Second Dinner

Making My Own Snow

2012-03-09T09:50:00.001-08:00

Not to mention it, but it's been warm around here. The daffodils are blooming, and New York was wandering around coatless yesterday. The wind was at proper strength, and the windows were open. It's Purim, the season of dressing as your opposite number, and getting so drunk that you can't tell the difference any which way between you and your worst enemy.

I know a little about topsy-turveydom at my house right now, as the wind sweeps through and blows the dust around. But the task at hand was anything but chaotic, in fact, these marshmallows were the simplest specimens of their kind that I've ever made. As I sifted the potato-starch-and-confectioners-sugar coating over them, I felt the quiet satisfaction of the snow globe, the mastering of my tiny universe.

Quirk Books sent me over a copy of Marshmallow Madness, by Shauna Sever, to review over a month ago (thanks). Last night, in a bit of a haze, I finally tried it out. The book is essentially a series of flavor variations on one or two basic recipes. Unlike some marshmallow recipes, there are no egg whites, and the base recipe relies almost entirely on sugar, corn syrup, and gelatin. For my 'mallows, I adapted Sever's maple-bacon recipe. Lacking bacon, I substituted cacao nibs for a more austere crunch.

The photo above is one of the first from my new iphone (yay), and while it obviously has room for improvement, I'm very excited to have my own photo apparatus again instead of relying on others for my documentation.

I love marshmallows, but even I found myself a little daunted by possession of a whole tin of home made (and thus more perishable) ones. I feel like, on the whole, this is less of a baking project for a casual Thursday night, and more one for when you have to impress someone or amuse a child (or impress an amused child). I will, however, be making cocoa tonight.

Maple Bacon Marshmallows

from Marshmallow Madness

makes about 2 dozen 1 1/2 inch marshmallows

4 1/2 teaspoons unflavored powdered gelatin

1/4 cup cold water

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup Grade A dark or Grade B maple syrup

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped candied bacon*

1/2 cup Classic Coating**

(Before anything, check all your equipment, especially your candy thermometer, and make the Candied Bacon and the Classic Coating. Then you can get started.)

Lightly coat an 8 x 8 inch baking pan with cooking spray.

Whisk together the gelatin and cold water in a bowl and let soften.

Stir together the sugar, ample syrup, corn syrup, water and salt in a medium saucepan. Bring it to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally, until it hits 240 degrees F. (Be prepared to lower the heat as need -- this syrup has a tendency to bubble up.) Microwave the gelatin on high until completely melted, about 30 seconds. Pour it into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Set the mixer to low and keep it running till you're ready to add the syrup.

When the syrup has reached 240 degrees F., slowly pour it into the mixer bowl. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 5 minutes. Increase to medium high and beat for 3 more minutes. Add the cinnamon, increase to the highest speed. and beat for 1 minute more. Quickly fold in the bacon bits. Pour into the prepared pan. Sift coating over top. Let it set in a cool dry place for 6 hours.

Use a knife to loosed the marshmallow from the edges of the pan. Invert the slab onto a work surface. Cut into piece and dust again with more coating. Eat 'em up!

*To make candied bacon, lay 6 or 7 slices on a wire rack set over a sheet pan lined with foil. Combine 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon. Rub over both sides of bacon. Bake at 350 degrees F until deeply caramelized, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool before chopping into bits.

**Classic Coating: Sift 1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar with 1 cup corn or potato starch. (Store extra tightly covered.)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Truffle Tart

2012-02-25T08:23:00.000-08:00

I resisted this tart from beginning to end. Brownies are good, tarts are great, brownies in a tart shell, eh. I love chocolate but desserts that just taste of chocolate and sweet are not my favorite. Too sweet, too one-note, just too...eh. The chocolate tart crust was great, and I'm thinking of filling a small tart with the remainder and some passion curd. The original recipe resembled a riff on Rocky Road, with white chocolate and cookies and chocolate scattered into the brownie mix. I threw in some white chocolate chunks, grape-nuts (why not, I'm from New England), and cacao nibs, which almost always get mistaken for nuts at my office.

Next up, rugelach, which I can pretty much guarantee that I'll prefer.

Tuesdays with Dorie: White Loaves

2012-02-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

Got no blogging in me today, but here's the photo. Baking with Julia begins.

Around and Around

2012-02-02T08:31:00.000-08:00

Photo by Christopher Silsby.

Groundhog Day. Hmph. The implications leave me uneasy at best, at worst distraught in a seriously dishevelled, crazy-eyed, whimpering spin. Groundhog Day actually makes me feel a little affronted, especially when it comes upon me unawares, as it does, because who remembers Groundhog Day is coming?

Vagaries of fate and fat little varmints aside (and it occurs to me that I'm definitely conflating the movie Groundhog Day, which I've never seen, with Scrooged, which I've seen in fragments), I had some people over for dumplings last week.

