zuchotto

(daddy, mama, michael, nardo, kevvie, j, bill, sue, mary, frankie-baby, james, moi, joseph, jim & joe. mara & col were gone by then and old greg graciously took this one for us. and i have no idea where steven was. i kept asking and never got an answer.)

this past weekend, we had my favorite annual tradition: gaining four pounds in two days while the ice in our drinks melts way too fast in the sweltering northern virginia august. also known as the hughes cousins convention at uncles jim & frank's.

after a solid year of emails and obsessive, mouth-watering discussion, jim & i finally got to make our zuchotto. bill recorded it for posterity. because by the time it was unveiled, jim & i were SEVERAL margamaritas in. what? they're GOOD.

zuchotto is a dome-shaped confection compromised of layers of pound cake "bricks," whipped cream with roasted hazelnuts and whipped cream with chocolate chips, all generously doused with booze and set in the fridge for several hours.



so, basically, you line a bowl in cheesecloth, spray booze, then line it in bricks. which you spray with booze.


does my family turn it ON when there's a camera, or what? this was about 10am. if mama didn't do it, kevvie would have had to, but he was busy JUMPING OUT OF A PERFECTLY GOOD AIRPLANE at the time.



then a floor of whipped cream with whichever mix-in. you want to alternate. then bricks. then booze. repeat as necessary.



we used about five 8" pound cakes, 2 quarts of heavy cream and... um... some nuts & chips. and booze.


young james was SUPER helpful with disposing of leftover bricks. spread with nutella, natch.



did i say REAL whipped cream? cause: REAL. and unsweetened. trust me.







after a good spraying, wrap her in cheesecloth, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 7-24 hours.







perfect!


and HUGE. cutting through it wasn't doing my tendinitis any favors, let me tell you. so uncle jim took over and people started sharing cause-- whoa-- my uncle cuts a serious piece of cake.





(i mean, he DID jump out of a perfectly good airplane that morning!)

mama guest blogs: from the red recipe binder files

(also known as: blogger bail-out. because my mother hates to see me be lazy on the interweb.)

The Red Recipe Binder

My mother (Clare’s Mimi) says that I “couldn’t find the kitchen” before I got married, which is true. I lived at home. My grandmother did all the cooking. My only kitchen chore was drying dishes once in a while.

So when I got married and moved out of state I had to learn to cook or face a lifetime of what my new husband had eaten in his starving-student days. Fortunately, his cousin Beth gave me The Joy of Cooking, as shower gift. I read it like a novel, all 900+ pages. And I decided that maybe the Tuna, Noodle and Mushroom Casserole on p. 215 (subtitled “An excellent emergency dish”) was something I could tackle.

That’s where it all started. We didn’t have no stinkin interweb back then. We had home delivery of the daily and Sunday paper, and Mimi has always favored magazine subscriptions as gifts. So every month I would read Redbook and McCall’s and Good Housekeeping and cut out the recipes I wanted to try. And every Thursday I’d read the Food Section of the paper so I could cut out those recipes, too.

I scotch-taped each recipe onto a page of looseleaf paper and filed the pages in a 3-ring binder with sections for each of the chapters in Joy, starting with Beverages and moving on to Hors d’Oeuvre, Salads/Soups, Vegetables, Fish, Meat, Poultry, Breads and Coffee Cakes, Pies and Pastries, Cookies, and so on. I left out Canapes and Tea Sandwiches, Game, and Canning, Salting, Smoking and Drying.

The scotch tape is all dried out now, and a lot of the pages are ripped on the edge where the 3-hole-punch used to be. Paging through the tattered remnants of my homemade cookbook, it’s easy to see what foods fascinated and frustrated me in the 70s. There are a dozen different pie crust recipes, lots of fancy dinner party dishes like Coquilles Saint Jacques (which I am absolutely certain I have never cooked). There are five carrot cake recipes, including the definitive version from the first “new” Philadelphia restaurant, Steve Poses’ Commissary. The Frog-Commissary Cookbook http://www.amazon.com/Frog-Commissary-Cookbook-Steven-Poses/dp/0940159732 didn’t come out until a few years later, but somebody at work had the Commissary calendar (1979?). It was a pinup page-per-month calendar, with a hand-lettered recipe for each month. Porn for office girls.

If a recipe turned out especially well, I drew stars on the clipping. Like this one, which I’ve been making ever since.

Chicken and Sausage

Ingredients

1 broiler-fryer chicken, cut up (now I use skinless, boneless thighs)

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 tablespoon salad oil

¾ lb sweet or hot Italian sausages, cut in 2-inch pieces

1 can (28 oz) whole tomatoes, drained, reserving ½ cup liquid

½ cup dry red wine

1 cup sliced onions

2 medium green peppers, sliced

1 tsp basil, crushed (now I use fresh or fresh-frozen)

Pinch sugar

1 ½ cups sliced fresh button mushrooms (this was before we knew about portabellas)

1/3 c. flour

3 tablespoons water

Prep

Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Slice everything up and have it ready.

Cooking

In large skillet, heat oil. Add chicken and cook until well browned on all sides, about 5 minutes. Remove chicken and set aside. Prick sausages with a fork and brown in the same skillet. Remove and pour off excess drippings. Add chicken and sausages back to the skillet. Add tomatoes, wine, onions, green peppers, basil and sugar and cook for a few minutes, stirring up browned bits from the bottom. Return chicken and sausages to the pan. Add mushrooms and stir until well combined. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 35 to 40 minutes, until chicken is tender. Push chicken and sausages to one side of the skillet. Combine flour and water until smooth; stir in ¼ cup of pan juices. Add to the skillet and cook until sauce bubbles and thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Stir to mix everything together. Better the second day.

pear-champagne cupcakes

i found this recipe through the lovely and talented lexa. it's perfect for if you need an excuse to drink most of a bottle of cheap sparkling wine alone in your jammies.

and for your mother's birthday.


cake ingredients:

• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup softened butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 pears
• 1 cup sparkling wine (j. roget "champange" in this case)

frosting ingredients:

• 1/4 cup softened butter (no, seriously, if it's not really softened it will be gross)
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 3 cups confectioners sugar
• splash "champagne"
  

prep work:

• preheat to 350*
• peel & quarter pears
• grate them in the food processor, ohmygod, not by hand
• combine flour, salt & baking powder

actual cooking:

• beat together sugar & butter
• beat in eggs one at a time
• add dry mixture
• add vanilla & "champagne"
• add pear
• distribute into lined muffin tins-- they won't rise much, so feel free to fill them a bit more than usual
• bake until a toothpick comes out cleanish (lexa says 12-15 minutes, my experience was more like 25)
• beat together frosting ingredients
• frost
• use leftover frosting to take a funny picture of any brave soul you can convince to eat frosting at nine am to star on your blog (thanks, pop)
• have four beers and forget to take a picture of, oh, i dunno, your mom blowing out her birthday candle or ANYTHING