oatmeal scones

I've been on an oats kick lately, from granola and yogurt to gooey oatmeal pancakes and now these, oatmeal scones with dried cranberries and white chocolate.

I baked these scones this morning, having woken up feeling both energized and defiled by my late night at the Pallas stripper contest. (Don't judge me until after you've eaten these scones.) The experience was so out of my usual orbit that it was necessarily exciting, if a little skeezy. I sat at the table next to my friend Brandee (a Stripper-oke veteran), in awe of what those women can do around a pole. They're athletes, and saying that isn't some hackneyed, post-feminist excuse for an activity that actually debases women (though I saw evidence of that, too)--the core muscle strength, flexibility and grace of the dancers is jaw-dropping. I was startled to find myself at one point with my mouth wide open, staring in unbridled amazement.

Plus, once you've seen a couple of vaginas the nudity gets less noticeable. At least to those of us who have vaginas and find them mildly disgusting at the best of times. But we were talking about scones, right?

So the stripper contest made me want to both jet to the gym to increase the flexibility in my hamstrings and reassure myself that domesticity is not divorced from sex appeal. Hence these seductive scones...and the 9am trip to the gym with T (who's working out to prepare for a shirtless scene in a new movie project--lady readers, keep your pants on).

Nubby and flaky on the outside, rich and dense on the inside, studded with soft raw oats and tangy cranberries and sweet, melty bits of white chocolate, these scones are like a wedge of the best possible oatmeal cookie married with the superlative homemade granola bar. I started with an old Gourmet recipe, but these scones are divorced enough from the originals to be called my own. The significant changes I made were to use self-rising flour with a bit of extra baking soda; dramatically increase the spice quantity and variety; add some wheat bran for fiber, dried cranberries and white chocolate chips; reduce the butter and include a couple tablespoons of organic vegetable shortening to increase the flakiness; and cut them into magnificent craggy triangles, homey enough in look to be comforting and full enough in flavor to be special.

By all means play with this recipe, leaving out the wheat bran or using whole wheat flour, brushing the scone tops with milk, brown sugar and oats before baking, omitting the fruit and chocolate, changing the spicing and making them savory with paprika and cheddar. These are yummy. Bake them and eat them, and do a little sexy jig in the kitchen while no one's looking.

Homey Oatmeal Scones

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and line a baking pan with a sheet of parchment paper.



2. In a bowl or your food processor, combine 1 2/3 C self-rising flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/3 C wheat bran, 1 tsp cinnamon and a 1/4 tsp each nutmeg and cloves, and 2/3 C brown sugar (I was out and ended up using powdered sugar with no problems). Add 1 1/3 C raw oats and pulse 15 times.



3. Add a handful each of dried cranberries and white chocolate chips and mix well.



4. Cut 1 cold stick of butter and 2-3 T of vegetable shortening into 1 T pieces. Add to the flour mixture and pulse until the texture resembles cornmeal with a few pea-sized lumps of butter. You can also do this with your hands or two butter knives.



5. Gradually add in 2/3 to 1 C milk, buttermilk or cream. Pulse or hand mix until just combined. You want the mixture to be moist enough to hold together, but not wet. The dough shouldn't stick to your hands when you pat it out to the shape the scones.



6. Dump the shaggy mess onto a very lightly floured counter top and knead a few times. Don't over-knead unless you like very dense pastry.



7. Pat the dough into a thick circle (maybe 8 inches across and 1 1/2 inches high) and cut into eight triangles. Place the scones on the sheet with a little space in between them. Bake for approximately 16 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a scone comes out clean.



8. Let cool to warm and enjoy. I like these without butter or jam, but I'm sure they'd be lovely with salty butter or a dab of marmalade.
   
   
   
   

May Storms

It has rained for eight straight days. And that may be a conservative estimate, because I can't quite remember the last day yellow light filtered through our blinds to create sun spots for the cats to sleep in. Instead the felines have chosen my lap as their primary source of heat, a decision that wavers (in my experience of it) from drowsy and comfortable to please get this wet cat and her muddy paw prints off of my laptop and out of my water glass.

