FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

COLD OPEN/TEASER

The San Francisco kitchen is surprisingly large and tidy for the amount of equipment stuffed into it. The large windows fill the room with warm gray light, typical of San Francisco. The oven is turned to 350˚F and the smells of wintery spices like ginger, cloves and allspice waft pleasantly through the one bedroom apartment. Irvin is busy at the counter, rolling dark brown dough on his new silicon pastry mat. His previous plastic one had accidentally melted when it somehow came to rest on the toaster oven when he had used it to make some frozen French fries. You can see the half melted pastry mat in the recycle bin behind him.

The timer goes off, and Irvin goes to the oven, opens it up and pulls out the first tray of the Gingerbread Toaster Oven Pastries with Bourbon Pear Filling. He looks down and frowns. Then Irvin looks over to the cookbook propped open on his table next to the stovetop. The fresh baked pastries look nothing like the picture in the cookbook.

FADE OUT

ONE YEAR AGO. INSIDE A TASTING PAVILION TENT AT THE PEBBLE BEACH FOOD & WINE EVENT. THERE ARE LOTS OF PEOPLE MILLING AROUND.

A wide-eyed Irvin (played by John Cho) is standing around with Sabrina (played by Zooey Deschanel) and as his head turns to looks around, he spots someone. In HAZY slow motion, you see Irvin whip his heard around and grab Sabrina by the arm.

IRVIN
Oh my God! You won’t believe who’s here!

SABRINA
Who?

Irvin freezes, like a deer caught in the spotlight.

SABRINA
Irvin? Hello. Irvin. Who?

Sabrina waves her hand in front of Irvin’s face.

IRVIN
What? Oh Sorry. A totally hot guy just walked by. No, Sherry Yard! I LOVE her!

Sabrina gives Irvin a blank stare.

IRVIN
You know, Sherry Yard? Only my pastry idol? The one who wrote the book Secrets of Baking that basically changed the way I bake and think about baking? The one who I would totally stalk, except I’m way too lazy to stalk someone because that’s too much work. She’s the Executive Pastry Chef of the Wolfgang Puck restaurant group. She’s responsible for the Grammy’s and Emmy’s and Academy Awards dessert courses. And clearly I know way too much about her because I’m rambling.

Sabrina continues to give Irvin a blank stare and pauses for Irvin to catch his breath.

SABRINA
Ok. Wanna go up and talk to her?

IRVIN
What? And have me go all fan boy on her? Gush and scare her off?

Irvin freezes. Just stares. A beat of silence.

IRVIN
Ok.

IRVIN hustles and quickly works his way through the crowd, knocking over a few slightly drunken people of indeterminable age (the plastic surgery they’ve had makes it hard to tell if they are in their 30s or 50s). Sabrina has a hard time keeping up. Irvin approaches Pastry Chef Sherry Yard (played by Melissa McCarthy) quickly while she has her back turned at her booth. She turns and is startled when she sees Irvin standing dangerously close to her and her cookies.

SHERRY
Oh. Hello.

Irvin pauses for a beat. He looks almost calm and reserve. Then…

IRVIN
Oh. Um. Hi. I’m Irvin. I just wanted to say that you are totally my pastry idol and I absolutely love you and your book Secrets of Baking changed my life and the way that I bake and I now have a food blog and you are fantastic and I’m sorry I’m going into fanboy mode, but I just love you.

Sherry looks taken aback. She physically steps back from Irvin, with a look of indeterminate emotion on her face. Is it fear? Is it confusion? A slow pause then…

SHERRY
Thank you!

There’s a huge grin on Sherry’s face.

SHERRY
I’m so glad you loved my book! Come here. Let’s take a picture together.

Irvin hands the camera to Sabrina and poses with Sherry.

FADE TO BLACK

NINE MONTHS AGO. INSIDE A DIFFERENT TENT FOR A FOOD EVENT, THE MEALS ON WHEELS STAR CHEFS & VINTNERS GALA. IRVIN IS WITH AJ (PLAYED BY JAKE GYLLENHAAL WITH A BEARD AND GLASSES) THIS TIME IN TUXEDOS.

IRVIN
Oh crap.

Close up of Irvin. You can see a slight bead of sweat forming on his brow. He has a look of panic in his eyes and all of sudden the camera switches to Irvin POV for a moment and everything looks hyper saturated, slightly blurry around the edges and shaky. It’s as if he’s having a minor panic attack.

AJ
What?

A pause.

IRVIN
Um. Pastry Chef Sherry Yard is here. There’s a slight chance that I might have frightened her last time I saw her. I kind of went into fanboy mode and gushed that she changed my life.

AJ
Sherry who? And Really? You never go into fanboy mode. Even when you met Jane Lynch you were super cool.

Quick cut flashback to Irvin paying papparazi of Jane Lynch (played by herself) with his camera and trying to play it cool, all the while taking photos of her in a overly deliberate nonchalant manner. He is definitely not playing it super cool, despite what he thinks.

IRVIN
Oh yeah. I WAS super cool when I met Jane Lynch. I dunno. I just kind of snapped when I saw Sherry Yard. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I was dazzled by the fact that she does the Grammy’s and Oscar party desserts or something. Well hopefully she won’t remember me.

AJ
I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.

IRVIN
It was bad.

Blurry fast forward through the night. Irvin and AJ eating a lot of fantastic food and drinking way too many glasses of wine from the different stations. The scene slows down for a moment when Irvin and AJ sit down to their three-course meal, zooming into close ups of the rare tuna, rabbit and hanger steak that is slowly going into their mouths. Then it speeds up again through the brightly colored desserts and live DJ set. It finally settles down to normal speed as we see that Irvin and AJ are one of the last people to leave.

