Sulky Oven

          Baking was never easy in my non-electric house. I had no electrical equipment, and my little antique propane stove was cute, but sulky.  

 The knob that operated the gas flow for the oven—or, more accurately, the screw stuck through the peg that once held the knob—had no temperature gauge. I couldn't turn it to a certain temperature, but by a thermometer set on the one oven rack, I at least knew what the temperature was. I adjusted the flame by guesswork—so high for 350 degrees, a little lower for 325, and so forth. If I guessed wrong, I had a hard time correcting the temperature because the oven was old and resisted change. The knob could stick with frustrating impudence.

          On one baking day, when I went to light the oven for the rummy raisin brownies I was making for gifts and the Christmas cranberry pear torte I would take to a winter solstice dinner party, the knob, unturned for months, was firmly stuck. Firmly persistent, I applied gradual pressure until, suddenly, the oven succumbed. The knob jumped, and the flame leapt high—too high. I turned it down, guessing at 375 degrees, closed the oven door—carefully so as not to blow out the flame—and turned to prepare, separately, the dry and wet ingredients for the brownies. I couldn't let the chemical reactions begin until I knew the oven temperature would hold true.

          When the oven reached 375 degrees, I pleaded with it to stay there, but it's a mean-spirited oven. With a sneer it rose beyond 450 degrees. With exacting finesse I tried to urge the knob counter-clockwise. Suddenly, with a wicked grin, it jumped, and the flame went out.

          I relit the oven. This time, when it reached 375, it sulkily remained there. I stirred the brownie batter together, put the pan in the oven, set the timer, and started in on dishes.

          Soon the oven was emitting a rich, warm-chocolate smell. Presently, though, those good odors became fringed with a burned-chocolate smell.

Rum raisin brownies, on another day

Still the timer clicked on. Suddenly, truly alarmed, I snatched the brownies from the oven. They looked like the classic burned-on-the-outside-raw-on-the-inside kitchen failure. Nonetheless, I cut off the burned edges and sliced the remaining cake into 24 pieces. The sticky batter solidified as it cooled. Maybe I had a salvageable fiasco. But how could I know? Since my migraine demon has begun reacting with fury both to chocolate and to alcohol, I couldn't even taste my rum raisin brownie gifts.
       I turned to the torte. Maybe it would cook better, since it baked in a smaller pan.

         My oven only holds one cake pan, so I made half the batter twice. After beating butter, sugar, and eggs till my arm quit working, I convinced myself that the batter was "light and fluffy," even though it hadn't even doubled in volume, much less tripled, as the recipe asked. I carefully mixed in the dry ingredients and set the cake in the oven. Haunted by "burned on the edges, raw in the middle," I thought, "If this cake is good, it'll be a miracle."

Cranberry pear torte

        I am happy to report that miracles still happen. The oven smiled and relented. The cake was dense because the batter hadn't tripled in volume, but it was done. Spicy with cinnamon, nutmeg, and orange zest, beautiful with a swirl of cranberry purée-reddened pear slices atop white cream-cheese frosting, it elicited at its presentation a murmur of appreciation. When someone asked the difference between a cake and a torte, I said, cleverly, that a torte was more dense. Two of the guests were an engaged couple. When the fiancée said, "This cake is fabulous. Do you do wedding cakes?" I gave a grateful inward wink to my stove, which, I knew, was sitting at home, gleaming modestly at its success.








Nest week: Carberry Creek Dessert Bake-off, Part1
Recipes below:
          Rummy raisin brownies
          Cranberry pear torte


Rummy raisin brownies
Yield: 16

Ingredients
1 cup raisins (about 5 1/2 ounces)
1/4 cup dark rum
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Preparation
Butter a 9x13x2-inch baking pan. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Soak raisins in rum until plump, about 30 minutes.
To make
Stir butter and unsweetened chocolate over low heat until smoothly blended. Cool slightly and whisk in the eggs and sugar, then the raisins with their liquid, then the flour. Finally mix in the chocolate chips. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees until done, about 20 minutes. Cool, and cut into squares.




