Category Archives: dessert

Membrillo scallop shells

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Membrillo

Membrillo

Here at The Ordinary, we’re extraordinarily crafty. Give us a few saltines, a length of ribbon and some double-sided sticky tape, and we’ll whip up a three-course dinner, a lovely appliquéd dinner jacket, and personalized individual place-settings for each guest, with their name in a never-been-seen-before font and a hazy picture of their childhood pet that looks as though it was taken in 1976! It’s true! This time of year, of course, we’re gifty-crafty! Crafty-gifty! And this year it’s all about the ball jar. We’re giving everybody on our list ball jars containing breakfast cereal made of tiny artisanally hand-crafted twinkies and oreos and bacon; nutella bacon hot fudge; and a tiny living treefrog in it’s own little ball-jar vivarium, with bacon. Do I sound bitter?!?! Why? It’s because I’m not crafty AT ALL!! I can’t effortlessly make things look pretty and appealing! I’m messy and vague. I can’t think of thoughtful little touches that make everything look stylie and perfect!! I wish I could, but I just can’t. That’s why I was so damn proud of myself when I made these little membrillo scallop shells.membrillo-2 I think they’re so pretty! They glow, and they have a lovely shape. And they’re made of membrillo, which is, of course, quince paste, which is delicious and fun to make and very historical and Spanish. I think they’d make nice gifts, you can eat them as is, or you could pair them, as is traditional, with some manchego cheese. Last year we put membrillo with manchego cheese in cracker cups. Remember? And we used membrillo and some dulce de leche to make alfajores. They slice quite nicely, so you don’t have to stuff the whole scallop in your mouth at once! Here’s how it all went down…I made a batch of membrillo, and I was trying to think which dish I should dry it in, when my eye happened upon my madeleine pan. So I poured the membrillo into that. Two quinces made just enough to fill a standard-sized madeleine pan. Then I put them in the oven to set for a few hours. I let them dry overnight before I tried to pry them out, then carefully cut around the edges with a sharp knife, and scooped them out. I trimmed the messy edges with a pizza wheel. Then I left them in the cupboard for a couple of days to dry even more. And that’s that!! Now if I was a genuinely crafty person, I’d think of some ingenious way to present them. Anyone? Anyone? Martha?membrillo

Here’s She’s Crafty, by the Beastie Boys.
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Nutella cookies

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Nutella cookies

Nutella cookies

We saw such an interesting movie the other night. Female, starring Ruth Chatterton, is a pre-code movie. This means that it’s shocking, sassy and salacious! This, in fact, means that it was made before the enforcement of the “Hays Code,” a set of strict rules imposed upon the film industry in the early 1930s. These rules determined what you could show in a film and what you could say in a film, of course, but I find it fascinating that they also controlled the plot of a film. You could get away with showing a “bad girl” or a “fallen woman” if she was punished by the plot – if her immoral actions resulted in death or redemption (and marriage). I love to watch post-code movies and see the way that humanity, in all of its imbalance and immorality, seeps through the cracks in the plot, to watch for moments when it’s obvious that the outcome of the film has nothing to do with the characters in the film, with their desires or fears. (Watch Some Like it Hot, and remember that “the code” discouraged the depiction of gay characters.) Female (1933) is something of a cusp film – the code had been introduced, but not yet strictly enforced. It tells the story of Alison Drake, the boss of a large auto plant, who long ago decided to “travel the same open road that men travel,” and to treat men exactly as they’ve treated women all of these years. And so she does! She has brief affairs with any young thing that catches her eye at the office, and she forms no emotional attachment and expects that they’ll do the same. In the end, of course, she’s tamed by a strong “alpha male” who looks alarmingly like Ronald Reagan. And so, in a sense, it could be a post-code movie, despite all of the innuendo and her shocking behavior throughout, because she’s redeemed by marriage. But the film struggles against this tidy ending. For one thing, it’s very funny throughout, and when she declares her decision to leave her company to her future husband and to have at least nine children, it comes across almost as another joke. And the humor is so clever and satirical. The show Mad Men got a lot of attention for showing how degradingly women were treated at a certain time, especially in the work place. Alison Drake turns that world on its head, but with such honesty and good nature that we almost take her side, though she’s using and abusing all the handsome boys at the office. The film raises questions, but it doesn’t make simple judgments about the characters or their actions. For instance, throughout the film it becomes obvious that Alison Drake’s servants like her very much. They talk to her like an equal, and they take an interest in her life – the chauffeur goes so far as to fight for her honor in response to a slur on her character. This makes her seem like a real, human character, and one who cannot be penned in by a simplistic Hollywood ending. She’s told to be softer and more feminine to snag her man, and she tries this approach, but with an unmistakable smile on her face the whole time. Oh those naive days of yore, when women thought it would be clever to pretend to be something they’re not to get themselves married. Thank heavens we’ve grown beyond that, as a society. But wait, what’s this? On the Fox news website recently, and written by a woman! Advice that women should be softer and more feminine if they’d like to get themselves married! I won’t give it any more attention than it deserves, especially since Stephen Colbert has pretty much said all that there is to say.

