Superabundant dispatch: Cardamom grapefruit cake and this week’s news nibbles

OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for a double-duty sunny grapefruit cake with amaro-pink peppercorn icing.

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If you think heart-shaped boxes, red roses and candle-lit dinners are played out (or like me, you’re really just waiting for the chocolate bonbons to go on clearance in a couple of days), you can never go wrong with a blushing bake for celebrating winter citrus on Valentine’s Day (and/or wishing Oregon a romantic 166th Statehood Day, depending on how you swing). Grapefruit has a sweet and sour, brightly acidic citrus flavor and a musky, grassy, metallic fragrance. Besides grapefruit mercaptan, the aromatic compounds that give grapefruit its signature scent are the same as found in hops, blackcurrant, Alaska yellow cedar, mango and green tea. A century ago, grapefruit became so popular that store shelves were swept clean of the fruits — do you know why? Read on to find out!

ALSO! ATTENTION READERS! If you haven’t yet subscribed to this weekly missive, you should — starting next week, the “Superabundant” newsletter will evolve to help make our recipes more accessible. The seasonal recipes will still appear on the OPB website every week, but all the food news, gardening tips, and Northwest-focused kitchen hacks you crave will be strictly for the Friday emails. We hope this makes it easier to quickly find the recipes you need! It only takes a few seconds to subscribe.

Warm and fuzzies are on the menu

This year on Feb. 14, Portland’s Ikoi no Kai celebrates a birthday, too — the Japanese Ancestral Society of Portland‘s program to feed elder Japanese Portlanders was started in 1979 as a way to prevent loneliness and ensure affordable, nutritious hot meals would be available to the older community members. OPB’s Winston Szeto shares a story about the program.

Science defines ‘like grandma used to make’ 🍲

Speaking of sweet lil grannies, a new study published by Washington State University’s Department of Food Science suggests that the dietary preferences of older adults may be closely tied to nostalgia — the more foods elicited feelings of comfort or memories of a loved one, the more they liked them, and nostalgia was strongly tied to flavor intensity, especially in foods like barbecue and cheesy dishes. Prepared meals that tap into that need for familiarity and comfort could be a ticket to improving the diets of an aging population.

Science also building a better pancake 🥞

Washington State University’s Department of Food Science also published findings on how to increase the fiber and protein content of basic breakfast pancakes through the addition of alternative flours — any recipe that upped the nutritional content while being undetectable to tasters was deemed a success. Published in “Cereal Chemistry,” the study found that buckwheat, quinoa and whole wheat flours can be added to pancakes to improve nutritional value without appreciably altering flavor or texture. (While scientists are out here testing the tricks that every parent of a picky eater keeps up their sleeve, next they should try adding chocolate whey protein powder and flax meal to banana bread or sneaking shredded zucchini into a lasagna.)

Recalls and other unpleasantries

In this week’s food safety news (it’s becoming a regular segment in this newsletter! *sigh*), Dunkin’ Donuts has joined the pastry companies affected by a Listeria risk announced this week, resulting in the recall of millions of cases of food. Canned tuna and oysters also made the “could kill you” list this week, but so far seems to be avoiding states west of the Rockies. Luckily for Oregonians, we have perfectly impeccable local tuna and fresh oysters, and many, many better doughnut options to choose from. (Unfortunately, one of my favorite old-school/friendly neighborhood hummus companies King Harvest joined the recalls list this week, but hey! At least theirs was just for plastic.)

Closures announced

Nearly a year to the day after the death of its founder Bob Moore, Bob’s Red Mill has announced it will be closing its Milwaukie store on Monday. And following a catastrophic fire last August, Northwest Portland landmark Caffe Mingo announced it will be closing permanently.

Humblebrag: I think I accidentally made fig hoshigaki. (Faux-shigaki?) If my macro lens is correct, these are sugar crystals growing on the seedy interior surface, like a sucrose geode (a thunderfig?) I didn’t massage them or anything, I just dried them in my countertop dehydrator and stashed them in ½ gallon glass jars for long-term storage, and there they’ve sat since late summer 2023.

Ah, 2023 was a remarkably good year for figs. By comparison, I turned most of this year’s crop to chile jam and sweet and sour sauce for a reason. I have just one tree, planted in my driveway where I dug some of the bricks out, growing so lushly in urban soil and unmortared brick sand that I have to cut back by a full third every year. I get so much fruit from that single tree — it seems like the most productive trees I see are always growing on someone’s sidewalk.

Once I’d confirmed that it was sugar, and not mold, growing on these figs, I tried a few. The flavor is all warm dried fruit with a soft sweetness. Rather than scrape the sugar off and do something tiny with it, as my friend Peter suggested, I’ll just marvel at how things can just quietly go about their business, improving and blossoming on their own without any good intentioned interference.

