Happy cake

Date: Tue, Mar 9, 2010

Baby, clear the decks for this one. It isn't difficult, but every careful chore that modern cake recipes tend to omit is required here. It's vintage 1933, and was called "Economical gold cake," or Basic Recipe 4, in General Foods' hardcover booklet All About Home Baking. After finishing it I mused that it deserved a better name, and tried to think of something clever and lovely; and then it got christened almost on its own, as you will see.

You will need:

4 cups cake flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened and ready to cream
2 cups sugar
6 egg yolks
1 and 1/2 cups milk
2 tsp vanilla or 1 tsp orange extract

After collecting all your ingredients and supplies, you might order the work like this:

Separate the 6 eggs if you haven't already. Grease two 8 x 8 x 2 square pans.

Sift the flour and add the baking powder to it. Sift again into a bowl, and set aside.

If you don't have a sifter, pushing the flour through a fine large mesh strainer with a spoon will do. Let it fall onto wax paper and then spoon it up into a measuring cup. Level off the piled flour in the cup without jarring the cup on the table or rapping it with the knife, which causes the flour to settle and skew the correct measurement.

I must admit, I never sifted flour for baking recipes, until consulting this little book and finding that it exactly diagnosed a cake problem that I hadn't even been aware of: the Hump in the Middle. Flour tends to pack, the authors say, a peculiarity which sifting combats. One cup of flour taken directly from the bag actually contains more flour than a sifted cup. Therefore, "the woman who is 'too busy to bother to sift' may easily put an extra cup of flour into a cake -- and ruin it! ALWAYS SIFT FLOUR ONCE BEFORE MEASURING." Humped, tough cakes, tough pie crusts, and "humped, tunneled muffins" all bespeak the use of too much flour.

So I began sifting. My cakes no longer hump in the middle. I feel chastened. You must sift, too. Actually, it becomes rather Zen-like. You will like it. Sift.

Next, cream the butter, and add the sugar to it gradually. Beat until fluffy.



Now beat the egg yolks with an electric beater "until they turn thick and pale" or "lemon colored."



If you have never bothered with a step like this before either, I can testify that it really does happen. Egg yolks thicken, gain in volume, and turn a beautiful shade of pale cream-yellow. When you thump the bottom of the bowl, a hollow echo sounds.



Pour the beaten yolks into the creamed butter-sugar, combine, and then beat the whole mixture very well.

Add, alternately, portions of the flour and of the 1 and 1/2 cups milk to the batter. Combine thoroughly each time. When all the flour and milk has been added, add the vanilla and mix in.

Now beat the final batter very well.



Pour and scrape the batter into your two greased pans. It will be "light," "smooth," and "fluffy," and take on a "sunny sheen." (All true. These women were having a lot of serious fun in the General Foods' test kitchens in 1933.) Smooth the batter out to the edges of each pan.



Bake at 350 F for about 40 minutes, or until nicely browned and done.



Now make the chocolate frosting. The original recipe calls for Luscious Lemon frosting, but I prefer chocolate. We'll use Barbara Kafka's childhood recipe, as given in the December 1987 issue of Gourmet magazine.



You'll need:

1 stick butter
8, eight, squares of Baker's Chocolate
3 cups of confectioner's sugar -- also sifted!
2/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp coarse kosher salt (I used regular salt)
1 tsp vanilla

Melt the butter and chocolate together in the top of a double boiler over simmering water or, watching it carefully, in a heavy bottomed saucepan. When it is all melted, set it aside to cool.



Place the sifted sugar into a large bowl. Scald the milk (you can microwave it on high for a minute). Mix the milk with the sugar and beat it well to dissolve any lumps. Mix in the salt and the vanilla.



Pour in the chocolate butter mixture. Blend well.



