Summer Food and Fun in Northern Michigan . . .

Last week, when my family was in Northern Michigan on vacation, I found copious opportunities to take pictures. Folks, Michigan is chock full of interesting things to photograph. Many of them edible.

Before we get to the food, please let me get on my tiny soapbox for just a moment, okay? I will come clean right here, right now, and confess to you that I love it here. Besides being the most adorably shaped state in the U.S. (let's face it--no other state comes close in this regard; I mean, we're shaped like a big, cozy, rounded mitten for heaven's sake), it's abundant in lakes and forest. We experience four dramatically different seasons in the most classic way imaginable. Personally, I think the bio-rhythms of longtime Michiganders are based, somehow, on the distinct character of each of our seasons--no kidding. And did you know that there are still areas of Michigan that are like something out of a storybook? It's quite true. Never been here? Well, you might want to consider a jaunt "up north" sometime to check us out. The state's gotten such a horrible rap in the media this past year or two, I feel compelled to say that the American tragedy-loving news machine doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the good stuff that comprises Michigan.

Okay. I'm done. Stepping off the soapbox now.

Among the many pleasures of even a short, relatively local vacation are some of the foods enjoyed, don't you think? I wanted to share a few photos I took on that trip, along with a non-baking related "semi-recipe" that comes care of my husband (he grills, oh yeah). Some of the pics are of delicious things to eat. Others are just simple, fun, or placid images (hey, placid is good) that drew me in, camera in hand.

You know how some of the most legendary local places, that have existed seemingly for centuries, manage to survive even well off the beaten track? Well, pictured below is Iva's Chicken Dinners, in a town called Sterling. Iva's, open since the 1930s, is just like that. Since I've been married (it'll be 18 years on July 20th), I've heard my in-laws and husband repeatedly mention this "old restaurant in a house, that serves these great chicken dinners." Finally, on July 3rd, I got to see for myself. About time.

We stopped there on the way to Torch Lake, our destination, to eat dinner. I'm glad we did. A kitschy time capsule, in the most genuine and honest way, Iva's looks as if it was placed in a deep freezer in, say, 1957, and they defrosted it just last week. The interior is vintage from top to bottom (sadly, my few photos of the interior were badly out of focus, thus not included here). The furniture alone would sell like hotcakes on ebay, and probably show up in an article in Martha Stewart Living the next month! They serve you coffee in those little old glass containers with the black collar and cap; brings back memories of my high school job as a waitress--we used those for serving tea water. The food at Iva's can be aptly described as homey, bland, comforting, and satisfying in a safe sort of way. (One thing they didn't put in the deep freeze was the pricing--that's strictly up to date, unfortunately.) Utterly comfortable in its own skin, Iva's Chicken Dinners is worth a visit for the retro decor alone--even if fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green peas, and fresh biscuits isn't necessarily your idea of a dining experience.


Michigan is . . . uh . . . one of the chubbiest states in the country--one of our less glorious claims to fame. So, it comes as no surprise that the entire lower peninsula is virtually peppered with ice cream stands and frozen custard shops. The one you see below is buried in the back of Higgins Store, a small market in a tiny town called Alden, near my husband's family's Torch Lake cottage.

It's curiously sequestered behind everything else that Higgins sells, in a separate and, well, rather dark room. I guess ice cream addicts appreciate the privacy. Though Michiganders will willingly come out in the light of day to do an ice cream deal--we're that hardcore--we appreciate the discretion showed by Higgins. My younger son who, as you may know, enjoys concealing his identity, is one such customer. "Mint chocolate chip, please. Single dip, in a large sugar cone. No sprinkles."

Also in Alden is the Muffin Tin, a tiny joint specializing in--you guessed it. Below is a nice cherry pecan muffin I tried. Not bad at all. Little groups of ladies meet there to knit or to conduct civic business while they indulge, as do happily solitary males who sit nearby, peering intently at their laptop screens as they contentedly munch on the crusty, oat-topped muffins. (Not all of Northern Michigan is wired yet. Folks with more modern inclinations have to make do wherever they can, you know. The Muffin Tin is a charming place to "make do.")

The little number you see below, dished up on Dixie's finest, was produced compliments of my husband, who we'll call Andy (because that's his name). He's the griller for our little brood, and he's damn good at it too. The stuffed pork tenderloin was a rip roaring success. Here's the "semi-recipe" I mentioned above. I have no exact proportions listed, so just wing it if you give this one a whirl. It was delicious. I loved it.


