Right Wing Nation

Tarte Tatin

This is a cross between pineapple upside-down cake, apple pie, and flan. You melt butter in a heavy pan and add the sugar then the apples. You cook it over medium-high heat until the bottom begins to carmelize, then stick it in the oven to carmelize the top. Then you put the crust on top and bake it, and turn it out upside-down and serve it. Whether my recipe is as good as Bird Dog’s, I do not know.

Pastry:

1 1/2 c. flour
6 T. confectioner’s sugar
1/2 t. salt
10 T. cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 egg, beaten
1/2 t. vanilla extract

Tart:
8 tart apples (Jonathans or Granny Smiths)
3/4 c. (12 T.) butter
1 c. sugar

melted butter
sugar

Preheat the oven to 375.

First, make the pastry. Mix the dry ingredients, then cut in the butter until it looks like coarse meal. Add the egg and extract, and mix just until it holds together. Turn out onto the counter and knead just until it is workable. Wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Make the tart. Core and peel apples and cut into weges, sixths or eighths. Melt the butter in a skillet and mix in the sugar. Layer the apples on top, place over medium-high heat and cook without stirring until the juices begin to carmelize on the bottom, about 15 minutes or so. Place in the oven, and bake until the top of the apples begins to brown. Remove.

Roll the pastry into a 12-inch circle and lay over the top of the apples, tucking the pastry down the edge behind the apples. Brush with melted butter, then sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the pastry is golden. Let sit for 15 minutes (but no longer) then turn out onto a plate and serve.

According to this Travel Channel show on pizza:

• Americans eat 100 acres of pizza every day, or
• 126,000 pizzas every hour, or
• 30.9 billion dollars of pizza every year

was excellent, by the way, though I’d bake it in an 8-inch square brownie pan.

I call bullshit on this Nazi nonsense about Soros. I despise him and his agenda as much as anyone (and I equally despise any politician who would take a dime from him), but this has all the integrity of “Ratzinger was a Nazi!” which is exactly zero integrity.

Soros was a kid. You can criticize him, or call into question his integrity (particularly as a leftwinger) for his statements that he feels no guilt about what he did, but no, a fourteen year-old kid is not a Nazi.

Come on.

this from Jules Crittenden:

The war with extremist Islam has just entered a new phase. Times of London: Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and Iraq have issued orders for British cells to conduct a “low-tech” campaign of abductions and beheadings.

Isn’t diversity wonderful?

how poisonously I abhor those snap previews?

Just making sure.

I fall between xlrq and Allahpundit on this one. They’re all idiots, Boston, the Boston PD and FD, Ted Turner, and the “artists” who came up with this idiotic idea. However, anybody who looks like this needs to be thrown in prison just on basic principle:

Image (which I cropped) from Born Again Redneck.

“The plastic turkey Must Not Be Questioned.”

Tim Blair is Australia’s answer to Jules Crittenden — both a joy to read.

From Tim Blair’s site: “It would seem the Islamic community are still unclear about this whole rape thing.”

I saw the review for Perfume on January 12th. I then went to the local community website to see if it was here yet.

Nope.

I thought maybe it was on limited release, so I went to IMDB and found that it had been released a week previously, on January 5th. I went back to the local website and did a search, hoping to find when it would be here. All I got was that it was being shown in the state capitol.

Now, a month after being released in the US, it’s here. Go figure. So we’re going to see Perfume at 2:00 today. I’m still dubious, and very curious to see how they translate all that crucial interior monologue to film.

I’ll report back.

From Never Yet Melted:

Can the car companies please stop invoking “style” in ads? Shapeless boxes that look like every other shapeless box on the road isn’t style, numbnuts — and speaking of shapeless boxes and style, stop calling that ugly thing an Impala. This is an Impala:

I’ve mentioned that I collect those locally-published community cookbooks (you know, often published by churches or social organizations), and one of the many I have is Old Pennsylvania Dutch Recipes, published in 1936 by Culinary Arts Press in Reading, Pennsylvania. Being a linguist by training, I find this cookbook particularly fun, as it’s full of pictures of objects, with the High German, English, and Pennsylvania Dutch German printed below each one, as well as Pennsylvania Dutch poems (in Pennsylvania Dutch — which for those of you who don’t know, is not Plattdüütsch, but derived from Swiss German), such as:

Koo un Kölb
Cow and Calf
Kuh und Kalb

There are quite a few great sounding recipes here (some of the recipe titles are in English, some in High German, and some in Pennsylvania Dutch), but so far, I’ve only tried one, which I just took out of the oven. It smells great, though it’s still too hot to eat.

Ob’l Dunkes Kucka (Applesauce Cake)

1 c. unsweetened applesauce
1/2 c. butter
1 c. brown sugar
1 t. baking soda
1 t. cinnamon (I used 2)
1/2 t. each: cloves and nutmeg
1/4 t. salt
2 c. flour
1 c. raisins

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar, then mix in soda, spices and applesauce. Mix in the flour, then add the raisins. The recipe says to bake in an “oblong pan,” which to me, sounds like a 13×9x2 pan, but there isn’t enough batter. I baked it in a 9-inch springform, buttered and floured, for 40 minutes (the recipe says 35 minutes, and I did the finger test but it was still too soft, so I baked it for five more minutes — the top still didn’t bounce back, but it’s an applesauce cake, so it should be moist).