IRVIN
Look. There’s Sherry Yard! I’m going to play it cool and go talk to her. Stop me if I gush.

AJ
Ha!

IRVIN
Shut up.

Irvin approaches Sherry and she turns around and is startled again.

IRVIN
Hi! I don’t know if you remember me, but we chatted at the Food & Wine Festival down at Pebble Beach. I promise I’m not stalking you.

Sherry looks at Irvin and initially is puzzled. Then a dawning look of recognition shows on her face.

SHERRY
Yes! Hi! I totally remember you. How are you?

IRVIN
I’m doing well. This is my partner AJ.

SHERRY
Hi! Nice to meet you. I’m glad Irvin has a partner, I was a little scared that he was stalking me.

IRVIN pauses dead in his tracks.

SHERRY
Kidding! Totally kidding. It’s so nice to meet you. Did you enjoy yourself?

AJ
Of course, it’s been a great evening!

SHERRY
Now, have you guys been to the restaurant?

AJ looks at Irvin. There’s an exchange of looks, as AJ hasn’t a clue what restaurant Sherry Yard works at. With a split second pause, Irvin slides in…

IRVIN
No. No, we actually haven’t been yet!

SHERRY
Oh well you MUST! Let me know when you come down to LA and we’ll totally treat you like kings there!

Irvin is starry eyed.

IRVIN
Of course! We’d love to! Actually we will be heading down there in a month because AJ does the AIDS Lifecycle from San Francisco to LA…

Sherry gets all excited and turns to AJ.

SHERRY
You do? That is so amazing! My friend Tom does that ride! Oh do you know him? I totally have a picture of him. Hold on. Let me find it on my phone.

Sherry whips out here iPhone and starts scrolling around, all the while mumbling under her breathe…

SHERRY
I know it’s on here somewhere. I just got a text from him. Where is it?

After a few minutes, Sherry gives up and turns to us.

SHERRY
Hmmm… I can’t find it, but you can’t miss him. White guy, tall, brown hair, fit, super attractive. Gay….

Sherry’s voice trails off, as she realizes that she is probably describing 70% of the riders on the AIDS lifecycle. She then starts to giggle.

AJ
Well, I’m not sure, but it’s possible I have met him.

Sherry waves her arms completely dismissing the thought.

SHERRY
You two have to come to the restaurant when you’re in LA. Here, I’ll give you my cell phone, just text me when you are coming down and I’ll set you up. I’ll totally treat you guys like kings! The AIDS lifecycle. So cool!

Irvin is a shell shocked when Sherry starts to spout out digits and quickly whips out his phone and punched in her phone number. He looks at disbelief at his phone that he has his pastry idol’s phone number in his cell.

SHERRY
Well, it was so great to meet you both!

AJ AND IRVIN IN UNISON
You too!

Sherry walks off, and as she does, AJ and Irvin bump into Yigit Pura (played by Alexander Skarsgård), winner of the first season of Top Chef Just Desserts holding flower arrangements as the event breaks down around him. He recognizes Irvin from meeting him and AJ earlier at the event.

YIGIT
Oh hey guys! You guys want some flowers?

IRVIN
Oh um. Thanks. No, we’re ok.

YIGIT
Really? You guys are rejecting flowers from me?

IRVIN
Um… Sorry?

Yigit turns around hurt and immediately finds two other attractive gay men to give flowers to. They graciously accept them.

AJ and IRVIN exit the tent

FADE TO BLACK

PRESENT DAY. IRVIN IS IN HIS KITCHEN, STUDYING HIS VERSION OF THE GINGERBREAD TOASTER PASTRIES WITH BOURBON PEAR FILLING THAT WE SAW IN THE COLD OPEN. HE LOOKS DISMAYED. AJ WANDERS IN.

AJ
Whatcha doin’?

IRVIN
Well, the Oscars are this weekend and because Sherry Yard does the desserts for the award ceremony dinner and I was browsing her cookbook today I got inspired by one of her recipes for a post-Oscar blog post on Eat the Love. But sadly, it went sideways when I did my gingerbread dough. I think I got the wrong ratios when I rejiggered Sherry’s recipe. I need more flour, less baking soda and should bake it on parchment paper for longer, instead of the silpat. Also totally different sugar on top.

Irvin frowns.

AJ
I’m sorry. Were you still talking? I started to zone out after “the Oscars”…

IRVIN
Whatever.

AJ
Well you know I have absolutely no interest in popular culture.

AJ keeps on eyeing the sad looking pastries

AJ
Can I have one? They smell really good even if you aren’t happy with them.

IRVIN
Sure. They probably taste ok, they just don’t look that great is all.

AJ is too busy taking a bite to reply, and then when he does, he talks with his mouth full.

AJ
Rurmhph rumphhhfur swrooryr.

IRVIN
Huh? I’m sorry I don’t speak crazy talk.

AJ swallows with a big gulp. Close up of AJ’s throat as his does a big gulp swallow. Then…

AJ
Whatever. They taste great.

IRVIN
Back to drawing board though. I gotta make them Oscar award worth. Sherry Yard worthy.

Quick cut to Irvin writing on his yellow pad of paper, reworking the formula for the recipe. In fast-forward you see Irvin dumping flours into a mixing bowl on a kitchen scale and mixing them in hyperfast speed with a balloon whisk, then creaming the butter and makes the dough, then refrigerates it, makes the filling, pulls out the dough, preheats the oven, rolls it and makes the pastries. He sticks the first round into the oven and then slumps into his kitchen chair.

AJ
How goes it?