Refrigerate the frosting for 30 minutes to an hour, until it is of spreadable consistency. Fill and frost the Economical Gold Cake,



... which is henceforth to be called "Happy cake." Why? Because a person who is health conscious might be aghast at the amounts of butter, eggs, and milk in this cake. In that case, you would quote deeply authoritative studies ("I read it somewhere") to say that people who allow themselves regular little treats, even technically harmful ones, are happier and live longer than those who do not. Pipe smokers, I believe, live longer than non-pipe smokers, because as far as their immune systems and so on are concerned, the happiness of enjoying the treat counteracts whatever ill effects tobacco would have. The same is true, I feel sure, for a cake made of all this good butter and eggs. And then after quoting your sources you would wave a piece of it under a nice health conscious person's nose, and encourage a forkful, on the grounds that, see? -- this is "Happy" cake. All About Home Baking is now out of copyright, so I think I am on safe legal ground in renaming it, too.

And isn't the retro square shape fun?

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2008 Les Sorts Rosat

Date: Sun, Mar 7, 2010

A Spanish rose, 90% grenache, 10% carignan, from Celler el Masroig in the Mont Sant DO (Denominacio d'Origen, one of Spain's legally defined wine making regions -- comparable to a French Appellation Controllee or an Italian Denominazione di Origine Controllata). Mont Sant lies in northeastern Spain's Catalan region, on the Mediterranean coast; Tarragona and Barcelona are two of its principal cities.

Ruby red grapefruit color -- very slight gamy aroma -- juicy, fresh, a tiny bit leathery -- very good.

Dry roses are the rarest finds in the wine aisle of a grocery store. I'm told that they become more sought after and therefore easier to find in the summer, when people's taste changes and the crisp refreshment of a dry rose seems right, just as the warmth of a red seems right in winter. Of course this makes some sense, but I confess to feeling just a bit impatient with such sensible seasonal thinking, especially if it becomes rigid and cramps my style, or my learning curve. Let's don't feel we must wait till June: do have a nice dinner of crisp fried fish, any time, or a creamy pasta dish, anytime, and see how well a dry rose pairs with either -- ignoring for the moment what the wind, rain, and sun are doing outside.

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2005 Twomey merlot

Date: Wed, Mar 3, 2010

Deep rich purple -- little "nose" -- maybe faint smoke
Soft -- luscious -- blackberries
Finishing acidity
Rather simple -- regal -- no busyness -- no swirl of oak, caramel, chocolate, etc. etc.

Very adult -- pair it with something adult -- creamy -- sophisticated.

Why does only one image come to mind?



Image from The Fresh Site.

For more background on Twomey merlot, made by the good people famed for Silver Oak cabernet sauvignon, do visit the Twomey website here.

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Persian apples

Date: Sun, Feb 28, 2010

(What a stroke of luck. This happens to be my 200th post. Tanti saluti e grazie tanti to all, as Lucia would say.)



It seems to be the inclusion of dates, in old cookbooks sometimes called "Persian apples," that gives this otherwise traditional American apple crisp the more exotic sounding name. The recipe comes from an old cookbook called Fondue, Chafing Dish, and Casserole Cookery, written by Margaret Deeds Murphy and published in 1969. Although the peeling and chopping of dates and apples takes a bit of time, it can be sort of Zen-like work if you let it, and the dish is easy to put together. It is very sweet, so much so that you may want to cut the sugar a bit, as I did.

Persian apples

Have ready: 1 cup pitted dates, cut crosswise; 4 large tart apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (make sure they are tart!); 1/2 cup chopped pecans. Combine the dates, apples and pecans with 1/4 cup granulated sugar (the recipe here calls for 1/2 cup of sugar).

Put this mix into a buttered 1 and 1/2 quart casserole. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Then mix 3/4 cup flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1 tsp. cinnamon. Cut in 1/2 cup butter, with two knives or a pastry cutter, until the mix resembles coarse meal. Spoon this over the apples and dates in the casserole. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the apples are tender.

And pair it with a robust syrah or a dry light rose, to see which you like better. Honestly, we all don't match desserts with wine enough.

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Vintage liquor ad, 1964

Date: Thu, Feb 25, 2010

I adore the ads that show liquor as having something to do with women. Earlier ads, from the 1950s, often seemed to show just the product, as if no one had any more imagination than that.



