Oysters in Cream

Saturday night we had what I would call an unexpected dinner party. Bob and I got back from Italy on Monday, just in time for all the Boston Marathon news. I invited my brother, George, to come over on Saturday night and look at our pictures. I was imagining a kickback evening with basic meat and vegetables dinner and the pix. Bob invited three other friends of ours, Tim, Nancy and Kathleen. Lovely people, but definitely upped the ante.
Since I am going back across the Atlantic in mid-May, I figured if the blog's momentum was to be kept going, I had better knuckle down. In deference to Bob's shellfish allergy, I chose a seafood appetizer, oysters in cream, so Bob could eat pate and the rest of the meal.
Oysters in cream is really good. Now, anything in cream is really good. Old shoes in cream, mudpies in cream, yum yum. And oysters are good. But oysters in cream, delicious, easy and relatively, for a seafood dish, inexpensive. The author expects us to open the oysters and cook them on their shells. Much easier to get a jar of oysters, and cook them in a little ramekin, which looks like a souffle dish for Peter Rabbit. Put three oysters in each ramekin. A 16 ounce jar provided enough oysters for five people.
The result was salty, creamy, and Parmesan cheesy and took all of ten minutes to prepare.

Oysters in Cream

24 oysters
Rock salt (You don't need the rock salt if you use the ramekins.)
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup melted butter

1. Open the oysters (See instructions about jars.) and remove from shell. Wash twenty-four half shells and place an oyster in each. Set in a shallow baking pan filled with rock salt.
2. Pour two teaspoons cream over each oyster. Sprinkle each with two teaspoons cheese and one teaspoon melted butter. Broil under a preheated broiler just until the oyster edges curl and the cheese is lightly browned. Makes six servings.

Hollandaise Sauce

Bob insisted there be Hollandaise  at our Easter dinner. We had ham, Bob's wonderful Gruyere potatoes, and asparagus. I was a little surprised. I don't make Hollandaise all that much. My mother used to make sauce Bernaise, which I called Bayonnaise sauce (sort of like mayonnaise, I guess) every time we had steak.  It was one of the first things my sister  and I learned to cook, and I made it in a little saucepan.
I  do remember my mother serving Hollandaise with a  dish we called jellied eggs, or in the case of my father, who had a taste for whimsy, "jerried eggs."  This was a summer lunch dish. One took a small baking dish, put a lightly poached  egg into it and then poured Campbell's consume from the the can over the egg.Then,  you put it in the refrigerator until the consume jelled. It was served over cold ham  and lettuce.  It made for a more decorative dish if you used an egg poacher and didn't just drop the egg into boiling water.
We loved it, but my husband has a low opinion of jellied consume. He calls it "beef jello". There is a famous family story that originated when my husband, who was then my boyfriend, came to visit my family at the farm. It was summer, and we had jellied consume as a first course.  Bob did not eat his, something that was just  not done in  my house.
 When we finished the soup and my brother George got up to take the soup dishes out, George noticed this, and remarked, probably with some subdued outrage, "Bob didn't eat his soup."
"Maybe he didn't like it," my mother replied. 
George probably doesn't remember this, but that statement probably made as much sense to him as if my  mother had said, "It might rain in Houston on  Thursday." In our house, like and eat had little to do with each other.
So we don't have beef jello in our house.
When I acquired my own kitchen, I  did not make Bernaise sauce, or Hollandaise sauce,  but I did know how to separate eggs, thanks to the sauce  brothers. In case  you are trying to sort out these two egg based sauces, Hollandaise is made with eggs, butter and lemon juice. It's the sauce  you ate over Eggs Benedict last weekend when your cousin Sally came to town. Bernaise sauce is made with eggs, butter and vinegar. It is served occasionally over steak.
Anyhow, it is fairly easy to make as long as  you take the instructions on low heat seriously. If you put the heat up too high, it does something called curdle. The eggs get cooked instead of blending with the butter. There are other recipes, some in this blog,(look in April, 2010) for Hollandaise that call for making it in a blender. That's easiest of all.

Hollandaise Sauce  

8 egg yolks
6 tablespoons hot water
4 tablespoons lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 
1 cup butter             

1. In a saucepan, beat the egg yolks with a wire whisk until they are thick and pale. Add the water, lemon juice, salt and pepper and beat viorously.
 2. In another saucepan,  heat the butter just to bubbling.  Pour it slowly into the egg yolk mixture, beating rapidly.
3. Place the sauce over very low heat and cook,  stirring constantly, until sauce is properly thickened. Do not overcook  or sauce with curdle. (To restore slightly curdled sauce, add two tablespoons cold light c ream and beat quickly, off the heat.) Makes one and one half cups.                                                                                                                                                                           

Coconut Frosting

1  tablespoon unflavored vegetable gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup sugar
3  egg whites, stiffly beaten
Juice of half a lemon
1 fresh coconut, grated

1. Soften the gelatin in the cold water; then dissolve gelatin in  the boiling water. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Set aside to cool.
2. When mixture begins to set, fold it into the egg whites, then  beat until mixture reaches consistency of soft marshmallow. Add the lemon juice and stir to blend. Use as a cake frosting. Coat the frosted cake with the coconut. Makes enough thick frosting for filling, top and sides of nine-inch two-layer cake.

