Kitchen Bits

Just about all winter stews and casseroles fit into this category. These are the foods that warm you from the inside out. Winter makes such harsh demands on us that these meals most often have a nostalgic component- the chicken casserole your grandmother made, the beef stew that carried you through algebra in February or even the after hockey practice Sloppy Joes.

By the time spring rolls around we’re ready for green around us and on our plates. Fiddleheads, asparagus, ramps, lettuces, peas and beans. Bury me in green.

But some Springs don’t come skipping down the lane gathering songbirds and lilacs along the way. Some Springs are surly and given to hiding behind torrential downpours and purse-snatching winds. Nasty business.

It’s too late in the year for me to make another stew. I’ve had my fill. Another mac and cheese would fit the bill, but not my wardrobe, so I’m looking to another country altogether for some lift.

I’ve never been to Morocco. I’ve seen the pictures and heard plenty of stories most of which involved some 70′s haze and dodgy characters, but it’s the food that attracts. Morocco’s most famous food profile is couscous, bold spice, and slow cooking in a tagine. Turmeric, cinnamon, cumin and ginger play leading roles. The history of the country means there’s a melding of many cultures in the kitchen-Berber, Arab, Moor, Ottoman and French. This dish is an amalgam rather than a faithful recreation of a traditional dish, but it’s sunny and just the thing to brighten a grey day.

 Ingredients

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

½ tsp salt

½ preserved lemon diced and 1 tbsp lemon juice or ¼ cup lemon juice

2 tsps ground cumin

1tsp cinnamon

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp ground ginger

Pepper to taste

1 small cut up chicken 1-2 lbs   (save backbone for stock) cleaned and patted dry

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

1 large can diced tomatoes (796 ml approx. 27 ounces)

1 large can chickpeas, rinsed (540 ml approx 19 ounces)

¼ cup sultana raisins

¼ cup chopped fresh coriander

 Method

Mash garlic and ½ teaspoon salt with a mortar and pestle until a paste forms. Transfer to a medium bowl and whisk in lemons and/or lemon juice, and dry spices.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cast iron is the best if you have one.

Sear chicken until lightly browned. About 5 minutes per side. Remove from pan and set aside. 

I’m a fan of dining out. It’s one of the great pleasures in life and in a city like Montreal, it’s a significant part of the economy. But I’m begging you to pick another date to take your mother out-- a day when you can enjoy the best of a restaurant’s menu, linger over the coffee and cake and enjoy each other’s company without having to shout over the din of other families out on the same excursion.

This Mother’s Day I’m suggesting a simple home brunch.

It doesn’t take chef-level skills to make French toast, or fry bacon, and a green salad is a snap. Add this simple spring tart and you have a meal worthy of any restaurant in town. One caveat- serving Mom includes ALL the preparation and ALL the clean-up.

Okay 

Fiddleheads are in season right now. They sing Spring. They also look beautiful in this dish. Unfortunately, they aren’t available everywhere so asparagus works as a substitute.  I make my own pastry, but there’s no need.  The grocery store is your friend. They sell butter puff pastry. Buy it ready-made in roll-out sheets.  Look in the freezer section.

  Ingredients

Raw puff pastry- your own, or a package of frozen (thawed)

1 cup of cleaned trimmed fiddleheads ( see my archived post on cleaning fiddleheads ----- http://asta1ns.tumblr.com/post/119406645543/fiddlehead-soup )

or

6-12 asparagus spears --really depends on size of spears

6 ounces of soft goat’s cheese

¼ cup light cream

2 eggs

4-6 sprigs of fresh thyme (1 tsp dried)

3-4  fresh chive sprigs minced (1/2 tsp dried)

fresh grated Parmesan 

Pinch of nutmeg

Pepper to taste

Method

Heat the oven to 400F

Cut sheets of puff pastry into four 3x5 rectangles or 4x4 squares. (any excess pastry can be sprinkled with cinnamon sugar then rolled up and cut into cookie size portions and baked in the same oven. Instant dessert treat)

Score an edge around the shapes, meaning run a sharp knife about a ¼ inch in from the edge without cutting all the way through the pastry sheet.  Place on a Silpat or parchment lined baking sheet and put in the refrigerator until ready to bake.

Blanch the fiddleheads for 2 minutes and then cool in ice water and drain. Same with asparagus—1 minute for slender stalks, 3 for thick)

In a medium bowl mix the cheese, eggs and cream until smooth and then add the thyme, chives and spices.

Take out the baking sheet of pastry from the refrigerator. Spoon the cheese mixture into the middle of the pastry shapes. Arrange fiddleheads / asparagus on top. Sprinkle fresh grated Parmesan to taste.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until pastry is light brown and the centres start to colour.

Can be served warm or at room temperature. Can also be made ahead and served the next day. Just warm in a 350 oven for 10-15 minutes.

Everyone knows that rhubarb needs to be cooked to be edible, but most people only consider it as a dessert ingredient. It’s wonderful as a savoury.

A few years ago my mother-in-law mentioned that she missed the rhubarb relish she used to have with roast pork. News to me. I’d heard of pickled rhubarb, but not rhubarb relish.

She went digging through her cupboard of newspaper and magazine clippings, scattering scraps of paper, brown and crumbling from decades of fingerprint sauces and oils, and found it.  Like all recipes from the age before Fanny, Julia and Martha, instructions are scarce. In this recipe there are only two sentences--

“Boil together until it thickens.”

And

“Preferable to leave the 2 quarts dry overnight” The two quarts refers to an earlier, larger batch recipe. This one is enough to give you between five and six 500ml jars.

This recipe is about 100 years old. It comes from a time when not wasting food wasn’t considered a trend, but rather a common-sense necessity. Wastefulness back then was a sin and this recipe is for using up the last of the rhubarb, the stalks that have grown large and perhaps a bit stringy. The rhubarb in this recipe is not the star flavour, but rather a member of the ensemble. There is still a bright tartness about it, but it’s better with game than in a galette.

 Ingredients

3 cups rhubarb stalks sliced into small pieces

3 cups white onion diced

1 ½ cups white vinegar

2 cups brown sugar

1tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground allspice

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp pepper

½ tsp salt

 Method

Combine the rhubarb and onion in a large non-metallic bowl and let sit overnight.  Next day drain off the excess liquid. Transfer the rhubarb/onion mix to a large pot. Add the sugar and remaining ingredients. Stir to combine and bring heat up to a boil.   Boil for about five minutes or until the mixture starts to hold together but still has discernible bits of rhubarb and onion. Remove from heat and spoon into sterilized jars. Wipe jar rims clean, seal and give them a 10-minute water bath.

