I’m not sure I trust anyone who doesn’t like cake. Sorry, that is just how it is. So, when I was thinking about a new blog topic, I thought of occasions past, captured in photos, and my mind went immediately to cake. (Especially since I had already written about noodles.)
Do all families have a “signature cake”? I suspect many do. Ours, going into its third generation, is a sour cream coffee cake with nuts, which is equally good for breakfast, a mid-morning or afternoon snack, or for dessert. It’s buttery, cinnamony, and just totally delicious. It is known by the name “Jewish Nut Ring” in our family, although we are not Jewish, and I think that my mother got the recipe from a women’s magazine, probably sometime in the 1950s. Our recipe is very much like this one but we would never, NEVER add raisins or chocolate chips as suggested here, and ours includes walnuts, not pecans, and involves pouring melted butter on top before baking. My mom had a special round pan for this (now my sister has it), but I found a suitable one years ago at a yard sale for just this purpose.
Do all families also have signature birthday cakes? I know many who do. My sister’s was a white cake, baked in a rectangular baking dish, split in half and spread with apricot jam, reassembled and coated generously with whipped cream. I think it fell out of favor some time ago. Mine is a keeper – the Chocolate Pinwheel Cake, very much like this one, which has been tracked down to a 1954 recipe “courtesy of Baker’s Chocolate and Carnation Evaporated Milk,” two of the main ingredients. So, though I never asked her about it, is likely to stem from my mom browsing through those women’s mags again.
Our version, passed down through a series of hand-written recipe cards and pieces of dog-eared note paper, has an important difference from the above recipe, in that the filling has a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of instant coffee instead of more chocolate. And, really, more chocolate is not what is needed in this cake. Swirling an unadulterated, and almost obscene, amount of pure melted semi-sweet chocolate into the batter to make the “pinwheel” design is the key methodology. When it cools, it forms an intense, crunchy chocolate orgy, which is offset somewhat by the fluffy, not too sweet mocha filling.
Various other cakes have come and gone, witnessed by this little parade of photos, but these are the two with the most memories and staying power. It’s no wonder, as they are delicious, but also evoke special times in the kitchen and at the table, sharing sweet moments bite by bite. I’d love to hear about other cake memories!
The classic nut ring. My mother, sister and I have made hundreds of these over the years, and my daughter is the third generation baker in possession of the recipe. One of the many Chocolate Pinwheel Cakes, and since this is not my cake plate (or my countertop), I think this one was made at my sister’s house. The cake assembly is tricky, as it involves cutting the two rounds in half each, to make four layers, with scrumptious filling in between each and around the edges. You have to pick the prettiest “swirl” for the exposed top layer.My sister doesn’t bother with standard women’s magazines, she subscribes to Bon Apetite and Gourmet…and often finds complicated recipes that we need to execute during the holidays. The inside of this cake, made by my daughter M.E. (who is a really good baker) was even more complex than the Pinwheel cake, with a layer of cake filled and rolled into a big round. That’s why she’s looking so satisfied with herself for pulling it off!Maybe baking complicated cakes rubbed off on her at a young age, after being impressed by her mother’s (somewhat amateurish) rendition of Mickey for her second birthday? Doubt if I will try this one again, but I was inspired when I read a book that had the recipe included. You, too, can read the book and recreate Burnt Sugar Cake with Maple Frosting at this link! Or just bake the cake if you don’t have time to read the book. (It was an okay book, though, but the cake was better than the book, in my opinion.)
Noodles. Such a silly-sounding word for something so delicious and endlessly variable, eaten by most cultures around the world, and beloved in our family.
Apparently the English “noodle” comes from the German “nudel” in case you’re interested. The word “noodles” conjures up comfort in my mind. Generously buttered and salted egg noodles were always the go-to food in our family when tummies were upset, or one was just feeling down. My sister and I still like to eat any kind of leftover buttered noodles for breakfast, even when we are happy. (Despite the possible guilt brought on by the calories, and sodium and cholesterol bomb.)
I recall one of my first encounters with a noodle that was not buttered or smothered in a vaguely Italian tomato-based sauce. (I’m looking at you, Chef Boyardee…and also remembering my mother’s signature canned tomato-soup, bacon and bell pepper spaghetti sauce recipe.) I was maybe about six or seven, and our family was having a rare meal out, at a Chinese restaurant in Patterson, New Jersey. I demanded spaghetti.
No amount of the grown-ups trying to explain that “Chinese people did not eat spaghetti” would console me. I had to have spaghetti; nothing else would do. And so, the waiter, who knew perfectly well that “Chinese people” might not call it spaghetti but certainly did eat noodles, brought something that was, well, not spaghetti but was definitely in the noodle family. Lo mein maybe? Wish I could say it was a big hit with me, but I think someone else had to eat it.
Fast forward to international cuisine opening to me like the beautiful flower it is. My personal awakening involving various noodle dishes thankfully got better as I got older. I recall the first time the amazing world of Vietnamese pho was revealed to me, back around 1990 when visiting my colleague Lynn in Hawaii. (Then the state folk arts coordinator of Hawaii, but later to become my friend and confidant when she moved to the same position in New Hampshire, and we conspired in the co-curation of the 1999 New Hampshire program… but that is another story entirely.)
