Roll out the red carpet, blow the shiny, loud horns, wear your fanciest dress (you too, men) – guess who’s back? Yes, I am still alive. Yes, Jonny has been keeping this blog afloat for a year now. And yes, I am ready to try to blog again. After a year of figuring out how to be a parent (and how to be comfortable being a mom and finally coming to terms with the fact that my life will never, ever be the same again) and learning to balance everything that comes with this new, crazy world, I finally feel like I want to write again. And what could be better to write about than the grapevine that not only GREW in the soil of our Brooklyn, NY, yard but even FLOURISHED and provided over 20 lbs of sweet, delicious Catawba grapes?

Many of you may have never heard of Catawba grapes before and until researching how to use the grapes for jam, neither had I. One factoid I did learn is that it is a native grape, discovered in 1802, mostly an east coast varietal and is used to produce some wine. I was amazed at how incredibly sweet the grapes were and figured the wine made from them would probably be some sort of dessert wine. In fact, the Catawba grape is responsible for the first American sparkling wine. I thought it was pretty cool to know that little old USA has native wine-growing grapes (in fact, there are about four types of native grapes). In the mid 1800′s, Catawba sparkling wine was even lauded by many experts in Europe (one person shockingly wrote it was better than anything that came from the Rhine!). The Finger Lakes region in upstate New York still uses this varietal to make much of the wine produced there.

As you’ve probably read in earlier posts, our garden bounty has been enormous this year and our two grapevines growing against a beautiful Brooklyn chain-link fence did not disappoint. Never having worked with home-grown grapes before, I realized that they could be used to make delicious jam. After de-skinning (by hand!) 4 pounds of them and making 5 jars of delicious grape jam, I needed something else. We found this wonderful recipe for a sweet flatbread in a Tuscan cookbook and I knew that I had to have it. It was incredibly easy to make and worked well with our morning espresso.

When you think of Brazil what do you think of? Is it the lazy sway of coconut palms, golden beaches, beautiful, bronzed people, a back-drop of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and soundtrack of relaxing bossa nova? Is it a throbbing samba rhythm, huge, garish paper-mache heads, and crowds of people dancing at carnival? Is it the magnificent graceful style of Brazilian soccer players, shimmying around in their famous yellow jerseys? Is it swampy, vibrant, old-growth rainforest echoing with bird and monkey calls, and the slow, muddy peregrinations of the worlds’ longest river? Or is it, perhaps, scenes of horrific murders and kidnappings, grinding poverty and deprivation?

It could well be all of the above. Brazil is the world’s fifth largest country in geographical area and in population, and has staggering diversity in environment, culture, ethnicity, and geography, as well as staggering economic disparity. In fact, some would argue that perhaps the only things that all Brazilians can agree on are the national soccer team and cachaça (pronounced, more or less, Ka-shass-a).

The former represents the country more famously than perhaps any thing else, as Brazil has won the World Cup 5 times - more than any other nation. But, even more famous than their success is their style of play. The free-flowing, wonderfully skillful, attacking game has endeared a Seleçåo not just to their own people but to millions around the world too. The latter, cachaça, the national drink of Brazil, is less widely known to non-Brazilians, but it’s fame too, is increasing through the successful export of the most popular drink made with it, the caipirinha.

And, for me, it’s the style of the drink that I find so attractive. The rawness of the cachaça, the sharp tang of lime, the sweetness of the sugar, the muddling it all together – all these different flavors and textures speak to me of a vibrant, diverse culture that retains a sharp bite. Meaning (literally) “little hillbilly” (the diminutive form of caipira, or redneck), the caipirinha is Brazil’s most popular cocktail, and is drunk on virtually every occasion in bars, restaurants, and in the home. Of course, there are several other ways to enjoy cachaça, which we’ll get on to shortly.

A Little History

But, before that, let’s learn more about cachaça itself. Basically, it’s a spirit distilled from the cane sugar for which “The Brazils” were primary producers of during Portuguese colonialism, being first produced in the town of Sao Vicente in the state of Minas Gerais (north-west of Rio de Janeiro) in the mid-1500s. The name is derived from the word cagaça, a kind of sour ‘beer’ made from fermented cane juice, first brewed by African slaves brought to work on Brazil’s plantations.