See below if you’re not familiar with water-bath preserving. Properly sealed jars can last for years.

A note about making the relish. Rhubarb freezes well and I have bags on hand for pies, cakes and muffins, but don’t use previously frozen rhubarb for this relish. The texture won’t be firm enough.

CANNING

Give the jars a 10 minute hot water bath, which means a pot of water brought to a boil and then kept on a strong simmer.  You need another large pot for this job. The water should cover the tops of the jars by at least an inch, I add more for insurance. You don’t want the jars sitting on the bottom of the pot. There are all sorts of canning racks for sale and so far not one of the many I’ve tried is any good for half pint jars- the ribs are too far apart and the jars end up tilted. I use an old round wire rack I found in a hardware store eons ago. For years I used kitchen tongs to get the jars in and out of the bath. It’s a fraught and risky method. Save yourself some aggravation and scalds and buy a jar lifter.  Kitchen and hardware stores usually stock them and they aren’t expensive.

 You know the seal is good if you hear the lids make a suction *pop* after you remove them from the canner. This should happen within a few minutes if not seconds. You should also see a small depression in the top of the metal lid. If you fail to get a seal on one or more jars, remove the lids, clean around the edges, reapply the lids and screw tops and run them through the bath again.

Nobody ever could explain why April 1st was a day for fools and fake news. There was talk of spring giddiness, and shaking off winter blahs, but that sounded lame even to an eight-year-old.

It wasn’t until I married and moved to Quebec that I heard of Poisson d’Avril which, frankly, sounded even more ridiculous. I was told it was the day children tried to pin paper fish on the backs of adults then ran away shouting “Poisson d’Avril”.  I  sort of understood the meshing of the doorbell game with Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but what in God’s Ocean did April 1st have to do with fish?

The expression ‘poisson d’Avril’ (April Fish) can be found in an early French poem dating back to 1466, and referencing April 1st as a ‘fools-errand day’ to a Flemish poet in 1561, but the melding of the two seems to link directly to French King Charles IX deciding in 1564 to standardize the date of the start of the calendar year to January 1st, away from the end of March. News travelled slowly and there was resistance to change among many rural communities. Those who stuck to the celebration of the new year during the Lenten season were declared ‘poisson d’avril’. There’s also some talk of the sun in Pisces and mackerel being especially easy to catch in the spring. Maybe it was as simple as someone being declared’ dumb as a fish’.  Whatever the particular details, it stuck.

I have yet to witness a single child in Quebec attempting to pin a paper fish on anyone, but I have seen fish cookies, chocolates and pastries. This I can embrace.

A standard roll-out sugar cookie dough is perfectly acceptable, but I’m a fan of a recipe from friend and cookie artist @fitpreserves (Instagram). I’ve adapted it slightly to my own preferences. I don’t want much of a rise for this cookie, but I do want crispness. Switching the leavening agent from baking powder to baking soda accomplishes both tasks.

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter

¾ cup white sugar

1 large egg

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 lemon’s grated zest

2 cups flour

¼ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

 Method

Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl.

Cream the butter and sugar in a standard mixer (about 3-5 minutes). Add egg, lemon juice and zest and stir until well combined.

Add dry ingredients to wet and mix to combine.

Turn dough out onto a flat surface. Divide in half. Form into a rough rectangular shape about 1″ thick, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.  The dough will keep for several days in refrigerator (months in the freezer) but if you’re planning on baking the same day-- forget the plastic wrap for one of the rectangles and instead, roll out the dough onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and put the sheet in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. I was delighted to discover that cookie queen Dorie Greenspan has been doing this for years.

Preheat oven to 400°F

When the dough is chilled and rested, remove from refrigerator and cut out fish shapes.

If you don’t have a fish cookie cutter you can hand-cut. Make two straight parallel cuts in the dough about 3-4 inches apart, or however large you want your fish to be. Then make alternating curved cuts along the dough. I like this method because no two fish are exactly alike and there’s next to no waste, and re-rolling.

If the dough has softened while you’re making cut outs, return the sheet to the refrigerator or even your freezer until it firms up again.

Leave about an inch of space between the fish before popping the cookie sheet into the oven for 6-8 minutes until the edges start to turn golden brown.

Remove from the oven and let cool on a metal rack before serving, or decorating.

Decorate any way you want. They’re fine as shapes, but if mixing colours for icing and letting your imagination loose is on your list of fun things to do… Go for it!  

Happy Poisson d’Avril!

I got as far as candied fruit and then ran into blind alleys and cul-de-sacs of misinformed, poorly described and deliberately vague descriptions of what I was pursuing.  I gave it up as one of those exotic French chef things that only the Michelin-starred were privy to.

Decades later I am standing outside Chez Louis at Jean-Talon Market in Montreal and I spy the biggest lemons I have ever seen in my life.

One of the marvellous things about this fruit and vegetable store is that you never know what you’ll find there and the staff is more than happy to share knowledge. This is where I learn about citron. Not citron as a translation of lemon, but citron as a thing unto itself. It also goes by the name etrog in Hebrew and cedro in Italian. I’m told that it’s prized for its peel and pith which are candied for cakes and other desserts. The centre is small and practically juiceless. 

 I hand over several dollars and take one home.

I’ve got a vague description of a recipe. Cook it in sugar and water. The hunt was on again. This time there’s an internet and at long last, success.  

All the recipes I’ve tried have two things in common, sugar syrup and time.  I thank David Lebovitz for the corn syrup tip because there’s always a risk of the sugar crystallizing when the syrup is boiled and the corn syrup prevents this from happening.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this can’t be rushed. The slices of citron have to slowly absorb the sugar syrup over several days. Rush it and the fruit will wrinkle and the skin will be like leather.  The slow approach is lovely. Etrog are prized for their not quite lemon scent, and turning one into candied citron will fill your kitchen with its perfume for a week.

I’ve noticed that most online recipes state that the citron will keep for a few months.  I have a mason jar in my refrigerator right now that contains a few remaining sections made in 2014. I used some in a lemon loaf a week ago. They’re still great.

This is the time of year to look for one if you live in North America. They’re expensive and the market is niche. I paid six dollars for a smallish one this year. You’ll have better luck if you live in a large city with good green grocers. Try all the names, when you go hunting.

Ingredients

1 citron ( about 1 lb)

4 cups of water

4 cups of sugar

1 tablespoon clear corn syrup

 Method

Scrub the citron to remove any impurities. The citron is shaped a bit like an American football so slice it lengthwise into six or ten wedges depending on its size. Discard the pulp and seeds.

