Cue Up the Gypsy Kings

There were some optimistic souls who assumed we were due for a mild summer to make up for the horrific winter we had, followed by a spring with a terminal identity crisis, which it tried to resolve by experimenting with 40s and rainy and 80s and humid in 72-hour rotations for the past two months. Said well-meaning souls do not have my hard-earned and deep-seated cynicism, which is why they might have been disappointed when the weather gods decided Memorial Day weekend was as good as any time to go from zero to July, and to hell with June.

Some might say that my reality-based view of the universe makes me less shiny-happy-whatever, but I say there is a certain grim satisfaction to be derived from being right, to say nothing of being better prepared when the inevitable happens. When the 90s-and-humid hit, I already had a pitcher of cold-brewed coffee ready in the fridge, and I was also raring to make my favorite heat-busting celebration of summer, even if it had to be made with supermarket tomatoes because it isn’t actually July and the Jersey tomatoes are still weeks away.

Gazpacho, like flamenco music, is one of those things I fell so hard in love with at first exposure that I have to attribute it to genetic memory. After all, some part of my cross-Mediterranean mix does come from Andalusia, the ancestral home of both. I’m still trying to find the time and discipline to learn guitar, but regularly making gazpacho during the sauna season honors my forebearers with almost no time or effort, and consistently helps me keep my cool.

Gazpacho is infinitely forgiving and you can vary the amounts and ingredients according to what you have and like. For example, this version comes from Jose Andres, my favorite Spanish chef and the source of the best flan ever. His (actually his Andalusian wife’s) recipe uses half a green pepper rather than one whole red one, but I almost never buy green anymore since red is so much sweeter and more versatile, so I used that. Of course, the better tomatoes you use the more deeply flavorful this will be. When the heirlooms hit the farmers markets, go nuts with any variety you can find.

Gazpacho
(Adapted from Jose Andres’ Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America)
Serves 4, if I feel especially self-sacrificing

2 pounds ripe tomatoes (around 5-6 medium ones)
1 large cucumber, peeled
1 small red pepper
1 garlic clove, peeled
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, preferably Spanish
2 teaspoons sea salt

Core the tomatoes, chop roughly into eighths, and place in a blender. Roughly chop the cucumber and pepper and add to the carafe on top of the tomatoes. Add the garlic, vinegar and water, and blend until the mixture is uniform and no visible chunks of vegetable remain. Taste and add more vinegar to balance the tomatoes and pepper if they’re especially sweet.

Add the oil and salt and blend again briefly. Don’t blend too long or the gazpacho will start to heat up and you’ll lose the fruitiness of the olive oil. Chill in the carafe until very cold, at least 30 minutes.

Serve in glasses, drizzled with a tiny bit more olive oil and vinegar. If you like, you can also garnish with cherry tomatoes and additional diced cucumber.

Notes:

The recipe calls for straining the gazpacho after the initial blending and before the refrigeration step, but I never bother because unless I’m paying big bucks for it at Jaleo, when perfection is to be expected, I prefer gazpacho to be a little rustic. You can strain if you like, but the extra fiber is good for you, and shouldn’t life have a little texture?

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Drama-Free Rye Bread

While there are a number of advantages to living in our neighborhood, which is one of the outermost zip codes but still technically-within-the-urbs, access to stores is not one of them. We have just one tiny mom and pop convenience store within walking distance, so any real grocery shopping requires a car trip.

Even then, the stores that are handiest to us do not, alas, offer particularly good pickings when it comes to the bakery section. During the summer and fall months, there’s a farmer’s market near work at which I can conveniently pick up artisan bread along with vegetables during a lunchtime walk, but that hasn’t started up yet. Since we aren’t going to make a special trip into the city every weekend just for the bakeries or the farmers markets that have already phased in, that frequently means settling for whichever of the supermarket’s bland offerings don’t have a shelf life of eight months thanks to corn syrup or transfats.

This ongoing frustration is what recently prompted me to resume my long-dormant habit of baking bread on the weekends. I have neither the time nor the patience to maintain a sourdough starter again, but I have been making some lower-impact breads every few weeks while the oven is already warmed up for the Monday office treat baking.

One of my newfound favorites is this dark rye bread, which gives you deli-style payoffs with just a little more time and effort than your average quick bread. It uses a bit of a cheat, getting the complex, tangy flavor that usually comes from long fermentation from buttermilk instead, but you’d never know the difference if I didn’t tell you. It also packs in some extra heartiness by using one third whole wheat flour and a spoonful of wheat germ along with the rye and some bread flour for stretch and lift. You’d think, given all that whole grain, that it would be a dense and heavy bread, but it’s actually delightfully soft and easy to slice.

While it makes great sandwiches, the best topping I can think of for a just-baked slice of this bread is a smear of cream cheese and a glistening, sweet and tangy layer of my mother’s pepper jelly, which she was kind enough to make and mail to me after I expressed nostalgia for it. Should you have a less accommodating mom, raspberry jam or currant jelly work very nearly as well.

