Catching Up, With Cake

I’ve been living at the center of the tornado that is student life for the past few months, and this blog has been silent because I haven’t managed to write anything that totally self-obsessed. Anything that isn't focused, that is, on questions about the nature of the self, the nature of our idea of the self, or the nature of what selves can do and how we should treat them, as asked and answered by David Hume, G.E. Anscombe, Sydney Shoemaker, Christine Korsgaard, and plenty of others. I've taken occasional breaks for thinking about Aristotle’s account of bravery. I then try to exemplify that virtue when I return to self-consciousness.

It’s unfortunate that I haven’t been posting, because this student life does not include a diet of instant ramen and dinner-cereal. Far from it. This is Berkeley, after all, and there’s no reason, excuse, or even feasible method for avoiding noteworthy food. And I’ve been experimenting with new things a fair amount – baking, braising, and freezing all sorts of substances. I’m going to try to catch up on the documentation over winter break, and of course I’ll be making countless new dishes to force on all the people who plan to come to town for the holidays.

But before I return to term papering, here’s a recipe to start off with. It’s one of a number of birthday desserts that I’ve made this semester, and the second one to include alcohol as a key ingredient. I find that people appreciate this on their birthdays. It was inspired by this year’s Anchor Steam Christmas Ale, a rich and spicy beer that could count as a dessert on its own. Upon my first sip, I immediately pronounced that it tasted exactly like cake, and promised to make it into one. Most things, after all, are improved by transformation into cake form.

Chocolate Birthday Beer Cake

1 box Trader Joe’s chocolate cake mix

Whatever else it lists on the back of the box, minus the water

Anchor Steam Christmas Ale

2 tsp cinnamon

Follow the directions on the box, but replace the water with an equal quantity of beer, and add the cinnamon. I didn’t frost it, because I didn’t have time to make frosting, and because I like cake better than frosting – especially this cake. But it would be excellent with some whipped cream. Or plain cream.

Subject Matters

I’m so sorry, blog. I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you. I’ve been thinking about you, and I’ve been thinking about food – and making it – quite a lot. But my camera is broken, and since I forgot to spend a few years as a financial consultant before signing up for grad school, I can’t afford to fix it. And somehow, slapping together some philosophical writing and a recipe without at least providing a nice picture doesn’t seem adequate.

But I thought about you the other day, when Stephen Yablo gave a talk on “A Semantic Conception of the Truthmakers.” His argument had something to do with the relevance of “subject matter” to the truth of sentences, which was supposed to capture our intuitions about when statements can be technically incorrect but “get something right.” To get to these subject matters, we have to subtract part of the content of the sentence from the rest of it, which can be illustrated by very complicated diagrams segmenting logical space in various ways. Or, Yablo mentioned, it can be illustrated by a simple analogy, like the explanation: “A gratin is a quiche that’s not baked in a crust.” You take the idea of a quiche, then you take away the crust, and what you get is an understanding of a gratin. Similarly, with statements, you take everything the sentence purports to say, then you subtract the bits you don’t think are essential to what’s being talked about, and you get the subject matter.

The problem with this is that there’s really nothing accurate about that explanation of a gratin. A quiche that’s not baked in a crust is a crustless quiche. It’s made with eggs, milk, and any number of fillings. A gratin involves no eggs; it’s generally made with a béchamel sauce using cream, butter, flour, and cheese. Perhaps a better example would be an explanation of a frittata: a quiche without so much milk.

This got me thinking about savory bread pudding, because I made some recently and had to explain it to people who had never heard of such a thing (and probably didn’t yet understand why you’d want to eat it). I think the best argument is a comparison to Thanksgiving stuffing: savory bread pudding is like that, but with milk and eggs instead of stock. The result is a very rich and delicious main course.

Here’s the recipe. You can add and subtract fillings you please, as long as we’re still talking about bread, eggs, and milk.

Fennel and Chard Bread Pudding

1 bulb of fennel, halved, cored, and thinly slice
1 large bunch rainbow chard, chopped
1 onion, sliced
3 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
Handful of parmesan shavings
3 ½ cups crusty bread cubes, toasted in the oven until crispy
2 ½ cups milk
3 eggs
Salt and pepper, to taste

Sautee fennel and onions until soft and wimpy, and slightly caramelized. Then add chard to pan in handfuls, adding when sufficiently reduced in volume. Toss vegetables with bread cubes and cheese, put into well-buttered and suitably sized casserole dish. Whisk eggs and milk together, season with salt and pepper, and pour over (I’m actually completely unsure of how much liquid ingredients I used; the mixture should come almost to the top of the bread, but not quite. Bake at 375F for 40 minutes, or until set. Sprinkle top with parmesan for the last few minutes of baking.

