An Experiment

Some time ago I read a description of leaf lard, what an awesome piecrust you can make with it.  Leaf lard is the fat around the pork kidney and far superior to the lard you can buy in a grocery store.   I began my quest for a local source by posting on the local list serve.  Several people responded with suggestions.  A farmer near Norwich said she had plenty so I went there expecting a nice container of ready-to-use lard.  Alas, what she handed me was a big lump of pig fat.  So–I went online to learn about rendering.  Then I chopped up the fat so that I could grind it in the food processor.  After I ground it I put it in the crockpot for about 8 hours until I had a container full of liquid fat with cracklings on the bottom.  My grandmother would have used the cracklings for crackling bread but that seemed way too evil.  So I disposed of the crackling and after straining the liquid, poured it in ice cube trays.  I got a *lot* of Tbs.-sized servings–about 42 from 3 lbs. of pork fat.  Then I bought myself some high-fat European butter and started in on the pie crust.  Alas, the fancy butter was not marked off in Tbs.-sized portions like American butter so the upshot was that I put twice the butter plus 4 Tbs. of leaf lard.  When I removed the foil and pie weights the crust was so full of fat it had slumped down in the pie pan.  BUT–it was delicious.  I juiced a bunch of lemons, grated plenty of zest and followed a standard recipe for lemon meringue pie.  I think I still need to work on the meringue but I must say I was pleased.  This lard is no worse for you than butter–both are saturated but not trans fats–so for special occasions I’ll break out some of the lard in my freezer and try using the correct amt. of butter.

We’ve been in Utica with Alison and her family for Christmas and have delayed our return home because of the huge snowstorm last night and this morning.

Baking

I’ve had such a time with my blog!  For months it has been typing one character per second–way too slow to be worth the effort.  My savvy daughter-in-law Jill told me how to fix it (use another browser) so it looks like I’m finally back in business.   I never signed up to have to deal with so much technology in my life but so it goes.   This one is about making a tarte tatin.  I’d never tried one before and when I realized I had an old box of puff pastry in the freezer and an abundance of good local apples it seemed worth the effort.  I think next time I’ll use pie crust instead of the puff pastry.  Maybe it was too old but I didn’t think it was as good as it should have been.  But it was pretty tasty nonetheless.   Note the handsome baking stone–a birthday gift from Jill and Gavin.   It makes an awesome pizza on the grill.   I thought while I was at it I would include some freshly-baked boules in the photo.  I think I finally have the sourdough baking down so that it’s consistent.

Spruce Tips

In May I read about making simple syrup or infusing vodka with fir or spruce tips.  I happened upon it about the time the trees were about to put out new growth.  So over a period of a few days I patiently  gathered a few cups of the tips.  (See photo below) When Alison visited us last I tried to make her a spruce tip martini but it wasn’t great.  Then we had the idea of using the spruce syrup to make lemonade to which we added the spruce-infused vodka.  That was awesome.  When we’re all together with the Calif. contingent this week I’ll make some spruce drinks– rural sophistication!

 

Baking

Since cooking is one of my passions I thought I’d create a category for the blog. Here are items I made in the last week to take to Utica for the holidays.

I love to make sourdough bread. Recently in Cook’s Illustrated cooking magazine I learned a new trick–raising the loaves on parchment paper and then picking up the whole thing and depositing it in a heated cloche (thanks again Gavin and Jill) or Dutch oven. It works beautifully and produces the nice dark crust that the French think is so important

Here are pralines made in the microwave–very easy. One time I had no light brown sugar so had to substitute dark brown. Then I had the inspiration to replace the vanilla and small amount of water with bourbon. So now I call these “dark bourbon pralines” and they sell well at the Strafford library sale.

These are Florentines that Alison requested. Be very careful about starting holiday traditions or you’ll wind up having to make the same thing every year! Actually, these are kind of fun. The cookie part, essentially a lace cookie, is not hard, but then you have to temper chocolate to coat the bottom.

And speaking of tempering chocolate–here are the truffles I made at the same time I was coating the Florentines. I think I have the tempering part down pat but have not really mastered the dipping part. I have a special fork but still I wind up with some really ugly truffles. Anyway, they taste just as good. This year I made raspberry, Earl Grey tea, cognac and coconut/almond. I had plans to pipe a little symbol on each one to tell them apart but things got so frantic–chocolate all over everything, rushing back and forth to the stove to keep the melted chocolate at the right temperature–I never got around to marking them except for the ones with coconut. As a result my grandchildren ate a few of the ones with brandy and I hope that doesn’t start them on the road to perdition.. The plate the chocolates are resting on is a beautiful piece of an art deco tea set our son-in-law John brought us from Russia the last time he took a tour group there.

And finally, here is a Jamaican black cake. I had read about it years ago in Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking” but never got around to making it. It’s a fruitcake with all kinds of dried fruits marinated in a combination of madeira and black rum for three weeks, baked for three hours and then covered with a layer of marzipan and fondant icing. The burnt sugar flavoring that’s required never arrived so I had to substitute molasses. (My guess is that since the UPS truck can’t get up our snowy driveway they left it hanging on a tree branch as usual and it fell into the snow.) Anyway, it wasn’t so good that it’s going to start any tradition–Whew!

Have a great holiday and remember–holidays are free-fire zones where calories don’t count!