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ I don’t know who needs to hear this, but once in a while what you really need is to mindlessly graze through an entire platter of various raw vegetable sticks with chunky blue cheese dip, or a very large bowl of somewhat-good-for-you cold cereal.

✨ I’ve been really leaning on my little jars of premade seasoning blends for getting quick flavor into basic weeknight meals. A mala blend of chiles, Sichuan peppercorns and cumin is handy for turning a pound of ground into dan dan noodles (or sub the Sichuan peppercorns for onions and garlic powder and use the blend for tacos instead). Berbere spice is great for making a pot of lentils into a delicious Ethiopian stew and homemade Cajun blends can transform a plain block of tofu. If you hit the bulk section for your spices, it’s much cheaper, but if you can, buy the spices whole and grind them yourself for the best flavor. If you’re feeling a bit adrift in a spicy sea, you’re in luck: Local libraries around the state have begun introducing ‘spice clubs,’ offering samples and recipes to help you expand your flavor horizons while learning about other cultures’ food.

✨ I admit that while I don’t really keep up with sports, I do very much enjoy eating chicken wings throughout the year and thank goodness, the prices on those seem pretty stable since chickens are raised for meat on totally different farms than those raised for eggs. (Raised for meat, broilers are typically killed as pullets, before they’re old enough to lay eggs; layers, on the other hand, are older, making them more susceptible to H5N1.) Anyway, I found a good deal on chicken wings over the weekend so I pan-fried them, tossed them in homemade turmeric chutney and then sprinkled them with chopped peanuts and scallions.

Recipe: Cardamom-grapefruit cake with amaro-pink peppercorn icing

It’s kind of funny how we think of one food as a panacea while considering another ingredient dangerously toxic. And then learn that we were wrong about both.

Take grapefruit, for example — a great source of dietary fiber and vitamin C. Starting with the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919, faddish grapefruit diets were advertised as a cure-all and within 10 days, reported one publishers’ journal, “markets were swept bare” of the citrus. The grapefruit diet variously resurfaced over the following decades with new names like the “Hollywood diet” in the 1930s, the “Mayo Clinic diet” in the 1940s and 50s and the “10 day, 10 pounds off” diet in the 1980s. Of course, now we not only know that grapefruit-only diets are considered an unhealthy approach to weight loss, but grapefruit can dangerously interact with medications prescribed for depression, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Then there’s the pink peppercorn, popular during the nouvelle cuisine movement of the 1960s and 70s, and then banned in the U.S. after organic chemists found the potential to cause an allergic reaction similar to poison ivy in the 1980s. Both pink peppercorns and poison ivy are in the Anacardiaceae family, which includes cashews and mangoes. After the Food and Drug Administration raised the alarm against pink peppercorns imported from France in 1982 (when the spice was mainly grown in a French territory near Madagascar), the French government responded by submitting research affirming the ingredient’s safety. The ban was lifted within a couple of years, but by then, it didn’t really matter; pink peppercorns had already become passé.

Unlike true pepper (Piper spp., which, confusingly, does turn red when ripe and is often included in peppercorn blends), pink peppercorns are usually from the Brazilian peppertree (Schinus terebinthifolia).

Here, the grapefruit and the peppercorns are both pink, and the piney terpenes in both ingredients complement the sourness of citrus beautifully. The icing gets its blush plus a punch of botanical bitterness from the amaro, but if you don’t want to use a liqueur, use unsweetened grapefruit juice instead; you can add a drop of red food coloring to make the icing pink. Don’t have any pink peppercorns? Try fresh rosemary instead, or even tender cedar sprigs. Either way, you’ll end up with a pretty cake suitable for a romantic Valentine’s Day dessert (it pairs beautifully with sparkling wine!) or an ordinary afternoon tea break.

Makes 1 loaf cake

Ingredients

Cake:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 cup buttermilk (or ½ cup milk mixed with ½ cup plain yogurt)

½ cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

Zest from 1 grapefruit

Icing:

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons amaro (such as Campari or Aperol) or grapefruit juice

Pinch of citric acid (optional)

1 teaspoon crushed pink peppercorns

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350o. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan and line it with a strip of parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and cardamom. In another bowl (or in a large measuring cup), whisk together the buttermilk (or milk + yogurt), the oil, eggs and grapefruit zest. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet mixture, then stir together until just combined.
3. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake until golden brown on top and a toothpick comes out slightly sticky, with just a little bit of moist crumbs sticking to it, about 50-60 minutes.
4. Remove the cake to a cooling rack, and while it’s cooling, whisk the icing ingredients together, adding a little more or less liquid as needed to make a thick but spoonable mixture. If you’d like the icing a little more sour than bitter, add a pinch of citric acid to it, and once the cake is lukewarm, drizzle it on. If you’d like, sprinkle a little more crushed pink peppercorns on top.

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