Alpha Bakers -- The Polish Princess

The Polish Princess. Sounds like a cruise ship, doesn't it? Or a jewelry display. 

But no, it is a cake. Under its fancy veneer, it is actually quite a humble and homebody cake. Just because a girl wears two layers of buttercream doesn't mean she's stuck-up. Also, doesn't she have a right to some honest pride when she's a righteous sponge soaked in a tea and rum syrup, topped with two smooth and creamy and eggy layers of pastry cream buttercream, one filled with cocoa and walnuts, the other with raisins and chocolate? 

The Polish Princess, or the Ambassador as it is apparently known in Poland, is a bakery cake--the kind you ogle in the pastry case that often doesn't punch its weight in taste outside the cage. This lady, however, holds up, especially at room temperature, where all the layers soften into a creamy blend.

 

The creation of the Princess happened over a few days, in slow stages. First, the sponge was baked and syrup-ed. The syrup, in Polish fashion, was meant to be a strong tea steeped spiked with vodka. Having no vodka, I used rum, which was delicious if not culturally appropriate. According to the recipe headnote, the cake was developed after the fall of the USSR, when new quality ingredients came to Poland, so perhaps it's just an appropriate cultural cross-pollination.

Then came the buttercream--one recipe divided at the end for flavorings. It starts with a goopy pastry cream, into which a LOT of butter is blended. I mean a LOT--about three sticks worth. Because I was making the recipe in stages, I had some trouble with the buttercream--it broke badly and became a cottage cheese looking wet mess. I waited for everything to come to a warm room temperature, added a few more tablespoons of butter, and came out at last with a creamy fluff. 

The Princess had a warm reception at work, as I made sure she was served at a cool room temperature, the spongy buttercream was a great success. One of our young shelvers (who have just been temporarily almost laid off due to budget constraints--call your city councilors!) told me it was a brand new cake experience for him--he had never eaten anything like it. 

The last few weeks have been stressful. Some of the stress is personal, a result of something very wonderful that I have the privilege to do, that is none the less...stressful. Also, a few mountains have been falling and a few cities have been burning, and that's not without its impact too, however far away it may be. Many of my friends seem to be finding themselves in a slightly ragged place as we straggle into spring. The reasons vary, from the personal to the professional, from life to love to happiness to sadness, but regardless, most of us need a heavy dose of cake and flowers and soup. 

Last Sunday I had a few dear ones over and made this soup--quick and simple and rich, a basic potato soup raised up with prosciutto and saffron and garlicky ground almonds, from my new cookbook, Food52 Genius Recipes. More from this cookbook soon. I'm going through my cookbook back catalogue and trying not to buy many more, but this one was a printed version of about half the recipes I have already bookmarked and printed out, and it seemed prudent to pick up the bound version.

Matt Makes Dinner: Salmon with Apples and Pickle/Carrot Slaw

I mentioned that these days my cooking life usually starts around 9 pm. Some days, I just can't take it, and I need some greasy Chinese food to make it through a writers' meeting. Usually, that's a great idea, and preserves my sanity, if not my solvency. Last Wednesday, it wasn't the greatest idea, because I came home to find Matt making something delicious. He broiled salmon in a glaze of agave and butter and lemon juice (I think), sprinkled it with a crust of almonds and pine nuts, and surrounded it with apples, which gave it moisture and a faint apple aura.
For a salad, he improvised with our limited vegetable stock, and came up with a carrot and pickle coleslaw type thing--let no one say the man doesn't know his way around the improvisational possibilities of the back to the refrigerator.

It was all excellent, and I could only eat a tiny tiny plate of it. Luckily, I got stuffed mushrooms on Friday, so I suppose I've done all right.

What Was That About Dinner?

All advice to the amateur food blogger that I've read, especially the advice that purports to lead to rich-and-famousness (or at least expanding readership), suggests that the most important thing a blog can have is an angle. I mean, who wants to see your dinner every damn night? Unless, of course, that's your angle... Wait. Ok, in angle terms, the hook of a blog can be almost anything, it seems to me, as long as it is either comprehensive or consistent. Comprehensiveness requires a full staff and a webmaster, as far as I can see, or far more time on your hands than I can muster. This endeavor is, after all, more of a procrastination tool than a 'legitimate' pursuit, although it is putting some fluidity back into my writing, which must be all to the good.

As to consistancy, the ostensible subject of this blog right here is bread--yeast, sourdough, rye, wheat, spelt, egg--you name it, I bake it. That was the original plan for the hook, and the original inspiration was indeed my near-daily adventures in bread. However, as the title Second Dinner indicates, my actual scope is a bit more diffuse. The true subject here is the food culture of my apartment, my little family and microcosm, as seen through the lens of my bread baking and increasing obsession with local food and food activism. When we start receiving our CSA share, I intend to post a weekly picture of our take, and there are also rumours of a foraging trip in the future.

But as to The Home, as we sometimes call it, there are four people living here, each with different tastes, schedules, habits, and food goals. Often, we eat separately for days or weeks on end, our yogurts and tofus and various greens elbowing each other in the refrigerator. We peek into plastic containers to investigate everyone else's leftovers, share spices and staples, and are generally companionable, but we are not always family-style. We are food autonomists.

However, these barriers, while real, are as much a product of schedule as of actual differences, and in reality, we love to cook together. Luckily, Libby and I have shared two rare nights off together, and both of them have resulted in elaborate dinners. What you see above is the beginning of Wednesday's dinner, Libby filling steamed vegetable dumplings.
By 'vegetable,' we tend to mean 'everything in the refrigerator.' My memory is that the filling above contains ginger, scallions, carrot, sunchokes, radish greens, garlic, and probably more, sauteed with a little sesame oil and tamari. The dipping sauce, not pictured, was a red curry peanut sauce.
While Libby was filling dumplings, I roasted this little chicken. Above, you see it trussed up, as Julie Powell would say, like a sex crime victim. I also made a very simple salad. Being hungry, we didn't stop to photograph the finishing steps, but as the shot below of Libby's dinner plate shows, everything was delicious. Last night, we repeated the extravaganza, adding Rob and some rhubarb cocktails. This time, the dumplings were chicken and the main dish was a tofu stir-fry courtesy of The Kitchn. The stir-fry was a fascinating little experiment in kitchen chemistry, exhibiting the best and the worst properties of cornstarch. Dredging the tofu in cornstarch before frying created a crisp crust with a creamy interior, just like the Thai restaurants do it. Now I know how, though I'm sure they deep-fry. Adding cornstarch to the sauce just made it uncomfortably gelatinous, which, although it cleaves to the theme of 'how the restaurants do it,' I could have done without. Still, it was a great dinner. What I'd really been craving most (been reading John Thorne again, more on that soon) was the rice itself, so I hauled out the rice cooker and made a ton of Jasmine rice, and I'm planning to have some fun with the leftovers.

So, it isn't bread, but it is (mostly) local and fresh, and it is us eating together, which is the metaphorical meaning of bread anyway. Right?