Writing With My Mouth Full

Rhubarb Crumb Cake

When Melissa Clark of The New York Times published this recipe, I read it over and over until I completely understood the process. I needed to make sure that making a crumb cake won’t require a Kitchen Air mixer. I don’t have one because I rarely bake, but the Dr. absolutely loves any type of dessert that has tart in it. The first time I ever baked with rhubarb, he ate every crisp. It’s spring and rhubarb is out in the markets–I wanted that reaction from him again. What can I say? I aim to please.

I made a mistake and left out 6 tablespoons of butter to make the cake. My version came out perfectly dense with the right amount of moisture and fluff, so I’m keeping the extra butter out from the recipe below. I started preparing at 9pm and the Dr. was eating his share by 11pm. At least he brought the vanilla ice cream with him.

Ingredients:
For the rhubarb filling:
6 stalks of rhubarb, trimmed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsps cornstarch

For the crumbs:
1 3/4 cups of flour
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 stick of butter, melted in microwave for 30 seconds
a pinch of salt

For the cake:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1. Using some of the melted butter, grease an 8-inch square glass baking dish. Set aside.
2. Prepare the rhubarb filling. In a big glass bowl, toss the rhubarb with the sugar, ginger and cornstarch. Set aside.
3. Make crumbs. In another large glass bowl, whisk together brown and white sugars, spices, salt and melted butter until smooth. Stir in flour with a spatula. They should look like, well, crumbs. Set aside.
4. Preheat oven to 325Âº while preparing the cake. In another large glass bowl, stir together the sour cream, egg and egg yolk, with the vanilla. Mix in the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt using a spatula. Keep folding until it has the consistency of batter.
5. Scoop about half of the cake batter into the greased baking dish, covering the bottom. Spoon rhubarb filling over batter. Then cover with the rest of the batter over the rhubarb. This layering doesn’t have to be even. Using your fingers, scoop the crumbs and sprinkle on top of the rhubarb-filled cake batter.
6. Bake crumb cake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean of batter, about 55 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on table counter before serving with vanilla ice cream.

Preserved Lemons

A month ago, my neighborhood supermarket had a lemon sale. I bought a wholeload but didn’t really know what to do with a lot of them except to preserve them for a future chicken tagine dish. I was already pickling like a maniac, so why not?

Ingredients:
4 whole lemons
juice of 4 other lemons
about 3 cups of salt

1. Make criss-cross slices on the two lemons without cutting through. Salt each lemon generously.
2. In a pickling jar, pack one lemon at the bottom. Then layer with salt. Pack the next lemon tightly and again, layer with salt. Do this for all four lemons and make sure all of them are surrounded with salt. Pour in lemon juice and cover tightly.
3. Store in the fridge for a month, flipping the jar over every week to ensure that all the lemons are submerged in the pickling juice.

Pearl Onion-Infused Martini

From the Dr., I learned how to order and drink martinis. When we were at Applewood in Brooklyn last year, he ordered their pearl onion martini. The onion flavor was strong, but it made for a perfect drink after a stressful day at work. Any new obsession costs money, so I infused my own vodka a few months ago to save $16 per drink. Last night, I took the bottle out of the freezer and we finally made our own martini at home.

There are several ways to make a martini. We like vodka-anything, so I recommend Kettle One vodka for this recipe. You can pick up dry Martini & Rossi vermouth from any liquor store. We also prefer our martini shaken instead of stirred. When you shake the vodka with ice cubes, some of the ice melts and adds a little water to your drink. This softens the bite of the alcohol. Of course, too much water will make the drink limp, so practice makes perfect. We also like our martinis dirty which only means including the olive brine in the drink. While James Bond may find errors in this recipe, we’re quite happy with it.

Ingredients:
1 bottle Kettle One vodka
1 small bag of pearl onions, peeled, some halved
dry vermouth
1 jar of olives with brining juice
ice cubes

1. Using a large pickling jar, combine the onions and the vodka. Let sit in room temperature. Save the original vodka bottle for later.
2. After a week and a half, strain the infused vodka back into the original bottle. Discard all the onions. Store in the freezer until ready to make your own martinis.

For the martini:
1. While preparing martini, put ice cubes in cocktail glass with a splash of vermouth. Set aside to chill.
2. Using a martini shaker, combine ice cubes, two shots of the infused vodka and a shot of the olive brine. Shake well.
3. Discard ice cubes and vermouth from cocktail glasses. Strain contents of the mixer into the glasses. Garnish with a couple of olives.

