Every August we make a pilgrimage to the Minnesota State Fair for a shortlist of deep fried foods on a stick.  When we spotted fresh cheese curds at our co-op this week, we had to try frying them at home.   Salty, oozing cheese and crisp batter—and in less time than it takes to get them in the mile-long line at the Fair?   Please and thank you.

This egg nog combines excellent orange liqueur, brandy, and dark rum with egg-enriched heavy cream and whole milk.

Thin slices of creamy potato and tender fiddlehead ferns baked in a bath of cream and topped with a crust of melted Emmenthaler.

If you are lucky enough to find some ramps this spring, and you can barely wait to cook with them, you can tame them and get one or two onto your plate in a heartbeat with this cream cheese.  Smeared onto some good bread, a bagel, or crispbread, these wild leeks, redolent of garlic and chives, breathe their pungent breath into and through a creamy cheese.  Just one or two do the trick.  As they are mild early in the spring and increasingly sharp, use more or fewer as the season dictates.

We’re kind of nutty for April Fool’s Day around here. We’re a silly family in the first place (see here). My Dear Husband is the truly funny one, but the rest of us take on April Fool’s with something of a mission, as our one day of the year to make him laugh. We start talks around January or February, planning in secret, because brainstorming and pulling off a really spectacular April Fool’s Day joke takes time. Here are some favorites from our Pranks and Monkeyshines archives.

In 1997, my agency in Tokyo left a message on our answering machine.  (I had been working doing things like Disney-style dancing in toilet bowl cleaner commercials and overly dramatic roles in cheesy medical dramas for Japanese television.) They wanted my Dear Husband’s measurements and to know whether or not he would consider being featured in an upcoming underwear spread.  Yes, underwear.  We went whole hog.  Circa 1999, our church music director left a message inquiring about him taking on the role of Shambleshanks the Railway Cat in the church production of Cats.  (No, they weren’t really doing any productions of anything.)  He hates musicals, and church + musical was too hard to resist.  In 2002, he was the Member of the Month at his gym, and, after telling his colleagues about it, he visited a puzzled staff member in the gift shop to claim his prizes, and an equally confused employee in the membership office to ask about having his picture taken for the lobby display.  I think the best part of that joke was returning to the office to tell everyone that, no, he was not the Member of the Month.  Around 2005, he received a letter, postmarked from the correct post office, from an acquaintance who waxed poetic about the mystical connection between them.  Weird can apparently be very, very funny, too.  And our best prank was in 2007, the year that I washed an entire set of white undershirts every week for three months, carefully pulling them from the rest of the laundry and hiding them.  They were one size smaller than my Dear Husband’s actual size, and, as predicted, on the morning that we made the swap, he emerged in one of the appropriately aged t-shirts to announce that he thought he was bulking up.  There was some mock flexing involved.  Oh, we howled that year.

We’re starting a new April Fool’s tradition now. Our April Fool’s tomfoolery hasn’t been quite the same without our Honey Girl here, now that she’s away at college. So we’re making a fool for April Fool’s, a creamy blend of whipped and sour creams, stewed berries, and crushed biscuits, for dessert.

I read some time ago, in an Irish cookbook I think, about the bilberry, or fraughan as it is called in Ireland. It’s a member of the same botanical family as the wild blueberry and the huckleberry. I haven’t gotten myself to Ireland yet, so I’ve never had a bilberry, but I thought stewing some wild blueberries and some blackberries might approximate the flavor. And I folded them into a bilberry fool. If getting up to April Fool’s high jinx isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps celebrate with this.

My Honey Girl and I attended a cheesemaking class with Jodi Ohlsen Read of Shepherd’s Way Farms yesterday, at a charming shop in St. Paul called Egg Plant Urban Farm Supply.  I’m totally smitten.  They stock baby chicks(!), chicken coop, gardening, cheesemaking, canning, and maple syrupping supplies, and more.  It’s a small retail space, but I could have spent hours there, browsing the tasteful and intelligent selection of useful bits and bobs.  During the class, as an aside, Jodi described a dessert she had made with some of her fresh sheep’s milk ricotta.  Um, yes please.  And thank you may I have another.  Here it is.  Simple, savory, buttery, creamy, with a pop from the sweet blueberries, it’s a cheese course died and gone to heaven.  Note: Describe what you are serving to your family or guests, lest, like my Dear Husband, they have a moment where they imagine something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with the whipped cream until understanding dawns and an expression of bliss spreads.

More about Shepherd’s Way, plus recipes to showcase their seriously amazing cheeses here.

