Cherry and Corn Far Breton

I've been doing a lot of thinking about home.  The threaded yarn that braids my siblings to the same farmland as me.  I made a Hoosier Pie last week and I thought it would satiate this deep hunger to feel connected.  It didn't.  I thought about going to church and feeling part of a community.  That feeling passed as quickly as it came.

The fact of the matter is, the ghost of the Midwest breeds in you.  It grows like a tumor and spreads like wildfire.  I've always lived in the limns between home and journey, between the concrete and the destination.  When I think of home, I think of cornfields and highways.  I think of the swaying of wheat fields and how you can either be crucified like a scarecrow or lost in the hedge maze.  Everyone I've talked to feels liminal, at the roughshod corners of two in-betweens.  It's what the Midwest is, by definition.  The in-between.  The forgotten.  It's a genetic abnormality to hold onto that gossamer strand of satisfaction and horror when you know there are still places that exist where pies sit on windowsills and you'll never be able to call those places home again.

I described this phenomenon as the Potato Salad Diaspora.  A dispersal, an exodus.  No homeland to go back to, the gates closed behind our family.  I only know the world through sense memory, through muscle memory.  Through fingerprints that left smudges on a set of silver.  On old bonds I cashed in for a hundred dollars last week.  The corn silk that stuck like cobwebs to your sweater, your finger tips, your eyelashes.  It all became folklore to someone like me, lost in his own mind and a refugee in the same home where I once stood on a phonebook and watched my grandmother cook eggs.  

Two flavors I remember well from those days are corn and cherries.  Of the earth, in their rawest form.  Toothsome, sensory.  Messy.  Spit out the pits over the sink, shucking corn in the bag.  It was primitive in its own way, messy on my blue jeans.  I loved every minute of it and I recreated those flavors in a French custard--a cherry and corn far breton. 

Bourbon-Soaked Cherry and Sweet Corn Far Breton

A French custard desert, made with bourbon-soaked cherries (too bad I used up my stock making this cake again) and a corn puree.  The flavors burst like dying embers of summer.  Adapted from David Lebovitz's recipe. Note: Preparation for this dessert is 8-12 hours.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups pitted cherries (frozen works too)
  • 1/3 cup warmed bourbon 
  • 2 ears corn
  • 2 cups whole milk
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup + 2 TB white sugar
  • 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2/3 cup flour

Directions:

  1. Heat 1/3 cup bourbon in a saucepan until warmed and throw in cherries.  Add two tablespoons white sugar and allow for cherries to soak in juices and bourbon, macerating slightly in the sugar.  Sit for at least four hours, but continue on to step two.
  2. Shuck corn.  Using a box grater, grate corn over bowl.  It is a messy process, but you should end up with a mashed corn pulse and a fair amount of liquid.  Discard cob and repeat with second ear of corn.  Set aside.
  3. Put all ingredients in a blender, including corn pulp, and pulse until fully blended.  It should be a very pale yellow color with minimal lumps. Refrigerate mixture 4 hours (preferably overnight).
  4. When ready, preheat oven to 400*F.  Thoroughly butter and flour baking dish (I used ceramic).  Drain cherries, but reserve two tablespoons of liquor.
  5.  Add liquor to the batter and blend for a second to reconstitute.
  6. Place cherries in baking dish, making sure to spread out
  7. Pour batter through a mesh strainer over cherries in baking dish, going slowly and gently, wiping sides with rubber spatula to get all liquid
  8. Bake for 35 minutes at 400*F.  Reduce to 350* and tent with tin foil to avoid excessive browning.  Bake for an additional 12 minutes or until set in the middle and a toothpick comes out clean (could take up to 20 minutes, depending on oven consistency).
  9. Dust with confectioner's sugar and best served warm or at room temperature.  Can keep for two days in fridge.

