remedial eating

for the noticing

It's been a long winter.

April's well underway, I know, but there's a bit of Winter still, stubborn, loitering.  It will pass, because it always does, and I think this is why we welcome Spring.  Here it comes, one big china shop bull, thrashing about with its reckless green and fierce growth.  Spring has no time for loiterers, busy as it is with its same old shock and awe.  It never fails.  That's something, right there. 

What always stands out to me, about Spring, beyond its insistence, is the contrast.  The contrast with what came before, to be sure, days warmer and longer, air lovelier.  But more, the contrast on the ground, and overhead.  

Chocolate earth and chartreuse shoots.  Extravagant blossoms glue-sticked to stark branches.  Grass stains on knees unsullied since Fall.  Purple Pasque flowers, all frill and fancy, sitting pretty in unmade beds.  The onslaught of blooms in cherries, plums, pears, that storm the skies, despite April's showers. Then storm the ground after, silk on cement.    

By Summer, it will all be history, blizzard, blizzard, everywhere.  Bugs, bees, flowers, leaves, crowding out every corner.  And this is good, too, the over-the-topness of it.  We all need a little excessive abundance.  And without Winter, would we even notice?  I think it was Shakespeare who argued after the tedium of every day, a holiday.  Or maybe it was Jimmy Neutron.  Anyway.  

Spring's for the noticing.  It's that slender moment wherein we can peer into both worlds, the full and the empty.  It's when we can see the contours, the outlines, what was, what is, what will be.  New against old.  Fresh against faded.  Bright stings of color, against sudden green.  I don't know about you, but I like a little bas relief in my days.  

And, it seems, in my salad bowl.

Salads have roared back into our lives in recent weeks, with the starting up of our Spring CSA.  I cannot remember feeling more starved for greens.  Which is good, since the first weeks look like this: greens, greens, also greens, and more greens.  

To be fair, there were also sun-dried tomatoes, and eggs, rich as butter, big as bread.  To be more fair, each green is distinct, and excellent: spinach, mizuna, mesculun, arugula, greens I don't even know the name of.  I thought I knew every green thing.  

I was wrong.  I am pleased. 

Naturally, I've been eating salads daily.  Being me, I'm always eating salads daily.  Difference being, between November and March, the salads are fractions of their former selves.  All winter, I buy the boxed stuff, and weary heads in yellow bands, craving always that chlorophyll, that crunch.  But by the time they reach me, they're not lettuce, not really, but Leaves that Look Like Lettuce. Sad shadowy things, weary, tepid.  

These lately greens?  So not tepid. 

These nearby greens are plump, glowy, vital, thrumming with the same sun that's sneaking up on our days.  They would palpitate, if they could.  They have stems that snap and leaves that resist and personality all over the map.    

They have flavor.  Imagine. 

I am in Happy Salad Land.

In no small part, because these greens brought back a salad I once made, and loved, almost.  For years, I made platters of beets and lentils, tossed in a zizzy vinaigrette.  Sometimes there were peppers, roasted and silky; often cheese; occasionally nuts.  It was good, really good, almost excellent.  But I never could quite banish the almost.  Until now.  

Greens.  The thing needed greens!  Great, lofty lashings of real-deal greens. [Doh.]  The original version, I realized, had thrilling flavors and excellent texture but—and I don't know how to be any more polite about this—it was stodgy.  Dense.  A bit frumpy.  Sturdy?  Sturdy.  Yes, sturdy.

I like sturdy in soups.  Not so much in salads.  I do, however, like thrilling and excellent in salads.   

So I re-worked this lost favorite, starting with the greens.  Into a bowl of plucky fresh something—arugula's ace, all peppery spunk, although any small spring leaves will shine—you add lentils, du Puy or beluga, the small tender sort that hold their shape.  Beets, roasted, cubed.  Ordinary oranges, also bite-sized. Toasted walnuts, as many as lentils.  Some sort of white cheese, firm-fresh and salty, cotija, feta, ricotta salata.  Not strictly necessary, but awfully nice.  

It's a riot.  The beets and oranges are differently sweet, one intense tender, the other, juicy bright.  Both play off the confetti of lentils, earthy, a bit flinty, savory, so good.  The walnuts, an unsung hero in my humble, bring their fantastic buttery crunch.  The small snowfall of cheese adds the odd saline wink.  And those plucky greens, they fix everything.  

They bring bounce and loft and breathing room to everything else in the bowl. The heavy-hitters, those beets, those oranges, get to stretch their legs a little. The lentils, which once slumped into a stolid heap, now flit about, discrete, lovely, tucking themselves into crannies and corners.  And the leaves themselves are no neutral backdrop, no styrofoam filler to the main event, but vivid little waifs, peppery or sweet or bitter or mild, depending.  Anything but bland.  A good slosh of vinaigrette, heavy on the vinegar, and the sweet beets are tempered, the lentils invigorated, the lettuces brought fully into the fold.  

