Kitchen Chick

Apple Pie Cake

Warm apple pie cake topped with vanilla ice cream

Years ago Joe picked up The New York Times Heritage Cookbook from a remainder book sale. It sat on the shelves untouched for a very long time, until one night, searching for a simple dessert, I cracked it open and discovered a whole world of American comfort food and heirloom recipes.

The book was originally published in 1972, and I don't think our 1995 edition is substantially different. It's organized by region (Northeast, South, Midwest, Northern Planes/Mountain, Southwest, Northwest), with each region further divided into appetizers and soups, fish, meats, etc. The author interviewed hundreds of home cooks over some five years and out of the enormous collection of recipes that resulted, choose what she felt were the best of the best. If you have the impression that American food is all the same, this book quickly dispells that notion. Yes, there are common elements, but each region also has its own character. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this collection is how well it brings out the way immigrant recipes interacted with the local foods in the different regions they settled. Some are recipes brought by immigrants from their homelands, others, like shoofly pie, are local inventions with a long American culinary history, and others are more recent creations.

This isn't trendy food. This is home cooking of the type found at potluck church dinners, farmers' markets, 4-H shows, and small town festivals all across America.

But that one night I was looking for something simple to do with apples, and I found this Apple Pie Cake recipe that has been a favorite ever since. This is a sweet, rich, extremely moist cake that almost turns "caramelly" on the bottom. The basic recipe calls for cooking it in a pie plate, but you can also cook it up in a muffin tin or mini-soufflé dishes (see image).

Amazing Zucchini with honey and mint!

Last year I planted mint, against all advice, around my house. Previously I had a mint container garden, which I dragged inside every year, but the mint got root-bound and scraggly and no longer grew luscious thick leaves. I needed fresh mint, and my mint needed a bigger happier place to grow. I have some areas bordered by cement walkways that have never had much in the way good plantings and they seemed the perfect contained place for mint, and I have a friend with excess mint in her yard, and she was delighted to donate a few plants.

So this year I have beautiful mint. Kentucky Colonel and Spearmint. I don't use a ton of mint, but I like to have it handy and I can't stand to pay so much money in the grocery store for a tiny package of an herb that grows so well in Michigan.

Anyway...

Pho Kits from Paradise

Hiding in the Colonnade out on Eisenhower Parkway is Paradise Restaurant. We've become very familiar with Paradise because they are one of three places that will deliver out to where we live. (The other two are pizzerias.) These days we order from Paradise not only because they're the only non-pizza place that delivers to our place, but also because they have the best pho we've tried in town. (Apart from our friend T's, but she doesn't own a restaurant... yet.) We don't claim to be experts on pho by any means, but we really like Paradise's. And they're also really nice folks.

Pho is a traditional Vietnamese soup with rice noodles, bean sprouts, and meat (often beef) served in a beef broth. It comes with cilantro, onions, hot peppers, a lime (or lemon), and sriracha (hot sauce) and hoisin sauce, and maybe a few other things depending on the particular pho. Though often pronounced like "foe" by English speakers, it actually sounds more like "fuh". Which, well, leads to a lot of bad puns.

Normally, people eat pho in restaurants, but here in Ann Arbor, you can get a tasty pho kit delivered directly to your door. (Don't live in Ann Arbor? Check out the pho experts to find a pho restaurant near you.)

Your Paradise Pho Kit arrives in two parts: one large soup container full of broth (and the meat balls), and another takeout container  with a mound of noodles, other beef cuts, and toppings.

Pho Kit Instructions

1) Call Paradise Restaurant at 930-1988 and order your pho. Note: their pho is in the witness protection program or something; they don't call it pho on the menu, they call it noodle soup. My own preferences are for either the "beef and meat ball noodle soup" or the "deluxe beef noodle soup".

2) Upon delivery, get yourself a large bowl. I use a Chinese casserole bowl.

3) Carefully lift out the noodles and beef and place them in the bowl. Do not be alarmed that the thinly sliced beef looks raw. The broth will cook it. (Yes, even after the car ride to our house. And our house isn't exactly close to the restaurant. But if you're concerned, there's always the microwave. Nuke the broth before you add stuff.)

4) You may top off your pho with the bean sprouts, cilantro, and other goodies. Or you may set them on a side plate and add them slowly to your pho as you eat it.

5) Pour your broth over the beef and noodles. I often have some left-over broth that I enjoy the next day.

6) Add hoisin and sriracha sauce to taste.  Taste the broth first, then mix in a little of each and until it tastes "just right" for you. (It's easier to add this stuff than it is to take it out after the fact...)

7) Eat! Chopsticks and a spoon are both useful.

Paradise also offers a fairly standard American Chinese menu, but we mostly order from their Vietnamese menu. We like their "Vietnamese pot stickers," which are balls of rice noodles, pork, carrot, and rice deep fried to a crunchy goodness and served with a dipping sauce. They also serve up the more commonly-known, and much healthier, cold spring rolls. If you don't want pho, we recommend the grilled dishes with lettuce and tomato for meat lovers and the low-carb set, while the caramel fish clay pot is excellent, and the vermicelli noodles with grilled meat dishes are also quite nice.

Paradise Restaurant
883 West Eisenhower Parkway
(The Colonnade)
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
734-930-1988

Gliding and Blueberry Muffins

View looking over the left wing of the glider at around 2,600 feet.

Last weekend I went up in a glider. It was so exciting that I just had to share, even though it has nothing to do with food. Well, that's not completely true. My friends shared their amazing sandwiches (I must get the recipe) and I shared some blueberry muffins (recipe at end of post). See? I did make it food related.

Kitchen Chick's Great Gliding Adventure
The plane is very small, with absurdly long thin wings. We used a small tractor to tow it down to the end of the grassy runway. At least one person has the "walk the wing" to keep it moving straight. The runway is a former strip of farm land embedded in the middle of a working farm.

You do multiple checks of the plane. A complete inside and outside visual check over when you take the plane out of the hanger, and more checks when you ready the plane for take-off. The belt is a four-point harness. A two-seater glider has identical controls for both seats. I just had to keep my hands off of them. (And keep my knee from knocking the canopy release, too.)

Everything was going fine until we closed the hatch, and it hit me this was real. I was going to go up in the air with just a thin shell around me and those long delicate wings keeping us aloft. Then the tow pilot got the go signal. The grass goes rushing a scant foot below your butt as the tow plane drags you down the grass runway...