Put the citron slices in a large heavy-bottomed pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer until the pith of the citron turns from solid white to semi-opaque, about 45 minutes. Drain the citron slices and set aside.

In the same pot bring the  4 cups of water, sugar and corn syrup to a boil.  Return the citron slices to the pot and boil for two minutes then reduce the heat to a simmer for 15 minutes.

Take off the heat and leave the pot covered to stand overnight.

Next day return the pot to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for 15 minutes. Take off the heat and let the citron stand overnight.

Day Three and Four- repeat the steps of Day Two, checking and turning the citron in the pot to make sure it’s absorbing the syrup evenly.

Day Five. The citron should now have taken on a slightly amber glow. Remove from the pot and set aside. Bring the syrup to a boil and keep on a rolling boil for 10 minutes. Immerse the citron slices. Take off the heat and let stand overnight.

Day Six. Check the syrup and the citron. If it’s thick enough for your liking and the citron have no cloudy spots, you can transfer everything to a sterilized mason jar and keep it in your refrigerator to use as needed.

If the syrup is still a little thin, remove the citron slices from the pot and set aside. Bring the liquid to a boil and boil until a candy thermometer reads 220°F. Return slices to syrup and let mixture come to room temperature before jarring.

 And it looks like this.

I’ve decided that whatever soup or stew we have on the day, it will include Irish Soda Bread.

In a world of crusty baguettes and fragrant sourdough domes, soda bread can be a drab dowdy sibling. Its great advantage is because it is yeastless, you can make a loaf in two hours or less.

As the name implies, baking soda is the rising agent. Baking soda needs an acid to activate properly and so this is why buttermilk is required. It took me a few fatal substitutions with regular milk when I didn’t have any buttermilk on hand to figure that out.

Soda bread looks like it’s been around for centuries. It hasn’t. In fact it can’t be any older than baking soda itself and doesn’t show up in recipes until 1836. But it is a humble sort of loaf that makes me think of poor crofters eking out a meagre living ahead of the potato famine that would send my great-great grandfather to Nova Scotia.  In truth I know nothing about him other than his place of birth. He was one of thousands.

At one time, almost a quarter of Canada’s population could trace their roots back to the island of the Book of Kells and on St Patrick’s Day even the most tenuous of connections is considered an acceptable excuse for Guinness, whiskey and wearing the green.

Some wonderful things are happening with Ireland’s food culture and cuisine, but I’ll always have a soft spot for plain Irish Soda Bread, especially now that I’ve figured out why so many earlier loaves I made were heavy as doorstops. I was using the wrong flour. I can thank The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread for setting me straight.

Take a close look at those two loaves. The one on the left is made with cake and pastry flour. The one of the right was made with regular enriched white flour. It is a leaden failure. It looks pretty from the outside but that exterior hides a multitude of sins. But don’t be dissuaded. Real Irish Soda Bread is a fine thing. 

The real thing is made up of flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk. Add anything else in the mix and you are making a biscuit or scone or veering into the dangerously enticing world of cake.

Ingredients

4 cups cake and pastry flour

1 ½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 ½ cup buttermilk

 Method

Soda bread was traditionally baked in a cast iron pot in the coals or peat of an open fire. I have such a lidded cast iron pot, known as a bastible. For those who don’t, the job can be done by greasing a large cake pan and then, once the dough is ready for the oven, placing another greased cake pan over the first.

First mix the dry ingredients together. Add the buttermilk all at once and stir to mix together. Time is of the essence here. Baking soda only has the one rise and it doesn’t last all that long. The dough will be wet and sticky.

 Knead only enough to form into a rounded shape. Use a knife to cut a cross on the top, to ward off the devil and bless the house, or more practically, to let heat reach the densest part of the loaf. Pop it into a 420F oven for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 15 minutes or until the top is golden and the loaf sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Everyone I’ve ever met can name a vegetable they’ve disliked since childhood. Perhaps there are some who have loved all vegetables from the day they were born. I haven’t met them. I’ve met a few who claim to dislike them all and a  few who say they eat them out of obligation rather than desire,  but very few who decided they were going to find a way to make a specific vegetable a best buddy.

Pickled beets were a table standard. Along with relishes and mustard pickles, they graced Sunday dinner tables across Canada in the 70s. Every grandmother had a china cabinet with at least one crystal relish or pickle dish. It was as much a part of setting the table as putting out the butter, salt and pepper. By the late 80s they were in the back of a cupboard gathering dust along with notion of Sunday family dinner.

I tried with pickled beets. I really did. They were  bitter dirt.

“But there’s clove!”

“It just taste sour”

The sour bitter aspect to so many vegetables, might explain why children have such a problem with them. It doesn’t explain why so many toddlers are happy to scarf down green beans and broccoli and then feed them to the dog a few years later. I suspect it’s because as we age we become more interested in salts and other seasonings. To this day, western children are served fairly bland meals, even after their kidneys are equipped to handle more.

When I was nine, I wasn’t thinking about any of this. I didn’t think about food at all unless it was right in front of me. I saw a lot of Harvard Beets. It was a dish served regularly through the winter months in the Maritimes.

The history and naming of the dish is disputed. Because a key ingredient is cornstarch, it’s certainly no older than the 1850′s. As to the Harvard name, there’s only folklore about either colour resemblance to the Boston University, or suggestions that it was a popular dish in the campus dining hall. What is certain is that it was an East Coast dish in term of popularity.

I loved how it looked and the smell was not unappealing. There was definitely an extra sweetness to it, and so I would take a bite. And it would bite back.  After the first flick of sweet, the bitter dirt asserted itself.  I persisted. Every time it was served, I’d take a bite. It was a rule in our house that you had to take at least one bite of whatever was served.

Then all the gears shifted into place. I can’t say exactly when, or even what meal, but somewhere in my early 20s, it happened. Bitter dirt became sharp earthiness. Harvard Beets added a layer of perfecting sticky sweetness. They are a favourite in our house.

 I suppose I still have time to teach myself to love turnips, but then, they’re turnips. Meh.

Ingredients

6 medium beets cooked and sliced or cubed

½ cup sugar

¼ cup white vinegar

¼ cup white granulated sugar

½ tbsp cornstarch

1 tbsp butter

 Method

The traditional recipe appears in almost every cookbook from the 30s through to the 80s virtually word for word. I’ve added a few more instructions for those who haven’t cooked beets before. You might want to substitute cider vinegar for white vinegar, or brown sugar for white. I’ve tried them both and while they introduce some slight flavour changes, you can’t call them Harvard Beets. Call those McGill, instead.