The gal in red is Julie London, whom most of us will probably remember as the head nurse at the hospital on the old TV show Emergency! What we might not have known is that Julie London was also a pretty big-name jazz and nightclub singer -- voted among Billboard's top female vocalists for several years in the mid 1950s, with no less than 32 studio albums to her credit -- as well as a movie and television actress. Venture over to the website that tells you all this, and you'll also find an introduction to the book The Cocktail: the Influence of Spirits on the American Psyche, by Joseph Lanza. I feel sure this book is going to be great fun, once I get my hands on it.

Image from AdClassix.com.

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Spicy beef and brown rice (imprew-ved)

Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2010

In our house we like to say, whenever there's been a change of plan or a change of mind about some activity -- it doesn't matter how small -- that we have "imprew-ved" whatever it was. We are cleverly quoting an obscure line in the old Disney movie Alice in Wonderland. When the snooty, hookah-smoking caterpillar misquotes "How doth the busy little bee," and Alice protests his error, he blows another perfect smoke ring, looks down at her, and pronounces, "I kno-ow. I have imprew-ved it."



Image from Conveniently Misplaced

Thus, with a recipe for "Spicy beef and brown rice" taken some years ago from the back of the Riceland brown rice box. Originally, the dish is the height of simplicity. You simply brown ground beef in a heavy skillet, and then add half a chopped onion, a diced tomato, a little garlic powder, and a little something, maybe two or three small forkfuls, from a can of hot chilies. Salt and pepper to taste, naturally. Simmer for half an hour, and serve over brown rice.

It will never render Larousse ridiculous, but it's serviceable for a weeknight, done-in-an-hour dinner. Still, couldn't it stand imprew-vement?



You might start with a chopped onion and a chopped leek, and soften both for ten minutes or so in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add a clove of diced garlic, scattering the pieces over the other vegetables so that they warm for a minute or two, but do not scorch.

Remove all this to a bowl, and then put a pound of ground beef into the empty skillet. Brown this completely, breaking it up as it cooks. When it is browned, spoon off the fat and discard it. Notice, in doing this, you get rid of a lot of the beef fat but not the olive oil still clinging to the aromatic vegetables in their bowl. I do wish cookbooks, or even the recipes on the backs of rice boxes, would include this little instruction, since it makes ground beef meals (never my favorite, frankly) less greasy and quite a bit nicer. Then again, maybe everybody already knows my clever trick.

Return the onions, leeks, and garlic to the defatted beef, and then add a can of stewed or diced tomatoes (again, we're not rendering Larousse ridiculous -- though do use fresh tomato if you prefer it), and -- carefully -- two small forkfuls of canned hot chilies. If two forkfuls prove not enough, you can always taste and, carefully, add more. Are you tempted to be safe and virtuous, and buy a can of mild chilies instead, so you can use it all and not waste any? Don't bother. Mild chilies won't have nearly enough "kick."




Add a can of black beans, and perhaps a quarter teaspoon of cumin if you feel frisky. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes or so, while you cook a pot of brown rice and prepare some sort of green vegetable. Peas leap to mind, as their sweetness offsets the heat of the spicy beef.







And that's all there is to it.




No wine can hope to survive hot chilies, tomato, garlic, and onions, unless perhaps you try something most definitely sweet. Perhaps a moscato would do. The best of them smell and taste just like a handful of hard, ripe, fresh Thompson seedless grapes all stuffed in the mouth and cracked deliciously against the teeth on a hot summer day. Or, in lieu thereof, Gawdhelpus, a beer? Feel free to think of an imprew-vement.

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You may have to spend some money

Date: Sat, Feb 20, 2010

2007 Rochioli Russian River valley chardonnay.

Tasting notes, in sum: Wow.

Is it any use to scribble down "bananas, roses, vanilla, cream -- no more burnt popcorn" or, "rich, prob. what everybody raves about in chards," or, more to the point, "the first chardonnay I have ever liked"? Is it any use to think again and scribble down, "no, strawberries in cream -- acidity, too"?

