Balsamic Tuna and Quinoa Salad

I couldn't find KLP mayo at any of the regular markets this year and did not want to go to the kosher supermarket.  Instead, I made a non-mayo tuna salad with vinaigrette instead.  This might turn out to be my new generic tuna salad recipe.  I loved it!

Quinoa is one of the few seeds and grains that has made it into the ok list of kitniyot.  It skates by on the technicality that it was unknown to the rabbis who made the list in the Middle Ages.  Same with coffee and chocolate (whew!), although those might be considered fruits.  They're weird rules.  Not sure how corn is still off limits, perhaps because maize shares the name "corn" with many other grains of the Old World.

Anyway, we have quinoa, tuna, and vinaigrette.  And it was quite lovely, nice enough to snap a couple of photos and write a post so I remember to make it again.  It also does not have an overwhelming fish smell, as mayo-based tuna salad sometimes does, so it isn't as offensive when you take it to work.

1 Tb olive oil
1 Tb balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 5oz can tuna in water
*1 C cooked quinoa
*2 Tb green onions, finely chopped
Lettuce or spinach for serving

1.  In a small bowl, whisk together oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

2.  Drain tuna and break apart.  In a bowl, toss together with quinoa and green onion.

3.  Add dressing to bowl and stir to combine.  Serve with lettuce.

Serves 2

Difficulty rating  π

Masa Harina Cornbread

I had less than a box of matzoh in the house this year, after someone brought me one for the second Seder.  That lasted less than a week past the actual holiday, so it was time to start buying and making bread.  No crazy matzoh inventions this year lasting nearly until the solstice.  I actually lost weight going back on gluten and kitniyot; they're just more filling.

This recipe came from the L.A. Times, which has now merged its Food section back into the weekend special and newsletters when they just come up with a theme and backlink it to older recipes.  Yeah, because it sucked.  I'm doing a four-serving half-batch in a 6" cake pan, so the amounts are going to look weird.  You could also do it in a loaf pan.  The original recipe bakes in an 8x8 square.

Because masa harina is finer than cornmeal, this quick bread is more dense.  On the upside, it doesn't crumble apart as easily as standard cornbread.  It smells a bit like a tamale, which is to be expected.  I like it, and will probably make it again.

And I apologize in advance for the bad lighting.  I often bake before sunrise.

1/4 C unsalted butter, melted
1/4 C + 2 Tb All-Purpose flour
*1/2 C + 2 Tb masa harina
2 Tb sugar
1/2 Tb baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 C milk (whole preferred)
1 egg

1.  Preheat oven to 400º.  Grease a 6" round or standard loaf pan and dust with flour.  I tried lining the bottom of the cake pan with wax paper.  It didn't work, so don't do that.

 

2.  Stir together both flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Separately, whisk together egg, milk, and butter.  The butter will chill and clump, but that's ok.

3.  Stir wet into dry until just moistened.  It's going to be lumpy, mostly from the butter clumps.  Allow to sit a couple of minutes without stirring.

4.  Pour batter into prepared pan.  If necessary, smooth top.  Bake for about 30 minutes, until it passes the toothpick test.

5.  Allow loaf to rest in the pan for 10 minutes for carryover baking.  Loosen from the sides if necessary, then flip out onto a cooling rack.  Being a quick bread, you can make this the day ahead, wrap it in plastic once cooled, and let it hang out in the fridge until needed.  It will probably be even better.

6.  Slice and serve, with butter if desired.

Difficulty rating  π

Salmon Chowder

I still had two small potatoes from the 5-lb bag after Passover.  That isn't enough to do much, but it is enough to bulk up a chowder.

I researched a couple of recipes, and Google says the essential elements of a chowder are potatoes, bacon, and either a cream or tomato base.  This one doesn't have bacon, because I consider celery one of the three essential ingredients, but I did use bacon grease for the fat.  Fresh celery in a creamy soup just creates an unexpected flavor and texture element.  Also, I have a lot of it growing in the Pond.  To me, chowder doesn't even require meat as long as you have both corn and potatoes in it.  This one has fish, so I'm skipping the corn.