It's a treat.

It's a cusp-ish affair, a last fling with storage roots and winter citrus, a first dance with Spring's fresh young things.  Which, calendar notwithstanding, is about where I stand right now.  I can't help notice it's a pretty fine place. 

 

Spring Greens with Beets, Lentils, Oranges + Walnuts
Choose the green French lentilles du puy, or the black Beluga lentils, here.  Both cook to a firm, tender texture, and hold together in the simmer and salad.  I keep roasted beets and cooked lentils on hand, often.  Having them cooked and ready makes me feel wealthy beyond measure. Each takes two minutes of hands-on time to prepare, and holds beautifully in the refrigerator, all week. With a stash of both, this is a 10-minute salad.  See end of recipe, for instructions on toasting walnuts, roasting beets, cooking lentils.  You'll need around 1/2 cup dry lentils for this recipe, though I always cook extra, 1-1 1/2 cups dry, at a go.  As with any salad, quantities are flexible.

Also?  Both beets and lentils drink up dressing like champs, and I like this salad best when I douse both, warm, in the vinaigrette.  That said, I usually keep my beets and lentils plain, for my anti-vinaigrette children.  Whatever suits.

for the salad:
8 cups arugula, mesculun, etc.
2 large roasted beets (or 4 small)*
2 large oranges
1 cup cooked lentils du puy (French green) or black beluga* 
1 cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped*
1/2 cup feta, cotija, or ricotta salata, crumbled

for the dressing:
3-4 tablespoons sherry, red wine, or other mild vinegar
generous 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Make dressing: In a jar with a lid, add sherry, salt and syrup, and swirl several times to dissolve salt.  Add olive oil, screw top on tightly, and shake shake shake to emulsify.  Set aside.  

Make salad:  Peel roasted beets by rubbing their skins loosely, with clean fingers or a paper towel.  Skins will slip right off.  Cut beets into bite-sized cubes.  Set in the bottom of a large salad bowl.  Add the cooked lentils to the beets, and pour a few tablespoons of dressing over both.  Toss gently, and set aside.  Peel oranges, then chop into bite-size bits, around 1".  Add to bowl. Add chopped toasted walnuts, crumbled cheese, and leaves to bowl.  Drizzle several tablespoons of dressing over all, and with clean hands, toss gently and thoroughly.  Taste a few leaves, and adjust dressing volumes and seasoning, to suit.  You may have dressing left over.

Eat immediately, in the company of spring.

To roast beets:  Trim leaves, if attached, leaving an inch of stalk, and set aside for soups or sautées.  Wash, and place in a small baking dish (Pyrex pie plates work beautifully) with a half-inch of water, and cover tightly with foil.  Bake beets in the oven, with whatever else is baking, anywhere from 275º to 450º, until a knife glides through the biggest beet with ease.  This may take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on beet size and oven temperature.  Test after 45 minutes, and if you meet any resistance, return to the oven again, adding more water if needed and sealing foil tightly.  Most of my beets take around an hour at 400º.  When done, cool slightly, top and tail, then roll each beet gently in a clean paper towel: the skin will slide right off.  Use immediately, or store in the refrigerator for later use.  Roasted beets keep beautifully for 5-7 days.

To cook lentils:  In a medium saucepan, bring 4 cups water plus 1 teaspoon salt to a boil.  Add lentils (1/2 cup for this recipe, up to 1 1/2 cups, if making for later), turn heat down to a simmer, and cook lentils 25-30 minutes. Sample a few at 25 minutes for doneness, and pull from heat when your entire sample is wonderfully tender, and still intact.  Drain.   

To toast walnuts:  preheat oven to 350°.  Scatter walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet, and toast 10-12 minutes, until deeply fragrant and slightly golden in color.  Do set a timer.  Nuts burn in a heartbeat.  

maybe you, too

I've needed many a reminder of this, this week.

 

 

And this.

 

 

Also, this.

 

 

All of the above.

 

 

Especially today.  Maybe you, too.

 

And still, I've needed to eat.  I am rarely without motivation to cook, more rarely still, without appetite.  It's been a rare week.  These are the weeks when I need food that reminds me to eat, what to eat, why to eat.  Food that comes together in fifteen, including breaks to wipe crumbs and talk about odes and discuss nuclear power and spell S-U-S-P-I-C-I-O-U-S.  Food that demands only knife and flame, plus a few pantry stand-bys, and zero effort.  Fast, easy, fantastically nourishing food.  Bonus points for mindless.  Preferably dazzling. 

I don't think that's too much to ask.

Neither, apparently, does Fuschia Dunlop.  This dish is a serious riff off one in Dunlop's exquisite Every Grain of Rice.  My copy is bristling with post-it notes marking dishes I intend to get to, soon.  Right after I get past this.  

