Gingerbread For Gretel
This is no mild-mannered, blond ginger spice cake. This is dangerous, original Grimm’s gingerbread: dark, sticky and fragrant. This is the sort of gingerbread that lures Hansel and his sister into harm’s way; the sort of treacly confection Monsieur Wolf scents through a deeply greening wood.
We often make this for holiday parties or gifts, and folks who generally turn their noses at gingerbread usually end up liking it.
P.S,. this batter makes great cupcake/muffin sized objects. I fully intend to attempt pancakes some day.
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup unsulphured molasses
1-2 tablespoons minced crystallized ginger (I usually double this, because I am a ginger freak)
2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten with a fork
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup water
1 tablespoon baking soda
Optional: (in my opinion MANDATORY) several handfuls of blanched almond slices
Baker’s Joy your 9×13 pan/muffin tin/etc, even if you’re using silicone. This is some harrowingly sticky stuff.
If you’re adding almonds, sprinkle them onto the bottom of the pan. You want a goodly amount, but not full coverage. Imagine fallen logs in a black forest of gingerbread.
Combine the oil, sugar, molasses, and crystallized ginger. Add the eggs and whisk until smooth.
(Put your water on to boil in a small saucepan, so it’s ready to boil when you’re done with the next step.)
The flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, salt, and cloves get whisked/go for a spin in the food processor/sifted together. Add wet mixture to the dry ingredients slowly until evenly combined.
Remove boiling water from heat and add baking soda. Add this mixture to the batter, and pour into pans.
Bake in the center of the oven: a full pan will run about 40-45 minutes. Muffins will run you anywhere from 15-25. Almonds will be perfectly toasted inside your batter.
You may, of course, top with whipped cream, ice cream, candied ginger, cream cheese frosting, etc., but this is truly perfect and joyous on its own.
Filed under recipes | Comment (0)Mahogany Fire Noodles
Victor Sodsook calls this Kwaytiow Sen Yai Phat Phrik Sod Kap See-Eu Wan. I call it dangerously tasty.
WARNING: If you have rivet-goggles, swimmer’s goggles, or any sort of protective eyewear that will spare you the sensation of being maced in the face, I suggest you wear them. I wear German Welder’s goggles: friends can attest to this. I am totally not kidding.
WARNING: This recipe had a hand in driving an overdue baby to vacate to more roomy, less Capsaicin-drenched quarters within 24 hours of its consumption.
Ingredients
15-30 small Thai chilies. FIFTEEN to THIRTY. I like them at 17-20.
10 cloves garlic (I usually double this, because I am a garlic fiend)
1 package rice noodles: prepared, drained
2 Tbs veg. oil
2 Tbs Thai fish sauce
1 tsp white pepper
3 Tbs sweet black soy (this is the unctuous molasses-based soy)
1 Tbs Oyster sauce
1 1/2 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 cu holy basil leaves, or 3/4 cu each of mint and basil leaves.
Optional but highly recommended
sliced chicken breasts, quorn or cubed med. hard tofu
egg omelet (best with creamy fresh duck eggs)
bamboo shoots
Instructions
PUT ON YOUR GOGGLES.
Pulverize 1 Tb oil, garlic and chilies in food processor together. Heat other Tb oil in med-hot wok while you do this.
Turn on your cooktop vent. Take a deep breath. Dump the chili mixture into your wok and stir vigorously for about 15 seconds. Exhale. Proceed to laugh at anyone not wearing goggles who adamantly refused to leave the room.
Add tofu or Chicken; stir-fry for about a minute.
Add fish sauce.
Add noodles and stir rapidly for another 30 seconds.
Add pepper and sweet black soy. Stir, and marvel at the beautiful mahogany color the soy turns the noodles.
Add Oyster sauce, sugar, bamboo shoots and/or duck omelet; stir-fry for a minute.
Turn off the heat. Stir in the herbs and let them wilt.
Remove goggles.
Serve immediately.
For dessert, I recommend sweetened coconut milk “ice cream” on warm sticky rice, or red grapefruit + orange segments steeped in rosewater syrup.
This dish will give your guests the exciting sensation of a string of firecrackers exploding in their mouths, and then rapidly dropping to a much more bearable level. You take a bite, wince, and then immediately fall victim to the spice’s dangerous wiles. You keep eating. You can’t help yourself.
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