So…nutella cookies!! They’re like nutella because they’re made with cocoa powder and hazelnuts, and they have nutella mixed into the batter! They’re like nutella because they’re delicious and addictive! They’re crispy-outside-soft-inside-chocolatey-nutty-melty-pleasantly-plump-and-weighty. And they’re fun and easy to make.

Here’s The Carter Family with Single Girl, Married Girl. Surely one of the first feminist anthems, and from such an unlikely source.
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Nutty cherry chocolate coconut flapjack granola bars

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What? Cherries and chocolate and coconut and nuts? And oats? Is this possible? Indeed it is, and its delicious, too. My boys like granola bars, and believe that they’re a healthy snack. I believe that granola bars are just cookies disguised as a healthy snack. And they remind me of the English version of flapjacks, which I love a lot. I have no problem with my boys eating cookies, or other sweet snacks, but if they’re going to eat something unhealthy, I’m going to make it for them myself, dammit! For some reason I feel better knowing that they’re getting actual butter and sugar rather than processed blizz blazz. It might seem silly, but there it is! Plus these have oats and nuts and fruit, so there’s some good with the bad. Obviously, you can throw anything you like in there! Don’t not make them because you don’t have all of these specific ingredients! I had fewer chocolate chips than I thought, so I threw some mini M&Ms left over from Isaac’s birthday into the mix.

I think of oats and chocolate as being ultimately comforting. And I’ve always wanted to make a playlist of empathetic songs. Songs like the magnificent It Hurts Me Too, by Elmore James. So I’ve compiled such a list, and I love it, so far. Some of the songs might be more sympathetic than empathetic – it’s a fairly liquid shift from one to the other, isn’t it? But they’re all supportive and comforting. Can you think of any songs to add to the list?
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French cake a week – quatre-quarts aux amandes

