19th Century Rose Brandy from Virginia

Within days of moving into the new house, I uprooted all the rose bushes. This was partly because I wanted to make room for herbs in that spot (indeed, wormwood, basil, parsley, and more grow there now). I uprooted them also because they weren’t healthy bushes and I would rather coax something to life there rather than nurse them back to health. But mostly I ripped them out because I can’t abide the overpowering smell of fresh roses. Not in a vase, not in a garden, not as a gift — and for God’s sake, never even near the dinner table where their overpowering odor would ruin any meal.

That’s fresh roses. Roses preserved are another matter. The suffocating, cloying smell of fresh roses can be tempered through skillful distillation, infusion, and preserving in sugar that leaves their distinctive floral notes in place, but smooths out the high notes. Candied rose petals strewn across a cake? Fine. Looks pretty, too. Rosewater in cocktails? Sure, Champagne and mild bourbons can — with a restrained hand — sometimes become the base of delicious rosy drinks. Odds are, I’d rather enjoy that bourbon without the rosewater, but if some bartender wants to show off, why not?

And then there’s baking. Desserts, puddings, pies ~ this is where rose flavors can shine and, apart from the occasional cocktail, where I tend to use rose as a flavoring. A hand pie, filled with stewed dried apples, palm sugar, and rosewater then fried and tossed in sugar is a sublime thing indeed. Good rosewater and even rose syrups are available in Middle Eastern markets and well-stocked liquor stores, but I am tempted to try a batch of 19th century rose brandy. This recipe hails from Virginia, but the technique is nearly identical to older French recipes.

From Mary Stuart Smith’s 1885 Virginia Cookery-Book, here is a rose brandy specifically for flavoring cakes and other desserts. And, hey, maybe a few cocktails.

Rose Brandy for Flavoring 

Gather leaves from fragrant roses, without bruising; fill a pitcher with them, and cover them with French brandy; next day pour off the brandy, take out the leaves, and fill the pitcher with fresh ones, and return the brandy. Do this until it is strongly impregnated; then bottle it. Keep the pitcher closely covered during the process.

Now if only I hadn't ripped out all those rose bushes...

Goes well with:

• Other notes on my garden, including a bunch of recipes from readers submitted for a giveaway of Amy Stewart's book, The Drunken Botanist, and a jaw-dropping revelation from a friend regarding paw-paws.
• My review of The River Cottage Preserves Book (with a recipe for beech leaf noyau).
• Peaches are coming into season. You may well want to grab some more brandy and put up a batch of proper ratifia aux noyau using the kernels inside those peach pits you were going throw out.

Homemade Marshmallow Creme

Sticky, fluffy marshmallow creme — sometimes dubbed marshmallow topping or "cream" — can be whipped together in less time than it takes to make a decent cup of hot chocolate. And then, hey, boom, spike that drink with a little whiskey or something stronger and you've got something to put on top of it.

We've discussed real marshmallow syrup before, using actual and esoteric marshmallow plant, but spooning globs of this fake stuff onto hot chocolate, ice cream, milkshakes, or Sundaes is a lot more familiar to...well, nearly everyone.  Legions of American children grew up eating fluffernutter sandwiches, a combination of peanut butter and marshmallow creme, in their school lunches. Some home cooks deploy it as a binder in puffed rice squares and popcorn balls, to add bulk and sweetness in sauces and fudge, and as the base for cake frostings and whoopie pies.

Here's what most home cooks don't do, though: make it themselves and change the base flavor. Vanilla extract is the common flavoring, but why not use mint extract, rosewater, or orange flower water? Pomegranate molasses adds a bit of color and a pleasant bitter note to the sweetness of the glossy white confection. And don't forget liquor: bourbon, absinthe, apple brandy, and dark rums are just the beginning. Admittedly, absinthe-flavored marshmallow creme may have limited uses, but that cup of hot chocolate is a good place to start.

