Plum Upside-Down cake

Yesterday, my one-year-old threw two meals on the floor and her shoe in the toilet. The highlight of my day was the company of friends and this Plum Upside-Down cake.

 

I copied the recipe from Alice Waters' lovely book The Art of Simple Food ages ago and finally got around to making it yesterday, at great expense to my sanity. As I beat the egg whites (my pet peeve), I told myself that this cake had better be worth it.

Well, it was. The cake was impossibly moist and tender, and while not exactly "easy", the cake is indeed "simple" as she says, and my favorite use so far for fresh plums. I used Santa Rosa plums from my parents' tree and Elephant Hearts from the Farmer's Market. I also used almond milk in place of whole milk as it was on hand, with great success.

Upside-Down Plum Cake

Adapted from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 c. brown sugar
3 Santa Rosa plums and 3 Elephant Heart Plums, pitted and cut into eighths, lengthwise
2 eggs, separated, at room temperature
1/2 c. whole milk, at room temperature
1 1/2 c. flour
2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 c. granulated sugar
1 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350.

Melt the brown sugar and 1 stick butter in an 8-inch cast-iron skillet. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the butter melts and starts to bubble. Let bubble for about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Arrange the plums, in a ring around the outer edge. Working inward, make concentric circles with the plums until you fill up the pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a large bowl or in a stand mixer, beat the remaining 1 sick of butter to lighten. Add granulated sugar and cream until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time. Stir in vanilla.

When well mixed, add the flour mixture alternately with the milk, starting and ending with one-third of the flour. Stir just until the flour is incorporated.

Beat the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Fold one third of the egg whites into the batter and then gently fold in the rest. Pour the batter over the plums and smooth the top with a spatula.

Bake for 35-45 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the cake pulls away from the sides of the pan. (Mine cooked for 45 and came out perfectly).  Remove from the oven and allow the cake to cool for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan and invert the cake onto a serving plate. 

Chez Panisse: At Last

This weekend we traveled to the Bay Area in an attempt to enjoy at least one real day of summer. We started our trip at Berkeley Bowl, the most amazing grocery store I have ever seen in my life. By the end of our exploration, we were joking about driving 1.5 hours every week just to do our grocery shopping at this place! I mean, look how many kinds of cucumbers alone the produce section carries:

Need squash or eggplant? Talk about having a variety to choose from:

When it came to yogurt, I haven't seen this kind of a selection since I was in France. I discovered the most amazing small-batch, French-style yogurt called St. Benoit. Produced in Sonoma, it tastes like a cross between yogurt, custard, and manna. I even found out that they carry this product at the Sacramento Natural Food Co-Op, so I can find it locally. Hooray!

For lunch, we fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine by eating at Chez Panisse Cafe. As I walked under the wooden sign into the wonderfully atmostpheric restaurant, I blissfully sighed, "I'm here, Alice!" (Waters, that is.)

The menu changes every day here, according to what is in season and at its best.

Our meal began with a crusty, hearty wedge of artisan bread and yellow, creamy butter.

Here is what my husband ordered Devil's Gulch Fried Rabbit, served over amaranth greens, sweet corn, and green tomatillos. He said that if everyone could make rabbit this delicious, it would be eaten much more commonly in America.

And here was my selection: Romanesco de Peix, a bowl of squid, mussels, clams, and shrimp cooked in a tomato-leek broth. It was simply perfection.

Finally, I couldn't resist dessert, especially since I desperately wanted to compare the apricot galette with the version I make using the Chez Panisse recipe - just to see how close I come in replicating the taste. Result? Because their galette is cooked in a wood-fired oven, the top gets a bit blacker and the bottom a bit browner and crisper, but other than that, it's definitely the same recipe - and a wonderful one.

Finally, we ended our trip with a stop at Stinson Beach. The smell of eucalyptus and fog and sea air always stirs something deep and moving inside of me. When the clouds quickly blew away, the sun was surprisingly hot and we moved on to exploring a little bookshop in town. It was a wonderful memory for this quickly fleeting summer of ours.

What Would Alice Do?

Source: norecipes.com via Stacy on Pinterest

Despite the fact that summer is in full swing, I found myself uninspired in my menu planning today. And I found myself wondering, What would Alice Waters do?

I found the answer on Chez Panisse Cafe’s website: A menu inspired by Deborah Madison, whose wonderful cookbook Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is a welcome presence in my own collection.

