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    raw blueberry pie with microwaveable filling and graham cracker crust

    This mostly-raw blueberry pie is a snap to make and very versatile--the filling microwaves in a few minutes, and you don't even have to bake the zippy gingered graham cracker crust--perfect for a hot Fourth of July and all summer long.

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Microwave Cheesecakes

Posted on May 21, 2010 by DebbieN

Microwave cheesecakeThis week we celebrated Shavuot, the feast of first fruits and giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Shavuot has only two solid traditions I can remember from childhood: studying all night (three ultra-dedicated guys from my congregation would hang out and do it for the rest of us, kind of like the Jewish Scholarship Marathon), and eating cheesecake. Which is a pretty good tradition, actually.

I go for the serious New York-style tall, lemon-tinged cheesecakes that are rich and just dry enough to have a fluffy crumb to them. The only one of these I ever made myself was the glorious one from (once again) Joan Nathan’s The Jewish Holiday Kitchen. It was huge, it was beautiful, it took two whole hours of baking with the oven on and off, and I was just barely smart enough to wrap it tight in a double layer of heavy-duty tinfoil  right before carrying it out to the car for a brunch setup. Because of course it took a nosedive onto the parking lot pavement–but the foil held up! And the cheesecake was only a little bashed! And we covered it pretty liberally in sour cherry jam, and everyone ate it happily, and no one kvetched. A miracle!

The story of how G-d gave the Torah law to the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai, is kind of hard to picture. Supposedly it was all so shockingly loud and bright people started to hear colors and see sounds (or else the lightning was so close it started to short out their neural circuits). But what is clear is that  everyone was so awed and shocked they stopped arguing, at least for a few minutes.

So of course it has everything to do with today’s topic, which is still cheesecake. It’s an established fact–feed cheesecake to your people and you’ll get a few minutes of blessed silence. It’s quicker and cheaper than group electroshock therapy, too, and it tastes better.

So I’d wanted to make a cheesecake for Shavuot, but not take two hours about it, especially in May in Los Angeles. Also, cheesecake is  a traditionally loaded food–one look and you can hear your gallbladder calling you.  But it’s a real challenge to make a decent-tasting, genuinely low-fat version that isn’t just “use neufchâtel and cut out 3 calories!” Or else hideously tough or gelatinous or watery or flavorless or grainy or otherwise weird.

Drained nonfat yogurt–no. Tough, tangy AND watery after baking. Ricotta–not bad, especially for Roman-style cheesecake, but bland and a bit grainy. Gelatin’s out for me because it’s not a kosher ingredient. Fat-free cream cheese–I’m just not a fan, it’s too salty and processed-tasting somehow. Not fresh. And on the web I’ve seen everything from tofu to tehina (sesame paste)–I can’t imagine, but to each his or her own.

Still, I think with the microwave I’ve got the time thing solved in a way that will work for a number of different versions. A while back I discovered you can take pretty much any standard New York-style cheesecake recipe (eggs, flour, cream- or other suitable cheese, vanilla, lemon juice), put it in a microwaveable baking dish, cover and nuke it through in a couple of minutes without ruining the texture. It’s probably better without a crust, but if you prebake the crust then pour the filling, cover, and nuke while it’s still hot, it might prevent sogginess.

The only versions that might be really troublesome would be ones with yogurt, which is usually too thin and watery even when drained, or else cottage cheese, which works in a conventional oven but not the microwave. For some strange reason cottage cheese curd liquefies into a buttermilk-like mess in the microwave rather than setting up. Frustrating. But ricotta works pretty well, cream cheese–of course, labaneh–astoundingly perfect, and even…nonfat powdered dry milk (NFPD) with buttermilk. Odd but true. So it will work with a range of adaptations from full-fat to ultra-lean, and the rest is up to your tastebuds. Continue reading →

Filed under: baking, cooking, Dairy, Desserts, holiday cooking, Microwave tricks, nutrition, Revised recipes | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Thanksgiving Vegetariots, or, How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Won’t Eat the Meat?

Posted on November 17, 2009 by DebbieN

Newspapers all over the country are sweating to include vegetarian main dishes in their annual Thanksgiving features. But they’re not doing all that well. This week the LA Times food section proudly listed a whole bunch of Thanksgiving vegetable side dishes as if to say, “See how much there is for you vegetarians to eat without your hostess making any changes just for your special status?” Only, as readers quickly pointed out,  1) none of the dishes contained any noticeable protein, 2) most of them were overloaded with butter and salt and 3) two of them contained chicken broth or pancetta. Someone had forgotten to re-edit them for a vegetarian audience.

I pick on my local paper because we’re talking Los Angeles, with great produce available all year round and a very large vegetarian population–and a lot of ethnic groups with significant roles for vegetarian dishes in their traditional cuisines. We have less excuse for this kind of simple ignorance than most cities.

But it isn’t simple ignorance. Running very close to the surface of most food publications’ features on vegetarian fare at the big showdown holidays is a distinct tone of hysteria. How can anyone not want to eat meat? Nothing tastes like turkey, and nothing sells like it either! We don’t know anything about vegetarian proteins! they panic. Do vegetarians eat Durkee Fried Onions or Empress Yams? Do they eat marshmallows? They don’t even like pancetta! What’s wrong with them?

These are home questions for newspapers and food mags, because you know the real survival question is, “How are we going to sell advertising for chickpeas and lentils, for chrissakes?” That probably goes double or more for food shows on tv. If they don’t advertise, they don’t stay on the air.

It’s not like tofu has a big marketing presence in the nation’s newspapers or brand recognition outside of local markets. There are only so many brushed-steel and cherrywood designer kitchens anyone is willing to buy in a down economy, especially once they discover how badly brushed steel shows fingerprints. And cooking mags don’t get a lot of help from PepsiCo and CocaCola, Ralston-Purina or the many cigarette and pharmaceutical companies.

What’s left? Bacon, turkey, and processed food companies featuring starches and microwaveable tv dinners. This might not be such a problem for food pubs if they’d found a way to keep their features a little more independent of their ad base. Bacon is showing up these days as suddenly gourmet in so many inappropriate dishes–ice cream? chocolate bars? popcorn?–precisely because it’s relatively inexpensive, widely available in supermarkets, and sold by a few recognizable national namebrand companies that still advertise reliably in a down market. Young food bloggers who go for it think it’s something new and daring, but you have to wonder whether they realize how hard the commercial food media are pushing it and why.

In any case, the November and December issues or episodes really need to push meat for all they’re worth because American bacon is basically the same everywhere and straight-up turkey isn’t all that popular the rest of the year, and the companies know it. Meanwhile, vegetarianism in all its variations, and with a growing political undercurrent, is gaining ground among younger Americans, or at least those not too obsessed with bacon. What to do?

Apparently the answer is, panic and get mad at the vegetarians for wanting non-meat dishes that are worth something, but try hard not to admit it in front of the camera. Continue reading →

Filed under: Beans and legumes, cooking, Dairy, Eating out, Food Blogs, Food Politics, Grains, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , | Comments Off on Thanksgiving Vegetariots, or, How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Won’t Eat the Meat?