Green Tea Everything

When Alex and I were walking around Tokyo and Kyoto, we were almost always within sight of a vending machine. These machines were quite welcome, because it's humid and warm there, and we were usually in need of a drink. I soon latched on to my favorite thirst quencher: iced green tea, unsweetened. I found it the ideal refresher, with just enough stimulant to perk up a caffeine wuss like me.

But green tea wasn't just hanging out in the ubiquitous vending machines. Green tea flavoring was everywhere, especially in desserts. In the Kyoto train station, Alex ordered a green tea parfait that contained green tea–flavored ice cream, pound cake cubes, mousse, gelatin bits, wafer cookies, and more items I can't remember. It was a tall sundae glass filled with various hues of forest green.

The Japanese employ green tea the way we do chocolate here: Soft serve ice cream comes in vanilla, green tea, and swirl. While I often found green tea treats overly bitter, it succeeds brilliantly in that glorious East-West union: green tea ice cream. The tea's bitterness meets the cloying sweetness of ice cream in a refreshing, perfectly balanced dessert. I like it far better than chocolate ice cream, which I've always felt doesn't do chocolate justice.

The day we left, I picked up some matcha, powdered green tea, and tea leaves. Thanks to the Japanese genius for illustration, I was able to understand the package directions for iced green tea (2 teaspoons of leaves in 1 quart of water; let sit 40 minutes and drain; chill). It's great fuel for working in the summer garden. The matcha I'm saving for ice cream.

Tools of Dessert

For Christmas Alex received a crème brûlée kit: a butane torch and six ramekins. So on Boxing Day, when family members dropped by for the third day of present opening, he decided to put his tools to use. Unfortunately, the traditional method of making crème brûlée — stirring cream and eggs over a double boiler while it slowly thickens — required too much patience for a 14-year-old, and the result was sugary soup.

Last weekend he wanted to re-try, and I found a better recipe on the inner tubes. This one requires baking the custard in a slow oven: no stirring required. (Thanks to Walter S. Burton's aunt Carol for the recipe.) However, the butane torch also requires some restraint: to get a golden, crisp sugar crust, you need to hold it at a distance and slowly move the flame over the sugar. Our crème brûlée was set on fire and well blackened. But I've always liked my marshmallows well burnt, so I was happy with it.

No-Stir Crème Brûlée

2 cups cream
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
Light brown sugar for topping

Heat oven to 275°. Whisk together the first four ingredients and pour into four 7-ounce ramekins. Place in a baking pan in the oven and pour hot water in the pan until it reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Cook for about an hour — it's done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cool, and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Sieve an even, 1/4-inch layer of brown sugar over the top of the custard and torch until it forms a crust.

Seven Kinds of Cookies

In the 1800s, when cookie baking reached its peak in Scandinavia, there ensued a competition among households in which the host of a gathering would try to produce more types of cookies than that served at the previous party. The competition grew so extreme that eventually everyone tired of it and settled on a reasonable number: seven.

To this day, a coffee table must include seven kinds of cookies or small cakes. And so, my contribution to the Christmas smörgåsbord this year were those seven batches of cookies. Running clockwise, starting with the hazelnut biscotti, are jam cookies (made with ground almonds, egg whites and cloudberry jam), pepparkakor (gingersnaps), spritz (almond-flavored butter cookies), sesame cookies (made with tahini and whole-wheat flour), flourless chocolate cookies, and pretzel-shaped cardamom butter cookies.

Visual Appeal

Ever since I wrote an article about the baking competition at the San Mateo County Fair, I’ve been meaning to enter a cake, a loaf of bread, or a plate of cookies. I tasted the goodies along with the judges, and I think I could give the winners a run for their money. But here’s what holds me back: I can’t make anything look pretty. While taste is the most important factor, cuteness counts, too.

My pies are always dripping juice, my cakes break apart when I try to ease them out of the pan, and my breads come out lopsided. They look appetizing in a rustic, homemade sort of way, but they’re not for show.

The cookies sitting inside the glass cabinets at this year’s fair were adorable, and way beyond my capabilities. I’m thinking I’ll start next year with a quick bread — if there’s no frosting or cutting involved I might do okay.

Chocolate Science

For several years now I’ve been cultivating a hypothesis that baking soda corrupts chocolate. I’ve noticed that brownies, cakes, and cookies made with baking soda or powder (which contains baking soda) have a bitter edge and less chocolate taste than those without. I’ve never liked chocolate layer cake (which uses baking soda to make it rise), though I adore chocolate torts (whose rising agent is egg whites), and in my mind Oreos are an abomination—chocolate in color only.

In keeping with the principles I learned in Mr. Freeman’s seventh-grade science class, I conducted an experiment. I made a batch of brownies from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts—her West Coast Brownies, as I am on the West Coast and it was the only brownie recipe that included baking soda. 

To avoid variances in ingredients, mixing, and baking times, I made a single batch of brownies up to the point of adding the flour. I divided the batter in two using a scale, and added flour, baking soda, and salt to one batch; flour and salt only to the other. I baked them in a single jelly roll pan, divided in the middle with aluminum foil. A green sticky note, which went from the mixing bowl to the pan to one side of the oven, noted which was the baking soda side. 

When I pulled the pan out of the oven, I saw that the baking soda batch was darker and riddled with pockmarks—which had me panicked that I had gotten the sides mixed up, as I figured the soda side would look nicer. But after I cut the cakes into individual brownies, it was obvious I hadn’t, as the soda brownies had risen higher. They also held together better than the soda-free brownies.

