Bon Appétempt

Video Attempt: A Moveable Dinner Party

2012-02-12T19:50:00.000-08:00

First things first: thank you to Ali and James for coming to dinner and committing to keeping the night moving. It was such a pleasure to sit in the bathtub together. Secondly, I must say, this is one of those moments I find myself so thankful for this small, creative outlet. Where else could I share my combined love for Barefoot Contessa, dancing, and having friends over for dinner? I hope you enjoy it!

Lentil Vegetable Soup via Ina Garten
1 pound French green lentils (which is 2 1/2 cups lentils, which I think is really really good to know.)
4 cups chopped yellow onions (3 large onions)
4 cups chopped leeks, white part only (2 leeks)
1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
1/4 cup good olive oil, plus additional for drizzling on top
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3 cups medium-diced celery (8 stalks)
3 cups medium-diced carrots (4 to 6 carrots)
3 quarts chicken stock
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 tablespoons red wine or red wine vinegar
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
In a large bowl, cover the lentils with boiling water and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Drain.

In a large stockpot on medium heat, saute the onions, leeks, and garlic with the olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme, and cumin for 20 minutes, until the vegetables are translucent and very tender. Add the celery and carrots and saute for 10 more minutes. Add the chicken stock, tomato paste, and lentils. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 1 hour, until the lentils are cooked through. Check the seasonings. Add the red wine and serve hot, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with grated Parmesan.

French Chocolate Bark via Ina Garten
8 ounces very good semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
8 ounces very good bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup whole roasted, salted cashews (I used peanuts, which worked fine. I think the important thing here is that the nuts be salted and roasted.)
1 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Directions
Melt the 2 chocolates in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water.

Meanwhile, line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Using a ruler and a pencil, draw a 9 by 10-inch rectangle on the paper. Turn the paper facedown on the baking sheet.

Pour the melted chocolate over the paper and spread to form a rectangle, using the outline. Sprinkle the cashews, apricots and cranberries over the chocolate. Set aside for 2 hours until firm. Cut the bark in 1 by 3-inch pieces and serve at room temperature.

Swedish Cardamom Buns

2012-02-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that I have a crush on Sweden. It probablystarted with the Shout Out Louds. Then, there was the Poetry in Translationclass I took with the Swedish poet Malena Mörling, whose book, Astoria, I recently read and highly recommend. Around this time, I discoveredthe music of Loney Dear, one of the most sincere live performers I’ve everseen. Then there was Jens Lekman, girls with dragon tattoos, Robyn (of course),and most recently, this article, which delves into the question: “What makesthe Swedes glow with health?”

Enter Lisa, who I met through my good friend Heather. Lisa’smom grew up in Sweden, and, well, it didn’t take us too long to come to the necessaryconclusion that we must meet up to make Swedish cardamom buns and drink Glögg.

However, by the time Lisa and I found a free afternoon tomake these cardamom buns, she was in the middle of a cleanse. How Swedish isthat? (Sweden’s a bastion of health and wellness, remember?) So, while Lisacouldn’t chow down on gluten-y, sugary foods and vodka-based beverages, Matt and I werevery much available to partake in both. Of course, there is a differencebetween chowing down and fika, whichLisa explained, is Swedish for taking a break to drink coffee or tea and eatsomething sweet—usually a cardamom bun—with a friend. (Seriously, thatfour-letter word means all of that, and it can be used as a verb or a noun!) So, while the cleanse may havestopped her from sipping the aforementioned Glögg, it didn’t put a damper onthe fika.

See, I think it’s important to note that these are not thekind of cinnamon buns you find at the food court. No, these buns are much moreSwedish. They are subtly sweet. There is no extra glaze on top and no creamcheese filling. I also think it’s important to note that it’s 2pm in theafternoon and one is warming up in the toaster oven as I type this.

This version here is a combination of two Swedish recipes,one of which comes to us via Lisa’s brother’s girlfriend, Ebba, and the otherfrom Lisa’s Aunt Veronica, which she translated into English for us, and whichwas titled “Mommy’s Buns.” So I must extend a big thank you to theseladies for all of the information!

Hear that? It’s the ding of the toasteroven. Excuse me while I go fika.

Cardamom Buns adapted from a few different Swedish recipes, with a lot of help from Lisa Fika!
Dough:
25 g of fresh yeast for sweet dough OR 1 1/2 packets of dry active yeast (.9 oz)
75 g butter (5.2 tablespoons)
2 ½ deciliters milk (1 cup)
½ deciliter granulated sugar (3.5 tablespoons)
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
about 7 deciliters flour (scant 3 cups)

Filling:
50 g room-temperature butter (3.5 tablespoons)
½ deciliter granulated sugar (3.5 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

For topping:
1 egg
pearl sugar or granulated sugar

Equipment: 25 cupcake/muffin wrappers

To do this: [I kind of love this detail from one of the recipes we used. Instead of the classic directions, to do this seems so much more deliberate.]

Start with the dough. Melt the butter in a sauce pan and add the milk. Warm the mixture until it is “finger warm," a.k.a. room temperature. Dissolve the yeast into this mixture. Let it sit a few minutes. (It should look a bit foamy.) Then, add the salt, sugar and cardamom. Stir.

Transfer mixture to an electric mixer or, if mixing by hand, a large mixing bowl. Add about 2/3 of the flour and mix until it becomes smooth and shiny. Add a little more flour, but save enough for kneading later. The dough is ready when it easily releases from the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with a thin towel, place it in a warm spot, and let it rise until it is twice the original size (about 30 minutes).

