For someone who spends every blustery subzero February singing to the universe to bring spring forth already, I have not been adjusting well to spring this year, dear friends. I had thought that the arrival of longer days, bright yellow sunshine and ridiculously-saturated blue skies would have been just the thing to clear winter's cobwebs away, but instead all that sunshine has done is illuminate just what a poor job I've done keeping those cobwebs from forming in the first place. It's not that there is anything wrong, outside of the usual collection of irritants and whimsies of which life consists; it's just that my attitude about it all has been so terrible. To call it pessimism is to miss the mark slightly: not only is the glass half-empty, but if I had been a better person I would have remembered to buy more water so that the glass could always remain full. You may be thinking by now that Lloyd must be a towering fortress of strength and forbearance to live with such a mercurial and just-barely-sane woman. You would guess correctly.
This week's Chattering Nonsense From My Conscience, in addition to the usual hit parade of "how can you be given so many opportunities and advantages in life, only to waste them all so consistently?", consists of variations on the theme of "Let's see, this time two years ago you were getting ready to go to Arkansas...this time last year you were getting ready to go to Scotland...what are you doing with your life this year? Ah, yes, that would be NOTHING!" The kind and excellent writer Anne Lamott refers to this phenomenon as Radio Station KFKD, or K-Fucked, the single greatest impediment to writing, or any sort of creative work, known to man. Out of the left speaker runs a continuous stream of self-aggrandizement and laurel-resting; out of the right runs a hash of self-loathing and fear. It should be an easy thing to just turn the radio off, but my own personal KFKD is a high-frequency station, and I haven't figured out a way to shut it off that doesn't involve burning the radio station down and then salting the ground so that nothing more may grow upon it. Nevertheless I know I need to figure it out, because if there is one thing worse than morose torpor, it's realizing that you have given up the past week/six months/ten years of your life to morose torpor. So I am turning the radio off now, reminding myself that the laptop imbroglio means more than just another bill, one that will be paid with the money we earmarked for paying off the mattress: it means that in 10 days I will have a sweet new computer, one that won't shut down in a blaze of kernel stacking errors at the very moment that I'm trying to finish my nice new blog post. I am also reminding myself that all of the recent irritants and whimsies are just that, just irritants and whimsies, and not the huge financial catastrophes they would have been had they occurred when Lloyd and I were newlyweds, earning just above minimum wage. I remind myself that even the worst occurrences I can think of are leavened considerably by Lloyd's presence by my side. And lest I think that this year has nothing to compare with years past, I should remember that I have finally got my act together and am taking it on the road, specifically to the Estes Park Wool Market, where I will hobnob with the knitterati, including but not limited to Snow, Kristi and Margene. I am ever so slightly stoked about this turn of events, yes.
But first things first. A dear friend, and a well-meaning one, asks if maybe I am eating an imbalanced diet, and if maybe all this talk of pie and cake and white bread is to blame. Well, sort of. I am in an overfed and underexercised place right now, and I *am* eating an imbalanced diet, woefully short on deep green leafy and bright orange tubery vegetables, and much too long on almond M&M's and little bags of SmartFood popcorn from the vending machine at the office. What I'm not eating too much of is chocolate kuchen, or lemon pie, or ginger cake. Whenever I bake something I haven't baked in a while, or when I get the urge to try a new recipe, I have the bad habit of just baking it, without figuring out whether Lloyd and I can eat all of it. Often we can't, and trust me, there are fewer sadder sights than a moldy half-loaf of raisin bread or a bitter, ropy cake or a spoiled pie consigned to the rubbish. I have been trying to bake smarter, freezing anything we can't eat in a couple of days, sharing anything that can't be frozen, as I did when Julie came over to bake at our house. Sometimes, even with our best intentions, we still discover that half of the pie that was baked last weekend is still sitting in the fridge, proving that even with pie, out of sight can still be out of mind. So to answer my dear friend's question, yes, I need to make some changes, I need to remember that I love my veggies and I like going to the gym and watching the Type A boys beat the stuffing out of each other on the basketball court while I bore away at the escalator climber, but until a medical professional tells me that my heart or brain will explode if I eat one more critical-mass slice of pie, I will continue to make a place for it in my kitchen.
Speaking of pie, Luisa asked, so I am answering. It's time for pie.