I'm adding cooked pintos to this version because it was originally on my meal calendar as "pinto soup" and evolved from there.  I'm on a post-Passover cleanse that is taking way longer than the holiday itself.  Matzoh alone isn't binding, but if you observe kitniyot, all the best sources of fiber are removed from your diet for an entire week.  I was seriously missing my legumes.  If this is a first-course soup, you can skip the beans.  They did make for a more filling meal.

*8 oz Russet potatoes
2 Tb butter, oil, or other fat
*1/2 yellow onion, diced
*2 ribs celery, diced
1 Tb flour
8 oz fresh salmon filet, cut in 1" cubes, or 10 oz canned (two small tins)
*1/2 tsp dill weed
salt and pepper to taste
*1 C milk
*about 1/2 C cream
*1 14oz can pintos or white beans, drained, optional

1.  Dice potatoes 1/2", peeling optional.  Place in medium saucepan with water to cover by a couple of inches.  Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, cover, and let cook while you work on the rest of the soup.

2.  In a larger saucepan or soup pot, heat butter over medium.  Add onions and celery and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.  Stir in flour to make a roux.  Once the flour is cooked, season with dill and some salt and pepper.

3.  Gradually add the milk, allowing the base to thicken between additions.  If using fresh salmon, add it to the potatoes in the last few minutes of cooking.  You just need to poach it a little before adding it to the soup.

4.  Once potatoes and salmon are cooked, ladle them into the soup base.  You don't need to add all the water, which is now a starchy salmon stock.  From canned, add to soup with the water in the can.  Only add enough water to achieve the consistency you like.

5.  Add beans, if using, and return to a low simmer.  Stir in enough cream to get the consistency you would like.  Taste and add salt and pepper as needed; the cream will dull what you had already added.  Serve hot.

Difficulty rating  :)

Challah #2 and Schlissel Design

Before Passover, I started watching several new-to-me YouTube channels by Jewish women of varying traditions and levels of observance.  All of them made schlissel challahs after Passover (sometimes spelled shlissel).  I had no idea what that was.  Just more of my barely-Reform upbringing showing a massive gap in my heritage.

Like round challah, schlissel is a design for a specific holiday with its own meaning.  You shape the dough into a key (schlissel is "key" in Yiddish) on the first Shabbat after Passover to wish for a prosperous year.  (There are four new years in Judaism, Passover being one of them.)  It's a Chassidic tradition, according to Google, and is at least a couple of hundred years old.  Some also wrap a house key in foil and bake it into the bread, but between food safety issues and some recent dental work, I wasn't about to do that.

I'm using the recipe from Leite's Culinaria because the photo is of a texture I want.  My challahs tend to come out dry and with an odd texture using the other recipe.  Also, when I went searching for a new recipe, everyone is using the stand mixer dough hook to make theirs.  Fine, I gave it a try, even though I prefer to knead by hand.  Yeah, that didn't even break the egg yolks.  I finished it by hand, and these directions will be more like my usual bread techniques, with only part of it using the hook.

Because eggs have gotten so expensive the past couple of months, I picked up a pint of liquid eggs.  I have several recipes on my meal calendar that use an egg wash or egg as a binder, where it doesn't matter if you whisk it in a bowl or buy it that way.  That was $2.99 for a 10-egg equivalent carton, instead of $3.99 for a dozen fresh.  The three eggs inside the dough are whole, but the egg wash was from the carton.  After getting it home, I noticed that it's cholesterol free, so just colored egg whites?  My cholesterol was 262 at the last check, so maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.

