.04 acres and a monkey

I'm feeling some pressure to provide more homegrown nourishment for my family, simply because it is getting bigger. Our monkey is growing up, way fast. "I'm HUNGRY dadda, maybe we can have some more lunch!" I've been thinking of her energy conversion powers as a wonder of nature. It makes me think: we need to find a way to run the planet off of kids. Yeah, that's the ticket! And no, I'm not talking child-labor, I'm talking about somehow harnessing the energy bursts some describe as screaming, or maybe rigging little magnets on them and having them slide repeatedly down a copper-coil tube (okay that would be child-labor) Focus now: or how about that dream of turning this untapped source of audible energy to work for us parents, who are usually the focal point for receiving such a release. I'm gonna need to provide more calories in the future to keep up with the energy absorption/emission curve.

We have limited garden space, on the north side of the house and in a yard that is only 15 feet deep. It contains a thick, black, expansive clay, that when we first started working it, contained tons of glass and gravel, with the occasional rusty nail and old toy. Two months ago we performed our largest "amendment" to the yard, but this does not make up for the fact that it only receives direct light for an hour in the morning and a few more in the afternoon. We do what we can with a few wine barrels placed out front that have served various functions over the past few years (including a staging area for things to be transplanted). We have them out front, facing south, where they get good light from sun-up till about mid-afternoon. So today the monkey and I took action and built a small planter box, to help expand out acreage if you can call such small increments. We brought it out back and rewarded ourselves with some pretty cheesecake for a job well (no, more like halfway) done. We'll get to that cheesecake later.

We filled the box with soil, and then began transplanting some of the spinach we had purchased from Berkeley Hort. While we were at it, we transplanted the beets seen here into the sunniest spot in the back yard, with hopes of at least beet pasta come late spring. The spinach would fill most of the new box, but we needed something else. Maybe with a streak of color, hardy, and certainly edible. "Hey let's go look out," I turned around and there they were:



The "Pot of Gold" container chard from last spring. I had planted it amongst the tomatoes last year, trying to fill in areas wherever I could with various seeds to see what worked. Turns out that in my yard, container chard stays a tiny little thing when it gets shaded out by tomatoes. But it is also hardy, for when I finally had the gumption to rip out the dying tomatoes, it was still its tiny little self, all four inches high and in about 8 or 9 places. I left it there, and a few weeks later it was twice as big. Well, this is certainly worthy of attention, so I took them out of the ground before the previously mentioned amendment by putting them in a container and in the sunniest spot in the backyard. Now they are thriving, and starting to really crowd their container. They needed thinning and would be a nice compliment to the spinach. I placed two plants at either end of our new planter and gave it a little pat-down. Now for the hard part: getting it upstairs and outside the window for living on the roof in the most direct light available.

Now our view of the elementary school across the street includes some greens for braising and salads. It is a small purchase of space, but we're hoping the rewards are great. Last year our attempts in the garden yielded a few tasty things, namely some peas and tomatoes, but really it had plenty of room for improvement. This year I have made a pledge to use our little bit of space in a fashion more befitting of its capabilites. We need more variety, more fecundity, out of our little space. With more use of our sunny roof, perhaps we can achieve such things.

Back to fecundity. And that bigger family remark. We are about halfway toward harvesting our "potato" crop. As with all tubers and subterranean veggies, this one will depend on the moon and other environmental factors as to the exact date it first sees the light. We're just hoping the arrival will go as smoothly as ours in late Nov, 2003. As seen by the in-utero headshot of "Pablo" (as the monkey calls her sibling), our potato has eyes, nose, lips and chin. Just as they should. Let us do the rain dance and pray for good spring weather. So far it's promising to be a bumper crop!



Oh yeah, and that cheesecake thing. You see, the one pictured at top, that we pre-emptively rewarded ourselves with, had some chevre in it, comprising about a third of the cream cheese component. I've been dying to try some goaty-goodness in a cheesecake for at least a year now, so this was a focus for this version. It had the typical (these days) sweet potato for body, color, and flavor, but I did go out on a new crusty limb and used ginger-zing granola and animal crackers for the bottom. It was tasty, but a little too goaty. I'm thinking, in the future, keep the goat on the savory side of the cheese.

And the reason all of these things spilled out of my mind, only to be put together in my dweeby little blog?

Kids.

could you hand me the fire pliers?

So this one is a little random. I was straining my brain to come up with something to wrap up the year. What better than to talk about the final dessert and libations for 2006! But in order to introduce dessert, I must go back a few days, to a jonesing for ube that found the monkey and I at Oakland's Chinatown, after striking out at the farmers' market. I had discussed ube ice cream with Ading A over the x-mas holiday and I just HAD to have some. Of course, this wouldn't involve buying it, because I'm can be an extreme hardhead. I'm not one to let never-having-made-it-before be an excuse. With ice cream not part of my repertoire, I thought "how hard can it be?" I just had to make it from scratch. The monkey and I bought a few pounds of purple sweet potatoes (The grocer indicated that they were from California, but my Mandarin is a little rusty, and he was probably speaking Cantonese, so in retrospect they could actually be from Hawaii.) We brought the loot home and I immediately fired up the Wedgewood, putting a few in to bake.