Apricot Glaze

Heat the contents of one twelve-ounce jar of apricot preserves over low heat. When dissolved, force the mxiture through a fine sieve. Use as a glaze when hot. Makes one and one-quarter cups.

Coconut Cake with Apricot Glaze for Passover

On the last day of Passover I made the last Passover recipe. These things seem to have attracted a certain amount of attention. Apple Cake for  Passover got   39 hits. It may not seem like much, but for someone who went on for two years with a total of six hits on most of the recipes, it's a lot.
I made the cake on Friday night and the icing on Sunday when the Easter guests were here. The cake turned out beautifully, like a souffle. Passover cakes contain very little flour or matzo meal, in this case 1/4 of a cup and half a cup of potato starch. Cooks might think that it won't bake properly, but it does.
This is meant to  be a layer cake. My husband, who had the task of cutting the layers in half, wondered why the cake couldn't be baked in two springform pans instead of one, thereby reducing the mess involved with cutting the layers in half. An excellent idea. So, bake the cakes in two springform pans instead of one.
Another tip. The coconut frosting is made with gelatin.  When it is whipped and ready to spread, spread it. Do not, as I did, set it aside for an hour or so. I discovered, when Easter dinner was over and half the guests were leaving for their next Easter dinner, that the  icing had set. It was like trying to spread cooked meringues.  It tasted all right, but the lovely, marshmallow fluff consistency that Lin, my co-mother-in-law, achieved with the mixer, was gone.
We had a hilarious Easter dinner, with stories and jokes flying back and forth. The table was decorated with the  30 or so bunnies of various sizes and materials that we have accumulated over the years. We have tall china bunnies playing the flute, tiny wooden bunnies sitting in a chair, metal bunnies, smoking  bunnies, bunnies decorated with holly,  bunnies decorated with floral patterns. Every place had little baskets of jelly beans and chocolate eggs.
The cake got good reviews. Lin liked it because it wasn't too sweet.  Bob liked the apricot glaze.

Coconut Cake with Apricot Glaze for Passover

1/4 cup matzo meal
1/2 cup potato starch
1/8 teaspoon salt
7  eggs separated
1 cup  sugar
Juice of half a lemon
Apricot glaze
Coconut frosting

1.  Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
2. Sift together the matzo meal, potato starch and salt.
3.  Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and lemon juice until thick and lemon-colored. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them  into yolk mixture. Fold in the dry ingredients and pour the batter into an ungreased nine-inch spring form pan.  (Or two nine-inch springform pans if you do not want  to  be bothered with cutting the tall cake into two layers. Bake thirty minutes.
4.  Increase the oven heat to 325 degrees. Bake fifteen minutes longer, or until cake tester comes out clean. Invert to cool. Cut   into layers and spread with apricot glaze, then frost with coconut frosting.
Makes eight to ten servings.                 

Brown Bread II

This is one of those times where, when confronted with two recipes for the same thing, one ought to make them both at the same time to make an accurate comparison.  However, then, you are stuck with two  recipes for, in this case Boston Brown Bread. So, because Bob is trying to cut down on carbs and I don't eat bread, I didn't make them both at the same time. I made Brown Bread I for the church social hour in January, and Brown  Bread II for the same thing after the Easter service.  The church sent off an e-mail requesting donations and I leaped forward.  Aside from giving me another recipe to check off, it also gave me the opportunity to throw away the three cans I had been carefully saving on the corner of the counter since January.
Honestly, this  brown bread, although it has rye flour in it instead of white flour, does not seem to be markedly different from the other brown bread. This is an easy recipe. Let me translate a few things. Graham flour is whole wheat flour. If  you can't get buttermilk, add a tablespoon or so of cider vinegar to the milk. It curdles.  Rye flour seems to be easy to get. Look among the  Bob's Red Mill products.
Steaming  bread, which might seem counterproductive is also easy. As the directions say, fill the cans about two-thirds full with batter and cover them with wax paper or tin foil held on with rubber bands or string. Put them on something that will keep them off the bottom of the kettle. The recipe says a rack. I didn't have a round rack, although I do remember my mother having a couple. I used a couple of ramikins, which are tiny souffle dishes, put upside down and allowed to fill with water. I set the ramikins in the kettle, put the cans of dough on top and  poured in the water until it climbed half way up the cans. I let the bread steam for three  hours as instructed and took the cans out when the timer went off.
When it says cans, it means just that. Aluminum cans, 28 ounces, the kind canned tomatoes or beans come in.
The product is dark and moist, good with cream cheese or butter.