The Hoosier in Me

There is a toothache in my soul and I've lassoed string around it, tied the rest to a doorknob.  I'm afraid the door of my past will slam shut soon.  I'm tugged, pulled to the flatlands of my childhood.  To the cornfields we'd drive through and the outlet malls we'd stop at on the way to visit relatives.  For a funeral, for a birthday.  I can still smell the plastic of the Happy Meal toy.  I can still see the flowers that were stepped on the last time we visited my grandmother's grave.

I come from the Heartland and if you feel it closely, my pulse still beats there.  Somewhere on the Ohio-Indiana border, where they put spaghetti in their chili and can hold a grudge for 20 years.  Houses that sit on cinder blocks and gas stations where you can buy jerky from tupperware.  My pulse still beats somewhere between 1991 and 1995, the last remnants of my childhood.  When the porch swing creaked, when the hot tub leaked, when my sister hit her head and my uncle swore he could see her brains falling out.

Small-town hyperbole.  Myths that become repeated and we become disreputable.  We fulfill our own prophecies and then don't speak for 20 years.  i thought about all of the snowstorms, all of the feet that crunched the ice beneath them.  All of the cups of coffee that sat going stale, acidic and boiling in the pot.  How no one bothered to pick up the phone and how my pulse would still beat, however faint and arrhythmic, to pull at the umbilicus of the Heartland.

Food has a culture in the Midwest. the economy of it all.  Where I come from, meat is sometimes bought at the Dollar Store and when everyone drink black coffee, there's always extra half 'n half. You get creative, you cut corners.  You can eat from the land and farm stands that line the roads, signs written in cardboard, others on wood.  Sometimes your mother feeds you a peach slice when you walk into the room, saying it's the best peach she's ever eaten. And sometimes you have cereal for dinner when the electricity goes out and you hide under a mattress.  Other times you try to recreate the desserts from spiral-bound cookbooks with scratches in the margins, from your childhood, before you forgot where you came from.

And it is a world that's bookended in coasts and often forgotten.  A frontier that's explored, tilled, left to its own devices.  Between plateau and plain, there is the Midwest.  Between the mountains and the ocean, there is the Midwest.  Between promise and pilgrimage, there is the Midwest.  The Great Lakes extend and the fingertips bleed into the backdrop of my bloodline.  And I am Midwestern in all ways but location.  I taste the salt of the earth when I bite my tongue.

Mini Hoosier Pie

A basic sugar and cream pie, eponymous of my home state's nickname.  The pie makes either 6 mini-tartlets or one 10-inch pie, using Ina Garten's pie crust (recipe cut in half). 

Ingredients:

  • One 10-inch pie crust (see link above, made in advance)
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 3 tablespoon flour
  • 2 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400*F
  2. Roll out pie dough on a heavily-floured surface and fit into one 10-inch pie plate or ~6 small tartlet pans.  Poke holes with a fork and weigh with pie weights
  3. Bake for 15 minutes or until slightly crisp.  Allow to cool while you prepare filling.
  4. In a medium bowl, measure all remaining ingredients and whisk vigorously until well combined
  5. Sift ingredients into a measuring cup (for easier pouring) to create a smooth batter
  6. Pour filling into prepared pie crusts and bake again for 30 minutes or until thickened and browned. (note: watch the small tartlets.  If browning or burning at such a high temperature, fit loosely with aluminum foil
  7. Allow to cool, garnish with confectioner's sugar before serving

Watermelon-Wine Granita with Orange Blossom Cream

I try not to think about how a California summer is different than a Pennsylvania one.  I try not to think about how you can feel a thunderstorm in your pulse when you're driving through the Laurel Highlands, while in California you stagnate in your car, on a highway to run an errand or run away.   I left those summers three years ago today, I left them before at bus stops and terminals.  I never got used to hugging those summers goodbye, but I ache for a Mid-Atlantic heat that is as syrupy as it is drowsy.

The day before I moved to California, I remember doing three things vividly:  crying in a parking lot, sharing a bottle of wine with my mom, and cutting my finger.  All in the span of six hours, my memories of home are punctuated in those, they remain paperweights on my otherwise scattered recollection of the fickle definition of "home".  

