We at weirdcombinations had the pleasure of meeting Sean Timberlake from Hedonia and now, his latest blog-venture, Punk Domestics, a while back for drinks and pizza at the oh-so-trendy Mission hot-spot, Beretta.

Sean Timberlake’s strawberry jam with balsamic and black pepper

Sean and Hegui had been corresponding for a while, and both Hegui and I had been admiring Hedonia since we started blogging last year. I even commented on Sean’s strawberry jam when he posted it in May because I was so excited by the black pepper. How marvelous to have a jar of this homemade hedonic delight presented as a get-to-know-you gift at our first meeting. Thank you, Sean!

Well, we’ve finally eaten through our boring store-bought jams, so this morning, we cracked open the real thing. We ate it with a baguette from Acme. I also tried it with some sunflower butter and bread.

you'll jump out of your pants, too, when you try Sean Timberlake’s strawberry jam with balsamic and black pepper

It worked really well with breakie, regardless of what your preconceived notions might be about balsamic and black pepper in the morning. Mostly it tasted like strawberries but with a deep yet subtle earthy flavor—kind of like a fine red wine. We loved it!

Wow! If you ever make more, Sean, I’m willing to pay you…

Sean Timberlake’s strawberry jam with balsamic and black pepper on a slice of Acme baguette

sweet potato ginger bread

I’m getting more engrossed in Stephan Pyles’ The New Texas Cuisine. This recipe comes directly from the book. He calls for pumpkin but recommends sweet potatoes as an alternative if pumpkin isn’t in season. I made this quick bread following the directions but ran into some problems. I think that I ended up with too much batter, as my loaf pan overflowed in the oven, thus necessitating that I finally clean the blasted thing! How annoying! Plus, to add insult to injury, even though my toothpick came out clean, the center of the bread wasn’t fully done. Next time, I’m choosing a flatter dish in the hope that it will cook more completely. That said, this recipe is spectacular and very, very gingery.

crystallized ginger

molasses and dark corn syrup are key

sweet potato ginger bread

¼ cup butter
½ cup canola oil
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
juice of ½ orange
2 medium sweet potatoes
2 tbsp diced candied ginger
3 cups flour
5 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
¼ cup dark corn syrup
½ cup molasses
1 tsp baking soda
¾ cup boiling water

Pre-heat oven to 350.

Boil sweet potatoes until soft all the way through. Drain. Remove peels and blend to puree with food processor. Strain to remove any stringy bits.

Cream together butter, oil and brown sugar. Mix in eggs one at a time. Fold in orange juice, sweet potato puree and candied ginger.

Sift flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, salt and baking powder together. In a separate bowl, mix corn syrup, molasses, baking soda and boiling water. Gradually combine flour mixture with creamed sweet potato mix, alternating with the corn syrup mix. Pour finished batter into baking dish. Bake until toothpick comes out clean. The book recommends about an hour for a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan.

We had ours for breakfast. Yum!

sweet potatoes and orange

Whenever we go food and cook ware shopping in the Richmond District, we try to go to Green Apple Books before hitting Richmond New May Wah and Kamei House Wares. They’re all near one another on Clement Street, which makes it convenient so long as we’ve scheduled enough time.

Rainier cherry almond cake

Time is an issue as we both get lost in the labyrinth that is Green Apple. That used bookstore has got to be one of the best in San Francisco. Steven goes directly to the fiction and history sections and I immerse myself in the cookbooks. I like to look at old cookbooks books just to see what people were eating at certain earlier points in time. It’s also cool to look at the book binding styles, formats, writing styles and so on. Old books are fun! I particularly like those books printed in glossy paper that’s turned yellowish and it seems that the pictures and lettering have somehow faded and blurred, just like an old tattoo on someone who had a wild youth. These books have a Zen look; you know, that feel of beautiful decay.

I saw this almond cake recipe in one of those out of focus well used books. The bad thing is that I don’t recall the name of the book or the author’s name, so I can’t give it here.