Remove the dough from the bowl, and using the rest of the flour, knead it lightly on a floured surface until smooth and shiny. Divide dough into two halves. Roll each half of dough into a thin, big rectangle.

Combine the filling ingredients and then spread evenly over one of the rectangles. Place the other dough rectangle right on top, making a sandwich! Then, roll the sandwich up, long side to long side, to form a long cylinder. Using a sharp knife, cut each cylinder into equal slices.

Place each slice into a paper cupcake holder and arrange on top of a rimmed baking sheet. Cover them with a towel and let rise until doubled in size (about 30-45 min). Preheat oven to 425 F. Once the buns have risen, brush the rolls with the beaten egg and sprinkle with pearl sugar.

Bake in center of oven at 425 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Tip: It's fine to make a double batch (or more)! [This was taken verbatim from one of the recipes. Such a great tip!]

Shelf life: At room temperature, the buns quickly become dry out, so if you don’t intend on eating them soon, freeze them!

Caramel Cake

2012-01-29T21:58:00.000-08:00

Here’s something I learned on Friday: mind your caramel.Yes, certain as the sun rises in the east, an unwatched pot of caramel saucewill get all effed up.

I have been wanting to attempt this cake ever since I foundit in one of my mom’s old issues of Gourmet—and then was recently reminded of it again when I was up late one nighttrolling Lottie & Doof’s recipe archives—but to quote Morrissey, wetried and we failed. Yes, I overcooked thecaramel glaze, so that instead of a beautiful, transparent, liquid glaze (likeGourmet’s and Lottie’s), I blanketed my cake with dark brown sugar-leather.

At one point, I considered trying to remake the glaze,substituting half and half for the heavy cream (I had used all of my cream),but the hardened caramel layer and cake had melded together—like a couple of best friends, inseparable.

I share this failure with you as yet another example of metrying to do too much and then doing those things poorly, instead of slowingdown and doing one thing right. I need to work on this. I had an old boss whoused to say: Ya do it right, ya do it light. Ya do it wrong, ya do itlooooooong. I was working as a waitress ina Middle Eastern themed lunch spot, and I was given a series of very serious versions of thisspeech throughout my time there. And would you believe it? Eight years later, I did this caramel cakewrong. But instead of starting over (doing it long?), I simply lived with it, though I'mkind of glad I did. It was still pretty great in adealing-with-this-dessert-is-a-bit-like-eating-a-deliciously-sweet-old-bootkind of way. And, bonus, it gave our dinner guests a good laugh.

Next time, I’ll do it right/light. Yes, next time willbe different.

Caramel Cake via Gourmet
Cake:
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour (not self-rising; sift before measuring)
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (4 oz) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature 30 minutes
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

Caramel Glaze:
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Make cake:
Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle. Butter an 8-inch square cake pan and line bottom with a square of parchment paper, then butter parchment.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture may look curdled). Add flour mixture in 3 batches, mixing until each addition is just incorporated.

Spread batter evenly in cake pan, then rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan. Invert onto rack and discard parchment, flip cake so it is right-side up and then cool completely, about 1 hour.

Make glaze:
Bring cream, brown sugar, corn syrup, and a pinch of salt to a boil in a 1 1/2-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Boil until glaze registers 210 to 212°F on thermometer, 12 to 14 minutes, then stir in vanilla.

Put rack with cake in a shallow baking pan and pour hot glaze over top of cake, allowing it to run down sides. Cool until glaze is set, about 30 minutes.

Meditations on Pittsburgh

2012-01-22T17:07:00.000-08:00

Recently, I was re-watching one of my favorite episodes of MySo Called Life, and it ended with a shot ofAngela riding her bike (or maybe it was Brian Krakow’s bike?) down a suburbanstreet. She’s moving away from the camera, trying to let go of the handlebarsto ride with no hands. She lets go and then grabs back on, lets go and grabsback on, before finally letting go and raising her hands in triumph up in theair. And as I watched, I thought about Pittsburgh—the city Angela lives in andthe city where I grew up. I was reminded of the freedom I felt bicycling down verysimilar suburban streets as a teenager and a pang of nostalgia hit me hard,knocking me into a daydream where Matt and I moved back, I got pregnant, and welived there, with a little yard,fewer neighbors, and a couple of animals.

Coincidentally, or perhaps guided by my daydream, I checkedin on my friend who just moved from Los Angeles to the suburbs of New York tosee how the wintry transition was going. And she told me her personal theory ofhow living in Los Angeles was just too easyand how she has learned that she needs winter to appreciate those first coldspring days. “There is always something to look forward to when you have fourdistinct parts of the year,” she wrote, and the poetry of her argument resonated with me. MaybeLos Angeles—with its perfect weather, proximity to the mountains and ocean, thepretty people and prettier produce, the special places like Runyon Canyon andKoreatown with its Korean spas—is toogood for our own good.

So, I went home to Pittsburgh with all of this in mind, andwithout telling anyone, I decided I would try to imagine what living there asan adult would be like: what neighborhood Matt and I might move to, what theprice of a house was there, how we might spend our Sunday afternoons, and whatit would feel like to be so near the support of family.

And then I stepped off the plane into the jetway, and thecold, Pennsylvania-in-January air blew right through mypurchased-in-Los-Angeles winter coat and boots, and rested in my bones where itwould remain for the rest of the night.

As is customary on the first night back, Mom and I picked upGrandma, and we went for sushi. Since my last visit, because of failingkidneys, Grandma has cut sugar out of her diet, and though Mom warned me thatshe had lost a lot of weight and was teeny tiny now, I still wasn’t ready forthe change.

