Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake

Even this "perfect" one seems to have some displaced apples.

I just pitched a piece to a women’s magazine about my schizophrenic kale-Cheezits relationship to food and eating. Jolly Ranchers and buckwheat groats; bar-room chicken wings and raw kohlrabi. “Interesting!” the editor wrote back. “But what’s the take-away going to be? We’re not getting such a clear sense of it.” That is a good and important question! What is the take-away going to be?

Maybe it’s this: the fact of our privilege means we have a fridge full of food, which is such a profound luxury. 

I want us to nurture our healthy bodies and to invest in organic practices, in local and sustainable harvests, in a healthier planet with healthier creatures on it. But I also want to not fret over every mouthful, which can feel kind of narcissistic given that so many people are frankly hungry. Also, I’m raising a girl. I really don’t want her to overthink every bite of food, if you know what I mean. I wish for some easiness in her about eating—a sense that, as long as her basic diet is healthy and sound, it’s fine to slurp up a blue raspberry Slurpee every now and again. (Even if she notices, and she does, that it makes her feel kind of cruddy.)

Corn Nut butt

I’m just thinking aloud, by the way. And this may all just be specious justification of the fact that, even though I’ve been generally leaning away from sugar and white flour, I’m posting this cake today. Because it’s apple season, and because I wanted there to be something nice when the kids got home from school.

The cake is so sticky-salty-buttery good that everyone will love it. Even if right after you take it out of the oven your camera strap catches on the corner of the kitchen island such that the camera slingshots out of your hands onto the tile floor where its lens cap flies off with a heart-stopping clatter and by the time you finish Googling "I dropped my camera and it seems alright but is it?" the topping has cooled and stuck, and you have to scrape the entire thing back onto the cake in a messy heap. Even then.

It will still taste delicious! Even if all the dumb apples and dumb cooled caramel had to be spackled onto it and photographed with a not-broken dropped camera that is maybe taking blurry pictures.

Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake

Serves 6 to 8

Active time: 35 minutes; total time 1 hour

This cake is like the autumn cousin of the more familiar pineapple version. It is gooey and gorgeous--and a fantastic way to use some of those apples you might be getting in large quantities right about now. It’s based on the French tarte tatin, so butter, yes, caramel, yes, salt, yes, but NO CINNAMON. If you want to add cinnamon though, you totally should. Because life is short.

Please note: if you need to be sure the cake is going to come out perfect, then butter the skillet and line the bottom with a circle of parchment before you begin melting the butter and caramelizing the apples.

For caramelized apples

2 crisp apples (or 3 if they’re small), peeled

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter (I use salted!)

For cake batter

1 1/2 cups flour (I use—can you guess?—half spelt)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 large egg

1/2 cup sour cream

Heat the oven to 350.

Core the apples, then quarter them and slice each quarter into thirds. Put the apple slices and sugar in a large bowl and toss to coat the slices with sugar.

Melt the butter in a10-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat until foaming. Reduce the heat to low and arrange the apples, cut-sides down in the skillet. I do mine in an attractive spiral! Sprinkle any leftover sugar around the apples, and cook over moderately low heat until the sugar begins to caramelize, about 15 minutes. (At first it may look like the sugar is caramelizing right away, but that is likely still the butter toasting. Wait a sec and see.) Remove the skillet from the heat while you make the batter.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and beat well. Add the flour mixture and sour cream alternately in 3 batches of flour and 2 of sour cream, mixing at low speed after each addition until just combined.

Spoon the (very stiff) batter over the apples in the skillet, blooping out all the batter in stiff little globs and using a butter knife after to spread it as evenly as you can without disturbing the apples; this is sort of stressful and unsatisfying, and the batter will not cover the tops of all the apples. Bake in the middle of the oven until the cake is golden brown and feels firm when you press it, around 25 minutes.

Run a thin knife around edge of the cake and invert a plate over the skillet. Invert the cake onto the plate, keeping the plate and skillet firmly pressed together, then replace any (or all) fruit stuck to the bottom of the skillet if necessary.

Serve cake warm or at room temperature.

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Linkapalooza

This baby is five. What?

ZOMG. These are for you, with love. I am so, so happy that you asked. Anything else? xo
Oh, and p.s.: These are recipes I'd published earlier, in a different incarnation as a food writer, and since they've disappeared from the internet, I am republishing them here. In case you're like WTF?