A word about cooking the beets.  You can roast or boil the beets, but for this recipe I prefer to boil them because I have a better sense of when they are al dente with this method. To boil, you should check that the tops and tails are intact, otherwise you’ll lose colour and flavour to the pot of water. Simply wash thoroughly, put in a 5 quart pot and cover with water.

Bring to a boil and test for doneness after 40 minutes with a skewer.  Drain into a colander in your kitchen sink.  

Once cool enough to handle,the skins should slide off with minimum effort. I wear vinyl gloves for this stage to avoid staining my fingers. Once skinned, Slice or chop into bite size pieces and set aside.

In a medium pot (3 quart) combine sugar and cornstarch. Add vinegar and water. Stir to remove any lumps and bring to a boil.

Keep on a rolling boil for 5 minutes. Add the beets and reduce heat to low for 30 minutes or off and let stand if you are serving them later in the day.

Just before serving, bring the heat back up to a temperature suitable for serving, and add the butter. The butter can be omitted if you like. It adds glossiness, and bumps up the flavour of the dish.

Give yourself at least two hours to prepare this. Most of that time is for cooking and slicing the beets, and so can be done a day in advance if you wish. If I’m serving this to company, I make the entire dish a day or days in advance.

This not what people think of when they picture maple syrup. They think of bucolic winter scenery, with a horse-drawn sled waiting for the hardy farmer to collect buckets of sap from the maple trees in his woods, taking them back to a little shack where it’s all boiled over a wood fire and magically turned to syrup.

Quebec’s 15,300 producers know this. It’s an integral part of their marketing.

It’s March.  From now until the end of April, give or take a week, Quebec’s woods will be filled with activity.

The same is happening to a smaller degree in other maple syrup producing provinces like Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and US states like Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.  But only Quebec has the thriving tradition of the cabane à sucre. 

Every weekend during the season hundreds of locals and tourists head out into the country to rustic commercial cabanes to fill up on  a 19th century diet of high energy hearty fare. From pancakes, and tourtières to tartes, and the maple snow taffy, known as tire sur la neige, everything includes maple syrup. In truth, most of the modern cabane à  sucre operations are more like banquet halls than cabins in the woods, but the intent is the same. It’s a celebration of maple syrup and the history that brought it to our tables. One of the staples of these feasts is fève au lard, which is always, without exception, made with maple syrup.

As surely as Canada’s indigenous peoples introduced the world to maple syrup, they were also the ones to teach European settlers how to bake beans with maple syrup. It’s a recipe that hasn’t changed much over the centuries. It was the predominant recipe until molasses made its way north from the Caribbean sugar plantations and gave Boston baked beans their rich, heavy almost bitter taste.  Baked beans with maple syrup are far more subtle, if any bean can be called subtle.

I’ve seen recipes for making beans in slow cookers. I’m not convinced. This is a recipe for a winter weekend. Start Friday with an overnight soaking of the beans in salted water. A tablespoon of Maldon or Kosher salt for five cups of water is plenty. The salt helps soften the bean and reduce the baking time, a bit. Instead of eight hours, your beans can be baked in five or six. You’re still going to give yourself all of Saturday to make them. This is a low and slow process. That thick sweet sauce needs hours to develop. Think of it as being productive while you binge watch that TV show you’ve been meaning to see. 

My recipe is an adapted version of my mother-in-law’s, and came with a much-loved cast iron pot.  I’ve not seen another as big or heavy, but a 5 quart Dutch oven or casserole will do.

Ingredients

1 lb navy beans or small white beans

¼ lb salt pork ( 1/3 lb pork belly if salt pork is unavailable)

1 large onion diced

1 bay leaf

3-4 sprigs of thyme tied with kitchen string

1 cup maple syrup (medium)

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon dried mustard

Pepper

 Method

Soak the beans in salted water in a glass or ceramic bowl overnight. In the first hour or two, check to see that the beans remain covered. They’re absorbing water and more might have to be added. Rinse well the next day. Set aside.

Preheat your oven to 250°F

Cut the salt pork into 1/4 inch cubes and cook in a large Dutch oven or bean pot on medium high heat on your stove. Once almost all the fat has been rendered out, add the diced onion and sauté until golden. 10-15 minutes approx.

Add the mustards and maple syrup and a cup of water stirring to combine and take out any lumps. Add the beans and four more cups of water and bring to a boil.  

Once on the boil, remove from heat, stir in the bay leaf, thyme and a generous helping of pepper and transfer to the oven. Bake uncovered for 5-6 hours or until the beans are tender, the sauce has thickened and the whole has a warm brown colour.  Every hour or so, check on the pot, stir the crust that’s formed back into the mixture helping to create the caramel-like sauce. Add water if the the sauce is too thick. Once done, remove the bay leaf and thyme stalks and serve.

Serves 6 as a main dish or 10 as an accompaniment to a platter of sausages, bacon, tourtière or ham.

An attempt to trace back an origin pancake is a fool’s errand. A pancake is a flat batter-based cake that has been fried.  It is a dawn of civilization food. Stone Age grinding tools from 30 thousand years ago contain traces of flours, suggesting pancakes, or at least some form of them was possible even back then. Every culture has a pancake of some sort.

Why the pancake became the star food of the day before Lent (the weeks leading up to Easter marked by fasting in western Christian churches) is a bit murky. Almost every article on the subject mentions it was an easy way to use up perishables like milk, eggs and butter that would be forbidden come Ash Wednesday. Mardis Gras is the Feast before the Fast. Fair enough. I would have picked chocolate cake, but there’s no denying that pancakes are easier and faster.

The pancakes of my youth are the griddlecakes, johnnycakes, or flapjacks that were a staple of roadhouse diners and family restaurants across Canada. My mother’s well-thumbed edition of Fanny Farmer opens easily to the recipe for Griddlecakes. It is almost the same recipe I make today. I use slightly less baking powder and slightly more milk because I like a flatter pancake. I use half the sugar because I want more maple syrup at the end.  I also rest the batter before hauling out the frying pan.

It’s all about the gluten. Great pancakes come from a soft, relaxed gluten batter. The best way to achieve this is to start with room temperature ingredients, work quickly at combining wet with dry and then let the batter rest.

