Dispatches From Whitcomb Street

mini sewing

I added a tiny little ort bin/thread catcher to my sewing kit. I’ve been using the kit like crazy, but keep leaving tiny snips and snaps of thread all over the place. This is an effort to corral them.

It’s just a tiny drawstring bag with a circular bottom and very short sides. It’s tacked down to one of the pockets. I stuff all my little thread ends and fabric trimmings in there and draw it closed to empty when I’m near a trash can.

All this is good, because I’ve just started an ongoing handwork project with fussy-cut 60 degree diamonds. I make them pretty much constantly. OBSESSION.

travel sewing pack

Awww yeah. Tiny and cute and crafty. I’m down.

I spent part of Saturday sewing with the amazing women of the Fort Collins Modern Quilt Guild and left full of new ideas and quilting mojo. We sewed at Penny’s lovely new place, and it was so inspiring to see all of her beautiful stuff at work and in use throughout a real, live, living and breathing home. 

Carmen was making a super-cute little travel sewing kit from this tutorial from Lots of Pink Here, and I got down on that action like immediately. I’m working on a big sewing/knitting/making space clean-up (how can such a tiny area become such a disaster? There seems to be an inverse relationship between how small a space is and how cluttered I can make it), and this tasty little treat was a nice reward.

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big dutch baby with apples

Though beloved of diners and pancake chains everywhere, each and every big Dutch baby is always new and always interesting. It’s a kissing cousin of the delightfully named apfelpfannkuchen (which I think literally means apple pan cake, awesome) by way of the Pennsylvania Dutch. 

Yes, yes, okay. This Dutch baby is a big, puffed, gloriously sticky-sweet and rich thing, basically an enormous popover with its crisp edges and almost custardy center. Studded with caramel and tart apples, it’s an amazing breakfast that looks super-impressive while requiring a minimum of work. Prep the dry ingredients, the liquid ingredients, and the fruit (toss with the white sugar and spices to prevent browning) the night before, and all you need to do the next day is turn on the oven and hit a button on the blender.

Big Dutch Baby with Apples

Recipe adapted from a million places

You need about four medium apples, cored and sliced into 1/3”-1/4” slices, for one 12” cast-iron pan’s worth of Dutch Baby. Use tart-sweet varieties that cook nicely. 

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Melt a big knob - say 1/4 cup - of sweet butter in a well-seasoned cast-iron pan. Swirl it over the bottom and sides of the pan, and then scatter 1/4 cup of brown sugar over it evenly. Spread out your apple slices on top of this proto caramel; sprinkle with 1/4 cup of white sugar and then with a healthy sprinkle of powdered ginger and a teaspoon of cinnamon. You can do this on the stovetop or in the heating oven while you prep the batter.

The batter:

Whisk

• 4 oz AP flour;
• 1/2 tsp salt; and
• a healthy pinch of ground nutmeg

together to combine. 

In a blender or a food processor, whir

• 4 eggs; 
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons of milk; and
• a splash of vanilla

until the eggs are well and truly broken up. Add the dry ingredients and process for thirty seconds or so, until the batter is completely mixed and looking foamy. When you take the cover off to check it, air bubbles should rise from its depths every second or two. 

(You can mix this by hand, too, just whisking hard for a couple solid minutes, but the machine will do the job more efficiently).

Your pan should be now be very hot and the sugar should be bubbling. Pour the batter carefully over the apples in the pan; it should sizzle at least a little as it hits.

Bake in the center of the oven for 25-30 minutes. Don’t crack the oven door at all, or at least not in the first 15 minutes if you absolutely must. The cake will rise and swell mightily, straight up out of the pan. It’s done when the center is set—a little jiggle is acceptable—and the curling edges are a deep toasty brown. Call everyone to the table and make them sit down.

Pull the cake out of the oven and serve in wedges straight from the pan. It will fall as soon as you cut into it (or it cools a little, whichever comes first—see below), so work fast. Serve with powdered sugar and lemon wedges, maybe a side of bacon or sausage. Take a long walk later; come back and eat the leftovers.

Half Square Quilt

I actually managed to finish sewing something. Been a while!

This is a half square triangle crib quilt for my new-ish second cousin (first cousin once removed? I have no idea). Aside from the backing and binding, it came entirely from my stash. The triangles finished at 3” square, and the entire thing measures about 43”x48”.