In the morning, the icy wind burned my eyes, filling themwith tears as Matt and I walked from a breakfast spot in Lawrenceville to thecute coffee shop a few blocks away. And when we arrived at Matt’s parents newloft space where construction just finished, instead of being able to properlyooh and aah, all I could do was sit on the couch and try to bring life back tomy feet, which had become two low-functioning blocks of ice. My body hadcompletely forgotten about winter.

But, later in the day, I was ready to give the outdoorsanother shot. It was dusk; it was snowing, and I wanted to breathe in thatfrosty, clean air. I offered to walk Matt’s parents’ dogs. I borrowed a hat andgloves, grabbed a Havanese and went outside.

I lasted three minutes. I wasn’t even at the neighbor’shouse before I handed my dog over to Matt, who was doing just fine with theother one, and ran back to the house.

That night, we were having a family dinner with both Matt’sand my family, which included Grandma, my brother and his girlfriend—theselatter two I hadn’t seen in over a year and a half. Matt’s dad made a fire,Matt’s mom made chicken Parmesan, Matt made his famous garlic bread, my mommade her famous Caesar salad, and I did nothing more than clean a few mushroomsand pour red wine. It was the big holiday dinner I’d wanted all holiday-seasonlong. And about halfway through the meal, I felt the color return to my face andthe circulation to my feet.

The next day, my recluse of a dad, who lives in ruralPennsylvania, drove down to see my brother and me. He doesn’t exactly travel andso, I haven’t seen him since my wedding, over three years ago. If I was alittle upset to see my grandma’s weight loss, I was even more upset to seeDad’s weight gain. He had open-heart surgery a few years ago and doesn’t seemto be taking care of himself or making the lifestyle changes I had hoped hewould. In his defense, he says his dad died at 62 and that at 63 he’s livingon extra time. Even if his response can be considered an argument, I find it very lacking. The good news? Between navigating controversial family topics andpolitical conspiracy theories, he tells my brother and I about his new, onlinechess “clan,” the Chessperados.

Pittsburgh is cold and complicated.

For those of you unfamiliar with Korean spas, let me tellyou that this is reason enough to live in Los Angeles or any other city thathas them. For only fifteen U.S. dollars, you can spend your day spa-ing away, andfor an additional thirty, you can get a body scrub that will rid you of skinlayers you didn’t even know you had. Of course, my first time there, I did itall wrong. I went from the hot shower (You must shower first. This, they make very clear.), to the hot steam room, tothe hot sauna, to the jade room (not sure what the benefits of this room are,but I like it.) to the scalding hot tub and back again. It was fun. So manyoptions! And all of them hot! But by the time the woman called my number(!) formy scrub, my face was lobster red and I was having trouble stringing a sentencetogether. She took one look at me and diagnosed my condition: “Too much sauna!”

A week or so later, I came across this super interesting article, which among other things,discussed the spa culture of Sweden. The article revealed my mistake: I hadn’tcold plunged. I had gone from hot to hot to hot to hot, and guess what? Body don’tlike that. And now that I thought about it, I had seen a fewbrave women plunging themselves in this one tiny pool, but when I dipped my toein and it nearly froze, I promptly trotted off toward the sauna.

Two knots in my lower back had me dreaming of a massage allweekend long, and so when we got home to Los Angeles, I ran myself to theKorean spa where the price is right when it comes to massages. As a seasonedveteran, I know now to cold plunge between trips to the sauna and steam room.This knowledge doesn’t make it any easier. Your whole being is screaming to get out of that freezing water. What does make it easier is knowing how great you’ll feel once you’re out. Maybe life is like this. Hot and cold—no matter where we live. And maybe the trickier part is in the moments in between, when we’re not sure where we're headed or how to feel.

Pittsburgh is a beautiful city. And for better or worse, it's responsible for much of my constitution.
But thismorning, Los Angeles didn’t feel so scattered and demanding. We woke up torain, and Matt made pancakes, substituting the called-for milk with half andhalf. And guess what else? That dreamy shot of Angela Chase riding her bike onthat suburban street? I bet they shot that in L.A.

Video Attempt: Poutine

2012-01-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

As per usual, a few things to note:
1. Thank you, Tim! I love when Internet friendships turn into real-world friendships.
2. If you attempt this dish at home, a few words of advice: invite friends and maybe include a giant salad. When I say, "Let's go finish this," at the end of the video, what I probably should have said is: "Let's go have a few more bites!" As it turns out, there's a reason why at Animal, this dish comes towards the end and is best shared with a group—it's super rich.

Poutine with Oxtail Gravy
I combined two recipes to make this crazy dish. If there's any trick, it's in timing it so that the French fries don't sit for too long before the gravy is ready. Definitely start with the oxtail and then, when it only has a half hour or so left in the oven, start the fries. That way, you can plate the hot fries; cover with the hot gravy and meat, and then sprinkle with cheese.

A stew of oxtail and onions via Nigel Slater's Tender
olive oil
oxtail (4 pounds)
large onions - 2
3 bay leaves
a glass of white wine
heavy cream 1 1/4 cups
smooth Dijon mustard - a tablespoon
whole-grain mustard - a tablespoon
1/2-3/4 cup cheese curds or grated cheddar (for sprinkling on top later)

Warm a little olive oil in a Dutch oven or other heavy pot. Season the oxtail all over with salt and black pepper. Lower into the oil and let color on all sides. Meanwhile halve, peel, and thinly slice the onions, while occasionally turning the meat so that it browns lightly and evenly. Remove the oxtail from the pot and add the onions, letting them soften a little but not color.

