Wow, It's Been Awhile (Best Ricotta Cake)

Hi. Yes, it's been a long time since I reported anything to le olde blog.  It's more common to put recipes in Instagram captions now, but honestly, I can't keep track of anything on there anymore. And I'm a little scared of turning more of my life over to that little app. But it has bitten me. I'm over there a lot. 

The reality is, things morph. Keeping this blog was, for awhile, an attempt to create a log of loved recipes so things don't live on scrap paper. Some I invented, many I adapted, barely. And things are better shared.

Cooking is cooking, though and it has happened So much more frequently since the pandemic hit us 3 years ago (and I already cooked a lot)--also when I last posted--that talking about cooking/recipes too much rubbed me the wrong way. Did you feel similarly? 

I did write about pineapple and asparagus and edit many recipe galleries.

But this week, I made a ricotta cake and I can't stop thinking about it so I want to show it off a little, photo-shoot style. I'm not sure I need to make any other ricotta cake again. And that, friends, is the intent of my blog-- to find what I like and share it. 

Besides the ricotta, which, if you can get fresh ricotta, the cake will be that much better, the ingredients are scant. I like to swap in a tad of almond flour and add a little cinnamon. Somehow, this addition evoked a slight likeness to the inside of a chocolate-almond croissant or rugelach from Breads Bakery in the city, which I miss dearly. I'm thinking about picking up some things there for old time's sake next time I make it into town. 

What else is new? I'm cooking from Smitten Kitchen Keepers currently. I'm in love with the cover recipe, the spinach-sauced pasta. I wish my son would try it. Also the turkey meatloaf for skeptics is great. 

I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on December 6, making us a quad. 

In Spring 2021, almost 2 years ago, we moved from our Jersey City building of 9 years, to a charming little house with a deck and yard in a town adjacent to where we grew up.

It was a change for sure. It's not the city, but there's space. There's not much in town as far as Main Street goes, but here lives the brick and mortar store for Jersey Girl Cheese (iykyk), which is where I bought the ricotta for this luscious little cake. 

RICOTTA CHIP CAKE

Adapted from Eater.com via Melissa Weller

1 cup mini chocolate chips
1 2⁄3 cups (200 grams) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 2⁄3 cups (367 grams) whole milk ricotta
12 tablespoons (1½ sticks, or 170 grams) unsalted butter, cubed, softened
1 ½ cups (300 grams) granulated sugar
3 (150 grams) large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon fine sea salt

Oven to 350. Line a big cake pan with parchment, or 2 smaller ones. Or halve the recipe and use one smaller pan. 

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl.

In a mixer, cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla, eggs one at a time, beating in to completely blend. Scrape down. Add ricotta, blend. 

Sift in dry ingredients. Gently mix on low until flour disappears. Remove mixer and stir in chips gently. Pour into pans, bake an hour-ish or until a tester comes out clean/reading 200 degrees +.

Cool.

Keeps several days and freezes well : )

Brownies for odd times

Like many of you, I've been trying to stay afloat.

Beyond the state of the world, it feels self involved to overly focus on what we are going through individually, and what moment the pandemic hit in our particular lives. But we also need to reflect.

Before state mandates to stay home and save lives, which I support fully,  Jack and I were doing a lot of outings. As a stay-at, work-from home parent, these outings were things I'd rely on for structure and inspiration, plus alone time. I never was thinking more than a few seconds about getting dirty at the park or potentially contaminated surfaces. Just bathe and wash it off.

One thing we would tack onto the park outings is a local bakery for book reading, mama's coffee and splitting of a cookie or brownie. Because, small business is important, and mama doesn't have to make everything everyday :)

But at the moment, I am doing a lot of that, and trying to find ways to extend and next over recipes, shorten time spent, simplify, get bang out of buck, and stock while not overstocking. Oh and there is also the opportunity to try new things.

Long story short, I finally tried a new brownie recipe for the repertoire, and for me, it is the goldilocks of brownies. You know what I mean. And, my son helped stir the batter.

Turmeric Lemon Loaf

I've been lately more interested in addressing the One thing.

And it's harder. Harder than doing all the little things. 