In the parking lot, I hugged my best friend, Carissa, goodbye.  I wore a dark denim shirt that I had hand-dyed myself, I wore a baseball cap that belonged to my brother.  We saw a psychic in her living room and we paid for it on her iPhone.  She said a lot of lies and we laughed about it on the car ride to the discount clothing store.  We ate macaroni and cheese and then said goodbye.  I've only seen her four times since then.  That day became a vector for our lives, we stretch away and are tethered by our memory to that last hug, that last embrace, and the overwhelming anxiety of choosing to go through with it all.

I cried the whole way home, regretting it all.  We drove the same way home, but I took a different exit than her.  I pulled over to catch my breath, clear my mind.  When I got home, my mother had made an effort at normalcy, as much as I could see the heartbreak in her eyes.  We watched "I Love Lucy" and played an old record at the same time, anything to drown out conversations we didn't really want to have.  We sat in silence and both drank a cheap white wine.  It felt good to be buzzed and it felt great to let go.

And at dinnertime, we had burgers.  Cheap, simple.  Utilitarian.  I cut up the tomatoes and opened the screen door when it got too smoky in the kitchen.  I cut my finger taking the rind off of a watermelon slice.  It bled into a swirl in the drain.  I wore the bandage until it fell off in a parking lot somewhere outside of Oceanside.  Our third day in California.  A new life.  The last totem of home curled in on itself like a match that burned into a cinder.

These flavors remind me of that day and I made this granita last week in recognition of those moments.  Those anchors, those competing vectors in the economy of my memories.  I thought of the resolute promise that I wasn't going to cry on my way to see Carissa and I thought about how the wine was ice cold when I got home, the bottle sweating and my mother trying to make the best of the situation.  I thought about it all as I dragged my fork over the baking sheet and even more when I took my first bite.  This granita is good for those cloyingly humid days in the Appalachia, but I'll settle for remembering those moments (and missing them terribly) as I sit in traffic in Southern California.  Anything to keep those memories alive.

Watermelon-Wine Granita with Orange Blossom Cream

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • Half of medium-sized watermelon, rind removed and cut into rough chunks
  • 1/3 cup Sauvignon Blanc
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoons confectioner's sugar
  • 2 teaspoon orange blossom water
  • 1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper
  • Mint for garnish

Directions:

  1. Prepare your station by laying a 13" by 18" rimmed baking sheet out and making sure you have enough room in your freezer for it
  2. In a small saucepan, combine water and sugar and heat on medium-high.  Stir a couple times and allow to boil until sugar is dissolved and a syrup forms.  Set aside.
  3. In a blender, combine the watermelon, wine, and the simple syrup and blend until liquified.
  4. Pour through a metal sieve and discard solids.  
  5. Pour watermelon mixture into baking sheet and put into freezer.  Every half hour, drag a fork over mixture to fluff up the slushy mixture (pay extra attention to the edges, as they freeze into chunks).  Reference image below. Continue this process for about 3 hours.
  6. As you wait for granita to freeze, whip the heavy cream on medium until soft peaks form.  With the mixer still on, add the confectioner's sugar and increase speed to medium-high.  Continue beating until peaks stiffen, add orange blossom water and beat for just a couple more seconds to incorporate.
  7. To assemble:  Add granita to any vessel you'd like, then top with the whipped cream, sprinkle with pepper and garnish with mint.

Cake built on community

I appreciate community now.  I used to spend summer vacations alone, in my room reading or dreaming of running to New York to recreate myself.  I used to spend my nights in college with one boy or another and then walk back to my dorm by myself.  I'd grab a coffee and still fall asleep by one. I used to feel that same solitude at Thanksgiving tables and around the fireplace at my aunt's house or a cousin's trailer.  I lost a best friend when I lived in Italy and never really tried to fill that absence with anyone but dried flowers and the occasional song I'd put on to remind me of her.  Of the people we used to be in high school, singing on the highway and terrified of growing up.   