IRVIN
Not bad. Pretty decent actually. I think I nailed it this time. We’ll see.

AJ
It really smells gingerbread fantastic in here right now. Totally gingerbreadtastic.

IRVIN
Thanks.

Close up of the timer, as the dial clicks to ZERO and a piercingly loud sounds emits from it. AJ jumps up startled.

IRVIN
That’s it. Moment of truth. Opening of the envelope. Let’s see if these pastries wins the gold statue. I wanna make Sherry Yard proud. Even if she never did get back to me when I texted her while we were in LA last year to see if we could go to her restaurant and get treated like kings.

AJ
Honey, you have to let that go.

IRVIN
Whatever.

Close up of the oven door being pulled open. The pastries look beautiful. They are sugar coated to perfection. Irvin beams.

IRVIN
Now those. Those are Sherry Yard worthy.

Camera focuses on the pastries sitting on the wire cooling rack. Camera pulls back and you see AJ going in for a pastry, while Irvin slaps his hand and tells him to let them cool a bit longer. AJ ignores him and grabs one and takes a bit bite. Then he starts waving into his mouth that it was hot and starts speaking in mouth full talk.

AJ
Orrgumm Shhuuuu Horrrttt.

IRVIN
Remember? Don’t speak crazy…

FADE TO BLACK
END OF SHOW
CREDITS ROLL

The 2012 Pebble Beach Food and Wine will be happening on April 12th to 15th at Pebble Beach, California. You can visit their website for more information.

The 2012 Meals on Wheel’s Annual Star Chef & Vintners Gala is on April 22 in San Francisco. You can visit their website for more information.

Last year I had a wonderful opportunity to travel to Columbus, Ohio to experience the best culinary delights that the city had to offer. Though I was dubious about the trip (which I talked about in an earlier post) I found myself consistently surprised at all the city to have to offer. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one to overlook the Midwest, as I grew up in St. Louis, a city that actually has a lot to offer itself in terms of food. But having living in the food mecca of San Francisco, I find that my jaded palate sometimes gets in the way of my open mind. I shake my fist at you jaded palate because Columbus had some inspiring food, enough to inspire me to make these white chocolate pistachio dark chocolate chunk cookies.

White Chocolate Pistachio Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Of course I had already written about the first day I had in Columbus, where I met up with awesome bloggers, ate fantastic Italian food and licked my weight in ice cream. However, day two had me waking up bright and heading over to Skillet, where my pal Brian of A Thought for Food and I decided we needed to sit at the window table. You know photographer types, always chasing the light. Of course, as photographers we needed a good subject matter, and Skillet provided with abundance. Farm fresh eggs are freely available all over the Midwest, but Skillet went beyond that with omelettes, biscuits and gravy, griddle cakes and sausages that made my stomach bulge. Brian looked at me in amazement as the food came out and later confided in me that the meal there changed his outlook on how good breakfast could be. True story.

Skillet "Rustic Urban Food" rocked the breakfast hardcore.

Brian and I couldn't decide what to order, so we told them to bring us a sampling...

Behind the scenes at Skillet, making the hungry bloggers breakfast.

Skillet's Ohio Corn "Hoecake" with Berkshire pulled pork. Yeah, it's as good as it sounds.

So when we ordered a sampling, we thought they would bring sample sized plates. We were wrong...

Completely stuffed, we jumped on the bus to the Franklin Park Conservatory where they were having an exhibition called Hungry Planet: Local Food, Global View. Large scale photographs showed local food trends around the world, from Asia to Africa to our own backyard here in America. As enlightening as the exhibit was, the rest of the Franklin Park Conservatory was even more eye opening, with Dale Chihuly glasswork permanently installed all over the park, as well as their community garden called Growing to Green which has memorial gardens, community gardens and school gardens all growing produce and other vegetation. Apparently it’s become so nationally acclaimed that Franklin Park Conservatory has become the national headquarters for the American Community Gardening Assocation. So cool!

Dale Chihuly glass sculptures on the wall at the Franklin Park Conservatory

Hungry Planet exhibit, with large scale photographs showing how cultures eat across the world.

A site specific Dale Chihuly artwork in it's environment.

An example of the community gardens, growing vegetables.

From the Conservatory, we went to Thurn’s Specialty Meat, where they make smoked and cured meat of all sorts. A family business for over 120 years, we poked around in the back, looked at the smoker, and the refrigerated room. I felt slightly creeped out by the dark smoky room after room of hanging meat, but I can’t deny that the smell was amazing and the sausage and cured meat we sampled were top notch. Walking into Thurn’s reminded me of walking into the past, where family craft was passed down from generation to generation and if you didn’t have enough cash on you, you could put it “on your bill” to pay the next time you visit.

Behind the counter at Thurn Specialty Meats

Some of the specialty meats they make in-house at Thurn.

The meats hanging and curing in the back at Thurn.

Showing off Thurn's meat (that sounded way dirtier than it was).

Thurn also takes custom orders, curing or smoking whatever the customer wants.

The smoker in back.

Lunch had us feasting at Katzinger Delicatessen, where I gorged myself on old school deli sandwiches and dill pickles. This is one thing that San Francisco sadly lacks, a decent deli, and Katzinger is the sort of place that I sore miss from my Midwest days. Stacks of meat, fresh baked bread, big barrels of pickles and a menu that is nearly overwhelming, I couldn’t but help sigh with defeat as I barely finished half my exceedingly large sandwich. Thankfully some of my fellow food bloggers were there to help me finish it off.

The menu at Katzinger's was overwhelming, as a good deli should be.

I refrained from getting anything from the cold case.