Buttermilk Rye Whole Wheat Bread
(From Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads)
Makes one loaf

1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) dry yeast
1 cup dark rye flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon wheat germ
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons canola oil
2/3 to 1 cup bread flour

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the yeast, rye and whole wheat flours, wheat germ, caraway seeds, and salt. Run the mixer briefly to integrate the dry ingredients.

Heat the buttermilk, molasses and oil together in the microwave or a small saucepan until hot, 120-130 F. Add to the dry ingredients and mix at medium speed for 3 minutes. Gradually add just enough bread flour for a firm but not stiff dough to form.

Exchange the paddle for the dough hook and knead the dough in the mixer for 8 more minutes. If necessary, add more bread flour, but err on the side of a slightly sticky dough.

Place the dough in a large greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, approximately 1 hour.

Pat out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a 14 x 7 inch rectangle. Roll the dough up tightly, pinch the edges to seal, and tuck into a nonstick or greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pan. Lightly cover the pan with plastic wrap and let rise again until doubled, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until it’s well browned and sounds hollow when thumped on the bottom.

Turn out of the pan and cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Notes:

As with all yeast breads, resist the urge to slice it when it’s still warm, since the steam will promote gumminess in the still-cooling crumb.

This loaf keeps well on the counter in a loosely folded brown paper bag for several days, but you’ll probably devour the loaf well before staleness is a going concern. You can also tightly wrap the loaf in plastic and a layer of foil and freeze it for later use.

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Seeing Red

So one of my coworkers requested I make red velvet cupcakes for my regular Monday-morning office treat, which posed a bit of a dilemma. While I’m not a food nazi, I do try to avoid the patently unnatural, and red velvet cake is defined by the glowing red produced by huge quantities of artificial food coloring.

What to do: compromise my principles, or settle for less-incendiary red from some more natural source?

As much as I like to please my coworkers, the idea of pouring two bottles of blood-red fluid straight from some Frankenfood plant on the New Jersey turnpike weirded me out too much, so I decided to go the natural route. Since research pointed to beets as an accepted coloring agent in the early history of the red velvet cake, and beets are one of my favorite vegetables, that’s what I chose to experiment with.

My first attempt used a Cook’s Country recipe, since despite my continuing annoyance with Kimball for the polenta fiasco, a lot of bloggers had used it with good results. While I agreed that the taste and texture were good, the pretty magenta color of the batter baked out to an extremely generic tan. I got no complaints when I passed them off as Brown Suede cupcakes, but I still wanted to make genuinely red red velvet without resorting to food coloring.

A little more research turned up the cause of the color change and a potential solution. Rose Levy Berenbaum’s most recent cake book has a recipe for red velvet cake, which uses artificial color but includes a note about baking soda neutralizing the natural pigments in beet juice. Her batter, in contrast, is highly acidic, which should preserve the color.

And it did! Although there was a little fading from bright raspberry to dusky pink in the oven, the resulting cupcakes were definitely in the red end of the spectrum. Because it’s an egg-white-only chiffon batter, it was considerably drier than the conventional Cook’s Country one, but a thick coating of cream cheese frosting mostly took care of it.

I won’t call these the best cupcakes I’ve ever posted here, but they’re perfectly respectable and they are a legitimately non-toxic red. And no, they really don’t taste like beet, I swear. They taste mildly of cocoa and of the cream cheese frosting, which, besides the inflammatory color, is what I understand the whole point of red velvet to be.

Non-Radioactive Red Velvet Cupcakes
(Adapted from Rose Red Velvet Cake in Rose Levy Berenbaum’s Rose’s Heavenly Cakes)
Makes 24 cupcakes

For the cake:

1 large beet, peeled
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons natural cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup grapeseed or canola oil
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup buttermilk

For the frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon creme fraiche or sour cream
Pinch of salt
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Set the rack to the lower-third position and preheat the oven to 350 F. Line two muffin tins with paper liners.

Run the beet through a juicer. Skim off any foam, and measure out 2 tablespoons of the juice. Whisk the beet juice and vanilla into the egg whites just until the color is evenly distributed.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa and salt in a medium bowl.

Mix the oil and butter together in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for 1 minute on medium speed. Add the flour and buttermilk, and mix on low until the dry ingredients are moistened, then increase the speed to medium and beat 1 1/2 minutes longer. Scrape down the bowl and add the egg mixture in two parts, beating 30 seconds on medium speed after each addition.

Using an ice cream scoop, evenly divide the batter among the cups. Bake for 16-18 minutes, until the tops spring back when pressed lightly. Cool for a few minutes in the tins, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling, combine the cream cheese, butter, creme fraiche and salt in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Add the sugar and vanilla and keep pulsing until evenly incorporated. Spread the cupcakes with this frosting once they’ve cooled.

Notes:

If you’re less gunshy about fake food coloring than I am, you can replace the beet juice with the same amount of liquid red food color to get a really bright red cake, but if you’re going to do that, I’d go with the moister, richer Cook’s Country version.

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