When It's Hot & Hazy

Lemon and Lavender: A Twofer

It’s hazy, hot, and humid. So what does dumb-dumb do? Go in the kitchen and start baking! I can’t help it. Our lavender has just finished blooming and summer just seems to scream for something with lemons and lavender, don’t you think? So here’s a twofer.

Lemon-Lavender Cookies

INGREDIENTS:

12 Tbls. unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar (I use lavender sugar which I make by throwing a bunch of lavender and a bunch of sugar into the Cuisinart and then store in a jar. You may want to sift out the lavender pieces before using.)

1 Tbls. dried or fresh lavender flowers (You can get these in bulk in most health food stores. Lavender also makes a great tea, which can be ordered from Harney and Sons). I find big pieces of lavender kind of bitter, so I chop them up pretty finely before using.

1 Tbls. grated lemon zest

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia (I love this stuff. It is a blend of vanilla, orange, and lemon essences. You can get it from The Baker's Catalog. I almost never use vanilla any more. This stuff is SENSATIONAL! Buy a bunch. It is wonderful in most sweet things Mediterranean. (Ah, Sophia!) Use vanilla while you are waiting for your order to arrive.

2-1/4 cups regular flour

PREPARATION:
In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until it is light and fluffy. Stir in the lavender and lemon zest. Add the egg, vanilla and salt and mix briefly on low to combine. Gradually add the flour. Take a piece of plastic wrap. Put the dough on it and twist into a log. You do this by twisting one end of the plastic wrap in one direction and the other in the other – just like Little Egypt! Refrigerate for a couple hours until pretty solid.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Unwrap and slice the dough into about ¼ inch slices. Bake the cookies until they begin to brown around the edges, about 10-15 minutes. Store in a can if you have any left over.

Lemon-Lavender
1-2-3-4 Cake

[This is my adaptation of a recipe originally found in a Williams-Sonoma catalog.]

“1-2-3-4 cake?” I hear you asking.

This is a very old cake recipe, sort of like a pound cake, but not. 1-2-3-4?

Easy: 1 cup of butter + 2 cups of sugar + 3 cups of cake flour + 4 eggs.

The basic 1-2-3-4 is a good arrow to have in your quiver. Modify the seasonings any way you want, just don’t mess with the proportions. Okay, here we go.

To the above ingredients, we add:

4 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2-3 Tbls. chopped lavender buds

zest from two lemons (If you don’t have a Microplane zester or grater,get one the next time you have the chance. They are wonderful – much better than the old box kind.)

1 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia (there he goes again) or vanilla

1 cup milk Note on the sugar: For this recipe I use lavender sugar for an extra lavender kick. You can add a bit more lavender buds if you haven’t made the sugar.

PREPARATION:

Get your stuff together.

Oil a cake pan or loaf pan (my preference) and line it with parchment paper. Spray paper. (Or, you can butter pan and dust with flour. Your call).

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift and measure cake flour. Grate lemon peel. (A digression is in order. If you are like me and have just made the cookies and are now making the cake, you will have three bald lemons in front of you. You have a choice: Make a whiskey sour – remember those – to keep you company as you work. Good choice.

Or, you can squeeze the lemons, take some sugar plus a bit or water and/or hooch, like grappa and boil it down until it gets syrupy. Then add about a cup of sliced almonds and let them brown a bit in the hot syrup. Let cool and poor over cake after it has cooled. Not as good a choice as the whiskey sour, but it is better for the cake – and probably the baker.)

OK, digression over.

Add baking powder and salt to flour. Mix.

Separate eggs. Brown ones in one bowl, white ones in another. Just kidding.

Beat butter in mixer until fluffy. Add lavender sugar (or plain) and beat for a while until the mixture is light and creamy. Add egg yolks, Fiori di Sicilia (or vanilla), lavender, and lemon zest. Beat just a bit.

Add whiskey sour to baker.

