Date cake and potatoes

Eastside Road, January 3, 2011—

SINCE IT IS NOT possible to entertain with something new tonight, our having dined precisely as we did yesterday — on brasato, potatoes, green salad, and date cake — let me enlarge a little on the details.

I've already explained how the brasato is made. As often as I've mentioned Lindsey's steam-sautéed potatoes, though, I think I've never described the technique. She cleans but does not peel them, always choosing the waxy variety rather than the russet; she dices them into say half-inch pieces; she cooks them in a heavy pot with a little water and a little olive oil, salt and pepper; when tender, she mashes them up with the wooden spoon. We generally use a heavy cast-iron enameled pot with a heavy lid.

The date cake came from a book I hadn't noticed before on the bottom shelf of what I think of as The Working Cookbooks, America Cooks: the General Federation of Women's Clubs Cookbook. Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons (1967), this “grand compilation of all those little cookbooks from the church women and girl scouts,” as zeegeezer describes it on librarything, was edited by Anne Seranne, whose name can be trusted. (She was among other things an editor at Gourmet. Lindsey bought the book back in 1986; I opened it for the first time tonight, to find that date cake:

Mix a cup flour, 1-1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, a cup sugar
Stir in 2 cups chopped pecans, 1-1/2 lb. chopped dates
Beat 4 egg yolks with 1 tsp vanilla until light
Beat 4 egg whites stiff; fold in the yolks; hold in the dry ingredients; turn into a 9-inch pan (greased and lined)
Bake at 350° for 40 to 45 minutes; cool 10 minutes in pan; then turn out of pan and cool on a wire rack

And there you have it. Lindsey serves a small piece, with whipped cream, and I am content.

Nero d'Avola