persimmon and corn soufflé; californio dreamin' part two

Jan. 12th, 1864
Dear Uncle Garner,

I find myself thinking of you again, as you are the relative that I confide my "new world" produce experiences with; this occasion I made a Kakee soufflé. A "what was that my dear?" you are probably mouthing as reading this. Well, that is right Uncle, a Kakee! It is really a form of a persimmon, somewhat like the ones encountered on my trip through the Ohio River valley, some twenty years or so ago, only this time much larger and easier to deal with if, if I may say so. Anyway, the manner in which these "simmons" (as some call them) came into my kitchen is that an Asian man in the neighborhood, hunched over and hardly able to see toward the horizon (from years of Railroad work I hear, not his current farming ventures) has taken it upon himself to introduce me to these bizarre orange fruits. Upon receiving them, I was in a quandry as to what to call them since he pressed a basket of them into my hand and then proceeded to sneeze. I promptly said "bless you" and placed the gift on the counter. He gave me a look of confusion and began saying over and over what he must have said when I thought he sneezed, with each repetition slower, making a point in pronouncing each syllable sharply: "Ha - Chee - Ya." Seeing my reaction, he quickly smiled, grabbed my hand and began squeezing it as though I were his child, then with a little shrug of his shoulder he spoke in a very reassuring tone and laughingly said "Ka - Kee." I smiled back and repeated: "Kakee!" I can't say why exactly, as both words sat wrong on my english speaking tongue, but I found I preferred Kakee.

I find this new fruit most delectable and very sweet, but with a pudding like consistency that is much too soft for me for wanting to eat out of hand as one would an apple. Maybe making a true pudding with it would be splendid? I had been wanting sweets of late, but my last sack of sugar has been empty for months. Luckily, some relations returning from an area drained by el rio de los reyes had recently given us several jars of honey. I have put this on my corn meal pudding lately, and even spooned it onto toasted pieces of wheat bread. But when I received the Kakee and found I wouldn't be eating much of them uncooked, I thought of combining them with the honey to make a pudding of sorts. With this thought in mind I immediately spoke with my neighbor, a Mrs. DuBois, who seems to have quite the mastery in her own kitchen. She informed me that she had no idea what this "slimey orange pulp in a skin" was, but in a pinch I could at the very least make a soufflé. She then explained how it involves separating eggs and treating the respective parts with the utmost care and attention, yielding divine results both sweet or savory she assures me. The texture of it she described as something we know to be a bread pudding. I was intrigued and made up my mind to try my hand at one. Thus was born the persimmon and cornmeal soufflé.........

now, back to today, or more realistically, two days ago:

So there I was. Staring in the freezer at two cups of frozen orange pulp labeled Hachiya. We had a lot of eggs, a jar of honey on the counter and I was feeling adventurous. I did a search for "persimmon soufflé" and was disappointed with the results. I figured, sheee-iiiit, as a food blogger, I can do something about this. Post a little something, label it accordingly and in the near future, if enough traffic comes my way you will soon be able to use this search phrase and come directly here. Consider it a form of direct action that involves no regard for demographic and whether this recipe is fit for the masses to read on paper. I said to myself: "Self, I will run an experiment. Can little 'ol Monkey Wrangler, use all local ingredients (within 200 miles for this experiment), make a yummy dessert AND have immediate effect on the internet search for persimmon soufflé?" The answer, we shall find out is up to you, the reader.

I had some fun last year about this time, using the voice of a deceased relative, who 140+ years ago lived here as a Californio. It was fun to imagine myself in their shoes with trying to make sense of the "local" ingredients and having to make do in order to feed the family. With the ingredients I chose for this post, I soon realized that this was another great candidate for a similar experiment. All local ingredients, likely available in this part of California mid last century, and made by hand. So here goes nothing.

Have you ever made a soufflé?

They are really much easier than they sound. If you are at all familiar with what an egg can do for you in the kitchen then there really ain't too much mystery about them. Another way to say that is that if you understand the physics and chemistry involved with eggs, this should be easy peasy. I started the whole thing off by taking out my eggs and setting them on the counter to get to room temperature. I gathered up the whole grain products, tasted a spoonful of the honey for calibration purposes, and put my Hachiya pulp in a pot to cook just a touch and then press through a sieve. With everything assembled, I separated the eggs, turned on the oven, and prepped my dish for the fluff.