Now add the flour and milk in three or four iterations. You know, a bit of milk, some flour, etc. Beat slowly. You are not trying to whip it into shape.

Now beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until soft peaks form.

Mix in about a third of the egg whites, then fold the rest in gently. Put in pan and bake.

This can take up to 45 minutes in a loaf pan. Test with skewer.

Let cool completely then, if you made it, pour lemon/almond syrup over top. Let rest and soak in for as long as you can stand, then eat it.

Potatoes and Pizza

Of Pizza and Potatoes

Now I am not one of those people who is above standing in front of the fridge and eating cold pizza (or spaghetti for that matter, or corn on the cob, or lobster). Last evening, I couldn’t decide whether to serve the last jar of caviar Conni gave me for my birthday. So while I debated, I stood in front of the refrigerator and finished it. Now what’s wrong with that?

But back to pizza. I don’t know if everyone does this, but I have discovered that the absolutely best way to reheat pizza is in a skillet on the stove. Heat a skillet over moderately low heat. Put in pizza in one layer. Put on a lid. Cook until the bottom is brown and the top bubbly. Turns out the skillet makes a perfect stovetop oven, and on a hot day, it is a whole lot cooler than turning on the big one!

And as it’s summer, there’s a gadget out there that actually does what it says – and a whole lot more. My Aunt Mid had one for half a godzillion years. She lived alone and used it for all kinds of things. It is called a Stovetop Potato Baker, but it is really a mini-oven. Plus if you like your baked potatoes with a crispy crust and not flaccid, this is a good way to go – if you’re only doing a couple. You can buy one at Home Improvements. Usually $14.99, they are currently on sale for $11.99.

Speaking of pizza and potatoes, did you ever have a Pizza Paisano? I stumbled across them when I was studying in Freiburg in 1964. We used to eat a lot of pizza (because it was cheap) and one evening I just pointed at this one. It became a favorite. It was basically a white pizza with very thin slices of potato stacked on top. The tops of these became as crunchy as potato chips while the bottoms were soft and melting like au gratin potatoes. Sort of combined the best of Italy and Germany didn’t it? Return of the Axis. Sure was good. Sure would like one.

3-2-1 dough

3-2-1 Easy as Pie – Thanks To The CIA

This turns out to be simpler than it has any right to be. 3-2-1, literally.

Pastry chefs work by weight because flours, etc. vary so much in volume due to humidity.

By weight the dough is three parts flour, two parts fat (butter & lard, your call on proportions), and one part ice water. 3-2-1.

I usually take three pounds of flour, one each of butter and lard, and remembering that “a pint’s a pound the world around.” 1 pint ice water. Add 1 tsp. or more of salt and 1 Tbls. sugar if you are making a sweet pie or tart.

Cut the fat into the flour until (as always) the size of peas. Add water. Smoosh together into a ball. Then take ping-pong ball sized balls and smear them onto a board with the heel of your hand. Use pastry scraper or spatula to lift. Pile these up. Then divide stack into 5 piles of same weight (+/- 20 oz.; just right for 10” tart). Form into disks. Wrap. chill, then freeze.

It is best to defrost the dough in the refrigerator overnight. If you are careful, however, you can defrost dough in microwave on low. If it feels warm, however, put back in fridge before rolling out.

Lemon Posset

Lemon Posset: But Don’t Ask Me How It Works

I know some of you are going to say “oxymoron, oxymoron,” but there is a really good British food magazine out there — called Olive. At $6.50, it had better be good!

Anyway, in last April’s issue, they had this recipe for Lemon Posset. It is sort of a panna cotta without gelatin or a custard without eggs.

Ingredients: 1 pint heavy cream (more or less), 1/2 cup lemon juice (more or less), 1/2 cup superfine sugar.

Directions: Simmer cream and sugar for three minutes; remove from heat; add lemon juice; cool a bit; strain into dishes; chill; eat. I mean really!

I use tiny shot glasses and keep them in the fridge with a spoon so that… well, you know.

Just don’t ask me how it works.