I’m thinking this morning about long lost books. My books.  I have what is perhaps a peculiar emotional attachment to them.  And I wish they could return home to their places, still waiting, on my bookshelves.  Some of the books, I know, are well cared for and will return someday after their long excursions. The book from which I first learned to make homemade yogurt, or at least got the idea for it, is in the keeping of one of my friends now, and has been for about five years, for example.  Others are gone.   When we were living in Japan the first time, we bumped into a college classmate, someone I hadn’t known while we were students, but with whom we struck up an alma mater connection.  He borrowed my favorite book, a slim little paperback volume of poetry that was long-since out of print.  I hated parting with it, but I didn’t have the heart to say no when he asked for it.  I tried to explain as I handed it over that it was…  Interrupted promises of its safe return were made.  Well, I heard that he had left the country a few months later and I said ‘goodbye’ to the book.  When I saw him working at the copy shop in my office building years later, I think I barely said ‘hello’ before I blurted out breathlessly about my book.  (In my defense, this was decades before online booksellers would make replacing such a book simple.  Still, I know, freak show.)

I’ve always loved books.  The year I stayed with my grandparents frequently, I would read in bed next to my Irish grandma, another reader.  My grandpa drilled holes into the headboard of her beautiful birds eye maple bed to mount a little reading light so that she could read every night with proper light and without the inconvenience of reaching for a bedside lamp.  We read, side by side, in peaceful silence, the nicest kind of companionship for reading, sometimes all night.  The sun would appear, a glow would fill the room, and we would realize that we had done it again.  On the weekends, I would stagger down after the long night of reading.  My grandpa would be cooking, eggs or hash or slices of Spam, and he would make me a piece of toast and smear it with butter and orange marmalade.  I wished on those mornings that I could suspend time and stay in the kitchen forever with them, that every day would be a weekend morning, my grandma sipping coffee and eating peanut butter toast and my grandpa eating his big breakfast as they chatted with me and each other.  I’ll be thinking of them and missing them as I eat my sunshine-drizzled yogurt today.  And missing my books, too, though certainly not the way I long for their company again.

My Honey Girl is a reader, too, and when my Dear Husband travels for work, she crawls into bed with me sometimes to read, until we’re both drowsy and dreamy and she returns to her own room.  We’ll be able to do that next week, when she’s home from college for spring break.  And I’ll bring her a little tray of breakfast in the morning and we can talk about the books we’re making our way though over coffee and eggs or muffins or her favorite waffles.

I used to make homemade yogurt the old-fashioned way when she was little, but I have one of those handy-dandy electric yogurt makers now, a little cheat.  There are lots of good recipes for homemade yogurt online: here and here, for example.  And here’s someone particularly devoted to the art of homemade yogurt.  The recipe that I really want to share with you today is for the winter citrus syrup I boiled down this morning.  If you made the candied winter citrus tart I made yesterday, you are minutes away from a rather heavenly breakfast and a little sunshine in a glass.   It would also be nice poured over a stack of pancakes, maybe one that you eat while reading a good book.

I made coconut macaroons yesterday.  This recipe is an Ole to their Lena, a Hardy to their Laurel.  It’s a pairing recipe in every sense, a frugal sister to egg-white only recipes, and a happy partner for a crumble or a figgy pudding or a slice of chocolate cake.  You could eat it with a spoon, a kind of childhood dessert, simple and comforting, and oft overlooked.  But I think it’s best as half of a pair.  And it’s awfully nice to have a little jar of vanilla custard in the refrigerator when the mood strikes.  You’ll find yourself dribbling it on all sorts of things—into a pool over a sugared biscuit, or nested in a trifle between layers of sherry-soaked gènoise and homemade jam.  I first had this kind of pourable custard when I was a student at Oxford, with a gooseberry crumble, a doubly happy discovery.  I was a visiting student at Keble College, and I had finally learned that if you didn’t get your paws in there to grab the family style platters of the night’s offerings, you might sit the entire dinner, quietly and politely, holding up a platter in the hopes that one of the waitstaff would kindly refill it.  Alas, you might also walk away hungry.  I was even more shy then than I am now, so I left more than once without a single morsel crossing my lips.  (Thank goodness for pub grub. ) But on a student budget, I eventually learned to get in there and fight for my supper.  English students, I should clarify, were otherwise extrememly polite; conversation was lofty (when it wasn’t banal) and manners were definitely on display.  Thank goodness I got my act together before they served the gooseberry crumble with a pourable, old-fashioned custard like this one.  Mine is a little less gummy than the version served in the Keble dining hall.  It’s thicker than crème anglaise but not quite a pudding, a dreamy partner for just about anything sweet, and especially so for anything tart.  Since it only takes a few minutes to stir up, bookmark it and make it when you next make something with egg whites and need an Astaire to your Rogers.

