Alpha Bakers - Luscious Apple Pie

Labor Day weekend was lazy. There was tubing. There were photo shoots. There were fires in the backyard at my parents' house and an abundance of tomatoes in all stages of ripeness. There was an Alpha Baker apple pie.

When I say lazy, I mean that I was lazy and went tubing, and while I drifted along wondering idly why the weirdos with the American flag on the bank were inquiring if I loved America and freedom, and calling me hipster scum when my enthusiasm didn't measure up to their beery standards, my hardworking mother and sister were shopping all over the Pioneer Valley for the pie ingredients. Rose's version of a classic apple pie includes apples, of course (we went with Empire and MacIntosh, given what was seasonally available), but also apple cider, preferably unfiltered. Even the apple haven that is Western MA couldn't provide us with unpasteurized cider (not freedom-loving enough?) but after a few stores my mother turned up some more pedestrian cider, which was then boiled down with some cornstarch to enhance the apple flavor in the pie. She also grabbed a half-bushel of peach seconds, which were so ripe they began to fall to pieces as soon as they got home, so I threw in a few of them as well.

For a crust, I used Rose's flaky cream cheese, despite my usual preference for a butter crust. I sliced the apples thinly and piled them in. My father asked 'how do you get it not to fall and leave a space?' I thought about it and then said 'I guess I don't. What's wrong with space?' Not to be cavalier, but some of NYC's most acclaimed pie makers, Bubby's included, leave big cushiony spaces in their apple pies.

I didn't actually wind up tasting the pie, as I left it for my Mother to take to a pot luck the next day, but she took this photo of the slice. Her verdict was that the filling was better than the crust, but I think this could have been addressed by a longer initial bake (always always take pie farther than you think you should...) or a re-warming before serving. Realistically, I am probably not going to make a boiled cider solution to thicken all of my future apple pies (I'm more likely to drink the cider), but it's a nice trick to know when faced with lackluster apples.*
 
 *Of course, I live in NY and am extremely unlikely to be reduced to lackluster apples at any time. But I do like cider.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Chocolate Strawberry Cake

One of the reasons I enjoy Rose Levy Beranbaum's cookbooks, (aside from precision and enthusiasm, that is), is her Ashkenazi/Eastern European palate, which leans toward apricots, and poppy seeds, and almonds. This week's cake, though, couldn't be more all-American, making it perfect for both today, Flag Day, and Memorial Day weekend, which is when I actually made it.

I was at my parents' house in Northampton, so I asked my mother and sister to choose my free choice cake. Despite my sister's stated avoidance of fruit-with-chocolate things, and the fact that the cake was already next up on the make list, somehow the Chocolate Strawberry Cake was selected. This involved some shopping, as the cake uses three kinds of chocolate alone--bittersweet, unsweetened, and white--and a raft of butter and eggs. I then went at the thing like one possessed, pushing through my task even as dinner guests arrived, people sat down to eat, and life went on around me.

The cake is a fluffy white cake, with melted white chocolate in the batter. The batter also contains what appears to be an inordinate amount of baking powder, but it seemed to work. Ignoring Rose's instructions to make two layers and two cupcakes, I poured all the batter into the 9" layer pans, where it billowed up but remained just contained. I was rushing a bit, so the layers didn't get a chance to cool through, and they were so tender that that meant that I broke one, leaving a plate of cake bits that was gratefully consumed.

The whole huge thing was eventually done, and it didn't last long, despite the protests of some guests that they only liked chocolate, and my sister that she didn't want the chocolate, the cake was deservedly popular, and lets just say it didn't make it to be dessert the following day.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: She Loves Me

Yes she does. My little sister is just delighted with me, after a solid weekend of cake and lying about.
A long weekend at my parents' house, 27-mile bike ride in the hill towns, avalanches of town gossip and barbequed chicken sausages, huge flowers everywhere, teary Memorial Day parade with a troop of T-Ballers and my dad riding on a flatbed playing the saxophone, strawberries and cream, was everything I needed in the world. And along the way I made a few cakes.

Trying to restrain my obsessions, I was only planning to make one, plus biscuits for my sister's birthday strawberry shortcake. It was free choice week for the Heavenly Cake Bakers, but the cake that my family picked out from the book was already on the list for the week after next--the chocolate covered strawberry cake. It was an over-the-top, squashy, sweet monster of a cake, and the pictures will appear in two weeks. I was just going to skip free choice week, as I didn't want to overwhelm the home folks with cake beyond their strength, but on a quick tag-sale cruise, my mother picked up and handed to me none other than--the daisy pan. Then she didn't understand why I was laughing. I often gently mock Rose's Heavenly Cakes for the large percentage of specialty cake recommendations--I mean, seriously, not all of us are product testers, but when the daisy pan of fate presented itself, what could I do?

I tried to hold back, and succeeded for about 24 hours, but then I couldn't take it anymore, and besides, there were all those egg yolks left over from the strawberry cake that my mother was just going to throw out...

The 'She Loves Me' cake is a plain butter cake, and the most difficult thing about the operation (aside from my mother's small mixing bowls, which got me and the kitchen well cake-spattered) was making sure that it would turn loose from the pan. I didn't have my Baker's Joy with me, but I buttered and floured very carefully, and only lost a tiny corner from one petal. In the end, the cake pan stood up to my and my mother's mockery, and surprised us both by having more texture and appeal than we had expected. In fact, it was downright attractive. I didn't bother outlining the flowers, as we had plenty of real live daisies in the garden, but I did fill it with passion fruit curd and last summer's blackberries, a bag of which had been waiting frozen from our picking spree in August.