I think that this cake is perfect for people who don’t like their desserts to be overly sweet. It turned out yummy. We had it as a dessert for a dinner party then ate the leftovers for breakfast.

fresh Rainier cherries

Rainier cherry almond cake

Dry ingredients:

1 cup flour
½ cup rice flour
1½ cups powdered sugar
¾ cup blanched slivered almonds, pulverized in food processor

Wet ingredients:

1 cup freshly grated coconut (or dried)
3 sticks salted butter (nuked in the microwave for a minute or so to melt)
8 egg whites
1½ lbs pitted fresh cherries, cut in halves (I used Rainier cherries)

Pre-heat oven to 375F.

Mix dry ingredients together.
Pour melted butter and egg whites over it. Whisk to combine. Add coconut and mix until it’s all incorporated.

Transfer batter to a greased baking dish. I used a 10 inch round glass pan, 2 inch deep. It should fill the dish about ¾ full. Depending of the size of the eggs you might end up with extra batter. If that happens, put the rest in another dish and bake separately. You can also use a larger pan and add more cherries to the top. The thinner the layer of cake the less time it will take to bake it. Place cherries halves on top, cut side down.

Bake for about 50 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick in the center. If it comes out clean then it is ready. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 8 minutes. To remove from dish, slide a knife around the border to release the cake then turn it upside down on a kitchen towel and then turn it over to a cooling rack.

Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

I used the egg yolks in a different recipe to make this delicious Brazilian quindim.

biscoito de polvilho azedo AKA sour manioc biscuit

Growing up in the countryside in Brazil was not fun in the sense that we didn’t have a bakery to go to every morning to get bread. On the other hand, it was great because my mother liked to bake. She had a rustic wood burning oven built outside the house near the kitchen in the same style that you might see at California pizza shops. She would fire up this oven once or twice a week, to bake for the crowd. The aromas that permeated the air are still vivid from my childhood memories.

One of the things I adored was the biscoito de polvilho azedo or sour manioc biscuit. This Brazilian biscuit has the consistency of profiterole shells; they’re soft, chewy, airy inside and crunchy on the outside. But whereas profiterole shells are almost flavorless, biscoito de polvilho has a salty and tasty sour flavor which I think goes well with dinner or with a good cup of black coffee or even café au lait.

I’ve forgotten my mother’s recipe but the other day I was looking at my blogger friend, Neide Rigo’s site and found one there that resembles my mother’s. Neide calls it Rosca de Polvilho, which is the name for the same dish in the southern part of Brazil.

I made it at home and it turned out fabulously.

some key ingredients for biscoito de polvilho azedo AKA sour manioc biscuit

biscoito de polvilho azedo AKA sour manioc biscuit

1 cup flavorless oil (e.g., canola, almond)
1 cup water
2 tsp kosher salt
5 to 6 cups of sour manioc flour/starch
1 cup whole cold milk
2 eggs
grated cheddar (optional)

Pre-heat over to 485F. Grease a couple of large baking trays and set aside.

Bring water, oil and salt to a boil. Place about 3 cups of manioc flour in a large bowl. Whisk in boiling liquid to scald the manioc flour. Mix until incorporated. Add milk and eggs then continue mixing. Add remaining flour in stages until it’s all incorporated. The dough will be ready when it stops sticking to your hands.

Shape dough into ping-pong ball size rounds and place them 2 inches apart on baking tray. Bake for about 22 minutes. The biscoitos will puff up and the bottoms will brown a bit.

mixing the dough

preparing the dough for baking

hot from the oven

Serve hot. I added grated cheddar at the top for additional savory flavor, but you can leave the cheese out.

oven roasted sweet potatoes before "the accident"

Eat your sweet potatoes! They’re tasty (and sweet). They make a perfect side dish for almost any meal: breakfast, lunch or dinner. They’re good snacks, too. Plus they’re nutritious with loads of vitamin A, complex carbs, protein and so on.