A New Plan, Gilbert Ryle, and Posole

Ok, here’s the new plan.

Each Wednesday, I turn in a few pages that attempt to make sense of some article or chapter on a philosophical topic of some kind. Most Wednesdays, others who have also just completed this task gather at my house for dinner. Both the discussion and the food aim to be sensible but innovative, and both are reliably satisfying.

So I’m going to start using these Wednesdays as the material for (I hope) weekly posts. Either I’ll put up the paper I wrote, or some discussion of the topic. Or discussion of some other topic, if I feel like it. And I’ll include recipes for the dishes that we deemed successful at dinner. Or other recipes, if I feel like it. None of this is set in stone.

Here we go. We have some catching up to do.

In "Knowing How and Knowing That," Gilbert Ryle elaborates a view of intelligence as a "skill," and intelligent action as "the exercise of a skill." He admits that an act itself has no distinctive marking of intelligence, since two acts could be indistinguishable though one is performed intelligently and the other is not. But this is because a skill is not a particular event itself, so would be incorrect to talk about it in the ways we talk about events, as being seen or unseen. To possess a skill is to have a particular kind of disposition, and possession of a disposition does not consist in actually being in a certain state, but in the truth of certain statements about what state one would be in if various conditions arose.

But what more can we say about intelligence, other than that we can't think about it in terms of a single isolated instance? Ryle seems to acknowledge the importance of distinguishing intelligent capacities from mere habits, but he fails to give a satisfying explanation of what it is that sets intelligent dispositions apart.

Whenever Ryle sets out to give an account of which counterfactual statements must be satisfied by an individual in order for his disposition to be intelligent, his analysis falls short in a specific way: the criteria that he enumerates are themselves intelligent capacities, so we come no closer to an understanding of the property of intelligence itself. Ryle is adamant that observation of action is sufficient for justifying attributions of intelligence: a chess player demonstrates his competence in chess with the moves he makes on the board, and nothing further is required. But what is it about his demonstration of those moves that makes chess-playing a matter of intelligence? Here and elsewhere in the chapter, Ryle refers obliquely to strategy: the chess player’s competence is shown in “the moves he avoids or vetoes," and the intelligent arguer has to “innovate,” be "on guard," and "exploit opportunities." A mountain climber must be “ready" to cope with any obstacles that come his way. But avoidance, exploitation, readiness, and innovation are all understood as processes that require intelligence, and we're interested in understanding that very concept, not just paraphrasing it. We still want to know, what is it about all of these activities that makes them intelligent ones?

It's striking that Ryle seems to blatantly ignore the somewhat obvious element shared by all of his criteria. Sure, he makes it clear that the player’s moving the chess pieces demonstrates that he knows how to move them – that he knows the rules for the types of moves allowed for each piece. But there is another kind of rule, or at least a feature of chess, that the player has to know to count as knowing how to play, which Ryle essentially leaves out: the player must know how to win the game. He must not just make legal moves, but make ones that will help him achieve his main aim of capturing the king. This omission is the source of the insufficiency of Ryle’s explication of the criteria for intelligence. It is fine to elaborate the specific ways in which an adept mountain climber or marksman would exercise his skill in order to reach his goal, but the key factor that separates these and all intelligent actions from mere habits and other simpler dispositions is that the agent has a goal. To act intelligently, the agent must antecedently grasp what it is to be successful in his endeavor, or what it is to win. Ryle is right to point out that since intelligence is a disposition, we must talk about it in modal language, using "could" and "would" statements. But to accurately capture intelligence, we must also recognize that the relevance of those "would" statements is determined by normative "should" statements. Intelligence must be explained in terms of successes and mistakes, in relation to a goal. Why does this seem to slip past in Ryle's discussion?

The end. Time for some Mexican stew.

Nopalito Posole

1 onion, diced
1 15 oz. can of hominy
1 qt. vegetable stock
1 cup tomatoes, diced
1.5 cups canned nopalitos, drained and rinsed
1 dried New Mexican chili
juice of 1 lime
handful chopped cilantro

Garnishes: diced avocado, crumbled cotija cheese, extra cilantro and lime

Sautee onions until translucent. Add next five ingredients, plus more water to cover if necessary. Bring to a boil, then simmer at least 30 minutes until stewy. Add cilantro and lime, and serve with extra garnishes.

