baking

food : all things quince

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Quinces from our backyard.

One of the best surprises we’ve had as we’ve gotten to know our house and yard was the discovery of quince trees in the rear corner of our neighbor’s yard, along the border between our two properties. Because we are the neighbor to the south, and there are other trees to the north in our neighbor’s yard, the trees grow toward the sun, overhanging our rear sidewalk and garage. During the first year we were here, we saw one or two yellow things on the ground by the back fence, and commented to each other that an animal must have dragged an apple or something into the yard and left it there. That was the sum total of the interest we paid in the situation and the energy we expended in addressing it: very little. We were busy with other parts of the yard, and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work it would take to clean up the property; the last thing we wanted to do was investigate mysterious happenings out by the garage.

The second year we were here, we spent more time in the yard during the autumn clearing the ivy, pruning the trees, and covering the weed-laden garden beds with a thick leaf mulch. During all that time in close proximity to the rear yard, we noticed that the yellow fruits were actually growing on the trees, and were littering our rear sidewalk by early November. This piqued our curiosity, and we consulted one of my partner’s colleagues who grows quite a lot of his own fruits and vegetables on a lovely piece of land that used to be part of a dairy farm. He told us we had quinces, a fruit of which I had only heard vague and mysterious references to before that point. Nonetheless, I gathered them up and set them on the back steps to cure while I figured out what to do with them.


Quince jelly.


Quince paste.

There are, it appears, two things to do with quinces. You can make jelly or you can make membrillo, a thick paste that is a favorite dessert in Spain that’s served with manchego cheese. You can also bake and poach them, mixing them in with apple desserts for additional flavor, which we tried as well. With two dozen enormous yellow fruits having literally dropped from the sky into our yard and folks all over the internet raving about the glory of the flavor of the quince, I decided there was nothing for it but to make jelly…and membrillo, since it would be a shame to have all the pulp just go to waste. This was my first foray into canning, and I had to improvise somewhat. I used a stockpot for the boiling water bath (which, by the way, I don’t recommend) and set to work chopping and boiling and draining and boiling and skimming and stirring and pouring, ending up with about a dozen half-pints of jelly and about 20 pieces of membrillo. Happily, everybody I know seems to love membrillo, a delicacy I had never heard of before embarking on this new culinary path. We were able to give away the membrillo, in addition to serving it to guests at every opportunity, and enjoyed the jelly for much of the year. I also learned that canning is actually not that hard — although quince jelly is arguably the easiest product to start with, containing just the right amount of natural pectin to gel on its own and turning a lovely deep rose color to let you know when it’s done.

Following this roaring success, we made a concerted effort to help the trees this year. We cut back the ivy that surrounds them and pruned all the not-inconsiderable deadwood. Once we knew what to look for, the trees became incredibly easy to identify, and we were pleased to discover two small saplings at the sides of the main grove, no doubt sprung up from fruits left to lie under the thick ivy ground cover. Later in the spring we were rewarded first by flowers and then by little green fruits. Little green fruits which soon littered the ground when the gale-force winds of the early summer storms blew through. This autumn, there was not a single yellow fruit on any of the trees, much to our disappointment. We are hopeful that quinces are like some varieties of pears, with large and small production years, and that next year will be a banner year. In the meantime, I have been combing the internet for a mail-order source of quince fruits, to no avail, having learned the hard way that their floral flavor is truly as addictive as quince fans claimed!


Tarte tatin, with a layer of quince slices — magnifique!

food : all things quince

A December sampling of arts in DC

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December is always busy for us, and this year is no exception. If anything, our choice to celebrate the season by attending performances of various kinds has heightened the schedule-juggling.

Our first event of the month was The Trumpet of the Swan, a reading of the book set to music that debuted at the Kennedy Center. The Trumpet of the Swan is one of my favorite books, and the actors and musicians did an excellent job of portraying it. I was excited to be able to see Kathy Bates and Fred Willard, and Washington local Edward Gero was perfect as Louis’s father. Attending this performance was my (early) birthday present, and I was glad to be able to share it with my partner, who had never read the book as a child.

The following Tuesday, we returned to the Kennedy Center to see the Martha Graham Dance Company perform Clytemnestra. Although I’ve seen many of the great modern dance companies perform at the Kennedy Center in recent years, I had yet to see a Martha Graham production. While I began to suspect that her version of Clytemnestra is something like the Ring Cycle of modern dance—by which I mean to say that we may not have risen to the level of knowledge or appreciation of other members of the audience—we were both fascinated. I found it particularly interesting given that it was first produced in 1958; I commented to my partner that you would have had to be terribly fashionable to attend this performance in its first run, as it was somewhat avant garde even for contemporary productions. The costumes and choreography were wonderful, and of course the dancing was superb. And now we can say that we’ve seen a show created by the mother of modern dance!

