Baked rice pudding

I have friends who have put off inviting me to dinner, self-conscious about their skills in the kitchen. I mourn the meals I'm missing, because there is nothing so tasty, really, than the food someone else cooks for you with utter abandon.

I have a friend who makes pickle calzones. He makes the dough with pickle juice, stuffs them with ham and bacon and cheese and dill, and invites us over for cheap beer and heartburn. In his house, playing darts and listening to Bobby Bare, they are delicious.

My brother-in-law will throw the entire contents of his CSA box into a pot and cook it down into something communal and tasty. We eat seconds and thirds in a little San Francico studio kitchen. If I try that trick at my house, it sits forlornly in the fridge for days while we eat macaroni and cheese or something, anything but the healthy mush.

My grandmother was a terrible cook, I think, looking back on it now, but she cooked for us with so much joy and hospitality that the most happy memories of her have food in them. When my sister and I spent the night at her beach house, we'd crowd into the tiny kitchen to make spaghetti and red sauce. When the noodles stuck to the ceiling, they were done. We loved snapping the wet noodles, launching them far above our tiny heads.

She had us over for dinner regularly; a soggy tabbouleh and some kind of fruit crisp--'70s-health-food-store style--were standards. In my memory, it was all familiar and delicious and we ate and ate and ran around her picnic table laughing.

She also made a baked rice pudding that I've never found a recipe for. It was a made of brown rice, studded with raisins. A vanilla custard layer dusted with nutmeg floated on top. We ate it room temperature or cold, not hot like the stovetop rice puddings are often served. I still crave it regularly. I make an approximation of this not-too-sweet delight regularly for breakfast and afternoon snacks, but it's just not the same without her.

Rice pudding

2 cups cooked brown rice, give or take
1/3 cup raisins (omit or increase as desired)
3 eggs
3 cups whole milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 t. vanilla
freshly grated nutmeg

Use a 9"-by-9" Pyrex or small casserole dish--whatever you have that will also fit into a larger baking dish. I use a square glass dish tucked into a round Le Creuset casserole, and it works perfectly. Pour water into your large pan. You will be using it as a water bath to sit the small pan into, so make sure it won't overflow when you put your pudding into it. Put pan with water into the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Your water bath will heat a bit while the oven preheats, saving you the trouble of boiling water.

Spread rice into small baking dish and sprinkle with raisins. Whisk eggs in a mixing bowl, then beat in milk, sugar, and vanilla until combined. Pour mixture over rice and dust with nutmeg. Careful set the whole thing in your water bath.

Bake until set but still wobbly in the center. Check by inserting the tip of a knife in the middle. Custard should just keep it's shape--no milky liquid rushing in around the knife. But it will continue to solidify as it cools, so you take it out when still somewhat soft. The time depends on how much rice you used, how warm your water bath got initially, whether your rice was hot or cold, those kinds of things. But mine usually takes about 1 1/2 hours with warmish rice.

Remove from water bath when done and cool in pan on rack. Serve warm, room temperature, or chilled. Store in fridge. Eat for breakfast or with a baby after naptime.

Pizza dough

We came out to our small town last week--put a yard sign up on our fence, proclaiming our choice for president for everyone to see. We had some trepidation; we're in the minority in our neck of the (not quite rural) woods. We anticipated some crude gestures from passing cars, a new chill from next door. But our neighbors have taken it in stride and continue bringing us vegetables from their prolific gardens, waving from their cars as they pass our house.

So I have a new bravery and am ready to come clean: I am a name-brand whore. It's hard when you're poor, when you are a public advocate of limiting consumption, living with less, and you dream of Calvin Klein suits and Tanqueray 10. I get my designer jeans and department store face wash on eBay. I go out of my way to make sure my cream cheese is Philadelphia and my pickles are Clausen. And I drool regularly over the latest models of Cuisinart. It's disgusting, I know.

So it pains me to pull out our food processor--that free, reliable, totally functional thorn in my side. We only have one blade, the brutal cutting one. The lid is cracked in so many places that you have to hold it on manually. But the darn thing works, and makes us pizza weekly and focaccia regularly. And when I can get something as pretty as the bread above out of it, it's much easier to count my blessings.

Pizza Dough (based on a recipe from Mark Bittman)

3 cups flour, a combo of 2 cups white and 1 cup white-whole wheat
2 T. olive oil
1 t. yeast
2 t. salt
1 cup water, approximately

Blend first four ingredients in food processor. Slowly add water until it forms a slightly sticky ball. Knead on a countertop for about 30 seconds and drop into an oiled mixing bowl, turning over to coat dough with oil. Let rise in warm place.