Mexican Chicken Salad with Buttermilk Lime Dressing
Perfect Sauteed Chicken with (or without) Mushrooms
Baked (but gooey) Macaroni and Cheese
Whole-Wheat Pasta with Chickpeas and Lemon
Cozy Noodels with Ham and Peas
Brown-Butter Whole-Wheat Shortbread
Fish with Brown-Butter Sauce
Chile Tortilla Eggbake
Smoky Saucy Chickpeas with Spinach
Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes
Roasted Cauliflower Salad
Classic Pot Roast
Corn Chowder
Dinner Beans
Beef Satay with Peanut Sauce
Fantastic Fearless Five-Minute Bread (no-knead)
Soft and Sticky Gingerbread
Pork Chops with Maple-Cider Cabbage
Pork Roast with Apples and Cider-Cream Gravy
Zuke-a-Ganoush
Pink Pink Beet-Walnut Dip
Asian-Style Chicken Salad with Ginger-Miso Dressing
Winter Sunshine Bars
Potato-Leek Soup
Rosemary Caramel Popcorn
Miso Kale Chips
Caramelized Brussels Sprouts
Tart-Cherry Brownies
Whole-Wheat Pasta with Broccoli Pesto and Garlicky Breadcrumbs
Banana Muffins

Edited to add:
Yummy Buttermilk Biscuits
Yeasted (Croissant-Scented) Waffles
Salted Caramel Popcorn
Camping and Eating
Instant Instant Oatmeal
Crunchy Oven Fries
Hummus Among Us
Lemony Broccoli Pasta with Chicken (OMG! I forgot!)
Apple Pie Tutorial

Some old favorites

The stuffed date Birdy made me for a snack. Heart heart heart heart.

My dearest darlings, I am moving recipes here because the old ones don't seem to exist online anymore. Here today are five requests from the last few weeks. It's funny to interact with the old recipes. I mean, these are all dishes I still make regularly, but things are a different now. I tend to use half spelt flour, for example, in most baked and breakfast dishes. My pictures look better to me these days. (Tamale Pie, flash-lit? I mean, with the corn? My God.) And also, I make things veggie that I didn't used to. The Tamale Pie, for instance, I make with tofu, which I crumble and fry and season heavily before proceeding. I'll try to post that variation too, because it's entirely worthwhile. We just eat way more like vegetarians now, even those of us who aren't Birdy. Over the weekend, Ben grilled her about whether or not she'd eat road kill, which produced some interesting and philosophical conversation. She is not sure she wants to validate the sloppiness of drivers, and of human technology, when it comes to animals, even as she would not want their poor dead bodies to go to waste. If I ever make and sell a question jar, that one's going into it.

THIS WEEK ONLY: your recipe requests (for the old recipes) posted within 24 hours. Please, bring them on. It's the only thing that motivates my sorry, lazy ass to deal with this issue. Scan through the recipe index here. (And you do know that you can always click on it up there, in the upper right corner, under "Pages," right?)

And, in the meantime, these. xoxo

Buttermilk pancakes


Borscht.


Walnut-Orange Cake


Tamale Pie


The Soup of 1000 Vegetables

Red-Cabbage Kimchi (aka Beauty-Prize Kimchi)

“I dreamed that Birdy was sick,” I said to Michael last month, waking, and waking him, in a sweaty fright in the night in our little Wellfleet rental. He murmured something soothingly, sleepingly, and I went back to sleep only to wake again with a start an hour later. Birdy was standing by our bed with the pinky cheeks and the glassy eyes. “I don’t feel so good,” she said. And she had a 101.1 fever, and then a 103.3 fever. There was a visit to the Cape Cod clinic and a strep diagnosis and a not even wanting to eat warm buttered orzo, which is her number-one favorite food on the planet. It was all very sad and strange and, thankfully, brief. She was a lot better by the next day, and a lot more better by the day after that, and then fine. Plus, we had cable TV, and I’d be lying if I said I minded cozying on the couch with her to watch back-to-back-to-back episodes of House Hunters. Beach shmeach.

The daily miracle of wellness.

Oh, but the dream. Michael imagines that there was some tiny butterfly-wing shift in the air that I registered unconsciously: a few stray strep molecules, a nano-degree of raised heat, a way Birdy's skin felt when I touched my good-night kiss to it. Something. It puts me in awe of my own parental psychic process. And of antibiotics, to which I bow humbly down.

For you, amoxicillin, for I know it was never your intention that Birdy barf you out into a bucket.