(The chopping wood and carrying water)

I've always been better at that part.

But we live in a chaotic world, and stopping to ask yourself what your priority is that day, or your top three of the week, can transform your day. 

As mama to a toddler, this has become super-evident. I find myself needing to address my time more than ever, as I float from being in the moment with my son and making myself stay there, sitting on the floor being silly and snuggly, blowing raspberries and playing with trucks, when the thought anyone emailing me or what I need to pick up at the grocery store later, or an enticing picture of crazy-looking Christmas cookies on Instagram, tries to sneak in and pull me into distraction. Or the boy knocks over his dish and steps onto is cereal laughing, my coffee spills and I laugh, too. 

I don't have a lot of time to hem and haw. Every minute counts, or so it seems. 

I found myself with a free second to tell you about this cake, though, because a little moment of satisfaction sat with me when I walked by it under the cake dome.

A yogurt loaf cake is one thing that will feed people, can be made quickly, stay for a few days and then park its extra slices-self in the freezer. 

That's a win

Summer and cooking bring up a lot...

On the one hand, there's more time to lounge, farmers markets galore with the bounty of produce, and all of the tempting things you are able to do! Berry pies, peach cobblers, jams, grilling. Then, there's the heat. The dread of heating the oven after a schlep to buy said produce when you're already sweating from carrying it home.

Getting together with others often involves being out. Or the days when you're laying out by the pool, then ordering takeout and blasting the AC at home seems like the right next move.

I always have maximized ideas for cooking projects, then find reasons to put them off. I  prefer free-styling when the moment strikes.

Big fruit desserts haven't happened much yet.

If it happens once or twice the rest of the summer, that works. I am ok with that.

There is precious time to be had with my 21 month old.
I'm celebrating the fact that I do manage to cook as much as I do with him running around.

I find myself approaching a day of cooking/feeding my family with the question:
What can I eliminate here?

One of the things that can become an unexpected witching hour is the breakfast hour. If I don't breathe through the morning it can send me on a tailspin before I've gotten dressed. I recently described it as feeling like a parade.

My son is up and bouncing off the walls, my husband needs to get out the door, I need to start my day. The tot would love if he could run outside the bedroom and be at the park already so I have to get him immediately engaged.

I've taken to getting straight out the door with him some mornings, with a stop at our local bakery to split a "chasson" (croissant) or kougin, which has become a little ritual for us when it happens. He isn't a strong one with table manners--wants to wander off the patio and knock on the cheese shop window, but these outings offer practice since it gets him excited and isn't about a formal "dinner."

But my wallet can't handle that every day and I want my kitchen to feed us as much as it can. One Saturday morning that didn't feel like a parade, I popped a few trays of these pancake bites into the oven. The batter assembles in a few minutes, and there's no flipping while standing at the stove. They are the perfect vehicle for dunking in maple syrup.


That's a win.

PANCAKE BITES

Note: I usually make half this recipe. But I know half eggs are annoying for people. The recipe below makes up to 48 if you make them small.

1 egg
4 Tbs butter, melted
2 cups well-shaken buttermilk

Big pinch salt
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups/(250 grams) flour
3 Tb (36 grams) sugar.

Mix wet and dry, then combine until just together. Let batter sit 3 minutes while you grease mini muffin wells.
Dollop into mini muffin wells and top with a few blueberries (or chocolate chips?)
Bake in a 350 oven for 10-15 mins.
Cool, then serve with maple.

Crumble Bars, Redux

Sometimes, there's a point in the everyday cooking process where you feel like the purpose of it all is to audition and figure out what to keep and replay those hits on rotation. Shh, I just deleted an old crumble bar recipe off of here from 5 years ago, and I am adding this one, instead. Karen DeMasco's crumble bars, via Food + Wine and Genius Recipes via Food52, are the only one's I'll make now.


Jam and Oat Bars

1 cup nuts, coarsely chopped and toasted
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
scant 1/3 cup granulated sugar
scant 1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing the pan
1 cup any preserves

Oven to 350 and line a 9 inch pan with parchment. Stir flour, nuts, oats, sugars, salt and baking soda together, then add butter and stir until clumps form. Pat 2/3 in the pan, spread with jam and top with other 1/3. Bake about 45 until golden. Cool completely and slice!

