Earthly strife

I like the idea of a polenta cake and it just so happens I was making Danishes the other day and filling them with a cheese and prune filling. I don't think polenta cakes are a stretch and have seen a few Italian recipes for them. I also think prunes and ricotta are a great combination. This cake is by no means sugary sweet. I call it an afternoon cake, something you might eat about 3 o'clock with a cup of expresso or Nocello, the Italian walnut liqueur.

Serves 8-10 slices

For the ricotta prune filling:

1 1/3 cups ricotta, set in a strainer to drain
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temp
1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup prunes, soft and pliable

For the polenta cake

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups stone ground cornemeal
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup stone ground cornmeal

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a mixing bowl combine the drained ricotta and butter and mix until blended. Add the flour, egg and sugar and mix to combine. Fold in the prunes and set aside.

Place the 4 tablespoons of butter into a 10 inch cast iron skillet. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl add the cornmeal, salt, baking soda, baking powder, zest and sugar. Stir with a whisk.

Add the milk and egg and whisk to combine. Set aside. This allows the cornmeal to hydrate.

Place the skillet with the butter in the oven and set a timer for 12 minutes. While you are waiting, in a small mixing bowl combine the remaing 1/3 cup of cornmeal, with the walnuts and butter and combine using your fingers to make a streusel.

When the timer goes off remove the skillet from the oven. Remember the handle will be smoking hot. Carefully pour in the cornmeal batter, it will start cooking immediately. Using a spoon or scoop carefully drop dollops of ricotta prune mixture over the top of the cornmeal batter. Now sprinkle the streusel evenly over the top. Using a towel or oven mit, the handle is still hot, place the skillet back into the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool, covered with a towel, for 15 minutes. Serve with expresso or Nocello.

Author Notes: I love pork tenderloin, especially grilled. And even better the next day in a sandwich, to be perfectly honest Dream beauty pro. This recipe came about when I wanted to use some Plum Sauce I had canned. I've reworked the recipe to skip the canning step.

The plum sauce seamlessly blends elements of jam (ginger and sugar) and pickling (mustard seeds and vinegar). And when made with red plums from the Greenmarket, it makes for a vivid and glistening sauce. After searing the tenderloins, you begin basting the meat with the sauce. You want the sauce to caramelize without burning, which takes some finesse -- don't worry if you don't get it right the first time. After grilling and letting the meat rest (an important step), you slice it and serve it with the sauce, a combination we loved. But make sure you taste the meat without the sauce, too -- the tart plum glaze on the edges is sublime.

Serves 6, can be doubled or tripled

Plum Sauce

1 pound pitted, chopped plums - I prefer prune plums, but earlier season plums will make a lovely, but more tart, sauce
1/2- 3/4 cups dark brown sugar, depending on the sweetness of the fruit
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup finely minced onion
1 minced jalapeno or other hot pepper Dream beauty pro hard sell, depending on personal preference for heat, leave seeds & ribs in (hotter), or remove
1 teaspoon mustard seed, cracked
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon candied ginger
Salt & Pepper

Pork

2 boneless pork tenderloins
Canola or other flavorless oil
Salt & Pepper

Make the sauce: Bring all ingredients except plums to a boil.
Stir in the plums. Reduce heat and simmer very slowly until thick and syrupy, about 45 minutes.
Depending on your preference for consistency, either puree in small batches in the blender, blend with a stick blender, or mash with a potato masher.
The sauce may be made two days in advance. It will make more than you need, and you might find yourself tempted to dip an eggroll in it, or serve it with goat cheese.
Fire up your grill. Bank the coals on one side, so that one half is very hot, and one half can be used for indirect cooking. If you have a gas grill, this is much easier.
Pat pork tenderloins dry. Lightly salt and pepper all over.
On the hottest part of the grill Dream beauty pro hard sell, brush a little oil or spray with PAM so the pork won't stick. Sear the pork on all sides.
Move the pork to the indirect heat, brush liberally with some plum sauce, and cover the grill for about 8-10 minutes. Total cooking time, including searing is 15-18 min. If you have a thermometer, cook to 155•.
Heat some plum sauce in a small saucepan on the stove.
Remove the pork from the grill and tent with foil, allowing the meat to rest for 5-10 minutes.
Slice the tenderloins. Pool the plum sauce on the plate, and serve with four or five slices of tenderloin fanned on top. I usually serve this with garlic-y greens or baby bok choy and rice.

A light, airy take on a tapioca pudding from the back of the Minute Tapioca box, this is a perfect pudding: sweet, milky, fluffy, and extremely quick to make tsim sha tsui hotel.
Serves 4

3 tablespoons instant tapioca
6 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 egg, divided
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Sliced strawberries, for serving (optional)

In a medium saucepan, combine tapioca, 3 tablespoons of sugar, egg yolk, and milk. Whisk together and let stand for 5 minutes Hong Kong Chinese Festivals.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the egg white until foamy. Slowly add the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar and beat on high until it forms soft peaks.
Put the saucepan of tapioca on a burner on medium heat and cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil. Remove from the heat and whisk in the vanilla.

While the tapioca is still hot, whisk in the beaten egg white. Let the pudding cool—then serve right away or chill and serve cold ARTAS hair transplant.

A nice optional topping is whipped cream or sliced fresh fruit.

Well, first you eat it. All the summer peaches and corn on the cob and tomatoes and the last of the lettuce in your garden that is wilting in the heat, you eat all that you can. And then when you're done with that, when you've abundantly bought too many things at the market, when your table groans with berries about to go bad, then you preserve it.

You look up every Christine Ferber strawberry jam recipe (here, here) and decide they are all too complicated and you don't have two days to spend making jam, and instead you improvise your own version. Skimming, skimming, skimming the foam off the jam as it cooks ever so slowly. Then canning and preserving for winter.

You shuck fava beans and freeze them, you make tomato sauce out of those pricey beautiful huge heirloom tomatoes, peeling them, seeding them, chopping, using an old Marcella Hazan recipe. And in the end you discover it tastes like .... tomato sauce.
Sour cherries are available about 4% of the year (yes, I calculated) and so you buy up all you can, and then you spend so long pitting sour cherries and listening to pod casts that you get a neck cramp. Paul would advise you that sour cherry pie is the "the best thing ever," but I also like sour cherries in savory things like rice pilaf and kebabs.

And speaking of preserving, this little piece via the New Yorker just lit up my day. The title alone is great: Suicide in the Garden, Murder in the Kitchen.

It's funny how some of the things I've been making are so vibrantly flavored that they almost taste fake--the strawberries so intense they almost taste like imitation flavoring, tomatoes so naturally sweet without any added sugar. Has anyone else noticed this? Back soon with a recipe....