This recipe does make more dough than I can eat before the loaf goes stale, so I made four small loaves to freeze three for later.  The first was to try the Schlissel key.  Then I tried a 5-strand braid, which was far easier than I was expecting, so #3 was one as well.  The fourth, I did the cheaty 6-strand where you lay one braid on top of another.  It kind of slid partway off the top in the oven when the part underneath it rose.  Still, I had made a month of challot in slightly over two hours, so that's a win.  Hopefully this will become a new thing for me.

1 packet (2-1/4 tsp) dry yeast
1 C 100ºF water
1/3 C sugar or 1/4 C honey
4-1/2 C-ish bread flour or 5-1/2 C-ish AP flour
3 eggs, room temperature
1/4 C neutral oil, like vegetable or grapeseed
2 tsp kosher salt
Egg wash

1.  Stir together yeast, water, and sugar.  Allow to sit until foamy, 5-10 minutes.

2.  In stand mixer with the paddle attachment, stir together yeast mixture and 1/2 C flour.  Beat slowly until fully integrated.  Beat in eggs until smooth.

3.  Stir in 1 cup flour, oil, and salt and beat until smooth.

4.  Switch to the dough hook.  Add remaining 3 C of flour (4 if using A.P.) and run on medium.  In about 3 minutes, you will have a lumpy dough.  Turn off the mixer, scrape everything down, and run for 5 more minutes.  At this point, you will have a sticky dough that rides the hook.

5.  Lightly flour a kneading surface.  Pour out dough, including everything sticking to the hook.  Lightly flour the top of the dough and knead until smooth, adding a bit more flour if necessary.  The actual amount will vary with the day's humidity, but should not exceed half a cup.  Round dough into a ball.  Oil a bowl.  Turn dough over in it to coat all sides.  Cover and set in a warm place to rise until tripled, 1 to 1-1/2 hours.  On a cold day, maybe 2.

6.  Punch down dough and weigh.  If making two loaves, cut in half by weight.  I was making four, so there was some math.  It probably would have been easier if I had switched the scale to grams.  The ball was over two pounds.  Cut each piece into however many strands you want to use, again by weight.  For the Schlissel, it was three pieces plus a tiny bit to be the key prongs.  Allow to rest at least 5 minutes before shaping.

7.  To make the key shape, roll each of the three main pieces into a rope.  Braid them about 2/3 of the length of the ropes.  I then sliced the remaining ends lengthwise and twisted them.  There are dozens of designs, but this seemed easiest.  Loop the twisted ends into circles to make the top of an old-fashioned key.  Place on parchment-lined sheet and crumple up a bit of parchment or foil to place inside the loop so it doesn't close as the bread expands.  Make that little side piece into the key prongs and set them at the bottom, where you started the braid.

8.  For a 5-strand braid, take three pieces on one side and do two steps as though you were doing a three-strand braid.  Then switch to the other side and do two passes.  The middle one will move to the other side each cycle.  Repeat until you run out of rope.  It's kind of a Celtic design, and pretty cool.  Also much easier to keep track of than a 6-strand.

9.  Set loaves in a warm place to rise for 30 minutes.  You don't want to over-proof, or they'll collapse as soon as they are egg-washed.  To make the egg wash, beat an egg with 1 Tb of water until smooth.

10.  Preheat oven to 350º.  Brush challah with the egg wash, taking care to get in every crevice.  If desired, decorate the loaves with seeds and/or spices.  Bake larger loaves (1 or 2) for 30-35 minutes, smaller ones, like my quarters, for 20-25.

11.  Cool on a wire rack at least half an hour.  Remove the foil balls before the bread sets completely.  Bread will keep at room temperature about 2 days.  For longer storage, wrap in foil then place in a plastic freezer bag.  Freeze up to one month.

Makes 2 lbs bread, about 12-16 servings

Difficulty rating  :-0

Tomato and Garlic Confit

I saw this on a YT video.  So dangerous to let me watch YouTube hungry.  It's probably a good thing I don't use TikTok.  I quickly realized what a great condiment it is for a whole lot of dishes and went looking for a proper recipe.