Stuffed Grilled Pork Tenderloin a la Andy

One pork tenderloin, decent sized
A few sweet baby peppers, yellow and red
Kalamata olives, plenty of them, pitted and chopped
sun dried tomatoes, can be cut into pieces (not too many; the taste is pretty strong)
garlic, lots of it, minced
fresh dill, lots of it, coarsely chopped
fresh mozarella, an amount about the size of a tennis ball is more than enough, sliced
kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
olive oil

Butterfly the pork tenderloin. Pound the meat thinner than it is. (How thin? Just not too thin.)
Spread the meat out, and cover it with a few slices of the prosciutto, in a single layer. Layer on top of that pieces of the sliced sweet peppers, then the slices of the mozarella, then the sun-dried tomatoes, then the chopped olives. Sprinkle on most of the garlic and dill. Using butcher's string (or any kind of cotton string you can safely put on food that is going to be put on a grill), and probably with someone helping you to hold the whole kit 'n' kaboodle together (or, if you like spewing a lot of profanity you can try doing it by yourself), tie the meat up into a secure tight bundle. You may need to place at least five knotted pieces of string on it to keep it all secure. Rub olive oil on the outside of the bundle. Stuff the remaining garlic and dill into the openings, and rub it on the outside of the bundle. Sprinkle liberally with kosher salt and pepper.

Put that baby on a heated grill and turn it carefully now and then. Grill it until the internal temperature is about 160. Remove the string before serving it.

Brace yourself for rave reviews.

* * * *
Okay, so now it's dusk and somebody (Uncle Ben or Uncle Keith?) made a nice fire outside on the beach. Is it time yet to make the S'mores? Oh good. Because you have to have them when you're up north. Wouldn't be a vacation without them. Try to get fresh graham crackers and marshmallows. They're going to be high quality S'mores if you're not using stale goods. And don't forget those thin milk chocolate Hershey bars. Make sure your marshmallows get pretty toasty on the outside and melty on the inside before you embark on the assembly. Critical to have completely heated marshmallows, agree? Apply your chocolate pieces to your crackers, slip the 'mallows on there, and squish it all together gently. Mmmmmmm . . . it's really summer now.


Plenty of nice flora around. Nice fauna too, but the fauna tends to move too fast for my current photographic skills.

Last word: Michigan is worth loving. And as for Detroit, well, Detroit is hard to love but it really just needs love. My mom used to say, "It's when a child is acting the least lovable that she/he needs the most love." I figure Detroit's like that.

Fresh Sweet-Cherry Coffee Cake . . . Yum . . .

One of my very favorite food blogs is Confessions of a Tart. Is it one you've ever visited? Almost every time I do, I find a recipe I'd like to try. It contains some of the most lovely and striking photos I've ever seen in any blog, and not just of baked goods. Its writer, whose name is Irene, has an intuitive way with her camera. Anyway, I'm a big fan.

A nice cherry coffee cake recipe--made with fresh sweet cherries, mind you--caught my eye in Confessions of a Tart recently and I tried it out yesterday, with slight revision. The texture is wonderfully velvet-like and kind of dense without actually coming across as heavy. The flavor is delicate; it fittingly complements the sweet-tart Bing cherries. Truly good.

The biggest changes I made to Irene's recipe included adding in a very small amount of lemon zest, adding in a wee bit more salt, baking the cake for no longer than 35 minutes max, draining a little juice from the berries at the get-go, and rewriting the directions a smidgen. Oh, and I baked it in a 9" springform pan. (I'm sure it would work just as well in any 9" layer cake pan but, never having made it before, I wasn't sure so I wanted a pan with slightly higher sides.)

**Full Recipe Disclosure: Irene notes in her post for cherry coffee cake that she in fact discovered the recipe in another food site called "A Series of Kitchen Experiments." Irene altered that recipe, and created her post based on her revision. I, in turn, looked at both recipes in both sites, and made my own version, which is sort of a slightly modified, happy medium between the two versions. ( Did you get all that? Are we good to go, or do you think I need to get on the horn and secure the services of an intellectual property attorney??)

It's a simple recipe with a pleasing result. Just what we all need now and then, right?


Fresh Sweet-Cherry Coffee Cake

(For a printable version of this recipe click here!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put a rack in the upper third of your oven.
Grease and flour, or spray with baking spray, a 9" cake pan or springform pan.

1 and 1/2 cups of cherries, pitted and sliced in halves or quarters (whichever you like)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups All Purpose flour, bleached or unbleached
1 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 scant tsp. of lemon zest
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk

Place the pitted, sliced cherries in a small bowl and mix in a tablespoon of granulated sugar.

Pour the cherries into a strainer or colander placed over the bowl, and let juice drip off of them for about an hour.