What began in her book as a crisp, cold bar snack, evolved in my kitchen into a sweet, fiery stir-fry.  Common to both are small cubes of smoked tofu, diced celery, and roasted peanuts.  These three are stir-fried, fast and hot, in a splash of peanut oil already acquainted with dried chilis.  When the celery's gone see-through but still has bite, and the tofu's gained a bit of color at the edges, and the peanuts have darkened a shade or two, a flick of sweet chili sauce goes in.  It stays on the stove just a minute or two more, but that final stretch is a doozy.  The vivid red sauce melts on impact and turns into a glaze, a sweet-hot veneer.  The key players absorb a wisp of its fire.  The sugars caramelize at the edges.  Ten minutes have passed.  Hello, hunger.

It's a fascinating dish, too easy to be true, too addictive not to repeat.  A real part of its charm is size, each player—celery, tofu, peanut—equal in stature. The appeal of this is irrational, and huge.

The combination of ingredients is inspired, a trio I never would've thought to assemble, and which I now can't imagine apart. The celery, sweet, grassy, retains its snap, but goes a little silky at the edges.  The tofu, already pressed and smoked, brings a marvelous sultry chew.  And those peanuts, plain old peanuts, earthy roasty crunchy peanuts, feel like they finally get their due.  

One batch feeds me well for two lunches.  (Unlike most stir-fries, it's a reasonable re-heat).  It's plenty solo, and wonderful with brown rice, and absolutely smashing with slow stir-fried peppers, their sweet silky selves a grand foil for the crunch and chew of their bowl-mate.  

If you start the peppers first, then get going on the tofu, you'll have everything ready at once, twenty minutes, start to feast.   I know this, because I've done this, a dozen times in half as many weeks.  If I'm to get to the other post-its, I'll have to be stern.  But seeing as I smuggled home more smoked tofu this week, it may be a slow, soft-pedalled stern.  Because even when I've no motivation and less appetite, I tend to fall hard for quick, thrilling riots.  Maybe you, too?  

A Sweet Fiery Stir-Fry of Smoked Tofu, Celery + Peanuts
adapted from Fuschia Dunlop, Every Grain of Rice
Yield: 2 servings, with vegetables and rice 

Pressed tofu is avaialable at large supermarkets, natural food stores, and Asian markets.  I buy this smoked tofu at Whole Foods.  Five-spice is a good alternative, if you like it's flavor (I'm not partial).  Ordinary white tofu is too tender to work, here.  Heat varies by brand of sweet chili sauce.  I have both this and this in my fridge door at the moment, and find one good glug (2-ish) teaspoons just right.  Adjust based on your brand and taste buds.  

1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 dried thai chilis
4 oz. smoked tofu
3 large-ish stalks celery
1 ounce (scant 1/4 cup) roasted, salted peanuts
1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons sweet chili sauce, plus more to taste 

Cut tofu into 1/2" dice.  Slice celery stalks lengthwise, into three long batons, then slice cross-wise, into small dice to match the tofu.  Squeeze peanuts lightly in your hand, to separate into halves.  Set aside.

Heat a wok or medium heavy skillet over high heat, until smoking, 30 seconds. Add the oil, and heat until wisps of smoke appear, 30 seconds.  Add dried chilis and celery, and stir-fry 1 minute.  Add tofu, and stir-fry 2 more minutes.  Add peanuts, salt, and sugar, and stir-fry another 3-5 minutes, until celery is transparent, tofu caramelized, and peanuts a shade darker.  Add sweet chili sauce, and stir-fry 1-2 minutes, until it has melted, glazed everything, and begun to caramelize.  Check for seasonings, add salt, sugar, and/or more chili sauce to taste, and enjoy.

 

a lotta miles

We set out Friday morning, well before dawn, with snow and Tim Horton's and that special resolve one saves for singular days such as these.  We arrived Friday evening, just past eleven, weary, creaky, really happy.  Really really happy.  Double double happy.

800 miles.

17 hours.

1 day.

Québec to Ohio.  We did it.  (Again.)

Sky over Toronto, ON; Centre des Sciences Montréal

When we crossed over mid-morning at Ogdensburg, New York, the border agent asked all the usuals.  Who?, Why?, How long?, Where to and from?  He studied us hard when we answered those last two.  Clarified our beginning and end points.  "That's a lotta miles," he finally said.

Yup.  

Montréal, QC; Backyard, OH

We are still a bit yawny, from Friday's travel and Saturday's scrub-fest.  Also, my computer hard drive is about to commit hari-kari.  We'll keep it brief today.