Local Columbus blogger Rachel from Hounds in the Kitchen reaching in for a dill pickle.

The BBQ brisket sandwich smothered in slaw.

Of course, the fact that I was full obviously wasn’t part of the schedule, as we immediately walked down the street to Pistacia Vera, one of the highlights of my trip. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of desserts (hello, just browse this blog) and this classical dessert boutique bakery had the goods. Shiny cases of French macarons, croissants, cookies, cakes and tarts all tempted a sweet tooth like myself. I watched as the lovely bakers in back rolled out beautiful sheets of laminated dough to make croissants (oh how silky smooth the dough looked). I watched as they handed out macarons to us all. Then I gorged myself on the sampling of desserts, as they fed us items that seemed tailored to make us swoon.

Pain au Raisins at Pistacia Vera.

Chambord Passion Fruit Truffle Torte

Making shortbread cookies in back.

Making croissants with laminated dough.

Cutting the laminated dough for the croissants.

Croissants ready to be baked.

Croissants so flaky they shatter as you touch them.

The dessert case at Pistacia Vera. I'll take one of everything please.

No, wait, I wasn't serious about one of everything...oh well. I guess I'll have to suffer and try it all.

Thankfully there was a little bit of a bus ride over to the next stop, which meant a break from eating (and I could slip into my food coma nap). Arriving at Rockmill Brewery, I secretly thanked the itinerary gods that we were drinking and not eating more. Located on a pastoral horse farm, the Belgian ale that they brewed there benefits from the fact that the water they use at Rockmill comes from an exclusive well that has the same mineral content as Walonia Belgium. As we got a tour of the brewery and saw how they made their beer, we sampled their beer, along with bread, cheese and chocolate which magically changed the way the beer tastes. I’m not a huge beer drinker but I came away with a new appreciation of beer all the same.

The owner of Rockmill Brewery showing us how to drink beer.

Dubbel is a fairly strong brown ale while Saison is a lower alcohol brew with lots of hop.

The bloggers sampled chocolate, bread and cheese along with the excellent beer.

Brian celebrated his birthday that day...

By popping his cork!

Jane from The Heritage Cook enjoying herself as we get a tour of the brewing facilities.

We headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up/pass out before dinner time. I was originally slated to go to another restaurant, but was able to weasel my way into Kihachi, which I had been wanting to go to, ever since I heard Michael Ruhlman and Anthony Bourdain rave about it how this Japanese strip mall restaurant blew them away. We put ourselves in the hands of the chef and the hosts who ordered for us and we weren’t disappointed. From the hard-to-find Japanese Matustake mushrooms to deep fried shrimp that pop in my mouth, I found myself drooling not only over the food but all the dishes that they were coming on. Once a food blogger, always a food blogger I guess.

An unassuming strip mall hosted this Japanese restaurant.

The expensive Matustake Japanese mushrooms found at the bottom of red pine trees.

Deep fried fresh water shrimp that popped in my mouth.

Sea bream compressed sushi with shiso leaf and yuzu shoyu.

Braised sweet potato, pumpkin, eggplant, snow peas, shrimp & baby octopus.

The cabinet of dishes that had my food blogger heart go pitterpatter.

Despite my jaded viewpoint, pretty much everything I saw and ate in Columbus surprised and excited me. Not only were the bloggers I was traveling with wonderful, but the food and sights we saw were utterly memorable. One of the treats at Pistacia Vera that I saw, but didn’t taste was a pistachio and chocolate chip cookie. Though I never had a chance to sample it, I thought it was only fitting that I did my own spin on what I’m sure was a fantastic cookie. I didn’t want to replicate it exactly, as I’ve had a couple of chocolate chip cookie recipes on this blog already, so I ground the pistachio into a paste with some sweet white chocolate, and made a white chocolate pistachio flavored cookie studded with dark chocolate chunks. Just try not to gorge yourself on them like my partner AJ did when I made them. You’ll stomach (and waistline) will appreciate it.

AJ couldn't stop eating these. Just one more, he said, as he reached for another...

Special thanks go to Experience Columbus for hosting me on this trip to Columbus, Ohio. All travel, accommodations, meals and tours were provided by Experience Columbus. That said I was not compensated otherwise for what I wrote above and everything I have written is my own opinion.

A couple of weeks ago I had one of those random dreams where everything seemed to make sense in dreamworld logic, only upon awakening, to discover that it was complete nonsense. I’m not sure if it was the NyQuil I had taken to get myself to sleep (just as I was finally getting better from my cough, AJ came down with a cold and passed it on to me) or my crazy brain trying to crack through the stuffy headedness of my clogged sinuses but my unconsciousness seemed in overdrive. Why was there a penguin in my dream? Did that penguin really requesting that I make him cherry muffins or the little corn husk doll that he was holding would die an ugly death? And didn’t the penguin know that cherries aren’t in season right now? Of course, in his defense, it’s quite possible that the penguin is from Chile, where cherries actually are in season. Nevertheless, I woke up with an overwhelming urge to bake cherry muffins. So I whipped up these Cherry Pistachio Meyer Lemon Cornmeal Muffins with Streusel Topping.

Cherry Pistachio Meyer Lemon Cornmeal Streusel Topped Muffins

I’m not one to think too much of my dreams. I often times don’t remember them, though when I do, they are usually entertaining. I used to keep a dream diary next to my side of the bed, in it’s own special place on top my faux antique dark stained vaguely Asian inspired wooden bedside stand. I would immediately grab the book whenever I woke up and could remember the dream, scrawling in barely legible handwriting the elusive dream, thinking that it would somehow to give me some sort of insight into my subconscious. But I think I ended up abandoning the habit out of sheer laziness. That or I had one too many dreams about a mysterious sister to Kylie Minogue (no, not her younger lesser known sister Danni, but yet another third sister) that was a disco diva singing hit star by day and a clandestine secret agent by night. Yes, the third Minogue sister was a spy. Not much interpretation needed in that particular dream. It was obvious that I was a screaming homosexual that watched too much spy television like Alias and Burn Notice.

