ginger chocolate pear bread cake

i was initially going to introduce some punctuation into the title of this post, but in fact i actually think of this as if it was all one word, like GingerChocolatePearBreadCake, so i decided to leave it punctuation-free. 

it's dangerous, though, if you already don't really use capital letters as you ought and then you start flouting the rules of punctuation. you could go off the rails really quickly, is what i'm saying. but. BUT. i was almost an english minor, so it's like one of those "learn the rules so you can break 'em" things. 

or not.

pears and i have a moderately complex relationship. i kind of dig fake pear flavoring (though it's uncommon to find in candies, etc., i like it when i do) and my favorite kind of skyr when i went to iceland was pear-flavored. too often when i buy pears, though, they start out hard, enjoy a brief 30 second interlude of flavor/texture perfection, and promptly melt into the crisper drawer.

that's essentially what happened with these pears mike bought, but i found them before they were quite destroyed and decided to put them to use in a sweet quick bread. there aren't a lot of pear bread recipes out there, but i found this one and modified it to my mental image of the pear bread-cake i sought.

to that end - chocolate. also much more pear and ginger, including a hefty dose of finely grated fresh ginger. nuts would be a good addition, too, but we didn't have any because we used the last of the pecans for the beet and blue cheese salad (aka Beets of the Southern Wild) we made for this year's oscar pun dinner (see previous offerings, Midnight in Pears and Precious: Based on the Liquor Gin by Bombay Sapphire, whose recipe has sadly been lost to the mists of glorious memory).

the great thing about quick breads is how quick they are (!). the main work involved in this is the messy (for me) peeling and cutting-up of the very-soft-at-this-point pears. as shown above, just cut them in half after peeling, get the core out, and chop them thinly one way and then the other. you don't have to be overly fastidious about this - they kind of meld with the rest of the bread anyway.

other than that, it's a typical one-to-one-and-1/2-bowl affair - the wet ingredients (including sugar. sugar usually counts as wet in baking) get mixed together and then you add the dry ingredients. probably the best thing would be to mix the dry ingredients separately and then add them, but i'm congenitally unable to dirty more dishes than necessary, so i always mix the leaveners in the measuring cup with part of the flour, add that, add the rest of the flour, and mix everything gently together. then fold in the pear and the chocolate. i used some dark chocolate discs, but you could also cut up a bar or use some chocolate chips.

i buttered the loaf pan (9"x5") and made a little liner out of parchment paper. you don't necessarily have to do this, but the paper or a liner of aluminum foil will make the bread easier to remove from the pan later. a stitch in time, etc.

then just bake it for 45-50 minutes or so, turning it around mid-way through. i let it cool in the pan for awhile before taking it out, which was a good move because this stuff is super moist (though not dense!) and it really wanted to fall apart at first. once it cooled down, though, it made for a rich, gingery afternoon treat that stayed lushly soft for several days. it's particularly good with a strong cup of tea, but would also work as a more dessert-y course with a scoop of ice cream.

ginger chocolate pear bread cake
(heavily adapted from this ginger pear bread recipe)

mix

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 packed teaspoon grated fresh ginger (i used a microplane over a cup to make sure to catch all of the ginger juice, which contributes a lot of flavor)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

zest of 1 lemon

add
1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs, beaten

mix separately, then add

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

fold in
2 cups peeled, cored, and chopped pears

1/4 cup chopped dark chocolate

bake at 325 (although i actually started at 350 and turned it down to 325 after 10 minutes or so) for 45 minutes or until a toasty golden brown

listening to: yo la tengo

indian summer

and now we've come to the weird interstitial time between summer and fall. here in texas, summer doesn't really give up the ghost until november sometimes, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to get out the scarves and start wearing boots again. this year, however, i'm trying to stop and enjoy whatever weather we actually have, since it's been a few years since i've experienced a texas fall.

the greatest thing about autumn in texas is cold fronts. the air will be still and sticky and you can't believe it's late september and then all of a sudden there's an electrical charge in the air and the wind starts blowing briskly from the north and the temperature drops 20 degrees in 20 minutes. it's very exciting.

this drink kind of reminds me of that, since it's full of summery gin and citrus and warming spicy ginger. it's refreshing, but not too light. the ginger and the use of the rinds of the citrus gives the whole thing some heft that's usually lacking in summer cocktails. thus it's perfect for this weird liminal time when you don't know what kind of weather the day will bring.