Speaking of which: I wanted to make something for Birdy that might offer a little pro- to counter the anti-, biotics-wise, and I so I thought of kimchi. But I didn’t have napa cabbage, which is what I’ve always used when I've followed my usual recipe from the Momofuku Cookbook; I had a red cabbage. So I Googled “Red Cabbage Kimchi,” and found a whole new recipe and method that I loved. I used fresh jalapenos instead of the Korean chile powder that I usually use, that I insist on using even though it smells kind of dusty in the package and I’m never sure I like how it tastes. I didn’t use sugar, which I usually add, or fish sauce, which I am fanatical about, even though sometimes the funk is a little funkier than my mood requires. And, most differently, I followed the instructions on Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried (a new-to-me blog providentially named after my number-one favorite Maurice Sendak line of all time), where Naomi Devlin recommends using two probiotic capsules to get the fermentation started.

Imagine a scallion into this photograph.

I’m telling you. This is the best kimchi I’ve ever tasted, even though what it really is is a cross between kimchi and sauerkraut. It’s gorgeously pink and perfectly tinglingly tart, crisp and aromatic and just so utterly fresh-tasting. It is the brightest thing I’ve ever made, in all ways. Plus, I can’t even begin to imagine how healthsome it is. Red cabbage! Fermented! 

Ah, the lovely, lovely fermented foods. Also, artificially-flavored strawberry milk.

I mean, please. I eat it pretty much every day, either with a groovy frankfurter or on a rice cake that’s been slathered with almond butter. Oh, and Birdy loved it never ended up mustering the courage to try it. It does, I should mention "have a smell." [Catherine makes prissy, judgmental suit-yourself face.]

This is absurdly, tangily, addictively delicious, even though it smells and the hot-dog slices might give you a strange preschooly feeling.

Red-Cabbage Kimchi 

Adapted from this recipe at Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried. I added the scallions and upped the ginger, garlic, and chile, but feel free to omit/scale back as you prefer. I would describe this as fool-proof, but then next week I’d end up screwing it all up somehow. Still, it’s very easy and intuitive, and if you’re interested, it’s a great starter fermentation project because the probiotic capsules control it all.

1 red cabbage (I used half of a quite large one), cored and finely sliced or shredded (I used this)

2 carrots scrubbed or peeled and grated, shredded, or julienned (I used this)

1 tablespoon peeled and finely chopped or grated ginger

1 large scallion, white and some of the green, finely slivered

2 cloves of garlic finely chopped

½-1 hot pepper, seeded and slivered (make it however spicy you like)

2 tablespoons kosher salt

The powder from 2 probiotic capsules dissolved in 1 cup of spring/filtered/mineral water (I used water that I’d boiled for tea and left to cool. The issue is that you don’t want the chlorine, which is designed to stop bacterial growth, because you want to grow some bacteria! It boils off after a minute, though.)

(I use these probiotic capsules. I think as long as you get capsules (not tablets) it should be fine. Actually, you could probably dissolve tablets no problem, so that should be fine too! There.)

Put everything into a (strong) ceramic or stainless steel bowl and pound with a meat mallet or pestle or wooden spoon until the juices start to flow. (This is an inexact science. Just make sure to give it a decent bashing or even a good squeezing with your strong fingers and all will be well.)

Now pile the mixture into a very clean 1- or 2-quart jar (or multiple smaller jars—just try to distribute the liquid evenly) and push it down with your clean fingers until the juices rise to the top of the cabbage. Close with a lid. 

Set the jar aside at room temperature for 3-4 days until the pickle tastes good and sour. (Unscrew the lid every day, if you think to, just to make sure no gasses are building up pressure in there.) You’ll see it, though: once the cabbage starts to ferment, it will go from looking purple and white to looking a uniform bright pink, the way it would if you added vinegar to it. Bingo! Once it’s as sour as you like, keep it in the fridge, where it seems to keep well. I mean, it’s already spoiled, so what more could really happen to it? 

Your Famous Tomatillo Salsa

I am preserving my troubles away. What? That’s not the catchiest saying. But, you know: kimchi, wild grape jam, puffball paté, the insanely good oven-roasted tomato sauce. And this tomatillo salsa, which I make every year. I used to make it in a less fussy way: I’d just puree the roasted veggies with everything else, using lime juice but no vinegar, and then pop it in the freezer in pint-sized containers or Ziplocs. But now I’ve taken to properly canning it, and so I follow stricter guidelines re. acid and boiling, so as to not get The Botulism.

I’m sorry to post something so particular for the four of you who have access to tomatillos, because I know what you’re wanting at this time of year is a way to turn one inch of tortilla-chip crumbs and six dirty beets into enough school lunches to last the semester. Alas.  