No more high-flown talk of fresh starts. Down here in the mud, it is what it is. I don't care what the groundhog thinks of his shadow (though if he wants to bite Bloomberg again, I'm down--UPDATE: Bloomberg's off the hook today for the Planned Parenthood thing. But the biting was still funny). Anyway, what winter? I caught my cousin and sister lounging outside the juice shop yesterday and I won't mention which one of them was rocking Birkenstocks. Welcome to the year of the Dragon.

But the dumplings. That was fun. My upstairs neighbors and I accidentally found ourselves hosting parallel dumpling parties, kept each other up the night before with rampant cabbage chopping, and got so busy that we never tasted each other's dumplings. His method was to prepare all fillings in advance and use his guests as a labor pool for assembly. Mine was a bit messier--I laid out bowls of filling components (including ground pork, shrimp, ginger, tofu, garlic, cabbage, carrot, daikon, mushrooms, scallions, garlic chives, tapioca starch) and bottles of condiments (amazingly, those bottles numbered well above 20, including sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, chili, ponzu, ume plum vinegar, pepper vinegar, etc...), and made it a free-for-all.

As guests arrived, they were encouraged to grab a bowl and concoct their personal blend of dumpling filling. After a slow start, the cabbage started spilling, there was black vinegar everywhere, and a potsticker pan and new 8" steamer were in full rotation. There were vegetable dumplings, there were pork and shrimp dumplings. There was shrimp and cilantro. There were a few little salads of straight filling ingredients (I provided no appetizers). Due to the time-consuming nature of handmade wrappers, I had provided a pile of store-bought ones as well, but my homemade ones were better in every way, easier to fill, tastier, and prettier. I wound up making another batch of dough halfway through because I wasn't enjoying filling and cooking the store-bought wrappers. I think they're better for ravioli, actually.

As I mentioned, there were no appetizers, but there was dessert. As guests drifted in and out, and the steamer sputtered, I did offer two varieties of ice cream, both made with recipes from my new toy, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. The lime frozen yogurt was good, but the Salty Caramel with Smoked Almonds (Jeni calls it Gravel Road), was the heart-stealer, converting even me, dubious about smoky flavors at the best of times. Since then, I've gone a bit nuts with that book, adding Passion Fruit Frozen Yogurt, Chamomile Champagne Ice Cream, and Hazelnut Ice cream to the repertoire.

Life is, as I mentioned above, seriously messy. But at least some of the mess is delicious. The rest...I'll tell you about it when that groundhog heads back under into his hole like the rest of us.

TWD Follow-Up: Classic Banana Bundt

2012-01-19T05:14:00.000-08:00

Tuesdays with Dorie is in valedictory mode, with Dorie on Talk of the Nation, and articles in major papers all over the country.

The Tuesdays with Dorie group is moving on to Baking with Julia, a twice-monthly affair.

But me. As I’ve pointed out, I’m not done. Not every goal gets finished. Not every cheesecake gets made. Still, I’m keeping my list, like I keep all the lists of my goals, and because this one can be done in small increments, I’m going to keep at it. For what reason? Not sure. But all the same, I do it.

This week, I did it in the form of a banana-pumpkin bundt cake. It was supposed to be a Classic Banana Bundt Cake, but I wanted to save one of my bananas for a smoothie, so the roasted leftovers of our squash chanukkiah were pressed into service.

The original host of this recipe was Mary of The Food Librarian, who later went on to develop quite the bundt cake obsession, making 30 in 30 days two years in a row.

Dorie recommends wrapping the cake and serving it the day after baking, also frosting it with a simple lemon-confectioners sugar glaze. The latter inadvertently helped us do the former, because Matt was put off by the word lemon, and it took him a while to warm to the idea of the cake, which we both loved.

So the project continues. Slowly. Everything happens slowly here lately, perhaps in reaction to the feeling that time is rushing by, out of control. So many big changes are upcoming, it’s good to still have a few bundts to bake.

The Last Tuesdays with Dorie: Kids Thumbprints

2012-01-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

Between Christmas and the beginning of the New Year, my baking machine slowed down somewhat. Those are dark days, and dangerous. There were some deaths, some fears, some time in the frozen northland. And, well, there were some cookies. We have souls that must be fed, after all.

I thought about opening up some more, about going in deep with all the stories of the last few weeks and months. And then I thought about a new year. A new time. A festival of cousins and lasagne and fireworks and trombones, a festival of flying sharks and ukuleles. One night hand in hand.

And that seemed like enough. Except the cookies. The last Tuesdays with Dorie recipe of them all, posted appropriately over a week late. There's nothing I could say that my mother hasn't said better.

Hi,

Here are some cookie pictures. I dedicate Wednesday to these cookies as that is pretty much all I ate that day.

-mom

Peanut butter thumbprints, rolled in egg white and chopped hazelnuts, filled with strawberry jam. She claimed she just kept eating them for the roasted hazelnuts.

Happy new year. 2012 is for opening the door.

