It seemed so comforting to make this wonderfully rich, sweet cake as we got pelted by snow and ice earlier this week. It’s a messy cake to prepare: lots of sifting of flour, powdery confectioner’s sugar, brown sugar and tons of butter. Sometimes I use equal amounts of light-brown and dark-brown sugar (for ease of preparation weigh the two sugars to equal 430 grams or 14 ounces instead of packing them into 2 measuring cups).
Pineapple upside-down cake
In the holding-tank of Portland restaurants, more Asian eateries continue to fill our culinary narrative in bold, declarative ways. Consider the arrival of Sichuan Kitchen, which opened two weeks ago, in a prime Congress Street location. I went with a friend shortly after its debut, and we had a few dishes from the concise menu. The Zhong dumplings, for instance, filled with pork were amazing: the dumpling dough was rich and the concentrated soy sauce with Szechuan peppercorns and chili in which to roll around the dumplings, conspired to make these some of the tastiest in town. Our second dish, the twice cooked pork, however, was bland—barely any heat, and the tender pieces of meat could have benefited by an assertive marinade before cooking. A third dish, this time white fish with pickled greens, which our waitress raved about, was disappointing: the swai fish–an Asian farmed catfish, which can be a problematic fish if it doesn’t have exemplary farming practices—was the blandest white fish, helped a bit from the pickled vegetables.
Zhong pork dumplings
Few, if any, of our restaurants in the Portland area could be called precious. But then walk into The Purple House in North Yarmouth and the Zeitgeist of this culinary Zen den dazzles discreetly. You ponder, Am I in a place where I’ll have a spot of coffee, bagel, pastry or a sit-down meal in this exquisite little spot with its communal harvest table and open kitchen with aromas that tantalize?
The Purple House and the wood for the oven that gives the bagels their distinctive crispiness
From early morning until 11:00 AM you’ll literally join a crowd who are already jamming this charming café for the Montreal style bagels that owner/chef Krista Kerns Desjarlais has hand-rolled and baked in the brick wood oven, which imparts a very particular patina to America’s favorite breakfast bread. (And, for now, don’t be surprised to see another star chef, Jason Williams, of The Well at Jordan’s Farm, giving a helping hand in the kitchen.)
Lemon meringue pie is one of the hallmarks of the American dessert repertoire. It’s not that difficult to make, though its three elements require care of preparation. For starters, use a rich, flaky pastry dough (see link for my flaky pastry dough recipe). This needs to be baked blind. Second step is the lemon custard filling. It’s thickened with cornstarch and flour so that when you add egg yolks to cook, the yolks when simmered to thicken won’t curdle because the flour and cornstarch prevent this. Then there’s the meringue.