Foraging

If you like getting stuff for free, Berkeley is a great place to live. That statement will strike many as strange and dubitable; let me explain. Yes, the cost of living in the Bay Area is one of the highest in the country. Rent is ever-increasing, water bills are staggering, and parking tickets should make up a significant percentage of the budget of anyone silly enough to have a car. But at least those costs are slightly offset by the incredible opportunities for foraging!

I now laugh at my former New York-resident self, selecting a plastic package containing three sprigs of rosemary from a frosty supermarket shelf, shuffling up to the check out line to hand over $2.99 for permission to take it home and cook with it. With an average of about three large rosemary bushes per block, no one in their right mind would ever think of paying for it here. Same goes for fennel fronds and lavender.

A few weeks ago I wanted to find a use for the nasturtiums that also grow everywhere of their own volition, including the entirely untended flower beds in front of my house. I used to eat them as a kid because nothing was more exciting that the idea of flowers you could eat, but I knew that I would enjoy their strong peppery taste much more now. I found some recipes for nasturtium butter spreads, but decided instead to incorporate them into mayonnaise, since I wanted to try making it with my new blender stick.

The blender stick method worked much better than my previous food processor attempts, though my hand did get a little tired holding down the power button for so long (woe is me and my electrical kitchen devices). It produced a very thick mayonnaise, probably thanks to the fact that I was forced to be patient about adding the oil since the stick took up most of the opening of the jar, and because I used two egg yolks instead of one whole egg. The chopped nasturtium confetti contrasted beautifully with the creamy white, and added an interesting sharpness to the flavor.

The mayonnaise went perfectly with all of the components of my mother's Shrimp Boil Birthday Dinner: we smeared it on boiled red potatoes, corn, shrimp, and soft herbed bread. It's an impressive jar to bring to a party, being both visually pleasing and somewhat conceptually unusual. You'll seem very gourmet, even though the key ingredient was plucked off a sidewalk. Don't worry, I washed it first.

Nasturtium Mayonnaise

2 egg yolks

2 tbps lemon juice

pinch of salt

3/4 cup oil (I used 1/4 cup canola oil and 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil this time)

3-5 nasturtium flowers, finely chopped

Place first three ingredients in a jar with a mouth wide enough to fit the head of the blender stick. Blend until well combined. Then, while blending continuously, start drizzling in the oil, literally drop by drop at first, waiting to add more until everything is fully incorporated. After the first 1/4 cup or so you can start adding more in each go. The mixture will get thicker as you go on. When all the oil has been added, stir in the nasturtium. Refrigerate.

Avocado Is Enough

Berkeley has a great philosophy program and everything, with well-respected faculty, and what seems to be a nice student community. But my presence here could be construed as somewhat overdetermined. Good quality avocados, while not necessary to my happiness (I coped without them for the better part of five years) are damn near sufficient for it.

My mother often served them for dinner, one half per person, the center where the pit had been filled with balsamic vinaigrette. For a long time that was virtually the only way I ate them, until Katherine showed me that they can be delicious with just a sprinkling of salt, if balsamic vinaigrette seems like too much of an effort. I discovered the avocado and cheese sandwich at some point in college; it seemed like it couldn't get much better than the subtle spectrum of textures of the creamy avocado, firm cheese, and toasted bread.

But the other day I found I was able to improve on this classic recipe, using another ingredient far more commonplace in California than other places I've lived: Tapatio hot sauce. It's quite potent stuff, and just a few dashes to stain a piece of whole wheat toast where enough to provide a good amount of heat. The sweet-and-sour spice brought out the fruitiness of the avocado, and reminded me again of some of the many reasons I'm happy to be here.

I encourage everyone to get their hands on a ripe avocado today, and try it out. I usually use a mild cheddar, swiss, or fontina, but it would be interesting to experiment with sharper cheeses. I don't melt the cheese because I like how the different types of firmness of the cheese and avocado compliment each other, but I toast the bread, usually a regular sandwich bread with a fine crumb, so that it adds a bit of crunch. This time I drizzled it with Tapatio, but mustard also works well. I layer the cheese on first, then slices of avocado, and often a sprinkling of course-ground black pepper.

