Yearly Archives: 2008

Tie-dye glaze for cakes

bundt cake with tie-dye glaze

Steven’s birthday and Mother’s Day today, resulting in efficiency or someone being “screwed,” and I would say that this is Steven, since he has to share his special day with a lesser event.  He requested some sort of pound cake so I made that with strawberries and whipped cream.  I gave the cake a tie-dye glaze, in honor of Steve’s childhood in the 60’s and 70’s.  This is easy.  You need:  food coloring kit; lemon juice; confectioner’s sugar; 6 glass custard cups (or other cups that won’t absorb the colors); a fully cooled pound cake.  Place your cake on a large piece of foil or a sheet pan.  Mix 2 cups of confectioner’s sugar with a little lemon juice.  Add more lemon juice until you have a very thick glaze.  If the glaze is too thin it will dry transparently on the cake and all this will have been for naught.  Divide your glaze evenly among the custard cups.  Make red, yellow, blue and green, which are the colors that come with basic food coloring sets, by adding a couple of drops of color to each cup of glaze and then mixing with a teaspoon.  Make orange with some red and yellow.  Make purple (and this is a must) from red and green.  Using a clean spoon, spoon the purple glaze on the top of the cake, at intervals, so it runs down both sides and so you wind up with four or five strips of purple.  Do this with the other colors, one at a time, on the clean parts of the cake, overlapping now and again for a tie-dye effect.  Allow icing to harden completely before moving.  Cakes like this are good served with basic strawberry topping, which you can make by washing, stemming and cutting up strawberries (to your liking, i.e., sliced or quartered), and tossing with a good dose of sugar and a few drops of lemon juice.  Cover with plastic wrap, pop in fridge, and in a few hours you’ll have strawberries in syrup to serve over cake slices.   The cake and fixin’s were a big hit – especially with Berry, who kept a close eye on the operation.

Berry the akita wanting cake on Steve's birthday

R.I.P., sourdough starter

live sourdough starter 2006

I forgot to mention that my sourdough starter died.  Sourdough starter is a good thing to have on hand if you like to make homemade breads.  My starter was cultivated using only wild yeast, meaning I did not add any commercial yeast at the beginning.  I’ll be making more soon and will chronicle the process on the blog, as well as care and feeding.  In memory of my fine starter, I have a photo to the right that shows how active it was when it was alive.  One of the wonderful things you can make using a starter is English muffins; all you need is a good sourdough bread recipe.  After the final rise of the whole dough just cut it into small pieces, form the muffins and set them on sheet pans that have been sprinkled with coarse cornmeal.  Cover with cloth and let them rise a bit.  You then “fry” them (both sides) in cast iron pans that have been sprinkled liberally with coarse corn meal.  Bring the pans up to decent heat and then keep them on a very low flame.  You want to cook the muffins through as they brown and not wind up with burned muffins that are raw inside.  If you want perfect circles, form them initially using metal rings, but I think free-form muffins are better.  These muffins will taste so much better than store-bought, and you will blow your family and friends away, since the recipe for English muffins is a mystery to most people.  Split with a fork and toast, then spread liberally with good butter and perhaps a little peach jam.

english muffins in pans

I like to have cornmeal around

cornbread sqares on a plate

Try to keep corn meal on hand.  If you have corn meal and a few other staples you’ll be able to make corn bread, which means you can fix up a quick meal.  For example, corn bread with an over-easy egg and sliced ripe tomato.  If you have nothing but canned tuna and mayo, just serve the corn bread with tuna salad.  Use the recipe on the side of the container of corn meal you buy, but remember that recipes for corn muffins are sugar-heavy, so use them only if you want sweet corn bread.  Albers is what I use, and there is a solid Southern-style cornbread recipe on the bag.  Whichever recipe you use, get yourself a seasoned cast iron skillet to bake the bread in.  Lodge Logic (the “Logic” line = preseasoned) is very good, and you’ll be buying one of the last decent American-made products.  After you grease the pan put it in the oven and let it get hot.  Then pour the batter in quickly and bake.  This maneuver makes a difference, trust me.

Genova Deli in Oakland

Sandwich from Genova Deli in Oakland CA in 2007

Sandwich from Genova Deli in Oakland CA in 2007

Decent Italian deli in Oakland.  Why did we not know?  I’ll bet when we were told we dismissed the information because of how often we have been misled by people who have lame data points when it comes to certain kinds of food.  Anyway, we were driving on Telegraph in Temescal when we saw a sign for Genova Deli (5095 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland) and thought, “What the hell – let’s stop.”  We made our way around the nice-ish rectangular strip mall to find a jam-packed Italian deli that looked like it actually had something going on besides Columbus and Saag’s (now owned by Hormel, did you know this?) products.  Lots of counters with  prepared food and cold cuts and a serious sandwich operation.  The sandwiches are made on good, crusty rolls and have a respectable amount of protein.  You’ll find all the suspects here, like various prosciuttos and salamis.  They have many varieties of salami, not just Genoa and Sopressata, so this is a place to get a real salumi fix on.  There are packaged goods, like beans and pasta, alongside your truffle and olive oils.  One end of the store is dedicated to baked goods, and you can have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake there.  I am told they make excellent ravioli.  I’ll bet this place is out of control during the Christmas season.

Rice shortage

Big bags of rice were going by in carts when I was at a warehouse store the other day.  There seems to be a rice mania around here that came about as a result of media coverage of the Australian/world rice situation and general food shortage projections.  I don’t blame restaurant owners for wanting to stock up a bit before prices go up further, but I don’t think every family of four needs to buy three 50-pound bags of rice at this point.  News people in this country need to stop creating these situations.  Then again, is there any real news nowadays?  Can you tell the difference between the evening news and Entertainment Tonight?