This marshmallow topping can be cobbled together from just a few ingredients common to both bartenders and moms; syrup, egg whites, confectioners' sugar, a pinch of salt, and some kind of flavoring. If you happen to be making ice cream, you may well have those egg whites on hand already. Some confectioners cook a syrup that's a mix of sugar, water, corn syrup, and cream of tartar. You could tie your shoes with gloves on, too, but why make this harder than it needs to be? Let's drop any pretense of this being at all healthy and use straight corn syrup. See below for notes on flavorings.

Homemade Marshmallow Creme 

2 egg whites
1 cup corn syrup (310g)
1 cup confectioners'/powdered/10x sugar (110g)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or other flavoring: see note below)
a knifepoint of salt — no more than 1/8 tsp

In an electric stand mixer (such as a KitchenAid) beat the egg whites and corn syrup with the ballon ship attatchment for a few minutes until the mixture is stiff and white. Stop the mixer. 

Add the powdered sugar in three stages. Add the first third, turn the mixer on low, then increase gradually to the highest speed until all the sugar is incorporated. Turn off the mixer. Add the second third of sugar and repeat until all the sugar is fully incorporated and the mixture is solid white, glossy, and thick enough to hold thick ribbons that plop off a spoon or spatula.

Add vanilla (or other flavoring) and salt and mix until well blended. Transfer to a one-quart container and store covered in the refridgerator; it will keep for up to three days.

A note on flavorings: A half to a full ounce (1-2 tablespoons) of most spirits should suffice (unless they are strongly flavored — use your judgement), a teaspoon of most baking extracts or cocktail bitters, and just a few drops for strong essential oils such as mint or neroli.

Goes well with:

• Chartreuse Hot Chocolate. When you don't feel like mucking about with flavorings and just want to dollop flops of this stuff on hot cocoa, why not this stuff?
• Smith & Cross pot-still rum-flavored marshmallows. Because they're easier to make than you think they are.
• Still on a marshmallow kick? Try a boozy marshmallow collins (no, not with this stuff — with real marshmallow syrup).
• Want more candy recipes? Try three variations of the classic Philadelphia springtime candy, Irish Potatoes (note: most Irish Potato recipes lack actual potatoes).

Miniature Ice Cream Sandwiches

Eighteenth-century lexicographer, biographer, and essayist Samuel Johnson wrote in the first edition of his pithy Dictionary of the English Language (1755) that oats are "a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people." It's a quote that still raises the ire of some Scots. Of course, Dr. Johnson could also be a bit of a prick about many things, not just English ethnocentrism. He defined a distiller, for instance, as "One who makes and sells pernicious and inflammatory spirits." That's clearly hogwash. Grains of salt — many of them — are required when reading his essays.

But Johnson was in mind on a recent trip to visit my parents when my mother picked up a small tub of tiny oatmeal cookies, each the size of a medium coin, from Trader Joe's. Opinionated as Johnson may have been, was not entirely wrong about oats. Oatmeal is fine in a mash bill for, say, dark and velvet stouts, but the grain doesn't make one of my favorite cookies because it tends to yield a dry little cake. Not horrible, just not something I'd shove others out of the way to get.

So in an offhand, joking way, I told Mom "You know, if you want to keep your granddaughter busy, you could have her make little ice cream sandwiches with those tiny cookies. Maybe a teaspoon of vanilla ice cream between two of them, then freeze them." The Midwest summer was soul-draining hot; ice cream sounded great, but the tedium of little handwork required to make them was not something seriously to be entertained. This was just idle chatter; holding an idea up to the light, as it were, and casting it aside without further thought.

When I went to get ice for my iced tea the next morning, lo and behold — a one-gallon bag of miniature ice cream sandwiches was waiting in the freezer. Mom had been busy after I'd gone to sleep. We had them that night for dessert as we sat around the big wooden dining room table, talking politics, religion, and other topics one doesn't broach with casual acquaintances.

Some ideas, it seems, should not be cast aside so lightly. 

