Golden Spiced Bread is Sometimes Sexy

I have a friend who says being nauseated is a lot like being pregnant.  You either are or you are not.  There are no halvsies.  If you are feeling ill you will have very primeval thoughts about, say, a monkfish piccata dish you recently made. No one vomits with ambivalence and certainly not about a slippery to the touch fish that is described as having a “muddy brown color, mottled with lighter and darker brown speckles.”

I mention this because my intestines, while they technically work and thank god have not been operated on, are assholes. They have been since I was a teenager.  I am aware admitting this violates the one rule of food writing: you do not talk about innards.  The second rule of food writing: you do not talk about innards.

But this is not Bon Appétit.  So I will tell you that last Thursday night, after eating monkfish and drinking precisely one beer, I spent most of the early morning hours lying in a fetal position on my bathroom floor. Because my digestive tract is a delicate flower, or I likely had some form of food poisoning, or some combination thereof. 

Are you still with me?

The next day the only thing I could stomach—besides some lemon-lime Gatorade—was this cake. It is a very good recipe and I have made about five different versions of it, including one savory edition that included sun-dried tomatoes, which was a grave mistake.

Brett said that the dried nightshade rendition tasted like gingerbread that had taken a wrong turn.  Imagine it is Christmastime and you slice off a piece from a freshly baked loaf, intending to wash it down with some delicious eggnog, but instead of candied ginger or some brandy-soaked currants, you find embedded tomatoes.

It was not completely inedible, per se, but I would not recommend it. I also feel compelled to mention I come from a lineage where it is customary to save leftover tossed salad and eat the soggy vinegar-laden limp greens the next day. Suffice to say tomato gingerbread is not something I ever hope to taste again, and that is saying something.

The version presented today is much better.  It is a recipe I have been experimenting with for awhile, because I have a few gluten-free friends who deserve to eat quick breads like the rest of us.  It is also very low in fermentable carbohydrates called FODMAPs, which research indicates can worsen digestive woes, like the kind you might experience due to post-infectious irritable bowel syndrome. 

It also has a pleasing spongy texture and pretty burnt orange color thanks to the turmeric. Because it is not overly saccharine, you can eat it at any time of day, truly.  Plus it makes a fine first meal after a bout of food poisoning.

The original recipe calls it a “golden savory cake” which sounds very sexy, but is not entirely accurate unless you intend to make the bread for an enemy and add those sun-dried tomatoes. Otherwise, it still trends more sweet than savory, though not enough to label it as a cake and get away with it unscathed. Regardless, it is a very good blueprint.

I recently found it is further enhanced by adding a schmear of frosting, which negates some of my earlier assertions.  The frosting recipe I used comes from Kindred restaurant, where my good friend Justin is employed. Like most everything they seem to make, their cinnamon bun cream cheese frosting is the kind of thing the devil warns you about.

So there you have it.  Not the most seductive of food stories, but an honest one and a damn good recipe.  Plus something that anyone who has ever had food poisoning or a colicky colon can relate too, without ambivalence.

Golden Spiced Bread

Ingredients:

• ⅓ cup (55 grams) plus 1 tablespoon (10 grams) rice flour, divided
• 3 tablespoons (30 grams) potato starch
• 2 tablespoons (15 grams) tapioca flour
• ½ cup (60 grams) buckwheat flour
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon (7 grams) ground turmeric
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon (or allspice)
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (or chili powder)
• 4 large eggs
• ¼ cup (55 grams) maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon orange blossom water
• 2 tablespoons (20 grams) olive oil
• ¾ cup (170 grams) milk (see notes)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon (10 grams) apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons (20 grams) lemon juice
• ⅓ cup (50 grams) pistachios, roughly chopped
• ⅓ cup (50 grams) assorted dried fruit, roughly chopped (see notes)

Instructions:

Set the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a standard loaf pan (9 x 5-inch) with a neutral oil, like canola oil. Line with a strip of parchment paper over the width of the pan, so that the parchment will hang over the sides a few inches. Grease the parchment with oil.