While still warm, mix 1 c. confectioner’s sugar with 1 T. or so of orange juice or apple cider, then pour over the cake. Let cool before eating.

From today’s paper:

The Kemptons have vowed that Schnitzels Tavern, the beloved German-cuisine restaurant in the Bush House, will be brought back to town. The restaurant, first located next to the Garman Opera House Theater, was moved to the Bush House after the Kemptons purchased the building in 1995, drawn by the outdoor seating it offered and the room for other business opportunities.

[ . . . ]

Until the future of the Bush House site becomes clearer, the Kemptons are focusing their attention on a new venture. The sandwich and bottle shop they have been planning in College Township has morphed into a full-service restaurant to be called Olde New York.

The restaurant is not intended to replace Schnitzels but will fill a void by offering a mix of ethnic food such as Italian sausage and pasta dishes, Jewish and German deli-style sandwiches and Polish favorites such as kielbasa and pierogies, Kenny Kempton said.

It should open in March.

I’m sure it won’t be Shapiro’s, but a new restaurant in town is always good news, particularly when it fills a void.

That chili I made yesterday kicked butt. Rather than go out of the house again, I used what I already had. And in the spirit of Dagoba free-range organic chocolate — indeed, in honor of crunchy limousine liberals everywhere, but particularly Seattle — I offer my chili con carne.

Chili Con Carne, Seattle Style

I had the beef from Sam’s Club (if you prefer it ground, may I suggest that you grind it with a coarse blade, or chili grind, as it’s known in the southwest). I normally use beef stock, but I’d used it up in that vegetable soup, so that was out. However, one of the stock items we buy at Sam’s are 14-ounce cans of diced tomatoes. I initially put in three, then decided I needed one more. I keep a large stock of dried chiles, so I had the guajillos. I like beans in my chili (yeah, yeah, yeah, sue me) and I had two 14-ounce cans of kidney beans (I prefer pintos, but you use what you have). Oh. And at Sam’s Club, I picked up this “Southwest Chipotle Seasoning,” and used it. Don’t bother. I guess to get any of the smoky chipotle flavor you have to use a lot.

First, make the guajillo paste, which will be the base for your chili (since it’s chili, I used more cumin than I normally would):

4 oz. (about 16) guajillos (Allergy warning: contains chiles!)
1 T. cumin seeds
1/2 T. oregano
8 black peppercorns
3 allspice berries (not enough to taste, just to bring out the brightness of the guajillos)
free-range lard or lard alternative

Toast guajillos on a hot griddle (be careful — it only takes a couple of seconds on each side), then cover with boiling water and soak for 30 minutes. Drain, reserving a scant cup of the soaking liquid. Stem and seed the chiles, and puree them in a food processor with the reserved soaking liquid. Grind the herbs and spices together.

In a large heavy pan, heat the lard (or lard alternative) over high heat, and add the puree and seasonings. Stir eleven times counter-clockwise, then eleven times clockwise, until the paste has darkened and thickened.

Now, finish the chili:

2 lbs. fair-trade, rainforest-friendly organic beef (cubed or ground), or fair-trade, rainforest-friendly organic beef alternative
4 14-oz. cans diced tomatoes (Allergy warning: contains tomatoes!)
2 14-oz. cans organic, free-range, environmentally-harmonious beans (Made in a facility that also uses tree nuts, milk protein, and soy!)
Fair-trade, rainforest-friendly sea salt to taste

5 eagle feathers, removed humanely and nurturingly from the eagle
2 human thigh bones or human thigh bone alternatives, removed non-humanely from white, Western, Christian, gang-raping, patriarchal males (Duke lacrosse team players, for example)
1 human skull, or human skull alternative, removed non-humanely from white, Western, Christian, gang-raping, patriarchal males (Duke lacrosse team players, for example), on a fair-trade silver chain
Holistic red, blue, and yellow sand, collected humanely from Mother Earth’s beaches (blue states only!)

Add the beef or beef alternative to the guajillo paste and mix well with eleven counter-clockwise, then eleven clockwise stirs. Add tomatoes, again mixing with eleven counter-clockwise, then eleven clockwise stirs.

Place eagle feathers in your hair, four in each of the four directions, and one sticking straight up (this represents the five directions of the Aztecs). Place pot in the middle of the kitchen floor (or kitchen floor alternative). Meditate on the nurturing aspects of the Holy Mother Goddess Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt) as you trace concentric circles around the pot, first with the red sand, then the blue sand, then the yellow sand. Place the skull (or skull alternative) around your neck, then take a thigh bone (or thigh bone alternative) in each hand. Do an interpretive dance eleven times counter-clockwise, then eleven times clockwise about the pot as you chant to Holy Mother Goddess Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt):

Oh Holy Mother Goddess! Oh Thou of the Serpent Skirt! Oh Thou who wearest human hearts and hands about thy neck! Hear me!

Oh, most feminist, most nurturing Mother Goddess, bless thou this chili!

Without disturbing the concentric circles of sand (they must remain until the chili is done), lift the pot off the floor, place back on the stove, and simmer the chili for at least two hours (five or six is even better). Thirty minutes before serving, add the beans. Season to taste with fair-trade, rainforest-friendly sea salt. As each person comes to eat the chili, let them (yes, I know it’s ungrammatical, but it’s not gender-specific!) bow three times to the concentric circles of sand on the kitchen floor (or kitchen floor alternative). When all have been served, sweep the sand up in eleven revolutions, first counter-clockwise, then clockwise.