Locally Grown Girl

sugar in my bowl

Recently, Schultzie at Starbucks gave a very nice speech, making sure that the world knew that the company he heads up is in favor of Washington's marriage equality law--the one that's coming up for a popular vote in November. It was a good speech, and a great corporate policy. And, duh, some conservatives I strongly disagree with promptly tried to get a boycott going (that is not a link to their site. That is a link to The Advocate, writing about the org that is trying to create a boycott). 

So, I do something I never do: I went to Starbucks and bought a drink. With Cap'n, who barely ever buys any sort of drink from any sort of espresso bar. The last time I bought from Starbucks, it was in an airport. And it was possibly 2006, in Atlanta--Cap'n and I still make fun of the barista saying "howa aybayout a nahca care-a-mell lah-tay?" I know I don't like their coffee--my dislike goes back to the 1989 and hasn't changed--so I ordered chai. Cap'n, who has a fondness for the milkshake sort of sugary treat now and again, ordered a mocha frappacino. We went to the Starbucks down the street, the one that was put in by Magic Johnson, back when my 'hood was one of the areas he was investing in as part of his Take Back The Hood campaign, or whatever it was called. There are nice murals inside, and it's always busy, and has a black-to-white customer ratio that is basically the opposite of the 2 nearby independently owned coffee places (Empire Espresso and Columbia City Bakery). I absolutely would enjoy sitting here. There is more floor space, more quiet, and more comfy chairs than in the indies.

The drinks were horrendous. I've never had chai so sweet in my life--it was sweeter than the butterbeer I made using cream soda and butterscotch syrup, for god's sake. I sipped a bit, as it was warm out, and this was cold, and I was thirsty, but almost all of it was thrown away/recycled. Later, I compared it to making a $10 political donation, so I wasn't as pissed off at the badness of the drink.

Cap'n made a point of telling the barista why we were there, and she gave us a big smile and some adorable awkward mumbly confessional bits, and said she was really happy about that speech, too, and that she'd had a number of customers come in and say the same. It felt like our own little It Gets Better project moment. According to what I read in political news, brown folks of various shades are statisically more likely to not be down with gay civil rights. All I can say is: at least one multi-race barista will be damn sure voting to approve marriage rights this fall. And I hope that her regulars at Starbucks vote with her. I will vote with her, but my coffee dollars have returned to Tutta Bella--who, by the way, is a huge supporter of basically every awesome Blue State cause (and official) that we have, including marriage rights. 

It's a different way to vote with my dollars than I normally do. I'm glad I did it once, and I think it's especially worth doing if you don't live in Seattle's urban core--just tell the barista why you're there. Something like "I've read about a boycott after Howard Schultz's speech on marriage rights, and I wanted to get in here and support that speech." Your verbal support might really mean something to someone who hears you say the words.  

yo pep, you up next

I am both delighted and skeptical and sad about this: Pepperidge Farm has licensed Tim Tams. Generally a good thing, right? No more special trip to Cost Plus or begging people who live in/visit Australia to pony up the goods.

Except I am not completely sure they're identical, and it's the end of April and according to the link above, they are only available October through March. I found my first package last night. The plain chocolate was sold out (s'fine, I like the caramel even if Cap'n prefers the plain), and there was no sign of shelf space for the dark chocolate. Which means I either ignore them until my birthday month when I will quite possibly be inundated with them as gifts, or run all over town searching out more packages. Since I'm used to only having them after, say, helping out some grateful Ozzies I shared a deadly armed robbery in the jungle with, driving to a few shops doesn't seem like too big a deal. (True story. Another true story: a single Tim Tam was once secreted in a small box, passed to me, and I was shushed upon opening it; it was Not Meant for Sharing with the Tim-Tam loving child nearby, which made it feel like a deadly weapon rather than a cookie. ) At any rate, the rareness contributes to the fun. They're not a regular household item, and possibly not worth the effort.

I'm not utterly convinced the chocolate coating is the same. It probably is, why would it be different, but it's hard to be certain without side-by-side comparison. Aside from that righteous mistrust of global food practices, the sadness is because this sort of brand licensing makes me feel like all the actually creative products are done. Pep Farms can buy successful cookie recipes, so why would they want to invent a new Brussels or Chessmen or those delicious Bordeaux? Or, bleh, even add new versions of those damned (and inescapable) Milanos. Stupid Pep Farm has already discontinued my childhood favorite (apple squares, like the turnovers but smaller and free of raisins). Pep, I don't think you're going to rock this party until the party ends, friend.

And if they're going to be all lazy and license other people's brilliant products, it'd be great to bring back some of the obscure short-lived flavors (chile chocolate!) that might do better here than down under. Like my brother once said: If you're going to be a tool, at least be a power tool.

