NY CHEESECAKE a la JUNIOR'S...made GF

 The World-Famous Junior's at Dusk

The traditional Juniors recipe calls for a sponge cake base. For this gluten-free version, I do a cookie and nut crust, which is my preference. The recommended products are wheat-and-gluten free at the time of this writing. However, if you have celiac disease, you should always double-check when making a purchase. Product formulations change frequently and without warning. No assumptions please.

The recipe

Serves 12

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

Prepare the cookie crust:

• 1 1/4 c gluten-free pecan shorties, or other gluten-free packaged or homemade cookie of your choice, made into crumbs
• 1/4 c granulated sugar
• ½ c finely chopped pecans
• 4 T unsalted butter, melted

Mix all four ingredients well and pour into the bottom of a nine-inch, non-stick spring-form pan.  Using the back of a tablespoon, pat the crust down firmly.  Bake for ten minutes. Remove the pan.  Wrap the bottom with foil. Place the pan on a cookie tray.  Leave the oven on.

The filling:

• Four 8 oz. pkgs. Organic Valley cream cheese, room temperature
• 2/3 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill corn starch
• 1 tablespoon Singing Dog Organic Vanilla Extract (gluten-free)
• 2 extra-large Omega-3 eggs, beaten
• 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Mix, assemble, bake, and chill:

Put one 8-ounce package of the cream cheese, half of the sugar and the starch in a large mixing bowl. Beat at the lowest speed on your mixing, scraping the bowl from time to time to make sure that the ingredients mix well.  Beat in the remaining three package of cheese and the remaining sugar in increments.  Blend in the vanilla. Add the eggs in two increments.  Beat at high-speed for 2 minutes. Add the heavy cream, beating at low until just blended, taking care not to over mix the filling. 


Spoon the filling into the pan, gently. Place the spring-form pan in a bain Marie, a large shallow pan with enough hot water to come up one-inch on the spring-form pan.

Bake the cheesecake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Cool the cake on a wire rack for 1 hour/10 minutes. Do not open the oven when the cake is baking.  At the end of the baking time, the cheesecake should be firm around the edges and have a slight jiggle in the middle.  Remove it from the oven. Cool on a wire rack. Then cover the cake with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Once chilled, remove the sides of the spring-form pan. You can leave the cake on the spring-form bottom and just place it on an attractive serving dish. Refrigerate left-overs . . . if there are any!

STRAWBERRY SUMMER

Anna Cerova, Public Domain Pictures.net.

I am fortunate in the location I've picked to live now that I've downsized to one person (me) and small place. I've chosen a very Brooklyn-spot here in Northern California. By that I mean, everything I need is in walking distance: groceries, pharmacies, restaurants (several Zagat rated), theatre, library, town square, Saturday Farmers' Market, a museum (tiny - not like New York), and a public transportation hub were bus lines and train lines intersect. I love it. This is very un-California like where you have to get into a car to run the slightest errand. Right now we are having unaccustomed heat. Yesterday it was up to 110. Today 107 is predicted. No air conditioning. Usually the weather here is temperate and we all make do with fans.

I walked into Whole Foods yesterday and there was a wealth of organic strawberries, bright red, plump, and cheerful. What is a summer without strawberries? I rarely have them with cream as in Simic's poem above, but I do love them on top of cottage cheese with a sprinkle of slivered almonds. Unadultured strawberries are fine too ... Mother Nature's fast food. Mom would do with Jell-O, so here's another retro recipe for a too-hot-to-cook day, though I see it 66° now with a high of 75° predicted along with some rain in Brooklyn. It must be humid though.

