Balls and Walnuts
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Killer Clafouti
It’s only a killer if you follow these instructions, and you are struck in the carotid artery with a large shard of glass. Otherwise, it’s merely tasty.
One more caveat: I haven’t made this yet with blueberries. Tomorrow maybe. Julia’s recipe uses 3 cups of pitted black cherries; blueberries should work, but they are a wetter fruit than cherries, so the result may be a bit odd. I’ll let you know.
Blueberry Clafouti (inspired by Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1)
Preheat oven to 350F.
Cleaned and ready to use: two small boxes of blueberries — about 2 cups (enough to cover the layer of your pie pan one-blueberry-deep)
Place the following ingredients into the blender jar in the order listed. Cover and blend at top speed for one minute:
1 1/4 cups milk
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup flour
Melt about 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter in the bottom of a nonstick metal pie pan or pyrex pie dish (7 to 8 cup volume). Coat bottom of dish with the butter. Pour enough batter into the pan to make a 1/4 inch layer. Put it into the oven and wait until you have a rather firm layer adherent to the bottom of the pan.
Add blueberries and spread them out, single layer thick. Sprinkle 1/3 cup granulated sugar on top of the blueberries, and add the rest of the batter. (You might want to whir up the batter for a few seconds before adding it.)
Bake for one hour. It should puff up and be brown on top (between the berries). Sprinkle top with powdered sugar and serve hot or warm.
***
Coming soon:
I succumb to Candy’s meme, “Ten celebrities I would shag.”
Later!
D.
Dumbass move of the day
Karen wanted a blueberry clafouti for breakfast today, so, loving husband that I am, I obliged.
In case you’re saying, “Huh? Wha?” a clafouti is a fruit pancake you bake in the oven. Or a giant muffin, something like that. You mix the batter in a blender, and then you pour some of the batter into a deep pie dish and let it set up a bit in the oven. Next, you add fruit, sugar, and the rest of the batter. Bake for one hour. Dust with powdered sugar.
I became inpatient with the “let it set up a bit in the oven” step. After waiting three or four minutes, the batter still had not firmed up, so I placed the dish (a heavy glass pie dish, oven safe, but not Pyrex) over a low heat. I moved it frequently so that it would heat in an even fashion.
Floppy defeats Blogger! Woo-hoo!
I’m not sure how I did it, but I managed to import my blogger archives into this new & improved WordPress Balls and Walnuts. For what it’s worth, here’s what I did:
I replaced my Blogger template with Andy Skelton’s template script (the stuff in the gray blockquote box).
Next, I went to my wp-admin dashboard, clicked on Import, and then clicked on Reset this Importer. I guess that got rid of my previous screw-ups, because this time, I was able to click on my blog-of-choice (Balls and Walnuts, of course), and it worked!
Since I’m still feeling siiiiick, I spent the last hour or so categorizing my May ’05 posts. As of this instant, all of the April and May ’05 posts are categorized. I’m going to try chipping away at this, a little each day.
Only one problem importing from Blogger: the photos I had uploaded using Blogger’s photo import tool did not transfer over. Out of laziness, I deleted those posts. Fortunately, I didn’t use that tool very often.
‘Kay, that’s it for tonight. See ya tomorrow.
D.
PS: This should go without saying, but some folks are as dense as I am, so . . .
Make sure you make a copy of your Blogger template before substituting the Skelton template. That way, you’ll be able to restore your Blogger blog to its original glory after you’re done importing to WordPress — assuming you want to do that.
Best. Biscuits. Ever.
From Cook’s Illustrated, the best cooking magazine ever (July/August 2004):
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon double-acting baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1.5 cups cold low-fat buttermilk
nonstick cooking spray
To form and finish the biscuits:
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- Adjust rack to middle position and preheat oven to 500F. Spray 9-inch round cake pan with cooking spray, dust with flour, set aside.
- In food processor, pulse the dry ingredients and the butter until pebbly. Transfer to mixing bowl and refrigerate until the oven is preheated.
- Add buttermilk. Stir until the wet and dry ingredients are just combined.
- Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, scoop out some dough and drop it into the all-purpose flour. Gently coat with flour and roll the biscuit from hand to hand to get rid of the excess flour. Drop it onto the cake pan. Repeat. You want the biscuits to touch one another. (Cook’s Illustrated sez: 9 biscuits snugly around the perimeter of the cake pan, three in the center.)
- Spoon melted butter over tops of biscuits. Bake 5 minutes at 500 degrees, then lower oven to 450. Bake an additional 15 minutes or until the tops are golden.
- Cook’s Illustrated sez to cool in pan 2 minutes, invert onto a dish, and cool 5 minutes longer. We eat ’em straight out of the oven.
These biscuits will totally effin KILL your low carb diet. They’re great as is, but they’re extra decadent with honey and more butter.
Tonight, I made these biscuits, ham, and candied yams. Not bad, considering I ate some bad chicken yesterday, and I’ve felt bloated and nauseated ever since. Oy.
