My Reputation Takes a Beating

NOTE: This is the last posting for this blog, at least for the time being, as these were essays written years ago and compiled in a book (as yet unpublished) called "The Poetry of Food." When I have occasion to write more essays about food, I'll post them, but this is the last of the weekly posts. In order not to miss any others, sign up for email notification.

    Remember, while reading this post, that it was written long before there was any such thing as an internet and easy access to questions of equivalency between ways of measuring things.]

    While I was visiting my friends Maren and Lasse in Sweden, I decided one night to cook dinner for them. I told them I would make a sweet-and-sour cabbage dish with cottage cheese dumplings and bake my famous lime tart for dessert.

    "Oh," said Maren brightly, knowing that the lime tart had been featured in the Carberry Creek Dessert Bakeoff [see posts on October 7 and 14, 2019], "maybe we could have a little dessert contest, and Lasse could make his famous pear hazelnut amaretto cream cake another night."

    That idea made me a little nervous, but I was in too deep to get out of it, so I swung my leg over my bicycle and went off to the market.

    There I ran into my first difficulty: buying in kilograms what I needed in pounds. Drawing on visual and kinetic memories, I did the best I could to keep proportions accurate and managed what I hoped was proper amounts of what I needed. I only found four tiny limes for the pie, too, when I needed six life-size limes, but they would have to do. With bags of groceries, wine, and bread precariously balanced on my bicycle, I pedaled my unwieldy way home to make dinner.

    I did well with the cabbage sauté dimpled with dumplings,

The cabbage sauté

but what trouble I had with the lime tart! The four tiny limes didn't give nearly enough juice, and the only pie pan I found was very pretty but too big. I stretched my crust to cover it, and I spread the filling as thinly as possible. Then I faced the next major difficulty: how hot in Celsius is a 350º Fahrenheit over? All I could do was guess, so I stuck the tart in the oven with little prayers to the Celsius gods. I set the table with Maren's pretty plates and wine glasses, then worried that the oven was too hot and turned it down a smidgen. I lit the candles, then worried that the oven was not hot enough and turned it up again. I called Maren and Lasse to dinner.

    How they exclaimed over the pretty table! How they marveled at the dumplings with the cabbage! I relaxed a bit, then jumped up to check the oven and turned it down. When I sat down again, explaining my difficulty, Lasse asked what body temperature was in Fahrenheit, and he said what it was in Celsius, so with that basis of comparison, I figured roughly how hot the oven was and jumped up in alarm. It was way too hot! The lime tart came out of the oven long before the thirty-five-minute baking time was up, as though time, like temperature, was different in Sweden.

    Ideally, I would have decorated the top of the pie with slices of lime and banana, but I didn't have any more limes, and I was nervous about our getting to the cinema on time, so I served the pie undecorated, which was, as it turned out, a serious error.

    Maren and Lasse said, "Mm! What a delicious pie!" It did have a nice, tart lime taste, even if the filling was too dry and a little tough because it had baked too fast and had cracked and was undecorated and looked burnt sienna instead of golden glow and the crust overwhelmed the filling because the pan was too big. It wasn't bad, really.

    Several nights later, Maren and I came home from an excursion to find the famous pear hazelnut amaretto cream cake on the table. It was spectacular with swirls of white pears laid on top like petals of a flower, golden yellow centers of custard surrounded by a burgundy red hazelnut topping, and everything dusted with the lightest brush of powdered sugar. A tureen of rich, sweet cream whipped with amaretto stood nearby. After we had properly admired the cake, Lasse, his eyes twinkling with understated pride, served his masterpiece, which tasted every bit as good as it looked. I graciously conceded the prize. 

    Inwardly, though, I was embarrassed. My boastings were unfounded, my reputation in shatters. And then I thought of my own non-electric kitchen in my little mountain home and wondered if Lasse might have as much trouble cooking in my kitchen as I had in his. When he and Maren come to visit, I decided, I would make them a lime tart that would knock their socks off, beautiful with circles of fluffy coconut outlining circles of limes, glowingly golden, creamy and rich. This would be a pie, I thought, to perk up the senses like a Rumi poem or a Beethoven string quartet—or like a pear hazelnut amaretto cream cake.

Recipes from this post

    Cabbage sauté dimpled with dumplings of cottage cheese

    The usually unbeatable lime tart

    Italian pear and hazelnut cake con crema amaretto

CABBAGE SAUTE DIMPLED WITH DUMPLINGS OF COTTAGE CHEESE

serves 6

The cabbage

The sauté with dumplings

Ingredients

1/2 tablespoons butter or oil

4 medium onions

2 small heads cabbage, red or green or both

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

4 medium tart green apples

4 navel oranges

1/2 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar (packed), or honey

Black pepper

Up to 3 tablespoons cider vinegar

Yogurt (optional)

Preparation

Chop the onions. Shred the cabbage to make 8-10 cups. Toast the cumin seeds. Peel, core, and coarsely chop the apples. Peel and cut up the oranges.