I make my batter the day before and keep it in the refrigerator overnight. The next day the batter will have thickened (liquid absorbing flour), and I add a bit more milk to get back to a more pourable consistency. If you’re in a rush, forgot to make the batter yesterday, or just can’t be bothered, even waiting 20 minutes will give you a better textured pancake. Overnight isn’t necessary, I just  find it the most convenient method for me, especially if I’m planning on breakfast pancakes. Remember. I like flat.

One other important thing- if you love big, fat, fluffy pancakes, don’t rest the batter overnight. The leavening agents of the baking powder start to break down as soon as the wet meets the dry, and while you will get the second rising action when the batter hits the hot pan, it’s never going to be as puffy as when you get both.

If you want a shortcut for room temperature ingredients all you need is a microwave for the milk and butter. Between 30-50 seconds on high will do the trick and then wait a minute or two for them to cool slightly. As for the egg, a minute in a bowl of warm( not hot) water will take care of that.

Cooking the pancake is a trial and error effort. I’ve been making pancakes for years and often would end up discarding the first and sometimes even the second attempt in the pan. Because I make them only a few times a year, I forget just how hot the pan needs to be, or how much butter to wipe over the pan’s surface between each pour and even if I measure to the last millilitre, every batter is going to be slightly different based on resting time, density, even the humidity of the air. Forgive yourself and move on.

Test the pan’s heat by pouring a few drops of water onto the surface. You should see a sizzle and dance of droplets before they evaporate. If they disappear immediately, the pan is too hot. If they lazily roll around waiting for the music, the pan is too cold. Adjust accordingly.

Have a plate ready to hold the pancakes in a warm oven as you make them. Unless you are cooking for yourself alone, or have a commercial griddle pan, there’s no way you can make enough to share and have all of them retain the heat they need to melt the butter and maple syrup you are about to pour over them. 200°F is fine.

I pour my batter from a large measuring cup, but if you’re shooting for more uniformity, use a ¼ cup measuring spoon.  I have butter and a piece of parchment paper by the pan to wipe the surface as I go. Not a lot. Just a glossy smear.

After pouring out the batter it will start to form bubbles on the surface. Once the bubbles start to pop, take a spatula to peek if the underside is browned to your liking, and then flip and brown the underside. This side will cook much faster than the first. Remove the pancake to the warming plate and repeat until you have a stack. Or two. This recipe will give you 10 palm-sized pancakes or 6 large ones. It can be doubled if you need more.

Serve with real butter and real maple syrup. No substitutions. The pancake is a vessel for the butter and syrup. Quebec produces almost 80 percent of the world’s supply of maple syrup, so we know our syrup.  The only way to improve on this is to add crispy bacon. Breakfast sausage is also acceptable.

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

¾ cup of milk

2 tbsp melted salted butter

1 egg

Method

Have all the ingredients at room temperature. If you read the post, you know how to speed that up. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl and mix the wet in another.

Pour the wet into the dry and mix just enough to combine and take out most of the lumps.

Let the batter rest. Overnight, if possible.

Set frying pan or griddle to medium high heat. Run the water test. What, you haven’t read the post yet? Go read it.

Grease the pan with butter and pour your first pancake. Wait for the bubbles. Flip, brown, and remove to a plate for warming in the oven.

 In truth, marmalade in one form or another was already being made in the more prosperous houses of England and as the British Empire spread so did its marmalade. Apologies for the pun.

The appeal is understandable. In the depths of grey winter you can have a little pot of bright, shiny, tangy sweetness to lift your day. Or perhaps you want a dark, deep comforting richness of flavour to warm your morning.

Start searching the web for marmalade recipes and you’re liable to be overwhelmed with choice—delicate thin shreds in jeweled jellies, thick-cut Oxford, overnight-soaked and double-boiled. I thought I’d seen them all until I bumped up against recipes where the whole orange is poached for hours.

 How easy is that? I have an innate bias against the easy when it comes to food preparation, in that I tend to think that if it doesn’t require effort, it isn’t as good. I’m old enough now to know that it isn’t necessarily true. So I set out to test this poaching method against a good old overnight soak. My assumption was that the overnight soak would give me a peel with more bite and better flavour; the poaching would turn the peel to almost mush and the flavour would be cooked out of it.

I was wrong.

The poaching method produced a marmalade every bit as good as those where I juiced the oranges, scraped out the pulp, pips, and some of the pith, collected them in a cheesecloth bag, cut the peels into thin ribbons or  bits and then put all of it in a large stoneware bowl to soak overnight.

 With poaching, I just popped all the oranges and a lemon into a large pot poured in enough water to cover, brought the whole thing to a boil and then reduced it to a low simmer for about three hours. When I say easy, I don’t mean fast.

 Almost nothing about marmalade is fast. That is the attraction. The scent of oranges fills the house for at least two days. If that thought bothers you then you’re better off buying a jar from a small-batch maker.

My primary concern with the poaching method was not knowing when the oranges would be ready for the next stage. Poach too little and the peel would be like leather. Poach too long and it could all turn to mush. I opted for the spoon handle test. If the handle of wooden spoon easily penetrates the orange, it’s done. At this point I removed the oranges from the pot, left them to cool for about half an hour and then was able to easily cut them open and scoop out all the pulp pips and pith into a muslin bag. I should mention that I did this over the porcelain bowl rather than on a cutting board to catch all the liquids. Next came slicing the peel. It took no more effort than slicing a grape. For anyone with RSI concerns, this is the way to go.

  I’ll be making more marmalades using this method but not all, because sometimes I want a marmalade with more pith on the peel, and in poaching, most of it cooks away into the mix of pulp and juices. The pith not only contains the pectin, it holds the bitterness of the fruit and when making a deep, dark marmalade, that bitterness balances the treacly sweetness of the mixture. The most famous of these rich dark marmalades is Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade dating back to 1874. The key factor in this marmalade is the mixture is cooked for a long time at a low temperature, caramelizing and mellowing out the sharp bright notes of the jam. This is the marmalade Scott took to the Antarctic and Ian Fleming gave to James Bond. It’s marmalade with attitude.

I post these recipes with some hesitation because every maker I know has their own preferences and quirks. These two recipes make a marmalade that I like. They are far less sweet then any made by large commercial producers, and the peel pieces are bigger with more bite. If that sounds like your bit of toast, here you are.

POACHED SEVILLE MARMALADE

 Ingredients

 3-4 lbs Seville oranges (4 large or 6 medium)

1 lemon

5-6 cups water

approx. 6 cups sugar

 Method

 Wash and scrub the oranges and lemon in warm water.