Goes well with:

• No need to restrict yourself to vanilla ice cream (or oatmeal cookies). We've made these with goat cheese ice cream (or, rather Glace au Fromage-blanc de Chèvre) that turned out quite good as did the Dutch cocoa ice "cream" made with thick coconut milk rather than cream. Lemon ice cream sandwiched between Belgian speculoos cookies are winners, too. Take this as a template and run with it. Hell, you can dip them in chocolate if you like. 
• Agnes B. Marshall was a bit of a maverick in her (Victorian) day. in 1901, she advocated mixing liquid oxygen with ice cream ingredients tableside to make ice cream, getting a jump on modernist cooks by almost a century. See Mrs. Marshall's Liquid Air Ice Cream.
• In her book Paletas, Fany Gerson gives a recipe for granizado de michelada, a granita-like frozen treat based on that Mexican spiked beer stalwart, the michelada. Here is the recipe.
• About this time last year, San Diego lost power for a day. Rum-lashed mango sorbet inspired by David Lebovitz helped get us through the dark, sultry night. Lebovitz called for dark rum, but I swapped it out with maraschino, then used rum over the top of the finished sorbet. You try it.

Mexican Chocolate Pudding with Dark Rum

This summer, noted one of my young friends, has been so hot that you've got to take your shirt off just to think. Certainly, it's been so hot that we keep the stove off as much as possible, lighting it maybe once a day to bang out a few things at once, things  that will keep; iced tea, for instance, or a quick vinegar dressing for cole slaw.

And pudding.

I've never enjoyed particularly intricate desserts. As  demanding as I can get in my cocktails and liquor, my tastes for dessert are decidedly straightforward — pies, cakes, ice cream, brownies, cookies. That sort of thing. Wholesome, uncomplicated, good ol' 'Murcan food.

Except, of course, if you've visited here before, you know that I don't live far from downtown Tijuana and my tastes reach far beyond our American shores. Yes, I like simple desserts, but they may be flavored with vanilla, pandan, cardamom, kafir lime, lemongrass, a range of flavors from homey to exotic. Mexican chocolate is one of those tastes I like and I deployed it this weekend in a simple pudding. This type of chocolate comes in dense discs laced with sugar and canela. Canela is the soft, fragile, true cinnamon (Cinnamomum zelanicum) from Sri Lanka that is ubiquitous in Mexico. What Americans know as cinnamon is actually the dried bark of the more strongly flavored and sturdy cassia (Cinnamomum cassia), a species of laurel tree whose dried, clove-like buds are called for in a number of old bitters recipes.

Right. Enough of botany. Ibarra and Abuela are two readily available brands of Mexican chocolate sold in American grocery stores. If you can't find them, you can follow the directions below using bitter or semi-sweet chocolate and a bit of ground cassia (or, better, if you've got it, canela). It's not necessary to pulverize the chocolate completely, but do break it into small pieces so it melts more readily. Use a box grater, a serrated kitchen knife to shave off pieces, or — as I do — show it who's boss with hefty butcher's cleaver.

An 8.5" cleaver makes short work of Ibarra chocolate discs.

Mexican Chocolate Pudding with Dark Rum

½ cup sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
Pinch of salt
2 cups whole milk
1 cup cream
3 tablets (6 oz total) Mexican chocolate, chopped
¼ cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 Tbl dark rum
1 tsp pure Mexican vanilla extract

In a medium metal mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add the milk and cream (or use all milk) and whisk briefly until thoroughly combined. Make a double boiler by placing the bowl over a pot of simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water.

Stir occasionally with a spatula, scraping the sides, for 15 to 20 minutes, When the pale mix is thick enough to coat the back of the spatula, add the Mexican and semi-sweet chocolates. Stir only enough to assure the chocolates are melted and thoroughly combined.

Remove from the heat and stir in the rum and vanilla. Pour immediately into serving cups or a single one-quart/liter dish. Cover the surface of the pudding with plastic wrap (unless you prefer a skin over the top, in which case, don’t let the plastic touch the surface), let it cool a bit, and then refrigerate an hour or two to chill.

Serve plain, with whipped cream, or a few fresh gratings of canela (the softer, more fragile, "true" cinnamon sold in Mexican markets). Or all three.