Or how about, "yes, the glass makes a difference -- voluptuous in big, thin crystal, harsh and thick in a Libbey."

Oh, and this addendum: retail, about $45. On the close-out shelf, still $16.

The beauty of spending this kind of money on a bottle of wine is that, besides the outlay getting you a very pleasurable experience, it will also give you a small foundation for understanding what more yeoman products are trying to be. If you've been disappointed by chardonnays which taste roughly like a piece of banana-and-vanilla-syrup candy picked up from your basement's cement floor -- really, what is that harshness? Oak chips? Burnt popcorn? -- then Rochioli, or wines of its class, will help clarify matters.

And, how curious that with just one revelatory purchase, we fall naturally into the old fashioned habit of discussing wines in terms of nobility and commonness. Fruit basket metaphors only take us so far.

Rochioli Vineyards & Winery, Healdsburg, CA (Sonoma County)

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2006 Artesa Carneros pinot noir reserve

Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2010

My notes, for what they are worth (shall I begin every tasting note this way?) --

Barbecue (light) -- pickles -- meat -- a hamburger
acidic -- tangy
You lick the fruit off your teeth afterward

And, should tasting notes resemble haiku?

A gourmet cheeseburger in a glass -- very very good

Retail, about $49

More about 2006 Artesa pinot noir reserve

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When retro goes wrong: "Sarah Bernhardts"

Date: Sun, Feb 14, 2010

To love retro cooking is to be unable to resist a recipe for "Sarah Bernhardts," from the cookbook Saucepans and the Single Girl (1965), written by the wonderfully retro-named Jinx Kragen and Judy Perry. This was the cookbook that called to mind images of the newly independent, post-college Jinx and Judy strutting around the big city in their pencil skirts, high heels, and beehive hairdos, buying groceries and liquor after work for their smart weekend dinner party. "Happiness is a very dry martini," they announce in their introduction ("or, why we bothered"). Later, they would move on to marriage and motherhood, and a new cookbook, How to Keep Him (After You've Caught Him) -- which is where we got the idea for those nice rum-soaked fudge brownies.

Saucepans and the Single Girl is among the treasures available in the cookbook collection at the Chicago Public Library's main branch on State Street (fourth floor, call letters beginning with TX, should you happen to be toddling around town in your heels and pencil skirt). These Sarah Bernhardts struck me as pleasingly, encouragingly easy to make, and so I persevered despite the little warning bell in my head clanging away, telling me that Sarah Bernhardts, somehow, should not be easy.

Nor should they necessarily include a bucketful of oats. This retro recipe didn't go wrong, exactly. It's just odd. For Jinx and Judy's version, combine 4 cups of old fashioned oats with 2 cups of brown sugar. Add 1/2 pound (2 sticks) of butter, melted, and 2 Tbsp., that's Tablespoons, vanilla (I replaced one of them with 1 Tbsp. of brandy, and still found the cookies incredibly sweet).

Fill muffin tins half full with this batter. Cook 15 minutes in a preheated 350 F oven, and when they are done, cool the little cakes in the pans completely. They must solidify or else they will fall apart on a cookie rack.

This recipe is almost the same as that for old-fashioned lace cookies, except that lace cookies at least include some milk to cut the sweetness and some flour to hold the dough together. And these "Sarah Bernhardts" are totally unlike those that other cookbooks claim to teach. The true Sarah Bernhardt -- although who's to say? -- seems to be a complex confection of almond-flavored cookie topped with a chocolate cream filling, and then drizzled with a chocolate coating. Martha Stewart can instruct you in the real thing, if you are so undaunted. I suspect Jinx and Judy would have been content with these little butter-sugar-oat chews, perhaps washed down with some sort of chic little potable.