One thing: Lime Bliss Balls

There used to be just Lara Bars. Now there are so many varieties of fruit-nut bars and balls out there and they don't cost a penny. They are great for on-the-go, but I'd much rather work with whole ingredients. Over the years I've whizzed dates and nuts in the food processor on occasion, pressed and cut them and within a few days between hubs and I, they were gone! It's always a thing I wish I did every week as part of #mealprep. Because in my best life I do meal prep. Ha. Usually not. BUT. I'm a mom now, and time and windows have never been of the utmost importance. If I can do one thing that is uncomplicated for which my later self will thank me, I do it. Like these balls. Yum. A couple ingredients--lime zest and a little juice, unsweetened coconut, dates and almonds, and you've got yourself that portable fruit and nut snack in a package. Don't skip the lime, it really flavors it.

Tahini Shortbread

The other day, when my 9 month old (what? what? how has it been that long?) was doing one of his I have-no-idea-how-long-this-will-be naps, I thought I'd get ahead in the kitchen.  You know those moments, though, when the second you start doing something, bebe wakes up, and those other moments when, it seems, they just conk for two hours and you have yourself some Time. The trouble is, you never know which of them it will be. So you have to be quick and not get yourself in too deep. Making dough for this shortbread is done in ten minutes. Then it sits in the fridge overnight, and gets baked off the next morning. This shortbread is my new favorite. I don't know why this recipe isn't more popular? NYT by way of Soframiz by Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick. I love, love sesame seeds and tahini, in baked goods, more and more (they are my new favorite banana bread compliment) and the complex simplicity, if you will, in sandy, tender shortbread, is just fab.

It is waiting for you

I keep three cookbooks on top of my fridge at the moment: Smitten Kitchen Everyday, Small Victories, and Little Foodie, about baby food--which, I have yet to open and "cook" from (couple more months... but I like the reminder). I've been opening the first two more often than I've expected over the past few months. I love to riff, and time and again I don't cook from recipes, but there is something about simplifying the game by picking something printed, leaving it open on the counter, going about your day, and coming back to it when you have a chance. It is waiting for you. I am getting tired of reading recipes on my phone mid-recipe. 😙😙😙 I want to open a book these days.

Deb's Small-Batch Oatmeal Cookies

Well, I've just marked two months into this mothering thing. Sometimes it feels like I blinked and woke up into a different...I wouldn't say life, because a lot is the same, but when you have a baby, you come home with, a baby. And (Jack) is the cutest, healthiest, smartest little nugget. We are...in awe. At the moment he is laying in my lap half sleeping, hiccuping and just flashed me a smile. We also, within the first two weeks of postpartum haze, moved out of our very small former apartment of five years, into the larger apartment next door, and boy is it more comfortable. Between caring for and feeding the baby and managing to attend to ourselves, we schlepped our stuff a couple of feet over the course of a week or so and suddenly on Thanksgiving night, we were eating a turkey breast with cranberry sauce (my husband freaked out at me when he saw me handling a large raw turkey part in the middle of us moving and attending to an infant because it clearly wasn't necessary but was definitely festive and delicious) and later that night we were marathon moved, at the table in our new digs, with Jack apparently insisting on joining us (we are exclusively breastfeeding). Ed took a picture of that but it won't go up here. Thank God for two hands.

Things I'm freezing for postpartum

The media-stereotyped images of frazzled new parents grabbing at trail mix in the middle of the day or night do not give me comfort. We will be new parents, yes but I keep reminding myself that it is just us and we will be together at home. When you're a frequent home-cook, a kitchen production system is already enmeshed into your daily life on some level, and you need that continuity to feel grounded. So whether you're also expecting, or cooking for the future, I thought I'd round up a post about stocking the freezer with food, which I'm doing a bit at a time. I started freezing some baked goods like always, but a bit more. Once a stack of cakes and loaves was in there, I moved on to make some tomato sauce with August's Roma tomatoes and chicken broth with a bag of bones and vegetable scraps, then half of this week's homemade hamburger buns, you know, building a supply (update: will make more buns again this week cuz we ate them; I have loved burgers at home in this pregnancy).