Even in California, Deli Wine Is Only Suitable for Granita

The fact that you can buy wine and liquor at just about any store in California is pretty exciting, but it does not mean that you should just buy it at any store. This we found out the hard way on Friday night, coming back from the Best of the East Bay party at Jack London square. After we’d had enough of the party (and the fog started rolling in), we wanted to end the night with a bottle of wine at our apartment. So we stopped off at Bing’s on San Pablo, and picked up a bottle of something called Crane Lake Riesling. I have no idea what motivated the choice since I didn’t do the selecting, but it was not a success. In fact it was entirely undrinkable. The lesson here: if you make wine choices in the interest of budget, be sure to always have a reliable Trader Joe’s brand on hand.

In any case, we were left with a mostly full bottle of this headache-flavored syrup, and in our kitchen all things that get opened must be put to use. I deemed it too powerfully sweet for a savory application like coq au vin blanc, so instead I decided to repurpose it as a dessert. A recipe for white wine granita with rosemary and lemon was easily adapted to what I had on hand: basil and lime. I also scaled back the sugar since the wine was so sweet to begin with….and added more wine. It needed to go.

Because it requires attention at intervals spread over a considerable about of time, granita is an excellent cooking project when you have something else to occupy you in the house for most of the day. For example, a 550-page book on perception and objectivity. The somewhat crucial step is catching it when the first ice crystals start to form and scraping them into smaller ones. I was in the middle of a gripping section on Primitive Agency when this happened, so I got to it a little late. The crystal shards that I ended up with might have been a little bigger than desired, but they got fluffier and fluffier as I continued scraping, every half hour to hour.

The resulting granita was much more edible than the wine was drinkable. It was a beautiful pale jade color from the basil, and the herbal flavor and citric acidity did a good job covering up the obnoxious wine. I’m sure it would be absolutely amazing with a high quality wine, but if I had one of those, it wouldn’t get anywhere near my freezer.

Bad Wine Granita

1/3 of a cup of sugar (or less, depending on the sweetness of the wine)
250 mL water
200 mL white wine
4 large basil leaves, roughly chopped or torn
Juice of half a lime

Bring water to a boil with sugar and basil leaves; stir until sugar is dissolved, then turn off the heat and let cool, covered. When cooled, mix liquid with wine and lime juice (I discarded the basil leaves, but pressed as much liquid as I could out of them with a wooden spoon). Pour into a shallow container and put in the freezer. When the first ice crystals start to form, use a fork to break them into smaller bits and stir them into the liquid. This may happen one to two hours after placing in the freezer, depending on the dimensions of the dish. Repeat scraping process every hour to half hour afterwards, creating a light, fluffy texture.

Karadeniz Romano Beans

One of the best ways to satiate an appetite after several hours of climbing Istanbul’s steep hills is to step into a lokanta. At these cozy, informal restaurants, similar to traiteurs in France, the establishment’s offerings are all laid out behind the counter, which is great for the traveler who is less familiar with the names and contents of Turkish dishes than she’d like to be. You can point to and inquire about the various stews, pilafs, and salads and know much more about what you eventually request to have heaped on your plate than you would if you had ordered blindly from a menu.

The food at lokantas is usually simple and traditional, the kind of thing that benefits from being prepared ahead. But when the simplest food is prepared with good ingredients and small, painstakingly made batches, it can impress just as much as a fancy restaurant.

One lunch I had at a lokanta specializing in Karadeniz cuisine (from regions along the coast of the Black Sea) was particularly memorable. I had ordered a stewed romano bean dish that looked hearty and satisfying, but I discovered after one bite that it had much more to recommend it than its nutritional value. There was some subtle ingeniousness to its flavor, soft yet slightly tangy, the herbs and spices blending into a single coherent background, making it difficult to identify and single component.

When I saw some romano beans at the Beehive Farmer’s Market down the street from my new apartment, I decided to try to recreate the dish, even though I knew it would require a lot of experimentation to get elusive the seasoning right. My first attempt included rosemary, garlic, and onion for aromatics, and a splash of balsamic vinegar for some depth and a balance to the sweetness of the tomatoes. It was good, but nowhere near revelatory. I left most of my spice collection in New York, and cooking with the more limited supplies I’ve gathered here is like switching from a grand piano to a 49-key Casio keyboard. But I believed I could still do better, and the next day I reheated it with some fresh sage, more fresh rosemary, ground sumac, and dried thyme.