But I wanted to mention a few quick things, before school resumes and life moves on.  Like, when we returned, the dirt was defrosted, the daffodils blooming, and there were worms!  Also, before leaving town for a week, it's always wise to empty the kitchen trash.  Even if you've just cleaned the fridge. Especially if you've just cleaned the fridge.  (Entirely unrelated, those worms, that trash.  The worms were outside.  In the garden.  Scout's honor.)

Centre des Sciences Montréal; Backyard, OH 

Also, books on CD in the car.  Over the years, we've stopped dozens mid-listen, because pleasing audiences aged 5, 8, and 12 is tricky.  Too silly, too scary, too too, whatever.  One out of three usually protests.  Not so with this, and this, and this.  Not only did each kid hang on every chapter, but this mom snuck listens when driving solo.  Unanimous thumbs up to all three, if you're wanting for such entertainments.  (Have you any favorite all-ages audio books?  I'd love to hear.  Let's trade titles in the comments.)

Also, road food.  Trail mix, my way.  Salted almonds, candied ginger, sour cherries.  So good.  

Centre des Sciences Montréal; Backyard, OH

I am not ordinarily an eater of GORP, or for that matter, of any trail mix.  For one thing, it's too uneven.  There's the rare Good Stuff, the abundant Bad Bits, the Semi-Okay In-Between Filler.  For another, there's just way too much strife. The jockeying for favorites.  The pile-up of stale peanuts.  The silent soap opera of who snitched what, when.  The inevitable M & M scandal, old as the hills, big as Watergate.

But this, this is another animal, Trail Mix 2.0.  For starters, there are no bad bits, nor good ones; splendid or bust seemed a good standard.  The proportions—so often severely lop-sided, so essential to great munching—are spot-on, to ensure balance in each bite, and to keep elbow jabs to a minimum.  Also, it's a nice bit of fuel, part protein, part fruit, part kick-start of sugar.  

Montréal, from atop Mont Royal; Sustenance, for anywhere

Fuel.  As if.  Let's talk texture, spunk, flavor, sparkle.  The cherries are dried sour Montmerencies, sweet intensely striped with tart, with a winey dark backbone that doesn't whisper.  The ginger is small, but spiky with heat, fierce by its lonesome, excellent company.  The almonds are salted, which changes the whole game, from bland sweet drumbeat, to fairly mesmerizing.  

But wait.  It gets better.  Because when everything meets in the mixing bowl, the tacky dried cherries become little lint brushes.  They pick up all the almonds' extra salt, and all the ginger's superfluous sugar, and even begin to look a little linty, only with crystals instead of coat dandruff.  Crystals that look identical to the eye, but run across the tongue in two opposite directions. Thrilling, that.  You wind up with these rich ambassadorial bites of chew mediating between the salty crunch of almond, the prickle of ginger, the mellow bittersweet of chocolate.  

Did I mention the chocolate?  Sometimes chocolate sneaks in.  I don't think it's necessary.  I understand those who do.  It's a fine fit.  If it's your thing, add it; you won't regret it.  Either way, it's heady stuff.  

And if you've got gardens to weed, or garages to unearth, or deadlines to meet, or any of a hundred journeys that involve a lotta real or metaphysical miles, well.  I can't guarantee results, of course.  But in my experience, a good mix can help you get there.  Even when there is awfully far off.       

Molly's Trail Mix (Salted Almonds, Candied Ginger + Sour Cherries)
inspired by a long-ago Trader Joe's mix
Yield: 2 1/4- 2 1/2 pounds 

Diced crystallized ginger can be tricky to find; I use 4 oz. bags from Penzey's. Sliced crystallized ginger, diced at home, doesn't make a good substitute, as the exposed edges are too sticky.  I'm devoted to Trader Joe's dried Montmerency cherries, which I love for their tart flavor and true texture.  As to ginger quantities, choose your heat level.  I like each bite to include one almond, one cherry, and two nubs of ginger, and so use the full 8 ounces.  But I love me my ginger.  Many will find 4 ounces plenty.  

16 ounces salted, roasted almonds
8 ounces tart, Montmerency dried cherries
4-8 ounces diced crystallized ginger
8 ounces chocolate chips (optional)

Pour almonds, ginger, cherries, and chocolate chips (if using) into a large bowl. Toss gently to combine.  Stored airtight, trail mix keeps forever, though crunch is best when eaten within 2 months.  

a small burst of sun

Hey!  It's eighty-two and sunny here!  

You?  There?

 

 

Excellent.  Glad we got that taken care of.  That's all on the topic of weather, today.  We already beat that horse, this month, and to do so again would be tedious and redundant.  

And who wants tedious and redundant and snow when we could talk lemon cake?  

 

 

Lemon cake, after all, is a proven distractor, and potentially highly tasty, to boot.  Particularly if it's an Alpha and Omega Lemon Cake.  I don't say this as a challenge, or to raise hackles, because I don't have a competitive bone in my body.  If I did, I might balk at the fact that although Ohio had snow one day into Spring, Seattle got snow two days in.  And then, five and six days after Spring sprung, when we got more?  I might say ha HA! and so there and pffbbbtt!   