I'm exaggerating a little--not about the cats--but about the rain. Not about the rain's duration, either, but about my unhappiness with the sun's vacation from Portland. Truth be told, I like the rain, and the stormier the better. The weather suits my inclination to cook and bake, read and write, and watch back episodes of Survivor in the early weekend mornings with Tom. I do miss running around outside, biking and pulling grass shoots out of my plants, and grading in the sun, but since I'm not an X-Man and have no control over the weather (I know! You're shocked!), I can be patient and appreciate the gray sheets soaking my strawberries and encouraging me to drink one more cup of tea before getting up to do something more productive.

So it is that I find myself on Sunday evening, after a mellow day that started early with the gym and will end late with the finale of Lost--filled in the middle by oatmeal pancakes with blackberries and warm maple syrup, reading and working, baking cranberry walnut bread, starting my first batch of yogurt, and a simple solo dinner of wheat berries, red chard braised in (T's amazing) tomato sauce, and a creamy poached egg--sitting on the couch with a damp cat and a computer on my lap, about to dive into the first of Robert Jordan's endless fantasy series.

For the readers who don't know this already, I harbor a secret love for (good) fantasy novels. I came to this self-realization late, when T thrust a Robin Hobb novel into my arms and said, This will change your mind. (It had been a pretentious, dismissive mind.)

It is now a more flexible one.

If you like Grimms Brothers' fairy tales (enough to have read them as an adult) and The Princess Bride and bildungsroman and the dubious authenticity of the Arthurian Legends (and dragons, princesses and magic), you will like fantasy novels. They're fun and expansive worlds, especially in the hands of character-driven authors like Hobb and George R R Martin (though curse you, Martin! For failing to finish the Sword of Thrones series, and for leaving us hanging with a book covering the exploits of the least exciting characters). I've read some Terry Goodkind, too, but a few books into his series I tired of his lovers kept apart by destiny fighting a never-ending stream of evil plotlines. I watched Buffy for that, you know? Give me something with a little more to chew on. Give me less obvious allegories for modern-day struggles.

(So, I am still a little pretentious and dismissive. But I believe in standards. Even brain candy should contain a few nutrients.)

So. Yes. The rainy gray evening and the less damp cat and the more damp sweater and the glass of water with an unmistakable trace of mud. And the book.

I don't really mind the rain.

Classic Crumb Cake, like Papa Used to Buy

When I was little we used to go to my grandparents' house on Sunday mornings for brunch, and if the weather was warm, an afternoon of swimming in Wincoma Bay. The brunches were typical Long Island Jewish affairs, with piles of fresh, chewy bagels, the whipped cream cheese I loved because we only ate it there, my Papa Lenny's herring (still an object of horror), lox, tomatoes, and onion slices. And those bagel sandwiches were really, really good...

But nothing beat the crumb cake.

If you've never eaten New York crumb cake, picture a thin slice of cake covered in at least 1 1/2 inches of dense brown sugar-butter-cinnamon crumbs. To be truthful, the cake part was never that spectacular; the typical slice crumbles into dry, tasteless pieces as soon as it makes contact with your mouth, causing minor choking problems. But we endured the cake in order to put off the slow, extravagant eating of the rich crumbs, trying to make them last just long enough to make our siblings jealous but not to invite the attention of our dad, who is an unethical eater when it comes to his favorite treats. ("Let me show you how to lick that ice-cream cone." "Can I see that cookie?")

So why does this admittedly flawed cake incite so much pleasure? In part the memories amplify its deliciousness and downplay its flaws, especially since my grandpa passed away, but it's also because the cake has potential. The crumbs are already delicious, right? So all that remains is to turn the bland cake into a lush crumb accompaniment.