D.
The better-late-than-never thirteen
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Thirteen Memories of Food
2. In Kindergarten, we had to drink milk at recess. Had to. You couldn't throw away your milk unless the level had dropped down below the level of the cow's bell. 3. First grade: I remember the taste of guinea pig pellets (not bad) and nontoxic paste (bad). I would taste anything. I'm still that way. 4. In case you haven't guessed, I used to have pica. From that link, I learned, "Pica is most common in people with developmental disabilities, including autism and mental retardation, and in children between the ages of 2 and 3. Although kids younger than 18 to 24 months can try to eat nonfood items, it isn't necessarily considered abnormal at that age." Good to know. My favorite nonfood items: the shellac on the wood of my bedframe; chalk from any source, even the ground; tar dripping off telephone poles. 5. On the other hand, I hated bananas, carrots, cantaloupes, raw nuts, and avocado. They made my throat itch. (Remember that, Sis?) Nowadays, naturally, I love 'em all. 6. I've never tasted breast milk. (That's a non-memory.) 8. When my mother made brown rice, I would slather it with margarine and soak it with soy sauce. "You must be half-Chinese," she'd say. 9. But I was all kwailo as far as my girlfriend's mom was concerned. For the most part, I loved her cooking, as long as she didn't try to feed me fish stomach. I found out later (long after we broke up) that the woman really, really liked me. She even liked my mother. No surprise there. 10. Worst thing eaten at a Chinese wedding: squab, poorly prepared. 11. Best thing eaten at a Chinese wedding: abalone, well prepared. 12. First year away from home, my boarding house mom fixed dinners for me and my roommate. Marguerite Slater, a wonderful woman, had a catering business on the side. She had even met Julia Child. I think often of Mrs. Slater, and grumble over the fact she would never part with her apple pie recipe. The. Best. Ever. 13. In the Berkeley Co-ops, the students took turns preparing meals. Worst idea ever: tuna jello. I missed out on that one, thankfully.
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Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Britney Spears’s Li’l Road Warrior
Sean Preston Federline-Spears enjoying a morning out with Mom. Like mother, like son?
D.
The future is now
Jules White, Typewriter, Photo-Collage
Jake finished reading Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger yesterday, so today we had him begin reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night (upbeat stuff, eh?) He got stuck on this passage:
It is a curious typewriter Mr. Friedmann has given me — and an appropriate typewriter, too. It is a typewriter that was obviously made in Germany during the Second World War. How can I tell? Quite simply, for it puts at finger tips a symbol that was never used on a typewriter before the Third German Reich, a symbol that will never be used on a typewriter again.
The symbol is the twin lightning strokes used for the dreaded S.S., the Schutzstaffel, the most fanatic wing of Nazism.
Jake’s problem with this? He’d never seen a typewriter, and couldn’t imagine how such a thing could work.
Even with ample visual aids, he still didn’t quite get it. I showed him the high magnification image, pointed out all the parts, described how they worked. Next, I took a #2 pencil and scribbled out a dense rectangular box of graphite. I flipped this paper onto another paper, and by marking firmly on the back of the first paper, I left a mark on the second.
“Like that,” I said. “The key strikes the ribbon, which contains ink. That’s like the graphite on this piece of paper. It transfers the ink to the typing paper.”
He got it eventually, but the whole thing proved surprisingly difficult. Now, I’m wondering what’s next. Will I have to buy him a sliderule on eBay to prove to him that, yes, you can work trig functions with a clever bit of plastic?
Go on — I know some of you must have similar stories.
***
In other news: suddenly, I’m the WordPress God. I figured out how to put a frog on my header all by myself! You’re looking at a Dendrobates leucomelas, also known as the yellow-banded poison dart frogs. They are native to northern Brazil, parts of Guyana and Venezuela, and they’re a hearty species, easily kept and bred in captivity.
We don’t keep leucs. We keep blue poison dart frogs (Dendrobates azureus), a frog so beautiful folks never believe they are real until they hop.
Honestly, though, I haven’t yet achieved WordPress godhood. I have yet to solve my Blogger importation problems, and I can’t figure out why other computers besides this one refuse to recognize my password. That’s why I haven’t been able to post in the morning. No, it’s not a cookie problem; I’ve made the cookie settings as permissive as possible and it does not seem to help.
Time for The Daily Show.
D.
An Idiot’s Guide to Blogging
I’d like to thank all of you who have gone out of your way to help me with my troubles — Pat, Hedgehog & Peacefrog, Monica, everyone. Thank you.
By the way — Monica? You beat me:
And now, I would like to share a little bit of what I have learned. About blogs, not sluttiness. Clearly, I have much to learn about sluttiness. I mean, 49%? I’ve never scored 49% on a test, never.
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Finding time
I finished seeing patients at 4:30, then popped over to St. Mammon to see a patient and leave a note. By 5:20, I’m home — far earlier than usual, so I thought for sure I’d get some worthwhile editing in this evening, or at least a big chunk of blogging time.