Chocolate Chips

My preferred brand of chocolate chip recently reappeared on the store shelves; it disappeared, perhaps forever, I thought, early last fall. I tried a well-recommended hippie variety and I tried the unpretty store brand--and the store brand was fine. Rich, sharp chocolate flavor and almost-perfect in texture. And then, happily my favorite returned, in a slightly improved form. The brand is the fancy "Private Selections" house brand from Kroger/QFC/Fred Meyer.
The basic dark chocolate chip with a perfectly oozy-when-warm texture, and a soft-not-crunchy after several days. It's an impressive little chip. The improvement came in the form of its sweeter, homier cousin, milk chocolate chip. They happen to sell for substantially less than even stubstantially worse Nestle chips; I've never thought the taste of ghiradelli rated the cost; the hippie ones don't taste properly of complex dark chocolate, and I prefer chips, not chunks, which lets out simply buying my favorite chocolate bars and chunking them up. (Althought I may try that with the Claudio Corallo orange/dark chocolate variety. That combo in my butterscotchy cookie base could be spectactular.)
My new favorite is adding extra salt to the dough; it works nicely with the milk chocolate sweetness.

Customer Service

I like milk. Not only am I apparently among some sort of freakish lactose-supertolerant group of humans (which I am making up, although maybe it's true), I actually like the taste. My routine disregard for nutrition claims based on specific foods began with milk: In the early 90s, I was told repeatedly that people shouldn't drink milk, but I liked it so, basically, I decided the advice was wrong. Or wrong for me.

I switched to Organic Valley milk from whatever's-on-sale milk many years ago. And today I learned something from them, which is both interesting and a little gross. A few days ago, I picked up a new carton of their milk. I poured some on my bowl of cereal, took a bite, and actually raced over to spit into the sink. It was like intense goat cheese, but mixed together with Cap'n Crunch. Repulsive. The milk smelled fine, and was three weeks before the "use by" date, so I poured a tiny bit into a glass and took another sip. Still, almost goat-cheesy. I love goat cheese, so this is sort of weird way to describe a bad flavor. Grassy times 1,000? It didn't taste like "bad" milk...but it was bad.

But it was also a brand-new carton, and I couldn't bring myself to pour it away, so I thought I'd use it with chai and cover up the grassiness. Today, I wanted a milkshake, and thought that chocolate syrup would be enough to disguise the flavor. It wasn't. It was gross.

This spurred Cap'n to do something I wouldn't have bothered with: He called Organic Valley's customer service. The guy on the other end of the call asked a few questions, including whether it was pasteurized or ultrapasterized (it was the latter). Turns out that this weird grass-cheese flavor is what happens when ultrapasteurized milk begins to spoil. The sugars begin converting, but instead of growing bacteria and doing the curdle/stink thing, it just goes weird (this is my translation of what Cap'n reported when he got off the phone, so it doesn't offer much in the way of scientific precision). O.V. said they were glad to get the call, because now they know that "somewhere in the supply chain", the milk was allowed to warm up. So: kind of gross, but also interesting.

And now for an (also sort of gross) historical milk tidbit: I am convinced that any kid who went to a south-end Seattle school and drank milk right around 1980 has the same compulsion. If any of us drink out of a single-serving carton, we have to shake it before opening it. There was a big problem with serving spoiled milk at lunch, sometimes spoiled enough that it was fully curdled. The alternate, equally common problem was for it to be partially frozen, like a milk slushee. Shaking the carton before opening allowed you to figure out which it was going to be--although this only worked for the curdled problem if there were substantial solid chunks. I have met carton-shakers from several other schools at the same time, but all were in the Rainier Beach-Beacon Hill-CD area. The staff knew about it, but it still took at least a year--maybe two--to fix.

One, Two, Chai-Chai-Chai

(The title is in honor of my 10th grade gym teacher, a 4.5' tall woman with a 2' beehive, who taught me how to do the cha cha. I doubt Mizz Willkins would much like chai, unless it was iced, non-milked, non-spiced, and ten times sweeter than normal. Southerners will recognize the final result as being simply "tea".)

About a year ago, I started wondering whether I liked chai or whether I only thought I liked chai. Ordering it in cafes, it often seemed both bland and too sweet, but what I got in Indian restaurants was never bland (if occasionally sweeter than I like) and always pretty likable. I figured out that there was a specific brand--Morning Glory--that a bunch of cafes sold, which I liked. I still do like it.

But what I've found from them in shops is the pre-mixed boxed blend, and I wanted something a little more customizable, especially after reading the whole strange history of British tea companies giving tea away all over India, for several years, to create the now gigantic Indian tea market. The spices were added because spices are added to everything there--and the tea companies kept trying to lower the proportions because more spice/cup = less tea/cup. (There's also a whole thing related to caste and the type of tea cup used, which led to a few riots--it's sort of a Jim Crow story, but you should just read the book.)