Quick Roundup of the Unphotographed

2011-12-08T09:53:00.001-08:00

Both of my cookthroughs are winding down, and before I get too invested in any other cookbook projects, I am going to try to finish up all or most of what I've missed over the last few years of participating in Tuesdays with Dorie and the Heavenly Cake bake-through. To that end, I've been taking stock, and wanted to mention in passing a few recipes that were made but never photographed, and so never blogged. As I leaf through the books, I'll put up a brief note whenever I discover one of these omissions.

The first was recent--I made Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake the weekend before Thanksgiving, as kind of antidote to the pie frenzy. I left it crustless, with just a few graham cracker bits scattered throughout. With no crust to add salt and contrast, it was almost painfully rich, but well received at work. I've promised my sister a cheesecake for the successful completion of the GRE, so more to come shortly.

We Will March on a Road of Your (Turkey) Bones

2011-12-02T09:07:00.001-08:00

I'll start off by admitting that the reason this post is two weeks late has everything to do with a bit of sulking. There's no question that had I won even an honorable mention at the Brooklyn Kitchen's Daisy Flour Savory Pie Contest you would have heard about it before now. Still, the competition was worthwhile.

Pictured are only about two thirds of the gorgeous pies ultimately assembled. Because I know you're wondering, the one on the cake plate is a pork and cranberry pie, served with mustard and pickles, baked by a genuine Brit.

The competition was fierce, and the fiercest competitor of all was Stacey (look left), who was actually overheard telling a judge that it didn't matter if she won, as long as she beat me. She put up a pretty good fight, braising DiPaola turkey thighs in Six Point Righteous Rye for her hipsterish galette (look right).

Guidelines and restrictions were few--home made crust, containing at least 50% Daisy WW Pastry flour. Beyond that, it was a free-for-all. I toyed with tomato tart recipes for a while, but ultimately went with a version of these pasties. I hewed pretty closely to the filling design, but substituted walnuts for pine nuts, and threw in a bit of walnut oil.

Stacey and I colluded back and forth on our pie plans for the week or two before the contest. Tempers occasionally got heated, and an unnamed husband did suggest that perhaps my well-meaning suggestions were a vicious sabotage, but in the end I think we were both pleased with our entries. Stacey's sported whales, mine bears. No one else had cut-outs of any kind, so I'm not sure what's wrong with us.

The judges went at their judging, and pie flew everywhere.The grand prize went to a Deli Pie, with honorable mention for a truly astonishing Chicken and Waffle Pie. Matt, who went above and beyond in his quest for perfect pie photography, was so struck with the Chicken and Waffle, that he talked about it for days.

The maker of the Deli Pie, whose blog is named Ugly Food Tastes Better, was nice enough to mention that my pie looked very professional, but clearly the judges agreed with her basic philosophy (although her pie was far from ugly), and gave no points for presentation. Critiques included the over-crumbliness of my crust, the the spill factor of my unbound filling. A bit of cream or egg to bind the whole thing together, or a bit more mashing of the squash cubes, is in order for the next attempt, and a better crust seasoning also seems warranted.

But we fought the good fight, the pies went down kicking and spitting, as you see, and we will be back. We will win! We will march on a road of your bones. Just wait for sweet pie season....

"...we hope this doesn't ruin your life..."

2011-11-16T11:16:00.001-08:00

Last week, we caused our downstairs neighbors some inconvenience (I won't go into it, but let's just say there was some water coming through their ceiling), and I baked them a bundt cake to make amends. They weren't home when I went to drop it off, so I left the covered plate outside their door.

The next evening we went up to visit our upstairs neighbors. This makes our building sound absurdly cozy. The truth is, that while there are only five apartments, and we're friendly all around, we don't socialize all that much. Still, we have a lot in common with the folks upstairs, and when we do see them, even for a short stairway conversation, I always think that we should spend more time hanging out.

Back to the story at hand--we went up to see the upstairs neighbors. The conversation turned to the water incident, and Clarence, who also has a food blog and loves to cook, said, "Oh, is that why there was a cake in the hallway?" I admitted my complicity, and he mentioned that any cakes that came their way would also be welcomed.

Now, it doesn't take a special occasion to get a cake out of me, but I knew they'd be getting a cake immediately when he followed up his cake observations by saying they had something to tell us...

"Now," he said, "we hope this doesn't ruin your life...but we're going to have a baby."

We assured him that we couldn't imagine it ruining our lives (we like little people, and are already up at all hours). In fact, if they let me put a funny hat on their kid, it may well enhance my life immensely. They laughed, and said they had heard that it might ruin their lives, but they would take advantage of Matt's 3AM ukulele solos as lullaby fodder.

With all this good news and running up and down the stairs, it was clearly time to make them a cake. I chose one of the last contenders in the Rose's Heavenly Cake countdown, an Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake. It's a simple but appealing sweet, two layers of sour cream coffeecake, sandwiched around a thin apple cinnamon filling, and covered with buttery walnut streusel.

