Brandon Eats

Just Coffee Cake For New Year's Day

Sometimes the old recipes are the best.  Old is a relative term, of course.  To me, old recipes are the ones you've been making for years and years, and although, if you're lucky, they've been handed down to you through your family, not all of us have a rich culinary tradition from which to draw.  My mother, as I've mentioned before, cooked like most mothers did during the sixties; cans, ground beef, frozen vegetables, and powdered garlic (occasionally) mostly dominated the evening meal.  Sometimes she strayed into Julia Child territory, but that was primarily for dinner parties and other special occasions.

Since you can't really hand down a canned ham recipe  (open can, score diagonally, sprinkle with brown sugar, stud with pineapple rings, bake until hot--there, you can so), I learned most of my cooking from books.  One of my first purchases, once I was living in my own apartment during college, was Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. My boyfriend (and future husband) and his roommates would throw big brunches on Sundays back in those days, where friends would bring everything from homemade egg rolls to sugar-powdered crepes. There I had my first taste of cardamom coffee cake and fell in love.

Rich and packed with lots of butter, sour cream, and nuts, this particular coffee cake stays profoundly, deeply dense and moist for over a week (if it lasts that long).  The unexpected perfume of cardamom laced with cinammon gives this cake an exotic glamour that ordinary coffee cakes, languishing in their little Sara Lee boxes, can only imagine in their dusty daydreams.  Gratitude will involuntarily overflow if you make this cake ahead and slice into it on the first morning of the new year.

Recipe after the jump--and for more sugar-filled treats, see Habeas Brulee and a round-up of the best of the web for Sugar High Friday #26.

Party Panic

Is anyone a complete, hysterical maniac because they've planned a Christmas party and managed to invite twice as many people as they did last year?  Anyone else besides me, that is? 

Although Xanax is probably your (my) best bet right now, I've got a few books to recommend that might actually help you (and me) through the party-planning and -giving process.  You'll need that maid though, to help you afterward.

I turned first to Amy Sedaris' new book, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, because it's brand, spankin' new, and Amy Sedaris is a complete nutcase.  In a good way.  Sort of that deep, unexpected type of funny Stephen Colbert practices, and in Sedaris' case, lives.  It's no coincidence  they collaborated on Sedaris' Strangers With Candy; these are people who share the same strange language. 

Her pages are full of odd, almost hallucinogenic photos evoking the early seventies in all of it's kitschy glory.  It's as if Amy Sedaris somehow found a way to regurgitate her unconscious preteen imprinting right onto the page without any kind filter at all. In fact, the pictures of Sedaris putting on pantyhose (pages 266-269) speak so profoundly about how un-sexy the the whole concept of pantyhose is, it's really worth buying the book just to get an automatic laugh when you need one or whenever you'd like a little jolt of self-esteem.

Yet her book is chock full of sincerely helpful advice in between pictures of Kleenex ghosts, meat loaf wreaths, and wine bottle rolling pins. Things like keeping notes (why, why, WHY didn't I do that last year?) about your party and an entire section on guest etiquette (i.e. never bring a guest without asking, bring what you said you'd bring and arrive on time with it, and don't come early) seem obvious on the surface, but somehow people don't think of these things on their own.  I love the idea of converting your shower rod into a coat rack, and although I probably won't set up a indoor garage sale table by my front door ("Everything Must Go, 25 Cents"), I will try to pre-plan and to make as much food ahead of time as I can, so that I too can "take my time bathing, check for lumps, and dress leisurely."

821 Cafe

Shucks, the folks over at 821 Cafe were so nice, I reviewed them in today's Style Weekly.

Menu for Hope

Food bloggers around the world are doing their part to help raise money for the United Nations World Food Programme by participating in Chez Pim's Menu For Hope III.

As for me, I'm offering The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, along with a box of Southern treats, like Virginia Diner boiled peanuts,  local honey, apple butter, and homemade tea cakes, cheese straws, and spiced pecans based on Miss Lewis's recipes.  There might even be a surprise or two, depending upon how much money my particular offering raises.