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My culinary hall of fame: M.F.K. Fisher*

Date: Wed, Feb 10, 2010

I have the effrontery to place an asterisk beside this culinary legend's, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher's, name because giant though I know she is, I have never enjoyed her books. She did splendid work, collecting and explaining all sorts of wonderful materials on food and eating in history, and of course she translated (1949) no less magisterial a figure than Brillat-Savarin, author of the famous Physiology of Taste (1825). Perhaps mastering him, even before publishing him, went to her head. "There are two kinds of books about eating," she pronounces in her introductory chapter to Serve it Forth (1937), "those that try to imitate Brillat-Savarin, and those that try not to ...."

Ah. Really. Her ideas are firm like that, and her prose clear, and flowing, and poetic and lovely I suppose, but her mood is so cold and haughty that I habitually put her aside after only a page or two. What with the jabs at other people's scandalously bourgeois food choices, and the terribly meaningful short stories, a la a Fellini film, about fragile Polish lady tourists emotionally crumpling in small French hotel rooms where the young bride Fisher happened to stand witness, and the magnificently offhand driblets of otherwise unexplained information -- "And when the infamous Whistling Oyster of Drury Lane started his daily pipings on the pub bar" -- what with all of it, I begin to think, great Madame M.F.K., give me some recipes and be done with it. ("They will only appear," she says, "like birds in a tree -- if there is a comfortable branch.")

For a woman who devoted her life to the joys of food and writing, she strikes me as singularly bitter. She's bitter about anything and everything. She's bitter about dish soap, for heaven's sake. She hates the radio ads exhorting women to buy "super-oxygenized Drift-O" so that their rough hands will be healed and pretty enough for Mr. Right to kiss. "All is well" at the end of these ads, Fisher assures us in a voice dripping with loathing, "and from that day forward she washes dishes with just oodles of soapsy sudsy bubble-squubble Drift-O" (How to Cook a Wolf, 1942).

Of course it's hardly fair to pick out the angriest, non-food related quotes as proof that she merits damning with an asterisk, but then again there are so many angry quotes. "There are few people alive with whom I care to pray, sleep, dance, sing or share my bread and wine," she tells us. Admirable honesty, but I can't help thinking that most of the people who knew her probably muttered sotto voce, Honey, that goes double. Just below her sentence on not wanting company, is this equally honest paragraph, on wanting it:

Naturally there have been times when my self-made solitude has irked me. I have often eaten an egg and drunk a glass of jug-wine, surrounded deliberately with the trappings of busyness, in a hollow Hollywood flat near the studio where I was called a writer, and not been able to stifle my longing to be anywhere but there, in the company of any of a dozen predatory or ambitious or even kind people who had not invited me.

That was the trouble: nobody did.

Both these quotes are from "A is for Dining Alone," in An Alphabet for Gourmets (1949). You can flip through Fisher for interesting food information -- she writes a really frightening passage on what it's like to die of a bad oyster in Consider the Oyster (1941) -- but there is also an awful lot of the above sort of thing. How she drank marc at that quaint French hotel, and cried when they fired her favorite old waiter ....

As for the recipes, those birds on comfortable branches, considering how flinty she is, I wish there were more at least of those. The few I have cooked are good. To make best use of M.F.K Fisher as a source, I recommend something like Here Let us Feast (1946, 1986). She keeps herself most in the background with this compilation of the best of other centuries' and civilizations' food writing, and so lets sunnier dispositions (better digestions, possibly?) speak, and eat, for themselves.

********

M.F.K. Fisher's basic minestrone, from How to Cook a Wolf (1942, compiled with four of her other books into The Art of Eating, 1990).

Begin by gently sauteeing onions, tomato, celery, oregano, basil and parsley in bacon fat or salt pork; I used a generous quantity of butter, to see if I could make a good version that had "not been breathed upon by meat in any form," which Fisher says characterizes one of the authentic Italian versions.



To the softening vegetables, add about 1/3 cup wine, 3 quarts water, and large quantities of vegetables:



... 4 stalks celery, more onions, 2 to 3 cloves of chopped garlic; carrots; an unpeeled potato; most importantly, Savoy cabbage, the mild, distinct flavor of which really makes a difference.



Simmer for two to three hours, and serve with grated Parmesan cheese. Garlic toast and any wine you like will also go nicely.