Banana Bread
The no-brainer of freezing. Mini loaves are my friend here, as they allow for rationing and rotating.

I welcome thee

In just 4-5 months, we'll be first-time parents to a lively kicking baby boy. I'm taking a moment to pop on here today and pull away from the Internet comparisons of strollers, cribs, loungers, bouncers (do we need one?), irresistibly cute footed pajamas, how birth works, how we plan for the future, to boast about pie. It's ok with me if it's ok with you. For, the first thing I thought when diving into this whole mom-and-dad-to-be thing is, there's no "right" way. Do we really not know what to do? Or do we simply have a plethora of opportunity to watch what others are doing and second guess if we are or will be doing it well enough?

PBJ

When I plan to make something again and again, it goes on here. Of course, I haven't been sharing everything. There's been more bread. And this coffee cake and muffins to use the last of my frozen summer blueberries (where are you, rhubarb? Come soon?) and I brought Julia Turshen's easy orange cake to Easter and made mini ones for us to enjoy in the days after, too. When I caught a Facebook Live video of Liz Prueitt of San Fransisco's Tartine, casually making these gluten free nut butter bars, that also happen to be one-bowl, gluten-free and a lot more wholesome than your average peanut butter and jelly bar featuring lots of flour, butter and sugar, I was smitten. Liz uses almond butter, I'd use peanut, she used blueberry jam, I used strawberry, and another time, apricot, making them essentially a jazzed up PBJ sandwich in bar form, which means they're a good breakfast option, or afternoon nosh. What's not to love? I've already been back to them twice.

While you wait

Over the Christmas week break, I opened a package of yeast for the first time. To make: Saltie's focaccia, which is the only recipe I will ever need for focaccia. I'm not sure why I waited so long to tackle yeast, but suddenly it feels like the perfect time. We could all use a bit of kneading these days. Or no-kneading, in the case of a lot of recipes in the new wave of bread. Waiting, resting and patience. Magical things take place, while you wait. The purpose of sleep? To forget, researchers have said. There is no better place to see this than with bread.

The gift of time

I've been thinking a lot about time lately. How easy it is to lose track of it, "waste" it, judge how you spend it. And what is worth your time. There are things that take a lot of effort, aka, time, which translates to work which translates to money. This is a cheap meal that takes time. But it doesn't take much effort. The only work lies in the ability to decide to start. 

In this case, my husband suggested a few weeks ago, on a Sunday, we make the slow cooked classic Italian sauce (and my plans for a quick chicken thigh dish were averted). It was 3:30 pm and we had none of the ingredients. As we headed to the store (the specialty one with better meat, I read Marcella Hazan's recipe again and did a double take when I checked on a trusted blogger's rendition. Three hours of cooking time for the final stage, but "up to another 2 hours" for the first two steps. 

Don't be tempted to rush, is a phrase often associated with bolognese. Also, trust Marcella. 

I stopped us in the street. We did not start this early enough, I explained, and I had to be the killjoy. After some huffing, we bought a strip steak instead, sat down for an espresso, and headed home. I gathered the ingredients over the next week (simple, frugal ones, really) and on snowy Saturday, we got to it (with non-specialty store beef). After some fine dicing of a mirepoix and some stirring, the flavors are left to build at a simmer, and build and build. 

A third of the sauce is in my freezer now, along with the rest of the bundle of the fresh pappardelle from a pasta store in our neighborhood, and I plan to pull it out on a night I am strapped for time. Although, now I'm kinda hoping for another snow day to make a second batch.