Day two’s version was better, and in fact very good. A slice of Acme’s herb slab stood in place of the shopping bag of fresh, fluffy foccacia that came with each table at the original Karadeniz lokanta. Below is the recipe for an approximation of the final version, but if you’re on your way to Istanbul, let me know and I’ll have Katherine take you to get the real thing.

Note: Even more than expected, this is definitely a dish that improves as it sits in the fridge. The last helping, consumed on day three, was by far the best, and a rival to what I had in Istanbul.

Karadeniz Romano Beans

Slightly less than 1 lb romano beans (I happened to have grabbed 4/5 lb)
1 8 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Half a medium yellow onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
6 inch rosemary sprig, chopped
2 large sage leaves, chopped
½ teaspoon sumac
½ cup water
Salt and pepper, to taste

Trim ends of romano beans and cut into halves or thirds, depending on size. In a deep saucepan or Dutch oven (one of which I am now the proud owner, or at least borrower!), saute onion in olive oil for a few minutes until softened and slightly browned. Add salt and pepper, rosemary, garlic, sage, and sumac, cook a minute more. Deglaze with balsamic vinegar, then add tomatoes and bring to a boil. Add beans and water (add more water if the mixture doesn’t cover the beans, then reduce to a simmer and cover. Cook for 50 minutes, until beans are very tender. Let cool in the pot for 15 minutes or so, allowing the stew to thicken.

National Picnic Day

Happy National Picnic Day! Have you had a picnic yet today? You’ve got half an hour left. I celebrated by eating lunch on the fire escape, feasting my eyes on the view of the BQE onramp (and, to be fair, the distant top of the Statue of Liberty).

I should have gotten to this post sooner, to offer advice for those already planning picnics and to inspire the rest to get up from the computer, go outside, and eat something. But I think what they always say about Earth Day applies here too; therefore, “Every Day Is Picnic Day,” especially at this time of year. Take a look at these pictures and recipes from picnics past, and pack one for tomorrow. There’s no chance of rain.

Gado gado: peanutty potato salad.

Chips and dips are always a good idea.

Flowery cookies to eat amidst flowers.

Does a snack count as a picnic? These spiced cashews were a good accompaniment to reading in Carroll Gardens Park. Combine chili powder, cayenne pepper, dried rosemary, and salt and grind with a mortar and pestle. Spray roasted cashews with cooking spray and stir with spice mix.

Sometimes picnics are best without recipes. A few carefully selected ingredients made a good spread on Governor’s Island. Crunchy vegetable + cheese + bread/crackers + fruit is usually a good combination. And if it’s not enough, there’s always the Dippin Dot vending machine.

May Flowers

I’ve been hoping that recent April showers will bring some May flowers. The April flowers have been lovely, but it’s always good to have more.

I’ve been trying to think in general about how to celebrate the advent of May; I participated in some memorable Maypole events as a kid which piqued my interest in all things pagan, and I would kick myself every year for failing to wake up at dawn and wash my face in morning dew collected from some nearby shrubbery. I don’t think New York has any morning dew – and even if it does I’m certainly not getting it anywhere near my eyes – so I’ve had to come up with alternative plans.

Many May Day traditions involve the bounty of flowers that appears at this time of year, so as a small preliminary celebration I decided to bake something florally-inspired. There’s been a jar of lavender sugar sitting untouched in the cupboard for several months now, and spring seemed like the perfect excuse to test it out. Though some people find them too “soapy,” I’ve always liked flowery flavors – candied rose petals, jasmine tea, the violet ice cream they sell at the Jardin de Luxembourg. I was hoping that the lavender sugar would infuse a batch of cornmeal cookies with a substantial perfume.

The final result was less dramatic than I had envisioned, but the cookies turned out pretty damn good nonetheless. I increased the ratio of cornmeal to regular flour to ensure a satisfying gritty crunch, and the buttery flavor of corn (and ten tablespoons of butter) was complimented by lemon zest and a subtle background of lavender. What surprised me most was the texture: I’ve gotten used to baking dense, shortbread-like cookies, and the addition of an egg created the perfect degree of tenderness for pairing with a cup of coffee.

Lemon-Lavender Cornmeal Cookies

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar (I used half lavender sugar and half regular sugar, but using all lavender sugar would probably be excellent)
zest of half a lemon
1 egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

Beat together butter, sugar, and lemon zest until very creamy. Add egg and beat until well-mixed. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, and slowly add to butter mixture. Form dough into a log and wrap with wax paper or plastic wrap; chill for at least an hour. Slice into ¼-inch rounds and bake on parchment paper at 350 F for 10-15 minutes, until edges are just beginning to turn golden. Remove from baking sheet to cool.

