Our Life

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Blue(ish) Velvet Cake, At Last

Belatedly, I realize that the entire point of the Amateur Gourmet’s Blue Food Contest is to make blue food look “appetizing,” not necessarily chronicle the efforts of a slightly off-balance person to produce blue food without blue food coloring. Nevertheless, the hotly pursued Blue Velvet Cake, while not aesthetically stunning or really even that blue, was actually . . . good.

I think it would be perfect if you just added some blue food coloring.

Or if you knew how to use PhotoShop and could also insert a picture of Isabella Rossellini.


Blue Velvet Cake

Grease two 9″ cake pans. Line bottom with wax paper and grease paper. Preheat oven to 350.

Puree in food processor:

Fresh blueberries, or thawed, wild frozen blueberries when it is February and blueberries are $3.49/cup. Puree enough to make 1 1/2 c of puree.

Sift together 2-3 times:
3 c flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

Cream:
1/2 c unsalted butter

Add to butter and cream until light:
1 1/2 c sugar

Beat in one at a time:
2 eggs

Turn mixer to low and mix in, or mix in by hand:
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves

Add, alternating:
Flour mixture
3/4 c buttermilk

Stir in:
Blueberry puree

Dissolve 1/2 tsp. baking soda in 1 tbsp. cider vinegar. Fold gently into mixture.

Divide batter evenly between cake pans. Bake 25 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly pressed in the center.

Frost with the following lemon cream cheese frosting:

1/2 c softened butter
8 oz cream cheese
1/4 c fresh squeezed lemon juice
3 – 4 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar

Mix above ingredients together until they are of consistency and sweetness you prefer.

And now the insanity is over. I can’t imagine that I will win the contest unless the Amateur Gourmet and Michael Ruhlman take pity on someone who devoted AN ENTIRE EVENING to creating FOUR BLUE FOOD RECIPES FROM SCRATCH even though she will probably never make it to New York to see the Blue Man Group.

But IF there is some kind of consolation or pity prize–say, having the Amateur Gourmet go out to dinner with us if he returns to the ATL–hell, I’ll take it.

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Buffalo Steak Salad with Bleu Cheese

We will coninue the Blue Extravaganza with something that barely qualifies as a recipe because it’s so easy. And it is really not blue, just “bleu,” which being French probably qualifies it for the Blue Food Contest.


Marinade a 12 oz. buffalo steak in 1/4 tsp. organic Better Than Bouillon Beef Base Bouillon whisked with 1/4 c red wine vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. (My Italian friend Claudia believes that beef bouillon and vinegar mellows gamey meat, and I always follow the instructions of Italians when it comes to food.)

Make a lot of other blue food and let steak sit out entire time in marinade. Pray buffalo is not a good source of E. coli.

Heat up iron skillet for several minutes. Add about 1 tbsp. olive oil. Sear steak on both sides to taste (for me, 3 minutes on each side). Cut steak into thin, bite-size strips for salad.

If food poisoning fears emerge at the sight of bleeding, oozing flesh, toss pieces back in the skillet. Don’t overcook as buffalo can get tough very easily.

Pour 1 container washed mixed baby greens into bowl, remembering after California Spinach Disaster that greens can harbor E. coli as well as buffalo but not caring. Baste with the following, whisked together:

1/4 c olive oil
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Add sliced mushrooms. Add bleu cheese. Add steak. Toss. Eat.

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Blue Plate Extravaganza

If you’re a professional chef, coming up with an entire dinner of blue food in three hours is probably a snap. If you’re not, here’s where you need to start:

Blueberry Martini

1 heaping T pureed fresh or frozen wild blueberries
1 ½ – 2 t fresh squeezed (as if I have to say it) lemon juice
1 very large jigger gin (Bombay Sapphire, of course)
¼ very large jigger triple sec
Pour over ice into martini shaker. Shake and strain into martini glass.

A normal person probably would have been happy with just a Blue Velvet Cake recipe for the Amateur Gourmet’s Blue Food Contest. But, as was established during the creation of Sunday’s lurid Greenish-Purple Velvet Cake, that would not be me.

Instead, discovering the contest only on Sunday and having to travel all day Monday, I set out to make ENTIRE DINNER of blue food on Tuesday. After work, starting at 7. With no food coloring involved.

