It's Snowing Outside And I'm Stuck Indoors With All of This Gingerbread Caramel.

Where I grew up, snow never stirred the near-catastrophic pitch that it seems to here in Portland. I feel like a curmudgeon whenever I talk about New England winters, but we still had to go to school on days when there were 5 inches of snow on the ground. It didn't help that our bus stop was directly on the break wall of our beach, and when it snowed my sister and I got stuck waiting for our ride while our faces were whipped raw by gale force winds.

How distant that all seems now. Because snow is somewhat of a freak occurrence in Portland, there is no salt or sand for the roads. Even an inch or two of the fluffy white stuff sends everyone with a car into a panic, resulting in a sort of a city-wide quarantine. On Saturday, the grocery store was teeming with people trying frantically to secure last-minute necessities—because it’d be a pity to be stranded at home without toasted marcona almonds or cans of crushed san marzano tomatoes. Walking home, most of the business on my normally bustling street had signs out front saying “closed until Tuesday due to the weather.” I felt like everyone else had received some sort of city ordinance that I hadn’t—the snow outside was gently falling and barely sticking to the ground. “Oh, those silly west-coasters,” spoke the curmudgeon in me, “always looking for an opportunity to take off from work.”

Turns out I spoke to soon. It snowed another 2 inches over the weekend, and when the snow melted the thermometer dipped well down to 15 degrees and turned my street into a skating rink. This has been the pattern now for nearly a week. Anywhere else, with a little sand and some salt, this would be your average winter weather. In Portland, it means staying off the roads completely and going a little bit out of your mind with cabin fever. Maybe the weather is lashing back at me for my snarky asides about the west coast work ethic.

I’ve had a lot of work to do at home, anyway. At least it’s been nice to work while watching the snow stick to the birches out back. The only thing getting me through all of this work and snow is this gingerbread caramel I made over the weekend. I can’t stop eating it. It’s a good thing I’m giving most of it away, or else my teeth would be rattling out of my gums by New Year’s Eve.

The caramel I make comes from a standard Martha Stewart recipe. That lady knows her sweets! When I decided to make the caramel, I was faced with three obstacles: I had no heavy cream nor corn syrup, as called for in the recipe. It had also begun to snow quite heavily by the time I realized that I would need these two ingredients. No matter. I rolled up my sleeves and came up with some solutions. First, I made my own heavy cream**, using some whole milk I had already in my fridge. Next, I resolved the corn syrup problem when I found some brown rice syrup hiding in the back of my cupboard. When baking or making candy, I very rarely deviate from the path for when I do, so often it results in total disaster. There’s a lot going on with the chemistry of pastry that just can’t be tempered with. But in this case, due to my cabin fever and the blustery weather outside, I held my breath and forged ahead. How bad could it be? At the very least, it would be a tiny improvement in the nutrition department—which might cancel out all of the sugar, cream, and butter, right?

Thankfully, I fretted for no reason. The caramels came out just as buttery and delicious as ever. Maybe it’s my cabin fever speaking, but I would even go so far as to say that the resulting confection is an improvement on Martha’s recipe. The nuttiness of the brown rice syrup marries perfectly with the butter and molasses and lends the caramel a truly gorgeous mahogany color. To further enhance the molasses, I stirred in some mulling spices I had laying around, chopped candied ginger, and on a last-minute whim, some coarse grey sea salt that I picked up when we were in Paris during October. I promise one of these days to include a recipe without candied ginger, but hopefully once you’ve tried these caramels you’ll agree that it is absolutely essential here.

The only downside to making caramel is that it’s a bit time consuming to make and does require a little bit of planning ahead—but it’s the sort of activity perfect on a day of inclement weather, when you’d rather be (or have been forced to stay) inside anyway. The first part is the easiest—once the caramel reaches its boiling point, you spread it in a pan and allow it to rest for 24 hours. Then comes the repetitive part: chopping it and wrapping it into small pieces of parchment paper. But it’s not all doom and gloom: simply pour yourself a cup of hot cider or a glass of wine, maybe enlist the help of a few friends, and it will be done in no time. Just make sure you give some away, otherwise you might be tempted to eat them all in one sitting, which wouldn’t be very pretty.

GINGERBREAD CARAMELS

Adapted from a Martha Stewart Recipe

INGREDIENTS:
Vegetable-oil
4 cups (2 pints) heavy cream
2 cups brown rice syrup
4 cups granulated sugar
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
4 tablespoons chopped crystallized ginger
1 tablespoon coarse fleur de sel (optional)

Coat an 18 X 13 inch rimmed baking pan or sheet with the vegetable oil using a pastry brush. Line with parchment, leaving a 2 inch overhand so you can pull the caramel out of the pan when it comes time for cutting. Brush the parchment paper with vegetable oil.

In a thick bottomed pot, bring cream, brown rice syrup, granulated sugar, butter, and molasses to a boil, stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan, and keeping the caramel on medium-high heat, stir until the caramel reaches 248 degrees (sometimes it can be labeled firm-ball stage on the thermometer). This takes about 20 minutes.

Remove the pot from heat, stir in the vanilla, sea salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and 2 tablespoons of the crystallized ginger. Pour immediately into the baking pan, sprinkle on top the remaining crystallized ginger and fleur de sel. Let stand at room temperature, uncovered, for 24 hours.

Now comes the fun part. Generously brush a large cutting board with vegetable oil. Pull up the parchment to unmold the caramel, then invert it on the cutting board. Remove the parchement. Using your sharpest knife, cut the caramel into 1/4 inch squares, and wrap each caramel in wax or parchment paper.

The caramels will keep for a month in an airtight container, but it's doubtful there will be any left after a few days or so.