Nothing beats biscuit, strawberries, and whipped cream, but the daisy cake came in a close second. Happy birthday, little sister. I've loved every year of your twenty-five.

Things in Pastry: Empanadas and Tarte Tatin

Dinner last night at my parents' house became a communal effort, a kind of post-fast blitz. I find lately that fasting changes my life more than it used to. Now it doesn't just involve not eating, it is also not cooking. And these days, I spend approximately an hour a day in recreational cooking. A day without menu planning, blog reading, puttering, and eating is a day with a very different rhythm. The next day, of course, it was back to the silliness, and Ellen and my mother and Matt and I made a startling amount of dinner. Pastry began and pastry ended, as I got absorbed in some empanadas and Ellen made a delicious tarte tatin from a hoarded old NYtimes recipe. Here she is rolling her pastry...
Here I am rolling mine.The filling for the empanadas, which could have used some more seasoning and some more juice, was turkey and onions and potato with some corn and paprika. The dough was cooperative but too buttery for the ultimately dry payoff. Some tweaking to be done, but like the dumplings, these are always fun to make and fun to eat.

Being home also means I was able to collect our neighbor's fallen quinces, some of which I already boiled into a very stiff jam, most of which are still awaiting their fate. They smell like fall and taste like a citrus-y apple.
Speaking of apples, I didn't take pictures, but we held a little heirloom apple tasting with local russets this afternoon, and the clear winner if you're a fan of dense and tart apples was the Orleans Reinette. Good thing, too, because I couldn't tell most of the others apart. If I remember correctly, there was a Golden Russet and an Ashmead's Kernel.

Vegetables from the Happy Valley

After all this talk about their wonderful CSA, my parents couldn't resist sending me photo documentation, with the accompanying note:

Now, to be fair, most of this is from our u-pick part of the farm, not the regular weekly share, but isn't it glorious? Note the watermelon, tomatillos, okra, tomatoes, bag of basil leaves, herbs (cilantro ,parsley), garlic..
Love Mom (for Dad, who is sorting basil leaves for pesto extravaganza)
Apparently they're also planning some sort of stew involving that okra. Also, note their superior photo skills. Those vegetables couldn't be more attractively posed.

The Hungry Ghost

In my ongoing effort to prove the obvious fact that Northampton, MA is, alongside Brooklyn, one of the greatest places on earth, I'd like to take today to highlight two of the town's wonderful features: The Hungry Ghost Bakery and its early morning employee, the food writer John Thorne.

The Hungry Ghost, run by Jonathan Stevens and Cheryl Maffei, is every hippy's dream. It's a tiny building with a huge orange oven, everything flour-dusted, warm, and wonderful-smelling. It's named for a Buddhist spirit of insatiable appetite, and more pertinently, for the yeast that resembles that spirit. I think I could cheerfully live there. Instead, I just linger around their doorstep hungrily when I pass through town, and have little fantasies about being one of their regulars and bigger fantasies about working there. Forever. Many people have written articles about them, many of them good, so I won't go into detail, but in case anyone was wondering, this is one of the things that fills my dreams before I go to sleep. Good bread, little town, invisible spirits.

And, as if good bread and perfect DIY ambience were not enough, The Hungry Ghost and others have started one of the most wonderful projects ever, the Little Red Hen. Longtime advocates of local flour, Stevens and Maffei have been working for a while to encourage local farmers in Western MA to grow wheat again. This year, as a combination publicity stunt and actual venture, they have asked their customers to do the same, in small plots in backyards and back fields. They will test out wheat strains and growing methods, and the whole will be scythed and collected by bicycle (and in case you were wondering, the downtown garbage collection contracts in Northampton are held by the same cyclists, the Pedal People). This is so good. So Good! I could spend my life dreaming up projects like this one. I hope I do. (See: finding my calling--to be continued).

There is one more debt that I owe (indirectly) to The Hungry Ghost, and to my mother, who found the article. A long article in Hampshire Life, the weekend magazine of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the paper that records whatever it feels like and to hell with the rest, introduced me to John Thorne. Whenever I read up on a subject, in this case food, I start to find that there are classics of the genre or subject that everyone refers to and that I simply must read immediately.

My interest was piqued by the article, which focused on the fact that the well-known food writer works the early shift at The Hungry Ghost. I was intrigued enough to check out a few of Thorne's books from the library, and to subscribe to his newsletter, Simple Cooking. It soon became clear that not only was Thorne (who collaborates with his wife, Matt), one of those semi-hidden classics, a food writer's food writer, and an addictive essayist.

He's so smart, so non-elitist, and so curious. I can't do him half justice in the writing of this blurb, but my recommendation is unequivocal. Even if you are not a foodie reader, he's worth it. Most of his books are at the Brooklyn Public Library, or reasonable to buy. I especially recommend the Irish potato chapter in Pot on the Fire.

In sum, The Hungry Ghost and John Thorne. A match made in heaven, I'm glad I've come to know both of them, they inspire me to live simply, and to make good bread as a part of a community. Read his work, eat their bread, and revel in the happiness that comes when the perfect thing is graced with the perfect name. And admit it, Northampton MA may be one of the greatest places on earth. Paradise, maybe?

P.S. For those of you following my career, please note that Matt Lewis Thorne (John's wife) appears to work as a librarian at Forbes Library. As usual, I must be on to something.