Cheese Cake

Today I made a cheese cake. Not a cheesecake, but a cheese cake. A cheese-like cake. A cake that looks like cheese.

There was an occasion for this cake. It was Mike’s birthday, and his 23^rd year needed to be celebrated in some suitably sophisticated way. And just in time, the perfect plan dawned on me: a cake designed to look like a wheel of brie.

A little back-story: Mike came home from work a few weeks ago with a nine-pound wheel of brie in his backpack. His employer, it turned out, had decided that cheese was now an acceptable form of remuneration for his hard work. I’ve never seen myself in the film industry, but the pay scale does seem attractive.

Nine pounds of brie was almost more than our refrigerator could handle, but we dutifully (and happily) whittled away at the wheel at an impressive pace. Even with our enthusiasm for brie and crackers, brie sandwiches, brie quesadillas, and just plain brie, it’s taken almost a month to get down to the last wedge, and I don’t think any of us will be running out to buy more for a while. So I figured that coming home to something that looked like another huge wheel of brie would make an impression.

For the cake, I used a simple recipe for carrot cake, omitting the pecans in the original and adding coconut instead. Since I didn’t have a round cake pan, I had to do a little engineering to create a circular cake. After baking the cake in a rectangular sheet pan and letting it cool, I inverted it onto a wooden board and used a paper plate as a template to cut out two semi-circles. After sliding them into place, I covered the cake with cream cheese frosting and adorned the top with some customized and very convincing cheese labels, carefully Photoshopped by Chase. A bunch of grapes on the side of the cutting board completed the effect.

I was thrilled that the final product turned out so realistically cheesy, but I didn’t expect to have discovered such a deliciously moist carrot cake. I’ll be going back to this recipe for all kinds of occasions in the future, for trompe-l’oeil purposes and otherwise.

Carrot Cake

4 eggs

1 ¼ cups vegetable oil

3 cups grated carrot

1 ½ cups sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 350F, and grease and flour a 9 X 13 inch baking pan. Beat eggs, sugar,vegetable oil, and vanilla together. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in carrots and coconut. Pour into baking pan, and bake for 40-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

For frosting: beat together 1/2 cup butter, 8 ounces cream cheese (both at room temperature), 4 cups confectioners sugar, and one teaspoon vanilla or other flavoring.

Irish Inspiration: Beer Bread and Green Soup

St. Patrick’s Day, for me at least, approaches with less anticipation than most other holidays, with the exception of, maybe, Ash Wednesday. I try to remember to remind myself to wish my dad a happy birthday over the phone, but that’s pretty much it. I’m not that into parades or Irish-themed drinking establishments – for both genres, it seems like if you see one you’ve seen them all. But for some reason, when I walked into the office today to find that my friend had made chocolate Guinness cupcakes for the occasion, I suddenly felt like I was under-celebrating.

I needed a festive cooking project, and beer cupcakes reminded me of a phase I went through during senior year of college: beer bread. At the time, cooking with beer seemed like a novelty (actually, the novelty of cooking of any kind hadn’t quite worn off), and the claim that mixing flour and baking soda with a can of beer could get you homemade bread required testing to be believed. In trying it, I learned that beer bread is unbelievable. Stirring in the beer creates a tantalizing yeasty aroma without the stress of activating any yeast, and the elastic dough bakes into a moist, dense crumb with an impressively professional crust. This time I mixed in some chopped basil and cubed cheddar, little bursts of cheese and herb flavor throughout each slice. Now that I’ve revisited the recipe with this loaf, a list of hundreds of variations to try has been running through my head: figs and gorgonzola, olives and goat cheese, fennel seeds, citrus zest, flax seeds, hazelnuts. I promise, the basic recipe is a magic trick that makes perfect fresh-baked bread appear in your oven.

Of course, I have no evidence that beer bread is particularly Irish. The fresh pea soup I made to go with it didn’t fit with the holiday’s ethnic aspect any better, but it was a strikingly bright green, as I the rolling hills of Ireland are said to be. All in all it was one of the best meals I’ve produced in a while, so I wasn’t concerned with whether it paid an accurately homage to St. Patrick or his native land. I was, however, very grateful for the inspiration.