This dough is very forgiving and takes about 5 minutes once you memorize the proportions. W. makes it in the afternoon and lets it rise anywhere from 2 to 5 hours. You can also make it in the morning or the day before and let rise in the fridge. We have pizza night once a week, rolling out two pizzas, topping with whatever we have on hand and baking both at once in the oven, set at 500 degrees, switching places after 5 minutes or so. Dinner and leftovers for lunch the next day.

Or we make focaccia, using an entire recipe to make a thicker bread. The one pictured above is topped with olive oil, coarse salt, black pepper, rosemary, and thinly sliced lemons.

(EDITED TO ADD: Don't stress if you don't have a food processor. Just stir everything in a bowl until you can't anymore and then knead it until it forms a smooth-ish ball. Easy.)

Flatiron steaks smack of summer

It's that time of year when we suddenly realize, "Crap, summer is almost over and we've hardly grilled!"

So we are making the most of the still warm evenings by breaking out the charcoal. W. and I are tiresomely opinionated about our grilling—no lighter fluid, no gas, mesquite charcoal or real wood only. Quick and dirty, herbs and olive oil and lots of salt.

We are fortunate enough to live where you can pick up two very big flatiron steaks--grass fed, organic, and still marbled--for $12 at the farmer's market. W. sliced tomatoes from the garden and made dinner rolls from scratch, so this truly was the poor man's barbecue, done oh so well.

W. rubbed the steaks with salt, pepper, and fresh marjoram, thyme, and rosemary, then set them out to come to room temperature. The baby played in the sprinkler while the steaks grilled over hot coals, about three minutes a side, then were sprinkled with olive oil. I came home from work ravenous and devoured the last of summer.

Not-so-chunky monkey

Warning: Gratutious baby shot ahead. Advance with caution.


It's starting to feel like fall--school starting, leaves falling. Even the hot days are bracketed by chill. And for some reason, as fall descends, bananas and walnuts seem just right. They've replaced the berries in our ice cream and the peaches in our pancakes.

This is my simple riff on the Ben & Jerry's favorite. Not quite the same, but I served it to a room of Chunky Monkey lovers and haters (something about the way the big chunks of walnuts get soggy), and everyone ate plenty.

I use my basic formula, doubling the berry recipe.

Smooth Banana Ice Cream with Chocolate and Nuts

3 cups milk and heavy cream, in combination
1/2 cup sugar
1 t. vanilla extract

1 handful chocolate chips, chopped
1 handful walnuts, chopped
1 1/2 overripe bananas, smashed into puree with a fork

Mix milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla and store in fridge until cool. Process milk mixture in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions until you have a slushy almost-ice cream. Put the chocolate, walnuts, and bananas in the freezer while you do this, so they are nice and cold. Then add them to the machine and run until you have ice cream that is pretty thoroughly frozen.

I've had problems with slushy ice cream that then hardens into a rock in the freezer. I prevent this by

• making sure the ice cream maker's bowl( I have one of those small Cuisinart ones) has been in the freezer for at least a couple days,
  
• chilling all the ingredients thoroughly,
  
• running the machine way longer than the instructions say,
  
• and scooping the ice cream immediately into a chilled container and popping it into the back of the freezer as soon as humanly possible.

I resist the temptation to scrape every last bit off the stirring bit while the bulk of the ice cream gets more and more melty. A little haste and waste pays off here.

The library

I work in an institution of higher learning, swayed continuously by the rhythms of the university year, buffeted by the energy--and ennui--of batches of students who seem to get younger every year. I love it. I love interview faculty about non-Newtonian fluids or generational succession within companies or the holy text of Islam or labor laws in Gold Rush California. I continually want to be a physicist or historian or political scientist or microbiologist.

But I hadn't explored the library until last week, in the quiet before the first week of school. I had forgotten what it was like, hurrying up those cement stairs crisscrossed in the depths of a big building full of books. The musty chill and the clang of the industrial door as it opens into a huge expanse of shelves high above the ground floor. That frisson of excitement.

It feels dangerous, illicit somehow, and I always jump when I hear the clang of a stairwell door across the floor. Then footsteps getting closer, stopping, turning, closer again, and my heart starts beating faster. I never see my fellow bookworms in those warrens of shelves, maybe just wandering, like me, with a finger out to move across the spines. But my invisible compatriots always make me want to hurry, like a kid taking a flying leap onto her bed at night so nothing can grasp at her ankles.