And by the way, the great Ben Making His Own Lunch experiment is proving strangely tedious. He is wearing me down by so much fretful consulting that it’s all I can do not to shove him away from his despairing slouch in front of the open fridge and just make the fucking lunch myself. But I am holding steady. Or trying to. “There’s ham,” I say, over and over, like a postmodern audio critique of the pork industry. Meanwhile, Birdy has taken to making her own lunch just for fun—and uncomplainingly. Thus becoming my Current Favorite Child.

Exhibit A(ngel)

Exhibit B(en)

Back to the salsa: it is fruity and aromatic, a gorgeous pale green and just enough spicy and sweet to be a total crowd-pleaser. Sometimes I’ll dump a jar in a bowl and then add some corn kernels and diced avocado to fancy everything up for taco night. Or I’ll tip some into a pot of posole or Mexican rice. Or I’ll just put it out with chips. If you start making it and bringing it places, it will become Your Famous Tomatillo Salsa. Mark my words.

P.S. I should mention that what I'm really famous for is tomatillo-corn pizza: pizza dough brushed with oil, then a layer of this salsa, scattered with corn kernels and slivered red onion, topped with shredded Jack cheese. It is just BEYOND. You will be everybody's girlfriend, like it or not.

Your Famous Tomatillo Salsa

Makes 6 pints

This recipe is adapted from the delightful Put ‘em Up by Sherrie Brooks Vinton, although I see that my darling Marisa at Food in Jars has a perfect-looking one as well. You can scale this way, way down and, if you’re not canning it, you really don’t need to be very particular about measurements.

5 pounds tomatillos, rinsed and husks removed

Olive oil (I use olive oil spray for this)

1 pound onions, peeled and sliced into thick rings

5-10 jalapenos, stemmed, halved and, if you like, seeded (it’s spicier with more seeds)

2-3 peeled garlic cloves

1 cup coarsely chopped cilantro

Finely grated zest of 2 limes

½ cup lime juice (from 3-4 limes)

¾ cup white vinegar

2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

0-2 tablespoons sugar

Heat the broiler. Arrange the tomatillos smooth side up on a large rimmed baking sheet and broil them until they are blackened in spots and steaming and hissing, 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, lightly oil another baking sheet and arrange the onion slices and skin-side-up jalapenos on it. Brush or spritz the tops of the onions with oil and broil the onions and jalapenos until they are charring, 5 minutes or so.

In a blender or food processor, in batches, puree the tomatillos with the onions and jalapenos and the garlic until smooth(ish). As you finish each batch, dump it into a large nonreactive Dutch oven or pot.

Bring the salsa to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat and simmer until thickened slightly, around 5 minutes. Meanwhile, puree the cilantro, lime juice, vinegar, lime zest, and salt in your dirty old food processor blender jar. Add this mixture to the simmered salsa, and taste it. If the tomatillos are perfectly ripe, it might be perfect as is. If not, consider adding sugar, up to two tablespoons, to balance the tartness. Taste for salt.

Can, freeze, or eat it up! If you can it, consult a proper instructional book or website, and process the cans for at least 15 minutes.

Warm and Fragrant and Sad Carrot Salad

I wish I could write something cheering and funny. I want to model a nice, brisk end-of-summer attitude for the kids, for you. But I am just boringly, wiltingly sad. I don’t have anything interesting to say about it. Just the dial-toney hum of missing Ben, who started high school, of counting the minutes until Birdy starts sixth grade. There is a big gangly-necked blue-jay baby at the feeder outside my office window, and his mom is coaching him about how to eat, and he is moving his beak in an awkward caricature of chewing, seeds falling out all over the place while he cocks his fluffy, baffled head.

Craney will never leave us! 

Ben is making his own school lunch. He spends a lot of time with his friends, whom I adore. I cannot always guess what he is thinking. The kids leave us in increments, I’m starting to understand. It’s all right and good and perfect. We are so lucky! And I could just cry. I will.

I've got to start growing again.

Still, there is the consolation of being invited to dinner, which is, I think I’ve mentioned, one of my greatest pleasures—and one of my greatest skills, the getting us invited. Stop me if I’ve told you this before, but this carrot salad? It’s the same one from the famous carrot-salad-in-the-car story. The one that goes: one time Catherine's family was invited to their friends Lee and Meredith’s house to do some cross-country skiing. And when Meredith later invited them to stay for dinner, Catherine said, “Oh, we’d love to! I actually happen to have a carrot salad in the car. Which I brought, you know, just in case.” Our friends like to remind me of this story at least every time we see them, which is, thank God, a lot. (If not quite enough.)