Slathered with a buttery spread, hot out of the oven, the purple gems are incredible. I had to have one this way, to calibrate the taste buds for venturing into the unknown. During the violet tasting I looked up a few recipes for ube ice cream. It seems as though many people mix ube powder into vanilla ice cream to get the desired affect. Or maybe start from scratch, use good ingredients, yet don't use eggs or cream. I took these factors into account, consulted the back of a Straus pint of ice cream for a hierarchy of ingredients, decided on making a custard base, and went from there.

I started with great cream and milk products, organic sugar and vanilla extract, baked ube, and coconut cream (not pictured). I had scored some "super-jumbo" double yolked eggs at the SF Ferry Building Saturday Extravaganza that would be perfect for the job. And yes, there might be a touch of sarcasm there, the place is a total zoo, complete with wandering "donkeys" (another more polite word for what I'd like to call them) who are more than willing to point out that the ricotta here is not real because it is not made from sheeps cheese as it is in Italy. Huh? I'm not sure what the hell this guy in particular was really talking about but he was highly annoying in his candor. When he spoke his nose elevated a few degrees toward the sky, while the rest of his face remained intact in a mutton-chopped and soul-patched scowl that just didn't go with the balding pate. I almost had to point that out to him, when his partner interjected "yes dear, but we're not IN Italy." Thank you and note to self: look up the various ways ricotta is handled and treated when you get home. It made me wonder that some people must forget to leave their "foodie badge" at home and therefore wander the public places correcting folks with their vast store of knowledge, projecting to an audience that are not at all impressed, or interested. Sorry 'bout that, but that guy really annoyed me and I've been trying to let go of my encounter with him since. There, done.

I borrowed Big-Daddy J's ice cream maker on New Years Eve morning and started plotting my final dessert of the year. I blended the baked ube with the coconut cream and set aside to chill. I poured in a pint of cream and a pint of mixed half n half and milk. I heated this thoroughly and then separated the yolks and added them after tempering in another bowl. With this mixture hot, I added sugar and extract and heated until it began to thicken. Goal attained, I added the ube/coconut cream blend, whisked together gently, and set in the fridge to chill.

I brought the components over to our friends' home to blend before serving. There were three 3 year olds anticipating ice cream so I felt a little pressure. Our monkey decided that she would wait by the mixer for her portion, even after I told her it would take another 20 minutes. "Oh yeah, and then it will be done Daddy?" Yes honey, I'll let you know when it is done, I promise. She lingered a few more moments and then decided to trust me. With the ice cream to a soft serve stage, I turned off the machine and immediately had three lilliputians competing for who was first to give me their bowl. With the serving complete and the monkeys seated at the tiny table, I stood over and snapped a pic to document that it is possible to have all three at the table at the same time. Ah the power of the ube......

After much struggle, the little tykes were down for the count and it was time for the parents to get schnockered. My German sources tell me that this means nothing in the native tongue, except maybe a small regional variant that refers to a mosquito. With that clarified, we finished our wine and beer and grappa (not necessarily in that order) and got down to viewing the real attraction of the evening, the "fire pliers punch" as it translates.

This is an action photo of the flaming drink that my friend G-man has treated us to on a few occasions. It involves cheap dry red wine, spices, oranges, ridiculously high-octane rum (that would be 160 proof) and made specifically for this concoction, the sugar cone and the fire pliers, and of course, alot of fire. The object of this one is to first not kill yourself while preparing this libation. It is perhaps best to let an experienced and qualified German friend prepare it. With a willing fire tender, pour the red wine into a large pot with spices and cut up oranges. Heat this over a controlled flame or on the stove. With the wine hot, but not boiling, place the "fire pliers" on the top of the pot, install the sugar cone, pour rum into a large spoon or small ladle and carefully light (AWAY FROM THE BOTTLE PLEASE!) Now douse the sugar cone with the flaming rum. Remove the flaming spoon/ladle and when the flame is extinguished, refill with rum and pour over the flaming sugar cone. It will crackle and hiss, and as you continue dousing with rum, the sugar cooks and dissolves, draining into the (mulled really) wine. With each new introduction of rum, the flames reach higher toward the ceiling, threatening to catch your place on fire. No problem. It's a rental! I mean, it's New Years, let's get this conflagration going.

Well, we managed to not burn down the house. We rang in the new year warmed by the flames now inside of us. And let me warn you: when someone hands you the fire pliers the night before, you might find it difficult to jump out of bed the next morning to do............anything.

