Baked Alaska

Today is, as I have been informed, Halloween.

Well, okay then. Boo.

Life can be rather ghoulish– especially now what with Presidential elections, hunger, global warming, terrorism, people who think that inserting discriminatory amendments into the California constitution is a good idea, home foreclosures, and Dancing with the Stars filling our mental goody bags with more tricks than treats. You get the picture. I suppose we might as well have a holiday to celebrate.

In contrast to all this unpleasant scariness, I have decided to dedicate my post to one of the nicest desserts to ever cross my path– The Baked Alaska. It’s cake and ice cream wrapped up in fluffy white meringue. Like a child’s birthday party all rolled up into one dessert. With a Party Clown. Nothing could be so wholesome as that.

A little background check:

According to foodreference.com, the Baked Alaska was originally a dessert consisting of ice cream on sponge cake encased in a piping hot pastry crust. Thomas Jefferson served it at the White House before it was even white, causing a guest to comment, “Ice-cream very good, crust wholly dried, crumbled into thin flakes.”

Many people have claimed creation of the later, meringue-encased version. Most notable among them was American-born Benjamin Thompson, later styled as Count Rumford (namesake, but not inventor of the baking powder). This Traitor to the Republican Spirit claimed to have invented the dish in 1804 after investigating the heat resistance of beaten egg whites. He called it “omelette surprise” or omelette à la norvégienne. God struck Rumford dead at the tender age of 61 for his sins, but not before he invented the wax candle, Rumford Soup, and established potato cultivation in Bavaria– saving many poor Germans from starvation.

It wasn’t until 1876, when Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York (think Hello, Dolly!) placed it on their menu to celebrate the newly-(13 years prior– newish for the mid-19th Century) acquired territory of Alaska that the dessert got it’s modern American name.

The dessert didn’t gain true popularity until the 1950’s, a time when America abandoned its big, unclean cities in order to breathe the fresh air of the newly-paved-over and sub-urbanized farmlands, fought Communism by digging enormous holes in their neatly manicured back yards, and connected with neighbors and families through the uniting, thought-provoking medium of television. The territory of Alaska itself was welcomed as a full member-state of our American union in 1959. Its eponymous dessert was, in my opinion, a true symbol of a great American era– cool on the inside, white on the outside, and sweet all over. It is impossible to imagine anything as pure and wholesome coming out of that other state admitted to the Union that year, Hawai’i.

It is high time for this dessert to make a comeback.

I hadn’t given the Baked Alaska much thought until a Canadian friend sent me an article on the subject by a little American housewife named Eve Ensler. Perhaps, as a British Columbian, he has Alaska on his mind, owing to the fact that Alaska is his next door neighbor and he can, therefore, actually see it from his own front door. Whatever prompted his sending me the link, I’m glad he did, and I think it’s delightful that Mrs. Ensler bothered to take the time to write down her little recipe and share it with her friends and neighbors.

Baked Alaska

This dessert is all about appearances. Try it out at your next dinner party. It will dazzle your guests with its fancy meringue get up. They’ll think you’ve put a lot of effort and know-how into its creation, but we know better. A pretty confection of fluff that wraps itself around a heart frozen at its core. Delicious.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 3/4 inch slices of old cake, be it a genoise, sponge, or pound cake. I prefer old pound cake because I can buy it in the store cheaply and not have to sully my hands with the unpleasantness that is baking anything.

4 egg whites

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/8 teaspoon salt of the earth

1/2 cup superfine sugar

1 quart of ice cream. Your choice. Jesus told me to opt for something less vanilla this go-around, so I am, like many people I know, voting for chocolate.

Soaking the cake with a little brandy is purely optional, but I think we could all use a little more alcohol in our diets right now.

Preparation:

1. Mold the ice cream, which has been softened just enough that you can shape it, into any form you please on top of your sliced cakes. I chose to make individual cakes, but please, by all means, do your own thing. Place ice cream-topped cakes onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Put into freezer.

2. In a stand mixer, whisk egg whites until almost stiff, then add cream of tartar and salt. Beat in sugar one tablespoon at a time. Beat until stiff peaks that resemble the snow-capped (for the moment) top of Denali form.

3. Remove cakes from freezer. Enrobe them with at least a 3/4 inch thickness of meringue for insulation and put back into freezer. They’ll need to be as icy as possible to stand up to the withering heat of your oven, the Liberal Media, or what-have-you.

4. A few minutes before serving, remove cakes from the freezer and pop under a very, very hot broiler for about three minutes, watching carefully all the while. If you are among those who do not believe that Man is responsible for rapidly increasing temperatures, that Global warming is God’s Will, the wait time may be considerably longer.

5. When sufficiently browned, remove from broiler, plate, and serve immediately, because this particular dish doesn’t have much of a shelf-life.