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Quatre-quarts aux amandes

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak french, bakes her way through a french cookbook from 1962. If you cast your memory back, you may recall that before hurricane Sandy and before the power outage and all that ensued, I was working on a little series we liked to call French-cake-a-week. And you may also recall that I’d gotten in the habit of introducing each cake by rambling on a bit about a French film. And of late the particular emphasis of these rambles seems to have been films made by French women, and in particular the pattern of establishing a new, different rhythm for films. These films consciously shift the emphasis of the narrative and the framing of shots from the traditional high drama “plot points,” to smaller, subtler moments – to the mundane and every day actions that create a truer story, and a more solid understanding of character. Perhaps the supreme example of this is found in Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which happens to be not French but Belgian. It was made in 1975 by Chantel Akerman. The film is three and a half hours long, and it shows three days in the life of Jeanne Dielman, a housewife and mother. We see her walking to the store, cleaning her house, peeling potatoes, making dinner. In a traditional film, these would be the actions that were never filmed, and the shots that were considered unworthy of inclusion. They become the focus of this film, and Akerman has said that she doesn’t believe a kiss or a car accident should be higher in the hierarchy of images than the washing up. Akerman shot these scenes in real time – in long, uncut takes – “…to avoid cutting the action in a hundred pieces, to avoid cutting the action in a hundred places, to look carefully and to be respectful. the framing was meant to respect her space, her, and her gestures within it.” It feels strange, at first, to watch this film and see these oddly intimate moments of a woman’s life, played out in the time each action demands, but it becomes pleasurable in a new way – you come to enjoy her quiet, careful movements, the rhythm of her actions is nearly hypnotic, the stillness of the shots is unexpectedly mesmerizing. Jeanne Dielman also happens to be a prostitute, taking one client each day to support herself and her son. Her relations with the clients is shown to be as routine and ritualized as all of the other tasks of her day – just part of her chores and her housework. Until the last day – but I won’t spoil it for you! The film is a masterpiece of slow, quiet attention to gesture and expression. You come to value each action, and to appreciate the time that it takes, and the steady effort. You recognize it, of course, from your own life…you know how long it takes to peel potatoes, and how tedious it is, but the action becomes beautiful and fraught with drama, as you learn to watch for each subtle shift in movement and expression.

And this cake is a subtle shift from the last that I wrote about, which was a quatre-quarts, or pound cake. This one is very similar, but it has ground almonds, which add their lovely and distinctive taste and texture. The cake is still very simple, and would make a nice base for a more complicated dessert – for trifle, or cream and fresh fruit, or a soaking of rum. I made this cake the day of the storm, and I ate it for breakfast when the power was out the next day. You can see all the leaves Sandy left on our picnic table!

Here’s Jeanne, by The Smiths, which happens to be a song about housework!
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Banana-chocolate chip-cranberry sauce cake

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Banana cranberry sauce cake

Hello, and welcome to another installment of “Claire clumsily paraphrases wikipedia in an attempt to share an artist that she loves.” David recently purchased a many-volume set of Memphis Minnie CDs. So much good music! She just kills me. She, quite literally, rocks. In the past I haven’t been able to find recordings of all her works, but I’ve read her lyrics like poetry. It’s so wonderful to be able to hear them now. Let me tell you a little something about her… She was born Lizzie Douglas, in 1893. She learned very young to play guitar and banjo, and ran away from home at thirteen to try to support herself as a musician. She landed in Memphis, Tennessee, and played in nightclubs and on the street. She travelled with Ringling Brothers circus for a while, and eventually she married and recorded with Kansas Joe McCoy. In the thirties she moved to Chicago, and formed a band with drum and bass, thus single-handedly inventing rock n roll. (What? what?) She went on to record during the forties, but her popularity and her health failed in the fifties. She died in a nursing home in 1973. Her songs are remarkable. On her gravestone it says, “The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general, and particular, speaking for millions, but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie’s songs we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we will hear them as if they were our own.” You do feel this way when you hear her songs! Her life was so different from mine – so wild and uncertain and vulnerable – and yet when I hear her songs I often think, “I feel that, way too.” Her words are so human and raw and honest and mysterious, all at the same time. The picture you form of her, from her songs, is of a woman who is strong and funny, empathetic but guarded, and who has been hurt and has known a lot of pain.

Here’s I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down,

I hate to see evenin’ sun go down
I hate to see evenin’ sun go down
Cause it makes me think, I’m on my last go-round

Some people take the blues, go jump overboard and drown
Some people take the blues, go jump overboard and drown
But when they gets on me, I’d rather stay ‘n go sit down

I been to the river, looked it up and down
I been to the river, looked it up and down
But when my mind never let me, to jump overboard and drown

There’s such a strange hopefulness in the lyrics, with the very blues that are bringing her down also buoying her up.