The taste test, conducted by family members present at baking time, determined that the baking soda brownies were more bitter and had an unpleasant baking soda aftertaste. The soda-free brownies were yummier, with a more prominent chocolate flavor.

My hypothesis about soda was correct: It does interfere with chocolate. But I think the amount of flour may play a larger role. My favorite chocolate brownies, which contain a third of the flour, are much better than either of the experiment batch.

One thing is certain: More research is needed.

Mission District Bakery Secret Revealed

Years ago, when we first moved to the north slope of Bernal Heights, near San Francisco’s Mission District, I started frequenting the panaderías on 24th Street. I tried a couple different bakeries and a variety of pastries, but as enticing as they looked in the window, invariably I found them stale, some to the point of needing a chisel.

I gave up on the panaderías, but one day after I had promised toddler Alex a treat, we passed a window showcasing rainbow sprinkle–covered cupcakes, and he had to have one. As I knew he wouldn’t much care about freshness—he would declare his cupcake delicious as long as it was brightly colored and sugary—inside we went. But this time, I realized the mistake I had made on previous visits.

Other customers were grabbing trays and tongs at the checkout counter and heading into the back of the store. We followed them and found ourselves in the bakery kitchen. There, workers were loading baking sheets directly from the oven onto carts, and customers were filling their trays with these freshly baked goodies. Fortunately, sprinkled cupcakes were on the day’s menu, so we grabbed one, plus a few sweet rolls, and brought our tray back to the checkout counter.

They were delicate and delicious, as to be expected from pastries that had just left the oven. The window pastries are for display only. Now I know. 

Bûche de Noël

The bûche de Noël, an edible Yule log, is France’s greatest contribution to the Christmas season. A sponge cake baked into a thin layer is topped with chocolate buttercream and rolled up—then decorated with more buttercream, meringue mushrooms, and perhaps a marzipan mouse—to resemble a log that happens to be lying on the forest floor. 

My 15-year-old niece Isabel created this bûche de Noël as extra credit for French class. I remember when her mother, Anna, made a similar one at the same age. It reigned over the holiday sweets during a Christmas party until someone couldn’t stand it anymore and snuck a slice.

Fun Food Finds

I first met Castelvetrano olives at a dinner party in Bernal Heights, and immediately fell in love. Grown in Sicily, where they are harvested young and cured in a light brine, they sport a beautiful, vivid green hue. But their greatest attribute is their complete lack of bitterness. Buttery, relatively salt free and bursting with oil, they’re the milk chocolate truffle of the olive tray.

Without the edge that other cured olives give to a sauce or stew, they’re best eaten plain, as part of an appetizer tray. They’ll appeal to people who don’t normally warm to olives.

In September, faced with a box of Bartlett pears that were fast turning into mush, I searched for a recipe that would use up a bunch of them. I found one by Maida Heatter: a pear crisp that called for candied ginger. I’d never used candied ginger before and wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I found it easily in the baking section—a tin of chopped young ginger preserved in sugar.

 

The ginger gave the pears (whose quiet personality all but disappears when cooked) a pleasantly spicy kick. And the little bits made a great snack: because they’re so potent, just one or two wake up the tastebuds. I’ve added them to ginger snaps for extra heat, and I’ve stewed them in milk for a soothing, sweet ginger chai.

I spent a cold Saturday morning in Berkeley sealing bag after bag of za’atar mix for the International Solidarity Movement. I messed up the first bag, so I had to buy it; because it was in my kitchen, I had to use it.

The complex, slightly bitter mixture of wild thyme, sumac and sesame seeds is used in the Middle East as a topping for labneh, or yogurt cheese; it’s also mixed with olive oil and spread on flatbread. I used it to coat squares of feta cheese and found it brought the mild cheese to life. I plan to use it as a dry rub for chicken breasts.

Canned-Pumpkin Pie

Several Thanksgivings ago, I headed down a path of twisted logic that went something like this: Fresh berries make a better pie than frozen berries. Therefore, fresh pumpkin will make a better pie than canned pumpkin.

Because I had won the annual family fight over who brings pie to Thanksgiving dinner, I had an opportunity to showcase the best pumpkin pie ever. I announced to everyone that I’d be making a real pumpkin pie. This meant, of course, that I’d need to buy a pumpkin and process it myself.

I purchased a cooking pumpkin at the farmers market and went through the hell of hacking it up, scraping out the seeds, steaming the flesh, and mashing it to a pulp. I then added the usual ingredients—evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, and spices—as I’ve always been fond of the recipe from the pumpkin can label and didn’t see a need to monkey with it any further.

I proudly transported the pie, which came out a lovely burnt-orange, to my parents’ house. When the main course was finished and it came time for dessert, my sister produced another pumpkin pie. She diplomatically explained that her children, being kids, preferred the canned variety.

Alas, my pie was a bust. The pumpkin was stringy, and raw-tasting, and altogether too squashy. I set my slice down and fought for a sliver of my sister’s pie. My nieces and nephews knew the truth all along: Canned is the way to go. I haven’t veered from that path since.

I’d include the recipe for best-ever pumpkin pie here, but you can find it on the can label. If, that is, you can find one during the expected canned-pumpkin shortage. I’m going to stock up.