The menu was in my head: blue cornbread, buffalo steak salad with bleu cheese, and, of course, the Blue Velvet Cake. Ingredients were purchased. (The Blueberry Martini was merely a last-minute, desperate effort that resulted from a lack of wine.) All I had to do was invent–and, for once, write down–the recipes.

For the blue cornbread, I turned to Southern Cornbread in Cook’s Illustrated’s The Best Recipe. Why I turned to a cookbook written by Yankees to make Southern cornbread I don’t know. But at least it was blue:

That is, until you cooked it:

It WAS blue on the inside, but I was too ashamed of how flat it was to take a picture. (I hope my mother doesn’t read this. Also, please don’t tell her I really like that sugary Yankee cornbread.)

Below is the recipe for blue cornbread that I WOULD make if I had time and didn’t have a full-time job. Please feel free to try it and let me know if it works.

Blue Cornbread

Preheat oven to 450. Chop 1 medium onion and saute in about 1/4 c. melted bacon fat in iron skillet.

Mix together:
1 1/2 cups blue cornmeal
1/2 c flour
2 tsps. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsps. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 finely chopped dried chipotle or poblano pepper

Stir in 2 lightly beaten eggs. Add 1 – 1 1/2 cups buttermilk. Add sauteed onions. Don’t overmix–stir just until all ingredients are moistened. Pour mix back into iron skillet and bake for 25-30 minutes until brown.

And now I have to go to work. More later.

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She Wore Greenish-Purple Velvet


The first attempt for the Amateur Gourmet’s Blue Food Contest went . . . well, it went like this.

What you see above is not molded cat litter covered with grape Jell-O, but a Blue Velvet Cake– blueberry cake with blueberry cream cheese frosting.

I have made some important discoveries throughout this process.

One: Fresh blueberries cost $3.49 a cup in February.
Two: Pureed blueberries mixed with cream cheese = garish pinkish/purple nightmare.
Three: I am not normal. Witness conversation below with a co-worker:

Me: So there’s this Blue Food contest on the Internet, and I’ve been working on an entry.

Co-Worker (already looking bewildered): Blue food?

Me: Yes, blue is supposedly the most unappetizing color for food, so this contest is to see what people will make. I’ve been on a quest for the perfect red velvet cake, so I thought I’d try a BLUE velvet cake. I’ve got these blueberry cake recipes and I’m going to try to modify them–

Co-Worker: Why don’t you just add blue food coloring to a red velvet cake recipe?

Me:

Me:

Me: But I want to figure out how to make it with blueberries.

Co-Worker (trying again): What’s the prize?

Me: Two tickets to see the Blue Man group in New York.

Co-Worker: But we’re in Atlanta.

Back to the kitchen.

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We Interrupt this Blog . . . .

Today, some photos of my kitchen because we are eating out and I’m not cooking. But here’s where I do it:

The World’s Most Perfect Small Appliance is appropriately in the center of the countertop, along with a beloved bottle of the Las Rocas Garnacha. The red thing that looks like a piece of plumbing material is our salt pig–if you do not own one and use sea salt as much as we do, get it.

Please disregard the dirty dishes in the sink. Despite the presence of a dishwasher, the dishes always seem to prefer to take up residence there.

And here would be the $900 Consumer-Reports-recommended stove with an oven that’s a mere 50 degrees off. But it does have a warming tray and an eye that cooks on very low heat.

And here is the other side of the counter top, with another Beloved Kitchen Appliance–the KitchenAid mixer, which is too heavy and too large to go anywhere else. Oh, and is that ANOTHER bottle of Las Rocas Garnacha?

Finally, the fridge, as big as the whole damn kitchen but bought really cheap at Sears Scratch-n-Dent. As you can see dents really don’t matter:

Finally, here I am actually in the kitchen eating a big wad of ham and saying, “Bye ya’ll, gotta clean the house because people are coming over and there are DIRTY DISHES IN THE SINK!!!”

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Babel-ing

No cooking last night. We saw Babel last night in our effort to see all the Oscar nominees before the awards. We had two bags of movie popcorn (free refills on the large!!) for our dinner.