Measure and combine the dry ingredients--flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

After an hour has passed, discard the juice in the bowl that dripped from the cherries. Put the drained cherries back in the empty bowl and mix in 1 tsp. of vanilla. Set aside.


Cream the butter and sugar in the large bowl of a mixer for a couple of minutes, until light and fluffy.


Add the eggs to the creamed mixture, one at a time, until well combined.



Add the lemon zest and the additional 1/2 tsp. of vanilla to the creamed mixture; combine.

Now, stirring just by hand--not with the mixer--add in the flour mixture and the milk alternately--three portions of flour and two of milk, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir just until combined; don't overmix. The batter will be thick.




Gently fold the cherries into the batter. Don't mix too zealously or the batter will become pinkish from the cherries. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.


Set on the upper oven rack. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.


Cool completely on a rack.

Garnish the top with confectioner's sugar and a couple of your prettiest leftover cherries.

Enjoy!


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We've all Heard of Peaches and Cream . . . How About Sour Cream Peach Pie?

When I think of peach pie, I don't typically envision anything that involves sour cream. But, apparently, peach pie made with sour cream in the filling produces a nice variation on the norm. I made a sour cream peach pie yesterday, and it certainly is an interesting twist on an old favorite. My husband has been telling me for years that he remembers eating a pie like this when he was a child, and that he just loved it. I kept that piece of info in the back of my mind for a long time, but I never came across a recipe that looked to me like it was really worth trying until just recently.

The pie that I baked last night turned out well, and the hubby ate a piece of it this morning (it was still cooling last night at about 10 pm; no choice but to wait!) after he was finished with his breakfast. He gave it his Seal of Extreme Approval, I was gratified to know. Okay, so far so good, I thought. I figured that the real test, though, would be if my fruit-pie-adoring teenage son would eat it without any urging from me whatsoever. Well, the pie passed that test about an hour ago, so I guess we're good to go!

The recipe that I used for the filling is from Baking From the Heart, by Michael J. Rosen, a cookbook I picked up while browsing at the library last week. It has a number of recipes that look deliciously promising. (In fact, I ordered a used copy for myself from Amazon; I hope it comes before I have to return the library's copy!) Besides rewording the instructions, the only alteration I made to the recipe pertained to the amount of fruit; I used considerably more peaches than the book's recipe called for.

For the pie's crust, I used a recipe that is a simple amalgam of other recipes I've seen or used over time. It makes a tender crust, and one that's not at all sweet, but is just slightly salty. It's a little harder to work with this pie dough than some others, in terms of rolling it out, and that accounts for the less than perfect looks of my pie's crust. I make no excuses; it's a somewhat homely pie, I know. I was patching crust rather roughly, here and there, as I went along. With pie crust, though, I think it's occasionally okay to sacrifice looks if the trade-off is worth it in terms of taste and texture. Hope you agree!

Sour Cream Peach Pie

(For a printable version of this recipe click here!)

Makes one 9" pie.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place rack in lower third of the oven.

For the pie crust dough:

1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into half-inch chunks
3 cups unsifted All Purpose flour (plus a bit extra for rolling out the dough)
3/4 tsp. salt
6 Tbsp. ice water, or more as needed

In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. With a pastry blender, cut in the shortening finely. Add in the cold butter, cutting it in coarsely. You should still be able to see little chunks of butter here and there.


One tablespoon at a time, add in the ice water, tossing the dough with a fork until it just holds together when you press a bit of it in your hand.


Gather the dough into two evenly sized balls.

Flatten them slightly into two disks. Wrap the disks in plastic and refrigerate them for at least 15 minutes, until chilled.

After the dough is chilled, and you're ready to assemble the whole pie, roll out one of the disks into a 12" to 13" circle and, carefully, fit it into your pie dish, patching as needed. Roll out the other disk into a 12" to 13" circle and cut it into 8 wide lattice strips (if you wish to do the lattice, that is; otherwise just roll it out and use it uncut as a full cover for your two-crust pie). The longest strips will go in the center of the pie. See "To Assemble the Pie" below.

For the filling:

7 - 8 medium sized ripe peaches, peeled and cut into large bite-sized chunks
1 extra large egg yolk (reserve the white for the glaze)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp. AP flour
1 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground nutmet
1 tsp. vanilla extract

In a large bowl, combine the egg yolk, sugar, and flour. Stir until smooth and pale yellow.
Whisk in the sour cream, spices, and vanilla until thoroughly combined.


Fold the peaches into the mixture; set aside.


To assemble the pie:

Into your dough-lined pie dish, pour the peach mixture and spread it out evenly.