Following close on the heels of this performance, we went traditional on Friday and attended a reception at the Swedish embassy celebrating Santa Lucia Day. A highlight of the evening was Mats Carlsson, a ‘rather well-known up-and-coming Swedish opera singer’ as we were told by one of our fellow guests, joining the girls for a lovely solo. Our hosts were very gracious, the hors d’ouevres were excellent, and the Glögg was wonderfully potent. Maybe next year we’ll get invited to the gala and I’ll have a chance to wear my wedding necklace! (A girl can dream.)

The next night we headed back down to Foggy Bottom to see the Christmas Revels at GWU. We don’t go every year, but this year’s program had a French-Canadian theme that I just couldn’t pass up. We had a wonderful time; there’s something about being knee to knee and elbow to elbow with strangers while belting out holiday tunes that creates an incredibly festive atmosphere. The evening had the added bonus of exposing my partner, who never studied French in school, to the joys of Alouette, complete with popping out of our seats to point at the various body parts as they became relevant (et le bec!). We particularly enjoyed the operatic flourish with which the young child a few rows in front of us bowed at the completion of the last round of the song.

We wrapped up all of this celebrating by hosting our now-annual holiday cookie party on Sunday night. It’s always fun to sample the variety of confections, and this year was no exception. We had quite a mix of styles and cultural origins this year, with a nice representation of classics in the form of chocolate chip, oatmeal, and sugar as well. Word of a party with nearly unlimited access to sweets appears to have gotten out among the under-8 crowd, and the children-to-adult ratio tilted quite dramatically this year. We are pleased to report that our friends, colleagues and neighbors are doing exceptionally well at instilling manners in their (many) young offspring; our household fabrics thank you, and you and yours are welcome back any time! In addition to being just a general good time, the party spurred us to finally deal with all of the furniture and household goods displaced through various acquisitions and basement trouble this year. After a whirlwind of preparation, it’s wonderful to look around and see shelves, tables, and sideboards in their proper places, and to have boxes of our family treasures stored in tidy piles in the (clean!) attic rather than in the center of our offices. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have tins of cookies on those tables, either.

Our plans for the coming week are quite tame compared to all of this. We’ll be celebrating the solstice with our gift exchange on Sunday, and I have a couple of surprises planned as part of our weekend festivities. (They’re surprises; you will have to wait to learn of them.) In the meantime, I will enjoy quiet evenings that involve neither dressing up nor rearranging furniture.

A December sampling of arts in DC

food : Medivnyk, Ukrainian honey cake

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On Monday, Election Eve, I had unwittingly double-booked myself. In addition to committing to help get out the vote in Virginia, I was meant to be contributing a dessert to a lunchtime program with a Russian1 theme. My assigned baked good was Medivnyk, Ukrainian spiced honey cake, which I suspect — and the interwebs suggest — is typically a Christmas cake. A quick search reveals that there are as many variations on this cake as there are families; I found five without much trouble, some of which include ingredients like coffee or orange juice or sour cream (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I don’t actually know the origin of the recipe I used: I was given a recipe photocopied from a cookbook, and I followed it.

If you’ve helped your mother or grandmother make an Irish-style Christmas cake before, the recipe will be less daunting. You put all the additions in a bowl with flour, in my case currants, raisins, and chopped walnuts. You heat the honey and add the spices to it, remembering that baking soda added to hot honey will make it foam like crazy and therefore you’ll need a taller saucepan than you might initially think based on volume alone. You mix the wet ingredients together into a stiff dough, using a mixer. You add in the flour-coated additions, nearly dislocating your shoulder. (I have to admit that at this point I made the incredibly impolite exclamation of ‘no wonder those Eastern European women are all built like oxen!’ for which I most sincerely and heartily apologize.) If you are stronger than I am, you move on to beating the egg whites until stiff and folding those in; if you are as strong as I am or weaker you call in reinforcements in the form of anyone else in the house at the time to dislocate their shoulder by helping you. Once the egg whites are folded in, the dough returns to a more batter-like consistency that can be spooned into the loaf pans. Loaf pans which you have buttered to within an inch of their inanimate lives and which are themselves lined with parchment paper that has been buttered to within an inch of its life on both sides. You then bake the loaves at what seems like incredibly low heat, 300F, for what seems like an incredibly long time, 90 minutes. In my case, the taller loaf pan required an additional 10 minutes or so, and the shorter one probably would have been fine at 85 minutes.

When the loaves are done, you tap them out of the pans, remove the buttery paper, and let them cool to room temperature. They are then loosely wrapped in wax paper and left to stand at room temperature for 1 or 2 days, depending on how far ahead you planned and when you need to serve them. This is the point when you will be wondering if this is the type of cake you soak in a bowl of brandy; it is not, sadly, that type of cake. It is, though, quite tasty, and perfect as an accompaniment to tea or coffee.

Having acknowledged that this is, in fact, a very nice cake, I have to say that I plan to never make it again. Unless I have a Ukrainian friend to impress, and that friend is an elderly person on their deathbed. Because it was hard and I’m a wimp, that’s why! Seriously, though, this strikes me as a recipe that one makes because it’s what one grew up with and it tastes like home and Christmas at Grandma’s. Like, you know, fruitcake. If Medivnyk isn’t in your particular personal or cultural history, it’s a lot of work for a spiced loaf.