I also talked to my friend Rocco last night, who was just putting away the ingredients for the Valentine dinner he’s making for his sweetie. I’m afraid forty-one years of East Tennessee-trained cooking simply cannot compete with forty-five-ish years of New York Italian cooking. (Rocco got his first promotion from AARP and was feeling sensitive about his age.) He even knew what calabasa was.

Rocco’s sweetie is getting tapas that include beet and blood orange salad and some kind of hazelnut/orange vinaigrette. Rocco doesn’t use recipes either. I can’t remember the rest but it was all glamorous and yummy. Fred is getting a pound cake and some as-yet-undetermined meat.

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.

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Still No Calabasa Soup

The Great Calabasa Quest remains unfinished. Last night poor Fred agreed not to go to a movie, even though he really wanted to, because I said I wanted to stay home and cook. Here’s a chronicle of the evening’s events:

5:00 Chicken put in to roast

5:00 – 6:00 Chicken roasts. Cook plays around on the internet. Cook periodically gets up to turn/poke at chicken. Cook has a glass of wine. (Las Rocas Garnacha, which we LOVE.)

6:15 Chicken done. One breast given to neighbor for washing our car. Cook and Fred hover over chicken, peeling off brown, crispy, delicious skin and eating it, along with the wings and tasty bits from the thighs. Cook and Fred are no longer really very hungry.

6:15 – 7:30 Cook balances checkbook while having one more, much-needed glass of wine. Cook discovers she and new spouse cannot eat out again for the rest of the month if all bills are to be paid.

7:30 Cook gets up to make a weird combination of cumin, anchiote chili powder, Hungarian paprika, pepper, salt, cayenne pepper, onion powder (bought specifically for this experiment), garlic powder (again, bought for experiment), and sugar. Cook is trying to replicate powder that goes on barbecued potato chips. It is a shameful fact that the Cook loves sauces and spices and has been known to eat them ALL BY THEMSELVES, something about which she is so embarrassed that she cannot even write about it in the first person. Cook’s idea was to use it for dipping celery in, as Cook is beginning to plump out and has to be careful about snacks.

8ish Cook and Fred sit down to watch Good Night and Good Luck. Poor Fred is actually still hungry, has given up his plan for a movie and nevertheless still has no calabasa soup. He gets more roast chicken and some cheese while Cook munches on celery and spice dip, occasionally eating the spice dip all by itself.

9ish Movie stopped so Cook can get up and put chicken carcass in a pot with water to make stock. At some point tops of celery stalks are also thrown in.

10ish Movie finishes. Somehow it still ends up being 1:00 a.m. by the time Cook and Fred actually go to sleep but all they seem to accomplish is watching two more episodes of Bob Newhart. And straining the chicken stock. And the Cook eats the liver and neck without even sharing it with the sweet, kind husband who gave up a movie for all this.

So this is how our life really goes. Do professional chefs do these kinds of things, or do they just not tell their bad habits to the world?

I came across Michael Ruhlman’s blog today, where Anthony Bourdaine talks about the horrors of various celebrity chefs on the Food Network. Not having cable, I can’t really comment, but the blog was hilarious. Nevertheless, Bourdaine’s lambasting of Sandra Lee and her love of canned food leads me here (while the subject of bad eating habits is still fresh in my mind) to make a few confessions:

  1. I actually like some casseroles that contain cream of mushroom soup and sour cream mixed together, topped with Ritz crackers and butter. There. That feels better. On a side note, I once served such a dish to several foodie friends to settle an argument about whether or not something like that was actually edible, and they had to confess it was pretty good. One did so while scooping leftover sauce out of the casserole dish.
  2. Other things I like (child of the 70s, that’s all I can say): Hamburger Helper Lasagna. Spaghetti-Os. Macaroni and cheese made from a box. Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Spaghetti made from Campbell’s Tomato Soup and Cream of Mushroom. Pies made with evaporated milk and canned cherries on top. Krystal hamburgers.

In confessing these sins, I’m probably forfeiting whatever miniscule chance I might ever have had to gain the respect of someone like Anthony Bourdain or Marc Ruhlman. (Maybe I could regain that by learning exactly how to spell their names.) Not that an East Tennessee trained home cook is likely to have that happen to begin with–but maybe I can improve things by noting that I can make home-churned butter and grew up drinking raw cow’s milk.

There will be no cooking tonight, as we are going to see Babel, as I promised WFW. Most likely dinner will consist of movie popcorn.