KTEH’s Cooking with Garlic: Vote for Your Favorite Video Host

This September, KTEH invited aspiring tv chefs to audition for their chance to be the next cooking show star in their live December special, KTEH Cooks with Garlic.

Thirty-eight people of all walks of local life got up enough nerve to send in their video recipes and on November 1st, you, in all your I-could-have-done-that-so-much -better smugness, are invited to vote for your favorite. Do yourself a favor and watch them.

For those of you who were either too late to submit your own video, or would simply enjoy contributing your own recipe, there is still time and an ounce of hope. Submit to KTEH your favorite original garlic recipe to be considered for their upcoming cookbook. All recipes should include a byline. Please note that any recipe submitted becomes the property of KTEH. Whether or not you share in the rights is something your lawyer will have to hash out for you.

It takes a lot of time to watch all of the video submissions, certainly, but I found them absolutely fascinating. I am impressed by the amount of people out there who have, um, garlic bulbs big enough to let Televisionland into their kitchens and, in a sense, into their psyches.

Take a peek. In the mix, you can watch a woman creating a Garlic Dream Sauce with the help of a puppet, teen-aged girls with confident cooking skills preparing soup under the supervision of a doting father, cooks hawking their own cookbooks, even a woman creating a garlic-infused “Toasty Thai Ice Cream” under the menacing gaze of crazed, apron-wearing pig.

The overall craftsmanship of the videos is non-professional, to be sure. Many of the videos are so dark, it sometimes seems as though some of the contestants were in the care of some sort of culinary witness protection program. Some of the submitters make up for lack of technical know-how with vibrant personalities. Others come off frightfully dull, professorial, repetitive, or even painfully awkward. But here they are, for all the world to see.

I’ve spent a few hours watching the videos. I’ve got my favorites and I’m definitely voting. I’m basing my choices not so much on recipe, production value, or even physical hotness. Instead, I’m voting based on kitchen décor. Look for the Marlo Thomas-as-That-Girl kitchen tile.

The Fig– A Good Fruit with a Bad Name

I love figs. They’re on the short list of my favorite things, so I have always had difficulty with the phrase “I couldn’t give a fig.” The meaning of the phrase, of course, is that to give a fig is to care little. To not give a fig means to care even less. Of course, the true purpose of the word “fig” in that phrase is commonly thought to be as a replacement for another, unprintable-on-this-website “f” word. And that depresses me. It’s giving the fig a bad name.

According to The Phrase Finder and numerous other sources, the saying is based upon the Spanish “dar un fico” (substitute the “o” in fico with an “a” and any Spanish speaker will know the not-so-subtle change in meaning), which gave its name to the traditionally obscene gesture of placing one’s thumb between one’s first and second fingers– roughly the equivalent of giving someone the finger– the third finger– but en español.

And the list goes on. There are several more unpleasant fig-related associations. Here are but a few:

The word “sycophant” (from the word sykon) is derived from a Greek term roughly meaning “to show the fig”. According to one interesting source, when valuable, sacred figs were stolen, a man sucking up to authority discovered the theft and revealed the figs and accused the robbers on the spot.

If one writes the word in all capital letters– FIG– one could be accused of referring to the Libyan terrorist group that once attempted to assassinate Mohammar Qaddafi. The attempt was made, I believe, in exasperation over their repeated attempts to force the press into settling on one official spelling of his name.

Cleopatra took her own life with the bite of a snake hidden in a basket of figs.

And then, of course, there is the penchant of likening the fig to a certain part of the female anatomy, which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on your point of view. Fortunately, the reputed First Woman found that a large leaf from the fig tree would do nicely in concealing hers.

A Little Bit of History.

The fig is ancient. Remnants of the fruit have been found in excavations dating from 5,000 B.C.E. in Western Asia Minor. The tree and it’s fruits quickly spread around the Mediterranean.

Demeter gave them to Dionysus. Plato mentioned that Greek athletes were fed on a diet of them to increase their strength and speed. Temporarily. Figs contain a high concentration of sugar (up to 50%). Think of them as ancient Power Bars. Jesus, in a fit of ungodly pique (Matthew 21:18), cursed a fig tree for not producing any fruit for Him as He passed by, thus killing the tree and ensuring there would be no second chances for it. Unless, that is, He chose, in His infinite goodness, to resurrect it at a later time.

The leaves of the tree have been used to provide shade, wrap food, and hide the naughty parts of statues. The tree itself was an easy source of quick-lighting firewood.

The fig is one of only five fruits mentioned in the Quraan along with olives, grapes, pomegranates, and dates. That’s some good company.

Eat Them While You Still Can

Unpleasant associations aside, figs are inherently good on the inside. They are high in fiber, yet according to the ancient Egyptians, have a mild laxative quality to them.