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Meme: vintage liquor ads

Date: Sun, Feb 7, 2010

From Italy, this time. And I happen to have it framed and hanging in the house, long since. Who knew?



Image from Enjoy Art

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2005 Artesa cabernet reserve

Date: Fri, Feb 5, 2010

My notes, for what they are worth:

• Very dark -- licorice -- opened up to caramel flavors -- not terribly fruity -- restrained (I think?). Acidic -- still, lots of sweetness
• 2nd day: can there be an austere licorice bomb? Cabernets don't have a vivid aroma, to me ... Toasty, burnt caramel aftertaste with food
• The use of French oak = "taut," "cedar" (Jancis Robinson, How to Taste)
  
• The use of American oak = "vanilla," "sweet" (ditto)

So, can there be an Austere Licorice Bomb? I can almost see this as a proprietary name on a wine label, although I would defy any graphic artist to come up with an appropriate design.

The one characteristic of cabernet which puzzles me, because wine writers all seem to agree on it and I don't see why, is its scent. Or lack thereof. Experts speak of the grape's unmistakable black currant aromas, just the thing for people who want a lushly smelling wine. I find a cabernet's scent weak to the point of non-existence, nothing like a chianti's horsiness, a riesling's lemon and clove, or a sauvignon blanc's grapefruit. If you're lucky you might get a big whiff of barbecue sauce, but that's not fruit.

And then there is the challenge of identifying cabernets that have been vinified in the French or the California style. California cabs are all thick, jammy, high tannin and high alcohol, grape-strudels-in-a-glass; the best French cabs are thinner, subtler, meant to be aged until those rich attributes -- if they've managed to attain them, in Bordeaux's shall we say, subtle climate -- have become all elegance, refinement, and structure. But while we puzzle over this, we should keep in mind that winemakers have been sampling each other's product, and making decisions, and taking stands, and not least of all looking at their spreadsheets, too. So there are California cabernet growers who want to produce subtle, French style wines, and there are Bordelais who make fruit forward, "global reds" to catch that share of the market trained by Robert Parker to like "huge" wines. If he can't see through it, he gives it 91 points, I've been told.

When you drink Artesa, or any cabernet that is obviously of a certain class, which have you got? Subtle or huge? French or California? Putting your nose in the glass and trying for that first clue, "explosive" black currant aromas, may prove a disappointment. And is it masculine or feminine? (To me, this old fashioned way of thinking about a wine is more interesting and challenging than identifying endless fruit-basket flavors.) Is jamminess and power "masculine" because it knocks your socks off, or is it feminine because it's lush and sweet? Are elegance and refinement feminine because they can be construed as quiet, or are they masculine because they an be thought of as pared down and undecorated? Can subtlety knock your socks off? (And could that be another cute proprietary label name? If so, I get credit.)

You see how wildly important it is to get this right. For the sake of a shared vocabulary and all.

The wine, in sum: very good. A bit austere and licorice-like, though. Have it with something luscious and -- feminine. Artesa, by the way, is owned by the Spanish firm Codorniu, famed for their cava; this cabernet retails for about $44.

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Northwest pecan treats

Date: Thu, Feb 4, 2010

These bar cookies rank as just about the best, richest, and most special I have ever tasted, which says a lot considering they don't have any chocolate. The original recipe comes from a magazine which I'm sorry I can't identify, because I have only a photocopy of the magazine page. It's of recent vintage, less than five years old. The magazine in turn credits "the Mountain Home Lodge in Washington state" for coming up with the bars.

These treats, basically a shortbread crust topped with pecan pie filling plus pecans and dried fruits, will be very sweet if you follow the recipe exactly. Sugar is called for in the crust, and sugar, corn syrup, and vanilla in the custard. You might hold back on the last 1/4 cup or so of one of those sweeteners, or skimp a bit on the vanilla. Also, the original recipe asks for only one-third cup of dried fruits, which seems not nearly enough; I used a full (6 oz., I believe) bag of tart cherries and half a bag of cranberries.