 Put the oranges and lemon a large heavy pot and add enough water to cover. 5-6 cups should be enough. Bring to a boil and then reduce to low heat and simmer for 2-3 hours or until the oranges can be easily pierced with a wooden spoon handle.

Remove the pot from heat and remove the oranges and lemon from the pot and transfer to a large bowl. Leave them sit until cool enough to handle. About 30 minutes.

 While waiting, measure out the remaining liquid in the pot, make note of it, then return it to the pot.

 Within the large bowl containing the oranges and lemon, arrange a piece of cheesecloth to hold the pulp, pips and pith of the fruit. Working over the bowl, cut the oranges and scoop out all the pulp, pips and pith, transferring them to the cheesecloth. This is messy, wet work, but the bowl ensures than none of the juice or pectin will be lost. As each orange half is scooped out, the peel can be set aside on the cutting board. The lemon peel can be discarded, or shredded separately, and saved for use in other recipes.

   Tie up the cheesecloth and squeeze out as much liquid as possible into the bowl. This is where the remaining pectin is contained and it’s what gives the marmalade its jell or set.

  On a cutting board slice the orange peels into fine thin ribbons or chop into chunks. Whatever you prefer. Measure out the shredded peel and liquid and return all of it to the pot with the poaching liguid.

In my last batch I had five cups of poaching liquid and two cups of peel and pectin juice. This seven cups determines the amount of sugar to add. Usually my ratio of fruit to sugar is ¾ cup of sugar to every cup of fruit, but Sevilles are especially bitter, so in this case I use a 1:7/8 ratio.  Seven cups of fruit and liquids will take 6 cups of sugar*.

Add the sugar to the pot. Stir to dissolve the sugar and slowly raise the temperature under the pot until the whole thing comes to a boil.  Keep at a rolling boil until the mixture reaches 220F or passes the wrinkle test. About 15-20 minutes.

For the wrinkle test, before you begin boiling put a plate in your freezer. When you think your marmalade might be ready, remove the pot from the heat, spoon a small amount of the mixture on the plate and return it to the freezer. After a minute or two remove the plate and push the marmalade with your finger. If it wrinkles, it’s ready. If it wrinkles and holds that shape you have a hard set. If it wrinkles and then starts to slump back a bit you have a soft set. Your choice.

If it’s not ready, return the pot to the heat and boil again for another minute or two and test again. If it’s ready remove from heat, skim off any foam that might be remaining and then let it sit for about ten minutes before pouring into sterilized mason jars.

Give the jars a 10 minute water bath. (See the recipe for Red Pepper Cranberry Jelly if you’re unfamiliar with the water bath.)

OXFORD SEVILLE MARMALADE

Two things give this marmalade its dark colour and rich taste- the addition of brown sugar and the long slow cooking time before the mixture is brought to a final boil. Some recipes call for all brown sugar or the addition of molasses or treacle. I find these too strong and overwhelming for the oranges, so I mix half brown sugar and half white.

Ingredients

3-4 lbs Seville oranges (5 large)

1 lemon

cheesecloth

5 cups water

2 ½ cups brown sugar

21/2 cups white sugar

Method

Wash and scrub the oranges in warm water

Juice the oranges and lemon and put the juice in a large pot. Scrape out any remaining pulp and pips from the oranges and put in a cheesecloth bag.

Chop the remaining orange peels into pithy chunks or slivers. If you think the pith is too thick in places, slice it out and add to the cheesecloth bag.

Tie up the bag with string and add it and the slivered peel to the pot.

Add the water and bring the whole to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Low simmer. Barely bubbling, for about two hours until the peel is as soft as you want.

Remove everything from the heat and let sit until you can squeeze the cheesecloth bag without burning your hands.  When it’s cool enough to handle, squeeze all the pectin into the liquid and then transfer the entire mixture to a large sturdy stoneware or glass bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight. Some recipes leave extracting the remaining pectin from the cheesecloth until the next day. I find it flows out more easily while it’s still warm.

Next day, measure out the liquid into the preserving pan or large pot. Determine the amount of sugar based on the 1:7/8 ratio. Split the sugar proportions equally. This batch resulted in 6 cups of liquid and peel, calling for 5 cups of sugar in total—2 ½ cups of each.

Add the sugar to the pan and stir to dissolve, slowly, slowly raising the heat to caramelize the sugars, eventually bringing the mixture to a boil. Approx 20 minutes.

Keep mixture on a rolling boil until it reaches 220F or passes the wrinkle test (see above recipe). Given the amount of cooking that’s already gone on this can occur in under 10 minutes, although I’d expect about 15. Keep a close eye on it and stir!

Remove from heat and let sit for 10 minutes. This will prevent all the peel from floating to the top of your jars.

Pour into sterilised mason jars and give the jars a 10 minute water bath.

These marmalades will keep for more than a year in a dark cool cupboard or coldroom, and like wines, will mellow with age.

For a family that practically lived on stew during the winter months, it puzzled me for some time as to why Coq au Vin was never part of our menu. It might have had something to do with traditions. A middle-class Maritime family with its roots in Ireland is more used to beef and lamb stews. But chicken is much more basic. France’s Henry IV may have decreed “a chicken in every pot” but every culture has some stewed bird recipe. Once Julia Child introduced meat-and-potatoes North Americans to Coq au Vin in 1961’s Mastering The Art of French cooking, ignorance was no excuse.

That book never made it into our house. Mom was a Fanny Farmer cook at best and far too busy busting gender barriers at work to give any thought to what was on the table, as long as it was on time and hot.

So maybe it was the mushroom problem.

There was no such thing as fresh mushrooms in New Brunswick grocery stores until at least the mid-Seventies, at least not in our family history. Canned was the only thing available. Canned mushrooms on pizza.  Canned mushrooms with steak. Canned or nothing. Canned mushrooms in a stew or casserole add nothing but a slightly sour rubbery texture. So perhaps there was a long-ago attempt at Coq au Vin in our house, and I have done a fine job at repressing what can only have been a shuddering taste experience. In case there is any doubt, this was also a time when one had “cooking wine” which was some horrid vinegary leftover sitting barely corked on a shelf for months. Good riddance. Whatever it may have been, it wasn’t Coq au Vin.

But I’m not a total pedant.

 Like any dish with a long history, there are dozens of recipe variations. If you want to add half a 6-ounce can of tomato paste near the end of cooking this dish, go ahead. It will certainly thicken your sauce and add another acid, but I like the wine and cognac to come through a bit. I don’t need another tomato sauce.