This oven-baked sweet potato chip recipe is really easy to make. It’s delicious and has vibrant and inviting colors, which adds to their overall appeal. Unfortunately, we only had the chance to sample a few from this batch. You see, I accidentally dropped the tray on the floor! Ughhh! According to Murphy’s Law, the buttered side of the bread always hits the ground first. Well, in my case, the sweet potatoes made it first. I’m not that clumsy normally. I just don’t know what really happened to me that day, At least Clarence loved the extra treat he got for dinner that day.

Oven-baked Sweet Potato Chips

4 longish sweet potatoes in mixed colors (mine were orange and yellow)
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp canola oil
1-2 tbsp potato flour
Cayenne pepper (optional)
Sprinkle of lemon juice (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 450F.

Peel sweet potatoes and cut into long strips or chips. Add to a bowl and toss with salt, pepper and oil. Dust chips with flour. Place chips sparsely on a tray that has been greased or lined with parchment paper. Transfer to oven and bake for about 10 minutes. Carefully turn chips over and bake an additional 15 minutes or until chips have shriveled up a bit and become browned.

Serve hot but be careful: these things can quickly get out of hand and hit the floor!

walnut raisin bread

This recipe is in latest issue of bon appétit, in the reader’s favorite restaurant recipes section. I love making recipes from magazines. I think that it’s a real test of the magazine’s quality if it turns out well in my kitchen. I’ve dropped several food magazines (that shall remain nameless) after trying a few of the recipes and having them not turn out right. I know, I know, it’s easy to point a finger at the home cook and blame the problem on “operator error.” But I don’t think so. Aren’t these food ‘zines written for people just like me? Shouldn’t the recipes be designed for “normal” cooks? That’s our approach here at weirdcombinations: exciting food for regular people. Plus, not to be too grandiose, but I’m a good cook, period. So excuse me!

Well, despite all of that hoo-haw, I find baking a bit challenging. There’s all that kneading and raising and the exact oven temperature and, of course, you can’t boil the yeast as it will never grow. Ugh! So complicated! I’m a bit freestyle in the kitchen and this whole “scientific” approach to cooking is a real downer. But one reaps what one sows, so most times that I adventure into the realm of bread baking, the results aren’t that great. But I want to be good. I want to change. I know that I can!

This bread has been my first attempt at the new ME. Of course, I’m still the old me, too, so I made a little change, but a minor one. I left out the pecans because I don’t care for them. Sorry, Georgia. Everything else is THE SAME. I even used a thermometer to make sure the water temperature was ideal for the yeast to develop! Can you even imagine?

I liked the end result. But what I liked most was the wonderful lingering yeasty sweet aroma of bread permeating the house for the few hours after I finally took the thing out of the oven. It brought me back delightful childhood memories of my mom baking her signature bread, ‘rosca de trança,’ that looked a bit like a brioche, though is sweeter and less airy. I’ve tried to make it many times all to no avail. Perhaps, in light of this successful walnut raisin bread, I should try again?

Walnut Raisin Bread

2 cups warm water (~110F)
3 quarter oz. envelopes of dry active yeast
¼ cup canola oil
2½ tbsp sugar
1 tbsp Kosher salt
5½ cups flour (plus more kneading)
2 cup raisins
1 cup walnuts
¼ cup brown sugar

Mix 2 cups water and yeast together in a large bowl and stir. Let it stand for approximately 10 minutes so yeast will dissolve. Stir in oil, sugar and salt. Add 5½ cups of flour and mix until roughly blended with fluid ingredients. Flour your work surface, such as your counter top. Knead dough until it becomes smooth, about 8 min. Add more flour if the dough is too sticky. Add raisins, walnuts and brown sugar. Knead further until incorporated. Transfer dough to a lightly greased bowl. Cover with cling film and refrigerate overnight.

The following day, line two baking trays with wax paper.

Split dough into two even pieces, and form each into 6-inch round. Make sure raisins are submerged in the dough, otherwise they will burn and impart a bitter flavor to the bread. Place rounds on trays lined with wax paper. Cover with a towel. Let rise in a warm and draft free place about 2 hours or until size has doubled.

