Fare Exchange: How to make Blackberry Cobbler, more lore on Pretzel Rolls

Welcome to June and all that is fare. Today’s requests begin with Dortha Pomeroy’s search for genuine lasagna.

“I am in search of an authentic, classic lasagna recipe like the one made by those Italian mothers in Northwest Italy. This memorable dish stands only 2 inches thick instead of 4 inches, and is never made with mozzarella. Could any of your readers help me with my question?”

The next challenge came from a conversation with a certain sweet thing: bourbon balls. Elaine explained that, despite the ease of the Internet, “I still love cookbooks. I love opening a cookbook, particularly one that belongs to someone else, and seeing what recipes are marked, dog-eared, batter-spattered.” And then she asked a fine question, “What is your very favorite recipe?”

So now I turn to you and ask the same thing. Don’t just tell us what, tell us how. And Elaine, you know we need that bourbon ball recipe, don’t you?

One of you wrote to ask whether you had missed the answer to the request for Mason Jar Breakfasts. You didn’t miss it; it’s still missing in action. If anybody has that recipe, please share.

Personalized cobbler

Blackberry cobbler was a hot topic of discussion awhile back, and this anonymous version continues the conversation. ‘Tis the season. Amounts are given very generally, so this is no recipe for the novice cook, but a pleasure for one who loves to personalize a recipe.

Blackberry Cobbler

Frozen blackberries

Sugar to taste

Tapioca

Butter

French egg pastry (recipe below)

Put frozen blackberries in a saucepan and heat gently. Pour sugar to taste over berries.

Butter a Pyrex pan and sprinkle pearl tapioca over it. Add berries to pan and dot with butter, generously.

Top with the following pastry made with an egg as the French do.

French Egg Pastry

2 cups flour

teaspoon salt

1 teaspoons sugar

2/3 cup shortening

1 egg

cup milk

In a bowl, stir together flour, salt and sugar. Cut the shortening into the flour mixture as you would for any pastry. Break egg into a measuring cup and pour milk over it. Beat until blended. Pour egg-milk mixture over the flour a little at a time, stirring all the time until pastry makes a ball. Chill.

Roll out chilled dough and cut in strips. Make a crisscross pattern over the pie. Dot with plenty of butter and sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a 400-degree oven for a half hour, then turn down to 350 degrees for another half hour or until done.

Pretzel Rolls Lore

You may have saved last week’s Exchange in order to try the pretzel rolls, prepared in a water bath with a good many careful steps. The recipe came from Clifford Burdette and a commentary that follows, on these popular rolls came from Mr. and Mrs. Sunday. Put them together and you have the whole picture.

In the process of giving us background, the Sundays also provided a solution for pots with burned food in the bottom. Read on to find out.

“Like bagels, pretzels and pretzel bread need to be boiled/soaked/sprayed with an alkaline solution, traditionally lye, to get the super-brown slick crust.

Lye is difficult to use in the home, after all, it’s the major ingredient in traditional drain cleaners, so most home recipes call for either sodium bicarbonate or sodium carbonate. The latter works best.

“Sodium carbonate is washing soda and can often be found in the laundry aisle at the megamart, but it isn’t labeled “food grade” although it’s “100 percent sodium carbonate.” The difference between 100 percent and “food grade” is usually extra refinement to eliminate trace impurities, lot tracking and paperwork/certification. Food-grade sodium carbonate is available by mail order, usually for about five times the price as “technical” or washing soda grade.

“You’d probably be OK to use washing soda, but why take a chance and why clutter up the kitchen with another box you’ll use perhaps once a year? Fortunately, it’s easy to make your own by baking sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) at 400 degrees for an hour or so. This drives water and carbon dioxide out of the sodium bicarbonate, leaving sodium carbonate. Use a foil-covered sheet pan and spread the baking soda out on the surface. You lose about one-third of the weight in the process.

“Do be careful with it; while not as nasty as lye it can irritate skin and do ugly things to eyes if splashed into them. The final baking process pulls its fangs, though, so it’s safe to eat once cooked.

“Don’t bother with unbaked baking soda as the alkaline solution; it’s not alkaline enough to catalyze the browning reaction.And washing soda is handy if you’re prone to burning food in pans.

“Dissolve washing soda in hot water and simmer in the burnt pot for 30 minutes and let it cool. Then wash as usual to see most of the stains disappear. Repeat if needed.”

Champagne brunch

A restaurant.com coupon and a special occasion combined to send us to Broad Street Grille last week for its Sunday champagne brunch. Here’s one more reason to be amazed by Chattanooga. The food was tasty and fabulous at every turn, from salmon with first-of-the-season heirloom tomatoes to Bananas Foster Bread Pudding to a gracious plenty of fresh raspberries and blueberries to poached eggs on fried green tomatoes. And after such a repast, a walk in the adjacent “Main Terrain,” a delightful park, was the best possible ending for a celebration in an increasingly pleasurable city.

Cookbook thanks

Thanks to you, Brenda Carter, for being the second person willing to share your Town and Country cookbook. For now you may keep yours, but what a kind offer.

Just a Dash

Lynn Carroll offered us a seasonal specialty, discovered when she was in her garden. She explained, “This morning while working in my garden my wonderful neighbor Uma Potdar bought out Green Smoothies. Thinking they were a big deal, I asked, ‘What’s in it?’ ‘Cantaloupe, spinach and a small amount of water to smooth.’ So simple yet sweet and delicious, adding much-needed potassium and magnesium on these summer days.”

Simple and sweet and delicious: that’s the prescription for summer cooking. And oh yes, very good for you. In these columns we are always interested in food that is healthful, though a little excess doesn’t seem to be a dangerous thing.