Preheat the oven to 325 (not 375, which is WRONG). Hide the meat among the onions, tuck in the bay leaves, and pour over the white wine. Lay a piece of buttered or oiled wax paper over the top, then cover with a lid. Bake for two and half hours, checking now and again that is not dry. If it is, add a little more liquid. Remove from the oven.

Lift the lid and remove the meat to a warm dish. Pour off any obvious fat from the pan, then stir in the cream and the mustards, and check the seasoning. Bring to a boil on the stove and bubble hard for five to ten minutes to reduce the quantity, stirring in any pan stickings as you go. Once it's reduced, you're good to go!

French fries via America's Test Kitchen
2 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed, dried, sides squared off, and cut lengthwise in 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch batons
6 cups peanut oil (I used Safflower oil.)
salt

Combine the potatoes and oil in a large Dutch oven. Cook over high heat until the oil has reached a rolling boil, about 5 minutes. Continue to cook, without sitrring, until the potateos are pale golden and the exteriors are beginning to crisp, about 15 minutes. [the fragile Yukon Gold potatoe tends to break into pieces if you stir before giving it the full 15 minutes, so be patient here, friends!)

Using tongs, stir the potatoes, gently scraping up any that stick, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until golden and crisp, 5 to 10 minutes longer. Using a skimmer or slotted spoon, transfer the fries to a thick paper bag or paper towels. Season with the salt to taste, check to see if Kennywood's open, and serve immediately. [And by serve, obviously, I mean, top with gravy, meat, and cheese!] [You're welcome!]

Juicy Satsuma Orange Cake

2012-01-08T20:44:00.000-08:00

One of my Christmas presents from Matt was a collection ofVirginia Woolf’s letters, which I’m really enjoying, and to which, theintroduction reads: “In turn-of-the-century handbooks on how to write a properletter, women were advised to be self-effacing. Ladies, they were told, do notbegin a letter with ‘I’. They begin instead with something that will interesttheir correspondents, chiefly themselves.” Therefore, “The proper female letterwriter was simply another version of the hostess.”

Maybe because I was sick on New Year’s Eve, spending it witha crazy headache and no champagne, Matt and I didn’t feel forced into adiscussion about resolutions. And maybe because, in a bit of aturn-of-the-century-inspired change of pace for this usually non-self-effacingwriter, I haven’t felt compelled to publicly (or privately) set a singleresolution for 2012.

I—here ‘I’ go again!—think it’s because I’m a bit tired ofsetting goals. Even when my dear friend broached the topic with me and told meabout how her resolution for 2011 had been to have more fun, and I instantlywanted to steal it for myself, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered: what doesit mean—to have “more fun”? Does thatmean I should watch more TV? Does that mean I should throw a Downton-Abbey inspiredcocktail party? Does it mean I should meditate more so that I can become lessstressed and more open for a good time in general? Or, does it mean I should go toamusement parks with friends and ride the roller coasters with no hands? Do yousee what I’m saying? It started becoming goal-oriented. So, alas, here I sit,one week into 2012 and very much resolution-less.

But hey, I don’t want to rain on your 2012-resolutionsparade. In fact, please tell me: how’s it going for you? Are you doing theGwyneth/Goop cleanse? Are you making macaroni and cheese? What about cake?Surely, you can fit in one slice of heavenly orange cake, no?

What if I told you that when you pull this cake out of theoven, you have to wait until it’s cooled down a bit before brushing the orangeglaze on top, and that during this interim period, I nearly pressed my faceinto the cake’s surface as the smell was that intoxicating? It was floral but orangey, and sweet. So, naturally, Ihovered over it with my nose only one centimeter from the top for at leastthirty seconds, if not a full minute.

This is a beauty of acake—perfect for a winter dinner party or, just for yourself. In fact, while Iwas eating a slice, I had the thought that if it weren’t for Bon Appetémpt, Iwonder if I would have made such a pretty, fairly involved cake. Perhaps, butprobably not midweek with only Matt and I to eat it, which is really a shamebecause it made an ordinarily drab Wednesday so much better.

Isn’t that funny? That while we may no longer approachletters, or emails, with a hostess mentality, or any real sense of etiquettefor that matter, (I know I use a lot ofemoticons.) we still do when it comes to actual hosting, over 100-years later.The editor of this collection, Joanne Trautmann Banks, writes: “The successfulVictorian hostess devoted herself to her guests and appeared to deny herself.”And isn’t that the same for the successful present-day hostess? We vacuum thewhole apartment, make special cakes, wash a million pans, and then wave off anycompliments with, “Oh, it was nothing! Thank you for coming!” I’m not complaining, I promise—I’m notat all ready to say goodbye to this tradition. There’s nothing I love more thanbeing invited to dinner, to being hosted.

Maybe that could be my resolution—to treat myself like Iwould my guests? Oh, but I’ve strayed. Back to you! Would you be interested in having me for dinner? Thanks inadvance!

Juicy Satsuma Orange Cake via Andrea Reusing's Cooking in the Moment
Oranges and Glaze
5 satsuma oranges
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Cake
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pan
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/3 cup semolina flour
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon table salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 10-inch round pan. (I used a 9-inch and, plain as the eye can see, it worked out great.)