Goes well with:

• The San Diego Tribune ran a piece on modern desserts this Spring. Asked my opinion on who makes the best local examples, I went on a bit of a rant. "Few things depress me more," I wrote, "than the freakish curiosities of pastry chefs who’ve abandoned familiar forms in a misguided rush for the sublime." More here.
• The chocolate/canela combination plays out often in Mexican cookery. Champurrado, a hot drink made with the same Mexican chocolate and thickened with corn, is common around here, but better suited for cooler weather.
• Straight-up chocolate pie is a great thing to have around. Here's a version I made with dark chocolate, Nabisco's nearly black Famous Chocolate Wafers, and a healthy dose of Dos Maderas PX rum.

Bookshelf: Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese

As a former cheesemonger, I have an affinity for goat. By the time I was 35, I’d eaten goat cheese in more varieties and states of ripeness of than most people will eat in their lives. And still I can’t get enough.

Although I’ve left behind the cool marble counters, greasy shoes, and reeking clothes of a life in cheese, it’s fair to say that we’re never without a bit of goat around whether it’s a little round of aged cheese or cabrito tacos scored from a street vendor. So I was particularly pleased to plow through Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough’s new tome, Goat.

Known widely for their blog, Real Food Has Curves, Weinstein and Scarbrough are a two-man cookbook factory, many of the titles focusing on a single category of food: brownies, say, or ham. Subtitled Meat, Milk, Cheese, this one is all about the sustainability and tastiness of what’s frankly an alien animal for most American home cooks.

If you haven’t seen goat meat around, I can only guess that you’re not going to the right markets: it’s extremely common in the US, if not yet at Kroger or Trader Joe’s. Try Middle Eastern and North African grocers or Mexican carnicerias for now and you’ll find plenty. Through recipes, sidebars, and stories, the boys explain how to use goat flesh once you’ve got it; in tagines, as vindaloo and mole, a ragu, in various stews, braised shanks, roasted legs, pulled shoulder, goat burgers, even chops and rack of goat.

There’s a whole section on goat milk and yogurt that covers muffins, danishes, lassi, soup, and a slew of desserts. But my favorite bit comes when they get into cheeses.

Now, very few cheesemongers who sell the stuff will admit it, but we hate gjetost, the American name for the sweet, brown, lightly caramelized Norwegian goat cheese made so popular in the yuppie 1980’s. It’s difficult to clean off our knives and counters. It cleaves to the roofs of our mouths like clay. Customers who rave about how wonderful and sophisticated it is (“Ooo, try with apples and white wine. It’s soooo good!”) are immediately suspect. Don’t believe me? Order it at a good cheese shop and watch the cheesemonger’s eyes go dull. Bitchy ones will actually sigh. We try to steer them to better cheeses, but the truth is that those dense, vacuum-packed blocks keep forever, the margins are good, and at the end of the day cheesemongers got bills to pay just like everyone else. You want gjetost? Fine. Here it is. The boys’ encounter with a frosty Norwegian cheesemonger who turns them away when they try to order some speaks volumes.

They’re on the right track, however, with a simple soft goat cheese turnover called briwat that's common from Morocco to Syria. Pre-made spring roll wrappers stand in for the traditional handmade pastry and make this a quick dish to prep. It also calls for Aleppo pepper, a crimson crushed chile sold with its seeds removed that’s a staple in our kitchen and that I’ve long found a great match with goat cheeses.

Briwat

9 oz/225g fresh chevre or soft goat cheese
½ cup/115g chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2 tsp freshly ground Aleppo pepper
3 large egg yolks, divided
16 spring roll wrappers, thawed if necessary
Peanut oil for frying
Honey for dipping

Mix the fresh chevre or soft goat cheese, cilantro, pepper, and one of the egg yolks in a bowl until creamy and smooth.

Whisk the 2 remaining egg yolks in a second bowl until creamy and light.

Put a spring roll wrapper on a dry, clean part of your counter so that it makes a diamond [shape] in front of you (one point facing you). Put 1 tablespoon of the goat cheese filling on it, situated a little toward you from the center, a little toward the “bottom” point.

