clay: altars and tarot/oracle card holders

I was on a roll last week to make pots other than test tiles for my community college ceramics glazing class and just because I've been enjoying hand building again. The high school ceramics classroom has silicon molds with celestial shapes of sun, moon, stars and clouds.

And then at the community studio, I made an altar that started with this quote from Karl Jung because I think of tarot cards as a tool for tapping into your intuition.

But working on the texture on the other side blotted out or compounded the clay into the text, and so I had to compress and re-do the text in the above photo.

And I didn't think I had it in me to stay another few hours in the studio and make another altar. But I did. And I'm rather pleased with the outcome, and so was someone else who wanted to take a pic.

David, then had me put them on the greenware shelf with the headstones down and bags of rice on top to keep them flat.

But aargh, the next day, there was a crack in the first one, and so I mixed vinegar with slip to fill in the hairline crack. Fingers crossed and in prayer to the kiln gods.

bake: almond lemon berry loaf

The New York Times  recently featured Yotam Ottolenghi's Blueberry Almond Lemon cake. I decided to bake and give the cake to a friend who just bought her first home. I've always got butter, flour, sugars, both white and brown, baking soda, baking powder, and vanilla extract on hand because I've a husband who bakes. I also happened to have the berries (blueberries, raspberries, and  blackberries)because I'd been trying to eat more fruit with Greek yogurt. What I didn't have though for this recipe was almond flour.  

I was pleasantly surprised to discover almond flour at Trader Joe's while shopping for a bag of lemons. The recipe called for lemon zest in the batter, but not lemon juice.

 

Also not only do you reserve lemon juice for the icing but also some of the berries after baking the loaf for 15 minutes. I then scattered those reserved berries on top of the loaf and baked for another 15 minutes. The top of the loaf looked to me close to burning.

But thankfully, the recipe also calls for covering the cake with aluminum foil and then baking for another 25 to 30 minutes. The moment of truth...

Woo Mama! The loaf is not burned. 

Once the cake is cooled, mix that reserved lemon juice with confectioner's sugar and glaze the loaf. The final verdict? Meh. I've had better.

bake: orange chiffon cake

I am not a dessert person. But I do love, love, love the orange chiffon cake at Gayle's Bakery. However, I can't be trekking the hour plus drive to Capitola when I'm craving that fluffy citrusy slice. And so I took it upon myself to check out the bakery's cookbook from the public library and made a point of buying a couple oranges in order to bake that cake. 

The batter is fairly easy. I broke a lot of eggs...

 

...and of course, whipped the egg whites separately before folding it in with the beaten egg yolks and oil and zest and orange juice.

 

If I recall rightly, I mixed all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt (but the recipe didn't call for cream of tartar like other chiffon or angel food cake recipes I've seen), and the batter was voluminous. Too much for my bundt cake pan.

 

The glaze also called for butter. I think I would have preferred just confectioner's sugar and fresh orange juice.

Really it was frosting, not glaze. However, the cake was delish. And I ordered myself an angel food cake pan for the next orange chiffon cake and plan to use another recipe.

cook: pita bread

I think I first made pita bread a year ago, and now I can't imagine ever buying it, even if it's a fluffy good Middle Eastern brand, because it just goes stale before I can enjoy it all. What I love about this recipe is its simplicity. Two ingredients: self-rising flour (and that's easy to make with all-purpose flour and baking powder and baking soda) and whole milk yogurt (and in my pic below, all I had on hand was labneh). I kinda measured out 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of yogurt, maybe? Next step is to put both in a mixing bowl.

Then combine with a wooden spoon or fork or, in my case, my hands. My dough was pretty wet, and so I added flour. Then use a pastry cutter to divide.

 

Flour your counter or rolling surface. And if you're not feeding multiple people, you can store the divided dough in a zipped lock bag in the refrigerator until you want to cook more. In my case, I consumed the dough balls within a couple weeks. I have a small rolling pin to flatten my bread for one. Sprinkle more flour if your dough is sticking to the surface, and a pastry cutter is awesome for lifting the dough onto a hot cast iron.

 

You don't have to add oil to your pan, but I do because I like the unctuousness. I like more golden brown leopard spots too.

Then add various proteins, vegetables, dips and sauces.

I happened to have on hand bits and bobs for a pita sandwich. In this case, I had beef and lamb kabob meat in the freezer that I fried while letting the pita dough rest, cucumber, hummus, baba ghanoush, radish, feta crumbles, and pickled cauliflower, and fresh mint.

cook: gazpacho

I've been wanting to cook new recipes for the past year and change up the rotation a bit. Gazpacho was something I made once during the pandemic but wanting to make again, and tomato season is such a narrow window of time to enjoy my favorite harvest. On a rare week of hot muggy weather in the Bay Area, I finally made the summer Spain staple. I looked at various recipes and finally settled on Jose Andres recipe and trekked to a produce store for a couple of Persian cucumbers and an Anaheim pepper. I'd already had on hand, shallots, garlic and jalapeno and Fresno peppers not to mention a bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes.