Google quickly scared me a bit with some of the questions related to my search.  I do know from my food safety lessons that you should not leave garlic-in-oil mixtures at room temperature for extended periods.  Garlic naturally harbors botulism spores, which is only a problem when you keep them in an anaerobic environment such as oil.  Cooked and refrigerated for two weeks or less, it's perfectly safe.  Yes, the oil will harden in the fridge, but it doesn't take much to re-liquify it for serving.  This isn't much different from the finishing stage of my oven-dried tomatoes, just adding garlic.

Scary stuff out of the way, this is pretty awesome.  Slow roasted tomatoes and garlic are great on their own, and when they are cooked in oil, that gets flavored too.  This can go with veggies, meat, on bread, in pasta, on a salad, in rice, in eggs...you get the idea.  The oil can also be used as a dipping sauce.  I mixed some of it with balsamic vinegar to make a salad dressing for Seder, then later made a savory matzoh brei for dinner with artichokes, confit, and cheese.

1 dry pint grape or cherry tomatoes
*1 large or 2 small heads garlic
*Fresh basil as desired, about 1 Tb (or another herb that fits the use, like oregano or thyme)
1 tsp kosher salt
Olive oil as needed, about 1 cup

1.  Preheat oven to 375º.  Rinse tomatoes and arrange in a single layer in an 8x8 baking dish.

2.  To prepare the garlic, you have two choices.  One is to cut off the top and nestle the entire head into the dish, then squeeze out the roasted cloves after baking.  My garlic was sprouting and some of the cloves had rotted a bit, so I did it the hard way and peeled all of them.  Your choice.

3.  Sprinkle the top with salt and basil leaves.  Pour oil into the pan until it comes up most of the way on the tomatoes.

4.  Place the pan in the oven and roast for 60-90 minutes, until the tomatoes are thoroughly cooked.  You're essentially oven deep-frying them in the oil.  The amount of time will depend upon how ripe your tomatoes are.

5.  Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.  Place in a non-reactive container, preferably glass.  A plastic container might absorb all the flavors and be difficult to clean.  Refrigerate and use within two weeks, or freeze for up to two months.

Makes about 1-1/2 C

Difficulty rating  π

Tilapia with Preserved Lemons

I decided to make colcannon for one of my meals during Passover, which meant that it was a dairy meal.  For some reason, Ashkenaz Jews don't consider fish a meat, so I made fish with it.  I tend to eat a lot of fish during Passover so I can still have dairy, and because I've been eating less meat in general.

The best deal at the market was a pouch of frozen tilapia.  While not my favorite fish, or even favorite white fish, I decided to make the best of it.

What I threw together without a plan was actually pretty good: pan-fried, lightly seasoned, with a lemon cream sauce and a light sprinkle of cilantro.  I'll make the horseradish optional, but it really did brighten up things.  It's so funny how Jewish people go crazy over horseradish at Passover, like we've been hiding a secret condiment the rest of the year.  I finally gave up refilling the dish and just put the jar on the table during Seder.

You can use lemon zest for the preserved lemon, but I really liked the texture of it.  I soaked the peels for a day first to reduce the saltiness.  If you only rinse them, then don't add salt to the fish.

4 tilapia fillets
2 Tb olive oil
salt and white pepper to taste
*1/2 preserved lemon peel, sliced, or zest of one lemon
*1 tsp prepared horseradish, optional
1/2 C water
*1/2 C heavy cream
*2 Tb chopped cilantro, optional

1.  Drizzle oil onto a large skillet and preheat over medium until the oil moves easily.

2.  Lay the fillets in the hot oil, then season lightly with salt and pepper.  Cook until the bottoms are crispy and the fish is cooked about halfway, 4-6 minutes.  While that's happening, stir the lemon and horseradish into the water so it is distributed evenly later.

3.  Flip fillets, then add lemon, horseradish, water, and cilantro to the pan.  Continue to cook until the tilapia is cooked through, about 5 more minutes. 