Finely grate the zest of one of the oranges, and reserve the zest for the cake batter. Cut the orange in half, juice it, and strain the juice; you should have 1/3 cup juice. Slice the remaining 4 oranges into 1/4-inch-thick rounds. Combine the orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and orange slices in a medium saucepan, and bring to a slow simmer over low heat. Cook for 6 to 7 minutes, until the centers of the orange slices are starting to become tender and translucent but are not falling apart. Carefully transfer the orange slices to a plate with a slotted spoon, and continue to simmer the syrup until it has reduced to 1/2 cup, 5 to 8 minutes. Set the glaze aside. (I did this step and then went to yoga class, came back an hour and a half later and finished everything up. Just in case, you need to break up this baking session.)

To make the cake, combine the butter and sugar in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix until fluffy. While the mixer is running, add an egg and wait for it to be incorporated before adding the other. Add the reserved grated orange zest. In a bowl, sift together the semolina flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture, a little at a time, to the batter mixture and mix until all of it is incorporated. Pour the batter into the pan and arrange the orange slices in one layer on top of the batter. Bake for 15 minutes.

Reduce the oven temperature to 350 and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the cake is an even golden brown and baked through; a toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean. Let the cake cool on a wire rack until it is warm. Then, using a wooden skewer, poke holes all over the surface of the cake. Brush the glaze over the top, using a pastry brush. Allow the cake to cool to room temperature, and then unmold.

Oyster Stew with Mashed Potatoes

2012-01-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

This was my first Christmas as an adult with a real tree(and a real tree stand). In November,Matt and I had grand plans to go to one of those farms where you can chop downyour own tree, but as December moved onward without our schedules coordinatingfor such an outing, Matt, my Hanukkah-celebrating husband, decided to take onthe task of acquiring and setting up the tree all by himself. In retrospect, asthe lone lifetime Christmas celebrator in the family, I should have gone over afew things with him beforehand—like the understood tree-to-room-size ratio,e.g., Times Square gets a giant tree because Times Square is a giant space; anant gets a tiny pine needle because it’s all that can fit inside the anthill. Andthen there is the whole tradition of trimming the tree with friends and familyalong with a glass of eggnog and Christmas music. But I took all of thisknowledge for granted, left him to it, and had the wonderful shock of cominghome to a completely decorated, towering tree in our living room.

This is Matt and this is one of the many reasons I love him.He tackled the Christmas tree like a challenge and presented it to me in all ofits fully-executed glory. It served us quite well. But a few days ago, the treewas looking less-than-healthy and ready to be excused. Against tradition (Ihave no childhood memories of taking the ornaments off the tree.), wede-trimmed it together. And that’s when I realized that the ball ornaments he’dbought to decorate our first tree were plastic. I don’t know why this surprisedme so much except for the fact that growing up, all of our ball ornaments weremade of glass. In Matt’s defense: “I don’t know. I had a couple of hours todecorate an enormous tree and Target was selling this giant box of ornaments.”

I wish I had photos of us getting this tree out of the backdoor of our apartment. Branches were snapping left and right, and when it wasfinally out, our kitchen had become a spitting image of Sherwood Forest. (Iwatched Robin Hood: Prince of Thievesrecently.) Once it was outside, we were faced with another challenge. What doyou do with a Christmas tree when you’re done with it? In the suburbs where myparents live, I faintly remember a “Tree pick-up day” or something like that.Well, sans Googling/knowledge of our community’s tree removalservices/policies, we took it to the dumpster where we take our regular trash,which is located in an alley behind our unit’s garages, which serves, alongwith the alley itself, as a bit of a magnet to members of West Hollywood’shomeless population. Once in the alley, instead of tossing the tree inside oneof the dumpsters, we propped it up against the wall on the opposite side of thealley. Please forgive us if this is your Christmas pet peeve. In the morning,it was New Year’s Eve, and I had an 8am spinning class to attend. I opened thegarage door and reversed the car to find our large Christmas tree still proppedagainst the wall, only now it was thoughtfully decorated with purple ornamentsvery similar to the ones Matt had bought.

I called Matt to tell him, and he divulged that the previousnight he had also thrown away some of the excess ornaments, the bulk of whichwere purple. In Matt’s defense: “There were just so many of them.” And so, we theorized that while weslept, a homeless person went through the dumpster, found the ornaments, andtrimmed the tree.

I don’t know why exactly I’m telling you this story. I can’tfind a way to tie it into the delicious oyster stew I made. I can’t even tie itinto a way of summing up 2011 and wishing you a happy 2012. All I can say isthat it seemed like a story worth sharing and is one I keep thinking about.

Okay. I bought 10 oysters for Christmas Day without knowingwhat I was going to do with them. So, on Christmas Eve, when I opened myHanukkah gift from my brother and sister-in-law and found Cooking in the Moment, and soon thereafter found AndreaReusing’s uber simple oyster stew recipe, our Christmas dinner appetizer wasborn.

Perhaps calling it uber simple isn’t quite fair. There isthe process of shucking a lot of oysters and doing it in such a way that youreserve as much of the surrounding oyster liquor as possible. With help fromMatt, I managed to do this. I also managed to reserve a lot of shell fragments.(How do the professionals do it without getting all those little shell bits inthere? Practice? Magic?)

