This is some serious gingerbread

Dark molasses, black pepper and Chinese five-spice powder make for big-flavored gingerbread with plenty of spicy bite. Recipe below.

As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, I hardly ever bake. Fortunately for me—and for you—Marion does. Wonderfully. So I’ll just get out of the kitchen and let her take over this week.

I know it’s May, but it’s become cold here again. Spring had a few tentative successes—the young leaves started emerging, all soft and green, the small brown birds came back and began claiming real estate and singing to each other, pollen floated from the trees and we put away our duvets and down coats and brought out the light blankets and the little thin jackets. Then on Friday, it rained—where we were, it rained a lot and the atmosphere was quite unsettled—and then the temperature dropped very aggressively. Last night, shivering and muttering, I gave up and dragged the duvet out for what I hope will be its last hurrah.

On the other hand, I also resumed baking gingerbread. The ancestor of this recipe originally came to us from one of the Silver Palate cookbooks, 15 or so years back. Over the years I’ve monkeyed with it in a number of ways—different sweeteners, varying volumes of spices, assorted toppings and accompaniments. Certain failed experiments included butter, orange peel, raisins, honey. Crystallized ginger was added, then rejected. It’s gone through a lot in our hands. For the past few years, this is the version I’ve almost always made.

There are plenty of gingerbread recipes that call for light molasses and a teaspoon of ginger and a pinch of cinnamon and maybe quickly hold up a nutmeg in front of the oven while you’re baking the bread: Bland to the vanishing point. To me if you are serious about gingerbread, you don’t use recipes like that. Just make yourself some white bread toast. Gingerbread to me is about bite and spiciness. I am looking for high impact power gingerbread.

This is intensely flavorful, and it doesn’t have the high-fat challenge of a cake or pie. It’s a great casual dessert, ideal to end a family dinner or a simple brunch. The ancestor recipe called for a lemon glaze, which in this evolved version is unnecessary. I myself like this gingerbread cut into squares and served plain, along with a cup of coffee or a glass of cold buttermilk [and, sadly, I am the one person in our entire family who likes the latter]. It’s good with whipped cream, it’s great with vanilla ice cream or a delicate nutty gelato, like hazelnut. It’s also one of those things that, eaten for breakfast, cheers you up inordinately even though it may not be the most healthful way to start the day. Not as evil as cold pizza or leftover devil’s food cake, but just as alluring.

We love this recipe in the cold months, but honestly, we have it any time of year.

Dangerously good: Linguine Non Carbonara

A couple of weeks ago, I did a post about a dish that wasn’t just more than the sum of its simple parts—it blew right past them. This one does the same thing in spades. How can something so insanely delicious not even use any spices, unless you count salt and pepper?

The dish in question is Marion’s decidedly non-traditional take on pasta carbonara. It’s dangerously good on a couple of levels. First, it is highly addictive. From the first time Marion made it for dinner guests years ago, it became a go to meal when we had people over—even people who had already had it, at their insistence [in the form of a polite request, of course].

It’s also dangerous because it’s, well, dangerous. No poisonous fish parts in it [am I alone in thinking that is about the dumbest culinary choice ever?], but it’s an artery-clogging party for your mouth. Marion dispenses with the heavy cream found in most American takes on carbonara [but interestingly, not used in the traditional carbonaras of central Italy]. But you start with a pound of bacon, okay? You cook things in bacon grease. And you add eggs and cheese. This is why we only have it once a year or so now. It’s also why, when we do, we enjoy every last tiny morsel of it. All right. You’ve been warned. Time to let Marion take over the kitchen.

 

The way this recipe entered our household has passed into the mists of time. I think that maybe it might have been something I found in a magazine, possibly, could be around 1980—that makes some sort of sense, although so do several other interpretations of what passes for my memory of this. It called itself Spaghetti Carbonara and it contained many of the elements that I still use to cook this dish. By the time I figured out that this dish is not even slightly a true carbonara—for one thing, it’s got vegetables in it—it was too late for us. We call it carbonara, just as we have dubbed every one of our daughters’ dates The Boy and call Schumann’s compositions ballet dancin’ music [Terry's note---this term dates back to a comment by a little first grader during my teaching days, not any philistinian tendencies on our parts]. It’s our lingo, and we’re sticking to it.

Bacon takes the lead in Linguine Non Carbonara, but it isn’t the neighborhood bully. If you wish, you can use wonderful applewood-smoked bacon from organically grown pigs, each of whom has a real name, but one of the nice things about this recipe is its pragmatism: the most average grocery-store bacon still lets you create a super dish. The only real caveat I have is: use a good olive oil, decent zucchini, peppers, and shallots and a good Parmesan cheese that you grate directly into the dish at the last step.

Yes, there are veggies aplenty in this carbonara. You know—vegetables, salutary, nutritious, radiating their sunny health benefits throughout your being. Well, don’t let the jolly presence of vegetables fool you. Any lurking health elements they may possess are eradicated by the lavish use of the bacon, and the sautéing, and then the great lashings of egg and cheese. All you have left is extreme deliciousness.

Linguine Non Carbonara is best accompanied by a big California chardonnay. On Sunday, we had this with a Girard from the Russian River area, which stood up to the pasta very nicely indeed.

Blue Kitchen: The kitchen is open.

Welcome to Blue Kitchen, the place for all things food and cooking and some things Chicago. Blue Kitchen is my way to indulge multiple passions—cooking, eating, exploring the city, photography [all photos on the site are mine, unless otherwise noted] and writing. Oh, and music—be sure to check out what’s on the kitchen boombox. It’s also a place for seemingly random stories—about a three-legged beagle who only spoke French, for instance—that somehow always circle back to the kitchen.

Look for new posts every Wednesday, newspapers’ traditional food section day.