Material: The colored triangles are pretty much all quilting cottons; the solids are a mix of unbleached muslin (old garment toiles, washed and ripped), undyed linen (leftovers from a duvet cover and an upholstery project), and a couple random bits and bobs.

Things I did: This was my first run at straight line quilting; I stitched (more or less) in the ditch of the vertical seams, and then quilted in one-inch passes across the horizontal. That’s 2640 feet of quilting! Then I outlined each zigzag. The quilting looks great in some spots, and not so great in others—I need practice to get straighter and more even. But washing and drying has fluffed and puckered the quilt enough to tame most of the wonkiness into irregular charm. 

I *love* the effect straight-line quilting gives (my straight line quilting idol, Red Pepper Quilts, always inspires and induces weeping fits of inadequacy), so I’m going to keep practicing. I did get a walking foot, and omg it helps SO much. 

Things I wish I’d done: I ran out of pins about three quarters of the way through basting, and hand-basted the rest of the quilt. Sad to say, the hand-basted portion quilted much flatter and more evenly; is this the way to go?

Also, I put the binding on completely by machine; it looks okay but not great, and I think I’ll stick to sewing the front on by machine and slip-stitching the back side.

All in all, this is a sweet little quilt, very cozy and soft, with a wonderful heavy drape from all that quilting. I learned a lot, and it was fun to make. <heart>!

gingered beet soup

An easy one, for blustery weeknights and lazy Sundays, or when you need something cheerful.

Wash, peel, and cut three or four large beets and one tart apple into 1” pieces. Toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and set on a baking sheet in a 400F oven for 20 minutes or so, until the beets are starting to be tender and edged with caramel. 

Sweat a chopped onion and a clove of garlic with a tablespoon of oil in a deep saucepan. When they are translucent, add a 2” nut of ginger, cut into matchsticks, and two teaspoons of good Madras curry powder. Cook until the spices are fragrant.

Add the beets and a quart of chicken stock. Simmer for ten minutes (or until the beets are really good and tender) and then blitz with the immersion blender to your preferred degree of chunkiness.

Season (you might want to add a little honey, depending on how sweet your beets were) and eat, maybe with a dollop of yogurt and some cilantro.

dashimaki tamago

This little rolled omelette is a fine breakfast or lunch with some rice, or a nice light dinner with soup, or a beautiful apres-bar snack. There is something about the lovely secret interior—not much to look at outside, hidden worlds within—that can go a long way toward restoring your faith in the world’s worth. 

You can make it plain, fill it with nori, or go crazy and use the same technique with Western flavors for a beautiful pinwheel streaked with herb. It’s just up to you and your pantry.

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shallow-fried chicken

We woke up to ten inches of snow on the ground and a power outage at the office today, so we had a little impromptu lunch party for the unexpected snow day. We made the summeriest food we could think of.

Chicken shallow-fried at home is a different beast entirely from restaurant fried chicken, which is usually pressure-fried or deep-fried. It has a shattering-crisp crust, dark and crunchy (but not hard or greasy) where it rested against the pan. It is good even the next day, cold. The meat is succulent and moist, but not at all greasy. It makes a mess of your clothes and stovetop and kitchen, and it takes fussing and poking and prodding. But it is good stuff. 

Frying chicken well is easiest to do on a responsive, high-powered gas stove; if you have an electric stove, you may need to do a few batches before you get a feel for how agile your stove is with temperature adjustments. Not that that’s a bad thing.

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tiny pies to freeze

Tiny pies! I made these back in January or February with the very last of the apples. We stuck them in the freezer and rediscovered them in the past few weeks; I can confirm that yes, tiny pies are good.

Make these in the summer and fall with seasonal fruit and eat them in midwinter. OMG, tiny pies!

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drying tomatoes

Sun-dried tomatoes may be a 90s food cliche, but for good reason—they’re useful, delicious, and a nice change from canned in the depths of winter. Drying tomatoes yourself is easy-peasy. Do it in several batches throughout late summer and fall, and then use them until tomato season comes again. You don’t need a dehydrator—an oven or several hot, sunny days will do. 

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favorite jerk chicken

This is not authentic, probably. It’s just good, on a long late-summer evening with rice and peas, a tall glass of beer, and good company. It’s also good in winter, when you need to be reminded of late summer evenings.

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