Brown Bread II

1 cup yellow corn meal
1 cup rye flour
1 cup graham (whole wheat) flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups buttermilk
3/4 cup unsulphured molasses
1 cup raisins

1. Combine the corn meal, rye flour, graham flour, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl.
2. Mix together the buttermilk, molasses and raisins. Add to dry  ingredients. Mix well. Fill well-greased pudding molds or cans about two-thirds full with the batter. It will fill about two 28 ounce cans.
3. Cover with greased mold covers or can lids and cover over with aluminum foil.   (I'm not even entirely sure what a mold cover is. The only can lids I have were used for the dog food. So relax and use wax paper or aluminum foil, held on with  rubber bands)
4. Place the molds or cans on a rack in a large kettle, with water extending at least halfway up the sides of the molds or cans. Cover and cook three hours, replenishing water as necessary. Makes two or three loaves.

Seven-Layer Chocolate Cake for Passover (Gluten Free)

This is in the nature of a definite experiment. I made it last night, using gluten free Passover matzos I found at Safeway. It's for the last Lenten night of the Bible study group, so I haven't tried it.  I felt like God was speaking to me, right there in the ethnic foods section.
 "Chase! Make that cake with the matzos. You can actually eat it." The matzos, in case anyone else is trying to procure the gluten free variety, are made by Yehuda and imported from Israel. I bought them at the Safeway on Davenport Street in DC. Rodman's, just down the street, has matzo cake meal, if on the eve of Passover itself, you (A.) are still looking, and (B.) live in or near the District of Columbia. Rodman's also has the Elite Chocolate, with the picture of the happy cow on the wrapper.
This recipe tells you to do some improbable things. The most improbable thing the cook is to do is to "moisten, not soak," matzos in a dish of wine. I was thinking, I would end up with a sodden mass.  Well, you can do this. I may have left the matzo in for all of 30 seconds while I groped for the camera to take a picture. It came out wet from the wine, but still intact and perhaps a tiny bit softer. I confess, I did not test for consistency, I just laid it on top of the last one and frosted it.
I was afraid that if the matzo did not dissolve in the wine, that it would shatter while being frosted. It didn't. The frosting is fairly liquid, and if the cook applies it gently, the matzo stays intact.
There was just enough frosting, which I was pleased as punch to be able to make with my own marmalade. Heh, heh. It looks like,,,maybe one of those tortes that an improbably named catalogue store of my youth called Italian Swiss Colony used to sell. Tiny, skinny little layers, separated by layers of frosting. It is not a high, fluffy cake, as matzos are not light, fluffy crackers. (I didn't see any round matzos, although the square ones come in white and whole wheat, and chocolate covered.)
In case anyone is still wondering, I finally got the definitive word on matzo cake meal from my Judaism expert, rabbi in training Margaux Yael-Buck, of St. Louis. She says, grains such as wheat, barley, oats, and even rice, and food made from them are forbidden at Passover because they could conceivably ferment if left in water. Anyone who has made sourdough starter can attest to this. Mix flour and water and leave it out long enough, and the microbes in the air will start it bubbling away. Matzos, though made from flour, are baked in a very short time, thus cutting off the fermentation process. Therefore, I guess, even if you mixed matzo cake meal with water and left it out in the air, it would not ferment.
(This sounds like a science fair project. Hypothesis: If I mix matzo cake meal and water and leave it someplace warm, it will ferment.) Joke, readers. I am not saying matzo cake meal will ferment. Margaux has spent an extremely long time studying this stuff, and if she says it's so, it's so.

Seven-Layer Chocolate Cake for Passover

1/2 pound Elite bittersweet chocolate (three bars)
1 tablespoon margarine
1/2 pound orange marmalade
2 eggs
2 tablespoons brandy
1 cup semi-dry white wine
8 round matzos
chopped nuts

1. Melt the chocolate, margarine and marmalade in the top of a double boiler over hot water.
2. Add the eggs and beat with a wire whisk until the  mixture is as thick as sour cream. (Be careful to turn down the heat under the water. If the mixture is too  hot the eggs will cook and you will have chocolate marmalade scrambled eggs.) Add the brandy and remove pan from the heat.
3. Continue beating until mixture again attains the consistency of sour cream. Pour the wine into a large, shallow dish.(like a square baking dish.)
4. Dip the matzos, one at a time, into the wine just to moisten but not to soak. Place moistened matzo on a cake plate and coat with a layer of the chocolate mixture. Top with another moistened matzo and more chocolate, continuing until all matzos are used. Use remaining chocolate mixture to frost sides. Decorate with nuts and let set at room temperature. Makes six to eight servings.