Shaker Meyer Lemon Pie
(makes 1 9" pie, serves 8-15, depending on the delicacy of your eaters)
There are two tricky things about this pie: 1. You really do have to slice your lemons to paper-thinness. 1/16" is about as thick as you can safely get. This means that you have to slice them with the sharpest knife you own. If your knives are dull, sharpen them before you start this. Chef Karen Barker, whose recipe this is, recommends using a serrated bread knife, while Ken Haedrich, whose all-butter crust is my pie crust staple, says that if you have a mandoline, it is perfect for the job. (He's right, but I must append his advice: If you have a mandoline, and you mostly use it for slicing ginger to make pickled ginger, for the love of Mike Nelson, get your mandoline blade sharpened. Do not be like the Bakerina, who soldiered on for years with a dull mandoline blade like the sap she is.) Whatever you use, just make sure it's sharper than sharp, slice the ends off your lemons, cut them in half lengthwise, take a deep breath and go to town. The sense of accomplishment you will feel when you are done is like nothing else -- at least until you pull the final pie from the oven the next day, which brings me to 2. You have to remember to slice the lemons the day before you want to eat this pie, because they must macerate in sugar for 24 hours to take the bitter edge off the peel. I have done it in slightly less time (16 hours), but please believe me when I tell you that the longer the macerating time, the better. The good news is that once you've sliced your lemons and let them soak in the sugar, the rest of the pie really is as easy as pie, and the results will make you feel like the most accomplished baker in the world.
Pie crust dough
1 1/2 cups (6 oz.) all-purpose flour
2 cups (8 oz.) pastry flour (or use all all-purpose flour if you can't get pastry flour)
2 tbsp. granulated sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 egg yolks
10-12 tablespoons ice water, as much as you need to make a coherent dough
Make your pastry as you like (by hand, in a mixer or a food processor; I usually use a food processor, taking care not to overprocess, and kneading everything together by hand for less than a minute, just until it comes together). Let it rest for at least four hours, up to 24.
Meyer lemon filling
3 Meyer lemons
2 cups (14 oz.) granulated sugar
pinch salt
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
Egg wash made from one egg beaten and thinned with a little water
Using a sharp knife, cut the ends off the lemons; then cut them in half lengthwise. Slice each lemon half to paper thickness, discarding any seeds you might find. Halve the lemons again lengthwise so that you have wedge-shaped quarters, and place them into a medium-sized nonreactive mixing bowl. Be sure to include any juice they have yielded. Add the sugar, mix thoroughly, cover and let macerate for 24 hours. Stir them two or three times over the macerating period to help the sugar dissolve.
The next day, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4) and move a rack to the lowest level of the oven. Roll out your bottom crust and place it in the pie plate. Add the salt and eggs to the lemon and sugar, and stir to combine. Pour this mixture into your pie shell, top the pie with the top crust, apply the egg wash, cut some steam vents into the pie, place it on a baking sheet and bake for at least 45 minutes. (I gave mine an extra 7 minutes and it was perfect.) Let it cool completely before you slice into it.
Ginger-glazed chocolate cake
(yield depends on size of cake -- and again, the delicacy of appetites, or lack of delicacy thereof)
After all of that slicing and macerating, you deserve something easy, and this wonderful cake is about as easy as it gets. This is the creation of Jill Cornfield, the editor and publisher of Cooking on the Edge, a zine whose presence is sorely needed in this era of worry and distraction. (Not that I would ever put any pressure on Jill to resume publication, as she and her husband are more than a little busy these days -- and while I'm linking to Jeff's book, please, dear friends, consider giving it a look. It is not always easy reading -- in fact, it is often harrowing -- but it is always good, illuminating and suffused with love.) This is the recipe whose ingredient list starts with "1 chocolate cake (how you get it is your business)", which is the reason I love it so. If you love to bake cakes from scratch, you can bake your own chocolate cake. If you don't love to bake, you can use your favorite bakery or supermarket cake, and it will still come out just fine. The magic ingredient in this cake is ginger jam, or ginger preserve, a jellylike spread with chunks of candied ginger. Jill recommends that after you melt the jam, you puree it in a food processor to de-lumpify it; she's right, but again, if an extra step is not part of your plan, the cake will still be fine; the finish will just be a little less smooth. If you have a 9"x 13" sheet cake or larger, you may want to double the jam and glaze quantities. Or not. It's a user-friendly cake, and it tastes like happiness made manifest.
1/2 cup ginger jam
1 chocolate cake, your choice
4 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely.
2 oz. (4 tbsp.) unsalted butter
Melt the jam over low heat, stirring to keep it from burning. When it is entirely soft, puree it in a food processor or blender -- or don't. Spread the warm jam over the cake and let it sit until it is sticky to the touch, but not wet. In a double-boiler or bain-marie, melt the chocolate and butter together. Stir just enough to combine, but not so much that you put a lot of air bubbles into the glaze. Set the cake on a cooling rack over a sheet pan to catch drips. Pour the glaze over the top of the cake and spread it with a spatula until the glaze runs down the sides. Et voila.