basically you probably need a food processor for this. all you do is cut the citrus into medium-sized chunks, cut the ginger into coins, and blend the whole thing up with some sugar. process it for a minute or so or until everything's well-blended.

then put the delicious sludgy mass into some cheesecloth to strain it. gather up the edges of the cloth and bring them together (if you don't have cheesecloth you could use a really fine strainer, probably).

then just squeeze the juices out as hard as you can. it's quite therapeutic. 

mix a little gin and some club soda and a few tablespoons of the citrus-ginger syrup (it's pretty thick and intense, so go with your tastes), and you have a friendly but assertive drink to keep by your side as we wave goodbye to summer and hello to fall.

*ingredients* (syrup for 6 - 8 drinks or so)

1 lime

1 lemon

1 small orange (i would spring for organic on all of these, since the rinds get included in the drink. no one wants a pesticide cocktail)

~3 inches of fresh ginger root

3/4 - 1 cup sugar

gin

club soda or tonic

instead of what i'm listening to, here's something else i wrote: http://thebillfold.com/2012/09/texas-london-texas-portland-texas/

it's about the many (many!) places i've lived over the last few years. also you should probably read the billfold and its friends the awl and the hairpin anyway, because they are good. 

that's my jam (whiskey/jam/lemon/ginger ale)

well i wouldn't be a very good part-irish person if i didn't have a drink to make for good old saint patrick's day, to be sure. but i'm not super-into green drinks in general so i'm not going to make some kind of unholy wheatgrass-vodka thing or an equally unholy green beer. i guess you could make this green if you use mint jelly, but it would be disgusting so i can't recommend it.

there are a lot of other colors in ireland besides green, anyway. stone, for instance. and sheep-color. but green does predominate.

irregardless, this is a drink that you can probably make from the things you have sitting around already (aka The Best Kind of Drink). all it takes is roughly equal amounts lemon juice and jam or jelly, mixed vigorously with a fork (or, if you fancy, a whisk). i was lucky to have some very tasty blackcurrant jelly that my wonderful coworker made, but you can use whatever you have around. maybe not grape. but maybe! necessity and invention and all that... then add an appropriately irish amount of whiskey (note the "e") and fill 'er up with ginger ale.

goes down a treat! sláinte!

*ingredients*

1 tablespoon jelly or jam (your choice - i think marmalade would be great, as would raspberry or strawberry)

1 tablespoon (+ or -) lemon juice

an amount of whiskey

ginger ale

listening to: it probably should be the pogues. let's go with that.

(secretly i was listening to clearlake, who are english, but it made me feel too guilty)

pear/ginger/lemon/bourbon

i know it's officially been fall for awhile now, but somehow late october is when fall starts seeming real to me. i think partly that's because in texas it's generally ridiculous-hot until then. here in portland, it's been pretty cool for awhile, but over the last couple of weeks the trees have started getting really colorful and the smell of woodsmoke is in the air. that's how you know.

fall has always been my favorite season. in texas, it means you lived through another summer (no small feat). in portland, it means scarves, boots, and brisk walks where you crunch through leaves and can see your breath. then when you get home, you can drink this to warm up!

this drink has a wealth of classic fall flavor - the sweet pear, spicy ginger, and, uh, lemony lemon combine with bourbon to make the perfect pick-me-up après-hike. or après-thrift-shopping. or après-whatever-you-like-to-do-on-a-saturday.

plus, you can make a batch ahead of time and then if people drop by unexpectedly, you can nonchalantly be like, "oh, would you like a fancy cocktail? i just whipped this up, no biggie." and they will be all, "wow, you are the fanciest!" and you will smile demurely and pass the cheese straws.

anyway. ginger:
you definitely want some fresh ginger for this. i use a spoon to scrape the papery skin off and then just slice it up (probably not with the spoon, unless it is one of those weird grapefruit ones). it doesn't really matter how thick they are, but think coins, rather than chunks.

i leave the skin on the pear and slice it from the top, also into coins. but you can totes slice it into wedges or whatever. i just think the extra surface area of the coins makes it easier to get it infused into the bourbon (yeah, that's where this is going). but follow your bliss.

then just put the pear and ginger into a thingy, add some strips of lemon rind (you can use a vegetable peeler or knife - just avoid the white pith part) smash them a few times with a wooden spoon to get the oils and whatever started, and add some bourbon.

i ended up using about a cup or so of bourbon, one small pear, maybe an inch and a half or two inches of a thinnish ginger root, and about 1/4 or 1/3 of a lemon's rind. then just cover it and let it sit for awhile. it doesn't have to be too long, but i would leave it for at least a few hours. overnight would be good as well.

then you can strain it, put some in a glass, maybe add some lemon juice if you aren't a fan of the sweetz, top it off with ginger ale or (preferably) ginger beer (it's stronger and much more gingery) and ice, and add a sliver of pear if you want to feel super-fancy. you could also use rye or another kind of whiskey or maybe even dark rum. hooray for fall!