Roll the bottom point over the filling. Then fold the points to the left and right over the filling. Brush the remaining “top” corner with a little of the beaten egg yolks and roll the spring roll over so that it sticks to this egg-washed corner. Press it a little to seal if you need to. One tip: Make sure you roll fairly tightly. Air pockets inside the packet will expand and can pop open as the thing is fried.

Repeat with the remaining wrappers, filling, and egg wash.

Fill a sauté pan or high-sided skillet with peanut oil to a depth of 1 inch/2.5cm. Clip a deep-frying thermometer to the inside of the pan and heat the oil over medium heat until it reaches 325°F/165°C. Drop 4-6 briwat rolls into the hot oil — do not crowd the pan — and adjust the temperature so that the oil stays right around 325°F/165°C. Fry until golden, about six minutes, turning once. Transfer the rolls to a wire rack with paper towels underneath it to catch any grease drips. Continue frying more. Once you’ve got them all done, set them on a serving platter with a bowl of honey on the side to dip them in one at a time. Pure bliss.

Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough (2010)
Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese
256 pages (hardback)
Stewart, Tabori & Chang
ISBN: 1584799056
$35.00

Goes well with:

• With Goat, a Rancher Breaks Away From the Herd, Kim Severson's 2008 New York Times piece about rancher Bill Niman who left his well-known meat company Niman Ranch to take up goat as the next big thing. 
• A bit I wrote on goat cheese ice cream last year.

Lemon Buttermilk Pie

I prefer to eat out for breakfast rather than for dinner. There's something nice about starting the day with a great meal and then trundling off to work. This is nothing new. I've been a sucker for great breakfasts for years and when I find a place I really like, I tend to go back again and again.

In the early 1990's, Paradise Cafe in Lawrence, Kansas was one of those places. My friend David was a waiter at Paradise — and a big part of the reason I went. But nearly half the reason I made the short walk to the cafe was its lemon buttermilk pie. Available most days, but not always. Some mornings, my breakfast was simply tea and a slice of that pie.

Paradise Cafe is now closed and David moved to New York, but before we left Lawrence, he scored for me the recipe for the pie. I made it on a whim last night for the first time in years and was reminded of why I liked it in the first place; a light, sweet custard spiked with lemon zest and the tang of buttermilk that just collapses in my mouth was a fantastic way to cap the night.

These days, if I were to muck about with flavors, I would consider adding cardamom or a tot of rum, but the simplicity of the pie still resonates with me after all these years and I made it as I always do.

The original recipe called for making two pies at once, so — unless I plan to give one away — I scale it back for one. Here's my slightly tweaked recipe:

Lemon Buttermilk Pie

1.5 c sugar
3 eggs (4 if they're small)
2 Tbl all purpose flour
¼ c melted butter
¾ c buttermilk
1 lemon, zest and strained juice
pinch of salt
1 uncooked pie crust

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Combine the eggs, sugar, and flour in the bowl of a mixer. Mix until well blended and the mixture is a light yellow. Beat in the melted butter, buttermilk, lemon, and a pinch — just a knifepoint — of salt. Pour into the prepared pie crust and bake for 30-40 minutes until the center is just set. Set on a rack. It will thicken on cooling. 

I like it at room temperature, maybe slightly warm. Whipped cream if you like, but that would be overkill for me.

Goes well with:

• William S. Burroughs' Birthday Beer, another tale of mid-90's Lawrence, Kansas.
• Chocolate Pie with Dos Maderass PX Rum, a different diner-style pie I recently made.
• The ever-popular ginger pie, inspired by a college viewing of Harold & Maude. Easily the most read post I've ever written. 

Bookshelf: My Sweet Mexico

My entire life — other than occasional stints in Europe — has been spent in the company friends whose families hail from Oaxaca, Baja California, Sonora, and other parts of Mexico. Even today, I live a mere eighteen miles outside Tijuana. Some ascribe the affinity between Irish- and Mexican-Americans to similar Catholic upbringings. While not denying that possibility, I prefer to think that it is testament to how susceptible those of us with freckles are to the siren call of Mexican cookery.