  

I didn't bother removing the skins off the tomatoes because I wasn't going to add bread to thicken the soup and would let the blender pulverize that tomato skin to add body, but I did remove the seeds to avoid bitterness. Per the recipe, I planned to embellish the soup with the other vegetables and aromatics, and so I removed the seeds from the cucumbers and the chiles before chopping and mincing along with the shallot.

To the blender besides the tomatoes which contained a lot of juice, I also added a teaspoon of sherry vinegar and a teaspoon of kosher salt and generous drizzles of olive oil. I pulverized until liquid.

 

Oh my! The soup tasted divine already. While buying the produce, I also found a sugar kiss melon and put that into the fridge to take the edge off during the swelter of summer.

Dinner or serving time! I dressed my toppings in more olive oil and sherry vinegar and sprinkles of sea salt and poured the wine.

Such a pretty soup.

 

Supper was divine. I shared a serving of the soup the next night with my neighbor, who also raved about this first time eating a cold summer soup.

cook: chili sauce

I'm watching the most charming Swedish film, "Je m'appelle Agneta" which is about a dowdy 49-year-old housewife who gets fired from her job and impulsively answers ad for an au pair in Provence to care for a child named Einar, who is not a child but an eccentric old Swede. Nonplussed by her charge, Agneta breaks out of her conventional straitjacket to blossom into the interesting, vivacious, bon vivant (bring on the brie and red wine!) she's always fantasized. Today is my last Saturday before commencing back to school, and it's been a good summer. On that note, I bought these wines, for winter is coming, and I too fantasize about being a consummate hostess, bring diverse friends to entertain and be entertained by. 

I've also been bingeing on heirloom tomatoes for the past couple weeks, and as usual, I can't eat them all. Instead of putting the overripe tomatoes up as marinara, I decided to ask my sister-in-law for my mother-in-law's recipe for chili sauce.

Holy smokes! 2 pounds of brown sugar?!? Yep, confirmed my husband's family, and he fondly recalls eating the condiment with honey baked ham. Okay. Carry on. I bought 2 red bell peppers and 1 green bell pepper, and because they weren't higher up on the Scovill scale, I also processed in a few jalapeno and Fresno chili peppers along with the overripe heirloom tomatoes and a large onion as well as add 2 cans of diced tomatoes into pot. This won't be no Midwestern chili sauce, but rather a Californian one.

 

And of course, the 2 pound package of light brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, salt and allspice.

Then you let the pot simmer for three to four hours or until reduced to a consistency you deem thick enough.

 

I had Patrick taste the chili sauce, and he said it was no longer his mom's chili sauce. Well then, I declared, this batch is Anna's chili sauce. Not only that, he said the chili sauce wasn't as sweet as he remembered and that the spiciness needed balancing. I was emptying the light brown sugar into the container, and added the overfill to the sauce pot. Why not?

I've got to remember to label these jars of chili sauce. Which are medium spicy. And run to the grocery store for 2 green bell peppers and 1 red bell pepper for Mom's chili sauce. And oh yeah don't forget the larger bag of light brown sugar.

bake: icebox lemon pie

The New York Times published a recipe for an easy, no bake, icebox lemon pie. I only had stale graham crackers in my pantry, and so I trekked to the store for Meyer lemon cookies to crush instead.

  

Combine the crumbs (made by processing in the Vitamix) with melted butter and press into a pie plate and bake in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. Note to self: use more crumbs than called for in a recipe to make a crust that extends all the way to the pie dish's edges. In the mixing bowl, combine two blocks of cream cheese (one was lowfat Neufchatel, but next time, I'd like to try Greek yogurt or use 2 blocks of the lowfat cream cheese), heavy whipping cream, and lemon curd (bought a jar at World Market).

After combining the liquid ingredients, I scooped the mixture into the pie crust. I recently read a column of Chris Kimball who made a key lime version of the icebox pie, and he used gelatin to firm up the filling. And so if I used Greek yogurt instead of cream cheese, I would probably have to use gelatin. I then put the icebox pie into a neighbor's freezer as there was no room in mine for a couple hours. Supposedly after freezing, the pie will stay firm if then placed in the refrigerator.

I zested and sliced thinly one lemon to embellish the pie.

The pie was shared with neighbors and tasted lovely. I'm thinking I'll make this again to bring to a friend's housewarming dinner (she bought her own condo)if I don't bake her cookies instead.