I love these muffins nearly as much as I love Kylie.

But I digress, as I oft do. I’m not sure what exactly the penguin in my dreams represented, though I think I can place the corn husk doll in the dream from a creepy corn husk doll that used to live in my partner AJ’s parent’s attic. Thankfully it’s not there anymore, but AJ and I would visit his family for the holidays, staying in the spare bedroom up in the attic, and just hope that the corn husk doll wouldn’t come alive as they often do in ersatz Stephen King stories, strangling us in our sleep. Why the penguin in my dreams would think that I cared if the doll lived or died is beyond me.

The penguin made me make these muffins. I'm not complaining.

That said, these dream-inspired muffins pretty much hit the spot for me. It’s been awhile since I’ve baked muffins and I have to admit the combination of cherry, pistachio and cornmeal really was pretty inspired, whether they came from a threatening penguin or not. The cornmeal came from the corn husk doll, the cherries from the penguin, and the pistachios, well I don’t know where they came from. One of those mysteries of my subconscious I guess. Much like the mystery of how in the heck did that penguin hold up the corn husk doll? It’s not like penguins have opposable thumbs or anything.

Special thanks to Oregon Fruit Product Co. for sending me some of their canned fruit as samples to play with.

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Download a PDF of Eat the Love’s Wordless Recipe #3 Valentine’s Day Edition
Molten Chocolate Lava Cake (2.4 MB file)

Previous Eat the Love’s Wordless Recipes:#1 – How to Make Your Own Ice Cream “Magic” Chocolate Hard Shell
#2 – Halloween Edition – Haunted Honey Caramel Popcorn

 Recipe adapted from Savory Sweet Life who in turn, adapted it from Paula Deen’s Home Cooking.

Special thanks to Scharffen Berger, LorAnn Oils Inc, and Three Twins Ice Cream for providing samples free of charge for me to use. I was not reimbursed or compensated in anyway for this post, nor do I individually endorse any of the products used. Feel free to use whatever products you are comfortable with.

It was the sort of invite that I couldn’t ignore. “Come over for dinner and we’ll dine on treats inspired by St. Louis and the Midwest!” AJ and I discussed the invitation for a brief three milliseconds before we texted back to our friend Peter and Grant in the affirmative. Peter and I had met in St. Louis at college, and the idea of revisiting our college days via food sounded awesome. The only thing was, I had volunteered to make a dessert for the evening and I wasn’t sure what to make. My initial thought was a gooey butter cake, but it’s more of a lunch coffee cake thing than an after dinner treat. Then I thought of frozen custard, but my friend Hadley was going to be there, and he happens to be terribly lactose intolerant. In the end, I went with a classic Midwest treat, reworked to make it a touch bit fancier. Fast and simple was the key because the original dessert that I had promised to bring didn’t happen. Instead I went with a Rocky Road Rice Krispie Treat.

Rocky Road Rice Krispie Treats

Now I’ve made Rice Krispie Treats before for this blog, about this time last year in fact for Valentine’s Day. That one was definitely a little bit fancier. But this time I didn’t have time to make the marshmallows from scratch. In fact, I had about an hour before the party started to make my dessert treat. This was because the original dessert I wanted to make, a Tunnel of Fudge bundt cake, just didn’t happen. In the immortal words of Katy Perry, it was an epic fail. The first time I unmolded the cake, the cake center oozed out, having not baked long enough. I quickly scooped it up and put it back in the bundt pan and baked it longer. It overbaked, without any tunnel or fudge at all. I was screwed with no time to make another one.

Friends Ben, Tina and Hadley all chatting away and exchanging stories as we munched away.

So I took a hard look at my pantry to see if anything jumped out and screamed Midwest to me. Then I spied the bags of marshmallows and the box of Rice Krispies and a classic Midwest treat was reborn. Of course, being the typical food blogger, I had to fancify it a bit – throwing in some chocolate chips and some chopped California walnuts as well as prebake the Rice Krispies cereal with some butter, sugar and milk powder to give them a salty caramelized flavor. They weren’t the prettiest looking Rice Krispie Treats, but they definitely were one of the tastiest according my friends.

Of course, my gracious hosts had a fancy glass pedestal plate to put them on.

The dinner party was fantastic, as expected. Appetizers included tortilla chips with vegetarian Sloppy Joe dip (I believe it might have been Manwich seasoning), Crab Ragoons (which were a definite step up from any crab ragoon I had in St. Louis – as it was made with minimal cream cheese and real crab meat) served without the scary neon pink sweet and sour sauce, and the St. Louis specialty, Toasted Ravioli. If you have never had Toasted Ravioli, it’s breaded, deep fried ravioli with marina dipping sauce and is a St. Louis tradition. I personally love it, but Peter’s version was baked instead of fried and was coated with an ingenious blend of panko crumbs, fried onions and ritz crackers. Ritz crackers! It was a midwest themed party…he was keeping it real.

Manwich dip. 'Nuff said.

Crab Ragoon made with actual crab meat. Whoduthunkit?

Classic St. Louis style toasted Ravioli, how I missed thee.