4.  Pour the cream on top of the fish and cook just to warm.  You don't want to boil the cream, or it might curdle with the acidic ingredients.  Serve immediately.

Difficulty rating  π

The Flour Bucket

Three icing buckets ran out the same day at work.  That never happens.  I took the two with the best lids home and washed them out.  So now I had two 2-gallon food grade buckets and no idea why I had brought them home.

One quickly turned into a home for chometz and went into the hall closet for Passover.  That was a temporary thing, and it still left one empty bucket.

While I was scooping the flour for matzoh, and making the usual mess, I realized what the other could be used for.  Once Passover was done (the icing was kosher, but not KLP), I dumped the rest of the bag of flour into the bucket.  There was plenty of room left, so I got another five pounds out of the freezer and tossed it in as well.  Looks like the bucket will hold slightly over ten pounds.

Wow.  No more keeping a leaky paper bag of flour in a plastic produce bag.  No more unrolling the bag and having traces of flour fall everywhere.  I don't have to keep the backup in the freezer, because I can see when I'm running low and need to restock.  When the lid comes off, there's a 10" wide opening.  Even I would have a hard time missing that.  The bucket is tall, but does fit on a pantry shelf; I just had to move a few rarely-used items up one level.

What this really does storage-wise is open up space on the baking shelf for my bread flour and get ten pounds of flour out of the chest freezer.  I want to get back into making challah and doing a proper Shabbat dinner every Friday.  This might turn into making one batch of dough and using it to create a month of smaller loaves for the freezer, but it's an effort.

As for the other bucket, I'll probably keep that for cleaning and water transportation purposes.  Some people use them to store rice or beans, but I don't keep two gallons of any one bulk item other than flour.  I managed to fill a half-gallon jar with rice, and that will take me at least a year to use.

Just a reminder that flour does have a finite shelf life.  It lasts about a year under ideal pantry conditions, two if you vacuum seal it.  Leaving it in the freezer can extend that a bit, but not indefinitely.  Just because I can now store ten pounds of flour in a bucket doesn't mean everyone should.  I will go through that.  If you can't, pick a smaller container or leave it in the bag.

Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole

Without spare boxes of matzoh for making brei and granola, I had to come up with something else for breakfast.  I had more than one potato dish planned during Passover and bought the five-pound bag of russets.  That left more than enough for a potato casserole.

Because I keep kosher during Passover, I did not add sausage to this.  Really wanted to.  Really, really wanted to.  I'm sure I will any other week of the year I decide to make this again.

Because I wanted the potatoes a bit crispy, this does take over an hour and one more pan than I wanted to use.  Maybe it's better suited to brunch than starting at 5am.  You could also cook the veggies the evening before and bake it in the morning, adding the egg and cheese then.

My regrown green onions started producing scapes (bud stalks), so I chopped those up for my green onion.  I had one Roma tomato from an impulse buy that became color for the casserole.  A red pepper would serve the same purpose, and should also be pre-sautéed.  Like in a quiche, any added veggies other than leafy greens won't really cook.

*2 stalks green onion, finely chopped
1 Tb olive oil
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
*1 Roma tomato, diced
*2 medium Russet potatoes, cut in 1/2" cubes
3 eggs
*1/2 C milk or 1/4 C heavy cream
1 C shredded cheddar or other favorite cheese

1.  In a medium skillet, heat oil over medium.  Add green onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.  Add potatoes, salt, pepper, and paprika.  Cook until the potatoes are browned and crispy, stirring often.  This is going to take at least 10 minutes.

2.  While the potatoes are cooking, preheat oven to 350º and grease an 8x8 casserole.  Beat eggs and milk in a small bowl and set aside.

3.  Add cooked potatoes and onions to the casserole, then add diced tomatoes to the same skillet.  Add a few more drops of oil if too dry.  Cook tomatoes until they start to break down, about 5 minutes, then add to the casserole.