Pre heat oven to 350F. Bake bread for about 50 minutes. To check for doneness tap bottom of bread and listen for a hollow sound. Remove from oven. The magazine encourages you to wait for it to cool before slicing. Whatever. We sliced into one loaf immediately and savored it with fresh salty, oozy, melting butter. Delicious!

doce de abóbora em pedaços

Doce de abóbora em pedaços or “sweet pumpkin in pieces” is a common roadside snack that you might see while travelling in São Paulo state on the way to Minas Gerais in Brazil. There’s another version that uses green papaya instead of pumpkin. The secret ingredient is this chemical called cal virgem. We bought some of this whitish powder, anxious that the border patrol would find it in our luggage and think that we were importing cocaine or something naughty. Nobody in Brazil seemed to know exactly what “cal virgem” really is. Thank god for the Internet! Turns out that it’s just calcium oxide, also known as lime: so not nearly as nefarious as we had feared.

What makes this sweet interesting is the firm almost crunchy exterior with the soft creamy interior. It takes a while but it’s actually easy to make so long as you have the cal virgem. I ended up with quite a lot of the stuff so we’re still snacking on it after more than a week. I think that if you have attractive jars, that this would make a lovely gift.

key ingredients for doce de abóbora em pedaços

Doce de Abóbora em Pedaços

1 lbs. winter squash (I used butternut)
1 tbsp. cal virgem
4 cups sugar
2 liters and 2 cups water
12 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick

Peel squash. Remove seeds, inner stringy parts and woody parts. Cut into 1 inch cubes. Mix cal virgem in 2 liters water. Add squash and allow to sit for two hours.

Drain water and thoroughly rinse squash. Using a fork, poke each piece of squash once to allow liquid to enter.

In a large pot, add sugar, 2 cups water, cloves and cinnamon. Cook on high until sugar melts into liquid. Add squash, bring to a boil then simmer until ready, about 20 to 30 minutes. Refrain from stirring the squash to prevent damaging it. It’s ready when a fork passes through easily.

Let cool and enjoy. This makes a great dessert, snack or breakfast food.

I never really liked canned or bottled juices. They always seem to taste a bit too sweet for me. Orange juice is especially tricky: often it comes with additional, unwanted pith and peel flavors, which makes it bitter; and it either tastes like plastic or metal from the container. Not good.

freshly squeezed Texas and blood orange juice

So over the weekends I try to prepare fresh juice for our breakfasts. It’s a really nice treat. One of the many benefits of living in beautiful California is that fresh, flavorful and economical citrus is available most of the year. This time of the year is really exciting, as all of the fruits come to market. I’ve seen lots of different types of lemons, grapefruit, tangerines, oranges and so on. Sometimes we even have friendly neighbors delivering citrus to our door from their gardens or country homes.

Last Saturday I squeezed fifteen oranges to make this “true blood:” seven sweet Texas and eight Moro blood oranges. Moro oranges are the darkest of the blood oranges around here. Neither orange is very juicy, that’s why I used so many. I like them though because they’re the sweetest.

blood and Texas oranges on the half shell

Just like on that HBO program, this juice is loaded with life sustaining goodness: lots of anthocyanins and other antioxidants.

It’s a breeze to make though you may need to put some muscle into it. Simply squeeze the oranges and serve in tall glasses. Add ice if you like it cold.

I don’t remember if the Texas oranges come from Texas. Maybe they’re from here, or perhaps Louisiana?

I’ve been putting off writing about the “toad skin” melon since we got back from Brazil a few weeks ago as I’ve been trying to figure out what we’d call it in the U.S. No such luck. According to the Cambridge history of the world of food, there are hundreds and hundreds of kinds of melon: so sort of hard to know if there is even an equivalent one here.

melão pele de sapo

Hegui was convinced that he’d seen melão pele de sapo in San Francisco markets under another name. I’d never really paid attention before. But now I’m intrigued so will search for it as we roll into summer.