I didn't expect to find—there in the TXs—anything but Physical Properties of Plant and Animal Materials and Rheology and Texture in Food Quality and Objective Methods in Food Quality Assessment. Food broken down from sustenance into small bits of data.

But I found a gold mine: cookbooks and commentary and culinary history and two of my favorite opinionated women...

Granola, honey

I read the Williams-Sonoma catalog the way some people pore over Victoria's Secret--furtively, open-mouthed, panting slightly. I fold over pages; fantasize about a hot and juicy night with La Caja China Grill's battery-powered rotisserie. And I realize that, like life with a lingerie model, an electric raclette maker just might not live up to the fantasy.

But Williams-Sonoma has changed our lives for the better with their honey granola recipe, clipped from a catalog while visions of muesli-drenched housewifeliness danced in my head. It was easier than I thought, and yummier, and I've since adapted the recipe beyond all recognition, doubling the oats (it's still plenty sweet) and throwing in whatever combination of dried fruit and nuts we have in the fridge.

I eat a sprinkling of granola on top of plain oats and topped with a peach and rice milk for breakfast. But an unnatural affection (obsession?) with plain cold oats runs in my family, so I'd understand if you sprinkled it on top of yogurt and fruit or just ate it out of hand instead.

Honey Granola

5 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 1/2 cups mixed dried fruit and nuts, chopped if in large pieces
4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) salted butter
1/4 cup honey

Preheat oven to 325. Put a piece of parchment paper on each of two cookie sheets. (You can skip the parchment, but it does make your life easier.)

Mix oats, sugar, spices, fruit, and nuts in a bowl. In the above granola, I used dried blueberries and golden raisins, sunflower seeds and almonds. Sesame seeds, chopped dried apricots, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries--they all work well. If I use regular raisins, I drop them in after cooking; they seem to get too crunchy and burnt-tasting in the oven.

Put butter and honey in a small saucepan, heat until melted, and mix. (Or combine in a microwave-safe bowl and nuke until melted.) Pour over oat mixture and stir.

Divide mixture between pans. Bake until golden and crunchy, about 25–30 minutes, switching pans and turning 180 degrees halfway through cooking. Stir if the granola on the edges starts to burn.

Cool and store in airtight containers.

Halve the recipe if you don't need granola on hand for regular eating for a week or two.

Dutch babies

Blackberries: Part 2

Sunday mornings mean Dutch babies around here, or pancakes, or eggs and bacon and fried potatoes. I make the bed with the baby, shaking out fresh sheets over her head again and again, waiting for the scent of coffee to waft upstairs.

W. does the baking--I don't like to bother with those fussy kinds of things like measuring. Which is funny, since I pretty much make my living being anal.

We set powdered sugar and lemon slices out on the table and make a big deal when the Dutch pancake comes out of the oven puffed and brown. It's good.

These summer mornings sound ideal, and after devouring breakfast we load the baby and dog into the car for a trip to the creek and a morning swim. But we only have time for all this loveliness because babies don't take Sundays off. Believe me, pre-kid, our asses were in BED until at least 10 am.

5:30 wake up call, anyone?

Peach & Blackberry Dutch Baby
(based on a November 2004 Gourmet recipe)

3 T. butter

1/2 c. milk
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
4 eggs
3 T. granulated sugar
1/2 t. vanilla
1/4 t. salt

1-2 peaches, each cut into 8 wedges (if you have very big or very juicy peaches, use1 or 1 1/2--the more fruit you use, the longer it cooks)
1 handful blackberries
Lemon wedges and powdered sugar for topping

Put butter in heavy 10-11 inch cast-iron skillet and put in middle rack of oven. Turn oven to 450°F.

While butter melts, put milk, flour, eggs, vanilla, and salt in blender.

When butter has just melted in preheating oven, remove skillet. Swirl butter around skillet and pour excess into blender. Blend well.

Arrange fruit in buttered skillet and slowly pour batter on top. Put into the oven and baked until puffed and golden, about 20 minutes.

Cut and serve right away. It will sink pretty much right away--don't worry about it. We're not making souffles here. Squeeze lemon on top of each slice and dust with confectioners sugar.

We switch out fruit based on the season--sauteed apples, as in the original recipe, or pears, or strawberries...