Beer Bread

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

4 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 12-ounce can of beer

Optional add-ins: ½ cup to 1 cup cheese (diced or crumbled), dried fruits, olives, nuts, 1-3 tablespoons fresh chopped herbs, anything else that sounds good

Whisk together all ingredients besides beer in a large bowl. Pour in beer, and stir until completely incorporated, forming a fairly stiff, springy dough. Pour into a greased 9 X 5 inch loaf pan. Bake at 375F for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top is crusty and toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Bright Green Pea Soup

1 pound frozen peas

1 large onion, diced

½ - 1 cup chopped fresh herbs (mint or cilantro; use more if cilantro)

2 (or more) cups chicken or vegetable stock

Salt and pepper

Saute onion in a medium pot until it softens and becomes translucent. Add peas, and pour in enough stock to cover all ingredients, plus a little more. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Puree in a blender in batches (filling it no more than 1/4 of the way each time, or else the hot soup will explode all over you when you turn on the blender – just trust me), adding in the herbs. Alternatively, use a blender stick directly in the pot. Add stock to desired consistency, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a squeeze of lemon or drizzle of olive oil.

Preppy Pickles

Chase is brewing beer again, and, not to be outdone, I decided I needed my own project involving culinary chemistry in glass containers. And I decided it was going to be pickling. Sure, my undertaking was on a smaller scale. While a six-gallon fermenter sat in the corner, on the other side of the kitchen I selected a clean and sturdy pint jar from the cupboard. The brewing took several hours of active labor and would take about a month and a half to become beer, but the pickles were supposed to be ready the next day, if not sooner. Ok fine, we were working on entirely different magnitudes. I was still going to make pickles.

I had tried pickling once before, with an intriguing cinnamon-infused red grape pickle. It had a complex flavor that was great as a sweet-and-sour addition to salads. But I figured it was time to try a savory pickle, and with an over-abundance of baby radishes in the fridge, radish pickles it was. I also threw in a few carrot sticks to see what would happen to them.

Preparing the brine, pouring it over the vegetables in the jar, and sticking it in the fridge was simple enough and came with no surprises. I fished the jar out of the fridge about a day and a half later to see the results. It seems that pickling inevitably makes things become somewhat less attractive, perhaps in solidarity with the wizened women who stereotypically make them. The radishes had shriveled slightly and leached the ruby pigment of their skins into the brine, leaving them a pale pink. But they tasted great. The salty tang was a nice counter to the spiciness of raw radish.

Even though it was gray and drizzly outside, the fact that it was warm enough to replace my winter jacket with a sweatshirt made me feel particularly Springy, and I liked that color of the pickles matched the tulips at the flower stall down the street. With minced pink and orange pickles, bits of pale green celery, and a spoonful of yellow mustard, the tuna salad I made for lunch looked like something from a J. Crew catalog. But much less expensive.

Preppy Pickles

1 ¼ cups water

1 cup white vinegar

¼ cup sugar

1 ½ tablespoon salt

1 ½ tablespoon pickling spice mix (from Sahadi’s)

Baby radishes (with slits cut into the tops of the larger ones) and carrot strips

Place the vegetables in a glass jar and combine the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for two minutes. Pour brine into the jar and allow to cool. Place in the refrigerator for about a day.

Snow Day Ice Cream

Another blizzard, another day’s plans erased by snow. So much snow. More snow than I’ve ever seen before. What are we going to do with all this free time, and with all this snow?

Staring out the window at the flurries that were now traveling horizontally, I began to wonder: could we eat it? For a fleeting second I contemplated how silly I would feel googling “recipes with snow,” but saved myself the embarrassment when I remembered Paula Deen’s demonstration of snow-based ice cream. I don’t know how she got snow into her sunny Savannah kitchen, but I recalled her mixing a bowl of it with condensed milk and telling us all to give it a try. What better use of a blizzard and a long-forgotten can of condensed milk could there be?

The idea of consuming the product of New York precipitation did give me some pause, however. This isn’t exactly the kind of city where I would regularly graze on what I find lying around in the street (which you can totally do in like, Singapore, right?). But I must have inhaled about a pound of the stuff walking home last night, and I felt fine this morning. Plus, friends far more paranoid and germophobic than I am deemed it a fine idea. I’ll also admit to a reassuring “eating snow” google search.