I almost cried out to my huge bowl of noodles, swimming together in fragrant broth with its compatriots of lean beef, Thai basil, and bean sprouts – “Where have you been all my life?” Well, maybe I’m being dramatic, but still. It was truly life-changing. Move over, buttered noodles, there’s another crave-worthy comfort food in town.
Today, as for many years, the homemade noodles and dumplings at Chinatown Express in what is left of downtown DC’s Chinatown is the go-to for cheap and authentic eats. Many an intern has been introduced to this modest, no-frills establishment on 6th Street, and it is a de rigueur outing for my daughter and I whenever she visits DC. I even convinced our office to order a boatload of dumplings and noodles from there for our holiday party this past year. I should be getting a commission?!
Our new family favorite at the Vietnamese complex, The Eden Center (usually where we go for pho because you can just throw a lime wedge in any direction and hit a place serving pho there) is actually a tiny Thai Street Food joint, Kao Sarn. Their noodle soups will bring back the memory of eating at any small partially outdoor stall in Bangkok or Chiang Mai by anyone who has visited Thailand and experienced “real street food. ” (Well, except for the price, but then you don’t have to fly half way across the globe to eat here if you’re a local, so there’s that.)
In short, there’s a whole world of noodles out there to conquer, and while nowadays I am partial to Asian noodle dishes, despite my childhood encounter with “Chinese spaghetti,” I have absolutely nothing against attacking noodles and noodle-adjacent dishes of all shapes, sizes, sauces, and cultural origins with gusto. Pierogies, halushki, ravioli, wagon wheels, seashells, carbonara, momos, spaetzle, ramen, udon, soba… the list is inexhaustible.
Hungry yet? If not, these photos of various noodle experiences will surely put you over the edge. Go forth, eat noodles, and be comforted.
I honestly don’t recall what noodle dish this is, but I would eat it again in a heartbeat. One of the many trips to Chinatown Express, I think with friend and colleague Lora. I usually default to the chicken noodle soup, though all the flavors I’ve tried have been equally yummy. As well as the dumplings. And the scallion oil accompaniment is a revelation too. Whenwe visited Hanoi, Steve discovered he could order pho for breakfast. Not only that, but after he polished off one bowl, he could ask for another. The tiny hotel we were staying in did not have its own kitchen, they just stepped outside into the alley and flagged down a street vendor.Our friend Ang, who was our cultural guide during a trip to Thailand, demonstrates how to eat “real Thai street food” in Chiang Mai. M.E. slurps up some Boat Noodle Soup at the Eden Center. Just before Christmas last year, we visited Philadelphia. Their Chinatown has some amazing noodle establishments as well, including this one. Honestly, I do not recall taking this photo but it came up when I searched my photos for “noodles.” I think I would skip “sauerkraut balls” (sorry to say) but cabbage and noodles, called by the Slovaks “halushki,” is always OK by me.A big old bowl of Japanese noodles with a side of California roll, in New York City. Excuse me while I start dinner…
I am procrastinating cleaning out the refrigerator. It is Veteran’s Day and I should be honoring the fallen, thanking someone for their service, contemplating the horrors of WWI. Instead, I am tackling the recesses of our overstocked fridge and trying to salvage some food that is in peril of inflicting us with food poisoning if we don’t ditch it.
Thinking about the imminent stacking up of our excess of food on the kitchen counter turns my thoughts to food in general, and my visits last weekend to two very different but somewhat related food events. And, finally, to the people who work to bring us our food.
First, I attended some presentations of the National Museum of American History’s annual Food History Weekend. The theme was “the changing dynamics of regional food cultures in the United States.” This fit in perfectly, I now realize, with my second food event of the weekend: my friend Jackie’s annual “Soup and Oyster” party on Cobb Island, Maryland, which features “scalded” oysters at the local firehouse as well as soups made by the hostess.
The last of the bounty of our very own backyard garden.
Visitors enjoy scalded (steamed) oysters at the Cobb Island Firehouse.
Visitors at the Food History Weekend expressed their own opinions on regional foods with post-its.
A sampling of Filipino food procured from a grocery and take-out just down the street from our house. (Everyone should be so lucky to have one of these in their neighborhood!)
Regional food is usually seasonal, reflective of natural resources and landscape, and has a warm, homey and almost romantic connotation. But, when you come to think about it more deeply, this food often represents someone’s backbreaking and highly uncomfortable work in its procurement. Oyster dredging and tonging, for instance, was traditionally done in the cold months on an unforgiving body of icy water.
Farm labor to bring us our vegetables and fruits (the apples in the pie and the green beans in the casserole?) is no piece of cake either. Picking your own apples on a crisp fall day for fun is one thing. Harvesting tons of apples for the commercial market is a whole other thing. The harvest and processing of the food that conveniently shows up on our grocery shelves is its own battle, fought by countless seasonal and regional workers, who deserve our respect.
So, along with honoring veterans today, let us also honor those on the forefront of the fight to keep us fed. Freedom from hunger is a privilege which the thousands of behind the scenes food workers laboring in the “trenches” of our farms, waterways, and processing plants work to make possible. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that hunger (like war, of course) isn’t still very much with us.