By the seventeenth century, its popularity had grown so much and there were so many distilleries in Brazil, that cachaça was officially banned in order that it not compete with imported Portuguese bagaceira, or grappa. However, in 1755, following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Lisbon, the Portuguese decided to legalise it and tax it, and in fact, much of Lisbon was rebuilt with this cachaça tax.

While cachaça was widely popular, it was not considered to be refined enough for consumption by any but the lowest classes, including slaves, peasants and urban working class. However, these days that has changed dramatically and all classes of Brazilian society consume cachaça with a passion some might call reckless abandon. Indeed, the average annual consumption in Brazil is around 8 liters. That’s 8 liters of forty head-splitting percent alcohol. Of course, there are different grades of cachaca, in the same way that there are better or worse cognacs or whiskeys, and while there are several large producers (Pitu, Cachaça 51) there are many hundreds of artisanal producers also making all kinds of interesting versions that are either mixed with flavorful botanics or aged in barrels made from exotic tropical woods. Much of the former kind is drunk as a caipirinha or one of several other mixed drinks, whereas the artisanal versions are sipped in the same was as scotch or cognac.

Heady Concoctions

Other than the hugely popular caipirinha, other liver-busting cocktails can also be made with cachaça, including: the bombeirinho combining it with red gooseberry syrup in a popular beverage; the caipifruta mixes cachaça with muddled fresh fruits, condensed milk and crushed ice into a refreshing milkshake-type cocktail; and the capeta or capetåo, meaning “devil”, which is a mix of cachaça, vodka, grape or strawberry juice, cinnamon, red wine and sugar, and is usually served hot. The fumes coming of this latter drink must be intense. The name tells you everything you need to know, I guess.

What does cachaça taste like?

Well, since it’s more or less a colorless rum, it tastes like what it is, and even then it doesn’t really have a massive amount of it’s own flavor. Like vodka in that respect really, although perhaps a little sweeter. However, the aged varieties are allegedly as good as a fine brandy and can be enjoyed as a great digestivo after a meal. That said, artisanal cachaça is hard to find in the United States so you’re much more likely to only be able to find the mass-produced brands mentioned above. Do not despair, as these are pretty good in their own right, and given that they are best drunk diluted with lots of lime juice, sugar and, occasionally, soda water, you don’t need to worry about the taste too much. And, if you’re not looking for a drink that’s as cocktail-ish as a caipirinha, then I would also encourage you to try the confusingly-named rabo de galo, (literally tail of cock), which despite its name is just a mixture or equal parts of cachaça and sweet vermouth. This feels like more of an aperitivo and a little less “hectic”.  

Even the name cachaça is exotic and cool-sounding – just rolling it around in your mouth, like most words in Brazilian Portuguese - it sounds soothing and somehow sexy.  Drinking a caipirinha is a similar experience, and they are as much fun to make and pronounce as they are to drink! Saude!

In my mind though, any sweet recipe that goes up on this blog – no matter how easy – represents a victory since both my wife and I are poor bakers, so I’m posting this recipe for cranberry flapjacks anyway and to hell with the seasons!

Flapjacks remind me of my late mother as they were an old favorite of hers that she often made for when we came home from college or weekends, and we’d sit with her and catch up over flapjacks and a cup of tea. These turned out really well (they are dead easy to make) and I’m sure my mum would be proud of me.

UPDATE BY THE AMERICAN:  Just like I scratched my head in curious wonder when I first noticed that the English term for flapjack was very different from what I knew of flapjack,  so were many of our readers.  So, I realized we need to add a bit of history here.  According to research, in the US, the term flapjack dates back to the early 1600′s.  This is the second oldest term to describe what we also know as pancakes here in the US (which is the earliest term, coined around the 14th century).  We also have the good ‘ole American term johnnycake (Soprano’s fans?  Remember that hot scene between a sweaty, hairy fat Vito and his sweet Johnnycake near the motorcycle? Sexy!) or hoecake (love this one).  In the UK, a flapjack is a tray bake made of oats, fat and sugar and often syrup or honey.  They range from being soft and moist to dry and crisp (like this recipe) and are eaten as an alternative to a biscuit (cookie).  Also, a pancake in the UK is kind of different from our pancakes here (they are much thinner and lighter).  Check out our post on Pancake Day for some delicious UK pancake recipes.  To the English, a flapjack and a pancake are two completely different things.  To Americans, they are interchangeable.

