dense, buttery cake with bananas sitting in caramel.

Well, OK, maybe you don't. If September is truly the start of the new year, you might have a resolution or two up your sleeve. I want to bone up on my French. I've lost it since we moved to the country four years ago. I don't get into too many conversations about the proper use of the subjunctive with my neighbors.

But I digress. I'm supposed to be writing about banana upside down cake. How it got mixed up with the subjunctive is. . . .

Right. Resolutions. The best thing about calling September the new year is that you don't have to make any. No French, no gym memberships. Those are all well and good. But you don't have to. You can just celebrate this thing called time. (Or not. At fifty, I can't decide which.)

I warn you, real food lovers: this cake is a also a celebration of butter. Without a doubt, it's empty calories. Probably eight servings in this thing. But butter is a real fat. Better that than some fake stuff. And yes, there's sugar involved. Even corn syrup. We'll get to that. On to the cake:

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Peach Crisp

We're almost done. Here in rural New England, the peaches are almost finished. And what a season it's been! It was so warm early and so wet early and then so very dry now that the berries and stone fruits have been in ridiculous abundance, sweet and juicy, almost beyond belief. We'll see if this current dry spell bodes well for tomatoes in the weeks ahead. But for now, peaches are making their last fling.

Which means we're stocking up. When we see peaches, berries, plums, or cherries in the markets, we go for it, buying way more than we need, then freezing them for the winter ahead. (Stone fruits like plums, cherries, and peaches should be pitted--the larger ones, sliced. Berries can go into the freezer as they are.) None will then be worth eating on its own. But a peach crisp in December is a thing of beauty indeed!

While we're on the subject, let's just say that frozen fruit is real food, no doubt. In fact, frozen fruit is often a better choice. If the peaches in December have been trucked to the store from Chile or Morocco, you're better off buying the sliced frozen ones in bags. The ones trucked in were picked green and won't be worth much for their taste. The frozen ones were picked at the height of ripeness, even by large-scale growers, and flash-frozen, often right in the fields. These fruits and berries (and vegetables, too) retain more of their essential nutrients--and taste!--than those brought over thousands of miles.

In fact, frozen vegetables are often picked at a better stage than the fresh ones going to a standard supermarket. The ripe green beans and carrots, the ones ready to eat now, are culled for the freezer truck. The less-than-ripe veggies and fruits are then packed for longer shelf-life at the store. So if peaches are out of season where you live and you want to make this peach crisp, consider the sliced ones in the freezer case--provided there are no chemical shenanigans going on in the package. (Read those labels!)

OK, the crisp.

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