I love how the menu focuses on the best organic produce, like zucchini, greens, corn, sweet peppers, rosemary, and tomatoes. Sample dishes from the menu:

Salads:

- Blue Heron Farm Little Gems lettuce with mustard dressing, spiced beets, egg, and chives
- Shaved fennel and parsley salad with black pepper and Parmesan

Entrees:

- Pizzetta with zucchini, bottarga di muggine, and mint pesto
- Sheeps milk ricotta and greens cannelloni baked in the wood oven with porcini mushrooms
- Grilled Riverdog Farm chicken breast with succotash and sweet pepper relish
- Pizza with Flammé tomatoes, pancetta, and rosemary

And for dessert, the simplest one I saw was a bowl of Frog Hollow Farm Santa Rosa plums! The fancier options included a peach, nectarine, and berry cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream.

Alice: Consider me inspired.

Chez Panisse's Nectarine Blackberry Galette

I would love to eat at Chez Panisse in Berkeley someday; it is one of my life goals. I read a book several years ago called "Alice Waters and Chez Panisse" by Thomas McNamee, a delightful recollection of the rollicking 70's Berkeley atmosphere and how Chez Panisse was created at that time. The book also chronicles how the restaurant has evolved over time under the guidance of Alice Waters, the perfectionist/artist/pioneer of California cuisine.

Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes for dishes served at Chez Panisse, and there is one page I have turned to over and over again. It's a simple, flexible recipe for a fruit galette by pastry chef Lindsey Shere.

This galette is phenomenal with almost any kind of stone fruit. I have used peaches, nectarines, plums, even apples in winter; you can also use some berries in a combination with other fruit, although you may find it too juicy if you were to use all berries. This week, I used nectarines from the farmer's market and plump wild blackberries I picked.

The crust for the galette is ideal - flaky, buttery, both crisp and soft, flecked with coarse sugar and filled with meltingly soft, sweet fruit. Baking it on a pizza stone does make a difference, so I recommend buying one if you don't already have one in your kitchen. Here's the recipe, which is very casual and more of a tutorial in Lindsey's own words:

Lindsey's Fruit Galette

Peaches, nectarines, and plums are great for this. It's easily translated to apples and pears, too. One of the great things about a galette is you can make it any size you want. If you want something for two people, you can make a little one.

You start with a pate brisee, of whatever size you need for what you're making. The one I use, for 6-8 servings, is a cup of flour, six tablespoons of butter, a quarter teaspoon of salt, and a quarter cup of cold water. You just put it together like pie crust, very quickly. I usually chill it then for a little while to let the flour relax a bit.

I roll it out really thin, as thin as possible, into a big circle. I usually bake it on a pizza pan, but it could be on a flat cookie sheet. If you've got a pizza stone, putting the pan on that would be an ideal way to bake it, because you want to get heat to the bottom of it very quickly.

So you roll out a big circle and lay it on the pan. then I usually make a mixture of equal parts of sugar and flour. For this size I'd use about 2 tablespoons of each and spread that over the bottom of the galette, out to about 2 inches from the edge. It's there to sit under the fruit and thicken the juices. Sometimes I add macaroon crumbs, or even a thin layer of almond paste.

If I were using peaches or plums or nectarines of pluots, I would use about a quart of sliced fruit. You can either arrange the fruit in a fancy design on the dough or just scrumble it about. Peaches I peel usually, but not plums or nectarines.

Now this is the part where you have to make a judgement. i sprinkle the top with sugar - more if it's something like peaches. You can sprinkle it reasonably heavily, because those things because much more tart when you cook them.

When you've sprinkled the fruit with sugar, fold the edges of the dough up over the fruit. You can pleat them in or father them in. Then I brush those folded-over edges of dough with water , pretty heavily, and then I sprinkle just the edges really heavily with coarse sugar, so there's a thorough coating on it.

It goes into the oven to bake at 400 degrees for 45-50 minutes. The thing you want to be sure of ts that the fruit is thoroughly cooked, and that it's boiling in the center of the galette, because that will cook the flour on the bottom.

When it's done, immediately slide it onto a rack to cool, so that the bottom doesn't get soggy. In the first 5 minutes or so, while the juices are still bubbling, I use a pastry brush to pick up those juices and glaze any of the fruit that looks dry. After that, the juices disappear into the flour, so you've got to be quick. And that's it.