Happy New Year!

colorful holiday cheesecakes

When I shop for sweet potatoes, I always hold a sort of hope that a taste of the islands can be found. You see, on the two trips I have taken to the Big Island, we delighted in sampling some of the local produce: coconut, bananas, papaya, pineapple, guava, longan, and some of the more familiar to us tomatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes. Only one thing, these sweet potatoes were purple. Heavenly, yummy, purple, gorgee-ous little sweet potatoes. Some of the local restaurants served it up as a side dish, to say a seared ahi steak or grilled ono fillet, in the form of light and fluffy lavender mountain, with a red colored salad sprig stuck in the top, representing lava spewing out. I fell in love with this form of mashed potatoes at first tasting, and we later purchased some raw ones at the local farmers' market and tried mashing them up ourselves. Well, our selections in lodging somehow never managed to have the right utensil, namely a masher in a kitchen drawer. We made do with forks and big spoons, and plenty of cream and butter I believe, and they ended up palatable. If only we could find these back home....


Shopping at "The Bowl" one afternoon last summer, I'm cruising the tuber section in produce and see something called an okinawan sweet potato. I look at it a little closer and see that the flesh looks like it has purple streaks in it. Ohhhhh, could it be........one of...........those.........hawaiian ones..........? I make my way toward the register to read a book I brought from home for entertainment while standing in line (or so I wish, about every-other time I'm in the place) and purchase somewhere near ten pounds of them. I get home and google it. I had found them. The very thing. I was so happy. I looked up a few recipes and found something entitled "Sweet Potato Cheesecake with Haupia Frosting " by anonymous locals. One look at the ingredients and you could tell they meant island locals. So, for thanksgiving last year we had this purple cheesecake for dessert.

Looking up the recipe again yielded this site:
http://www.e-hawaii.com/features/Christmas/recipes/sweetpotato.htm


Sadly, this year I have not seen the sweet little purple things. I've been back to the source, then another, but without luck. I should probably check chinatown, as I did last year and found them, but you see, most of the crop comes from Hawaii. This doesn't sound too bad right? Think about it a little harder and consider the requirement that the USDA has on irradiating them first, before shipping them the 2,500+ miles (at least) to your door. Purchasing them, should I even find them, is something I just can't do now, for either of those reasons, when there are just so many great locally grown sources of equally delicious tubers. So this year, our family has happily plugged away at eating our papas in the white, yellow and orange color scheme. And as it happens, this week found leftover baked garnet yams, sitting in the fridge, just waiting to be made into something else. Sister A was spending some time with us, so technically it was a holiday and all......so why not, let's do another colorful cheesecake!



Based on making the purple variety twice, adjusting for my own preferences, and of course altering the recipe into one more accommodating to my ingredients, it became something like this. So for a first time, I shall put something into an actual recipe form (of sorts), so here goes:




Garnet Ginger Grenadine Cheesecake (a work in progress)

1 cup chopped pecans (fine)
1 cup mashed graham crackers
1/2 cup buttery stick
2 tbsp chopped candied ginger

combine and pat into that fancy pan you have for such occasions and bake at 350 for ten or so minutes

1 and 3/4 cup mashed garnet yam (1 cup at least, or up to nearly 2 depending on consistency and size of eggs used)
3 jumbo eggs (use large sized if using only 1 cup potato, more like 4 large or 3 jumbo if using nearly 2 cups potato)
1 pound cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

combine these together in a large bowl, preferably in a mixer to save your arms from breaking off. when finished, wrap your pre-baked and now cool pan with tinfoil (if using a springform pan) and pour this mixture in. place the pan into a large roasting pan that will hold it and lots of boiling water around it (should you consider a water bath, which I highly recommend) pour in boiling hot water (around the cheesecake pan please) and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes. it should be hardly done (no more jiggle in the middle). carefully take the roasting pan out of the oven, making sure to not scald your arms off with sloshing HOT water. DO NOT POUR WATER OUT while cheesecake is still in the roasting pan. it will slide to one end and not being horizontal at this high of a temperature will destroy it. siphon off the hot water with a turkey baster or the like and then remove the cheesecake pan from the roasting pan. place on a cooling rack and leave for several hours on the counter until it is totally cool. mix up 1 cup of sour cream with a few tablespoons of grenadine. pour this over the cheesecake and smooth it out. place in the fridge to chill for a few hours before serving. when chilled, place pomegranate seeds on the top, hopefully in a pattern more thought out and interesting than the one above.


Oh how I love leftovers like these. Because when the weather outside is dreary and gray, I feel like wrapping myself up in a blanket and snuggling down with a nice piece of cheesecake. Besides, it's kinda funny to see the colors of Fall on a plate, and be reminded that this weather will pass (after a few more months of rain that is) as this season of colorful cheesecake comes to an end and ushers in a new year.