That Cambridge story is pretty informative. I didn’t realize that melons were thought to originally come from Africa, for example. And though I’d always considered melons and watermelons related, I’d never considered placing cucumbers in the same group. Did you know that in times past, melons were considered status symbols in northern Europe due to the difficulty and expense of their production? Me neither! The story even alludes to their symbolic sexual meanings in literature and culture. To borrow a phrase from someone I know, “Interesting!”

I'd never really thought about it much but melons do have sexual meanings, don't they?

Our melon had a green striped skin that kind of looked like toad skin. Weird how the name of the fruit does make sense, yet it puts me off as something to eat. Doesn’t ‘toad skin’ sound just dreadful for breakfast?

The flesh was a pale greenish, yellowish white. I thought that it tasted like honeydew and was “subtle.” Hegui was more blunt: he said it was “boring.” Perhaps it wasn’t quite ripe enough? We’d just finished eating these super sweet almost over-ripe mangos, which might have clouded our judgment on the melon.

melão pele de sapo flesh

melão pele de sapo slices

Guava is a very popular fruit in Brazil, particularly in my home state of Minas Gerais, where it’s grown all over. As a kid I remember climbing guava trees in the woods behind my house and gorging myself on those delicious, flavorful fruits. Mmmmm!

pedra do baú - Mantiqueira Mountain Chain

luscious red guava

Guava can be pinkish-red or white. They have a “tropical flavor:” sweet and a bit sour with a tad of bitterness. They also smell sweet, sometimes too sweet; almost like something is about to rot and get very scary, but in a good way. I favor the reds over the whites, just like wine.

Besides eating the fresh fruit you can make it into killer desserts and jams. I especially liked the guava jam my mother used to make. My bro Nelson still makes it the way she did.

guava at a Brazilian fruit stand

Ripe guava has a thin peel that can be yellowish or light green. Just under the skin there is a thick grainy layer of fruit surrounding a very smooth and creamy pulp that has hundreds of little rock-solid seeds. The pulp is the most flavorful part but be careful with your teeth. The entire fruit, including the skin and seeds, is edible.

To make a delicious, creamy guava jam, however, you only use the pulp. Really it’s more of a “guava butter” than jam though I eat it in the same way that I would jam. If you’re going to make it, the recipe’s fairly straightforward. Just split the guava in halves. Using a spoon, scoop out the pulp and place it in a large pan with sugar. Cook it for a while. Then strain to remove the seeds and store in a jar. It is very laborious, but well worth it. I do not know the proportion of guava pulp to sugar. If you’re really interested, e-mail me and I’ll get the exact recipe from Nelson.

charming mountain city of São Bento do Sapucaí

On my recent trip to Brazil for my nephew’s university graduation, there was no homemade guava jam waiting because everyone was busy doing other stuff. Too bad! Luckily I came across a road-side shop on the way to visit my hometown, Olegário Maciel, MG, that sold it. I bought a few jars from that vendor. Their shop is located somewhere close to the city of São Bento do Sapucaí in the beautiful, green Mantiqueira mountain range that divides the States of São Paulo and Minas Gerais.

This particular shop has been there for quite some time. They sell all kinds of Brazilian sweets that have not quite yet made it to mainstream supermarkets, like guava jam. Guava comes in at least a dozen different ways, including jams, jellies, candies, whole fruit in sweet syrup and firm “bars.” Delicious!

Mantiqueira mountain range in fog

I brought back several jars of guava products in my luggage. The guava jam and fruit in syrup pictured here are just two examples. We’ve already eaten through almost two jars of the jam since our return about two weeks ago, spreading it on bread or cake for breakfast. Another great way to serve it is as an appetizer with cheese and wine, similar to quince jam and cheese with wine.

I’ve seen fresh white guava for sale at the Alemany Farmers’ Market. I spoke with one of the farmers who says she also grows the red but the season was later in the year. Guava jam is sometimes available at specialty and Brazilian markets. When we lived in Queens it wasn’t that hard to find. In San Francisco, I’ve mostly seen the guava bar variety and guava mixed with doce de leite at Brazilian markets. If you do bump into guava jam at your market don’t hesitate to try it. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.

preserved guava jam and fruit