Table & Travel

We had a lovely Thanks­giv­ing din­ner with Vicki’s fam­ily at her mother’s house. Vicki really out­did her­self this year, mak­ing three fab­u­lous desserts and a won­der­ful salad. She made the salad based on one we had at Soizic Bistro in Oak­land, where we recently had an out­stand­ing din­ner. It includes frisee let­tuce lay­ered with roasted acorn squash, pro­sciutto, and pome­gran­ate seeds. It is sprin­kled with feta cheese and served with kale pesto and a vinai­grette. Won­der­ful fla­vors and texture!

One of the three desserts she made was a pecan pie that uses rum and honey. It was deli­cious, crunchy and sweet, out­stand­ing with whipped cream. The recipe sug­gests using Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which is a good alter­na­tive for the evil corn syrup. It’s made in Eng­land from cane sugar and has a nice golden color; avail­able from Amazon.com.

Pecan Pie

Adapted from John Thorne’s “Best-Ever Pecan Pie” recipe, found in the book, Clas­sic Home Desserts

Home-made pie dough for 1 crust, or frozen pie dough
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup
2 table­spoons com­plex honey (laven­der, herbed, etc.)
1 table­spoon maple syrup
1 table­spoon dark rum
3/4 stick unsalted but­ter, soft­ened
3 eggs (at room temp.)
1/2 tea­spoon vanilla
1/4 tea­spoon salt
2 cups bro­ken pecans

Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F. Fol­low direc­tions for home-made dough (i.e.: roll out, fit to but­tered 9-inch pan, trim edges and chill), or remove your froze crust from the fridge.

In large saucepan, com­bine sugar, Golden Syrup, honey, maple syrup, rum, and but­ter over medium heat. Let mix­ture come to a boil for a minute, scrap­ing down sides. Remove from heat and let cool for 20 minutes.

In a bowl, beat eggs till creamy. Incor­po­rate slowly into the cooled syrup. Stir in the vanilla, pecans and salt.

Pour fill­ing into pie shell and bake in mid­dle or lower rack, and bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Serves eight.

Last Octo­ber, food writer Mark Bittman asked read­ers of his New York Times food blog to com­ment on their favorite “under the radar” food blogs. The blog that was cho­sen to be fea­tured first was Alexandra’s Kitchen, the blog of Alexan­dra Stafford, a jour­nal­ist, pho­tog­ra­pher, designer (and cook), who lives in south­ern California.

I really like her blog, it’s well-written, has fab­u­lous pho­tographs, great recipes and is writ­ten by some­one who cares about food. Alexan­dra shops the farmer’s mar­kets, buys grass-fed beef, believes in sus­tain­able food sys­tems, and quotes Michael Pol­lan on her website.

The first of Alexandra’s blogs I was intro­duced to was about Balzano Apple Cake. This peas­ant dessert has its roots in north­ern Italy and was high­lighted in a New York Times arti­cle on Rick Cars­berg and his Seat­tle restau­rant, Lam­preia, where the dish is served with caramel ice cream.

I enjoyed mak­ing this, and fol­lowed her recipe very closely, cook­ing it for an hour. This cake has a lus­cious vanilla taste and a won­der­ful, creamy tex­ture. As Alexan­dra describes the cake’s tex­ture, it’s a cross between a French clo­fouti and a pancake—the best apple pan­cake you ever tasted!

Here’s her recipe, which was adapted from the one that appeared in the NYTimes arti­cle on Rick Carsberg.

Balzano Apple Cake

Source: Adapted from The New York Times 2004
Serves 8

1 stick but­ter, plus more for greas­ing pan
parch­ment paper
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean 

4 Fuji apples
½ cup flour
2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
¼ tea­spoon sea salt such as fleur de sel (or 1/2 tsp. kosher salt)
½ cup milk at room tem­per­a­ture
pow­dered sugar

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease a nine-inch-circle pan with but­ter. Cut a cir­cle of parch­ment paper to fit the bot­tom of the pan and place inside pan. Grease sides of pan and parch­ment round with butter.

2. Melt but­ter in small saucepan. Set aside. Beat together eggs and half of sugar in a bowl. Con­tinue to beat while slowly adding remain­ing sugar until thick — it should form a rib­bon when dropped from spoon.

3. Split vanilla bean in half length­wise. Scrape seeds into the egg-sugar mix­ture and add pod to melted butter.

4. Peel apples and cut straight down around the core into four big chunks. Dis­card the core then slice the apple pieces thinly.

5. Remove vanilla pod from but­ter and dis­card. Stir but­ter into sugar-egg mix­ture. Com­bine flour, salt and bak­ing pow­der, then stir into bat­ter alter­nat­ing with the milk. Stir in apples, coat­ing every piece with bat­ter. Pour bat­ter into pan.

6. Bake for 25 min­utes, then rotate the pan. Bake for 25 to 30 min­utes more, until cake pulls away from pan and is brown on top. Cool for at least 30 min­utes, then cut into wedges sprin­kling each with pow­dered sugar if desired.