I have, for instance, dispatched an incalculable number of pigs in the form of tacos, guisados, sopas, tortas, enchiladas, chorizos, and various antojitos. My lust for fresh, dried, and smoked chiles leads to eating amounts that would shock (and likely render ill) my pale ancestors. Yet Mexican sirens are not all chiles and pork. Some of them sing songs of sweetness.

One such sirena is Fany Gerson, a Mexican-born pastry chef and author of My Sweet Mexico. Oh, sure, you may know about caramel-topped flan or the long, ridged donuts known as churros, but there’s a wealth of desserts, candies, sweet beverages, and snacks that, while ingrained in Mexican culture, just don’t get much play in the US. Gerson’s here to fix that. Rightly.

Traveling around her native country, the author gathered recipes for dulces de convento (sweets from convents), dulces de antaño (“heirloom” sweets) pan dulce (the ubiquitous sweet morning breads), fruits, various desserts, and frozen treats such as margarita ice, rose petal sherbet, and sorbets made of quince, tamarind, lime, and cucumber.

If you’re the slightest bit interested in Mexican food or sweets in general, Gerson’s book is a knockout. It has recipes for both traditional sweets (want to make your own Mexican chocolate tablets? Instructions included) and more complex modern desserts such as an original lime tart with tequila-plumped “drunken” cherries.

My Sweet Mexico brings together in one place a trove of the kinds of recipes you would have to cobble together from dozens of English-language cookbooks devoted to Mexican cooking. The tone is light, erudite, and engaging: the voice of an expert and one whom I would want to have over for dinner (and not just because she may bring dessert). 

Drinks are not ignored. Sure, there’s an entire chapter devoted to bebidas, but pastry chefs, after all, are used to judicious use of spirits in their work. Gerson puts a Mexican spin on that tradition. Consider her recipe for gaznates (“windpipes”), light, cannoli-like shells filled with Italian meringue: the shells are made with brandy or rum — and the filling? Spiked with mezcal.

Don’t like windpipes? Try the jamoncillo de leche, a fudge-like milk confection that can be flavored with chocolate, lime, coconut — or reposado tequila. 

Gerson’s recipe for pasita, a raisin cordial, was inspired by a bar in Puebla that serves its namesake tipple in a shot glass topped with a skewer of salty cheese and a raisin.

Pasita

(a raisin liqueur)

1.5 c/340g sugar

1 c/250ml water

3 c/750ml brandy

2 c/300g dark raisins

Combine the sugar and water in a pot over medium heat, and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Pour into a large container. Stir in about 1 cup of the brandy, add the raisins, and let macerate until the raisins plump, about 20 minutes. Add the remaining 2 cups brandy and cover tightly. Store in a dry, dark place for 2 weeks, Stain through a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth and store in a sterilized jar.

“Although this drink is typically served,” she adds “at room temperature, I like it a bit chilled. It will keep about 2 months in the refrigerator.”

~ Adapted from My Sweet Mexico to include metric measures.

Though well-researched throughout, Gerson tips her scholarly hand at the end by including a bibliography of nearly thirty titles, most from Mexico and nearly all in Spanish: a goldmine for those who want to read more.

Fany Gerson (2010)
My Sweet Mexico: Recipes for Authentic Pastries, Breads, Candies, Beverages, and Frozen Treats

224 pages, hardback
Ten Speed Press

ISBN: 1580089941

$30.00

Goes well with:

• Fany Gerson’s site My Sweet Mexico
• Amazon sells the book here
• Gerson’s soon-to-open paleta company, La Newyorkina. Paletas are typically Mexican and often fruit-heavy popsicles that sometimes come in arresting flavors such as mango/chile or roasted corn. Try them: the good ones are very good indeed.

Chocolate Pie with Dos Maderas PX Rum

Leftover dessert? An alien concept. Put before me a cupcake, a slice of pie, a cobbler, crumble, grunt, slump, cookies, ice cream, cake, tortes, tarts, stolen, krapfen, baklava, cannoli, pudding — or, face it, nearly any sugar-egg-flour combination — and I will eat it down to the plate. None of this “just a taste” nonsense.