Two unrelated notes: my spellcheck doesn't recognise coffeecake or streusel. Or spellcheck. It has a lot to learn. Also, I am really over people using 'buttery' to describe rich tuna belly or other sashimi. Maybe I just don't like sashimi. At any rate, Clarence assures us that the cake was excellent.

Spice Smuggler Lentil Soup

2011-11-13T08:08:00.001-08:00

When my friends travel, they often bring me back gifts (nice people, my friends). Because they know that I love to cook, these gifts often take the form of chocolate, herbs, or spices. Recently, I came into possession of some curry powder from Singapore, and some unlabeled 'Ottoman pepper' from an Istanbul market. I used both of these in my version of Heidi Swanson's lentil soup from Super Natural Every Day. She uses green lentils or split peas, my version went with red lentils, but the finished version, augmented with coconut milk, and curry-infused butter, was rich and creamy, and still oddly green.

The soup recipe can be found here, and it's only one of many excellent recipes and ideas in the book. I think of this as the soup smuggled from afar. Not that my other spices came from any place any nearer, but it's the principle of the thing.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Far Breton and Honey Nut Scones

2011-11-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

Rustic pastry bathed in golden light? Oh yes.

As I may have mentioned, Tuesdays with Dorie is finishing up and doubling up recipes to make it to the end by year's end. This week, both recipes were so appealing that I made them in one night.

Above, we have the Far Breton, a high-level example of what the British call nursery food--custardy batter pocked with sweet dried raisins, craisins, and cherries. The Far was a close cousin of some other good friends of mine, the clafoutis, the popover, and the cup custard, and so completely compelling in its eggy-ness that I ate it all in about 24 hours.

With most of my attention focused on the Far Breton, I didn't have a lot of time for the eating of scones, but these honey-walnut ones won my approval by being very plain and simple. Whole-wheat pastry flour was allowed to shine, and they were a perfect jam vehicle.

Speaking of jam vehicles, nursery custard, and the end of the year, I wanted to take a second to float an idea I've been hatching. (Mixed metaphor alert--unless the idea is perhaps a duck.) Having built a pretty decent reputation in the neighborhood as a provider of delicious things, I'd like to launch a little ~~consignment~~ business for the holiday season, providing pies, cookie plates, and other good things upon request. Perfect for your dinner party or host gift dilemma. More on this shortly, and all suggestions welcome.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Rose Red Velvet

2011-10-29T00:30:00.000-07:00

Just a little red velvet cake, chilling out at work.

Most people who know me know that my personal dessert pantheon looks something like PIE! CUSTARD! FRUIT! COOKIES! ... cake. Every now and again, though, I get a strong urge to bake and frost something tall, fluffy, and all-American. Red Velvet cake, while not my favorite, fits the bill perfectly, with the additional perk of being covered in cream cheese frosting, which I prefer over buttercream. I have made Rose's white chocolate cream cheese frosting before, and found it a little grainy and thin. For this batch, I used a recipe from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, a shelf staple at my house.

I made this little fella and took it to work last week, where messy as it was (I undershot the confectioner's sugar quotient needed for the frosting), it was appreciated.

Where in the World is Tuesdays with Dorie?

2011-10-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

Tuesdays with Dorie, a fixture of my life for over two years, is fast winding down. Although I’ve nearly stopped blogging TWD recipes, and clearly don’t adhere to a Tuesday baking schedule, I still feel a certain regular resonance from that big dirty cookbook with the melted cover. This resonance takes the form of a kind of proprietary fondness, a connection to the tome that goes beyond following printed instructions toward a goal of dessert.

As the good bloggers hurtle their way to the finish line, I remind myself that it’s the journey that makes things interesting. In the interest of making up somewhat for the last few months, a brief overview of the unphotographed portions of the journey. Many were missed, but along the way…

Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet: Very soft, and popular. I found it overly sweet but a good companion to other ice creams of the moment, especially passion fruit and black pepper.

Salt and Pepper Shortbread: I make these all the time, they’re a popular Valentines Day cookie in my house, as well as being the go-to choice when out of eggs. It may say something about me that even when out of eggs I’m well stocked with cocoa.

Flip-Over Plum Cake: Buttery crisp-edged, very sweet. Lives somewhere between crisp and clafoutis. Ate it at all hours with a spoon.

Basic Biscuits: Basic. Excellent. Any excuse to make biscuits is warmly welcomed.

Bittersweet Brownies: Whipped up this November recipe quickly the other night. The only alteration I made was to sub in about ¼ cup of Bustelo grounds for the instant espresso powder. This made a big difference in the taste and seemed to leave the texture unaffected. Matt, who should be pretty jaded on the subject of late night desserts by this time, got misty-eyed on being told that hot brownies were available at 11pm, a condition that he described as ‘one of the best things that could happen.’ The morning-afters went to Jill, who had them for breakfast.

The TWD group is continuing the fight in the coming year with an earlier Dorie Greenspan collaboration--Baking With Julia. A companion volume to the PBS show of same name, this book contains contributions from a variety of American cooks and pastry chefs. While the writing will remain Dorie's, I'm looking forward to changing it up with this eclectic collection.