After much arm breaking whisking, rue making, pudding flop-plopping and the like the experiment was closer to reality. With the fluff carefully placed in the dish and its stiff paper collar in place, I loaded it into the 400 degree oven and hoped for the best. This was a first for many ingredients in a soufflé here at the monkey ranch: sweetened with honey; whole grain wheat and corn used; and pectin thickened persimmon pulp. This was most certainly uncharted territory, that was maybe, just maybe, soon to be charted. Searchable that is.



It worked, it worked!

Well, it wasn't the lightest, fluffiest cloud of egg ever, but considering it was a heavy recipe to begin with, I was most pleased with the results. If you consider yourself a whole grain lover, this is just the thing for you. If you don't, you'd probably think someone just handed you a scoop of bread pudding that must have had some corn bread and graham flour in it.

Well, thank you dear readers for getting through this post. If you are feeling adventurous and really like persimmons, give this a try some time.........

californio kaki n' corn soufflé:

2 cups persimmon pulp
4 large eggs
1/2 c honey
1/2 c cornmeal
1/3 c butter
2 T whole wheat flour
pinch of salt

remove eggs from the fridge at least one hour before doing anything. put the pulp in a pan and cook over medium heat until it plops. remove and press through a sieve into a small bowl. separate the eggs. heat the butter in two quart pot and add the butter, whisking it over medium heat until it bubbles and begins to brown slightly. add the pulp and the cornmeal and stir most vigorously. temper the egg yolks in and cook for another few minutes until a light boil is achieved. set aside and cool to near room temperature. while this is cooling, preheat the oven to 'round fer-hunnerd degrees. prepare your soufflé-appropriate dish and beat the egg whites to a medium peak. casually fold the egg whites into the now tepid persimmon and cornmeal pudding of sorts until almost completely combined. gently and of course still quite casually, guide this mixture into the dish and put into the oven. try not to giggle the oven too much when you first peek at the thing at around 15 minutes into the cooking. somewhere around 20-25 minutes in, the desired brownness will occur and the middle won't be all wiggly-jiggly. remove from the oven and try some before giving to anyone else.........

Hopefully it looks something like this. If not, all I can say is that maybe you should try a real tried and true recipe from a professional! Although I doubt they would make this version, let alone publish something about it, for fear of losing some readers and thus money.

Still, I couldn't find a persimmon soufflé recipe and did something about it. Or so I think, let me know.

Later 'taters! Catch you soon!

californio dreamin'

This post plays with a new concept of sorts, so if you are just looking for a recipe, then skip on down a ways and scratch your head while wondering why..........or pretend like you are transported back in time...........(like in the movies, you know, where you exercise "willing suspension of disbelief" all the time)

Feb. 16th, 1863.
Dear Uncle Garner,

It is late Friday here in Monterey. I would love to be home again, enjoying whatever fills your hearth air, and it is this memory that I bring to mind as I write. California remains somewhat exotic for me, and I am still not used to the local fare (even after 13 years!). I will freely admit that unlike home, here in the spring (mis-named winter locally) we have fresh items: onions, garlic and cabbage that look splendid; cheese of many kinds; crabs are still easy to pull from the depths; and ample supply of salt beef and pork are to be had. We are not want for sustenance by any means. Despite these bounties here, I am now and then forced to be somewhat wreckless with my dining preparations. Occasionally, out of need yes, more so out of ignorance truthfully.

I offer as anecdote, an experience involving a bizarre new item: an "alligator pear" or "aguacate," as I have heard, that found it's way into my home a few days ago, after sailing from a port near the City of Angels. Angelic or not, I am not at all acquainted with this leathery looking green pear, and quite to my suprise, in using it as prescribed by it's giftor, created an uproar in our home at supper by placing it atop soup! Afterward, the men stood about frantically smoking their pipes and swilled copious amounts of some local "brandy" while arguing whether this newly presented item was fruit or vegetable, and what therefore would be the proper course for this "pear" to be a part of. If only they knew what was in the soup, their conversations might be of a different matter entirely!

(this is still in the works, so let's stop there for today and fast forward:)

I've been wanting to explore the theme of cooking within a particular time and place in history (and ideally the associated available food), where I pretend I have landed there and am forced to make do. (Miraculously, my current state of experience remains intact. I love fantasies.) This is another horizon to the theme contained here, and it might be important to keep this in mind while you read on. Call it justification for the ingredients about to be used. Call it writing a story around some recipe made up on the spot. Call it using what's in the house, in this season and time, while wanting to participate in some Soup's On! fun. Call it birthing a new idea and trying it out. In public (ouch!). Call it pulling out the stops, and rolling it all into one. Thank you Alanna!