The flip side is that, because I know I’ll devour sweets, I don’t keep them around the house. If we bake cookies, friends, neighbors, and co-workers taste the bounty. Red velvet cake? Half of the last one I made was claimed by a friend 30 minutes after it was frosted.

The chocolate pie should have followed the same path. It didn’t. Naturally, everyone in the house got a slice, but then we repeated until all that was left was a pie pan smeared with chocolate and tiny black crumbs.

This was originally a Martha Stewart recipe and, except for the liquor, a pretty typical diner-style pie, but I tweaked it a bit and swapped out her suggested whiskey in the pie with Dos Maderas PX, a flavorful blend of aged Barbados and Guyana rums. After basking five years in used bourbon barrels under the Caribbean sun, it’s shipped to Jerez, Spain for five more years in two different sherry barrels. Score a bottle if you see it. I often sip it just neat. And because a rum-laced pie’s not enough, I spiked the whipped cream with some of it as well.

Is it any wonder we ate the whole damn thing?

Chocolate Pie with Dos Maderas PX

Crust
6.5 oz/185g chocolate wafer cookies (about 30)
1 Tbl sugar or vanilla sugar
6 Tbl/85g unsalted butter, melted

Pulverize the cookies in a food processor. Transfer the resulting fine crumbs to a medium mixing bowl and stir in the sugar. Add melted butter and mix with a large mixing spoon or spatula until the entire mixture looks and feels like soft, wet sand.

Turn crust mixture out into a 9-inch round pie plate. Using the back of the spoon, press the mixture evenly into the bottom and up the sides. Transfer crust to freezer.

Filling
½ c sugar (4 oz/100g)
3 Tbl malted milk powder (35g/1.25 oz)
1 tsp salt
¼ cup cornstarch (35g/1.25 oz)
5 large egg yolks
2 c/500ml whole milk
½ c/125ml heavy cream
5 oz/140g dark chocolate (60-70% cacao), coarsely chopped
1 Tbl aged rum (Dos Maderas PX)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Make the filling: In a medium saucepan, whisk together sugar, malted milk powder, salt, and cornstarch. Add the egg yolks and whisk until combined; mixture will look like a thick paste.

Slowly pour in milk and cream, whisking constantly. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly; let boil for 30 seconds and immediately remove from heat.

Add chocolate, rum, and vanilla; whisk until well combined and mixture has cooled slightly. Let stand, at room temperature, for 15 minutes. If a thin skin forms on the filling while cooling, whisk until skin is gone. Remove the pie crust from the freezer and pour the slightly cooled filling into the crust. Refrigerate for 4 hours before serving.

Serve with whipped cream lightly sweetened and dosed with additional Dos Maderas PX. If you’ve got leftover chocolate wafer cookies, now is a good time to crumble one or two and sprinkle them over the whipped cream-lashed pie slices.

Goes well with:

• Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers — these dark, almost black little buggers are not always easy to find. Amazon sells a 12-pack of them which is more than I'd ever need, but maybe you've got a buddy who would go halfsies with you. Or have a bake sale...

Day Old & Bold: Francis Lam’s Banana Pudding

It takes a little time to develop that flavor

(Day old banana puddin')
To soak it all up with your vanilla wafer
(Day old banana puddin')
So get out your bowl and your wooden spoon
(Day old banana puddin')
'Cause I can smell your pudding clean across this room
(Day old banana puddin')

~ Southern Culture on the Skids
Banana Pudding

A few days ago, in a Facebook thread about a pork shoulder I’d been cooking, banana pudding came up—specifically, a caramel-laced version Francis Lam posted recently. Someone—someone in my own household—declared “We ♥ Francis Lam.”

This is true. We do. What’s also true is that Francis, a friend of friends and erstwhile editor for Gourmet, has disrupted more dinner plans at our house than earthquakes and kitchen accidents combined. After Gourmet disbanded, Francis started writing—and writing and writing—at Salon.com’s food section. I really like his stuff. So much so that dishes I’d planned to make for dinner get shoved aside so I can play with his recipes instead.