I've been very remiss, obviously, on the photo-taking front, but while you imagine all the the desserts mentioned above, you can admire this shot that my sister dug out of the archives from our 2008 trip to Uganda.

Grave-Robbing and Baked Goods, in Park Slope

2011-10-11T17:00:00.000-07:00


Photos by Avi Glickstein.

Winds of change, visions of apples. And Polybe + Seats is at it again. There's a play coming up, and that usually means a bake sale. This year it was whoopie pies, and buckwheat cookies, and most of all, tomato tart, adapted from this tart, with oven-dried CSA tomatoes, CSA rosemary, eggs from Tello's Green Farm. Park Slope never had it so good. And they bought it right up.

We also sold things for non-humans, of which there are many, many of whom are surprisingly well-off.

Only humans, however, and those in the spirit world, are invited to see Alice, or the Scottish Gravediggers, at the Old Stone House in Park Slope this Halloween season. Grave-robbing, medical minutiae, melodrama...who can resist?

Cakes and Cakes and Cakes

2011-09-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

On looking back, that last post seems very ambitious. Did I do all of those fun sounding things? Well, not yet. The bike is still blocking the side door, the African dance remains a myth. I did go to yoga, though, once, and I made three cakes. Although the photo above was the only survivor of the process (Matt deemed the others 'unacceptable,' and I have to trust his word), there were in fact three cakes, and all three were Heavenly cakes, it seems only right to have a little discussion of them, photo or no.

Two weeks ago, I made the Apple Upside Down Cake, one of the first recipes in the book but one that I hadn't gotten around to yet. Caramelized apples under a yolky, buttery cake layer, sprinkled with nuts...that one was good. I tried to give it away as a housewarming present for my cousin, who just moved back to town, but only half of it made it over (next time, Sophie). Luckily, my Aunt Nicki was down the following weekend, and as a fellow devotee of Dorie Greenspan, she instigated the making of a Swedish Visiting Cake, so all was well.

Last week, I made the much-awaited Ginger Cheesecake, a fairly classic cheesecake made with a ginger crust (in my case, crushed oatmeal cookies), and juice squeezed from grated ginger. I didn't have quite enough ginger to get the amount of juice recommended, but it was still clearly present in the final product. My crust was oily, probably because my cookies were less austere than your average gingersnap, but the cake itself was excellent, and was devoured whole by hungry librarians at a training I helped conduct on Saturday.

This week's cake, pictured above, was a riff on the Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cake, which I last made for Liana's birthday the year before last. I didn't have white chocolate, which is called for in the cake, so I made Rose's White Velvet cake layers instead, and filled it with a pear buttercream and pear butter, then covered it with the Sticky Chocolate Frosting. The result, although it looked like Boston Cream Pie, tasted more like sheet cake. The pear frosting didn't really make itself heard, and without it the cake was, as Liana and Matt both admitted, somewhat boring. My co-workers disagreed, and finished it happily, proclaiming Liana and Matt spoiled, to which they both readily and happily admitted. I thought it might improve with chocolate ice cream, but then just went for the ice cream and ignored the cake.

It's been a chaotic few weeks, at least under the surface of placid librarianship.There's a new year coming, and I'm not ready, but maybe I'll get there. Right now, I'm trying to remember what's best in life, and to hold on to it with a fierce grip.

Somewhat on that last note, I've had one more Rose Levy Beranbaum-related milestone. I finally got too annoyed at the broken binding and sticky pages of Rose's Heavenly Cakes, and bought myself a brand new copy. Time to make that one sticky too.

Backward

2011-08-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

I need to get out more. To remember that I live in a giant city with hundreds of parks, bike paths, and beautiful places. I need to be like that guy who walked every street in Manhattan. I need to find more adventure. I need to go hear more music. I need to re-acquaint myself with a lot of things.

In the meantime, while I'm strapping on bike helmet and going to yoga and starting African dance and re-learning to drive, I need to post a link back to the Heavenly Cake of the week, Coffee Chiffonlets, made back in May of 2010.

Buttercream Recovery

2011-08-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Eggplant caviar on SCRATCHbread MuTTT loaf.

All the leftover buttercream is discarded or frozen. A few pints of passion fruit curd still linger in the refrigerator, but this week our kitchen's main focus has been grilled meats and fishes, and vegetables. August is high CSA season, and I am trying to keep up. While some kale and lettuce has gone to a smelly, wilted grave, we've been doing our best to make sure that Windflower Farm's hard work doesn't go to waste.

Last year, two of my big pitfalls were beets and eggplant. I let more than a few eggplants wither away in the crisper, and I dealt with the beets by giving them away or by juicing them. This year, I'm back to the juicing for the little red roots, and I'm still trying to develop a taste for eggplant before little back dots of mold appear. It's not that I hate it, I just can't seem to cook it in any way that makes me want to really eat it.