Last night we were actually invited to dinner ahead of time (yay!) and I made this. If you’re getting lots of sweet, delicious carrots from your garden or farm share, this is a lovely change of pace from the usual rawness and crunch. 

Another of my carrot-season favorites: escabeche, with jalapenos and onions, which makes me feel like I'm back at Tacos Vallarta in Santa Cruz, gorging on carnitas loaded down with pickled carrots. I  can as much as I can can. Some jars are called ahead of time.

The carrots in the salad are tender but, thanks to the vinegar, still firm. The seasoning is bright and unexpected, herby and fresh and mellow all at once. Good hot or cold. Delicious. Even though Ben did not, I notice, choose to pack the leftovers in his lunchbox. (WTF?)

Gardening is not my area of expertise. I had to pick the mint from underneath the sprawling tomatoes and volunteer grape vine.

Warm and Fragrant Carrot Salad

Serves 8

This is my expanded riff on “Carrots, Roman Style” from the lovely Deborah Madison book The Savory Way. Above the recipe I have written “simple + yummy,” but then, weirdly, I have made about a million notes. Don’t be dismayed by the long cooking; this happens largely unattended. You can used a teaspoon of dried mint if that’s all you’ve got; also, ground cumin is fine, but use a bit less.

1 ½ pounds nice, fresh, sweet carrots, scrubbed

¼ cup olive oil

1 heaping tablespoon (or more) chopped fresh mint

1 heaping tablespoon (or more) chopped celery leaves (or, if you’ve got it, lovage—but less of it)

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

3 smashed and peeled garlic cloves

2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

3 cups water

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar (and more, for later)

Black pepper

More herbs for garnish

Cut the carrots into 2-inch lengths, and then cut these into quarters, sixths, or eights, so that they are all nice and even(ish). (I don't see why you couldn't slice them into the usual coins, unless you are obedient like me.)

In a Dutch oven over low heat, warm the oil and add the herbs, cumin, and garlic, and cook just until you can really smell them. Add the carrots and toss them with the oil and aromatics, then add the salt, water, and vinegar. Bring to a boil over high heat, then lower the heat and simmer until tender, about 40 minutes. Deborah says, “By this time the liquid should have reduced to almost nothing, leaving the carrots nicely glazed. If the pan becomes dry before the carrots are done, add more water in ¼- or ½-cup increments until they are sufficiently tender.”

Grind on some pepper, then taste for seasoning, adding more salt or a splash more of vinegar until the carrots taste very bright and delicious. Serve with a scattering of more herbs. 

Instant Pickles, Beach-Rock Rainbows, and Endless Summer

Man, oh man. Even as I write this, I'm watching maples leaves flutter and drift, watching the plums darken and blush, watching a roly-poly woodchuck fattening up. ("I really like the blobby animals," Birdy just announced from the window. "Woodchucks and manatees. You know. The fatties." Me too.) This is all I can say about it. Because I love cool nights, I do. But the end of summer? Kill me.

We have been having such a good time.

We made Jiffy Pop at our campsite. Jiffy Pop wants you to know that they don't recommend popping it over a campfire. Just saying. I wonder what they imagine people are doing with it.

We played Acquire in our miniature Wellfleet rental. Birdy took this photo from the spiral staircase.

Ben and Birdy made drip castles.

I laughed in a pond. 

We arranged dozens of rock rainbows on various Cape Cod beaches.

Speaking of summer, which we are still in the middle of, I reposted some of my very, very favorite recipes here. Including the pasta that I am making tonight, the peach jam that I am making as soon as I hit "publish," and the dill pickles that I am not currently making:

• This delicious pasta, with zucchini, corn, cream, lime, jalapenos, and handfuls of cilantro, basil, and mint.

• This easy peach jam.

• These traditional, but easy, dill pickles.

The only reason I am not brining any of those pickles right this minute is that I invented something I'm calling Instant Pickles, and I make them all the time because we keep needing pickles for picnic lunches, and I keep not having made any. 

This used to be a full jar.

Here's how you make them: fill a quart-sized jar with sliced pickling (or regular) cucumbers. I cut the cukes in half lengthwise, and then cut the halves into fairly thin slices. As you stuff the cukes into the jar, add a couple of heads of dill (or sprigs if you've got no heads), 2 garlic cloves peeled and smashed, and, if you like, a hot pepper or a pinch of pepper flakes. Add a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 cup of white vinegar, and shake the jar well. That's it. They're ready as is, but they'll get better as they sit in the fridge (shake the jar  as you think to). Plus, as they sit, the salt will draw the water out of the cukes so that they'll end up in a fair amount of brine in the end. Unless you eat them all right away. Which you might.