Happy Birthday to Mom

Spiced plum vegan birthday cake for my mom

Note to Mom: Sorry this is overdue!

This weekend was my Mom's birthday. Although she's in Hong Kong, I meant to give her a surprise and write about the birthday cake I made for her on this blog. My mom, who became a vegetarian a long time ago, was the first person who told me back in the 90s that a vegetarian diet is much less energy-intensive than an omnivorous diet (read this Mark Bittman NYT article for a detailed analysis). Environmental considerations are one of my top, if not the most important, reasons for becoming a vegetarian. That's why I want to dedicate this vegan, low-fat spiced plum cake to her on her birthday. By the way, my mom looks much younger than she is, which I believe is in part because of her vegetarian diet. Her compassion and selfless spirit certainly help too!

I combined the recipes for the Rosy Peach Cake from FatFree Vegan Kitchen and Spiced Nectarine Cake from Bon Appetit, and substituted the fruits in these recipes with plums. I was on a shopping high at the farmers' market the previous weekend and bought more fruits than I could consume, and by this weekend my fridge still overflowed with plums. My mom is never a fan of frosted cakes, so I thought she would like this simple cake that made use of plums at their peak.

I cut down on the sugar called for and used only two teaspoons of oil in the batter with no detrimental effect. The cake was still moist, lightly sweet, and fragrant because of the plums and rose water in the batter. I sprinkled some cinnamon and sugar on top of the batter before baking to give the cake a rustic, golden-brown hue. As you can tell, I am no expert cake decorator - I simply dusted the cake with powdered sugar to make it a little bit prettier.

Cake dusted with powdered sugar (try pairing it with ice cream!)

Although the cake was great as is, I also tried pairing it with the new coffee ice cream from Starbucks. The combination was wonderful.

Happy Belated Birthday to my mom again!

British summer pudding

This Summer Pudding recipe from the July/August issue of Vegetarian Times caught my immediate attention when I received it in my mail. It looks elegant but requires little time to put together. In this version, freshly cooked summer berries (I used a mixture of strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries) are ladled into a "bowl" made of sponge cake slices, then the bowl is covered with more cake slices and refrigerated overnight. You serve the pudding by inverting it onto a plate and garnish with more berries. The cake slices take on a rosy tint after soaking up the berry juices. The "wow" moment comes when you cut into the pudding, and the berries burst out of it uncontrollably. The pudding is incredibly moist, lightly sweet, and you get heaps of perfect summer fruits in each bite.

Apparently this summer pudding is a mainstay in the great tradition of British puddings (although it's usually made with white bread). This BBC blog post proclaims the British invented puddings, trifles, and the like. So the British do have something in the dessert arena to rival the French.

Delectable British summer pudding

Like enjoying summer berries, another of my summer rituals is summer reading. I haven't been well-read enough to know before the famed American writer John Updike, who passed away in January this year. But I recently picked up his posthumous collection of short stories, My Father's Tears and Other Stories, from my neighborhood library, and was instantly struck by his extraordinarily adept use of the English language. His writing is hands-down one of the best I've ever read. His depiction of the everyday life of Americans, their love, fear, and trepidations, is piercing, beautiful and sad, yet sympathetic. Savoring his writing is like chewing on good food: it promises layers of complex, intensely gratifying pleasures, and always leaves you with a consummate feeling. Read more about John Updike in this New York Times article.

Writing to savor - John Updike's My Father's Tears

Simple summer cooking: make an open-faced sandwich!

The past few days have been hectic and I often got home late, and all I wanted for dinner was something simple. With the sun out till almost 9 pm, I just didn't feel like burying myself in the kitchen heat longer than I needed. I had bought a batard loaf from Oakland's Arizmendi Bakery, and I got a bunch of summer veggies in the fridge, so I decided to make some open-faced sandwiches.

Call it tartine or crostini, the open-faced sandwich is just some savory toppings on toasted bread. I took my inspiration from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Suppers as well as the July/August issue of Vegetarian Times. Once I heated some chopped heirloom tomatoes briefly in olive oil along with minced garlic and red onion, and finished with a couple drops of balsamic vinegar and seasonings. At the same time, I seared slabs of leftover tofu, then placed the tofu and tomatoes onto the toast, and garnished it with chopped mint. Served warm, the combination was simple, elegant, and delicious. The key is not to overcook the tomatoes so they maintain some structure, and let the tofu beneath them absorb their juices.

Sauteed heirloom tomatoes and seared tofu on toast

On another day I warmed some canned black beans with jalepeno chiles, and mixed them with ad-hoc pickled red onions (simply place the sliced onions in a mixture of apple cider vinegar and some salt and sugar for 15-20 minutes) and chopped parsley. For the sake of adding more colors to my meal, I made a quick Moroccan-style grated carrot salad tossed with olive oil, garlic, jalapenos, allspice, cinnamon, parsley, and lime juice. Then I spooned the two mixtures each on a toast. The entire preparation took just about half an hour. It's good to know that as you bite into the toasts with heaps of toppings on them, you are not piling on calories because there's only one piece of bread. Yeah, I guess this is another advantage of having open-faced sandwiches!

Black beans with pickled onions, Moroccan carrot salad on toasts

By the way, the batard bread from Arizmendi was awesome. The bread literally smelled of wheat and had the right chewiness and crunchy crust. I'd say it's better than the batard from another famed Bay area bakery, Acme Bread Company.

End-of-winter cake to celebrate the Summer Solstice

Today is the Summer Solstice (obviously Father's Day too), which provides another excuse to celebrate with...desserts! I want to feature a cake that marks the end of the long winter months, a light Orange Cornmeal Cake from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine. You are probably wondering - how about spring? Well, while there were days that felt like spring over the last few months in the Bay area, the mornings and evenings continued to be chilly so it's still like winter to me. Now that summer has officially arrived, I hope I don't have to bundle up anymore.

I am fond of Everyday Food because it is the first food magazine that ignited my passion for cooking. I remember poring over the magazine for hours and conjuring up all the dishes I wanted to make. Just a little bit bigger than a wallet, it includes a wide range of easy-to-prepare recipes (both vegetarian and non-veg) every month that are ideal for anyone who wants to cook gourmet but cannot spend hours in the kitchen. Like other Martha Stewart publications, its food photography is top-notch, albeit not as sophisticated looking as that of its sister publication Martha Stewart Living.

Back to the orange cornmeal cake. As summer fruits such as apricots and peaches phase out oranges in farmers' markets, I felt that I was hanging on to the remnants of winter by making this cake. I prefer cakes with some texture and this easy-to-prepare (as always!) cake fits the bill. The cornmeal in the batter makes the cake crumbly but it doesn't fall apart easily like cornbread. The orange juice keeps the cake moist and the zest gives it a slightly tangy flavor. This was actually the first time I used olive oil in baking, and while I didn't taste the oil in the cake at all, I believe the cake became lighter and more delicate because of it. I finished the cake by dusting it with some confectioner's sugar and sprinkling a handful of olalliberries (I bought them from the same farmer as last time) on it. Summer is not the time for heavy, buttercream-laden desserts, so make sure you get to try this cake before the last crop of oranges is over, say for afternoon tea or just as an everyday afternoon snack.

Have a wonderful summer and Father's Day everyone!

Everyday Food's Orange Cornmeal Cake