I selected a Tupperware snow catcher and placed it on the fire escape, but the small amount of snow it caught was melted by a short interlude of sun. In the end, I collected a sample from the untouched deck/roof behind the apartment. The recipe said to use eight cups of snow for one 14-ounce can of condensed milk, but scooping snow in precise cupfuls turned out to be difficult. I estimated that I got about six cups into the container, packed fairly densely.

Once inside, I dumped the stuff into a large bowl, poured in about two-thirds of the condensed milk and a capful of vanilla, and tried to combine them without melting the snow too much. It did lose a lot of volume in the process, so I put it in the freezer afterward to try to resolidify some of the puddles that had formed. After about a half an hour it seemed a good consistency. I stirred in chopped mint and scooped it into a glass, adding almonds for some crunch.

The snow ice cream was, as you might expect, not indistinguishable from real ice cream, and had more in common with a creamy granita or milkshake. But it tasted great. Condensed milk never disappoints the taste buds, and it took on a very nice perfume from the mint and vanilla. I can imagine all kinds of flavorings and additions working well in this context – fruit syrups, jams, liqueurs, and any kind of small crunchy candy.

I would eat this every day until the snow melts if carcinogen build up were not an issue. As it is, I'd call this a great activity best limited to one blizzardy day a year. And since I no longer have any use for the snow, I hope it hurries up and melts into spring in the very near future. Skipping straight to full-on summer would be fine by me as well.

Snow Day Coq Au Vin

What do you do when work ends early due to inclement weather and you find yourself with an entire afternoon and evening free? Well, first, you get yourself out of the muddy slush-swamp that Midtown has become, and back to the muted serenity of Brooklyn. Then, as the snow rises higher and higher against the window panes, you think of something warm and rustic to make for dinner, something special enough for the occasion of a historic blizzard but rustic enough to make the apartment feel like a log cabin. And something that will take up the whole afternoon.

Obviously, you make coq au vin. At least, it was obvious to us. The brilliance of coq au vin is that it manages to be elegant without the slightest hint of pretension: it puts delicious use to the cheapest parts of the chicken and it doesn't require particularly skillful culinary maneuvering (it will probably taste good no matter what), but it ends up seeming lighter and more delicate than the potato-based peasant food you might make instead. It could be that the pearl onions and the ruby tint of wine give the impression of luxury, or that quartering tiny brown mushrooms and tying together a bouquet of fresh herbs produces images of Shakespearean wood nymphs. I'm not sure. The point is, a pot of chicken and vegetables simmered in a wine-based broth for two or three snowy hours has the power to turn a Snow Day into a European Vacation Day.

Like I said, it's not hard to do. You'll need four chicken thighs, some vegetables, a bottle of the cheapest red wine, and a few bunches of herbs. First, season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper, then brown them in a wide pan. Sauté some chopped carrots and peeled pearl onions (chopping off the ends and boiling them for a minute will help the peels come off) in a large pot, adding minced garlic for a minute or two at the end. Put the chicken thighs in the big pot, pour in a little more than a cup of wine, and about the same amount of chicken or vegetable stock. (Measurements aren't important, use just enough to cover everything.) Throw in a few spirgs of sage, rosemary, and thyme, and add a dried bay leaf. Bring everything up to a boil, then lower the heat and cover the pot. Leave the kitchen to discover what day-time TV is like.

After an hour or so, or between magazines or worthwhile TV shows, heat up the pan used to brown the chicken and sauté some quartered mushrooms in that delicious leftover fat, until they've exuded all their juices, shrunken to an even more endearing size, and started to brown at the edges. Add them to the pot about 20 minutes before you deem the whole thing pretty much done (we let it simmer for about two hours, but if you get desperately hungry before then I'm sure it would be ok to cut off the cooking earlier). Finally, take the chicken and vegetables out of the pot with a slotted spoon and place them in an attractive (Ikea) serving dish. Turn the heat to high and reduce the liquid to a satisfying thickness, adding a tablespoon or so of flour if you want. Pour the sauce over everything in the dish (don't worry, the chicken is underneath there somewhere).

Some recipes say to serve it with egg noodles, but I prefer it (like most things) with large amounts of crusty bread on the side. It also goes nicely with mulled wine, and since the discount rack at Warehouse Wines has produced some disasters lately, you probably won't want to drink the rest of that bottle unadulterated anyway. After a plate of coq au vin and a mug of hot wine, your core temperature will be primed for venturing into the blizzard in search of snowmen.