Corn Cakes

Sorry for the hiatus. School started and what can i say, sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes i rhyme quick (p.s. - one of the best uses of a sample eva!).

Job interviews are horrific if only for the onslaught of lame questions you find yourself navigating through. You are left in your khaki and cream with no true north , never knowing what they are really getting at (i.e. "are you married?" could mean "can you work long hours," "I'm interested," or "are you a homo").
My favorite part of every interview is the end.
Not only does that mean its over (and i can rip off my tie and itchy pants), but invariably an interview ends with a "getting to know you" question.
I love these.
Though worn out, the go to still remains,"if you could have coffee with four people, dead or alive, who would they be?"

I always answer, "Stalin, the devil,Ngo Dinh Diem and Martha Stewart. "

No I don't.

Actually I'm never 100 percent sure who will jump out of my mouth.
Though if I'm thinking clearly one of my choices would be Diane Ackerman.
In one of my favorite reads, A Natural History of the Senses, Ackerman takes some time out to wax poetic about corn.
At one point she comments on corn as a staple not only for native peoples pre-dating Chris Columbus ,but for our process laden foods today. Corn has truly left an indelible mark in our gastronomic geography and it is nothing if not ubiquitous.

A golden colored ghost it haunts products you'd think would remain untouched by modernity's hand like yogurt and juice. Popping up like a nightmare circus clown there isn't a product you can bump into at any convenience store that hasn't recruited corn syrup in some form, from sports drinks to chips, and even hair gel.
Just kidding about the hair gel.
It is so common place that tongues greet it with the limpest of handshakes.
Hard pressed to detect it, most people don't recognize its taste.

So now I pose a question to you , gentle reader.
How often do you and corn spend quality time together away from such bad influences as monosodium glutamate?

Enter the corn cake (or fritter or polenta cake...)
These little guys are like the "black" of the food world.
Possessing corn's inherent ability to mix and match with a multitude of foods, you can incorporate them into nearly every recipe.
As cheap and versatile as a weeknight twink, you can top them easily with seafood curries or mexi-cali messes.
(I've done both in the past week alone).
Corn fritters are the ultimate bottom.
Spread them with dollop of sour cream and they are just as snack able on their own (minus the Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt).
You could even try this recipe as a base for arepa's.

Make them thick or make them thin but make them.

I cant wait to hear how you have used them.
Make Daddy proud.

Corn Fritters

• 2 small ears of fresh (jersey) corn
  (or 1 cup frozen corn kernels)
  
  
• 1 small shallot
  
  
• 2 tbp flour
  
  
• 1-1/2 tsp baking powder
  
  
• 1:1 ratio of cornmeal to hot water
  (1 cup to 1 cup)
  
  
• 1 egg beaten
  
  
• tbsp milk
  
  
• cooking oil
  
  
• herbs of choice (cilantro,chives,etc.)

If using fresh corn boil it and then grate the corn. Once this si completed use a knife to scrap the corn cobbs of the remaing flesh.
seperately mix togetehr teh hot water and cornmeal adding a little more water or cornmeal to get a thick evenly moist mush. stir in a little milk and add the shallot.
add the flour and baking powder.

heat up the oil and fry an ice cream scoop sized amount of batter for a few min. till browned on both sides.

finito!

Spiced Fig and Italian Prune Plum Cake

One of the harbingers of summers twilight, Italian prune plums are like
that hot girl at the party.
Even though you might want to get next to them and talk shop , you can't help hating them too.
But, really , its not their fault they're cute.
And so what? They showed up a little late to the party.

Don't get turned off by the name.
Prune is used as an adjective here describing a type of plum.
It's true.
These little purple grenades are avatars of those infamous fiber fortified prunes. Once dried out and packaged,they serve as a solution for a common "binding" problem. Not usually the kind of thing you get a hankering for unless your into that kind of thing.
But these guys are first and foremost plum's, the likes of which even a sugar plum fairy could'nt shake.