She has quite a few songs about prostitution, but I love the odd beautiful detail of Hustlin Woman’s Blues…

I stood on the corner all night long, counting the stars one by one
I stood on the corner all night long, counting the stars one by one
I didn’t make me no money, Bob, and I can’t go back home

New Dirty Dozen is a sassy, funny insult song, based on the game dirty dozens, which involves inventing increasingly hurtful insults about a person’s family, until somebody can’t take it any more and gets angry…

Come all you folks and start to walk, I’m fixing to start my dozen talk
What you’re thinking about ain’t on my mind, that stuff you got is the sorriest kind
Now you’re a sorry mistreater, robber and a cheater
Slip you in the dozens, your papa and your cousin
Your mama do the lordy lord

She has beautiful songs about rambling, about being cold and homeless, with sore feet and not enough to eat, songs about being treated cruelly by policemen and judges and doctors and boyfriends, songs about dirt dauber wasps building nests on her when she was a child, songs about superstition, even a song about President Roosevelt and a mule, she has a lovely song of admiration about Ma Rainey, she has generous songs offering shelter and food to desperate men, she has saucy, sexy songs, songs full of hunger and pain, songs full of warmth and humanity. And she plays guitar like a mother-flipper!

Here’s a small playlist of Memphis Minnie songs.

And here’s a cake that uses up leftover cranberry sauce and bananas that are past their prime. It’s rich and moist and tasty. I added chocolate chips, cause I love them, but you could easily leave them out.

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Chocolate-covered, raspberry-filled coconut shortbread cookies

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Raspberry coconut chocolate-covered cookies

Isaac says that the worst thing about turning seven is that you’re all achy when you wake up in the morning. And I said, “just you wait till you’re forty-three and when you drop a pencil it’s not worth bending down to pick it up!” (And then I worried that I was belittling his complaint. And then I worried that he was coming down with something, because a seven-year-old shouldn’t be achy! He seems fine, though.) But I spent some time thinking about it, this morning, sitting on the couch with Clio and not getting anything done. (She’s no help, this puppy! Does she shoo me off the couch and say, “get to work!”? She does not! She makes ridiculously cute little grumbly clucky noises “ooonph, ooonph” and curls up on top of me with a big sigh so I couldn’t get up even if I wanted to!) Ah yes, I was thinking about it this morning, whilst slowly recovering from a busy weekend of I’m-too-old-to-be-a-waitress, especially in shoes that are a size too big. I’ve been feeling very stressy, lately. With stomachaches and headaches and rashes. Of course a big part of the problem is that I stress about the symptoms, I’m too aware of them when they’re there, and not grateful enough to feel better when they’re gone. Something I think about quite a bit is feeling good – a specific moment in time when you feel good and you know it. You walk down the streets of your town feeling sunny and light and happy and comfortable with yourself. You’re not hungry or tired or manic. You’re not worried about anything. The sun is shining, and it feels good to walk in a place that you know and love. It’s not a lot to ask, really – it’s more the absence of discomfort and anxiety than anything else – but it seems like such a precious, elusive feeling. It would be nice to bottle it as an elixir for the next time you have a sniffle, or you shut your finger in a door (that’s me, last night!), or you’ve got worries weighing down your heavy feet. It’s a feeling I associate with youth and springtime, but you can feel it in the winter, too, even when you’re forty-three and you don’t always feel like bending down to pick up a pencil.

I like songs about this sort of moment, and I was listening to one the other day, but I can’t remember what it is! I’ve started a short playlist of the ones I can think of, and I’d appreciate your help in adding to it! Songs about feeling good, in your neighborhood. I’ve stretched the rubric a little for some of these, but the nice thing is, listening to these songs makes you feel good!

I had a meeting with a client who asked me to make a dessert for a dinner party. (Okay, so the client was my mother and the meeting was a glass of wine in the afternoon! Before pick-up at the school! Shocking!) The party was a wine-tasting featuring Argentine wines, and the maternal client requested a dessert with coconut, raspberry and dark chocolate. So I decided to make a version of Argentine-style alfajores. These little cakes are made with a subtly-flavored coconut shortbread, sandwiched together with raspberry jam, and coated in bittersweet chocolate. They also reminded me of the empire biscuits that my scottish mother-in-law makes. I think they would make a nice sweet for a holiday party, because they’re portable – you can stuff a few in your pockets and wander from conversation-to-conversation, fully stocked!!