The one thing I won’t compromise on is the idea that you can cook all of this up in less than an hour.  I’ve seen that claim made. This is comfort food. It takes time. Don’t rush. Have another glass of wine. Go set the table. Invite some friends over. Mash some potatoes to go with it. Have another glass. Share some stories. Enjoy life à table.

 MARINADE

¾ bottle of Bordeaux or Pinot Noir. If you wouldn’t drink it don’t cook with it.

4lb chicken broken down to breast thighs and drumsticks. Save wings and carcass for stock.

4 to 5 sprigs of dried thyme or a handful of fresh

1 large carrot peeled and chopped

1 celery stalk chopped

8-10 peppercorns

1 bay leaf

1 garlic clove sliced

METHOD

Put everything in a large resealable plastic bag and marinate in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight if you can.

COQ AU VIN INGREDIENTS

4-5 slices smoky bacon cut in one-inch pieces or 100gm of thick pancetta cubed

3 medium carrots peeled and cut into bite-size pieces

2 bags of pearl onions ( about 24 total) skinned

12-14 cremini mushrooms quartered

 1 medium yellow onion diced

2 cloves of finely diced garlic

2 cups chicken stock

2 tbsps  cognac ( or to taste)

3tbsp cold cubed butter*

*1-2 tablespoons of arrowroot flour for thickening if sauce is too thin

 Parsley, pepper, salt to taste

METHOD

In a Dutch oven or equivalent, brown the bacon/pancetta until crispy.

Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve

Remove the chicken from the marinade, pat dry and lightly season with salt and pepper. Strain the remaining marinade, reserving the wine to use later.

Add the chicken to still hot bacon drippings in the Dutch oven and brown on all sides. Render the fat out of the chicken and cook until skin is crispy. Remove chicken and set aside.

Add mushrooms to the pan and lightly sauté in the remaining fat for 1-2 minutes. Scrape up any brown bits as you go.

Add all the onions, carrots and garlic and cook until diced onions are translucent. Don’t let the garlic burn. If the pan is too dry, add a tablespoon of the reserved wine, scrape the bottom of the pan and continue.

Add the bacon/pancetta, wine, cognac and chicken stock and bring to a simmer.

Add the chicken except for the chicken breasts. The skin of the chicken should sit just above the level of the liquid. You didn’t go to all that trouble frying up crispy skin to let it get soggy in the pan.

Put the pan in a 350°F oven for one hour uncovered. In the last 30 minutes add the chicken breasts.Any sooner and you risk the meat drying out.

Remove pan from oven and remove chicken from the pan. Whisk in the cold cubed butter to thicken. If the sauce is still too thin, put arrowroot in a small bowl. Add a couple of spoonfuls of the sauce to the arrowroot to dissolve and stir until smooth. Add the arrowroot to the sauce and stir until thickened.  Add parsley, pepper and salt to taste.

Return chicken to pan to keep warm and serve.

Of course I didn’t. A cursory Google search told me how very much I didn’t. BUT I did think of them without knowing they already existed in the world. Swear.

That same Google search showed me people making rather optimistic claims about the health benefits of matcha balls. I make no such claims. Dates, figs and apricots, for all their goodness, still contain sugars. Sugar is sugar is sugar. These contain far more sugar than anti-oxidant bearing matcha.

These are better for you than stuffing your face full of chocolate-covered jellied sugar water, and I can say they’re gluten-free. But they’re an energy treat. This recipe will give you 24 truffle-sized balls of yum.  Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a week, or in a freezer for several months. Try not to eat them all at once; they do contain caffeine.

INGREDIENTS

Balls

1 cup pitted  dried dates 

½ cup dried figs

½ cup dried apricots

½ cup pistachios

¼ cup unsweetened coconut

1 tbsp matcha

2 tbsp coconut oil ( melted)

¼ tsp pure vanilla extract

 Coating

½ cup chopped pistachios

1 tsp matcha

METHOD

In a food processor or blender, combine the dates, figs, apricots, pistachios, and matcha and process until the texture is like tiny pebbles or coarse sand.  Add the coconut oil and vanilla and pulse until well combined. The mixture should be sticky enough to hold together when a bit is squeezed in the hand. If it is still like sand, add a few drops of water, combine and test again.

If you want bite-sized balls, scoop 1 dry teaspoon portions and roll each into a ball and set aside.

Make the coating* mix by combining the ½ cup of ground/chopped pistachios with the teaspoon of matcha in a shallow bowl.  Roll the balls in the mix, pressing slightly if needed, to coat. Place the balls on a plate or tray and refrigerate until set ( 15-30 minutes).  Once set, they’re ready to serve or store.

It’s not much to look at- a mushy sickly yellow that so resembled the smog of 19th Century Industrial London that it took on the nickname London Particular in England.

Its trip to Canada is more than likely to have come via France. I’ve read speculation that it was a staple for Samuel de Champlain’s crew and subsequent settlers. Perhaps. Its ability to warm and sustain certainly made it a staple of Canadian fields and lumber camps especially in Quebec where this soup is most popular.

When the winter winds cut through to your bones, it doesn’t much matter what the history is. It’s better to have a steaming bowl of soupe aux pois to thaw you out.

It’s a simple soup. The recipe I have comes mostly from my mother-in-law. Family recipes like this are really nothing more than a list of ingredients and an order of preparation. If you have made a soup more than 100 times you have long passed the stage of measuring anything except by eye. This is a forgiving soup, so quantities are suggestions rather than edicts.  One caution. If you’ve had a bag of dried split yellow peas sitting in your pantry for a year, you can use it for this soup, but those peas are past it- they’ve been aging like any other vegetable except at a much slower rate. Buy a new bag.  

I save the bones from picnic hams in our freezer for making this soup, but you can buy a ham hock at most grocery butcher counters. Some variations of this soup say you can substitute chicken stock for the ham. You will end up with a tasty pea soup but it won’t have the same depth of flavour. They will be cousins, not siblings.

INGREDIENTS

1 lb dried split yellow peas (approx. 2 cups)

1 ½ lb roasted ham bone or ham hock

2 celery stalks 

2 carrots

2 small yellow onions or one large

2 tbsps butter

1 bay leaf

6-7 cups of water

Salt and pepper to taste 

METHOD

Pick through the peas and discard anything that doesn’t look like it belongs. (wrinkled, discoloured, pebbly)

Rinse the peas in a colander and set aside

Peel the carrot and dice all the vegetables.

Melt the butter in a large (5 qt) heavy-bottomed pot.  Mine’s cast iron, but a Dutch oven will do.

Add the vegetables and sweat on medium high heat until the onion is translucent.