If you're using lattice strips, lay four across the top of the peach mixture--longest in the center, shorter on the outside. Then, one by one, add in the strips going in the other direction, starting with the center. (You don't have to interweave them if you prefer not to, but interweaving is really not difficult. Probably a zillion sites on the internet can show you how to do it, thus I will refrain from rehashing the instructions here.)

Seal the edges of the crust, and flute it as you wish.

Brush the top crust with a beaten egg white that's been mixed with a tiny bit of water. Sprinkle sugar liberally over the top of the pie.

Bake the pie on a rack in the lower third of your oven for 20 minutes, then rotate the pie 180 degrees, and bake another 20 to 30 minutes. Cover the top with foil if it is browning too quickly.

When you take the pie out of the oven, let it cool completely on a rack. The filling kind of "sets up" a little bit as it cools.

* * * *
It's all cooled? Okay, cut a piece and give it a try . . . . . . not your typical peach pie, hmm?


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Fail-Safe Peanut Butter Cookies

Well, I'm going to be on vacation for a few days and, thus, not blogging again until perhaps next Wednesday. I'm going to Torch Lake, in the upper western part of Michigan's lower peninsula, with my husband and kids for the 4th of July. It's a beautiful spot. No longer all that wild or primitive, but still beautiful. My in-laws have had a cottage there for decades, so my husband spent every summer there as a boy. I was particularly hoping that the sweet cherry crop--a big deal "up north"--would be ripe on the trees while we're visiting, so I could pick some and bring them home to bake with, but apparently the cherries aren't cooperating this July. It seems they're still too green. Oh, well. What can you do? Just have to bake something else!

I thought I might bake a few cookies tonight to take on the trip, and I realized I haven't yet shared my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe with you--my FAIL-SAFE PB cookie recipe, that is! So, we'll remedy that right here and right now. (Have you seen my Fail-Safe chocolate chip recipe post? Or my Fail-Safe oatmeal cookie post? Those are really good too!)

The recipe, below, is simple and reliable. It's one I've customized over time by combining what I felt were the best aspects of several recipes I'd used many times in the past. The cookies turn out kind of tender-crisp, with a slight chewiness on the inside. They're not so peanutty-ish that they knock you over. You know that big whoosh of peanut scent that engulfs you when you open a new jar of PB? These cookies probably won't do that. They have a nicely balanced flavor that comes not just from the PB, but also from light brown sugar and a little vanilla extract. (This evening, someone in my immediate family, who made me promise to completely conceal his identity, said, upon biting into a fresh-from-the-oven cookie, "Beautiful consistency inside. Perfect crunch on the outside." It was high praise, coming from said individual, who shall remain nameless.)

You know the classic criss-cross design on the top of PB cookies? Well, I've discovered that I like using a potato masher(!) rather than a dinner fork to make that design. It works especially well with cookies that aren't very small. It makes a thicker impression with more space between the tines. Look at the cookie dough pictures below . . . see what I mean?

Anyhow, you can put the criss-crosses on your cookies any old way you want. Or heck, leave them off! It's a free country. God bless America, and all that!


Jane's Fail-Safe Peanut Butter Cookies

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put your cookie sheets in the freezer to chill. Line the cookie sheets with parchment paper as you pull them out of the freezer, one by one, to use them.

2 cups All Purpose flour, unbleached
1 and 3/4 cups All Purpose flour, bleached
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt

3 large eggs
1 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup creamy peanut butter (I've had the best luck using Jif brand in baked goods; maybe it's the texture and/or the sweetness level?)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 and 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed
1 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

In a medium bowl combine the dry ingredients with a whisk; set aside.

In a large mixer bowl, on medium-low speed, combine the eggs, shortening, PB, sugars, and vanilla. Mix for a few minutes, until fluffy and well combined.

Add the dry ingredients gradually into the mixer bowl, on low speed. Mix on medium-low speed until well combined.

Chill the dough in the fridge for about twenty minutes or so.

Portion the fully-chilled dough into even balls about the size of small walnuts. (I use a size No. 50 ice cream scoop for these cookies; I think it's just slightly under two tablespoons). Roll the balls in some granulated sugar that you've put in a bowl or on a plate. Space the balls a couple of inches apart on the parchment-lined cookie sheets. With a fork or potato masher, gently but firmly make the criss-cross design, if you like. (If you don't, they'll just be smooth on top, like sugar cookies--still good!)


Bake the cookies on the middle and/or upper rack(s) in your oven for 8 to 10 minutes, until they're lightly golden brown. Let them cool on the pan for a few minutes then transfer them to a rack. They cool quickly.


Okay, now pour that little glass of milk and taste one of your cookies . . . . . . isn't it good?


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