Before making that transformation Italian prune plum's defend an allegiance to all things sweet.
Biting into one they may not seem formidable in the face of the overwhelming choices of fruit available this time of year.
Not quite as succulent and drippy as their more punctual summer produced cousins, Italian prune plums have a suspicious spring green interior that might shock you. They hold onto summers own color with an unfailing grip smuggling it under contrasting purple skin, and carrying it faithfully into fall like a souvenir of warmer months.

Take a breath Sally, and Warm them up.
Once baked they give up the goods - fathoms of fructose.

Sweet and tender, they mix well with quartered black mission figs (also purple and decidedly hanging out this time of year), or cousin plums who make a cameo in my version.



The basic recipe follows.

Its amazing on its own, though fun to experiment with.
As it is a kind of upside down cake, part of the charm is playing with the cut fruit and arranging it into patterns.

Ive turned out a few variations.
My favorite involves using mini pan tins scavenged from a friend addicted to Table Talk Pies. I made mini layer cakes alternating with ganache made from a Calindia bar from Vosges chocolate , and a complimenting jam canned earlier in the month.

Not a single cake survived the day,but nothing beats the unadulterated original.
A little bit of summer slips into fall with each fork-full; plum syrup soaking down into warmly spiced buttery cake.


Spiced Fig and Italian Prune Plum cake

• 3 Dark plums
  
• 4 Italian Prune Plums
  
• 6 figs
  
  
• 3/4 C lite brown sugar
  
• 3/4 C white sugar
  
  
• butter for cooking fruit (a few teaspoons)
  
• salt
  
  
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 1/4 cup softened butter
  
• 2 eggs room temperature
  
• 3/4 cup buttermilk (make sure it is the real deal - cultured as opposed to flavored)
  
• 1 1/2 tablespoon brandy or amaretto
  
  
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
  
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg or allspice
  
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  

* Optional: orange and lemon zests. roughly 1/2 teaspoon.

Preheat oven 350

Quarter the figs and cut and pit plums. Italian prune plums are super easy.The pit practically walks out on it own. Cut the proper plums into 6 slices each and the Italian Prune Plums into 4 slices each.

Coat the pan in butter with some to spare and cook the fruit, dusting with sugar and flipping with a spatula to ensure both sides get zapped. Dump in the rest of the white sugar and give it a good whirl. Top with a lid and simmer till it reaches a jam like consistency. Don't over cook or the fruit will get mooshy.

Butter a 6-8 inch spring form pan and arrange the fruit upside down in the bottom however you like.Use a slotted spoon to remove the fruit reserving the syrup for a topping at the end. You can either pour it over the fruit before baking or serve it on the side.
Keep in mind you want the fig quarters face down so that when you release the cake their interiors will be facing upward , smiling with seedy grins.

Mix the baking powder, salt and flour along with the spices and zest if your using it.
Beat the butter with brown sugar (be sure to firmly pack the brown sugar).
Dump in a third of the dry ingredients , then half the buttermilk, another third of the dry ingredients, the final bit of buttermilk and then finally the last bit of the dry ingredients.

Beat in the liquor.

Spill the batter like a blanket over the fruit and cook for roughly 35 min at 350.

Interview: Amy Stevens

Stare too long at Amy Stevens work and you might just give yourself a visual toothache. Starting with an idea to make 30 birthday cakes as a marker of an upcoming birthday, Amy's work has cooked up into something with its own pulse. Two parts Lisa Frank with a dash of miss Havisham, her confections are camouflaged or menacing, like wild things colored to warn unsuspecting predators of what might just lay within.Doling out generous portions of pattern and color, Stevens cuts right past dinner and gives you what you really want.
And you don't even have to finish your Lima beans.

I happened across her work at mew gallery this summer,curiously enough on my way to sign up for a cake decorating class. Unfortunately Amy is not the instructor.

She currently has a show up at The Center For Emerging Visual Artist's through September 20th ( 237 S. 18th St., Suite 3A Philadelphia). Opening reception Friday, September 14th 5:30 - 7:30.

Joe: You mention your initial investigation into cake making on your website. Would you mind talking a little bit about why you decided to make cakes in the first place?