4.  Pour egg mixture over vegetables, then sprinkle cheese on top.  Bake 45 minutes, until egg custard has set.  Allow to cool 5 minutes before slicing.

Serves 4-6, depending on side dishes

Difficulty rating  :)

Chicken Mafé

I first heard of this dish from Senegal in the L.A. Times.  They did a vegetarian version of it, which I don't mind in the least, but it didn't seem filling enough on paper.  I decided to add meat to it, which is very common.  The most traditional meats are beef or lamb.  I do have a chuck roast in the freezer, but I haven't decided if I want to corn it, and I didn't want to risk my last pound of lamb on an untried recipe, so I defrosted chicken legs instead.  Chicken and peanut flavor go very well together.

While I love North African food (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, etc), I'm not familiar with Saharan and sub-Saharan dishes.  I've never even been to an Ethiopian restaurant, but I've heard good things.  So off to Wikipedia to learn about Senegal.  Seems like a nice country, and much more temperate than I gave it credit.  They get more rain than Southern California.

The original recipe neglects to mention that you need to use an oven-safe skillet.  I don't have one large enough for this whole recipe, and if my largest skillet was large enough, the handle wouldn't fit in my small oven.  I changed it to a stovetop braise, and it's fantastic.  It does not change the cooking time, and saves you cranking up the oven to 400º on a hot day.

Peanuts are not something I normally stock.  I used two of my grocery rewards to get a pound free.  I'm always happy if I have rewards or a freebie coupon for something that was on my list anyway.  If you prefer, you can use a cup of peanut butter out of the jar instead of making your own for this recipe, but there's something special about freshly ground peanuts.  Maybe open a new jar of the good stuff.  If you're allergic to peanuts but ok with tree nuts, cashews would be a good substitute.  If all nuts are off the menu, maybe use oats, wheat berries, or nutritional yeast, but they won't give the same nutritional equivalent.

You do need this much sauce to braise the meat and cabbage.  This wasn't a problem in the original oven recipe, because it would reduce as it roasted.  You're going to end up with extra unless the mafé is served as a kind of soup.  No problem, I froze the other pint for use later as pasta sauce.  I've made this a lot simpler than the one in the paper.  Pound the cilantro in a mortar and pestle?  I already had the food processor out.  And mine ended up looking a lot like the photo in the article, just with less caramelization of the peanut sauce because I cooked it on the stove.

2 C unsalted peanuts
peanut or vegetable oil as needed (about 1/4 C)
1 large head of green cabbage, cut through the core into 8 wedges
*4 chicken leg quarters
kosher salt and ground black pepper
1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped
*1 Tb minced fresh ginger
*6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 Tb tomato paste
4 C chicken or vegetable stock, or water
*2 Tb fish sauce (coconut aminos would be a good substitute)
1-1/2 C cilantro leaves & tender stems, chopped
*3 Tb lime juice
2 Tb olive oil

1.  Preheat oven to 350º.  Spread the peanuts on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until a shade or two darker and the oils are brought out, about 6-8 minutes.  Stir them frequently.  When cool enough to handle,  run through the processor into a paste.  It's going to take a couple of minutes and goes through several stages: noisy, grainy, clumped ball, paste.  It helps to scrape down the sides when it's transitioning past the grainy phase.  You can do this a few days ahead and store it in the fridge, or use immediately.

2.  Get out the biggest skillet you own, preferably one with a lid.  A wide soup pot also works.  Drizzle about 2 Tb of oil and heat over medium-high until shimmery and coats the bottom of the pan.  Sprinkle the cabbage wedges and chicken with salt and pepper and fry in batches until you get a nice char on them.  Turn after about four minutes to do the other side.  Save any leaves of cabbage that fall off; you can add them back in later.  Remove to a side plate.