After this step, things get easier. You simmer some cream,add a pinch of cayenne and a bit of salt and pepper. Next, you add thesea-salty oyster liquor, bring it to a simmer again, and then add the oystersfor about 30 seconds. You divide this into warm bowls where a softenedtablespoon of butter awaits, and voila, a decadent oyster stew. But wait, Ididn’t stop there. While Matt shucked a few oysters, I boiled some potatoesthat I had on hand. And while the cream was simmering, I drained and mashedthem with just a bit of butter and milk. And then, after I’d eaten the oystersout of my stew and had nothing left but the delicious, creamy, slightly spicybroth, I poured it over the potatoes, and the result was over-the-top amazing.Seriously, if I had a restaurant, mashed potatoes with creamy oyster brothwould be on the menu. And the restaurant would be called: Amelia’s Fish Wish.(Kidding about the latter. Very serious about the former.)

As for our alley-based Christmas tree, Matt and I packed upsome of our leftovers from our New Year’s Eve dinner (oxtail stew) and placedit under the tree with a note. This morning, we checked and it was gone. I knowit’s hardly anything in the great scheme of helping others, but it’s something,which is better than nothing, which is a positive start for the New Year.Wouldn’t you say?

Happy New Year, Friends! Hope it's one filled with hot stews, dear friends, and as much plaid flannel as possible.

Oyster Stew (with mashed potatoes) adapted from Andrea Reusing’s Cooking in the Moment

serves 2

4-5 small to medium Yukon gold potatoes

10 salty oysters, freshly shucked and liquor reserved

1 cup half and half

3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

¼ teaspoon kosher salt (more ore less depending on thesaltiness of the oysters

Pinch of cayenne

Freshly ground black pepper

Wash and scrub the potatoes, and then place them in a largestockpot. Cover them with water and a pinch of salt and bring the pot to aboil. Boil the potatoes until fork tender. (I just keep checking on them with afork after about 10 minutes.) Once they’re tender, strain them and then returnthem to the hot pot. Mash them up with a scant ¼ cup of the half and half, 1tablespoon of the butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover the pot with alid to keep the potatoes warm while you make the stew.

Strain the oysters, reserving the liquid. (I put the oystersover a strainer and freed them of shell fragments before placing them in a prepbowl until they were ready to add to the cream.)

Heat ¾ cup of the half and half in a heavy nonreactive potto a low simmer over medium heat, being careful not to let it scorch. In themeantime, warm two small bowls, add 1 tablespoon of the butter to each bowl,and set them in a warm spot.

Season the cream with the salt, cayenne, and black pepper.Add the oyster liquor and return to a simmer. Add the oysters and cook for 30seconds, until they start to curl and are just heated through. Adjust theseasoning, and divide the oysters and sauce among the warm bowls. Servealongside the mashed potatoes, spooning the potatoes into the stew or viceversa, whenever it strikes your fancy.

Apple-Gruyère French Toast With Red Onion & Happy Hanukkah!

2011-12-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

If you watched this most recent holiday-themed video attempt, you'll recall that all Christmas stockings are not created equal and that it's important to remember that Matt's Jewish. With that in mind, I didn't want to let another Jewish holiday come and go without a proper culinary dedication. I also really wanted to eat this apple-Gruyère French toast with red onion, which Melissa Clark somewhat recently presented as an "Alternative for Latke Lovers" in her New York Times column.

Her piece begins with the question: "WHY is it that there are eight days of Hanukkah and only one really traditional holiday food, at least in this country?" Of course, Clark is referring to the latke, which is delicious and which I'll be making a version of for Christmas Eve, but as she points out, "As long as it’s fried in olive oil to commemorate the miracle of 165 B.C. (when a day’s worth of oil burned for eight), almost anything goes."

I just can't tell you how good this was. I can tell you, however, that I used extra Gruyère and finished my fried milk-and-egg-soaked Challah stuffed with onions and cheese and topped with apples and an egg faster than Matt finished his.

I can also tell you this: Happy Hanukkah, friends!

Apple-Gruyère French Toast With Red Onion via The New York Times / Melissa Clark
2 1 3/4-inch-thick slices challah bread from middle of loaf
3 ounces grated Gruyère cheese (about 3/4 cup)
1/4 small red onion, very thinly sliced
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup whole milk
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small apple, cored, quartered and very thinly sliced
Fried eggs, for serving, optional.

Place one slice of bread on kitchen counter, the bottom crust nearest you. Cut into bottom crust, parallel to counter, to make a pocket. Do not cut all the way to top of slice; bread should remain attached there. Tuck half the cheese and onion slices in pocket. Repeat with other slice.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, salt and pepper. Pour custard into a wide, shallow dish. Soak stuffed bread in custard, turning once halfway through, until most of the liquid has been absorbed, about 5 minutes.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add half the apple slices in a single layer and cook for 1 minute. Place bread slices in pan, covering apples. Arrange remaining apple slices on top of bread; cook 1 minute more.

Reduce heat to medium low, cover and cook for 5 minutes. Uncover and increase heat to medium; cook until bottoms are golden, about 2 minutes. Carefully turn bread and apples and cook until bread is golden and cheese is melted, 3 to 5 minutes. Serve topped with fried eggs if desired.

Yield: 2 servings.

Video Attempt: Holiday Cocktails and Spicy Almonds

2011-12-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

For the record, I had a bad feeling about using the coffee mug in place of a cocktail shaker—I even told Matt that I didn't think it would work. If I could have it back, I would have improvised the shaker differently, but these things happen. Also, the new stocking my mom made Matt is absolutely perfect. I'll have to show it to you someday soon.

Point being... happy holidays, everyone! I hope you have a bunch of days off from work and are able to relax with great friends, family, food, and maybe even a few cocktails!

p.s. To purchase the tote bag featured at the end, go here!