There's one other reason--a minor one--that I didn't really want to suck down a couple of cups each day of the Morning Glory version: They load it up with five herbs meant to be medicinal. Because I happen to think that a great many herbs are, in fact, medicinal, I would prefer to only take them when I want them--not as an unnecessary "tonic". (The alternative, I think, is assuming that each cup of tea has unnoticeable amounts of each herb, in which case they still shouldn't be there.) It's not like I avoid the brand--I think the flavor's vastly better than the other boxed chais I've had. But until I'm convinced that I need a daily hit of astragalus to avoid diabetes, I'd prefer it not be in my afternoon tea.

I tried a few chai-spiced loose teas, and bleh--I didn't like any of them. Some whole spices were usually visible, but the taste was that of cinnamon and/or clove oil--Red Hots plus toothache remedy. Because the tea had already been mixed in with the spice, it meant that either the spices were under-steeped, or the tea was over-steeped. I was reluctantly considering going to the fussbudgety zenith of hand-blending spices and keeping a tub separate from the tea--but that would've led to a whole round of testing plus about 30 minutes of delayed gratification everything time I thought, "hmm, chai sounds good".

Then I wandered into Travelers looking for lentils and saw an interesting packet of chai, which included a bag of spice blend and a separate bag of black tea. The directions had each packet steeping for different times, and a note that the final blend could be stored in the fridge for a while. It was good--the right spice blend for me, and the steeping times seemed accurate--and duh, storing a non-sweetened, non-milky, pre-made blend in the fridge is just what I needed. A more recent trip turned up an improvement: The spice blend packet is available separately, without the tea packet, which means I can use my own preferred tea to mix with it.

My tea leaves are larger than the Travelers brand, so the steeping time needs a bit of fiddling, but in general, it's still yummy. I'm not sure why or how--let's say epiphany--but I determined that evaporated milk is part of the proper taste and texture for my ideal chai. Lastly, the tea and spice mix has to be strained through a double layer of cheesecloth, because I hate the grainy spice sludge that's fine enough to make it through my sieve. (I am not an oyster. My liquids should come pre-strained.)

Buttermilk Biscuity Biscuits

This morning, the brother came to join us for one of the world's great (and very unhealthy) breakfasts: biscuits and gravy. We have something of a sausage surplus, so I used up a pack from Wooly Pigs and made a couple dozen buttermilk biscuits. The sausage and gravy were great (hard to go wrong with that sausage), and I was even happier with the biscuits than normal (and normally, my biscuits make me pretty damn happy).

I'll post the recipe in a moment, but first I want to rave about a product. First, the packaging is all cutie pie; I do love a cartoon chef. More importantly, it does exactly what buttermilk is supposed to do: Provide richer flavor and color, a finer crumb and create a more tender overall biscuit. Check the label of a carton in the dairy section labeled "buttermilk" and it's gross--mostly skim milk and seaweed, and it's never added anything worth noting to any recipe of mine. I noticed years ago that powdered buttermilk was actually an improvement (John Thorne mentions actually buying buttermilk culture online in one of his books; he also says that the powder beats the liquid, which made me feel all proud), but the powder I had was pretty clumpy/cakey and hard to dissolve properly. The flavor was there, but it was subtle, and it didn't do much to texture or color. I finally used the last bit, and Cap'n grabbed the new brand at QFC (it was the only kind he saw). It's got noticeable tanginess, and it also dissolves quickly.

So now to the biscuits. I like a biscuit with edges that are crisp and a little crumbly, and then some nice flaky layers in the middle section. I want 'em so tall they tip over a bit, and I want 'em easy to make--these take me about 10 minutes, and they bake just long enough to throw together some gravy. If all you have is salted butter, scale back the salt amount to just a dash, or they're too salty to work with jam.

4 cups flour
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp white sugar
2 Tbsp baking powder
4 Tbsp buttermilk powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, chopped into 1" cubes
1 1/3 cups water
First, preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Using either your fingers, a pastry cutter, or two knives, mix the cold butter chunks into the dry ingredients, until there aren't any chunks left and the dry mix is more like fresh breadcrumbs or damp sand. Make a well in the middle, and pour all the water in at once. Mix together with either a large fork or a silicone spatula (it'll stick if you use a wooden spoon); beat it all together for about 30 seconds. Turn the dough out onto a large board or counter top, fold it and knead it about a half-dozen times, and pat it into a rectangle (thickness is the important dimension: you want it about 2" thick and fairly even all the way across). With a large, sharp knife, cut the rectangle of dough into squares about 2.5" across. Transfer to a baking sheet, leaving about an inch between each biscuit. I bake these for 11 minutes, but with such a hot oven, you'll probably want to set a timer for about 9 minutes and peek until they look brown enough on top. Serve lava-hot, with just about anything. More importantly, feed them to me. This makes about 16 biscuits, sized so two per person is about right for a breakfast.
A minor note on the baking sheet: I prefer baking these on an non-insulated sheet. The bottom seems to crisp up a bit more, but it's subtle. If insulated sheets are all you've got, those will work almost as well. And--I learned this from my mom--I always line my baking sheets with tinfoil, not parchment. It's not really necessary, but it does save me some washing, and I do reuse the foil if at all possible so it doesn't feel like some kind of eco-nightmare.

