First of all, happy (late) mother's day to all the mom's out there. :)
(And a happy 16th birthday to my favorite cousin named Katie!)
As I'm sure the majority of you are well aware, yesterday was the celebration of those hard working women we love so dearly... our moms! :D In my house we celebrated with me stuck in the kitchen. Well... not stuck, as I am the one who put myself there... but I was there practically all day.
We started the day off with smoked salmon scramble, peach nutmeg scones, and (of course) cafe au lait. The salmon was smoked on Thursday along with some almonds, pecans, and pine nuts. (Post meatloaf smoke. HOLY CRAP! Was that delicious! I highly recommend that anyone who has or can get their hands on a smoker try smoking a meatloaf. It's got a wonderful smokey exterior (made smokier by a home made barbecue sauce) with a juicy, melt-in-your-mouth interior. A friend of my dad told him that once you smoke your first meatloaf, you will never want to have a regular, run-of-the-mill meatloaf again... and I think I must agree with him.) The nuts were actually pretty good for just throwing them on the smoker. My favorite were the pecans because they seemed to retain more of the smokey flavor than the almonds, but both were good and the two large bags we smoked disappeared in days. It's definitely something that will be done again, especially because they're so easy to make.
Okay, so... onto dinner. I had planned on grilling pork tenderloin wrapped in pancetta, served alongside sauteed asparagus, risotto, and a green salad. HOWEVER, My trek to the local market led me to three possible vendors to buy said pancetta from... and they were all out! Each one of them had a sad, empty opening where the sign read "pancetta". Not to mention, the market was utterly packed full of people. I had to stand in long, looping lines just to get to the counter and realize the items I needed were not there. Woe is me. :( All was not lost, though, because when I got home, I whipped out the "Webber's Big Book of Grilling" again and decided upon a recipe entitled "Disappearing Tenderloin", how could I pass up a promising name like that? This recipe called for a two-hour marinade period followed by a rub and about 25 minutes on the grill. Wow. That was superb! I think I much rather prefer this one to the one that would have been wrapped in pancetta. Maybe the North Market was trying to tell me that. ;)
The risotto was kind of made up in my head. I used the basic recipe for risotto from my mother's simply named "Risotto" cookbook. But, I simply used that to get the proportions of rice to stock, then I just added my own ingredients based on my knowledge of risottos. Wanting to keep it light and simple, to compliment and not overwhelm the delectable pork, I went with a red pepper and baby garlic risotto. My aunt and uncle down the street have a crop of garlic that overtakes the very back of their garden every spring. The early garlics look almost like scallions, but taste intensely of garlic. We are a family that obsesses over garlic, so these are like heaven to us and I have been attempting to use them in any dish I can. (The eggs I made had chopped up baby garlics in them instead of leaks that the recipe called for.) Anywho, looking to experiment a little with spices, I added a bit of cinnamon, ground allspice (love the scent), a bit of smokey paprika, and some cayenne for heat. It was a decent risotto. I enjoyed the little kick from the cayenne, but other than the smokiness from the paprika, that was really the only spice I could taste.
Dessert, oh dessert.
My mom loves lemon (and can't stomach chocolate, unless it is frozen and has at least a 60% cocoa content). I try to make her a new lemon cake every year (mainly because I don't like making the same thing twice, I get too bored with it). This year, I definitely did not turn out the best product... I think I'm still a little partial to the lemon curd filled, whipped cream/white chocolate iced, and pistachio brittle coated cake I made a few years back from Bon Appetit. This year's cake wasn't bad (actually quite delicious), it just wasn't one of the best... and caused too much grief... here's why...
Cake layer #1. (The other layer from this batch is more than half eaten. :P) This is one of the layers I made in the morning. Cake flour is not something that we have on hand here often, so I usually just use regular, all-purpose flour for my baking and that usually works fine. However, I may have to dedicate myself to making the perfect, fluffy cake this summer and in order to do that I probably need to purchase some cake flour, eh? This cake was pretty dense and that probably has something to do with the flour... or maybe it's just supposed to be dense? Clearly, though, this layer is too thin to even have considered using it for my cake. (Although I had considered it before I removed it from the pan and saw just how depressingly thin it was.) How sad would that flat thing have looked? (Pretty darn pathetic, if you ask me.) So I decided to go for round two, this time I would be more careful about whipping the butter enough, gently add the flour/milk, and not over beat it. I also changed the size of my pan as I think I was using a 10" round where I should have been using an 8"... whoops.
This second cake baked up higher/thicker, but I think that largely had to do with the decrease in pan size, because the denseness of the cake did not change much. Thus, I've come to the conclusion that, for my next cake, I am in dire need of cake flour. Everyone raved about this one (my mom even said she thinks it's the best lemon cake yet, but I don't think she has a clear memory of the previous ones :P), but I don't think that would have been the case without the frosting. The frosting was, by far, the best part of the cake. Whipping cream, whipped up with confectioners sugar and folded into lemon curd. Wow. So yummy! The lemon curd was very tart as that's the way I like it... I'm not a fan of the overly sweet... which added some much needed depth to the cake. I practically had a whole slice of cake while I was decorating, nibbling on the bits I cut off to the level the layers and dipping it into excess frosting. 8D (<--- that's me... wide eyed and beaming with delight at my pre-dinner snack.)
This picture probably represents the extent of my artistic ability when it come to photography. I wanted to showcase the drastic change in height of the cake layers. (Look how flat that baby is!!!) Maybe I should outsource my photography to a friend... I have just the one in mind... but she'd have to work for Monopoly money (not to be confused with Canadian money) as I am pretty much dead broke. Check out her skills on her blog anyways, because she does some extremely excellent work. Right now she's working on her latest passion, food photography for her final project at CCAD. She hopes to put together a sellable cookbook (along with her chef boyfriend) featuring her beautiful photography and his excellent cuisine made with fresh, local ingredients. She's pretty awesome. :)
This picture I liked because you can see some of the yellow flecks in the frosting from the lemon rind. Yum yum yum.
Oh, another missing aspect of this cake was candied orchids. I have never candied a flower and was in need of organic orchids, which I could not find and was not in the mood to trek all over for. They would have been wonderful an added a little more visual interest, but ultimately would not have added much to the final product, so I'm pretty content in not having gotten a hold of them.
I wish I had taken pictures of dinner to share with you all, but it seems to be too much work to slave over dinner and then wait another 45 minutes or so to eat because I'm setting up and taking pictures. Huff! I am tired just thinking about the extra work. How do all these bloggers find the time to continuously update and manage to fit in exquisite pictures. I guess I'm still an amateur.
More to come soon, I hope. :P
P.S
I have to mention that there was a slight competition for cakes this year. I had set out to make a Persian Love cake that I have been gawking at for years now on the epicurious website. However, in the end I opted to keep this relatively new tradition alive and make a lemon layer cake. The Persian cake will have to come later this summer... but don't worry... it will get made... and pictures will be shared. :)