Cranberry pear torte
(from Bon Appetit)
Serves 10

Ingredients
2 cups chopped toasted walnuts
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup plain dry breadcrumbs
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
Preparation
Toast walnuts in frying pan over medium-low heat, stirring. Chop fine. Grate orange peel to make 2 teaspoons. Melt butter and let cool to lukewarm. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter 2 9-inch-diameter cake pans. Line bottoms of pans with waxed paper. Butter and flour waxed paper. Tap out excess flour.
To make
Blend walnuts and flour. Add breadcrumbs, orange peel, spices, and salt, and blend well. Beat eggs in large bowl until frothy. Gradually beat in sugar and brown sugar. Continue beating until mixture is thick and triples in volume, about 6 minutes (longer, much longer, if you're mixing by hand).
Fold flour mixture and melted lukewarm butter alternately into egg mixture, beginning and ending with flour. (Do not overmix!) Divide batter between prepared cake pans. Smooth tops.
Bake cakes until golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool pans on racks 5 minutes. Invert cakes onto racks and cool completely. Remove waxed paper.

Topping
Ingredients
1/2 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup sugar
To make
Toss cranberries with sugar to coat. Transfer berries to plate. Cover and freeze.

Cream cheese-orange frosting
Ingredients
1 1/2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Preparation
Grate orange peel. Set out butter and cream cheese to soften.
To make
Beat cream cheese, butter, and orange peel in large bowl until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until frosting is light and fluffy. Cover and refrigerate until frosting is firm enough to spread, about 30 minutes.

Poached pears with cranberry purée
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups orange juice
2 large firm but ripe Bosc pears
Preparation
Peel and core pears and cut into 3/4-inch wedges.
To make
Combine berries, sugar, and juice in heavy large skillet. Bring to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Simmer over medium heat until berries burst, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Purée until smooth. Strain into same skillet.
Bring purée to simmer over medium heat. Add pear wedges and stir to coat. Simmer until pears are just tender, about 8 minutes. Using slotted spoon, remove pears from skillet, shaking excess purée back into skillet, and transfer pears to paper-towel-lined plate. Reserve purée.

Assemblage
Ingredients
Two cake layers
Frosting
3/4 cup walnuts, toasted
Poached pears
Cranberry purée
Frozen sugar-coated cranberries
To assemble
Place 1 cake layer on platter. Spread with 1 cup frosting. Top with second cake layer. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of torte. Press remaining walnuts onto torte sides. Arrange pears decoratively on top.
Rewarm cranberry purée in small saucepan over medium heat. Brush some purée over pears. Transfer remaining purée to bowl.

To finish
Garnish torte with frozen sugar-coated cranberries. Serve torte with purée.

Food as Muse of Poetic Flights of Prose

        Food is poetry: its blended tastes, its visual beauty, luscious smells, and atmosphere of conviviality. Food, family, and friends are as closely entwined and as beautifully symbiotic as the New Dawn rose winding among the branches of my apple tree. If there is a birthday, a wedding, an anniversary, a graduation, a solstice gathering, I want to celebrate with friends and family around food. If I want to do something special for someone, I'll invite that person to eat at my house If I have an apology to make or a thank-you to give, I'll bake cookies for the recipient.

        The poetry of food showed up again and again in my radio commentaries on Jefferson Public Radio, broadcast from Ashland, Oregon, between 1981 and 1988 and then again between 1996 and 2009. Once after a reading in Yreka, California, when I read the essay called "The Carberry Creek Dessert Bake-off" (scheduled for blog posts on October 7 and 14), a woman said, "I love your food commentaries. Why don't you write a book of food essays with recipes?"

The conviviality of food (in my new house)

        That idea morphed into this blog. More than a recipe, each post is an essay, usually accompanied by at least one recipe, and in many cases several recipes, of whatever food was mentioned in the essay. Many of the essays were written while I was living on a remote mountainside in Southern Oregon in a little house without electricity. Along with pies, soups, and salads, that non-electric kitchen produced stories, many of which reflect the various stages of my life in that house: when I was single-parenting my son, Ela; when he was grown and I lived there alone; when I had a little propane refrigerator; when I didn't; when I was vegetarian and then wasn't. The stories are about the poetry of food. The recipes are given so the reader can evoke a poem of his or her own with the same food.

        But the span of time in this blog goes back years before that kitchen, back to my childhood in Georgia, and then stretches beyond the years in the non-electric house to the house I live in now, with electricity, on the same piece of land. The geographical span also extends beyond the mountain house to kitchens in Sweden, to food in France, to restaurants in cities and towns, to picnics and pot-lucks and parties.