But I wouldn't.  Because I'm not.  Competitive, that is.  I am merely a pilgrim, traveling the long road in search of the ultimate lemon cake.  

 

 

But wait.  Didn't we already find it?  That gold and white number, thick with curd and petticoats of cream?   

Why yes, yes we did.  That was, and is, our acme Lemon Layer Cake.  But it has recently come to my attention that cake and layer cake are two different species, entirely.  The latter, the layer, is a special occasion confection, towering, indulgent, the high heels of crumbs.  It's what you whip out for full transits around the planet, parties of people, polished shoes and posh frocks. Or at least lots and lots of moustaches.  

 

 

Cake, on the other hand, unmodified cake, unadorned-by-adjectives-or-buttercream cake, is—get this—nothing special.  Ordinary eating.  Everyday fare.  Wedge-with-coffee, sliver-with-milk, dessert-on-any-old-Tuesday material.   

Blimey.  The memos I miss.

 

 

It's not like no one tried to tell me.  Everyday cakes have been everywhere, for a while now.  But for me, cakes and kids went hand in hand, my baking of one the direct result of my baking of the other.  And when your first cakes are birthday cakes, to celebrate first years, first footsteps, first words, all those age-appropriate f-words, well, frosting and frippery just can't be helped.

I'm making up for lost time.  Forgive me.  I did bring you cake.  And if your outdoors look anything like ours, if you're peering desperately out windows, in search of sun... 

 

 

Oops.  Off-script.  Alpha and Omega Lemon Cake.  I've been searching for such a cake for years (decades?), diligently, unflaggingly, unsuccessfully.  Shackelton came to mind more than once, as I tried and failed, tried and failed to escape yet another bleak outcome.  Dry cakes. Tough cakes.  Pallid, tepid, mild, faint cakes.  Sodden cakes.  Gooey cakes.  All of the above cakes.  

Lemon cake should be none of the above.  Despair fairly well summed up my state of mind.   

 

 

Okay, alright, I didn't survive on seal meat for a year.  And no, I didn't bake by blubber-light.  And, strictly speaking, I lost only sleep, never men, on my quest. Still.   

I did endure many a mediocre lemon cake, which was trying, and which, it has always seemed to me, should not only be illegal but also, an oxymoron.  How, I ask you, can lemon cake stand to be in the same sentence as mediocre?  Lemon cake, by definition, should be fraught with tension, heady and sharp and fantastically vivid.  As tart as tart can possibly be, threatening (but not making good) on true sour.  And I don't mean a thin tart veneer, along the top.  And I don't mean a girdle of pucker around the edge.  Because we both know how those stories end, with fought-after edges nibbled carefully away, while the vast interior bland wastelands are left for the crows, sad as snow-bound daffodils.  

 

 

Thing is, lemon's a tough customer, especially when baked into a cake.  Like chocolate, its flavor tends to fade when bolstered by flour and blasted with heat.  Layer cake solves the problem nicely, by smuggling in those pillows of curd.  But what for a cake with no contraband?  

Here's what: make Matt Lewis' lemon bundt cake.  Do not pass go.  Let me know what you think.  I think it's the cat's pajamas.  Also, I've officially ended my search.

 

 

Lewis is co-founder of the famed Red Hook bakery, Baked, and, it seems, a lemon whisperer.  Lewis works every angle in the lemon book to amplify the fruit's bling and zing.  Then, he writes a few new chapters.  The zest in the batter—ten(!) lemons' worth—is rubbed into the sugar, before either are beaten in.  The sugar becomes midwife to the lemon, delivering its essential oils throughout the batter.  Clever.  Also, he calls for two tablespoons of pure lemon extract.  I didn't know pure lemon extract existed, in December.  I'm now halfway through my second bottle.

There are other funny bits to the batter, funny enough they first gave me pause.  Confectioner's sugar?  Eggs and yolks?  Unbleached and cake flour? Butter and oil and heavy cream?  Really?    

 

 

Really.  As really as the wonky technique, which defies all science and logic. Where's the all-important creaming of butter and sugar?  The individual addition of eggs, for lift?  What's with this dump and stir?  Whence its loft? How will the darn thing ever rise?  Is he What is he thinking? 

Except apparently I'm illiterate in the ways of lemon cake, at least of the Be All, End All variety.  Because this cake bakes up so high that it buckles, with a crumb gold and fine as any I've eaten.  And yet—and this is deeply important—strong enough to withstand a downpour. 

 

 

Like all the best lemon cakes, this one involves a syrup of lemon juice, cut with sugar.  This syrup is brushed over the bundt's just-baked curves, which instantly dials the volume to high.