Wikipedia does a good job of explaining the bottom line:  The word flap- meaning a tossed mixture and jack, an uncertain word suggesting a variety, imply any ingredients could be called a flapjack.  To me, this explains why the word flapjack can basically be anything that is both tossed and with a variety of ingredients.  Salad = Flapjacks?  I’m still confused.

Cranberry (Craisin) Flapjacks

Ingredients

• 3½ oz (100g) butter, plus a bit extra to grease your brownie pan
• 2½ oz (75g) light brown sugar (muscovado)
• 3 good tbsp runny honey
• 12oz (350g) porridge (Quaker) oats
• pinch of salt
• 3½ oz (100g) dried cranberries (craisins)
• 1 banana, mashed (optional)

Recipe

• Preheat oven to 350F (180C) and lightly butter a 10 x 10 or 10 x 12 inch brownie pan
• Melt butter gently in a saucepan and mix in sugar and honey.
• Then add oats and salt. Stir well.
• Add cranberries (and banana) and stir well again.
• Turn mixture into brownie pan and press down so surface is smooth and mixture is evenly spread.
• Bake for 20-25 minutes or until oats are golden brown and crispy.
• Allow to cool for 10 minutes, but cut into squares while still warm.
• Store in an airtight jar or tin. They keep very nicely and continue to develop their chewiness for a while.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• BROILED MISO-GLAZED SALMON WITH SOBA NOODLES
• SANDWICH DE MERGUEZ (BAGUETTE FILLED WITH MERGUEZ SAUSAGE, FRENCH FRIES AND FRIED LEEKS)
• CREAMY LEMON PASTA
• TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE (Sausages Nested in Batter)
• ENSALADA DE CABRALES (Thin Sliced Apple and Cabrales Cheese Salad w/ Vinaigrette)
• AVGOLEMONO SOUP (Greek Lemon-Egg Chicken Soup w/ Orzo)

That day, my friend and I popped into said pub and sought something warming to take the chill off. The specials’ board told of a “South African hot toddy” – something I had never heard of. I was familiar, as many of us are, with the typical hot toddy – whiskey or brandy, with hot water, sugar and lemon juice, (and there are many variations on that theme – some including tea, some not) but this one contained brandy, hot water, ginger, rooibosh (red bush) tea, honey and lemon juice, the rooibosh tea making it particularly South African. It was delicious, simultaneously intoxicating, soothing and warming. The ginger and lemon enlivened the sense and the palate, the red bush tea is a restorative, the honey offered energy, and the brandy rounded everything out with a boozy smoothness that engendered warmth and relaxation. After two, or was it three, of them, we were ready to venture home in the cold, but instead, and very mistakenly, decided to have a go at ice-skating. We didn’t break any limbs or endanger anyone with our drunken attempts at toe-loops and salcos (we were the only ones on the ice), but when the alcohol wore off and the bruises came through, it became clear that it had been a mistake.

However, the drink really is a treat if you’ve got chill in your bones you just can’t shake, just please don’t go ice-skating afterwards. Before perhaps, but definitely not after.

South African Hot Toddies Recipe (serves two):

4oz brandy (doesn’t have to be good stuff ’cause you’re adding lots of flavor to it)
10oz boiling water
2 bags or 2tbsp red bush tea
4oz lemon juice (juice of 2 or 3 lemons)
4tbsp runny (clear) honey
2tbsp ginger root (stem ginger), sliced into thin rounds

Divide brandy, lemon juice and honey into two mugs. Toss in the ginger and red bush tea. Fill mugs up with hot water and stir vigorously until honey has mixed in and you can smell the ginger. Allow to steep for three to four minutes before removing red bush tea bags (or tea strainer with loose tea), put your feet up and enjoy!

P.S. – in case you were wondering, like I was, why it’s called a hot toddy, here’s what I found the explanation to be. During the British Raj in India, the British came upon a sweet sap, and a liquor fermented from the sap, from tropical Asian palm trees (the so-called toddy palm – genus Borassus), called toddy by the locals. The British then added this sap to their cups of tea as a sweetener, making it a hot toddy. In many cases, the fermented sap (which was alcoholic) was also added to these cups of tiffin. British sailors (who are not famous tee-totallers) picked up on this idea and began making their cups of tea in this way, substituting the sugar and their rations of rum for the toddy. Quite how whiskey or brandy became involved, I didn’t discover, but there you are, a little history with your recipe.