        You will find in these posts recipes to suit any cookbook: vegetarian and meat dishes, salads, desserts, appetizers, breads, breakfast foods, pastas, sandwiches, soups, and sides. You might begin to notice a preponderance of dessert recipes and thin pickings for salads. The reason for this imbalance is literary, not dietary: I have more stories about desserts than about salads. I am not giving dietary advice.

        Most of the photos were taken specifically for this blog, not at the time of the essays they go with, although I will include some long-ago photos when they are relevant. Blog posts will fall into chapters: "Cooking in a Non-electric House" (15 posts), "Food from the Past" (16 photos), "What We Eat and Why" (8 posts). "Outdoor Eating" (6 posts), "Harvest" (6 posts), and "Eating from Other Kitchens" (11 posts). I plan to post every Monday.

        Below is the first essay, a story about the kitchen in my old house, the house without electricity. It sets the scene for the first chapter of weekly posts. It does not have accompanying recipes. The photos were taken while I ws living in that house. Next week's post will include recipes.


Who Says You Can't Cook in My Kitchen?

       I once had a French boy friend who was, he said, a very good cook, but he refused to cook in my kitchen. I cook quite well in it, but I have to admit it isn't an ordinary kitchen. Not only does it have no electricity; it is also spread around three rooms. The propane cook stove and the sink with its blue tile counters are in the original "one-room cabin" room of the house that I later expanded.

The kitchen end of the one-room cabin

The pantry sticks off one corner of that room, and the RV-size propane refrigerator sits on the back porch. Preparing meals, I have reason to be grateful that this is a small house, since I first walk to the pantry for ingredients, then back across the house to the sink for washing vegetables or mixing sauces, then back again to the stove for cooking, and then back to the counter at the sink for dishing food onto plates. Maybe François was too lazy to cook in my kitchen.
        In winter, the kitchen shrinks: the pantry becomes the refrigerator, and I cook on the wood-burning stove. I chop vegetables at the sink and merely turn on my heel to scrape them into a frying pan on top of the stove, saving steps, just as in a model kitchen in Sunset magazine.
          There is an oven, but it's only big enough for one cake pan (I can't make layer cakes), and there is no control panel to let me know when the oven knob is turned to a particular temperature, so I have to guess at temperatures according to the size and color of the flame. When I think I've got it right, I close the door and let the oven heat up. Then I check the thermometer on the rack inside. If I've guessed right, the pie goes in. Otherwise, my baking might be put off for as much as an hour as I try to adjust the oven temperature because once the knob is in place, it tends to stick, and when I turn it up or down, it jumps, and then it's hard to guess where the flame was before and where it needs to be now. Maybe what François was lacking was patience.

Me, cooking in my kitchen, early 2000s

        Counter space is at a premium in a kitchen that still doubles as a sitting room, and wherever space is tight, patience is necessary. If I'm cutting up vegetables, I balance the cutting board on the thin strip of tiles in front of the sink, being careful not to overweight one side of the cutting board, or else it'll tip over and dump vegetables either into the sink or onto the floor. It's even worse if I'm putting unbaked cookies on a cookie sheet, which balances in the same place, because unbaked cookies can't be picked up off the floor and washed.
          Because it doubles as a sitting room, my kitchen has a couch in it, under my bedroom loft (or, my living room has a sink I'm it).

Bedroom loft, couch, oven

If my arm gets tired when I'm whipping egg whites, I can sit down on the couch and put the bowl in my lap. Pie crusts are rolled at the counter to the left of the sink. A shelf above restricts upward motion (but how much upward motion do you need in rolling out pie dough?), and though there's plenty of elbow room on the sink side of the space, on the other side a pole wall separating the kitchen from the back entrance gets in the way. I wield the rolling pin with short, stubby strokes, like an ice skater on too small a pond. Because I was used to it, I could make a good pie crust in my kitchen, which is more than François ever did. In fact, given how many meals, cakes, and pies I have produced from my kitchen, I can't understand why François refused to cook in it. He just had to get used to it.








Next week: "Sulky Oven," with recipes for rummy raisin brownies and cranberry pear torte.