The bars are rich and delicious, and -- again, in the original recipe -- only deceptively difficult to make. Never mind all the folderol about lining your pan with tin foil and then greasing that, and lifting the bars out of the pan with the foil. Lightly butter a 15 x 10 x 1 jelly roll pan,and then pile the shortbread dough into it and pat it out flat.

Northwest pecan treats

• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter
• 4 eggs
• 1 and 1/4 cups dark corn syrup
• 1 (and 1/4) cups sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3 Tbsp melted butter
• 2 and 1/2 cups pecans, chopped
• 1 bag dried tart cherries
• 1/2 bag dried cranberries

Preheat the oven to 350 F. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender, two knives, or your hands until the mixture resembles coarse meal or small peas. (It should start to feel rich but not greasy to your hands). Pat it into a greased jelly roll pan, and bake it for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in the same bowl, combine the eggs, corn syrup, sugar, melted butter, and vanilla. When the crust has prebaked, sprinkle the pecans and then the dried fruits over it and spread them out evenly.

Pour the custard slowly over all. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the filling is set.

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"Frequently asked questions" lol ;p

Date: Tue, Feb 2, 2010

Okay, maybe one person asked them. Maybe I even thought of a few myself.

I checked out your profile and I see you've been on Blogger since May 2006. But At First Glass' archives only start in December 2007. What's the deal?

I experimented with a blog of book reviews beginning in May 2006, but I couldn't seem to get the hang of it. (Lacking fifty million visitors an hour right away, I probably thought "this isn't how it's done.") I shut that one down and then started At First Glass a year and a half later. Then I started a few more just for kicks. Blogger, bless its heart, still gives me credit for having been around since the moment I opened any account whatsoever.

What's the quote, or blog description, under the title? -- about the girl named Miss Pommery?

It's from the great old movie The Philadelphia Story. Towards the end, wealthy ice goddess Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) gets drunk and makes a spectacle of herself with another man (James Stewart) on the night before her wedding to the parvenu stuffed shirt, George Kittredge (John Howard). In hashing things out the next morning, in front of witnesses no less, the affianced agree " 'she'd had too much to drink.' " Too much Pommery champagne in particular. But the witnesses defend her behavior, and anyway Tracy has learned to enjoy having "feet of clay," too. The script goes something like this:

Liz: You see Mr. Kittredge, it really wasn't Tracy at all. It was another girl, a Miss Pommery '26.

George: You'd had too much to drink.

Tracy: That seems to be the consensus of opinion.

George: Will you promise me never to touch the stuff again, Tracy?

Tracy (hesitating): No, George, I don't think I will. You see, there are certain things about that other girl, that Miss Pommery '26, I rather like ....

Are your sidebar links all sponsored ads?

No, none of them are. Some are links to myself, and some are links to wine-industry professionals who have simply suggested "my readers might like this." A few represent link exchanges -- I'm listed at (as luck would have it) The Wine School of Philadelphia, for example. I used to be a part of the ad networks BlogHer and then FoodBuzz, but in both cases I decided the ads were too unattractive to warrant the few dollars a month they brought me in revenue.

Are you earning any money blogging?

No. I earned about $25 in a year with BlogHer, and had earned about $5 or $6 in a few months with FoodBuzz before I took those ads down.

How much does it cost you to own the domain name www.atfirstglass.com?

Ten dollars a year, paid to Google.

What made you become a -- well, a food writer?

You mean, for lack of a better word? Funny you should ask. I have always been a writer. And even as a teen I liked reading cookbooks. I can remember an older brother, who shall remain nameless, stalking past one day while I was absorbed in The Farmer's Daughter Cookbook and asking me "Whaddya reading a COOKBOOK for?" And I always enjoyed the food parts of novels -- Scarlett O'Hara's honeymoon indulgences in Gone With The Wind, for example ("fish baked cunningly in oiled paper and limes...."), or Dorothy's first breakfast in Oz (bread, butter, spring water, and fruit.)