1I know that the Ukraine is not Russia. I expect that the ladies who organized this lunch know it, too. The focus of the day was a visit by Naomi Collins to discuss her book about living in Soviet-era Moscow as an American, and I imagine that time’s linguistic conflation of ‘Russia’ and ‘the USSR’ bore out in the general description of all the dishes as ‘Russian.’

food : Medivnyk, Ukrainian honey cake

food : Italian almond tart

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For the first time this year I attended my alma mater’s annual local potluck dinner. I signed up to bring a dessert, as I’m always glad to have an opportunity to make a pie or tart when there are others available to eat most of it! This time I chose to make an Italian Almond Tart, a recipe I’ve made a few times before and was confident in. Also, I’d picked up some homemade blackberry jam from the folks at Harris Orchards, and I was eager to put it to good use.

The nice thing about this tart is that it’s quite easy to make, but guests assume it was complicated because it looks so professional when it’s done. I highly recommend it for when you want to impress people! The trickiest aspect of the recipe is making the tart shell dough. As with all pie crusts, the tricks are to (1) use very cold butter, preferably some that’s been kept in the freezer; (2) use very cold water, preferably some that’s been chilled in the freezer; (3) handle the dough as little as possible, for which I recommend making it in a food processor; and (4) chill it thoroughly before rolling it out and again before it goes in the oven, which will both help you add as little extra flour as possible in the rolling and keep it nice and flaky. The dough recipe for this tart is quite sticky, with the egg yolk and vanilla, so judicious chilling helps a lot.

The tart shell is prepared by half baking it, which means you line it with tinfoil, weight the bottom with rice or dry beans or little ceramic beads, and then cook it at 375F for 20 to 30 minutes, until the crust is golden and the dough is no longer wet. Once the tart shell is rolled out and baking, the rest couldn’t be easier.

Step 1: mis en place.

Sugar, flour, butter, eggs, almond paste.

Step 2: cream the butter, beat in almond paste chunks [note: almond paste is not the same as marzipan, the ratio of almonds to sugar is higher], beat in eggs, mix in sugar and flour.

Nice and smooth.

Step 3: when the tart shell is done — this one actually could have used another 5 to 10 minutes, as it’s still a little wet — spread the jam in the bottom.

Blackberry jam ready to go.

Your shell will then look like this:

Having the shell a bit warm will help spread the jam.

Step 4: spoon the filling evenly into the shell, trying not to push the jam too far up on the sides; pushing out from the middle will cause a lot of overflow.

Work quickly to keep the filling from melting too much.

Step 5: sprinkle the almonds on top and bake.

Nice and even.

Step 6: bake at 350F 30 to 40 minutes, then let it cool on a rack overnight to firm up, then slide it onto a plate and chill in the fridge or serve; this one could have again been baked about 5 minutes longer, but I was on my way out the door to something else so I didn’t make time for that.

The tart will have risen and will collapse a bit as it cools.

Finally, enjoy! Do I need to say that there were no leftovers?

food : Italian almond tart

persimmon cookies

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Wild persimmons.

Last year we foraged wild (American) persimmons from an undisclosed location in our county. All the hippies we know seemed to be wild about the fruit, and having stumbled across a few trees we decided to give them a try. Persimmons being extremely astringent when not quite ripe, it was hard to gain a sense of what the fruit actually tasted like. But I collected them, made sure they were soft, and mushed them through a strainer (a process that took several hours to glean a total of two cups of pulp, making me suspect that the thrill of the chase has more to do with their underground popularity than any aspect of the fruits themselves).

Having collected the fruit in that way, I stuck the pulp in the freezer and tried to find out what to do with them. There seem to be two ways to use persimmon pulp: (1) in an English-style Christmas pudding and (2) in cookies. Because the pudding recipes I could find were heavy on the milk and best served with whipped cream, I was hesitant to go there. I didn’t want to waste my hard-scavenged persimmon pulp on a modified recipe that risked being terrible, but neither did I want to commit to something that I wouldn’t be able to eat. Also, cookies seemed kind of boring.

I stayed in this persimmon limbo for a year, and finally decided that I needed to make something with the pulp, if only to decide whether to forage again this year. After scouring the internet — by which I mean ‘using Tastebook‘ — I came up with two recipes for my first attempt. One is an English-style pudding, liberal on the brandy, which I’ll test when it gets cold and possibly make for my birthday (just as soon as I figure out how to rig up the steaming container). The other is a spice cookie recipe, advertised as ‘an old family recipe’ which I am hopeful means it was designed for use with native persimmons. The cookie recipe I made last night, with much effort — I locked up my touchy shoulder mixing up the dough; I recommend a mixer — and not a small amount of trepidation. The cookies turned out well, though, much to my relief. Substituting in canola oil and egg beaters worked fine; the persimmon flavor is not strong, but the texture is nice so even just as a spice cookie they’re enjoyable.


Persimmon cookies.

persimmon cookies