Add the peas and bay leaf and stir.

Add the ham bone and enough water to just cover—6-7 cups should do it.

Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer, stirring, and also skimming off scum occasionally. Maintain the simmer for an hour-2 hours until the peas are fall-apart tender. You may have to add more water through this simmering time if the soup is becoming too thick. If it looks like lava, it’s too thick.

Remove ham bone from the pot. When cool enough to handle, cut off the meat from the bone into bite-size pieces and set aside. Taste as you go. Sometime the outer layers of the ham have lost most of their flavour to the soup. Discard anything that you wouldn’t eat on its own.

Traditionally this is a lumpy chunky hearty soup with discernible bits. If you want something smoother, this is the time to bring out the immersion blender and puree until you’re happy. I like it chunky. I smooth it only slightly by stirring with a ball whisk.

At this point, you can either return the chopped ham to the soup  and stir it in, or ladle out the soup into individual bowls and sprinkle the ham on top.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with chunky bread and a salad.

This soup is even better the next day.  

I’ve decided I’m going to be more honest with myself. I’m going to eat the chocolate. I’m not going to spend an hour a day at the gym and I’m never ever going to give up butter.

I did go off the rails in December and I’m forgiving myself and restocking the freezer.

Stock. It’s my building block for the most versatile of winter comfort foods- Soup.

I’ve been making my own for more than a decade and I’ve learned a few things.

It’s not hard.  It isn’t. Anyone who goes on about ratios and exact temperatures and the need for eggwhites to remove impurities is faffing about.  Comfort food should be comforting when you’re making it as well as when you’re eating it.

A quick word about meat stocks versus broths. Stocks are always made with bones. Broths can be made from meat alone. Broths are almost always seasoned in the making; it helps compensate for the lack of bone flavouring. Stocks are most often not seasoned ( aside from bay, salt and pepper) since they are a usually a base ingredient, rather than a final dish. When I know I’m making a chicken stock for chicken soup, I throw in a handful of dried thyme.

This is what you need

Bones

Save the bones from whatever meat you’ve roasted until you have enough to work with. For me, that’s two chicken’s worth, or four roasted beef ribs, or a three-pound mix of whatever’s been consumed over the past month or so.

Put the bones in a five-quart pot.

Just cover with cold water. Adding more water is not going to help- it’s either going to give you a bland stock or you’re going to have to leave it on the stove longer reducing it.

To that add-

Parsley-  a wilted  handful is okay but it should still look alive- otherwise use a tablespoon of dried.

Two celery stalks, two carrots, a medium onion, a bay leaf and some peppercorns (a dozen works for me).

Clean, and slice the vegetables. The idea that you can just throw any old thing in there and it will be fine is wrong. It doesn’t have to be pretty, but if you wouldn’t serve the vegetables raw, don’t think they will be fine cooked.

Some people start with the vegetables, sweat them in a bit of butter and then add the bones and water. Go ahead if you can taste a difference in the extra step. The only time I start with the vegetables is if the bones I’m using haven’t already been roasted. In this case, I sweat the vegetables, then roast the bones, and then add the water.

 Whatever order you’ve chosen, this is when you bring everything to a boil and then reduce it to a simmer. Simmer. This means you can see individual bubbles rising to the top. Think of it as a slacker effort. That’s how much bubbling you want.  Skim off the foam as it forms.  Now leave it alone for about 4 hours*. Taste. Add salt if it’s needed.

Strain through a colander. I add a layer of cheesecloth but it isn’t absolutely necessary.

At this point I put it in the fridge overnight because the next day, when I take it out, the fat has solidified at the top and I can remove it easily.  I have stock. So do you.

Use it to make soup, add to sauces and gravies, or, as I often do.. just drink it by the cup.

Leftovers go in the freezer (6-months in a refrigerator freezer/12-months in a deep freezer. I confess, I have thawed and used two-year-old stock and it was fine, but it had lost some flavour).

So I stalled on posting this recipe for weeks. I’d posted an upside down cake recipe recently and it’s not that I think the world needs another gingerbread recipe. But there might be one person out there, hosting a meal over the holidays, who doesn’t want to serve plum pudding, or mince pies or cookies to their guests. If you are looking for something both familiar and different, then this is the recipe for you. It’s a comfort desert with style.

The cake is rich, without being cloyingly sweet- the ginger gives it zing and the pears give it depth. It is as good the second day as it is out of the oven. I’ve even experimented with freezing leftovers and so far, it holds up amazingly well. The trick is to set the cake( or segments of cake) on a plate and freeze it before wrapping it in clingfilm for longer-term storage. This way the wrapping won’t stick to the pear and caramel topping when you defrost it.

INGREDIENTS

Pear topping

2  firm Barlett or Bosc pears

2 Forelle pears (  1 more Bosc if  Forelles aren’t available)

¼ cup unsalted butter

¾  cup packed  brown sugar

Batter

2 ½  cups white flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp ground ginger

½  tsp ground cloves

1 cardamom pod (  ground seeds )

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup molasses

1 cup boiling water

½ cup unsalted butter room temperature

½  cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

2 tbsps  candied ginger  finely diced

 Make topping

Peel and core the large pears, cutting each into 8 wedges. With the Forelle, peel and core and cut in quarters, or fifths if you want a star shape(they will sit in the centre).

In a 10-inch cast iron pan, melt the ¼ cup butter and ¾ cup brown sugar. Stir until the sugar melts and the mixture is liquid. Add the pear slices in a circle pattern, rounded side down. Cook until the pears start to soften. Remove the pan from heat when it all starts to bubble.

 Make cake

Preheat oven to 350°F

Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom and salt in a bowl.

 Lightly apply cooking spray to the inside of a 2-cup glass measuring cup such as Pyrex. Pour in molasses and then stir in the water until both are combined.

In stand mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, add the egg and mix until smooth. About 3 minutes.

Alternate the addition of the molasses and flour by hand to avoid over mixing, giving it a few turns at the very end with the machine as you add in the diced candied ginger.

Spoon the batter over topping in the cast iron pan, spreading evenly and trying not to move the pears around.

Bake until a wooden tester comes out clean,  40-50 minutes.

Set the pan on a rack to cool for about 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges.  Here’s the tricky part. Use oven mitts to protect your hands.  Place your serving platter/cake stand over the skillet, hold both together firmly, and then flip so that the cake stand is right side up and the skillet is upside down. Any bits that remain stuck to the surface of the pan can be added to the top of the cake, or eaten by you. Baker’s choice.

Serve warm with ice cream.