I wanted to play along in the soupy fun and was daydreaming in the realm of possibilities for this post when I tripped over the idea. Literally. We have pumpkins on our doorstep that date to Halloween, a gift grown by grandpa that have lived sporadically in the house since that time. About a month ago they were moved outside. They have collected sediment beneath them with the tiny bit of rain we have had, but are free of rot and look like they were just picked. Several times, while not paying attention going out our door, I have stubbed my toe on one or another, and immediately berated myself about not doing something with them. After the last trip, I thought: Ha! One of you is becoming soup!

I've always wanted to try cooking a soup inside of a pumpkin, so from the start I was intending on making this happen. Due to the antiquity of the pumpkin, I started thinking about other old items we have around that might be used. We have some old stock in the freezer, that's good. We have potatoes and cheese. That's good too. Hey, all these things are old! Yeah, I'll do an OLD SOUP post!

Wait! What am I thinking? Focus D. Okay, put the stock in the pumpkin, add some ingredients, maybe use that salted beef......wait a second. Is it possible that all of the items I am contemplating would have been around for some long-ago relative to use.......Wait, what about this avocado that I wanted to incorporate, and needs to be eaten? I've seen folks put these as garnish on soups. Dowf! How long ago did these become a foodstuff here in sunny California? Hmmm, you don't say, really.......

With the fantasy in mind, the monkey and I forged ahead and brought our victim into the house to be gutted. We removed the top, scooped out the seeds and persimmon, and started to prep our other ingredients. (Kidding about that persimmon! See this post for more background on this overly used item.) With pumpkin prepped, we filled it with our frozen crab stock (using the logic, lots of crabs back then, probably had some stock of sorts or easily could have) and put it in the oven. Where to go from here.....

My sis had bought some "beef bacon" for us to try. Considering it was a heavily salted meat item that was likely rather popular before refrigeration, I assumed that this would have been common back then, and besides, I needed some fat to fry the onions in. I grated a little cheese (olive oil and brine rubbed, I thought this might be reminiscent of earlier days), got out a few potatoes and onions, and sat my Hass down for a little rest. For those sticklers out there, yes, the Hass wasn't "developed" until the 1930's, and to be authentic, this should probably be something more like a Fuerte, but come on, keep playing along please.)

The pumpkin was baking, filled with crab stock, fried salted beef and onions, grated cheese and diced potatoes. It needed more body, and we had leftover cabbage. I don't know about early cabbage usage in CA, but I do know that it would grow easily, and at the very least different species were likely being farmed in family plots by members of the local Asian community at the time. I thinly sliced about a third of a head of cabbage and stirred it into the soup.

Baking together in the oven, it was starting to smell intriguing at least. After a good hour at least, the pumpkin was browning nicely and the contents looked great! I ladled some out into a cup, and it was good. I wanted to stop right there, and write something else for this post, but struggling with honesty, forced myself to go on. Besides, the pumpkin was balanced within a ceramic dish (but unsupported on its bottom) and beginning to cave in with each moment. I removed it from the oven, pureed the contents, scraped the flesh from the gourd, blended that too, and prepared the avocado for the top. I had some garlic quark in the fridge and thought: shucks, I have no fresh crema for authenticities sake, but this will defiantely taste good. (Remember, first time trying this theme out, so my allowances are a bit loose here.)

It was like orange velvet. Only with meat bits, and a crabby disposition. The cream component tied it all together though, and I just couldn't help but frying up some sourdough bread crumbs to serve on top. It was definately different. Inspired though? Uh, sure. Tasty? Yeah, but you might have to like the ingredients to start with. Should I do it again? I'll leave that to the bloggers out there who stumble upon this one. Who I pray, will get to this point in this long and complicated post not asking: "What was this guy thinking?" only to read on and find themselves staring at a recipe in disbelief.

californio pumpkin soup:

1 big, old pumpkin
1 quart crab stock
3 russet potatoes
3 large spring onions
2 thick slabs "beef bacon"
3 ounces finely grated Old World Portuguese cheese
1/3 savoy cabbage

garnish:
1 avocado
seasoned sourdough bread crumbs
creme fraiche (sounds better huh?), but you can use sour cream or quark for the same result
oregano sprig