3.  Add another 2 Tb of oil to the pan and start cooking the onions in it.  Add the fallen shreds of cabbage. Once the onions are softened, about 5 minutes, add the ginger and garlic and continue to cook until the onions are browning.  Stir in the tomato paste and peanut butter and let them soften and caramelize.

4.  Add the stock and fish sauce.  Bring to a simmer and stir until the sauce smoothes out.  It could take a few minutes.  Add the chicken and cabbage wedges to the pan and cram everything in.  Put on a lid, lower heat to medium low, and go make the sauce while the stew simmers for 40-50 minutes.

5.  If you just made the peanut butter, wash the food processor.  For the sauce, add the cilantro, lime juice, and olive oil to the food processor and process until smooth.  Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.  I used white pepper in case there was extra to use as a salad dressing later.

6.  Once the chicken is done and the cabbage is cooked, serve over *couscous or rice with a generous drizzle of cilantro-lime sauce to cut the thickness of the peanut butter.

Difficulty rating  :)

Basque Cheesecake

Preppy Kitchen posted a recipe for Basque cheesecake, which does not have a crust.  I instantly thought how great that would be for a Passover dessert.  And because it's supposed to look burnt, it's pretty hard to mess up.

Then I had a ridiculously difficult time finding matzoh cake meal to use in place of flour.  I didn't even need much.  Finally went to a Ralphs in a more Orthodox neighborhood and they had a respectable array of KLP foods.  I could have gone to one of the big kosher supermarkets, but I didn't want to go through that drama for one item.  I restrained myself to what I was there to buy, plus a bag of baking chocolate.  I can make biscotti with that and the cake meal.

You can serve this with whipped cream and/or chocolate sauce.  I served it with some Sabra-infused cherry preserves I made last year.  Sabra, the national liqueur of Israel, is chocolate with a hint of orange, and KLP.

I'm writing the recipe more or less as John posted it, and will go into KLP substitutions as necessary.  I also made a 1/3 version in a 6" springform, just adding a little extra boxed egg white to make up to make up for 4 eggs not being divisible by 3.

3 8oz bricks of cream cheese, room temp
1 C sugar
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs, room temperature
2 Tb flour
1-1/2 C cream

1.  Preheat oven to 400º.  Line a 9" springform pan with two pieces of parchment, placed 90º from each other.  All the recipes I looked at agreed on this point.  You can crumple the parchment first, to make it easier to get in the pan.  The ends of the parchment should overhang the top of the springform, as the cake is going to puff up really high before collapsing as it cools.  For extra security, I placed the pan on a baking sheet.

2.  Beat together cream cheese, sugar, salt, and vanilla.  I had made vanilla sugar with some of the vanilla beans I ordered, plus used my homemade KLP vanilla extract.  Once creamy, beat in eggs one at a time and whip until smooth.

3.  Stir in flour on low.  I used matzoh cake meal.  For gluten-free, I would recommend tapioca starch or a GF flour blend.  You only need a minimal amount of stabilizer.  Many Basque recipes omit flour entirely and make it up with an extra egg.

4.  Slowly add the cream with the mixer running and stir until batter is smooth.  Pour into prepared springform.

5.  Here's where the artistry happens.  Bake for 45 minutes, then take a look.  The top should look slightly burnt, like milk chocolate, and it should only jiggle a little when shaken.  If it's still light or jiggles a lot, bake at 5 minute increments until done.  It's going to be super puffy, so you can't use the toothpick test.  Basically, the only thing you have to cook is the egg, and the cake will continue to cook as it cools.

6.  Cool the cake on a rack to room temperature, keeping it in the pan.  It's going to deflate down to about 1-1/2 inches.  That's normal, so don't panic.  Chill another 4 hours, or even up to two days.

7.  When ready to serve, pop the springform and remove the parchment liner.  It's going to have crinkles around the edge, which is the rustic coolness.  Slice and serve with sauce or preserves of choice.

Makes one 9" cake, at least 10 servings

Difficulty rating  :)