My Norwegian grandfather had something of a love affair with butter; he loved a pool in which to cook an egg or some hash, or a thick smear on toast.  But mostly, it was his tableside companion at every home-cooked dinner I can remember eating with him, and he was not shy with it.  A dinnertime ritual, stick of soft butter at his side, he would take a swipe of butter for his roll, cloverleaf or farmhouse, a drag through the gravy, pheasant or duck, and pop the mouthful into his gob, happy as a lad.  He ate the better part of the stick.  I always had the chair next to him, and I can remember being acutely aware of the butter, the generous sweep, his mouth full of butter, and another dip, and another, the roll disappearing, and the butter stick a little smaller with every bite.  He would have loved this recipe.

I haven’t made butter since I was a schoolgirl, and I can remember the first time I did quite vividly.  We shook little jars filled with cream until it separated into butter and buttermilk, and I was spellbound.  It’s funny, really, the small moments that we remember.  I can tell you the rules around the graham crackers and milk we ate at nursery school, about the details of the first fig cookie I ever ate, too.

I was ordering some cookie molds last month, to use next Christmas, when I saw this butter mold.  It was so charming, and brought back memories of the excitement of making that butter.  Gene Wilson hand-carves each of his beautiful wooden molds, and they are quite simple to use.  I highly recommend them.  Their details are lovely.

You could make butter by simply separating cream in a food processor, or even in a jar shaken vigorously.  But I decided to try cultured butter after seeing it on the Playing With Fire and Water blog.  There are excellent step-by-step photos of the process on Chef Linda’s blog.  Cultured butter is made by introducing a culture, here the live culture in buttermilk, and by ripening the cream.  Culturing creates a subtle flavor profile which intensifies the taste of the butter and creates a lovely, creamy mouthfeel.  As it has a higher percentage of butterfat and no added water, it ideal for pastry such as laminated doughs.  Of course, I think it’s ideal on a piece of toast or a stack of hot pancakes, too.  I think I’ll make some tomorrow!  Mmmm.

Note: These photographs are unaltered.  I used Cedar Summit Farms’ incredible cream, and the resulting butter really is this lovely soft yellow.

After a taste of spring, we are in the midst of another good old-fashioned Minnesota blizzard.  I love a blizzard.  Here in Minnesota, snowfalls come and stay for the winter every year, but a real pileup, one that sends people en masse to the markets and shops the day before it’s to hit, is always exciting.

When we lived in the city and our Honey Girl and Sweet Boy were little pips, we had a blizzard tradition.  We would haul out a little wooden sleigh, pile on the snow clothes—the hats and mittens and scarves and coats and snow pants and wooly socks and boots—and I would pull them to our neighborhood ice cream shop for a blizzard ice cream cone.  We’d clear the snow from our eyelashes and wipe our noses and brush off and warm up a little bit while we licked our cones and watched the snow, fierce or gentle, bring down a hazy blanket of white.  Then I’d pull them home and we’d make hot chocolate to warm up.  It was a triple treat, all that snow and ice cream and hot chocolate.  It was fun for me to celebrate like a kid again.  We often wondered why the faithful people at the Grand Ole Creamery were open in the winter, let alone during a blizzard; we always seemed to be the only customers on those days.  But we were thrilled they were.  We don’t live in the neighborhood anymore, but whenever we have a blizzard, I think about pulling my little ones on that sleigh over for another cone.  Now I just make an extra yummy mug of hot chocolate: one for me and one for my Sweet Boy, since our Honey Girl is away at college.  We toast to winter and watch the snow blur and soften the world outside again.The hazy blue light of the blizzard is so lovely.

When we lived in England, one of my favorite things to do was to pause for cream tea in the afternoon. It’s such a nice respite in the middle of a busy day, so civilized, and so edifying. It really only takes a few minutes, too. These cream scones are prepped and out of the oven in 20 minutes flat. You mix them up—all five ingredients—with a fork in a single bowl, and pat them out on their baking tray. Tidy up the kitchen and brew a nice pot of tea while they bake, and settle in for a few quiet minutes.

Cream tea is an afternoon tradition in England. British tea is served with milk and accompanied by scones, clotted cream, and jam; strawberry is traditional. These cream scones are plain but unusually tender and rich. To serve them, split them as you would an English muffin, spread them with clotted cream, and top them with a spoonful of good strawberry jam in the Devon tradition, or, in the Cornwall tradition, reverse the two and put the jam on the bottom.

Clotted cream is native to South West England, specifically Devon and Cornwall. It is produced by indirectly heating unpasteurized milk and cooling it in shallow containers, during which clots, or clouts, form as the cream rises. It has a minimum fat content of 55%, though it is often higher than that, and is characterized by its creamy, yellow color and its top crust. I have not found any producers of clotted cream in the United States, but you can find imported clotted cream at many markets today, or it’s incredibly simple and rewarding to make your own; see the recipe below.