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Isaac’s Robot Cake!

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Robot cake

I pretty much spent the entire day yesterday making a robot cake and blowing up 125 balloons. I consider it a day well spent, even though all of the balloons were popped within ten minutes once the party started, and the cake quickly became a headless, armless little lump of a robot. The party was wild! And noisy! And rambunctious! But Isaac had a wonderful time, slept late this morning, and then announced that he feels so lucky to be part of this family. I went on and on about Isaac yesterday, so I’ll just share a few pictures today. Here’s Isaac, wearing my shirt, blowing out his birthday candles…

Here’s a series of pictures he did for a flipbook. I just love them! I love the way his little brain works! It’s only part way done, and I’m on tenterhooks to see how it ends.

I made the cake with non-cake pans, I used an oven-proof bowl for the head, a souffle dish for the body, a small square baking dish for the feet (cut in half into two rectangles) and three cupcakes each for the arms. I used m&ms to make the control panels, and twizzlers to make the hoses, because Isaac assures me that robots have hoses. My policy is to make an ugly cake look nice with lots of candy, and make a messy house look good with lots of balloons, so that’s what we did!

And Isaac says his favorite song is Brianstorm by the Arctic Monkeys, so here it is!
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Pumpkin blondies with chocolate-covered ginger

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Pumpkin blondies

I’ve mentioned in the past that my fun-o-meter might be broken. I’ve told you how things that I’m supposed to find fun make me anxious, and things that many people think of as chores are my favorite things to do…every….day. On my ideal day we’d go for a hike, write or draw a bit, listen to music, make a nice dinner, go for a walk around town, watch a good movie. Nothing fantastic, but we’d do it together, and we’d all be in good moods and get along with each other (this means you, boys!) Nothing makes me feel like getting out the old fun-o-meter adjuster like a holiday. I like holidays, but I don’t anticipate them as eagerly as I once did. You can never quite match that childish zeal, and sometimes it makes me feel a little sad to have lost it. Isaac is a living manifestation of Halloween excitement. He asks me every morning how many days are left. He plans his costume, wears the bits we’ve already made, changes his mind about what he wants to be. He draws zombies and skeletons and ghosts. He’s sad that we don’t have more Halloween decorations, and he spent an afternoon cutting them out of paper and hanging them in the windows. And he wants to carve pumpkins, lots of pumpkins. I’ve been thinking about pumpkins, this morning, and I think they might be my golden ticket back to Halloween glee. I can’t really get excited about trick-or-treating. I love making the boys’ costumes but I’m anxious that I won’t get them done on time, or they won’t look right. But pumpkins…lately I’ve looked on pumpkin carving as a messy and slimy task. But today I realized the error of my ways. I love pumpkins! I love everything about them. The way they taste, the way they smell, their color, the word, “pumpkin.” I love how mythological they seem – they can replace a horseman’s head or they can become an enchanted carriage. And I love the idea of souls and spirits…this time of year is so rich in the remembrance of souls, so joyful and awe-ful. A jack-o-lantern is a pumpkin spirit, smiling out at you with fiendish glee. It’s the ingis fatuus that leads you across dry fields of middle-aged disillusionment to the vibrant, glowing, slightly frightening, sweet, morally complicated, highly anticipated night that is Halloween. I can’t wait to carve one!

I thought these pumpkin blondies turned out very tasty! They’re a little softer than a normal blondie, cause of the pumpkin, but they make up for this (not unpleasant) attribute with taste. I spiced them with cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, and I added chocolate-covered-ginger, which contributed a lovely chewy little bite. I added a handful of chocolate chips, too, because you can never have enough chocolate!