Chartreuse Cocktail (adapted from Martha Stewart Living)
makes 2 cocktails
1/4 cup Chartruese
1/4 cup gin
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tablespoon simple syrup (recipe follows)
1/2 cup sparkling water
ice cubes

To make simple syrup, bring 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water to a boil in a small saucepan. Cook, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Let cool.

Combine Chartruese, gin, lime juice and simple syrup in a large glass or liquid measuring cup. Divide evenly into two ice-filled glasses and top off with sparkling water.

'Egg Nogg' via The Savoy Cocktail Book
1 egg
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1 glass of any spirit desired (We used a shot glass to measure 1 glass.)

Fill glass with milk. Shake well and strain into long tumbler. Grate a little nutmeg on top. [These are the directions as they're written in this cool little book. I don't think you can go wrong with it... Oh, wait. You can. You definitely can.]

Pink Rose Cocktail via The Savoy Cocktail Book
The white of 1 egg
1 teaspoon grenadine
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon sweet cream [We mixed a bit of half and half with simple syrup.]
2/3 glass dry gin [Again, I think glass here means a shot glass.]

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

Spicy Almonds via Ellie Krieger
2 cups whole, unsalted almonds
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Toast the almonds in a dry skillet over a medium heat, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Transfer the almonds to a bowl.

In a small bowl, stir together the cumin, garlic, cayenne pepper and salt. Heat the oil in the skillet over medium heat. Stir the spices into the oil and cook, stirring until warm, about 30 seconds. Add the almonds and cook, stirring frequently, until the nuts are warm and the spices are evenly distributed. Add the hot pepper sauce and stir to distribute. Remove the almonds from the pan and allow them to cool before serving.

Crispy Potatoes

2011-12-11T21:09:00.001-08:00

Is it sad that even though I haven’t set foot in aMcDonald’s since I was a teenager, the first thing I thought when I bit intothis potato was: Oh my God. I just made McDonald’s fries? But then, on the second potato, I changed my mind: No,better than McDonald’s. Because there wasthis mellow, round flavor from the olive oil. With my third potato, things gotweird. I imagined marching into a McDonald’s and saying: “You call that apotato? (I would motion towards their potatoes at this point, obviously.) No. This is a potato.” Then, I would dig into my pocket andproduce one of my potatoes. Theywould try it, agree with me, then lift me up on their shoulders and parade methrough the city!

But before I get carried away, I need to tell you how Iarrived at these remarkably crispy potatoes, as I believe I learned a valuablelife lesson from them, and if there’s anything one knows about valuable lifelessons, it’s that they need to be shared.

It began with a headache—I get migraines. And though I haveprescription drugs for them, sometimes I don’t want to take the medicinebecause it can make me feel like a space cadet / almost as non-functioning as Iam with the migraine. So, last week when I got one, I tried to sleep on it. Iwent to bed early, only to wake up in the middle of the night with the pain muchworse than it was when I went to sleep. I took a pill, felt sorry for myself,and then woke up 4 hours later all woozy.

That afternoon, I was feeling better and mentioned theheadache to my dear friend, who of course, I’ve mentioned these headaches to inthe past, and she told me how she believes there’s a link between blockingfun/pleasure and head pressure and basically prescribed me two hours to myself. To be exact, her actual emailed words were: “Take 2hours TOTALLY FOR YOURSELF. Do not cook food for Matt. Do not get writing done.Go and play with your inner girl child.” (Right now, Matt’s like: Wait asecond. How did I get wrapped up into this?)

I must say that I loved theidea. Who wouldn’t? Two hours to yourself. Of course, I couldn’t start right that moment. I decided I wouldfinish up the writing I was working on and then take my two hours. And not cook dinner for Matt? Iliked where her head was at, but let’s get real. I had already bought theingredients for that night's dinner. Plus, Matt was at work and it wouldn’t be very nice to skipout on him, especially since on days I work and he doesn't, he always cooks agreat dinner for me. So, once I worked through my tasks,I finally shut my laptop, looked around the apartment and repeated the words inmy head: Take two hours to myself.

But what to do? My pal hadsuggested things like going to a park or a café, but those didn’t resonate withme. And everything I came up with seemed either too indulgent (going to the movies alone) or tooexpensive (going shopping). So, I just stood there, re-asking myself: Whatshould I do? What would be fun? It musthave been at least five minutes until I finally decided to grab my screen-printingstuff and screen-print the tote bags I had recently dyed. It sounded fun and was something I needed to do anyway (holiday gifts!). But when Ifinished cleaning everything up, I went back on the Internet. Or, in otherwords: a two-hours-to-myself fail.

Fast forward to a few days later: I was dragging my feet ona project, distracted and generally frown-y, when it dawned on me that I shouldtry my hand at taking two hours for myself again, that maybe it would help.Our apartment was freezing and my first thought was to take a hot shower, butthen, an angel/devil on my shoulder whispered: No! Take a bath, Dingus! Coincidentally, I had just discovered Pandora (Ithought you had to pay for it, so I had never previously checked it out.) and Iput it on the Mazzy Star channel. (Just lost my male readers!) But listen: whatensued was one of the nicest least expensive things I have ever done formyself. And when I returned to the world with all of its electronics andwebsites and earthly demands, I felt so completely ready to dismiss them. Infact, I got in bed and opened a book. In the middle of the afternoon! And Ithought to myself, a very specific thought: the only thing missing from thisscenario is crispy potatoes.