This year's first attempt at eggplant reclaimation was Dorie Greenspan's eggplant 'caviar,' incidentally last week's French Fridays with Dorie pick. It's essentially a spread, made from roasted eggplant mushed up with garlic, oil, lemon, salt, pepper, chile, paprika, herbs, onion, and tomatoes. In that it doesn't taste like eggplant at all, it's pretty much a win. All I tasted was garlic, and Matt, who tried it later, was concerned that he had tried the wrong dish, as it tasted like 'salsa' and appeared to contain peppers. The more I cook from Around My French Table, the happier I am with it. All of the things I initially disliked--cutesy dishes, very personal tweaks--don't seem to detract from the general solidity and usefulness of the recipes, and sometimes add a little extra that I wouldn't have anticipated. I'm still a little irritated that the book doesn't include weight as well as volume measurements, but maybe in the next edition...

Mazel Tov

2011-08-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here somewhere between having no idea who I am any more, and being more sure than I've ever been. Between the pouring rain and the raging swampy heat, the cold ocean and the primordially un-air-conditioned baking gig, I lost everything, and somewhere in the midst of all that water, I found it again. Along the way, I started two new jobs, gave notice at another, and asked the man I love to marry me.

Three tiers and an extra 9" cake waiting in the refrigerator under their first coat of buttercream.

He said 'of course.' Which is more or less what I assumed everyone would say after all these years. But being engaged turned out to be somewhat of a bigger deal than I had anticipated. I don't mean that it became a burden, or that anyone hired a skywriter. I mean what happened to me, and to Matt; the subtle shifts of responsibility and of commitment, the pleasure of our families, and the making of plans. Wedding plans may be a long way off, but in some new way, even more than before, we're planning the way we'll live our lives together. Some of it has been beautiful. Some of it has been very hard, I won't lie. But in a deep, deep way, I feel like my life is beginning to move forward again, to break up the logjam, to grow.

Bowl, sieve, and spatula after straining roughly two quarts of lacquer glaze.

After the first glow of that 'of course,' Matt revealed the same exact question had been on his mind. In fact, he'd even started the process of ring shopping before he left for Avignon. Instead of being upset that I'd stolen his thunder, he was delighted that we had found ourselves in almost exactly the same place. If it weren't more than a little ass-backward, it just wouldn't be us.

The pristine perfection of the top layer, pre-transport.

And there there was wedding cake. Right in the middle of everything, in times so intense I feared things would go all Like Water for Chocolate on me, I made a three-tiered chocolate wedding cake for Jessica and Christopher and took it for the ride of its life (in crates, in the back seat, precariously balanced on bottles and old clothes) . Based on Rose Levy Beranbaum's Deep Chocolate Passion Wedding Cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, the cake was, as I've already described, Rose's German Chocolate Cake base, filled with passion fruit curd and passion fruit mousseline buttercream (light, spongy, marshmallowy, and tangy), and covered in a shiny lacquer glaze. The glaze is poured on warm, which allows it to form such a smooth, shiny layer.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to re-warm my extra glaze when assembling the cake at the wedding venue, so I accepted a few wrinkles and drips in the finished product. Any fears I may have had about the tower's look vanished as another friend of the bride arrived with boxes upon boxes of home-made sugar flowers, the loving work of several months. Together, we made one another look so good, and made the cake an impressive spectacle. I was so grateful to have the flower-maker on my team, and hope very soon to pester her into teaching me how she did it all.

The finished monster, covered in flowers.

While I was tiering and touching up the cake, the catering staff kept scaring me by asking me if that was all I had brought (it was), and if anything else would be served (not that I knew of, it turned out there were some truffles). I should have trusted Rose, though. Using her measurements, there was plenty of cake for all, in comparatively generous 'wedding-size' portions. In fact, the top tier managed to escape wholly unharmed, but only lived until the following day, when the newlyweds ate it for breakfast.

I have compared this cake to an upscale packaged snack cake on several occasions, but in practice it became something a little more--still light and fluffy, but served on fancy plates and placed on marble mantelpieces, it became elegant. I couldn't have done it alone though--without Matt to drive, position, photograph, and support me, without the faithful tasting crew and the online advice, without the friends who exempted me from all other wedding duties, and without the flower-maker who made it look so good, I would be nothing. Luckily, I have them all, and so I'm quite, quite, pleased with myself. Mazel tov, Jessica and Christopher, and thank you for your complete and unwavering trust in me.

Beautiful, no?

In these turbulent times, I want to wish joy and congratulations not just to the bride and groom, but to all of us figuring out our lives--to the friends finishing and starting dissertations, the friends moving from city to city, the friends walking across the UK, the friends starting new jobs, beginning new careers and new families, and becoming distinguished, the family old and new who loves me more than I can believe. To all those I treasure who struggle for and with love, who fight and sweat and treat each other right, and hold each other tightly. With Saturn returning for most of us soon, I couldn't be in better company, or more proud, happy, and grateful to know you all.

