Food

Let them eat cake

/ get back, laurettadimmick / 1 Comment

Sometimes, I just need a slice of cake.

And when that happens, I bake one.  I like to bake, I usually have the ingredients on hand, and I prefer my own baking to any cake I can buy, even from premier bakeries.  What can I say?  I’m fussy about cake.

So, I got the yen for cake recently and yesterday I pulled out my well-worn edition of Joy of Cooking and looked up the pound cake recipe.

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I was yearning for a simple, classic, all-American cake.

As I perused the ingredients, so I wouldn’t start mixing only to discover I was missing a key element, I ran across these words:

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You may add brandy or “8 drops of rose water” to the batter.

And then it hit me: I happen to have a brand new bottle of Italian rose water on hand.  It was obviously time to break it out!

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So, along with 2 cups of butter (no substitutes, Joy of Cooking demands!) and 9 eggs, I was off to the races.

And this is my first baking post.  I feel like Dorie Greenspan. Sort of.

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Nine eggs!  This cake is rich and nutritious (if you don’t count the 2 cups of sugar).

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No, I am definitely not Dorie Greenspan.  I am very messy.

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But I got the batter made and put into these cute little green and white paper bundt pans I happen to have in my baking stash.

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And filling those little suckers took some time, let me tell you.

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But I got them in the oven and baked them for an hour at 325 degrees F.

 

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And yowza, did my house smell great!

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The little bundt cakes turned out just great!

And yes, one of them is missing in the photograph above.

And no, I don’t know what happened to it.  You are getting rather personal, don’t you think?

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Well, okay, I cut into it.  I had to check the crumb.  Dorie would, wouldn’t she?

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I’m not Mary Berry (the baker from England), but this cake is good!

And featured in today’s breakfast with some Fortnum and Mason Darjeeling tea I just happened to get for Christmas.  Not a bad way to start the week!

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Here’s my recipe:

 Classic pound cake with Italian rose water, modified from Joy of Cooking

2 C butter, softened

2 C sugar

9 room temp eggs

4 C flour (I used all-purpose flour; I find cake flour too prissy and don’t like the texture it produces)

1/2 t cream of tartar

1 t salt

1 T vanilla

1 t almond extract

1 T rose water (8 drops were impossible to detect in the batter)

Cream the butter until it is light and airy.  Add the sugar slowly. Add the eggs, one at a time. Add the flavorings.  Add the salt and cream of tartar. Add the flour slowly.

Pour into prepared (buttered and floured) pans (loaf is the usual shape used) and bake at 325 degrees F for about an hour, depending on the size of your pan.  Keep your eye on the baking cakes, you don’t want to overbake and dry the cakes out.

The recipe makes a lot of batter, so depending on your pans, you’ll need a few.

Happy baking!

Tortelli lucchese

/ get back, laurettadimmick / 1 Comment
Any foods prepared in Lucca, Italy are automatically known as “lucchese.”
Makes sense, right?
totelli
 I’ve discovered to my absolute delight that one of the most well-known and delicious primi piatti on many menus in Lucca is special type of meat ravioli. What sets this pasta apart immediately is that has a very bright yellow color, for, as it turns out, it is made with eggs and flour. Typically, pasta in Tuscany isn’t made with eggs; such pastas are more common up north, the traditionally wealthier section of Italy.
But, this lovely pasta fresca is rolled, cut in circles, and stuffed with a mixture of meats often including beef and pork, and served with a meat ragu.

Then there is the whole discussion of ragu. The most popular and widely used sauce in all of Italy is simply known as ragu. Most foreigners think of ragu as a tomato-based sauce, but it is actually a meat-based sauce, with only a small amount of tomato sauce or paste added.

Ragu is usually served with pasta. It often begins with a soffritto, or chopped onions, celery, carrots, and typical seasonings of salt and pepper. Minced beef is added, browned and then the sauce is simmered slowly for several hours to let all the flavors marry, as they say.  I’ve always thought that was a weird use of the word marry, but what do I know?

Italian cuisine is famous for its simplicity and variety with cheese and wine as major components of every Italian food recipe. It is also known for its pasta of different shapes, lengths, and widths and sauces with different ingredients.

Compared to other sauces it is thicker and made creamier by adding milk at the later stage of cooking. It has several different versions, and lamb, poultry, fish, veal, or pork can be used instead of ground beef. Other spices like chilies, peppers, beans, tarragon, and cumin can also be added.

Ragu alla Barese is prepared using horse meat; Ragu alla Napoletana has a lot of tomatoes and uses red wine; Ragu alla Bolognese uses white wine and fewer tomatoes. Ragu alla Bolognese or Bolognese sauce is the most popular version of ragu.

Bolognese sauce originated in Bologna, Italy and dates back to the 15th century. It is a pasta sauce that is meat based and contains a small amount of tomato sauce. It is traditionally served with tagliatelle, green lasagna, and other wide-shaped pasta instead of spaghetti pasta because the sauce holds up better with wider pasta.

Its ingredients include beef, soffritto, pancetta, onions, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and cream or milk. Like all other food preparations, Bolognese sauce has different variations. Pork, chicken, veal, rabbit, goose, and other meats can be used instead of beef.

The soffritto is made with celery, carrots, and onions cooked in butter or olive oil. Mushrooms, ham, and sausage are also added together with milk or cream to add more flavors and give it more creaminess. It is usually simmered for at least five hours.