Last Friday’s recipe for banana pudding in particular caught my attention. I had a load of bananas I intended to make into a Filipino banana ketchup. Enter Lam, all tatted up and full of loose talk about “Fancy Pants Banana Pudding.” Now, I like this tropical trifle as much as the next guy, but the version he wrote about incorporated a banana-spiked caramel. I was hooked. Ketchup? What ketchup? That’s for another day.

It was time for banana pudding. Click above to see Francis’ original post, but I’ve made some adjustments to the recipe (you know how these things go), so you can compare them if you like.

The result is simply one of the best banana puddings I've ever had. Homemade custard is almost always an improvement over store-bought powder, but the real trick pony here is the banana caramel. It gives deep, sweet, luxurious notes to the whole thing. Next time, I might toss a little rum into the dish (a quick dip of the cookies in, say, a nice Demerara), but for now, all I need is a spoon.

Banana Caramel
2 average to large bananas, very, very ripe (brown spots on skin)
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup water

1. In a blender or food processor, puree the bananas fully, until they pour like pancake batter.
2. Combine sugar and water in a very clean, heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil over high flame, and turn it down to a vigorous simmer. As the water boils off and you're left with pure molten sugar, the bubbles will get bigger but slower and less violent. Nothing will look like it's happening for a while, but keep an eye on it.
3. When you start seeing some color develop at the bottom, gently swirl the pan to distribute it; this helps the sugar caramelize evenly. Caramel is a game of chicken: Pull the sugar off when it's too lightly colored, and the flavor is one-dimensional. Pull it off when it's too dark and it's burnt, bitter and acrid. But once the color starts to turn, it turns pretty quickly, so you have to be brave but not stupid; only repetition and a good memory for color will tell you when you've got the perfect color. But if you're new to this, play it a little safe and cook and swirl until the sugar is amber-colored and remove it from the heat, still swirling gently.
4. Pour in the banana puree and stir vigorously with a spoon, heat-proof spatula, or whisk, making sure to dig in the corners of the pan. It'll hiss and sizzle and maybe even boil. Just stick with it and it'll calm down. When it's cooled, give it a taste. Delicious! You will have extra; keep it in the fridge [edit: in fact, you’ll have enough for a double-batch of the pudding below).

Pudding
1 ½ cups whole milk
½ cup heavy whipping cream, plus ½ to 1 cup more for whipping
3 Tbl 25g cornstarch
3 Tbl/45ml cold milk
2 eggs
6 Tbl/80g sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 Tbl/30g unsalted butter, cut in pieces
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup banana caramel (or to taste)
1-2 large, firm bananas (ripe, but still pale yellow)
Nilla wafers (or ginger snaps , ladyfingers, or cookie or cake of your choice)

1. In a heavy 2-quart pot, heat the 1 ½ cups of milk and the cream just to the point of simmering, lower the heat, and hold it there.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and 3 Tbl cold milk to assure there are no lumps.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, and salt together until light.
4. Combine with the cornstarch mixture.
5. Slowly pour—while whisking—about half of the hot milk/cream mix into the egg mixture. This helps to temper the eggs and make sure that the shock of a bunch of hot dairy all at once doesn’t curdle them. Add the remaining hot dairy, and whisk to combine.
6. Working quickly, clean out the pan used to heat the milk (or just use a clean one), then return the mixture to the clean pan. Stir over medium heat, adding butter bit by bit, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon.
7. Once thickened to a loose, well, pudding-like consistency, take off the heat, and pour into a mixing bowl.
8. Add the vanilla extract.
9. Fold in the banana caramel (if it’s very cold and thick from the fridge, measure some into a bowl, stir in a cup or so of the warm pudding, then fold this lighter, more malleable mixture back into the pudding).
10. Assemble the pudding by putting down a layer of cookies in whatever dish you intend to use. Then about a third of the caramel-laced pudding. Then a layer of banana slices (about ¼” thick), then more cookies, then a final layer of the remaining pudding mix.
11. Cover the top with plastic wrap to keep a skin from forming, and chill in the fridge overnight.

To serve, lash it with whipped cream.