Cut off top of pumpkin and scoop out the seeds and loose innards. Place stock into pumpkin and put into the oven. (I took the lid off until the liquid was hot, as it seemed that initially it kept the inside from effectively heating by acting as the top to a cooler on a blistering hot day.) Do this in some sort of secondary containment if attempting for the first time, as I did and still managed to make a huge mess. While the pot is browning and the stock is heating, fry your bacon. If using beef, you will need some oil too. I used a local olive oil and when the bacon was beginning to brown, I threw in the chopped onions including most of the greens. When the bacon is done, chop it into smaller pieces, adding it and the onions to the steaming broth in the gourd. Dice the potatoes and some finely sliced cabbage. Add some finely grated cheese. Carefully stir all of the ingredients while trying not to poke a hole in the side of the now possibly slumping/deforming pot. Place the lid back on and attempt to cook for an hour or so more. When it has been over an hour, or impending scalding hot liquid doom is imminent, transfer the contents of the pumpkin to either a blender or a large pot and puree by some means. Scrape the now very tender flesh from the steaming pumpkin and add to the puree. With all of the cooked items incorporated, serve garnished with slices of avocado, some creamy dollop of sorts, and something else fun, like herbed breadcrumbs from the last bread you overbaked. Think: It is not 1863, and try to enjoy. And serve with a nice high-alcohol beer. Preferably prepared in an authentic fashion of course.

Thanks for listening!

For those stopping by for the first time:
Thanks for coming on the ride. Please check for all of your personal belongings before disembarking the vehicle and have a lovely day. And please, stop by the monkey ranch in the future. It's really not this weird all the time. (Who am I kidding?)

On second thought, maybe I should have started playing with this new theme in a time and place where sourdough, used with whole wheat and rye were popular breads. Yeah....maybe that would have been a bit easier considering this picture represents what else had been happening in my house as I have attempted to write up this post. See, I'll be playing in the snow with monkeys this weekend, and I hear bread keeps you warm. When dipped in hot soup that is. So today, in preparation for the cold I baked some bagels, pretzels, and a baguette while starting the new habit of documenting sourdough adventures in my new "book of loaves."

A monkey wranglers work in the kitchen, is never completely done........

californio mac-n-cheese

Translation: I'm a Californio, and this is a version of mac-n-cheese inspired by the "local" items we had from two different farmers markets, plus what was in the pantry (TJ's whole wheat penne), and some chorizo (also local) that the monkey suggested we use, saying emphatically "yeah, mac-n-cheese with the meat daddy!" Consider yourself warned, this dish is of mixed ancestry. I'll explain in more detail a little later.....

Half-n-half, sage cheddar, cream cheese, penne (a macaroni product remember, and pictured here cooked to within minutes of done), chorizo sauteed with red and white onion, shitakes, and a few cloves of garlic. And for topping, sliced quarters of the leftover mushrooms and a few sprigs of fresh thyme. I heated the half-n-half and whisked in the now, very soft cream cheese. With these well blended I combined them with the penne into another mixing bowl and gave it a stir. Then I added the chorizo mix and finally the grated cheddar.

I poured the mixture into the oval dish, placing the mushroom pieces around the rim and the thyme sprigs in the middle. (I had steeped them in the half-n-half before adding the cream cheese, I almost forgot to mention.) With this complete, I placed it into a pre-heated 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. It was getting a touch brown, but still appeared juicy, so I turned down the heat (325) and left it in for around ten more minutes. It was nice and crispy on the top at this point, so I put it on a rack to cool for a bit and told the monkey that lunch was ready.

She took one look at it and requested milk. At this point I think she knows from experience that milk is one of the best things to extinguish the flames that accompany chorizo laden products becuse she picked at some of the noodles, and a few choice meat bits, declared "ooooh, that's spicey daddy" and commenced chugging her milk, afterwards excusing herself from the table to finish "camping out on our holiday" in her room.

Overall, I agree that this one was a little on the spicey side. As I'm sure a few of you know already, cream cheese may lend great flavor in this application, but without chemically binding it together with the rest of the ingredients, it is prone to turning into curdled bits during the baking, as it did in this case. The final outcome (in my humble, I ate half of it during the first seating kind of way) was thus summarized: fun flavors in a unique combination, but overall lacking in texture.

