orange cling peach oatmeal cobbler

In hindsight, I think that the peach tree we had in our backyard when I was a kid had to have been an Orange Cling. The fruit were never as big as these ones I got the other day at the Alemany farmers market. Perhaps they’re “super-sized” to look more attractive? Whatever the reason, these peaches are the bomb!

Usually, I don’t go for fruit that much at all. But the sweet and tart aroma from these was so intoxicating that I couldn’t resist. The couple selling these beauties had nothing else in their stall at the market. They knew a good thing, that’s for sure. I ate a couple of peaches as soon as I got home, channeling Gary Paul Nabhan for sure! Steven suggested I made a cobbler with the rest. (Was that in the book, too?)

beautiful and aromatic orange cling peaches

orange cling peach oatmeal cobbler

6 orange cling peaches, pits removed, cut into wedges
9 tbsp sugar
½ cup flour
½ cup oatmeal
1 tsp baking soda
Pinch salt
½ stick cold butter cut into small pieces
5 tbsp Kefir yogurt

Pre-heat oven to 350F.

Place peach slices in the bottom of a glass baking dish. Sprinkle with 4 tbsp sugar. Mix dry ingredients and remaining sugar together. Add butter and mix with your fingers until it becomes crumbly. Fold in Kefir yogurt.

Using a spatula, place blobs of batter over peaches. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the dough comes out clean. The crust becomes a dark golden color. Remove from oven and let it rest for 10 to 20 minutes. Serve with your favorite ice cream or by itself. Yumm!

orange cling peach oatmeal cobbler ready for the oven

orange cling peach oatmeal cobbler cooling off

This oatmeal crust reminded us a lot of the stunning oatmeal pancakes that they serve at Just for You Bakery Café. We’re still looking for a recipe for that, so more to come!

orange cling peach oatmeal cobbler is perfect for a clear warm night

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.

If you have cholesterol issues skip this recipe. I made an almond, cherry and coconut flavored cake the other day with a recipe that called for egg whites only. Eight of them! Then I was stuck with 8 egg yolks. My first thought was to just discard them, but I hate being wasteful. Then I decided to make this decadently luscious Brazilian sweet that’s very popular throughout the country.

Brazilian quindim

Basically quindim is a mix of egg yolk, sugar and coconut baked in the oven that turns into a custard-like crust-less pie. You can bake them in individual small trays or do as I did and make one medium sized cake. I used fresh coconut which tastes better.

It’s delicious, and sweet but never too sweet: just the way I like it!

Brazilian quindim

8 egg yolks passed through a strainer
½ cup sugar plus some
2 cups freshly grated coconut (or dried)
1 cup of water
1 tbsp butter plus more for greasing the pan

fresh coconut is best though a bit more work

To prepare the coconut:

Using a cork screw puncture two holes through the soft ‘eyes’ that the coconut has at one of its ends. Drain the coconut water. Drink it right away or refrigerate to enjoy it cold later. It’s a delicacy that’s uncommon in the States!

Crack the coconut shell open with the help of a hammer or heavy cleaver. To detach the meat from the shell, insert a knife between the shell and the flesh to loosen all the edges until the meat pops out. Cut off brown skin layer around the meat. Rinse to remove any impurities. Place coconut in food processor and spin to grate it. Freeze any leftovers.

To prepare quindim:

Preheat oven to 375F.

Grease baking dish with butter then sprinkle sugar all over it and set aside.

Meanwhile bring water and sugar to a boil. Stir until sugar dissolves and forms a medium thickness syrup. Add butter and remove from heat. Let cool.

Mix in coconut and egg yolks until incorporated. Transfer to baking pan. Bake for about 60-70 minutes in bain-marie.

What is bain-marie? That’s when you place a dish for baking in another larger one full of water. This lets you cook the food at a constant temperature, using the water as a conductor. To do this, place the quindim tray in a larger tray in the oven. Fill the larger tray with about ¾ of the way with hot water, keeping it out of the quindim dish. And there it is: an improvised bain-marie device.

My friend, Sandy, who lives in the Silicon Valley, surprised me again with luscious fresh fruit from her own backyard. A while back she presented me with beautiful purple passion fruit, which I promptly devoured.

loquat AKA nêspera

This time around she brought me a whole bunch of loquats, also known as nêspera. The fruit was completely ripe, bursting with sweet and sour flavors and hints of pineapple, peach, nectarine, and the taste of the tropics; in other words, simply delicious.

Like the passion fruit, nêspera also brings me back to sweet memories from my childhood growing up in the tiny village of Olegário Maciel, Minas Gerais State in Brazil. We had a loquat tree that grew right outside our kitchen in the backyard from seeds we’d inadvertently discarded out there. (Brazil is very lush, isn’t it?) My mom nurtured the tree until it became fully grown.

To please my mother, my dad or maybe my older brother, I don’t remember which one anymore, dug the earth around the tree to form a bench with a half moon shape. He (they?) covered it with stones that my dad had cut himself from a quarry nearby. Then, he mounted an old wagon wheel around the trunk to make a table. It was shaded by the loquat tree and became one of my favorite places to hang out after school. I’d spend time eating snacks, playing, taking naps and climbing the ‘table’ to reach for the ripe nêspera fruit.

The nêspera tree had a sad end though. It got infested with bats. My mother was terrified of them for fear that they carried rabies. She insisted that the tree must go! And that was it. Dad cut it down to right about the height of the ‘table top.’ It wasn’t a total loss as a place to rest in the shade, as a branch of an avocado tree from the neighbor’s garden covered it somewhat. But the place didn’t look the same anymore and of course, no more fruit. That was sad.

Later we learned that that type of bat is a frugivore: a fruit eater. Those bats particularly liked loquats.

So no more nêspera for me from my own backyard. But it’s cool to have some from the fertile land of Santa Clara that also nurtured Apple, Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Intel, HP and so on and on and on. It seems so high-tech

nêspera growing in the land of cabernet: this tree was growing on the grounds of the Beringer winery in Napa County

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?