Here’s Mikey Dread’s spooky Pre-Dawn Dub.
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French cake a week – Quatre-quarts

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Quatre-quarts

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak french, bakes her way through a french cookbook from 1962. I seem to have gotten into the habit of talking about a french film as well as a french cake each week! I like that idea, so this week will be no different. The last few weeks I’ve spoken about films by Agnes Varda, and I’ve been thinking since about films by certain female french filmmakers, and about the significance of writing about them in the context of a food blog. For some, like Agnes Varda, it became important to have a new language of film – a language created by women…a new way of looking at women and showing their lives, a new rhythm to the film, a new way of asking questions instead of providing answers. 35 Shots of Rum, by Claire Denis, is a beautiful, mesmerizing film, with engaging actors and a glowing underwater light. And it feels, to me, as though it fits in this tradition of telling a story in a new way, not following accepted rules and expectatations. If you watch the trailer, you won’t get an idea of the pace of the film, because the nature of a trailer is to show big, punchy dramatic scenes; in 35 Shots of Rum, all of the important decisions and conversations happen when we’re not watching. What we see is compelling shots of every day life – buying a rice cooker, cooking rice, eating dinner, going to work, riding home from work. The drama happens on the edges, and outside of our view, but we feel more intimately connected to the characters, and care about the drama more. It’s also a very quiet film, and as I love silent moments and expressive gestures, I’m a big fan of this scene, which has, quite rightly, gotten a lot of attention. It’s a nearly wordless scene, full of grace and power.

This cake! It’s really just a pound cake, in the traditional sense, in which you have equal parts eggs, butter, flour, sugar. You measure the eggs, and then measure everything else to be exactly the same. It’s got no leavening, no salt, no vanilla. It does have a bit of lemon zest. It was very delicious, with a lovely dense but light crumb. We ate it with a compote made of apples, blackberry jam and cassis and some whipped cream. And it was nice the next day with coffee. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, I’ve provided some measurements that should work!

Here’s some music by the Tindersticks, accompanying the opening scenes of 35 Shots of Rum.

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Pear/hazelnut/chocolate crisp and ginger ice cream

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Hazelnut chocolate pear crisp and ginger ice cream

I had a hard time taking this picture, because of the fading light. In the summertime I could take pictures of my food outside, in perfect light, just before we ate it. Lately it’s been harder and harder. It’s often dark by the time we eat our meal, and I have to save some to photograph the next day, which reminds me of last winter (and makes me feel a little crazy! Who photographs their food? Who does? Well, everyone lately, it seems.) For some reason this simple fact – that I can’t take a photograph before dinner – makes me feel almost anxious. It drives home the fact that days are getting shorter and that winter is coming, in an oddly concrete way. I love the long days of summer – so generous and expansive. There’s time for anything that you might want to do. Evenings this time of year always make me feel melancholy. The darkness is closing in on you, and you can feel time passing. In the summer we have gloaming, a warm glowing beautiful hour, when all the golden heat of the day collects on the edges of the world and holds the bright clouds. In the winter we have dusk, full of chilly shadows and dark spaces. It all goes so fast – it all slips right by you, as you’re caught up in the worries of the day.

You know what makes autumn evenings pleasurable? Cooking! Being in a warm, cozy kitchen, no matter how dark and cold it is outside, making something warm and comforting is what it’s all about this time of year! This dessert is one of the best I have ever made. Ever!! David suggested the ginger ice cream, and he suggested making something with apples to go with it. So I made this crisp. It has apples and pears, it has a sprinkling of bittersweet chocolate, and it has a crispy hazelnut brown sugar crust. I can’t stop eating it! And the ginger ice cream has a little salty bite to it, and a little gingery bite to it, and it’s so smooth and creamy. The contrast in warm crisp and cold ice cream is just like this time of year, when seasons and temperatures melt into each other.

Here’s Evening Time and Autumn Sounds from Jackie Mittoo. I’ve probably played them both beofre, but they’re just so perfect!

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