Spritz Cookies

I love a good butter cookie. So pure, so delicate, so delicious. And so pretty if they're spritz cookies. I decided to make a batch late last night, and for the first time, used Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe. Hers is very interesting because you add toasted ground almonds. This, says Rose, gives the cookies a very tender texture. And you don't have to use as much sugar. Having let my butter warm up for two hours (which I almost never do), the batter was really easy to whip up. And the cookies were not just more delicate, but had more flavor because of that toasted almond goodness. If you'd like to try her recipe out, just click here and I'll direct you to the LA Times website where they've archived it.

BTW, my recipe came from Rose's Christmas Cookies. For some reason, I have an autographed copy and was delighted to find out that she'd lovingly signed her name in both red and green colors!

Chong's Sesame Oil

My discovery of the year is Chong's Sesame Oil. Made fresh in a tiny little storefront in L.A.'s Koreatown, the oil is absolutely fantastic! I had no idea fresh sesame oil could taste so alive. No hint of rancidity at all. Available in a variety of sizes, Chong's comes in both light and dark.  The small 16 ounce bottle of light is $10, which is a bargain.

I've heard that you can get Chong's to mail the oils to you, but I haven't tried it. If you're in L.A., just go to their store in Koreatown, although finding the store is a bit tricky because the store is on the phantom 8th street. Phantom 8th street, you ask? Yes. Because, it turns out that there are two 8th streets: the main 8th street and a tiny side street that parallels it for about a hundred feet which is also called 8th street. Chong's is on that parallel side street.

Chong's Grocery
3560 W 8th Street
LA 90005
213 387 0651

BTW, according to the Korean spelling, the store should really be called Jeong's Grocery. Just saying.

Goguma (Korean Sweet Potato) Cake

Goguma cake is something you often see at Korean cafes but I've never seen a recipe for it. (Of course, I've only been searching English language sites—there must be some very good ones on the Korean language ones.) Undeterred, I decided to MacGyver up a recipe. I mean, how hard could it be? After all, gogumas, or Korean sweet potatoes, aren't too far off from bananas, so wouldn't a banana cake recipe work just as well? After some research, I had a hunch that the most workable banana cake recipe would be Martha Adams's version in Cooking From Quilt Country. It uses cake flour and turns out a very light, wonderful cake.

Of course, I ended up having to substitute more than just the bananas—I didn't have buttermilk. But lack of buttermilk is never a deal-breaker. I've always found that a combo of yogurt and half-and-half does a pretty good job as a buttermilk sub, and those two things were luckily in the fridge. Now the only difficulty in making this cake is that you have to have precooked gogumas. I had some leftover from a couple of days before, and really, it was trying to figure out what to do with it that led me to making this cake.

In case you've never eaten a Korean (or Japanese) sweet potato, let me warn you that it is very different from American red sweet potatoes (sometimes called yams). A goguma's flesh is light golden and its sweetness is more delicate, less in-your-face. And there's a natural buttery richness so that if you simply roast one, you can eat it plain. Fantastic as part of a tempura platter too.

Another warning: this cake recipe is a bit more involved than a banana cake recipe because you need to put the cooked goguma through a sieve (chinoise) otherwise you just end up with too much fiber in the cake.

So, here we go!

Adapted from Cooking From Quilt Country by Marcia Adams

Goguma Cake

2/3 cup of butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs at room temperature
2 1/4 cups of sifted cake flour
1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons of baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons of salt
2/3 cup of buttermilk at room temperature (or a combination of plain yogurt and milk or half-and-half)
1 1/4 cups goguma, cooked, mashed, and sieved
2/3 cup of chopped walnuts

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well. Sift the dry ingredients together. Add a third to the butter mixture and beat. Then add a third of the buttermilk (or sub) and beat. Then a third of the dry, then a third of the wet, etc. Add walnuts, mix, put in a pan (I used a brownie pan but you can use two cake pans) and bake.