Y'all know all about Miss Lewis, don't you?  She represents Southern cooking at its best and her book is an indispensable guide to all the region has to offer. Paula Deen, eat your heart out and chase it down with a can of cream of mushroom soup.

Sleigh Ride to Hell

Remember how Col. Klink on Hogan's Heroes was always knocking back schnapps whenever any SS officials showed up at the camp? You know, on that crazy, madcap show when apparently in the 60s the Nazis were hilarious? I know.

The series never explained what those officers were drinking — and I always wondered what schnapps were when I was a kid watching the nightly reruns, but my parents had no idea either.

Klink was probably drinking Rumple Minze, a particularly lethal form of peppermint schnapps from Germany that makes all that off-brand stuff taste like an old candy cane run over by a bunch of reindeer. It also forms the foundation of one of my favorite holiday cocktails that I like to call:

Sleigh Ride to Hell

1 1/2 oz. 100 proof vodka
1 1/2 oz. Rumple Minze
Smashed-up candy canes

Now this cocktail is nothing fancy but it's big and really, really strong.

First: Smash (with manic glee) a few candy canes to powder.  Lightly rim the glass with a little Rumple Minze (this can be done with your finger, thank you very much) and then dip the glass into the candy cane powder you've conveniently spread out onto a small plate.

Secondly: Shake vodka and Rumple Minze with ice and strain into the prepared glass. (Yes, this is a recipe for one but you've got a calculator, don't you?).

And finally: Do NOT garnish with one of the cute, little candy canes that escaped the hammer. It's not that kind of cocktail.

Hand over your car keys and soon you'll be racing through the dark, snow-heavy Bavarian woods at Winter's Solstice in a sleigh with the horses running full out as the wolves snap behind your frozen ears. Just don’t toss your bride out to placate those slavering wolves.

They’re going to eat you anyway. Time for another drink.

Check out The Spirit World for more holiday cocktail recipes during the round-up of Mixology Monday 10 - Drinks for A Festive Occasion.

Soup for a Cold Spanish Night

When I opened my freezer to make a little room for Christmas future, I found it stuffed with pork--Spanish pork to be specific.  Morcilla, lomo, a hunk of jamon (just the way I like it), serrano ham, and chorizos:  chorizos from Despaña in Soho, mini choricitos from Palacios available at Ellwood Thompson, chorizo from an old school New Jersey company called Corte, much anticipated, newly imported Iberico sausage from acorn-snuffling, wild pigs of the motherland, and finally, a whole shrink-wrapped package of contraband, homemade chorizo from my husband's great-aunt in Taramundi.

No one in their right mind needs to collect sausages (I also found some andouille and a few miscellaneous Italian sausages from the Double H farm), but it seems that, without really intending to at all, I'd assembled a comprehensive selection.  It was time to free up some space and put at least a little dent in all that porkage.

A typical Spanish meal--well, at least typical in Staten Island--is a bowl of steaming Caldo Gallego with a triangle of tortilla on the side.  Caldo is a soup thick with turnip greens, white beans, smoky ham and garlicky chorizo that can be found on the menu in most restaurants in Northern Spain.   My husband orders it every single time he sees it and is always shocked to discover that it tastes exactly the same as his family recipe.  No doubt this is because there aren't a lot of ingredients involved nor fancy preparation; you don't even need broth. No one thinks to tinker with it because it's perfect just the way is.

Arias Caldo Gallego

1 medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 15-oz. can Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed
2 quarts water
1/2 lb. serrano or smoked ham, cubed
1/2 lb. chorizo, left whole
1 10-oz. package frozen turnip greens, defrosted, with the water squeezed out, or about 3/4 lb. fresh greens, well-washed, de-stemmed and coarsely chopped
2 red potatoes, peeled and diced
2 t. coarse salt

Heat olive oil, and saute onion in a Dutch oven until soft. Add water and the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 45-60 minutes.  Remove chorizo and slice, and then return it to the pot. Serve with Three Potato Tortilla with Red Onion and Chorizo (recipe after the jump).

Check out running with tweezers for more fabulous soup recipes from some the best food blogs on the web during the Super Souper Challenge.