*ingredients* for a number of drinks (4? 6? it depends on how much bourbon you want in yours)

1 small ripe pear

1 1/2-2 inches of ginger root, cut in coins

peel from 1/4-1/3 lemon

1 cup (+/-) bourbon

ginger ale/ginger beer

lemon juice, to taste

cherry/lime/ginger/bourbon

wow, it's been more than a month since i featured a cocktail recipe.

lest you be concerned, this in no way relates to the frequency of my cocktail-drinking. that is still going on, but i've been sticking mainly to classics; namely, the gin + tonic. i haven't even been making my own elderflower gin cocktail. what can i say? i don't think g+ts can really be improved upon too much as far as balance and tastiness.

that being said, woman cannot survive august's heat on gin alone. this past weekend, portland's temperature got up past 90 degrees for the first. time. all. summer.

let us (particularly those from warmer climes) pause and marvel at that for a minute. i still can't believe it myself. being from texas, i am used to 90 degree days in march. to pass the bulk of the summer in cooler temperatures is nothing short of a miracle to me.

that being said, i think my blood has thickened or something, because it felt really hot in our house. even the dogs were moping around everywhere searching for somewhere cooler to flop. this drink was a great help in the general cooling-down effort (note: we did not give cocktails to the dogs).

it combines fresh (or you could use frozen) muddled cherries with lime juice, ginger beer, and bourbon. when you sip it, you feel immediately as though you're in jamaica or something. although i've never been to jamaica myself, i assume that's due to the ginger beer and the relaxation that washes over you as you drink up.

cut the cherries in half (maybe 4-5 per drink) and remove the pits (if you don't much care for your guests, leave the pits in for a nice surprise!). add the juice from a quarter of a lime and smash them together with a muddler or a wooden spoon or something like that. add bourbon and ice and fill the rest of the glass with ginger beer. you could use ginger ale instead, but ginger beer is way more gingery and delicious. it makes ginger ale look like sprite in comparison. and sprite is really not what you want for this drink. if you can't find ginger beer, you could use ginger ale and some fresh ginger, muddling the fresh ginger with the cherries.

whatever you do, make this soon. it is extremely refreshing and may just usurp gin + tonics for the all-too-brief bit of summer we have left. i am thinking of calling it "the chillax" - ask for it by name!

*ingredients*

4-5 cherries

juice from 1/4 lime

bourbon

1/2 or so bottle of ginger beer

lots of ice

*after you finish the drink, make sure to eat the gingery bourbon-y cherries - they're perhaps the best part.

gin/ginger/mango/pineapple punch

punch is a fun thing to make for any gathering of friends. it can be as complicated or simple as you want (i am fond of the idea of having sherbet in punch, but it seems like that doesn't happen as much as it used to).

the genesis of this particular punch was the fact that mangoes and pineapple were both on sale at safeway. it's not much, as creation myths go, but it is the truth.

first you must get some jars together (or, if you are fancy, get out your pitcher) and then you should cut up some coins of ginger (i just wash it and cut it up with the skin still on). for three largish (like spaghetti sauce jar-sized) jars, i used perhaps 2 inches of ginger root, cut in pretty thin slices. then cut up the pineapple (for instructions on that, see rhubarb-pineapple crumble) and the mango.

mangoes seem to intimidate people sometimes. when i was buying this one, there was an elderly fellow in front of me buying like a dozen of them and he was talking to the cashier about what a pain they were to cut up. apparently he was peeling them first and then trying to cut them, which to me sounds like an exercise in slippery fruit, futility, and sliced fingers. it is much easier to cut them up with the peel still on them, then cut the pieces out of the peel.