Alice Waters' Cherry Clafoutis

We never seem to get sour cherries in my neck of the states, but sweet cherries are being sold like crazy in streetside stands and markets everywhere this time of year. I bought a big bag yesterday that were cheap and looked nice, but it turned out they weren't too sweet, so I decided to bake with them.

For help, I turned to Alice Waters, the queen of regional fruit desserts. Decidedly French in spirit if not nationality, Waters' desserts are consistently subtle, light, and almost always feature the very best in fresh fruit.

Well, my fruit wasn't the very best, but when used in a cherry clafoutis, you could hardly tell. This traditional French dessert is sometimes very custardy and rich, but this version is more of a light cake topping over baked sweet cherries. The reserved cherry juice is thickened into a sweet-tart syrup that only heightens the flavor.

WARNING: If you are averse to the idea of perfuming your entire kitchen and the surrounding areas with the heavenly scent of cherry, almond, and lemon, this might not be the dish for you. However, if you are a fan of aroma therapy, by all means make this cherry clafoutis. The smell is to die for, not to mention the taste.

Cherry Clafoutis
From Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook by Alice Waters

1 lb. sweet cherries, washed and pitted (I halved mine)
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp. grated lemon zest
A pinch ground cinnamon
1/3 c. sugar (or more, depending on the sweetness of the cherries)
2 eggs, separated
3 T. sugar
2 T. flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1/3 c. cream
A pinch salt
Powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly butter a baking pan large enough to hold the cherries loosely in a single layer. Prepare the cherries and arrange them in the pan. Sprinkle with the lemon juice, zest, cinnamon, and sugar. Bake until the fruit is tender, about 15 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Raise the oven temperature to 375F. butter another dish large enough to hold the cherries in a single layer (I used a medium rectangular Pyrex). Drain the cooked cherries, reserving their juice in a small saucepan. Arrange the cherries in the bottom of your baking dish. Beat together the egg yolks and sugar until well blended. Beat in the flour, vanilla, almond extract, and cream.

Beat the egg white with a pinch of salt until they form soft peaks. Stir a little of the whites into the batter, and then carefully fold in the rest. Pour the batter over the fruit in the baking dish, letting a little fruit show through the top.

Bake in the upper third of the oven for about 20 minutes, until the batter has puffed and browned. While the clafoutis is baking, reduce the fruit juices to a thin syrup. When the clafoutis is done, dust it with powdered sugar and serve warm with a drizzle of the syrup.

Peach Blackberry Crisp

I realize that this is the fourth recipe for some form of fruit crisp on my blog. I think that makes it quite clear where my dessert loyalties lie. This version comes from Alice Waters' cookbook called The Art of Simple Food.

If you're wondering why I made this seasonally summer recipe in late February, there are two reasons. First, I am eagerly anticipating spring and summer. We're almost to March - soon asparagus and even strawberries will start appearing, and I can hardly wait. In the meantime, I needed something to tide me over. I looked in my freezer and saw that I still had peaches from a CSA box we received last summer, as well as wild blackberries we had picked and frozen. This recipe struck me as a perfect way to use clean out the fridge as we start a new growing season.

Note: You could also use 4 pound of peaches, or substitute nectarines; use raspberries or blueberries instead of blackberries; and so on.

Peach Blackberry Crisp

3 pounds ripe peaches, peeled and cut into 1/3 inch slices plus 1 cup blackberries (about 7 cups of fruit)

Toss with:

1 T. sugar (if needed)
1 1/2 T. flour

Pile the fruit into a medium baking dish and top with Crisp Topping (recipe below). Bake in a 375 oven for 40-55 minutes (rotate once while cooking for even browning) or until the crisp topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling in the dish.

Crisp Topping

Toast in a 375 oven for 6 minutes:
2/3 c. nuts (walnuts, almonds or pecans)

Let cool, then chop coarse.
Put the chopped nuts in a bowl and add:

1 1/4 cups flour
6 T. brown sugar
1 1/2 T. white sugar
1/4 tsp salt (leave out if using salted butter)
1/4 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

Mix well, then add:

12 T. (1 1/2 stick) butter, cut into small pieces

Work the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or your fingers until the mixture comes together and has a crumbly, but not sandy, texture. Chill until ready to use. Crisp topping can be made ahead and refrigerated a week or so, or frozen for 2 months.

The Job I Covet

Alice Waters with kids in Berkley's Edible Schoolyard

Dear Alice,

I want your job.

Sincerely, Me

P.S. You are really cool.