Well, originally, to medium.  

I don't really do medium.  

So I took, early on, to doubling the syrup, and doubling the drizzle, and inundating the cake.  I perforate the thing like a soaker hose—a #2 knitting needle is ideal, though a thin skewer makes a fine substitute—first on the still-hot exposed underside, later over the peaks and valleys.  I douse each surface as it becomes available, applying layer after layer (after layer) of syrup.  The pinholes work like volcanic conduits, in reverse, funneling the goods right down to the core.  That's the theory, anyway.  I've done this before with many a cake, and usually, the results are sad.  Soggy.  Sodden.  Sometimes dreadful. Not this time.  The cake held.  

 

 

The cake held, and drank every double drop, saturating each cranny with bright citric kick.   The edges are sharpest; the center, still pointed; the whole, like a lemon, masquerading as cake.  The glaze (there's glaze) is unnecessary, and excellent.  The texture, somehow, still textbook tender.  It works.  

It's not much to look at, especially sliced, where even its curves end up looking like squat.  It pinch-hits for birthdays, if you add candles, and undemanding guests of honor inclined toward supernatural childcare feats.  But bundts are, at heart, everyday things, for slivering and whittling over a week.  And this bundt, this smug humble bomb of a bundt, might just be a week's finest moment.  If nothing else, it guarantees a small burst of sun, no matter what the weather week brings.

 

Holy Grail Lemon Cake
adapted from Matt Lewis, via Food and Wine, December 2012  
equipment: 10" bundt pan 

My only adaptations to Lewis' genius formula were to use salted butter, double the lemon syrup, and tweak the glaze slightly, for added lemon and less drip. The initial blitzing of sugar and zest releases the lemon's essential oils into the sugar, and eliminates all trace of peel.  I like the effect of both, and find a quick rinse cleans the bowl, but feel free to skip, if rushed.  (Lewis' original called for rubbing the two together with fingers, a fine alternative.)  I use this lemon extract.  Artificial extract is completely different, and not a good substitute.  If you wish to leave out the rum, which adds a nice edge, simply substitute additional lemon juice, in both cake and syrup.  

Don't let the length of this recipe fool you.  It comes together quickly, and the extra elements (syrup, glaze) can be made in minutes while the cake's baking.  

Cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup lightly packed, finely grated lemon zest (from 10 organic lemons)
1/2 cup canola oil
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
2 sticks salted butter, melted and cooled
3 tablespoons dark rum
2 tablespoons pure lemon extract
3/4 cup heavy cream

Lemon Syrup
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (from zested lemons)
2 tablespoons dark rum

Glaze
1 - 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (from zested lemons)
1-2 teaspoons pure lemon extract
1 teaspoon pure almond extract 

Make the cake:   
Preheat oven to 350°.  Generously coat the interior of a 10-inch bundt pan with butter (or baking spray), and flour, tapping to release excess.  Place oven rack in middle position.

In a medium bowl, whisk together all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking powder and salt.  Place confectioners' sugar and lemon zest in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse 15-10 times, to pulverize zest and incorporate its oils into the sugar.  In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add sugar, lemon zest, canola oil and cooled, melted butter, and mix at medium speed until well combined, 1 minute.  Beat in whole eggs, egg yolks, rum, and lemon extract, until just incorporated, 1 minute.  Reduce speed to low and beat, in 3 alternating batches of dry and wet, the flour mixture and the heavy cream, mixing until just barely incorporated.  Scrape down sides, and finish any final mixing by hand.  

Scrape batter into prepared bundt pan, and smooth surface slightly.  Bake on the middle rack for about 1 hour, checking at 50 minutes.  Cake is finished when a toothpick inserted at the deepest point emerges with a clean, damp crumb.  Other clues: cake will begin to pull away from sides, will have risen dramatically and buckled, and the cracked center will no longer be shiny.  Also, you will nearly faint from the scent.  Remove cake from oven and let cool on a rack for a few minutes, while you make the syrup...   

Make the Lemon Syrup:
In a small saucepan, combine sugar, lemon juice and rum and bring just to a low boil.  Turn heat down slightly to maintain a strong simmer, and stir until sugar dissolves, 3-4 minutes.  Let cool slightly.  

Douse the Cake:  
10 minutes after the cake emerges from the oven, while still in the pan, poke cake all over the exposed surface, deep enough to nearly but not quite hit the bottom.  A clean #2 knitting needles works beautifully, as does a long, thin wooden skewer.  50 pokes is none too few.  Slowly, with a tablespoon or pastry brush, drizzle syrup over the exposed surface, as well as down the sides of the tin, waiting for the syrup to soak in before adding more. Repeat a few times, leaving a few minutes between applications, until cake becomes less thirsty, and slows its soaking speed.  You will use 1/2 - 2/3 of the syrup in this fashion. Wait 15 minutes, then carefully invert cake onto a cooling rack.  With your needle or skewer, perforate the cake from the newly exposed surface, top and sides.  Slowly, in small patient batches, brush remaining glaze over top and sides of cake.  Set aside to dry and cool completely, about 2 hours.