Grant made both St. Louis style pizza (the crust is cracker thin – Cook’s Country had recently done an episode about St. Louis food) as well as Chicago style deep dish pizza. They even went beyond the call of duty and made Pasta House salad. Pasta House is an ersatz Olive Garden chain in St. Louis, that offered an unlimited salad and breadstick option, which (being poor college students at the time) we almost always got. Of course, Peter and Grant’s Pasta House version is way better than I remembered in St. Louis. I think it’s because the salad wasn’t sitting around in the dressing for hours beforehand.

Grant rolling out the thin St. Louis style pizza crust

Peter topping the pizza.

The pizza options of Chicago style deep dish and St. Louis style thin crust.

Don't forget the Pasta House style salad.

Of course the evening was filled with stories about how I was fired from my first temp job in San Francisco (remind me to tell you that sometime), motorcycle accidents, taking PE classes in walking, and trying to find a good dry cleaner in St. Louis (hint, don’t go to Tip Top Cleaners there). That said, it was nice to kick back, enjoy an evening with friends, and eat the food from where I grew up. Well, except it was a little better than the memory of what I used to eat. Which is just as it should be, as the present should always trump the past. Thanks Peter and Grant for a walk down memory lane.

Rocky Road Rice Krispie Treats for a midwest themed dinner.

I was taken aback, while mingling at my annual holiday party in December, when my friend Matthew accosted me and pointed out a cookie that I had made for the festivities. It wasn’t the fact that a friend of mine liked my baked goods (this happens on occasion). Nor was it the fact that he was so vehemently excited about the cookie (I’ve experienced superlatives often, after all, a great number of my friends are food bloggers nowadays). It was the WAY he said it to me. “What are those cookies?!?” he exclaimed, pointing to a small round cookie encrusted with snow white powdered sugar and cracked all over exposing rivers of deep dark-as-midnight chocolate dough underneath. I looked at him, charmed by his enthusiam and told him they were my Black Forest Chocolate Crinkle Cookies and that they happen to be gluten free. His reply, eyes wider than I have ever seen them before, was the simple sentence “They are SEX. IN. MY. MOUTH.”

Black Forest Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Now things got a little awkward after that declaration. After all, his boyfriend was standing next to him, and I really didn’t want to go down that road mentally, so I just smiled, said thank you and tried to excuse myself, but Matthew would have none of it. He repeated to me the statement “SEX. IN. MY. MOUTH.” at least twice more before I was able to escape the conversation, whimsically amused and slightly horrified at the description of my cookie. I certainly didn’t mean to create a cookie that could possible reproduce any carnal relations he might have with his significant other. Though, I have to admit, I thought the cookies I had baked were not bad.

Our party was insanely crowded. I haven't a clue how we squeezed that many people into our tiny place.

Matthew is not a food blogger – despite his disposition to talk in superlatives. “It is the BEST. EVER.” “No, you don’t understand. It’s PERFECT.” “It’s AMAZING. SO. AMAZING.” All of those phrases have come out of his mouth, and I love him all the more for being willing to commit to the absolute 100% positive praise of something. Me, I can rarely, if ever talk about something as being perfect, amazing or the best. I’ve been asked to judge a few contests here and there, and I almost never give the top score to any of the entries. When I fill out those surveys that ask me to rate my experience I never say I am completely satisfied or dissatisfied, after all, things could be worse, or they could be better. Nothing is PERFECT in my eyes, nearly everything is always room for a little more improvement. Perhaps it’s the way I was raised, the ideal always slightly out of reach. This allows me to constantly be striving for something more, a smidgeon better, a touch higher. Praise, coming from me, is often in the form of “Huh. It’s not bad.” not “It’s the best ever.” which I find all too frequently in the food blogosphere.

A small selection of some of the treats I made for the party.

But I won’t quibble with those food bloggers who want to talk about how their fresh mint lemonade is the perfect summertime drink or how their chocolate chip cookie is the best ever. I know that, on occasion, I probably have done the same thing in posts. It’s an easy crutch to fall back on. But I rarely cross certain lines and there I was, talking to a non-food blogger, a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a few years, and he had crossed that line. I doubled back and decided to grab one of my Black Forest Chocolate Crinkle Cookie and see if what he said was true. One bite, and I knew it. Matthew…had it wrong.

The obscenely good cookies.

The cookie is nothing like sex in my mouth. True, a single bite of the cookie and I was suddenly reminded of the first time I took a bite of black forest cake. The whoosh of memories, like in Ratatouille, hazy in it’s history, me as a child, sitting down and being served a slice of sexy soft dark chocolate cake, covered in light-as-air slightly sweetened whipped cream, crumbly bittersweet chocolate shavings that melted at the touch of my tongue and boozy impossibly obscenely red cherries that dotted the top of the cake. This cookie, with it’s soft bittersweet chocolate interior and sweet crunchy exterior, followed by the bits of dried moist tart cherries found on the inside, transported me away from my crazy Christmas party, and for an instance, I was that child again, experiencing a beautiful cake for the first time. This cookie, the one that Matthew exclaimed was SEX. IN. MY. MOUTH. It was pretty good – maybe a step up from not bad. That’s as high praise as I’m going to give it. But that’s just me. Ask my friend Matthew and maybe you’ll get a different choice of words.

My pretty good, slightly better than not bad, cookies.

This past Monday was Chinese New Year, and I had every intention of posting something “Chinese-y” in celebration. However, I did not expect my ridiculous cough that I got from around the time of the Western New Year to have persisted until the other new year – the Chinese New Year. Obviously I didn’t have a chance to perfect what I was trying to make, so I ended up posting about my caramel apple snickerdoodles, but that’s okay, as those cookies are awesome, and I got to post some fun pictures along the way. So consider this post, for the Chinese New Year, a late new year celebration for you all. And what better way to celebrate the year of the dragon than the egg custard tart. Take a look at my version: the Caramel Egg Custard Tart, a twist on the classic Chinese dim sum treat.