Marcella Hazan's Bolognese

Adapted barely from NY Times

3 tablespoons butter plus 1 tablespoon for tossing the pasta
½ cup chopped onion
⅔ cup chopped celery
⅔ cup chopped carrot
¾ pound ground beef chuck 80% (or you can use 1 part pork to 2 parts beef)
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup whole milk
Whole nutmeg
1 cup dry white wine
1 ½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice

Pappardelle pasta and grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese to serve

Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in the pot and turn the heat on to medium. Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring vegetables to coat them well. Add ground beef, a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color. Add milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely (45 min). Add a tiny grating -- about 1/8 teaspoon -- of nutmeg, and stir. Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated (another 45 min), then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, add 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt. --NYTimes

A goldenness

Funny, I wrote this post on Election Day, hadn't published it yet. I, like everyone, woke up to an Internet with a lot of strong feelings.

I'm not sure anyone has escaped this election without feeling deeply, deeply provoked on some level. 

I don't think I've listened to the radio (often while cooking) more in my life than over the past few months. 

We haven't stopped doing what we're doing just because of a chaotic season of anxiety around us and now we are not going to stop doing what we are doing because something has been decided that we perhaps, have major problems with, but the person next to us, does not. 

We've had to keep going. We've had to examine our conscious. We've had to, in small ways remember what grounds us.To hold everyone accountable and to to be kind and strong and gracious. I woke up today wanting to act, to protect, to remember who I am, no matter what.

Good, cozy plan

Fundamentally speaking, baking chocolate chip cookies shouldn't be complicated. But with the many ways to do such a thing: brown the butter, rest the dough 3 days, use part pastry flour and part bread flour, find chocolate feves/wafers, choose to use expensive chocolate, use only whole wheat flour (still a great choice) or simply decide which recipe to follow---and it can easily become a bother. Not so with these cookies. There's one caveat though, which is also why I chose to bake them: they use egg yolks, which I found, sitting in a lone cup in the fridge after making omelets with an extra white. The recipe, from The Violet Bakery Cookbook by Claire Ptak includes only yolks to add a delicate richness to the cookies, and manages to do so without getting too fussy. You can swap in a bit of whole grain flour, dial down the sugar a hair, add nuts, use whatever chocolate to your liking, and also eat them on the same day, while stocking the dough in the freezer for later which, to me, sounds like a good, cozy plan for fall. 

A push

And with a snap, all things summer get stored in the memory...
Increasingly beautiful sunsets.
Air, mountains, grass, oceans (for us urbanites)
Low-power A.C. : ( (good riddance)
As I write, a powerful breeze, slightly tropical, gusts through the living room window, announcing its entrance.

It will be four years in this space next month. In my kitchen, this summer, I got extra counter space--a seemingly simple thing that now seems inconceivable was never here. 

One night, early-June, a few days shy of turning 31, I was talking to Bryan Calvert, chef at James in Brooklyn. It was a celebration of his cookbook. It was a lively evening, with delicious appetizers and cocktails, and a cookbook so big and pretty it took me weeks to make anything from it (more below..)

Midsummer

It seems like I blinked and it was Midsummer. Suddenly, the urge to do all the things we want to do fills us like school kids checking off bucket lists, the required reading punctuated by trailblazing. Except when you're an adult, there's not exactly a deadline signaling the close to your summer days except the sun itself. And I am reminded to appreciate all that we have done, are doing and what is here.

Hurry, hurry

This is my favorite cake of the season. There, I said it. With its colors and flavor profile, a rhubarb-almond cake would be ideal on a Spring table (it stems from a Bon Appetit Easter feature from about a year ago) but who actually gets rhubarb for March/April? The first time it comes around here is May, and I expect it to last only a few weeks, yet every Saturday, when I went to the farm stand with produce from Mid-South Jersey, it was there well into June.

A good thing to have around

Last mid-summer, while procrastiweddingplanning, I bought a popsicle mold, knowing that even if I wasn't making popsicles weekly, or even monthly, it would be a good thing to have around. I made raspberry yogurt pops (from Orangette) a bunch. We've got several ice cream shops in our neighborhood that have begun their summer craze. If you take a walk, it won't be unlikely you'll run into the gelato cart or ice cream truck from said places, both of which are doing very cool things flavors-wise. Going to a shop or passing by the cart to seize the moment, is always a way to feel like you're on vacation. Wanting an even easier route (can't I be on vacation in my own home?) today, I opted for Alice Medrich's fudgesicles.