MOM'S RETRO STRAWBERRY SUMMER JELLO DESSERT

The recipe

Serves six

• 1 1/4 cups boiling water
• 1 3-oz. package of strawberry flavored gelatin
• 10-oz. of fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
• 1 8 3/4-oz. can of pineapple
• 1 fresh banana, sliced
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Empty the package of gelatin into a bowl. Pour the boiling water over the gelatin and stir until it has desolved. Add the juice from the pineapple. Partially chill until the mixture is cook and starting to thicken but is not set. When the gelatin is cook, add the fruits and nuts. Pour into a one-quart mold. If you spray it with a cooking spray, it will be easier to unmold. When it is firm, unmold the gelatin dessert onto a pretty plate. Serve with fresh, unsweetened whipped cream.

THE BROOKLYN COOKBOOK

"Brooklynites are fiercely loyal to neighborhood, family, and the food that nourishes them, body and soul." From the Introduction to The Brooklyn Cookbook by Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy. It's not a gluten-free cookbook, but it's great nostalgia and some recipes are easily adapted.

No doubt you can find many books on Brooklyn cooking with healthier and more up-to-date recipes than those inThe Brooklyn Cookbook. However, I don't think you will find another book that offers such canticle to life in Brooklyn as it lives in the memory of the boomers. It's our story and what a story it is.


The real values and pleasures of this book are in the old pictures, the stories of famous and not so famous Brooklynites, and the restaurants, not all of which have come and gone. It's not elegant, but it dazzles. It offers a celebration of history, custom, roots, neighborhoods within neighborhoods, icons and landmarks. It explores the seventy-three mile center of the universe, the world's melting pot, which at that time had ninety-three ethnic groups. With such a rich and stimulating diversity, it's no wonder that Brooklyn has given the world so many poets, playwrights, authors, musicians, actors, and Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners.


If you remember fondly the Spumoni Gardens, Nathan's Famous, Lundy's, and buying fish at Sheepshead Bay, you'll love finding them all here again.  The book starts with the Canarsie Indians and Dutch arrival in the new world, The Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House and baked indian pudding.  It ends with the hospitality management program atErasmus Hall and cranberry-orange relish cups.


In between you have such delights as Cammareri Bakery, enshrined forever in the movie, Moonstruck. It includes one of my great loves, Danny Kaye with his recipe for Szechwan beef or pork in bau bien. The Dodger's are gone forever from Brooklyn, but they live on in The Brooklyn Cookbook and food to take to the ball game. Dem bums. Oh, dem bums. I wasn't even a baseball fan in those days, but they were on my radar.  In this cookbook, you can once again visit The Subway Riviera, Little Odessa by the Sea, and the Seaside Suburb.


Do you remember having pizza gran for dessert on Easter Sunday?  You'll find it here. Is kibbe bissaneeyah your thing?  It's here.  How about kasha varnishkas? Want Henny Youngman's recipe for cheese blintzes? You got it. That's here too. The old ethnic groups and the newer ones enrich the book as they enriched our lives.  The Brooklyn Cookbook is about more than food. It's about the people who make Brooklyn so loveable and memorable.

LOVE AND CARDAMOM

But Mrs Caldera is baking cookies,
she is humming a song from childhood,
her arms are heavy and strong,
they have held babies, a husband ...
Mrs. Caldera's House of Things, Gregory Djanikian, in About Distance

Copyright: All rights reserved.

It's almost upon us, rusty autumn with its promise
of feast days, holidays, and crispy winter
And I stand caught between blue oceans and bluer sky
Singing songs of purple harvest, golden grains
Prepping the kitchen for fall and winter, these are days
stuffed like date-filled cookies with
mellow thoughts of homemade goodies
·
Maybe this year Lebanese shortbread and
An apple-plus pie stained with the last of
the bramble berries and cinnamon scented
A pumpkin cheesecake with streusel topping
Perhaps a struffoli for Christmas, nut colored
honey soaked and cheerily doted with sprinkles
·
After suffocating summer, autumn comes
crashing and banging with cooling breezes
school supplies, renewed energy, and sweet

oven-baked dreams

smelling of love and cardamom

Public domain photograph of the traditional Neopolitan Christmas sweet and Brooklyn delight, struffoli, courtesy ofSteve-081 via Wikipedia. (This is a repost from my poetry site, Musing by Moonlight.)