I'm gushing. But it's a good gush. As my mother says, it's always good to take advantage of any opportunity to celebrate a simcha. And this is certainly a simcha, which some would say is a mitzvah. Or a kosher beer. Or a pimp.


All photos in this post by Matthew Korahais.

L'chaim.

News from the Swamp

2011-07-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

Don't you just want to slurp that?

We're melting here. The words melt out of my brain before I have a chance to type them onto my melting keyboard. There's only one defense, one last bulwark before insanity sets in. Ice cream sandwiches. On Monday, when I was feeling a bit more mobile, I bought some tiny sugar plums from the Union Square Greenmarket. A few days later, having made short work of my caramel ice cream welcome home present for Matt, I adapted another David Lebovitz recipe to suit my sweet sweet plums. The recipe was for plum ice cream, but since I used whole milk instead of cream, I think it teeters on the edge of being plum sherbet. Either way, it is sharp and fantastically pink, with the help of a little splash of ginjinja. Because the plums were so sweet, I reduced the sugar called for by about one third.

The oatmeal cookies are also a David Lebovitz recipe, made without the raisins he recommends to better showcase the plums. I had qualms about turning on the oven but the recipe was so quick and the pairing so perfect that I didn't regret it. So pink!

Next up, vanilla/mixed pepper ice cream, with my brand new huge squashy Ugandan vanilla beans. Now, diving back into the cool lake bottom.

Getting Underway

2011-07-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

The wedding cake planning begins in earnest. A few weeks ago, I met with the bride and groom, and with the bride's parents. We had ourselves a minor cake orgy. In the end, I made them three cakes to taste: a pretty straight version of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache (and candied cherries), from Rose's Heavenly Cakes; a seven layer cake modeled on this one, and frosted on the outside with the same caramel ganache, and a version of Rose's Chocolate Passion wedding cake, which uses a German Chocolate cake base, a milk chocolate soaking syrup, and was filled with passionfruit mousseline buttercream and passionfruit curd, then glazed with Rose's Dark Chocolate Laquer Glaze. This last, which is light and spongy and resembles an extremely upscale ho-ho or ding-dong, was the winner.

Now I find myself deep in calculations, mathing it all out on a monster excel sheet, bustling away. Wish me luck as the temperature climbs toward 99 farenheit.

Doughnuts! On a Stick!

2011-07-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

Some of my readers may have deduced that I have a small cookbook problem (one that leads to a large cookbook collection). I never say no to a new cookbook, and while I don't cook from all of them, I get endless pleasure from reading and consulting them. Fads come and go in my house, but there are some stalwarts, many of which can be found on my little Amazon guide to the right of these sage words. Being on a somewhat limited budget, I try to limit cookbook spending. However, despite the library and self-imposed waiting periods, I do purchase a good many. And sometimes, someone sends me one for free!

That is exactly what Matt Armendariz and the good people at Quirk Books did. They let me have my very own review copy of On A Stick: 80 Party-Perfect Recipes. That was very very nice of them, and it's perfectly shameful how long it has taken me to actually review the book. But here, at long last, it is, with a bonus section by guest blogger Miriam.

Armendariz's doughnut holes.

Armendariz's book is built around a simple concept, that (yes, good guess) everything tastes better skewered. While he pushes the point to or over the edge of absurdity (there's really no need to impale fish and chips), his overall enthusiasm and expert photography make it possible to withhold snark and just take the book on its own terms, as a kind of entertaining thought experiment. On or off the proverbial prong, Armendariz's recipes are solid, and his expertise really comes out in the dipping sauces and marinated meat section. My expertise, however, is in desserts, so the recipes that I wound up trying came from that chapter.

Our doughnut holes--via Matthew Korahais.

I made the doughnut holes (p. 145) and the fudge pops (p. 154). Both were good, the recipes simple and clear. Perhaps in reaction to the pristine book photography, my efforts were large, unwieldy, and messy. I eschewed sprinkles and glazes and the stick in my fudge pops was a spoon. I'm sure I'll be back for more, especially as the book kind of screams 'group project' or 'baby-sitting activity.' In the meantime, thanks to Matt and to Eric at Quirk for making this review possible. All photos except the (upcoming) one of my monster doughnut holes, are from the book, and copyright as such. Please contact Quirk for permission to republish.

Wonderful dessert composite. The composite shot of different skewers is also excellent.

A few unconnected other thoughts about On A Stick:

Serving sizes--unusually small. Each recipe is intended to serve a few bites to roughly four people. I got only two large popsicles out of my efforts, though the doughnut yield was much larger.
Best photos are the composite photos. I love seeing all the sauces/skewers/dishes lined up in rows.

Below is another version of the story, from Miriam, who's coming back to New York after all these years. My comments are in brackets.