mangoes are sort of flat on two sides and if you use a sharp knife and hold the fruit so that the stem is facing up, you can cut down on either side of the pit. these are the larger oval pieces above. then there are just the two smaller side pieces and you're almost done! then just make hatch marks as above, push the skin in so that the flesh goes out as in the bottom part of the picture, and use a small knife to cut the little cubes off. so easy! and it's already cubed for you! i used a whole mango and almost half of a pineapple.

then just put the fruit and ginger in with some gin to soak. i let it soak on the counter for a good couple of hours - this infuses the gin with the fruit flavor and infuses the fruit with the gin. i used about a liter of gin in total - just try to get all of the things evenly distributed, if you are using more than one vessel.

after a couple of hours (and i'm sure it would be fine if it was longer than that), add some soda or similar. i used one bottle of grapefruit italian soda and then added some sparkling water to each glass as it was poured (the picture at top is post-italian soda addition). this made for a not-too-strong and very refreshing summer cooler.

we enjoyed it while picnicking and playing bocce ball, which is the preferred way to enjoy it, but it wouldn't be too bad if you sipped it at a cookout or similar.

isn't summer just the best?!

spicy-sweet carrot-ginger jam/chutney

carrot jam is wonderful.

you can have it on toast. you can have it in a cocktail. you can make it into salad dressing. you can do that thing where you put it all over some goat cheese or cream cheese, like people do with jalapeño jelly in texas.

whatever you want to do with it, make it today!

this is how i cut up the carrots. i used 6 medium-sized carrots, which made like 3 cups-worth when diced. something like that, anyway. but yeah, you should dice them up. or you could probably use a food processor or grater or even buy pre-grated ones, if you like. i like the texture of the diced ones, though, and felt like chopping, so i went old school with it.

this shows all the spices i used. i think it is barely legible if your eyes are young or your computer is large. however, you can also look at it here. it is much better and easier to read that way.

you definitely do not have to use all of these spices. if you have them all, great. otherwise, use what you have. i happened to have lots of ginger, so i used powdered, fresh, and crystallized. one could also just use one of these. also, instead of ras el hanout and za'atar, you could use more cumin and cinnamon and maybe some dry thyme and/or oregano. it won't be exactly the same, but it should still be good.

by way of measurement, it's more a proportional thing, but that's a pretty small plate, so it was about a teaspoon or so of the larger amounts of spices, and maybe a tablespoon and a half of the crystallized ginger and like 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon of coriander. i also used 1/4 of a lemon, cut up into smallish pieces (skin and all) and 1/4 - 1/3 cup of brown sugar. finally, i put in a few grape tomatoes, cut in 1/4s (maybe 8 or 9 tomatoes).

the main point is that this can be as complicated as you want - if you just want to make it with a few spices and no tomatoes, i think it would still be good. you could also add dried fruit if you like that sort of thing.

so. once you have all of your stuff chopped up and your spices gathered, heat up a smidge of oil in a saucepan (medium heat). then add the garlic and fresh ginger, if you're using that. after 30 seconds or so, add the spices and let them toast for a few seconds. things will start smelling exciting and exotic.

then add the carrots, sugar, lemon, tomatoes, etc. also some water - enough to cover the other ingredients, but not too much more than that. turn up the heat until it boils, then turn it down to medium-low and let it cook, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are super tender and everything is nicely cooked down.

mine took a couple of hours or maybe an hour and a half or so. don't let this intimidate you though! it is mostly time in which you are not doing anything in particular with the carrots. you can watch an episode of murder, she wrote or read your new issue of sunset magazine or otherwise behave like an old lady. or you could do something hip. the old lady stuff's just what i did. you only have to stir it every 15 minutes or something. also you may need to add a little more water at times, if it is looking too dry. it's not a big deal.

once the carrots and lemon are soft and the tomatoes have kind of melted into the other stuff, use a potato masher to smush everything together. the lemon will be all soft and will just mix in with everything else easily. you can also use a food processor or immersion blender if you are not poor like me. although i do like the texture you get with the potato masher.

then let it cool and put it in a jar in the fridge. it should keep at least a week or so, i imagine.

and yes, i did put it in a gin & tonic and yes, it was delicious.

for a nice salad dressing, add a tablespoon of carrot jam to a couple of teaspoons of olive or other oil and a teaspoon or so of dijon mustard. add water to thin it out and that's it! it's good on those salads with cheese in them - like goat cheese or blue cheese and walnuts.

it would also make a fine sandwich spread for turkey or duck or a salmon burger or things of that nature.

you can also just eat it out of the jar.