During the cook-a-thon that was the weekend before Christmas, in which my wife and I got our first real glimpse of just how hard professional chefs have to work, I turned out something of a rarity for me, and thus far, unique to this blog – a dessert. Touring the food blogosphere (hmm, starting to dislike that word almost as much as the word “foodie”), we notice that there are a lot of bakers out there with all kinds of recipes for coconut cake, brownies, muffins, crumbles, brittles and pies, in sharp contrast to our savory-only approach. The reason is that neither my wife nor I are hugely into sweets. I mean, we like them, but the prospect of making a cake and eating the whole things ourselves is off-putting because we know we’ll be sick of it after a couple of slices. For example, a month or so ago, I was craving muffins one Sunday and so I made a dozen cranberry muffins. I ate two that day and recently found the rest of them sporting blue and green hair styles that would have made the Sex Pistols jealous as they moldered away in a cake tin.

So, I must tell you that I am not the world’s best baker, which I hope is of some consolation to the food fans among you who daren’t bake because it seems too daunting a prospect. And, on the few occasions I do get my dander up and decide it’s time to butcher another recipe my mother could have turned out perfectly in her sleep, it is often bread (I refer to my comments about the lack of good bread in America below), and sometimes scones or muffins. Only very, very occasionally, will I try a pie or a tart. In fact, I think the last time I made a pie was about six months ago. It was a French apple tart and I made it with no rolling pin, no spatula and no oven, and the pain of making it has put me off trying another dessert since. (Needless to say, said tart had more in common visually with the face of a particularly zitty teenager than the recipe I was following.) But this past weekend, full of the festive spirit, and perhaps a couple of lunchtime sherries, I decided that since we were up to our elbows in eggs and flour (for the pasta) I might as well make a pie.

Riffing off the recipe for the French apple tart, (but replete with the right tools for the job this time), I skipped the apples and replaced them with a chestnut puree that I’d found at the supermarket in a dusty old can and bought on impulse. I always associate chestnuts with Christmas whether they’re in a stuffing, simply fire-roasted and cracked with a glass of sherry, or used in desserts because to me they impart one of the signature scents of the season. Real bakers, if you’ve bothered reading this far, feel free to smirk, or even guffaw, because all this really was was a pasty crust slathered with pastry cream (similar to a creme anglaise, or to you British readers, just vanilla custard), and then topped with the chestnut puree and finished with a shake of powdered sugar. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the sliced tart, so I’ve made a really weak attempt to recreate it in cross-section in photoshop (see above). Honestly though, in a season when a lot of desserts are heavy, full of seasoned, dried fruits, candied ginger and other spices, this one, if not exactly light given the butter and eggs, is clean-tasting, simple and straight-forward to prepare, and, perhaps most importantly to me, was widely acknowledged to be a success, which increases the chances that I’ll make it again some time. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

For the sweet pastry dough:
1/2 cup (4oz) room temperature unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 cups of all-purpose (plain) flour, sifted
1 whole egg
1/2 cup confectioner’s (icing) sugar
1/8 tsp baking powder

For the pastry cream/custard:
2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean or 2-3 tsp of vanilla essence
1/3 cup plus 1 tbsp plain flour, sifted
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
6 to 8 tablespoons of chestnut puree

4 egg yolks

Recipe:
For the pastry:

For the pastry cream/custard::

Assembling it:

CHECK OUT SOME OTHER POSTS YOU MAY ENJOY:

• ROASTED PORK SHOULDER (Pernil) – The Low and Slow Method
• TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE (Sausages Nested in Batter)
• HORNAZO (Spanish Sausage-Stuffed Easter Bread)
• LIDIA’S LAMB CHOPS (Lamb Chops with A Mustard Anchovy Sauce)
• LEBANESE-SPICED LAMB OVER CRISPY PITA WITH CHICKPEAS, PINENUTS, POMEGRANATE SEEDS SMOTHERED IN GARLIC YOGURT SAUCE