"Saturday was really great. After five years of living in New Haven, and one week of stressing out over the Brooklyn rental scene, I found an apartment I wanted to live in! Then I celebrated at Chavella’s with Katya and Catherine, where Catherine mused on the merits of gazpacho while Katya and I discussed when sweet things are “dessert.” Later, sitting on Katya’s roof, we tried to figure out which recipe from “On A Stick” was most important to make right away. We almost went with cake pops, because Katya had some leftover buttercream and ganache, but a dark horse candidate--doughnut holes on a stick--won the day.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I dumped ingredients into a bowl while Catherine stirred and Katya exuded calm and expertise. Then Katya took over and stirred some more. Then we let the dough rise. (While we made butterscotch pudding. And also ate rhubarb custard pie. And were apparently too elderly to hear “The Office” on netflix from two feet away.) The dough practically doubled! After rolling it out in a generally flattish but not too flat way, we cut circles out of it and arranged them on a baking sheet with some dish towels to rise the second time. (Katya called this “proofing.” I think.) We also made a video of Katya and me, fully clothed in the bathtub, thanking Polybe’s donors and getting wrong the name of the play we’re working on. Sometime around this time was the moment when I did not notice it was the rising doughnut holes that I was plopping a stray tote bag on top of, and I fully squished the little babies. [she did, but they were overproofed anyway, and failed to hold their shape at all as they were scooped off of the tray--so they were shaped any which way]

That did not seem to matter once we had them in a wok of hot oil, with Katya frying, Catherine sugaring, and me skewering them two to a stick, even though they were significantly larger than the tasteful popem-size doughnut holes in the book. They were delicious, so delicious, that we had to set an upper limit of three as a reasonable eating amount. And as Katya remarked, they actually did taste better on a stick. Later that night, Catherine texted me to ask whether Katya knew how to make sopaipillas." [I don't, but perhaps I will soon. Catherine is persuasive.]

This and That

2011-06-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

First, the Heavenly Cake Bakers (Cont.) are making Mud Turtle Cupcakes. Here's the link to mine. Incidentally, I realize I never posted the Lisbon updates to which the post refers. Been a busy spring.

Secondly, a query--I just made some carnitas and allowed the (very charming) butcher to sell me a piece of pork butt with several inches of thick fat on it, which then had to be trimmed off. I now have several pieces of thick, expensive (raw) pork fat in my freezer...any ideas? Render for lard?

Heavenly Cake Bakers: White Gold Passion Genoise

2011-06-16T05:18:00.000-07:00

Strangely, not my favorite of the Heavenly Cakes. For some reason, Rose and I seem to part ways when the frosting involves cream cheese, which doesn't even make sense, as all cream cheese frosting should be delicious. The cake was a bit dense, which was my fault, as I got the mixing instructions backward and mixed all the egg whites into the butter, deflating them quite a bit.

The frosting was ok, and the passion curd, as always, was amazing. I had it all over my breakfast muffins for days, and am definitely trying to worm it into the wedding cake. The flecks in the passion fruit curd are because I made it with the leftover brown butter. The leftover syrup was spectacular in selzer. I think next time I'll skip the whole cake and just make stuff with passion fruit.

Tuesdays with Dorie: On the Run

2011-06-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

In the midst of all the cake, I do keep making all sorts of things from Baking: From My Home to Yours, and they often turn out to be the most popular. I've made nearly all of the recent TWD recipes, but haven't had time to blog them, and sometimes failed to get the picture. But here they are, all in a row.

Maple Cornmeal Biscuits--crunchy drops, not a lot of staying power, but no problems here.

Oatmeal Nutmeg Scones--ahead of the pack. These are more than they seem, nubbly, and nutty, and really, really, good.

Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake -- like muffins in a pyrex dish. Lovely. With rhubarb. Something about the words 'plain cake' just screams the best part of L.M. Montgomery's Avonlea. So wholesome yet kind of not.

Caramel Pots de Creme--wonderful on the bottom, grainy on the top where the bain marie didn't quite reach. Breakfast. Seriously, why do people eat muffins for breakfast. It's all about custard.

I might skip today's chocolate biscotti, but we'll see. On we barrel, on the way to looking just like a couple of barrels. Custard ho.

Making Things Up

2011-06-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

I've been making a lot of cake. There is buttercream in my dreams. After three little chocolate cakes in a row, it all started to tasted like Ho-Hos to me. I started to yearn for something white and fluffy, something with jam and creaminess. In a fit of perversity, I thought up the cake below--honey buttercream, rhubarb curd, crabapple jam, and buttery cake.

All the recipes are based on Rose Levy Beranbaum's, though many are a bit adapted. The honey buttercream, from The Cake Bible, was good but I found it overwhelmingly buttery, and not strong enough on the honey, even after I beat in about a quarter of a cup of extra honey.

I decided that as long as I had all this soft buttercream and not enough sleep, the time was ripe to learn some flower piping techniques. I tried for sweet peas and roses, and...well, got some fluffy piles. Maybe next time I'll go with some stiffer frosting.

Pretty in pink.

Oh, by the way, this week's heavenly cake was the Swedish Pear and Almond Cream bundt, which I made a while ago.