Make and Apply Glaze:
In a medium bowl, whisk together 1 cup of the powdered sugar, lemon juice, almond extract, and 1 teaspoon of the lemon extract, until thoroughly combined and lump-free.  Taste, and add additional lemon extract, if you wish.  Texture should be very thick, like corn syrup or pancake batter.  A too-thin glaze will slide right off the cake.  Add some or all of of the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, as needed, and whisk to combine.  Slowly and evenly, pour glaze over the completely cooled cake. There may be extra; save to serve on the side.  Let glaze set, 15-20 minutes, then slice into wedges and serve.

Cake keeps beautifully, covered or well-wrapped, for 4-5 days.  Good luck with that.    

quite a lot

I do believe apologies are in order.

March: Mea culpa.  How wrong I was.

I can't imagine what I was thinking, equivocating on about your fine self.  

Waffle, schmoffle.  You're not ambivalent in the least.  You totally have a purpose, and it is called pause.  Respite, re-calibration, ramping up.  Your job is to make sure we're sick and tired of winter, and ready and waiting for spring. Roger, that.

You're St. Patrick's Day.  Jeepers creepers.  I love any month that calls for slumps of spoon-tender corned beef, and golden roast parsnips, and soda bread so good, we ought to make it monthly.  

You're Pi Day!  Excuse to play fractions, and talk equivalents, and feast on pizza and pie, the same night.  And, on an existential note, to debate whether a properly proportioned Pac-Man is two-thirds or three-quarters of one whole.

You're old toys, re-discovered, as days remain cold, and kids dig ever deeper into closets.  Who couldn't use a second Christmas?  Your weather makes it so.

You're old games which play surprisingly like new.  Same old Uno.  Brand new kids.  Older, wiser, now able to hold cards!  Uno, open-hand, is an important first step, but somehow, it just isn't the same.  

You are new-to-us thrifted games, good games, the sort that amuse and challenge and fit between snack and homework.  My favorite.

You are unexpected gifts, logic puzzles, generously given by kind friends. (Thank you, friend.)  So small, it fits in the palm of small hands.  So addictive, it might keep one up until eleven.  Oneself, and one unnamed twelve year old. School or no school, the thing must be solved.  (It's not.  Yet.  A few more late nights.)    

And even if March is raw throats and runny noses, sick days and sleepless nights and lots of missed school, it seems like last gasps, like end parens, on a season that surely is near done.  (Surely?)  

Besides, it opened up a Monday to devour a sweet book, start to finish, between tissues and temperature-taking and tea. 

You are rain, rain, rain!  I adore rain, rain, rain.  After Winter's deep freeze, its kitty-paw snow, I'd all but forgotten that plip-plop, plip-plop.  It actually woke me up one night.  Then hypnotized me right back to sleep.

Except when you send the odd flurry of snow.  The day after Winter is over, say.  It didn't stick around, but it did inspire in my eldest an a cappella Twelve Days of Christmas revision: On the second day of Spring, it was twenty-two degrees...  

(I think, March, it's fair to say you also have a sense of humor.)

You are crunchy brown earth, too thuggish to dig, too ugly to not at least feel the itch.  I'm not one to order seeds after Christmas, to poke with a spade, eager to begin.  But I recognize that this March moment's important, this awareness that someday soon, something must be done.  

You are pre-daffodils I dare to cut, when the buds are barely more bulge than stem.  I knew I was pushing it.  I expected nothing.  It bloomed anyway.  Roger that. 

And then, there's the light, the last faded light, the final throes of Winter's soft hum.  Raging bright sun is returning with a vengeance, and I'm dusting off my soon-requisite squint.  And doubling down, drinking my fill of the intermittent, exquisite overcast.  The flannel skies, the tip-toe mornings, the pale monochrome afternoons.  Hush light.

In the past week, between clear and glare, we've been gifted a few pigeon-belly grey days.  Oyster shell days.  Damp newspaper days.  Old sock, fresh concrete, dirty mop water days.  Days with light so gauzy and fair that even laundry baskets look appealing.  Full, unfolded laundry baskets.  Did I mention I love this light?    

So while I might not call March my most favorite month, it seems I rather like it, food trenches and all.

For pie or no pie, good games or bad, we are still weeks away from spunky fresh food.  This, I cannot fix.  We indulge, right now, in mangoes and oranges, the odd far-flung berry to keep the kids from scurvy.  We pad our menus with hardy roots and leaves that aren't actually March fare, not here anyway, but which at least look and taste the part.  We dig deep into grains, nuts, seeds, and beans.  We rub elbows with roots and crucifers, until everyone involved needs corduroy patches.  

