memorial desserts

Hello. It's been a surreal week here, with three days of memorial events for P (“free store” at hir storage unit, celebration of life, and scattering of ashes). And there was another gathering but I had to stop there.

Of course I'm grateful for all the chances to connect with people who loved P—and for the chance to cook for those people, especially because cooking was something that ze connected with many of us around.

I think of hir many lovers and friends, and how ze continues to inhabit and animate us, in the kitchen and I imagine for others in their writing. I think about it when my hands move in an uncharacteristic way in the kitchen—did ze want a little more of that? Or my recent 24/7 earworm… is ze bothered by the silence, should I put something on? (I mentioned the earworm in a different context at yesterday's memorial, and my friend was like “ah you're ocd fam”—but I prefer my explanation.)

I wanted to make Edna Lewis desserts for the memorial, because P introduced me to her work in my early twenties—but ended up going with a couple cobblers that are quicker than Miss Lewis’s which require a Virginia-style top and bottom pie crust.

Here is what I made. I would love if you had some pie, cobbler or cake for P’s birthday. Any kind is fine, but ze didn't care for chocolate, except maybe on a fancy coffee.

A note on the fruit—I used storebought frozen blackberries and peaches for the cobblers, since it's March in Northern California. I wanted to look more into the carbon footprint of frozen fruit, and found this information:

Becky Krystal writes for Washington Post:

Food meant to be frozen is picked at optimal ripeness and processed, often within hours of coming out of the field. That means it can beat out items trucked in from far away in terms of both taste and carbon footprint, especially for vegetables brought up in winter from the Southern Hemisphere.

I took a closer look, and actually my prominently-labelled USDA organic blackberries were from Chile, which I learned has 61% of the market share for American imports of frozen blackberries. The peaches said USA. Imported frozen fruit has the benefit of being typically shipped rather than airfreighted like some perishable fresh produce. Mike Berners-Lee says that “avoiding foods that have been airfreighted [could] knock 20 percent off [the carbon footprint of] any diet.” One of the issues that I kept reading about is that there is no requirement to label airfreighted food, so you have to guess.

peach cobbler with grains of paradise

The King Arthur Southern-Style Peach Cobbler says, “We realize it's not an exact interpretation; a true Southern cobbler is very juicy (more peaches than cake) while this is akin to a peach coffee cake. Still, we think it does justice to this Southern classic.” It is true that it was more of a cake, but cobbler describes a wide enough range of desserts that I went along with it.

Modifications: I doubled the recipe (baked slightly longer to internal temperature of 200F), used Carolina Ground trinity blend flour for the AP, buttermilk for the milk, and added 1.5 teaspoons Burlap & Barrel grains of paradise to the fruit mixture.

Overall, this turned out okay, but not nearly as good as the blackberry cobbler. In spite of swapping buttermilk for the milk, I felt that the final product lacked acidity. The grains of paradise were nice.

Next time, I'll go with a different peach cobbler recipe—and probably canned peaches next time since they have that nostalgic flavor and texture.

vegan blackberry cobbler with blue corn masa harina

This cobbler was great—unsurprisingly for a Stella Parks recipe.

I made this vegan using Miyoko’s butter, and soy milk plus ACV for the buttermilk. Referencing Diana Perez’s mango-blackberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuits which uses masa harina for 1/3 of the flour, I replaced 25% of the flour with Masienda blue corn masa harina, and used Carolina Ground trinity blend flour for the remainder. I used 40 ounces of frozen blackberries instead of fresh blackberries and raspberries, baking slightly longer to an internal temperature of 212F.

I appreciate Parks’s details like that you can make about 20 scoops of the dough with a tablespoon scoop—it’s such a pretty detail for a drop biscuit. The modifications above worked great IMO, and you definitely couldn't “tell” this was a vegan recipe. I will remember this one!

more eating

This week's sogetsu assignment used backyard mustard and a neighbor’s meyer lemon, which became dinner afterwards.

More signs that she's reading Butter… Naoko Takei Moore's spicy miso butter ramen, also with bolted mustard in place of rapini. This was good, and fantastic the next day cold.

Evan Kalman’s radicchio salad with citrus, goat cheese and dates. Substituted meyer lemon juice for the orange, and used walnuts to avoid pistachios. Candied the leftover peel from segmented citrus with Camilla Wynne’s streamlined method, which made me feel better after I let one of the blood oranges rot while threatening to make this salad for over a week.

listening

Oakland Soul - The Bay Area Soundtrack