In The Pantry: Molina Real Vanilla

My taste in vanilla is greatly at odds with conventional (vanilla) wisdom. For me, standard vanilla extracts, regardless of name or brand, taste like one thing: booze. More expensive brands taste of better booze, but still--not what I am looking for in my chocolate chip cookies. Extracts are of such a high alcohol content that I don't understand how they get around the liquor laws of Washington state--we should have to go to the state-run package stores to buy them, and that's just how they taste.

I played around from brand to brand over the years, and then in about 1995 a friend went to Mexico and returned with a bottle of Mexican vanilla for me. It was love at first taste, but for many years I was confused about the reasons I loved it so much. It wasn't until 2006 that I finally figured out that what I actually like about most Mexican vanilla is simply that it's blended with more water and alcohol. Some people insist that this means it's of inferior quality, and maybe in some ways that's the case. But I also know that this sweet, very fragrant vanilla has a complex flavor, and that people often think my vanilla-heavy desserts (creme brulee, chocolate chip cookies) have a "secret ingredient" of some kind; that I've added something along with the vanilla to make it taste so good. Nope--I just took the booze out. Alcohol can go well with dessert, but it shouldn't have to go into everything you want a little vanilla.

I order mine in one-liter plastic bottles from MexicanVanillaExtract.com, a Utah-based company whose products are FDA approved (so no worries about coumarin, a carcinogenic additive). They have occasional discounts and shipping deals, so I usually load up with two bottles at a time--that way, I can share with other baking friends.

In The Pantry: Penzeys Korintje Cinnamon

About ten years ago, a woman I worked for gave me a Christmas gift of a whole bunch of Penzeys spices. Four of them were cinnamon, including the true Ceylon cinnamon and Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese cassias. Of the four, the Indian Korintje was my all-around favorite. It has a strong, balanced flavor that isn't as intense as cinnamon candy and isn't bland and washed out like most grocery store cinnamons. I use it in everything from snickerdoodles to pumpkin pie to coffee cake to barbecue rubs, and it works just perfectly in all of them.

If you're a cinnamon fiend, by all means experiment with the other varities; each has such a distinct flavor that I've used the four types in introductory cooking classes when I'm talking about spices. For one fragrance comparison, I threw in some inexpensive grocery store brand of cinnamon, too. My blindfolded student thought it was pine needles, and wondered why I'd mixed it in with the different cinnamons. Penzeys is about the only place I've ever found true Ceylon cinnamon, as well, which tastes nothing like the cassias normally sold as cinnamon on this continent.

In The Fridge: Organic Valley Whipping Cream

The first time I bought Organic Valley whipping cream was something of an accident: the store was sold out of all the other brands normally available. I wasn't happy that it was nearly five bucks for a pint, but I'm generally happy to pay a premium for organic products (it's a very literal take on putting my money where my mouth is). When I got it home and poured the cream into a bowl,  I was shocked--this was thick and pale yellow...in fact, it looked the way good cream is always described in old books. I was over 30, and I'd never seen cream like this.

And then I tasted it. It was like the first time I tasted real whipping cream after a mispent youth in the land of Cool Whip. If you can have an epiphany over whipped cream, then that's what happened. Since it has a light but distinct flavor of its own, I no longer sprinkle any sugar in it for topping pumpkin pie. This cream lifts shortcake to its deserved level of perfection with nothing more than the tiniest dab of vanilla. And happily, its price has actually come down a bit since that first purchase--and I see the brand in a number of large chain supermarkets, so it should be easy for everyone to find.

In The Pantry: Pernigotti Cocoa

I first tried Pernigotti cocoa based on a recommendation from Cook's Illustrated; at the time, I thought it was only available in the states via Williams Sonoma. They sold it in small tins for about ten bucks, and at the rate I use cocoa powder, this was a bit pricey. Since I discovered it at Chef Shop as a 2.2 lb bag for $20, I haven't ever gone back to another brand. Part of it is good quality cocoa, but a bigger part, I think, is that some amount of vanilla is added in the blend that brings out great flavors. I have a great brownie recipe, but the real reason people think my brownies (and chocolate cupcakes) are so great isn't the recipe--it's this cocoa.

Other than Williams Sonoma, which does occasionally have the small tins, I do not see Pernigotti in stores. Chef Shop is local for me, and I've never ordered through their website, but the service I've had in the store has always been smart and friendly.