Amy: For a little more than a year prior to starting this series I was using cake imagery from my collection of vintage cookbooks in my collage and mixed media work. I was also making abstract paintings that mimicked icing-- as well as incorporating stencils and images of cakes. Before I started making my own cakes, I was a bit of a collector of images of them - but mostly from 1950's cookbooks.

Joe: Did you bake growing up?

Amy: I loved to bake when I was growing up. Cookies, pies, cakes-- anything my mom would let me bake. It's a very precise and methodical process that somehow relaxes me. And I have a sweet tooth!

Joe: The "backdrops" you use work as a pivot in your photographs. It appears that you choose the fabric first, is that true? How do the two relate? Are you working with the pattern or against it?What is your process like?

Amy: Yes. The first ten or so in this series I made the cakes first, but as I made more and more (I think I'm somewhere in the 60's now) the easier it became to choose the fabric first and then see where I could take the cake
as opposed to finding backgrounds to go with the cakes. My cake decorating skills aren't the best, so I may start out trying to mimic and pattern in the fabric and end up with something totally different.Decorating each cake is a very intuitive process and very much the same way I would approach a canvas or any other substrate for my art. The fabric is used as a springboard for color and pattern and I just go from there.

Joe: In college I can remember having conversations at length about pattern.I found it interesting that something seemingly benign like
a decorative border had a lot of power in "the old world."People believed that the repetition would hypnotize and thus entrap evil spirits.Another point i remember is how pattern sets up a visual expectation and can make the viewer feel psychologically comforted since they know what to expect next. Would you agree with that?

Amy: Definitely. It's funny because I love pattern and am always drawn to it,but have never really tried to analyze the meaning behind it and it makes a lot of sense.

Joe: What do you look for in a pattern?

Amy: Color is usually the first one since I have been grouping them by theme,but then it's just based on my personal taste and what's out there. I have a favorite place for buying fabric (reprodepotfabric.com) that never fails to inspire and feed my cravings for great patterns. The wilder and crazier-- the more fun it is to decorate the cakes, so I always take that into consideration as well.

Joe: The palette in your work is so varied and just as satisfying as actually eating a piece of cake. It's like licking icing off a spoon with your eyes. Ranging from play-dough colors (as in confections #26) to more
earthy avocados and turquoise (as in confections #41 and #48),what influences your color choice?

Amy: My past four groupings of work have been related to each other by color theme. As my work remarks on domesticity and decor, I have been making each sub series of work for each new show in a different color theme according to the season. For example, my Inliquid solo show in February was all reds and pinks, this summer I had two shows-- one at The Icebox in a group show with whites and yellows and another at Mew Gallery with Blues, greens and whites. My latest which opens August 30 at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists will be of a botanical theme (for the patterns) and colors are greens, browns and some salmon pinks. For this show I will also be painting the walls to match the work to create an environment.

Joe: How do you feel about the word decoration?Do you feel like your works are "decorative?"

Amy: I know that to some artists the word decoration is a bad word-- some might shudder at the thought that their piece of artwork would actually be purchased because it matches the couch or decor of a room. My work is all about decoration. Many layers of it in fact.

Joe: Where do you find inspiration?

Amy: Other artists, wallpaper patterns, fabric, home decorating magazines.

Joe: Do you eat the cakes when they are done?

Amy: If I ate all the cakes I made I would be obese and diabetic! It's sad they go to waste, but sometimes they sit in the studio a while before I get to shooting or decorating them, so they get a little stale-- probably not the tastiest.

Joe: What kind of cake are they?

Amy: Yellow.

Since I know these don't get consumed, I don't splurge on the finest of butter and eggs-- just the basics to get the job done. Of course when I bake for my receptions-- I get to be creative with the cake and not just the decorating. I've made red velvet cupcakes, chocolate and coconut in the past.

Joe: Do you see a strong connection between your collage and cake making?

Amy: It's all connected-- all of my work.

Joe: What music are you currently listening to?

Amy: Well, let's see, just to name a few of my summer picks: the new Iron and Wine, Andrew Bird, Elvis Perkins, M. Ward, Mary Timony, Spoon, The New Pornographers, Field Music, Thievery Corporation, Astrud Gilberto...