This past year, things changed in me.  When I moved to San Antonio, when I left my own life in San Diego, I was forced to create a world where I talked to people, actively participated in the lives of others and not live at the periphery of judgment and jealousy.  I had to maintain conversation, show interest, survive.  It was a practice in survivalism, so I didn't lose my own mind.  So I didn't go to bed too lonely and wake up for work late because I wanted to drink another cup of coffee and feel the warm on my hands.  I kept Milo because the bed got too cold at night; I moved back to San Diego.  But, that lesson has stuck with me over the course of these months:  I had to try, to make friends, to build relationships, to not lose my mind.

That is why, when I received a package from Robbie and Pat, it meant so much to me.  To see that  progress and that growth in me.  To send a gift and receive one, too.  My personhood used to found in waste baskets, on crumbled up love notes and old Kleenex boxes.  Now, part of me span continents.  I have built a community through instagram and this blog, and I am grateful for it.  And that community is continuing to grow, as I start to recognize there are people like me all over the world.  And that is why I keep creating in these spaces, so the world can be a little smaller and we can all enjoy these gifts of community.

So, thank you, Patrick and Robert, for the gift box!  The coloring book, the polaroids, and those bourbon cherries, which I have turned into a toffee-topped black tea and almond cherry-upside down cake! (or, if you'd like, a ghetto cherry tarte tatin).  With a little tea blend from my mom's shop in  Pennsylvania, this truly is a dessert that will remind me of the Mid-Atlantic every time I make it.

Black Tea and Almond Cherry-Upside Down Cake

really like the name ghetto tarte tatin more, though ;).  This cake is honestly perfect for any time of day, but I particularly liked it for breakfast with black coffee.  Because of the cherry juice and caramelization, it maintains a light, springiness to the middle cake part.  And bake it in a cast iron!  That truly makes all the difference in the world.  Makes one 10" cake.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2/3 cup almond flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • ~1 1/2 TB black tea (see note)
  • 3/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar, divided
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 5 tablespoon butter, softened, divided
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 tablespoon white vinegar
  • 1 cup greek yogurt or buttermilk
  • splash of heavy cream
  • 2 cup cherries, frozen, fresh, or preserved in bourbon like the ones I used

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare a skillet (or cake pan) by buttering it and adding parchment paper to the base
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, sift together flours, soda, salt, tea, white sugar, and 3/4 cup brown sugar.  
  3. In a measuring cup, whisk together oil, 3 tablespoons of butter, eggs, extracts, vinegar, and yogurt (or buttermilk).  Whisk until incorporated and a pale, pale yellow
  4. Create a well in the dry ingredients and pour in wet mixture.  Turn on mixer and mix until incorporated, then turn on medium and beat for 2 minutes or until ribbony.  Allow to sit while you make the glaze.
  5. In a saucepan, melt butter and mix in 1/4 cup brown sugar.  Allow it to melt down and begin to bubble.  Add a splash of cream.  This does not have to be in any kind of candy stage (e.g., hardball/softball), but allow for it all to cook on medium until slightly nutty in smell and sticky.  
  6. Toss in cherries.
  7. Pour cherries in "toffee" onto the parchment-lined pan/skillet and move with a spatula until evenly distributed.  Then, carefully pour in batter to cover entire surface, being careful to distribute evenly as well and to not move around the cherries too much.
  8. Bake for 40-50 minutes, checking at the 40-minute mark and tenting with foil if browns too much.  Done with a toothpick comes out clean.
  9. Allow to cool and flip carefully onto a plate, peeling off parchment.  Dust with confectioner's sugar to serve.

Note:  Teas come in a variety of grinds, so if you are using a fine grind (like from a teabag), I would use about one tablespoon.  If you are using a loose-leaf (as pictured), then I would go with an extra half-tablespoon.  The blend I used for this cake was flavored with notes of walnut and really came through on the gooey layer between the cake and the cherries.  So, have fun playing around with this!

And finally, CONGRATS TO JARRY FOR REACHING THEIR GOAL!!!!!  What an exciting and monumental occasion for you guys.  I am so happy and can't wait to see what's to come.