Is it worth sharing with the rest of the foodblogging community? Sure. Because the whole time I was preparing it, I was thinking of my family history. Of how my personal tastes reflect my bloodlines, not necessarily how I was fed as a child, and how spicing it up a bit is something I relish in doing. If food is anything beyond simple nourishment, as I'm sure many will agree, it is at the very least a way of sharing our past. With that said, if you want more explanation about the Californio thing read on......if not, I hope you enjoyed the post and find comfort in the fact that someone out there is putting together dishes that make sense to perhaps no one but themselves. And writing about them anyway.

And now for the rest of the story....

You see, my maternal grandma's name was Garner, one that can be traced to an English fellow who was part of a mutiny aboard a whaling ship in the mid 1820's off the So-Cal coast. This type of behavior was usually grounds for your captain to kill you, but if he didn't and instead manacled you and left you ashore, you were stuck wherever that may be. And so it was that my great, great, great grandfather found himself in "Alta California" in 1824, then part of the newly independent country of Mexico. He soon converted to Catholicism (baptized at Mission San Juan Bautista), married a local (herself a blend of native american and spanish ancestry), went on to become a prominent businessman and personal friend of many notable folks in early California around Monterey (he was the translator/secreatary for one of the first American Alcalde of California, Walter Colton) and was later killed in a raid by a local tribe, somewhere near the Fresno River, while he was making another killing of sorts: supplying early gold prospectors with provisions, and trying to find a source of the precious metal for himself.

It was learning about this ancestor and his progeny, that have made me pround of being a Californian with "roots" that pre-date statehood. I now have a better understanding of my place in modern American society as a Californio. So, being the scientist that I am, I started thinking about what else this meant. Although just about anyone would look at me and decribe me as a tall white male (a likeness toward Jesus I've been told several times, prompting my joking with it in an earlier posting), and it is true that my name is highly anglo, when it comes right down to it my basic cellular functioning carried out by my mitochondria were likely inherited from the indigenous population residing in California before European contact. Or in another scenario, it was inherited from a mestizo past, carried north from present day Mexico, and mingling with the former scenario, making it of indigenous origin still quite possible. How? While H was pregnant with the monkey we learned that although we inherit our DNA from both of our parents, a small portion of that, our mtDNA (if you didn't guess already, our mitochondrial DNA) is only handed down from our mothers. This fact allows modern geneticists to look at something with a set continuity in our genes, allowing them the ability to establish some deeper family genetics that is one of the key elements in our modern understanding of the distribution of peoples around the globe. It is this matrilinial genetics applied to my family that leads me to believe, through one way or another, that my mtDNA came across the Bering Land Bridge during the end of the Pleistocene. Geologically speaking this was only a few moments ago, but culturally speaking, a looooong damn time ago. As a geologist myself, I really dig this, and with the advances in genetics and the various genome mapping projects out there, I hope to confirm my hypothesis in the future.

The monkey and I sat down to this mornings breakfast of scrambled eggs with chorizo and homemade english muffins. I was struggling with how to best discuss this latest experiment. I looked at the muffin and thought about my wife's English and Scottish heritage. (Okay, so they really eat things more like crumpets, but we're in the right ballpark with the approximate size and shape.) I looked at the chorizo and eggs and thought about my own heritage (limiting it to the matrilineal for our purposes here), and it hit me. Our breakfast was in some bending of the imagination, representative of our kid, who ended up devouring all of the muffin and most, but not all of the chorizo flavored scrambled eggs. Yeah.....kind of like that whole thing about getting ALL of your mom's genes, but only most of your dad's. Our monkey is the product of the genetic union of paternal Californio genes and maternal British genes. Like Garner and his wife a long time ago, only backwards. With all of this in mind, the name came easy: californio mac-n-cheese.

Sorry guys, but what you were probably taught in school ain't quite right, because on a cellular level, you really are more like your mom than you are like your dad. It's really not that hard to imagine, if you consider how your being here speaks of a time when you lived in symbiosis within your mother, where having the same mitochodria was of critical importance to your miracle of being, according to modern theory.

Thanks Mom, for making me possible. And handing down some mtDNA that likes eating ALL of the chorizo on my plate, whether it is in scrambled eggs or put into less "conventional" things like mac-n-cheese.