Indeed, without March through mid-April, I'm not sure I'd love roots and crucifers like I do.  It's during this last, long peninsula of winter that I double down, take stock, get serious.  When I pause long enough to pay heed to the turnips, appreciate the cabbage, give thanks for the carrot.

Ah, the old carrot.  The ubiquitous carrot.  Year-round citizen of our fridge, daily guest at our table.  It probably deserves its own place setting, by now, so regularly do we reach for its crunch.  Useful, dependable, versatile carrot.  So common the carrot, it can sometimes seem as familiar as tube socks you buy by the twelve-pack.  As dull, also.  

Or not.

What follows is a way with carrots that is many things, none of them dull.  It is the Ginger and Carrot Stir-Fry, from Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford's Beyond the Great Wall.  And if you wonder why I led off with ginger, read on: it is no typo.  

This is a simple, straightforward stir-fry, a classic in most respects.  Two firm veg, cut slender and fine, for lightning-fast cooking and bold spare flavor. Blistering heat, a splash of oil, garlic and chili, for depth and smoke.  A modicum of pork, mere ounces, really, so little the authors don't include it in the title.  

Which brings us back to that intriguing title.  

Which begins, significantly, with ginger.  

Which is where things get interesting.   

One cup of fresh ginger, the ingredient list reads.  One-third of a pound.  One Pac-Man mouth's worth.  I probably don't need to tell you that that is quite a lot of ginger.  I might, however, need to explain why this lot is an excellent idea.  

I don't know about you, but I tend to think of ginger as an aromatic.  I've no qualms about using several slices in tea, or heaped tablespoons in greens, or ounces in cakes.  But it wasn't until a few years back, when I first took this recipe out for a spin, that I came to see ginger as vegetable, an ingredient in its own right.  I was, as they say, dubious.  Needlessly.  It is so, so right.

Slivered and stir-fried, something happens to ginger, something unexpected, something wonderful.  The heat seems to seal in the heat, the wok's sear mellowing the root's burn.  What remains is an invigorating warmth, a thread of zing, a welcoming glow.  

Against the simple sweet of the carrot, whose texture and shape it echoes like irony, the ginger dazzles, thrills, delights.  High drama as dinner.  Root and alter-root.  And as happy a wake-up call for carrots as any early Spring eater could ask for. 

Which brings me, March, to my second mea culpa: I called you the trenches. When will I learn?  

With meals like these, there's quite a lot to like about eating in the fine month of March.  

Ginger + Carrot Stir-Fry, with Pork
adapted from Beyond the Great Wall, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

Look for fresh ginger that is firm and unblemished; wrinkly, shriveled roots will be fibrous.  Asian groceries stock excellent, inexpensive ginger, though most supermarkets carry it, also.  To matchstick the peeled carrots and ginger, I cut deep diagonal 1/16" slices, stack the slices 3-4 deep, then cut the slices into 1/16" slivers.  Presto: matchsticks!  As with any stir-fry, have all ingredients chopped and ready. The cooking itself takes under 10 minutes.  The original calls for a dozen crushed Sichuan peppercorns.  I typically use freshly ground black pepper instead, but feel free to trot out the lip-tingling original, if you've got it.  

I sometimes increase the pork to eight ounces, to please my resident carnivore.  That said, I think this would sing without any, with instead small cubes of smoked tofu, or tempeh, or even edamame, any mild toothsome bit to round out the bright roots.  If using pork, freeze 15 minutes first for simpler slicing.  

2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
5-8 ounces pork tenderloin, thinly sliced into bite-size bits (1/2 x 1"), optional
2-3 dried red thai chilis
About 2/3 pound carrots (6 med., 4 lg.), peeled and cut into matchsticks (1 3/4 finished cups)
About 1/3 pound fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks (1 finished cup)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
several grinds black pepper
2 tablespoons soy sauce 

Have all ingredients sliced and ready.

Heat an empty wok or heavy skillet over high heat.  Add oil, swirl to coat bottom, and let heat until it shimmers, 30 seconds.  Add garlic, stir-fry 10 seconds, then add pork and chilis.  Stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, nudging pork to separate, and to expose all pieces to the hot pan, until meat is seared and coloring here and there.   

Add carrots and ginger, and stir-fry for one minute.  Add salt, and stir-fry another minute.  Add water, cover, and boil vigorously for 3 minutes.  Remove lid, and continue to boil briefly, 1-2 minutes, until roots are tender but still toothsome, and sauce has reduced to a near-syrup.  Add soy sauce and freshly ground pepper (or crushed Sichuan peppercorns).  Stir-fry another minute, taste for seasonings, adjust salt and pepper, and serve immediately.