To make

In a large skillet, sauté onions in hot oil or butter. Cook 5 minutes over medium heat. Add cabbage and salt and cook 8-10 minutes or until cabbage starts to become tender. (Work in batches if necessary). Add remaining ingredients. Stir well, cover, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, 20-30 minutes.

The dumplings

Ingredients

2 eggs 

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons fresh dill (or 2 teaspoons dried)

4 tablespoons butter

To make

Beat eggs and cottage cheese in medium bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients, except butter. Mix well. Boil a large kettle of water (about 3 quarts). Add rounded tablespoons of dumpling dough. Do not crowd the kettle. Poach 15 minutes in gently simmering water. Remove with slotted spoon. About 20-30 minutes before serving, melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. Add dumplings and sauté over medium heat till golden, 10-20 minutes.

To serve

Transfer the cabbage to a large, shallow serving bowl or platter. Top with dumplings. Add a dollop of yogurt, if desired. Serve hot.

THE USUALLY UNBEATABLE LIME TART

serves 8

The pastry

Ingredients

7 tablespoons butter

1 1/3 cups unbleached white flour

pinch salt

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup sugar

3-4 tablespoons very cold water

To make

Cut the butter into the flour and salt with a pastry cutter or two knives. (Or use a processor.) Mix in the vanilla and sugar, and then use just enough water to make the dough clump together. Press dough into a 9-inch drop-bottom pan, making it crawl up the sides. Chill.

The filling

Ingredients

4 limes (if they are good-size)

5 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup sugar

5 eggs

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

Squeeze the limes to yield 1/2 cup fresh juice. Beat the eggs well. Preheat oven to 425º.

To make

Line the chilled crust with wax paper or parchment paper and fill it with dried beans or pie weights. Bake at 425º for 15 minuets. Take the pie from the oven and remove the beans and the paper. Lower oven temperature to 350º. Heat the lime juice, butter, and sugar over low heat until the butter melts. Pour the beaten eggs slowly into this mixture, whisking constantly. Continue to stir over low heat until the mixture thickens into a pudding. Stir in the vanilla extract. Pour this custard into the baked crust and bake at 350º for 30-35 minutes, until the custard is set.

To finish

Ingredients

the baked pie

1 banana

1 lime

unsweetened flaked or shredded coconut (optional), or whipped cream 

Preparation

Slice the lime and the banana. Sprinkle the banana slices with lime or lemon juice to prevent browning.

Decoration

Decorate the edge of the pie with coconut or whipped cream, if desired. Garnish pie with circles of lime and banana. Chill.

ITALIAN PEAR & HAZELNUT CAKE CON CREMA AMARETTO

Note from Lasse: "It's not Italian, actually—I just added that because of the amaretto (almond) liqueur. The original recipe (my mother's) had cognac in the whipped cream, but I liked the amaretto touch."

Note from me: I have given the measurements as Lasse gave them to me, which would be the most accurate. I translated them into American measurements, as accurately as I could, but you might look up your own equivalencies.

The cake

Ingredients

2 deciliter (dl) hazelnuts (1 /12 cups)

5 bitter almonds

1 1/2 dl flour (2/3 cup)

1 teaspoon baking powder

100 grams butter (1 stick)

1 1/2 dl milk (regular fat %) (2/3 cup + 2 tablespoons)

2 eggs

2 dl sugar (3/4 cup)

(I added 1/2 teaspoon salt.)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350º. Grind hazelnuts and almonds into meal. Butter and flour an 8-inch, circular, 2-inch-high cake tin. 

To make

Mix the ground hazelnuts and almonds with flour and baking powder. Melt butter and mix with milk. Whip eggs and sugar until really puffed up. Stir dry ingredients into the egg mixture along with the milk. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared pan. Bake about one hour at 175º centigrade (350º Fahrenheit). Set aside to cool.

Topping

Ingredients

2 cans of pear halves in syrup

1 jar of apricot jam

almond flakes (roasted)

10 ounces cream (1 1/4 cups)

3 tablespoons Amaretto liqueur (or Cognac)

Preparation

Roast almond flakes on a baking tray under the grill till golden. Whip cream with amaretto and keep refrigerated.

To make

Wet the cake with some of the pear syrup (careful—no soaking). Spread the apricot jam over and around the cake. Put the pear halves on the cake, covering the top fully. Decorate with almond flakes on top and on sides of cake.

To serve

Serve the Italian Pear & Hazelnut Cake con Crema Amaretto with a cup of strong coffee and a small glass of amaretto liqueur or cognac.