In a large bowl, sift together ⅓ cup rice flour, potato starch, tapioca, buckwheat, salt, and spices; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, maple syrup, vanilla, orange blossom water, and oil; set aside.

In a large measuring cup, add the milk, baking soda, vinegar, and lemon juice; whisk to combine. (It should froth.)

Pour the wet ingredients (both the egg and the milk mixture) into the dry ingredients and whisk just long enough until everything melds together and the liquid becomes the consistency of pancake batter.

Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan and bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until golden brown.  The loaf is done when the top is firm and springs back when touched (because you are using gluten-free flour a toothpick is not a reliable indicator of doneness).

Makes one loaf (enough for about 6 thick slices)

Notes:

1. Any milk (almond, lactaid, whole cow’s milk) could be used here.
2. My favorite version so far has involved dried mixed berries (blueberries, strawberries, etc.) as the fruit of choice, but dried cranberries are also very nice.
3. The original recipe uses almond flour instead of buckwheat, but almonds are higher in the type of carbohydrate that can cause digestive issues.  This is also true of the pistachios, so swap them for walnuts or pecans if you have a sensitive digestive system.
4. I realize this is a long list of ingredients, but it ensures that you end up with a bread that no one can tell is gluten-free. (Feel free to leave off orange blossom water if you do not have it.)

Gluten Free Salvadorian Cheese Pound Cakes, When Things Go Missing

My parents used to host an annual holiday party. About fifteen minutes before showtime, a gang of flickering votives would appear in the downstairs windows. My siblings and I would be summoned for shoe patrol, which was met with groans, and meant our shoe piles in the laundry room were rounded up and tossed somewhere out of sight.

My mother would then take the miniature crustless cheesecakes she baked in holly leaf paper wrappers and arrange them on a silver tray.  Each one was jeweled with a single red canned cherry.  They were meant to last for only one bite and I could easily have consumed them all by myself, bite by bite, had it not have been for the other guests.

The dessert only made an appearance around Christmastime. Its presence indicated that everything was going to be okay, except maybe for the Keds cast into internment.

When I think about those cherry-topped cheesecakes I feel a little heartsick.  They remind me of a time when my family unit was intact, before my parents divorced and went on to become people whose pairing, in retrospect, did not make sense.

They remind me that my childhood home was sold, painted forest green, and now hosts a blowup Santa on the roof well into Valentine’s Day.  (I am sure my mother would have something to say about that state of the laundry room these days, as well.)

They remind me I can never return to that place.

A teeny dessert with a cherry on top will never taste like it did at eight years old.  Its existence indicated there were grownups that also valued tiny little cheesecakes, and these adults would be the kind to protect you, and nothing would ever change.

I suppose I could make them for myself these days, but doubt they would feel the same.

I was recently testing a recipe for a friend and it reminded me of those little cakes from childhood, adult-sized. You would never know it was gluten-free, and probably would not care after tasting it either, regardless of your stance on wheat. 

The gluten-free cakes are slightly savory, but because of this they are easily eaten for breakfast with coffee, as is said to happen in El Salvador where the recipe originates. You can leave off the lemon zest in a pinch, though its presence melds the sweet and salty aspects together seamlessly.  You cannot leave off the pecorino cheese, however odd its presence seems. It adds addictive umami. Cheesy pound cake is a pretty apt description.

They will not replace the departure of those cherry-topped cheesecakes, but that is not their role. They stand in their own right as a present-day source of comfort and of remembrance.  There is an article in The New Yorker from February 13th called “Losing Streak” that sums up this evolution perfectly.

“Disappearance reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. Loss is a kind of external conscience, urging us to make better use of our finite days.”

These cakes represent this, in food form.  It was never really about the cheesecakes, after all.

Gluten Free Salvadorian Cheese Pound Cakes

Adapted from Food52

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rice flour (see notes)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk Greek yogurt
• ½ cup pecorino cheese
• zest of one lemon
• sesame seeds, to top

Instructions:

Set the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 6-cup muffin tins with butter.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium high until fluffy and white (about two minutes).  Scrape down the sides and then add the eggs in one at a time, with the mixer running on low.

