Immigrants and Jordanian Food

Two interesting articles in the NYTimes, 1/13/08:
A Passage to India, on immigrants and food culture.
All the Foods of the Mideast at its Stable Center, about restaurants in Amman, Jordan.

In other news, I've been baking my own bread lately, exuberantly. Last time it was three loaves of whole wheat sweetened with maple syrup (thanks to Joy of Cooking), tonight I'm going to do the same except with flax and sunflower seeds. It's so wonderful that little things like this make me happy.

Comfort Food

I know it's not Middle Eastern, but damn it, I'm sick, and I want PIE. Our fridge is sadly quite empty right now, and one of our car's tires is compleeeeetely flat, so there's no way that I'm going to make it to the grocery store anytime in the near future. So I was looking at the pantry and the freezer, trying to figure out what I could make with what I had (after laying in bed all day I decided enough was enough and that I should at least cook something). Turns out, I had exactly what I needed to make the blueberry hand pies from Vegan YumYum. I have to say (now that I've had two utterly successful baking experiences), baking with earthbalance is awesome. The crust of these pies tastes so light and buttery, but with low cholesterol and no carbohydrates or transfatty acids. The wee pies were easy enough to make, although I couldn't get my dough as thin as she did in the picture. The dough tastes so good that it doesn't really matter, and of course the fillings are what makes it great anyways.

I made some with blueberries, some with blueberries and ricotta, and then the one last straggler piece (made up of all those bits of leftover dough) with Bonne Maman jam. Hand pies rock my world.

Happy Birthday

This week has been full of new things. New classes, new birthdays, and baking, which for me, is new. At least, baking well. I made a batch of cookies once but they looked more like splatted cow patties and less like cookies. They tasted like cow patties, too.

I meant to post about this earlier, but like I said, new classes.

It took me a while to figure out what cake I was going to make. At first I was pondering a Persian Love Cake recipe that I found on epicurious, one of my favorite cooking websites. The candied rose petals sounded lovely, but cooking with rosewater reminds of a time when I was a little kid and my mom made rice pudding with rose water, and it wasn't good at all but she made my sister and I eat all of it, and Erica hated it so much that she ended up puking all over the floor (this scenario was repeated several times with a variety of foods and medicines, and usually ended with me cleaning it up...). So, I decided against that, although maybe one day in the future, bolstered by my recent successes, I'll give it a shot. I ended up making a Lemon-Lime Layer Cake that was featured in the September issue of, you guessed it, Cooking Light.

They wanted to cut back on some of the unhealthier things, and so substituted egg beaters for real eggs. I decided to use real eggs, sans yolks, but instead of butter and cream cheese used earthbalance and tofutti cream cheese. Normally, I'm bad at baking because until a few days ago, I assumed that baking was just like cooking. This is wrong! Very wrong! Baking is just like chemistry class, where precise measurements are absolutely necessary in order for the chemical responses to occur at the right time and for the correct duration. Once I understood that, I took great care to ensure that I had just the amount I needed and not more. I did cut back on some of the sugar in the frosting, as 2.25 cups is just a little too overzealous. 2 cups were just fine.

So, the cake turned out amazing. Dan told me after taking his first bite that he was prepared to lie about the whole thing and say that it was great, but it really was great. Incredibly moist and citrusy, the frosting sticky and drippy and perfect. I decorated it was crepe myrtle and jasmine blossoms from the front yard.

Unfortunately, my digital camera broke my last day in Singapore, but I took a photo with my new cell phone camera, and as soon as I figure out how to work the damn thing, I'll post it.

Make this cake!