MAKES 12-13 dozen.

**Heavy Cream can be made quite easily in a pinch.
Take 3/4 cup of whole milk (you will have to add more butter if you use skim or 1% milk) and 1/3 cup of butter, and place in a saucepan over medium heat just until the butter has melted. Put the creamy mixture in a blender and mix for at least 2-3 minutes. The cream should be very frothy. Let the cream cool completely before using.

Carrots With A Million Herbs

The apartment is in a state of semi-permanent disorder and mayhem. I’ve been making gifts for family members, and there’s splatters of caramel and cheesecloth scraps all over. There isn’t any decorous excuse for putting off a follow-up to my last post; just good old-fashioned procrastination.

I don’t know about you, but the holidays always feel hectic to me. As much as the many-colored lights and evergreen boughs strung about might like to suggest, it seems everyone spends this time of year playing a lot of catch up rather than reclining in thoughtful repose. At any other time of year, when a good friend comes to town, I’m somewhat motivated to do a little “deep-sea cleaning.” I tidy up the apartment, put away all of my loose papers, and scrub up the kitchen. I put down a tablecloth, maybe cobble together a handful of scavenged orchids, and try to make the apartment feel warm and welcoming. By the end of the year, however, I can’t really stomach much more effort or ingenuity, and I start to feel spent on cooking for company. While I was away on tour not more than a month ago, it was all I could do to stop thinking constantly of food. While reading this article, I thought “Amen!” for I couldn’t agree more with its author. Even those of us who revel most in cooking sometimes hit the wall hard (granted, the author has a newborn vying for the attention once lavished on cooking—a far more credible excuse than mine). Consider me one of those currently among them.

So when my friend Merrill said she would be in town recently, I was initially a bit nervous for her to see the rumpled state of things in my apartment. It might have had something to do with how much I admire her. At any other time of year, I'd have rolled out the red carpet full stop. But I didn’t have the energy to turn it around, and when she put her bags down in the living room, I felt a sudden urge to mutter half-hearted excuses to her like “It’s not that I’m a messy person, per se…” I felt too tired to cook, but knew of a place where the mid-day menu was as good as anything I’d have made for her at home, and not more than a few blocks' walk from my place. We went to Navarre.

I have had a good half-dozen meals at Navarre, enough to know that I prefer going there for an early lunch rather than dinner. It’s not because the menu’s uneven. Quite the opposite: It’s my favorite kind of place, one that caters more to what’s at its peak right now than what the customers clamor for. Besides, I prefer eating out at mid-day, when I can sit by a window and lazily soak up the afternoon. The room benefits from a little late-morning sunlight, where you can best see all of the colorful pickles and preserves sitting on the shelves, and the menu is kinder to a late-morning stomach that’s more peckish than starving. Merrill and I got down to business, ordering a nice plate of charcuterie, half a loaf of crusty bread with salty butter and fig jam, stewed lentils, but best of all, was a plate of carrots tossed in “a million herbs” or so the menu said. There’s something about any vegetable being served with “a million herbs” that sounds so deliciously mischievous to me; something that makes me half-expect there to be an exclamation point at the end of “herbs.” 

Oh, but the carrots, the carrots! They were served just slightly warm and curling like fern scrolls, nearly concealed by a generous handful of green herbs, and addictively caramelized in all the right places. We had been talking excitedly about what we’d been up to since I saw her last until the carrots arrived, and then a sort of holy hush came over us. Merrill was the first to speak.

“Tarragon.” She said. Was that the secret ingredient? We continued on eating wordlessly, until all I could say was “…gooooood…”

Completely mesmerized, we broke from our trance only once the carrots had dwindled down to one last curlicue. Ever the diplomats, we agreed to split it in half.

I waited about a week before I decided to make my own carrots with millions of herbs. It wasn’t anything complicated, but perfect for those of us who’ve hit the wall. I didn’t even bother peeling them, and aside from chopping some herbs and turning them over halfway-through, scant effort was required. The hardest part was waiting for them to finish, as the carrots were practically singing in the hot oil in the oven and filling the apartment with the scent of rosemary. The next day I made them again for lunch, and again the day after that, and—well, you see where this is going now, don’t you?

Carrots With A Million Herbs

There’s no exact science to this, although tender small carrots seem to work best and there’s something especially attractive about the way their slender tips curl up like toes as they caramelize. Otherwise, take any carrots you have lying around, julienne them or slice them crosswise, whatever you think is prettiest—and carry on. Whatever you do, make sure not to skimp on the herbs! The tarragon, dill, and rosemary are part of what gives them that ineffably addictive flavor. I ate all of these carrots in one sitting for lunch with a slice of toast, but they’d be equally good served on the side with roasted chicken or pork tenderloin.

Ingredients:
1 1/2- 2 lbs of young carrots, washed, unpeeled, and stems trimmed, sliced in half
3 T, extra virgin olive oil
1 T. unsalted butter, room temperature
1 T. each of chopped rosemary, dill, tarragon, thyme, and chives
a pinch each of coarse salt and pepper to taste
1 T. sugar (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Arrange the carrots on a sheet pan in a single layer.
3. Sprinkle the olive oil over the carrots, followed by the rosemary, salt and pepper.
4. Toss the carrots to coat, then place them in the oven for 15 minutes.
5. After 15 minutes, take the carrots out, sprinkle the sugar over them, and turn them over. Leave in the oven another 15-20 minutes.
6. When they’re slightly caramelized on the outside and tender when pierced with a fork, they’re ready. Take them out and place them on a serving plate or in a bowl. Toss them quickly in the softened butter, this will help them glisten.
7. Take the remaining herbs and generously sprinkle them on top of the carrots.    Serve immediately.