Turn up the speed slightly and beat in the yogurt and cheese.  Take care, the mixture may splatter a bit.  At this point the batter will look slightly separated.

Remove the bowl from the stand and fold in the flour mixture and the lemon zest with a spatula, until just combined.

Fill the muffin tins mostly full, the batter will puff up slightly but will not significantly expand.  Sprinkle each with a pinch of sesame seeds.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the edges are browned and the middles spring slightly back when touched. 

Place the tins on a wire baking rack. When the cakes are cool enough to touch, run a knife around the edges of the cups to loosen them.

Makes 12 individual cakes

Notes:

1. I like them cooled to room temperature, but enjoy them even more after being chilled overnight in the fridge.  They take on the properties of cheesecake better in this form. They can be frozen, as well.
2. The recipe makes no distinction between brown or white rice flour.  I used brown and will again (there was no notable density from the extra fiber).
3. Hard cheeses like cojita or parmesan can also be used, but pecorino is what I keep around.

Turmeric Tea in Quiet Protest

As the world slowly imploded Saturday night after the immigrant ban, Brett and I watched Scarface. An extreme choice in retrospect, but it offered insight beyond its cautionary tale of greed told by way of a cocaine avalanche.

Suffice to say if you are concerned about refugees killing Americans, which has not happened since the seventies, you might as well since cite Tony Montana as a reference.

I understand that terrorism is a threat.  I feel it.  I was in Boston during the marathon bombing and I have not been able to stand at ease in a large crowd since. But at its core this ban is un-American and uninformed.

It is also cowardly. 

Have its supporters ever met a refugee? 

I have. She was from one of the seven countries now banned from entering the United States. She was not carrying an assault riffle or a burning flag. She was carrying baklava.

Her delicately flaky pastries were held in a disposable foil pan.  The kind your mother might use to cook and transport a casserole.  They were stuffed with pistachios and scented with cardamom. She had Margaret Keane eyes and was incredibly kind.  So grateful to see me that she came carrying dessert.

Diversity makes us better. It makes our plates, and our lives, richer.

Without the movement of people from space to space we would not have baklava.  There would not be spaghetti and meatballs, either.  No chocolate for our chocolate chip cookies.  No coffee.

And certainly no turmeric tea. Which is what I am here to talk about today.

I had it in caffeinated protest before the rally in Boston on Sunday. 

The recipe comes from Tejal Rao, a London-born writer with Kenyan-Indian roots living in Brooklyn.  She describes the tea as her grandmother’s silent acknowledgement of the typical grievances that tend to occur in childhood, no matter where you call home.

The drink is the color of a canary and tastes like a delicate chai.  I used mostly water and a little half and half, instead of milk, because it was what I had. I do not think the liquid you use will matter much past its volume.  The milk is not the point.  The spices are the point.

I had torn the recipe out a couple weeks ago, intending it for a time when I needed a little quiet comfort. I did not expect to need it so soon.

But I am glad to have it here.

Turmeric Tea

Adapted from Tejal Rao of The New York Times Magazine

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup of water
• a ½-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
• ½ tsp dried turmeric
• 1 cardamom pod, lightly cracked
• 1 cinnamon stick (see notes)
• 2 black peppercorns
• ½ to 1 tbsp honey
• ¼ cup half and half
• 1 black tea bag

Instructions:

In a small saucepan, add the water, ginger, spices, and honey (start with a ½ tablespoon) and set over medium-low heat.  Bring to a simmer and then add the half and half and tea bag.

When the liquid starts to steam (it should be barely simmering at this point), taste and add additional honey if needed.

Pour through a mesh strainer into a teacup and discard the spices.

Makes enough for one

Notes:

1. If you are going to make this often, you will go through a lot of cinnamon sticks.  You may want to experiment with ground cinnamon, which I suspect will be just as good.
2. If you do not want to use half and half, you could cut the water down to a couple tablespoons and add in about a cup of milk (or even a nut-based milk) instead.