Abigail Johnson Dodge does just that in The Weekend Baker, which, by the way, is totally worth the purchase. It's full of fast and delicious homemade goodies that you can whip up at 7am the morning of a birthday brunch because you kind of forgot to make something. I mean, who does that, though?

Dodge's cake is soft and subtly flavored with vanilla, which is a nice counterpart to the spiced topping. It just gets better as it ages, too, because the crumb top softens and solidifies into a rich mass (it's a lot more appetizing that it sounds) and the cake gains a certain density. The only alterations I made were to add an extra bit of cinnamon, use only brown sugar (and to reduce the amount slightly), and to just barely reduce the amount of melted butter, which is pretty extravagant.

The 9x13 cake will feed a small breakfast army, so make this for the people you love. And eat it with them.

Classic Crumb Cake (from The Weekend Baker)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Melt 3 1/2 sticks butter (yeah, I know) in a small saucepan. Set aside 3/4 C for the cake.
3. To make the topping: Mix the remaining butter (16 T) with 3/4 C brown sugar, 1/2 C granulated sugar, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, pinch of salt , and 2 2/3 C flour in a large bowl. Set aside.
4. To make the cake: In a large bowl, mix 3 C flour, 1 1/4 C granulated sugar, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. In a separate bowl, combine the reserved butter (12 T), 1 C whole milk, 2 eggs, and 2 tsp vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and mix until just combined.
5. Pour the batter into a lightly greased 9x13 baking pan. Sprinkle the crumb mixture over the top in an even layer (it will be quite generous).
6. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the cake springs back when lightly pressed and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Let cool before eating. And, if you can wait, don't eat it for a few hours. It just gets better.

Green Grocery

I just, for the first time, added up how much I spend on food and house-related goods per week and was surprised to see an average $144/week (caveat: this includes low-cost prescription medicine and toiletries).

That's a lot of money. Especially for someone who prides herself on shopping wisely, buying seasonally and buying bulk, making most stuff from scratch. I know you're looking on the blog now and thinking, ricotta tart? Not exactly budgetary. But to be honest a tart is just flour, butter/oil, and something in the middle that doesn't have to be too expensive, like cheese. That fresh ricotta made two dishes with a lot of leftovers. And who doesn't have flour, oil and cheese in the pantry? So where's the money going?

One culprit is definitely multiple trips to the store. I never seem to have everything I want in one go, and so back to the store I fly (with glee--I love grocery shopping) and I inevitably end up with something not on my list. Like last week's little wheel of Spanish goat cheese and that small red wedge of Dorset. The loaf of ciabatta and the organic tomato to go with them (especially egregious given that I baked ciabatta last weekend!). The bottle of wine for Ryan's birthday party that no one drank...and stayed with Ryan.

The other culprit, much as I hate to say it, may be my food choices. I shop at Whole Foods. I do buy beans, grains, nuts, granola and some flours in bulk, but I counter that with organic produce, dairy and meat. I buy myself little yogurt containers to take to work instead of the more budget-friendly large buckets (which seem to languish in our fridge, collecting mold colonies), and I always find something to splurge on: ginger granola, asparagus, pink lady apples, buckwheat noodles. Because I don't buy packaged goods and I do cook a lot, even our sweets, I forget that even the most budget-conscious person is going to spend more for an organic, well-rounded diet. And if that person has a bread-baking habit and a subscription to Bon Appetit, well...it's hard to resist that pancetta that so perfectly tops those roasted baby leeks.

I need to make an effort to stick with one list all week and bear out the consequences. This week is shot as I have a Mother's Day Brunch to attend to (well, come one, what's lucre compared to the gift of birth?), but starting next week I will plan and implement with the fastidiousness of the most anal-retentive wedding planner. One list, one trip. If we run out of milk then we'll be the unhappiest unintentional vegans on the block. And I'll set a reasonable budget, something of an average of my usual visits: $75/week for two people, with an extra $25 for cat food, etc. Forty-four dollars saved is something, right? I probably won't stick to such orthodoxy, but I want to see what happens to my money.

