BlogMadness, Round Four

Yep. This is getting serious, now. I'm getting spanked in Round Four by "No Ping," a Mr. Bean-esque tale of trying to buy sex lube at Wal-Mart without the children seeing. And how it won't ping the register. As I said in a previous post, it's very funny. I've voted for it. But not now. Now I'm trolling for votes. I want to win. I have to win. It's ugly, but it's one of those little things people love me (or hate me) for: my fiercely competitive nature. There's only another 35 hours at this writing, so get out there and vote... for me.

On another note, the spam haiku is continuing to fill my mailbox. I dump it all in the garbage, but admittedly, the topics are getting more interesting.

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About Valentine's Day

Despite a childhood scarred with memories of an empty shoebox on Valentine's Day, back in the dark days before politically correct schools boards and soccer moms made their children give a valentine to every member of the class, whether they were popular or not, I enjoy the holiday. I love velvet boxes shaped like hearts, full of dark chocolates. I love the idea of receiving perfume, and flowers and other girly stuff. I love doting on the RLA. Not all the time, mind you, I have a reputation to keep, but on Valentine's Day, I'm happy to just schmear on the L-U-V.

That's just what I did yesterday. I baked a cake, and made a special dinner. Then we watched samurai movies. The cake though, was special. The first Valentine's Day that the RLA and I spent as a married couple we were living in the scorched-earth epicenter of hell* and he was teaching nights until late. That night, while he was teaching, I cooked a nice meal, and decided to bake him a chocolate cake for dessert. A rich chocolate cake that had been one of my mother's best recipes. Two layers. Never fail.

Unfortunately, I grew up at sea level and never lived more than 40-50 feet above it in my life. I had no idea about high-altitude baking. Even though where we were living was far from mountains, it was on the edge of the high plains, and sat about 5,000 feet above sea level.

The cake behaved like something out of a Three Stooges short, rising up and over the rim of the pans, and continuing to do so as I watched helplessly. By the time the RLA came home from school, there was a third layer of cake baking on the floor of the oven, and I was sobbing inconsolably on the floor of the kitchen. The cake, such as I was able to salvage, looked like an elephant dropping covered in a chocolate butter cream frosting.

What the RLA had no way of knowing at the time was that I had never had a cake fail in my life. I'd been baking since I was old enough to see into a pot. And I am damn good at it. But how could he know that? And what reason did he have to believe me when I said I'd never had a baked good come out bad. Darling boy ate the lumpy chocolate cake anyway.

All of which is by way of explaining why I was thrilled to be able to produce another flawless cake last night. I've been on a quest for a variety of Red Velvet cake that isn't chocolate, but flavored with maraschino cherry. There's a nurse at the hospital who makes it and won't reveal her recipe for love or considerable amounts of money. Last night, though, I think I came very close to getting it right. The recipe I used came from a 1950 copyrighted Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook. The only alteration I made was to use maraschino cherry syrup (from the ice cream sundae fixings shelf at the grocery store) instead of the juice from a bottle of cherries. I also left out the nuts and the chopped cherries. I made a mocha butter cream frosting for it, and the RLA ate a quarter of it last night.

Here's last night's menu and recipes.

Bloody Marys

Marinated Skirt Steak
Fresh Steamed Spinach
Baked Potato (really baked, in a super hot oven for over an hour, until the skin was crisp, not nuked until soggy)

Maraschino Cherry Cake

Skirt steak is an underused cut of meat. It's cheap and exceptionally flavorful and lean. The marinade I used also originated in the 50s I think, because it includes soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, two staples of the 1950s kitchen, and very similar to a marinade my mother used to use on lamb chops when I was I child. I pulled the recipe from Epicurious and it was a reader's contribution from 1996.

Grilled Beef Steak Verciano

1/2 cup dry red wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons dried rosemary, crumbled
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

1 1/2 pounds of strip steak (any other kind of steak will do just fine)

Mix first 6 ingredients in a 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Add steak and turn to coat. Marinate 1 hour at room temperature or refrigerate up to 6 hours, turning steak occasionally.

Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat) or preheat broiler. Drain marinade into small saucepan; boil 1 minute and reserve to pass as sauce. Grill or broil steak to desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium rare. Transfer steak to platter. Thinly slice across grain. Serve with marinade.

Maraschino Cherry Cake

2/3 cup soft shortening (half butter for flavor)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 cups sifted cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cherry syrup
3/4 cup milk
5 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Grease and flour 2 9" layer pans
Preheat oven to 350F

Cream together until fluffy the shortening and the sugar.

Sift together the flour baking powder and salt.

Mix together the cherry syrup and the milk.

Alternately add the dry and the wet ingredients to the shortening mixture, beginning and ending with the dry. Fold in the egg whites. Pour into prepared pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool and ice.

Mocha Butter Icing

3 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup soft shortening
3 squares of un-sweetened chocolate, melted
about 3 tablespoons of strong black coffee

Blend together the confectioners sugar, shortening and the chocolate.

Stir in the coffee until smooth and spreadable. You may need to add a little more coffee as the icing stiffens if you don't frost fast enough.

A word about baking soda

Back at the time of my chocolate cake debacle, there was a writer for Gourmet magazine by the name of Laurie Colwin, and she was, and is, one of my favorite food writers ever. She died in 1992, but I still read her two volumes of collected columns: Home Cooking, and More Home Cooking. The latter book has an article written for Halloween that includes one of the best recipes ever devised for butternut squash, but that's for another time. On pages 57-58 of More Home Cooking, Laurie had this to say about baking soda.

"In the back of Edna Lewis's immortal classic The Taste of Country Cooking is a word of advice about baking powder. Mrs. Lewis feels that double-acting baking powder, the kind now generally available, leaves a bitter aftertaste, and she is right. She suggests making your own with 2 parts cream of tartar to one part baking soda. Since I read this piece of advice I have never looked back. What is good for Mrs. Lewis is good for the nation, in my opinion."

Well, once I read Laurie's assessment of Mrs. Lewis and her baking powder, I, too, never looked back. I make my own, and it is heavenly.

And that was what I did for dinner last night.

*Clovis, New Mexico