Caramel Egg Custard Tarts

The traditional Chinese egg custard tart is something that you see in dim sum restaurants, one of the few “desserts” that you can get after a meal of steamed dumplings and fried turnip cakes. Personally, I was never a fan of the egg tart, as most of the time they are soggy and flavorless. Then again, I grew up in St. Louis, which isn’t really known for their dim sum restaurants (at least not back then, I think things have gotten a little bit better since).

Happy (late) Chinese New Year folks!

In truth, I rarely make traditional Chinese food at home. I grew up in the Midwest, more fascinated with my friends cookies and fluffy box cakes than my mom’s red bean paste buns and pineapple cakes. But this has changed a bit lately. My parent’s visited San Francisco for a month and I asked my mom to show me how to make some of the more traditional foods that we ate at home. No one I know makes steamed pork buns like my mom does, and I am hard pressed to find anyone out there that makes sticky rice wrapped in lotus leafs like my mom’s. I guess that old adage of “nothing beats mom” is true. Sadly, we never did have a chance for her to show me how to make any of her specialties, but it did get me thinking about the food I grew up with and my Chinese heritage, and there’ll always be time for it when they move out here to San Francisco (which they keep on saying they are going to do soon).

Hanging out with my mom and dad for a month was awesome.

Of course, Chinese egg tarts aren’t something that my mom ever made at home. Egg tarts are more of a Cantonese dim sum thing and (honestly) I always found them more on the bland side (remember – from St. Louis). However, when I moved to San Francisco I found the Chinese egg tarts here can be sublime, with a flaky crust and a soft egg custard, reminiscent of a flan. In fact, it was a variation of a flan, the crème caramel, that inspired me to make my version of the egg tart with the addition of caramel. I’m a fan of caramel and though the burnt sugar probably is too sweet for a traditional Chinese dessert, I think it’s perfect for Chinese New Year here in San Francisco. Think of it as one foot in the past, and one foot in the future. No matter what happens in 2012, whether it ends up the luckiest year of my life, or the end of the world as we all know it, I’m pretty darn happy to be here right here and now, enjoying my own version of the egg tart. Happy (late) Chinese New Year guys.

The year of the dragon. I expect epic things to happen this year. Once I'm over this darn cough.

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I’ve had this terrible cold that morphed into a cough that morphed into sinus infection that’s morphed back into a cough. Or, at least, that’s what I think is happening to me. AJ has told me I should go to the doctor since it’s been so long since I’ve been hacking up nasty stuff, and I probably should listen to him. In the meanwhile, I’ve been thinking of different posts and different things I want to bake, but I can barely make it out of bed, and every time I do rally to get out of the house…I find myself relapsing ever so slightly. Of course today’s post was suppose to coincide with the Lunar New Year. I had every intention of creating a stunning new contemporary twist on a classic Chinese dessert like I did last year…and I didn’t. I mean I tried, trust me, I tried. I made one version, which turned out…not bad, but not really blog-worthy, and then I got side tracked even though I meant to revise the recipe and make them again, and then AJ looked really cute when he laid down in bed for a nap, and I thought I would maybe lie down next to him for ten minutes and then an hour and half went by and apparently I needed more rest than I thought. So no Lunar New Year post today; maybe later this week. But for now, I present to you my Caramel Apple Snickerdoodles Cookies that I whipped up last month, back when I was on a cookie baking binge for the holidays. I hope you aren’t cookie’d out, because I kind of love them.

Caramel Apple Snickerdoodle Cookies

Last month AJ and I had gone back to Indiana for the holidays, which is AJ’s hometown. Usually we split the time between Indiana and St. Louis (my hometown) but circumstances had us just going to Indiana for Christmas. This meant we actually had more time to spend in Indiana, running around to see the sights and visit with friends. It also meant we were able to get to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has changed a lot since I’ve last been there. Though they still have their iconic LOVE sculpture by Robert Indiana, they also have renovated the Lilly house, restoring it to it’s old glory.

AJ caught me instagramming the Love sculpture.

The study in the Lilly House.

I was immediately drawn to this punch bowl in the Lilly House. Oh the punch that I would have with it!

The best part of my visit there, however, was wandering around the 100 Acres, a gifted land to the museum that they have created (and are still creating) into an art and nature park. I, of course, want to call it the 100 Acre Woods (after Winnie the Pooh’s 100 Acre Woods) but this one seems both more real, and more magical than Christopher Robin’s woods. AJ and I spent a little bit of time exploring the various sculptures and environments, wandering to and fro.

Staring at the wall of rocks in the 100 Acres at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

About to enter the tunnel.

AJ and I posing against the rock wall.

Time was catching up on us, and we realized that we needed to head out to dinner. So we left the museum and head over to AJ’s brother’s house where we they were planning on making dinner for us. I decided I wanted to make some cookies for them as dessert. I had been experimenting with adding burnt sugar caramel to cookies, and figured why not experiment me some more? Turns out they loved the cookies, which was both a good thing and bad thing as AJ’s sister-in-law was trying to limit her sugar, flour and dairy intake for the new year. Had she told me that before hand, I would have made something more suitable for dessert, but oh well. I don’t think she was too unhappy as took a third cookie. All in all, it was a great day in the Midwest, made even better with these cookies.

Walking all 100 Acres wore me out.