Knife + Fork Restaurant & Wine Bar

108 East 4th Street between First and Second Avenues
212/228.4885
about $170 for two tasting menus with wine pairings, without tip
â™¥ â™¥ â™¥

It’s almost unheard of in New York City to pay $45 for a six-course tasting menu. At Knife + Fork, chef and owner Damien Brassel pulls it off without sacrificing taste and creativity. When I called two weeks before we planned to eat there, they couldn’t accommodate four people. So two of us went and insisted we sit at the bar. Apparently, they don’t allow diners to sit at the bar unless the chef says it’s okay. The waitress asked the chef, who was only three feet away from us, and relented. The space has a romantic feel to it: heavy wood and dim lighting. There are a couple of tables which can accommodate more than two diners, but most of the guests around us came in pairs. As our night wiled away, we realized why the bar is off-limits. Chef Brassel just doesn’t want people in the way, lest it turns into a loud restaurant like Mercat.

If I have to pick a word to describe the food at Knife + Fork, I would have to say “thoughtful.” Each dish served tasted like chef Brassel put a lot of work into testing to see if his inventive
combinations would work out. Most of them do. I can imagine him working in the kitchen like a mad scientist replacing ingredients with whatever’s in the market that day.

Our first course was the salmon sashimi with pickled radish and seaweed salad. Salmon sashimi is salmon sashimi especially if it’s fresh, but chef Brassel added a dollop of homemade wasabi creme fraiche to this dish. We all know how delightful and painful at the same time wasabi can be through your nostrils. Knife + Fork just happens to make it all delightful. This was paired with a Francois Crochet Sancerre, one of my favorite white wines, which was fresh and lightly fruity.

In between courses, we picked on the dense and creamy homemade bread with salt and butter. I knew the bread was extra special after a man came in to buy a loaf before leaving again. The waitress told us that a lot of the people in the neighborhood stop by just to buy their bread.

The second course was a small dish of frog’s legs covered in sauce. The watermelon chunks and micro-greens were a good addition to them because the sauce was a little undersalted. I actually liked the wine more than the dish itself: a more citrusy and toastier Paul Cluver Chardonnay.

The third course was barbequed eel with risotto and sun-dried tomato tapenade. It sounded better on print because I thought this dish needed a little bit more of a spike. Chardonnay’s main contender, an Aligote, made the dish more interesting. I loved the firm skate with apples in Thai green curry as our fourth course. An “Innocent” Viognier from Shinas Estate was the perfect match for this spicy dish. I liked this dish so much I could have eaten one more serving.

We were prepared for more seafood with our white wines, but then the lamb with the mashed black bean-licorice reduction was served as our fifth course with a glass of Burgundy. I thought the meat was a great way to end our meal. I didn’t quite understand the black bean and licorice combination, but I was more than happy to ignore it for the medium-rare lamb.

I’m not a big fan of port but it came with our last course of cheeses and honey. The port tasted a little bit like jam and was even more decadent with the spoonful of honey. Our experience so far was a gradual presentation of chef Brassel’s cooking skills–this was the perfect end to it.

Achara, Filipino Pickles

I don’t really use a food processor because one of the things I love about cooking is the actual process of getting all the ingredients together and preparing them for the actual cooking. But for this Filipino pickles recipe, or achara, I was thankful that my mother owned one. I chopped the papaya and the carrots in smaller chunks and passed them through the machine to grate. Just make sure that you squeeze out excess water after grating them using a cheesecloth. The pickling juice should be the only liquid in your jar.

To make this even more Filipino, I bought a small flower cookie cutter for the carrots. (Filipinos love playing with their food!) The red bell pepper and the onions were chopped by hand. I don’t have exact measurements for the vinegar or the sugar. Start off with enough vinegar to cover the vegetables in the pot, but it’s all up to you to balance the sweet and sour taste in the end. Season with a little bit of salt to taste. Heidiologies, this is for you.

Ingredients:
1 green papaya, grated
2 medium carrots, some grated, some cut into flowers
1 red bell pepper, julienned
a handful of pearl onions, peeled, sliced thinly
half a head of garlic, minced
1 large knob of ginger, peeled, sliced thinly
vinegar
white sugar
salt

1. Combine all the ingredients in a large pot and let simmer until carrots are soft, about 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and let cool before transferring to a jar.