I believe in eating well, and I believe that food should be a larger factor of my budget than entertainment or clothing or anything else other than rent, but I also want to live within my means. And those means ain't so much.

So farewell fair Dorset; grace another plate with your red wedgy magnificence. And pass the beans, will you?

Savory Ricotta Tart

Maybe it's a spring thing; the birds are singing, tree pollen is floating, the neighborhood squirrels are playing capture-the-female, and I can't stop thinking about tarts.






And while sweet fruit desserts like the rustic strawberry tart I made last week are nice, what I really yearn for when my stomach yells, "Tart!," is something savory. A sugar-loving pastry chef might disagree, but I find the balance of salt and fat, mixed with whatever herbs, veggies, cheeses or meats you use, much more compelling in a tart than the sour-sweet tang of fruit. And while the various combinations of nuts, fruits, chocolates and spices in dessert tarts are exciting, there's so much more to play with when you shun the sweet for the multifaceted world of animal, vegetable, mineral.

That said I find it hard to bake a tart just for the two of us. Would we eat it with greedy bites, toasted or out of the fridge, stone-cold, with guilty crumbs on our lips? Yeah. And we have. But tarts are so presentational that it's way more fun to bring them to parties for your friends to ooh and ahh over. Besides, it's a well-known fact that food tastes better when the cook's ego has first been seasoned with praise. (Oh, you know it's true. Don't even try to deny it.)


So it was that I found myself thinking about our friend Ryan's birthday party tonight, which led to thoughts about the half container of fresh ricotta on the floor of our fridge, which led to memories of Clothilde's amazing olive oil pastry crust which led to a reminiscence about last fall's tomato tart, which led to the unstoppable urge to make one, right now, for Ryan.

Obviously, this tart is for Ryan.


I started with David Lebovitz's recipe for an herbed ricotta tart, changing out the spring onions for a leek and some shallots. I also added fresh goat cheese to the ricotta to increase the tang, and mixed in fresh rosemary and thyme. My final substitution was to use a few pieces of crumbled, crisp bacon in place of the chorizo. Normally I love chorizo, but something about spicy sausage in a tart turned me off. And I'm sure it would be extra delicious to use crisped pancetta or prosciutto in place of either.

The extra 8 ounces of cheese made the tart bake a bit longer, almost an hour. Just wait until the middle sets before you take it out of the oven. Then, as it cools, sprinkle the top with some reserved fresh herbs. So pretty!

Savory Ricotta Tart (serves 8)

1 tart crust (olive oil or French butter, even puff pastry might do in a pinch)
8 ounces fresh ricotta
8 ounces fresh goat cheese (mine was covered in crushed herbs)
1 1/2 tsp fresh thyme, rosemary, or any combination of herbs you like, plus a few springs for garnish
1/2 lb leek, thinly sliced
2-4 shallot cloves, thinly sliced (optional)
3-4 pieces of bacon, crisped and crumbled
1/2 C heavy cream or creme fraiche
1/2 C whole milk
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and grease your tart pan if it isn't a non-stick.

1) Follow your preferred tart pastry recipe, chilling the dough once it's in the pan.
2) While the crust is chilling, thinly slice and wash the leeks. I find it easiest to slice the leeks, pile them into a bowl, cover the whole mess with cold water, and let the leeks soak to draw off the sand and dirt. (The sand will float to the bottom.) After 10 minutes or so, drain the leeks and rinse well.
3) Thinly slice the shallots.
4) Add the leeks and shallots, along with a pinch of salt and pepper, to a hot pan with a bit of butter, olive oil, or leftover bacon fat in it. Cook over medium heat until tender. Add the chopped herbs and let cool.
5) In a bowl, mix together the ricotta, goat cheese, milk, cream, egg, bacon, leek mixture, and any additional herbs. I added 1 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp of pepper.
6) Pour the filling into the crust and bake until the middle sets and the top of the tart is golden brown, 35-60 minutes.