They are rich in calcium, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. Less so in Vitamin C and B vitamins, but they are sourced there, too.

Figs are excellent dried, stewed, or eaten raw. They add a subtle depth to sweet dishes, and sweetness to savory ones.

How anyone could see their way to giving this simple fruit, one which exudes such sweetness, sexual suggestion, and history with every mouthful, is beyond me. And frankly, I simply couldn’t give a fig about this poor fruit’s detractors.

I shall think no more about it. Instead, I plan to continue making myself sick on them until the season is over.

Fig Salad

I like this preparation because it basic– if not as old as the hills, it is possibly older than the Bible. All the ingredients have been in common use in and around the Mediterranean for more than 7,000 years. That’s about 1,000 older than the earth itself, according to Young Earth creationists.

I am not giving specific amounts for any of the ingredients because that would complicate such a perfectly simple dish. The amount of each ingredient is entirely up to your preference.

Ingredients:

Ripe figs, well washed, to reduce the risk of poisoning from scheming Roman matrons.

Any soft, faintly salty sheep or goat milk cheese at room temperature. Goat cheese will add a wonderful tang to the dish, while sheep’s milk lends a certain umami to the overall outcome. I do not recommend cow’s milk cheese– it’s just doesn’t seem as biblical.

Olive oil. Extra virgin.

Honey. I prefer mine slightly warmed. Looking at this last sentence, I realize that replacing the period with a comma produces an entirely different meaning altogether.

Chopped pistachios. Or almonds. Your choice.

Procedure:

Wash the figs well, dry and bisect. Place them on a serving dish with the cheese which you have broken into reasonably attractive chunks. Drizzle figs and cheese with olive oil and honey. Sprinkle dish with chopped nuts to garnish. Eat.

Serves as few or as many as you wish.

Horchata– This is gold, girl!

When you hear the word “horchata”, what comes to mind? I’m sure the answers will vary. The most literal-minded of you will think “rice milk”, some of you may simply associate it with the concept of the “taqueria”, while others might draw a complete blank. I for one can’t get the image of the mouthy whores of the Mission district out of my head. Not that I associate them with actual drink, it’s just the phonics of the word that lead me there.

The word horchata is derived from the Valencian word orxata, which itself is derived from ordiata (from the Latin word for barley, hordeata ). A popular, though quite unsubstantiated, myth tells the story of a young Moorish girl who gave King James I of Aragon a beverage of ground chufa (tigernut or earth almond) and upon drinking, the king exclaimed, “Això és or, xata!” (This is gold, girl!).

So there you have it. Believe it or not.

The origins of the beverage are as cloudy as the drink itself. The Egyptians had a similar drink made of barley water mixed with honey. The Arabs brought a form of it up to the Iberian peninsula in their unconquerable days, and the Spanish have loved it so much for so long that they ended up pouring it all over the New World.

In Mexico, the beverage is made of rice, water, cinnamon, and sugar. In Spain, the chufa is the preferred source of starch. El Salvador has its own version, too. Pretty much everybody has their own version which they deem to be correct, but the essentials remain the same: a source of starch, water, and some form of sweetener. Cinnamon is commonly used (and personally, I feel that horchata without cinnamon is just plain rice milk). Lime or lemon zest are also frequent guests in the mix. It is entirely up the the preferences of the individual making it.

And I say make your own. It requires more effort than wandering down to your local taqueria to buy some, but it is inexpensive and extremely satisfying– much more so than those whores in the Mission, certainly. And it’s gold. It’s tasty white gold, girl.

Horchata

After examining several recipes, I settled on one that included almonds. The almonds give an extra bit of complexity to this otherwise humble-but-wonderful beverage.

Ingredients:

1 cup long grain white rice

1 cup chopped almonds, without skin

5-6 cups of water (depending upon one’s preferences)

1 cinnamon stick

1 cup simple syrup or sugar. You may use less or more, according to your taste for sweetness.

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. In a coffee grinder (that does not smell of coffee), pulverize the rice into dust. Most effectively done in two or three batches.

2. In a suitable container, combine rice, almonds, cinnamon and 3 cups of water. Let sit covered overnight.

3. The following day, pour the mixture into a blender and purée until as smooth as possible, adding as much sugar and water as you like.

4. Strain the horchata. Some prefer to do this through a sieve lined with cheesecloth. I prefer to use a tea towel, since there is a lot of grit involved. It takes a bit more time and hands-on wringing, but the gripping and twisting motions are an excellent way to work out pent up aggression, and the results are much better. So I think.

5. Refrigerate or simply serve over ice with a scant sprinkling of ground cinnamon.

Makes about 5 to 6 cups, depending.