In a brownie pan, the cake should take about thirty minutes, depending on your oven. You want to keep the cake pretty light and tender, so check after twenty. I always use a cake tester. Of course, you are perfectly free to frost the cake if you wish (any type of frosting will do), but I like mine with just a dusting of powdered sugar.

Celery

 

Celery is one of those vegetables that doesn't really get my imagination going. It's a nice vegetable and pretty critical as part of a mirepoix, but on its own? I suppose this is why there are so few recipes where celery takes center stage. Italians braise it in stock for a long time and that's really good. And I have a dish I make that's beef and celery stewed together for about half an hour (I got that recipe from the back of a Campbell's soup can because what makes the dish is cream of mushroom soup). And, of course, sliced celery is very nice in creamy salads. But what else? I was wondering that when I was browsing a Gary Rhodes' cookbook and I found a very interesting cooked celery dish. It's kind of a warm Waldorf salad because it uses the classic combo of celery, apples, and walnuts. But there's no mayonnaise, just a little bit of butter for enrichment. All you have to do is wash and peel the celery (to get rid of the strings which can be hard to eat), blanch it in boiling water for three minutes, fry some cut-up apples in oil until browned, throw in the blanched and drained celery, and add the butter and walnuts. Some salt and pepper too. It's a nice, light dish. I made it a little bit more savory by garnishing the dish with some thinly sliced Pecorino cheese (best done with a vegetable peeler).

How did it taste? I'd give it a solid B.

Carrot And Ginger Soup

When we were living in New York, we'd sometimes go to E.A.T. for lunch. I always found the restaurant too expensive for what you got, but I did love their carrot soup, which was just so amazingly fresh and concentrated. Now whenever I make carrot soup, I try to emulate E.A.T.'s version. The key, I've found, is to use water, not stock. Stock just muddies the taste. By using water, you get this amazingly fresh carrot flavor. This is a super easy recipe.

About a dozen carrots, peeled and cut into smallish pieces
A tiny clove of garlic, peeled and smashed (use side of knife or bottom of glass)
A chunk of ginger about an inch long, peeled, cut up and smashed (smash same way as garlic)
Water
Pinch of ground cumin (optional, but nice to add because cumin has an incredible affinity for carrots)
Salt and pepper

Put the carrots, garlic and ginger in a pot. Add water--but only enough to just cover the carrots. What you want is a very thick, concentrated, bright orange soup. Cook until the carrots are tender (10-15 minutes). Add ground cumin (if using). Then blend using an immersion blender. If the soup is too thick for you, feel free to add more water. Now adjust the taste with salt and pepper.

My Dilemma With Trader Joe's

This is pretty simple. I'm just mystified that some of Trader Joe's products are so good and some are so bad. Like their avocados—always ripen to a lovely creamy consistency. Or their frozen chocolate croissants which you bake at home—turns your home into a bakery. So why are their cheese so bad? Their "Parmesan" is horrendous. Their Monterey Jack doesn't even melt. And their frozen ethnic foods, like the gyozas, have the consistency of wet cardboard. But great apple juice.

My Dilemma With Whole Foods

My dilemma with Whole Foods? They're just weird. Like they've got stuff I really like to buy, but the shopping experience is just so confusing. Like sometimes the meat you get at the counter is really fresh and sometimes it's really not fresh. Like I'm at the produce section and they've got all this stuff with scanner codes but no prices. So finally, I ask a staff guy what's with the veggies with no prices? I'm assuming since they have scanner codes, there must be a scanner somewhere? Like where is it? So the guy says, "Well what do you need the price of?" And I'm like, no—week after week this happens—where's the scanner? Do you guys even have one? So the guy finally gets it and says, "Yeah. I'll show you." And then he take me to the tiniest computer behind some mushrooms and I say, "Uh—don't you think you guys should have a big sign so we can find this scanner?" And he looks at me like, "Why?" Shopping rage. I'm getting a headache just retelling this story.

Coming next, my dilemma with Trader Joe's.