That must have been some indication of where my tastes lay. When I began blogging, because I had a whopping six months in the wine industry under my belt and I wanted to earn big money like all the other bloggers, I found those indications reinforced. I found, a little to my own surprise, that I appear to have foodie-ism in my inner hard drive. It's a most congenial thing to have encoded there. Of course it's congenial for lots of reasons to lots of writers, but even though it might seem too girly, unchallenging, and monotonous a subject to concern a grown up -- strawberry shortcake is strawberry shortcake, after all -- there are serious reasons why food writing attracts, I like to think, pretty good minds.

Mainly, food and drink are an honest subject to write about. You are not agonizing over the invention of a new plot (fiction), or carefully diluting your opinions in the struggle to be loftily objective, incredibly prescient, and forgotten (nonfiction, politics). You are not doing a lot of navel gazing and calling it "creative non-fiction." Though you'll do research like any other pale academic, you will at least research things that other people can eat and drink, not abstractions and theses that might have embalmed you in an academic journal if you were lucky and had stayed in school.

There. Besides, Lin Yutang, with five thousand years of Chinese civilization behind him, says that thinking and writing about food is absolutely among the most civilized and serious topics to which poor, puny, hungry man can devote himself. He says, of the Chinese:

We are unashamed of our eating. We have "Su Tungp'o pork" and "Kiang bean curd." In England, a Wordsworth steak or a Galsworthy cutlet would be unimaginable. ...

The Chinese accept food as they accept sex, women, and life in general. No great English poet or writer would condescend to write a Cook Book, which they regard as being outside the realms of literature and worthy of the efforts of Aunt Susan only. But the great poet-dramatist Li Liweng did not consider it beneath his dignity to write about the cooking of mushrooms and all kinds of vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods. Another great poet and scholar, Yuan Mei, wrote a whole book on cooking, besides writing a most wonderful essay on his cook. ...H.G. Wells, who of all English minds is the one most likely to write about English food, evidently cannot write it, and no hope is to be expected from the less encyclopedic minds ... (My Country and My People, 1935).

According to Google analytics, in 2009 about 10,000 visitors landed at At First Glass. I think that's considered very low traffic. I'm not even sure whether individual people found me, or whether most of this traffic was search engines "dinging" the site automatically while trawling the web for fresh content. If those visits were actual people, then I get two or three hundred readers a week. Unfortunately, the average visit length seems to be about fifty seconds. I hope this doesn't mean I'm a bore. My Google page rank is 4 out of 10; high powered blogs like Orangette (among the best known food blogs in the world) or Fermentation rank 6 of 10. My subscriber count, according to Feedburner, hovers at about 70 all the time. My goal and delight would be to break 100 there.

Do you have any formal culinary training?

Good heavens, no.

Do you have any formal wine training?

Good heavens, no.

What sparked your interest in wine?

I did read one book, Leslie Brenner's Fear of Wine, B. Y. O. W. S., Before [finding work at] Ye Olde Wine Shoppe. But it was working there that did it. After a very brief and unpleasant stint in a medical office, I went job hunting on purpose in a local, swanky southern suburb -- there are only a couple of them -- hoping to be taken on at some swanky, scarf-draped boutique. None of them were hiring, but the wine shop was. I began to learn. All the good things encapsulated in a bottle of wine, sensuous pleasure, history, food, nature, religion, human conviviality, culture, aesthetics, the challenge of everlasting learning, have conspired to keep my nose in the glass.

What's your favorite wine?

It's early to say yet, and of course I have never tried the sublimities of Burgundy or Bordeaux, but I think it might be Chianti.

What's your favorite Star Trek episode?

It's a tie between Mirror, Mirror and Journey to Babel. Yes, City on the Edge of Forever is excellent, but I prefer the episodes that take place on the Enterprise. That's the most truly alien environment the crew ever cope with. By the way, have you noticed how often in TOS (The Original Series) officers and men relax over a good stiff drink? So red-blooded of them.

Image from Wikia divertissement (a Star Trek geek site -- in French!)

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