I’ve been meaning to post about my pomegranate dark chocolate tart for ages, especially after Saveur Magazine picked me as their Site We Love and mentioned it in their post. A few people asked me about it, but I just haven’t had a chance to write it up yet. I created it a couple of years for one of my annual holiday parties and it’s one of those last minute desserts that I threw together. I was at Trader Joe’s buying supplies and as I navigated my increasingly full cart through the crowds, I walked by the produce section one more time and saw pomegranate seeds, clean and deseeded from their fruit all shiny and ready to use. I knew I had to make something with them. Which is how I ended up making my Pomegranate Dark Chocolate Tart.

Pomegranate Dark Chocolate Tart

I’m not usually one buy packaged prepared ingredients. There’s something nice about taking a whole ingredient and slicing, dicing or cutting it up. I scoff at the pre-sliced mushrooms, shrug my shoulders at the jarred minced garlic and dismiss the chopped onions that I find on the shelves. If I’m in the mood to cook I want to cook from scratch, with the prepping and chopping becoming a meditative event. Chefs sometimes call it deep prepping and I can fall into a zen like state doing it, peaceful and meditative as the raw ingredients slowly reduce into components for the dish. But when I’m baking and creating a dessert buffet for 100+ people with twenty-five different desserts, shortcuts don’t seem as much an issue with me. And glittering shiny pomengranate seeds? How could I turn those down?

So I bought them, unsure what I was going to do, until I realized that I had recently been sent some POM Wonderful brand pomegranate juice to play with. They had contacted me soon after BlogHer Food 2010 and asked me if they could send me some juice to experiment with in the kitchen. I told them to send me a few bottles if they want, and a couple of weeks later, I had six bottles in my fridge waiting for me to use.

I didn't even have a chance to eat a slice at my last party, it was snatched up so fast.

Coming up with the tart was easy-peasy after that. The only extra step in the process is making the pomegranate molasses. You can buy it from specialty stores, but if you have pomegranate juice around, it’s easy to make. My friend Kamran over at The Kitchen Generation has a great tutorial on deseeding pomegranates without getting the red juice all over yourself, it’s how I deseed pomegranates (which is normally what I do when I’m not cranking out desserts). Feel free to cheat and buy the seeds already pulled from the fruit. I won’t tell.

[special thanks goes to POM Wonderful for providing me samples of pomegranate juice to play with in the kitchen]

Back in November I hosted Thanksgiving with AJ and made a huge dinner with all the fixings for us two, my brother and his wife, and their utterly cute daughter (my niece) who I absolutely adore. It also happened to be her second birthday so, of course, I had to make her a birthday cake. After hemming and hawing about what sort of cake to make her, I decided the best thing to do was the straightforward birthday cake that one makes for a child. A white chocolate funfetti birthday cake made from scratch, not the kind you make from a box mix. Luckily I had received a preview copy of the Momofuku Milk cookbook by Christina Tosi and there, in all it’s glory, was Chef Tosi’s version of the funfetti cake, made from scratch: the ultimate child’s birthday cake.

The made from scratch Funfetti birthday cake for my niece.

Of course, when I had initially thought to making a birthday cake for my two-year old niece, I did not think of what she might like. No, being the slightly self-absorbed typical San Francisco food blogger, I started to think about all the “seasonal” recipes I could create for her, the type that would be perfect for this blog! Maybe I could make a gorgeous upside down butterscotch pear cake, or an apple and quince bundt cake with toffee glaze. Maybe I could take advantage of the winter citrus and make a blood orange cornmeal cake or meyer lemon olive oil cake. Winter had just started up and I was falling back in love with grapefruit and pomegranates and kumquats. Gingerbread, peppermint, dark chocolate, all the heavy, beautiful flavors of the holiday season, start peaking around the corner of Thanksgiving, and my little niece was the excuse for me to bring them into the forefront.

My niece seemed obsessed with the pumpkin. Perhaps I should have made her a pumpkin cake.

But then I had to take a step back. Reason kicked in, and I remember that my adorable two-year old niece didn’t care at all for seasonal ingredients or fancy holiday flavors. She wanted cake. Heck she DESERVED a proper straight forward classic birthday cake. So, as the cool gay uncle that I was, I gave it to her. She got her funfetti birthday cake and oh boy was she happy.

My niece blowing out the candles with her two gay uncles.

Turns out my niece now associated her Uncle Irvin with cakes and cookies. True, she still hasn’t quite figured out which one is Uncle Irvin and which one is Uncle AJ (we’re both one single unit to her, names interchangeable) but that’s ok. She still picks up my brother’s calculator, presses a bunch of buttons on it, and then puts the calculator to her ear and speaks into it “Uncle Irvin? Uncle AJ? Cake? Cookie?” like a cell phone. That makes me love her all the more. It makes AJ and Irvin love her all the more in fact.

She loved the cake. What two-year old wouldn't?

So I was thrilled I found this recipe in the Momofuku Milk Cookbook. If you don’t have it, I definitely recommend running out and getting it. Sure there may be a number of recipes that have some difficult ingredients to get ahold of (milk powder, glucose, clear vanilla extract, citric acid etc). However, Chef Christina Tosi really just wants you to be able create her desserts the way she makes them which is why she wants you to use these ingredients. Thankfully she also includes some substitutions (not for the milk powder though – you should just bite the bullet and buy some, you won’t regret it). Though most of the recipes in the Momofuku Milk cookbook are super sweet (she tries hard to replicate the flavors or childhood, which is that super sweet packaged baked goods flavor) every now and then a treat like that, made from scratch without the weird preservative chemicals, is exactly what you need for a two-year old who equates you with cakes and cookies.

Mmmm....cake.