It’s funny the things we do when our significant other isn’taround. I like to light incense, write letters, eat ice cream from the cartonwhile standing at the kitchen countertop, and watch romantic period movies.Matt likes to order chicken wings, search the Internet for used cameraequipment, and watch B-horror movies and/or strange documentaries. Of course wecan do these things while the other one is around, but we usually don’t. Forone, I don’t like the way those chicken wings look and Matt thinks the incense“smells like burning.”

I mention this because as I lay in bed post-bath, I wasreminded of a few things. 1.) Matt had a late meeting after work so I was on myown for dinner that night. 2.) I actually already had potatoes in the house.And 3.) I rarely cook myself a thoughtful, delicious meal when it’s just meshowing up for dinner.

I think this should change. Starting with this meal ofcrispy potatoes and salad. And please don’t think I phoned in the salad. It’svery much inspired—specifically, by a salad I’ve eaten on a few separateoccasions at David Lentz’s The Hungry Cat and had been meaning to recreate.So, from memory—as searching for the recipe online would’ve been a buzzkill—Itossed together romaine lettuce, sliced hard-boiled eggs, avocado, and lots ofshaved Pecorino, with an olive oil, lemon juice and white wine vinegardressing. It came together quickly, and while it didn’t taste exactly the sameas The Hungry Cat’s, it was pretty close. Next time, I’ll try a softer lettuce.Alas, romaine is what I had in the fridge. The potatoes, on the other hand,came together less quickly. I was making less than half of what the recipecalled for, and just peeling all of those tiny potatoes took 30 minutes.And then you have toboil them, wait for them to cool, and scrape each one with a fork beforeroasting for an hour. (So, please pardon the photos as they were taken in lowlight.) But if less-than-stellar photography and an hour of prep time in thekitchen leads you to potatoes this delicious and crispy, so be it!

I mean, remember the McDonald’s comparisons above? Each one had a shell layer of crispy potato while the inside remained all soft and fluffy. A must try for potato lovers. (Mom, I’m talking to you!)

So, where’s that valuable life lesson I was talking about earlier? I think it’s this: take time for yourself and then, and this is key, be nice to yourself. Draw yourself a bath, light a candle or two, and take the time to crisp up some potatoes. You won’t regret it... Have you ever heard anyone say, “Man, I shouldn’t have taken that bath,” or, “Wish I hadn’t made those little crispy orbs of potato.”? But then, what do I know? I’m 30 years old and just took my first bath in over four years.

Forked Oven-Roasted Potatoes via Bon Appetit
6 pounds small Yukon Gold potatoes (1 1/2"–2"-diameter), peeled
1 tablespoon kosher salt plus more
1/2 cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 425°. Working in 2 batches, cook potatoes in a large pot of boiling salted water for 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer potatoes to a rimmed baking sheet. When cool enough to handle, firmly scrape the tines of a fork up and down potatoes, creating a rough, grooved surface.
Pour oil onto another rimmed baking sheet; bake (to heat oil) for 5 minutes. Add potatoes; turn to coat. Season with 1 tablespoon salt. Roast, turning 3 times during cooking and occasionally basting with oil, until browned and tender, 60–70 minutes.

Animal Crackers

2011-12-04T13:06:00.001-08:00

My version above. Heidi Swanson's version below:

While I don't have kids, was never one of those teenagers asked to babysit, and have been known to make my beautiful niece spontaneously burst into tears, I inexplicably love creating kids-y snacks/desserts.

Exhibit A: The VolCAKEno.
Exhibits B and C: The Leprechaun Trap Cake and Rainbow Cake Guest Attempts. (Okay, fair enough, I didn't actually make these.)
Exhibit D: That time I made 3-D Reindeer and Sleigh Cookies.
Exhibit E: The Organic and Chic Goldie Attempt.
Exhibit F: These Animal Crackers:

I can't be sure, as I didn't have any munchkins around to taste test this recipe, but I suspect some may have a problem with the intensity/amount of ground ginger, though that can be easily dialed down depending on where you stand with ginger.

Not only are these crackers relatively quick and easy (like this post!), but they also make for fun, homemade, holiday gifts.

This below animal was simply too cute to eat, so we set him free.

Animal Crackers via 101 Cookbooks
1 pack of extra-large wonton wrappers
1/4 cup natural sugar, evaporated cane sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger Note: You could get away with using just 1/2 teaspoon of ginger; unless, of course, you are a total ginger hound... in which case, QUADRUPLE IT.
1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 organic egg
tiny splash of heavy cream
poppy seeds
sesame seeds
Equipment: cookie cutters

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place racks in the middle. Line a couple baking sheets with parchment paper. In a bowl, combine the sugar, ginger, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and cream together.

Cut the wonton wrappers into various shapes using the cookie cutters. Brush the wontons with a thin glaze of the egg wash and be sure to get anyplace you want the seeds to stick. Sprinkle each cracker with seeds and then a generous dusting of sugar mixture.

Move the crackers to a single layer on the baking sheets and bake until the wontons are golden and crisp, 5 to 8 minutes. Don't let them burn!

A Very Bon Appétempt Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T09:59:00.001-08:00

Last week, Iwatched Dirty Dancing on back-to-back nights. And by watched, I mean, watched, sans computers and folding laundry, simply grippedby the story of this unlikely romance at Kellerman’s resort in the summer of1963, as if I hadn’t grown up watching it a million times. I could talk aboutall the reasons I love it—Don’t put your heel down! blah, blah, blah. Baby? Is that your name? blah, blah, blah, but there’s a good chance youalready know these reasons, and if you don’t by now, you’re likely not to care.

Having said that, on this newly rekindled Dirty-Dancing high, I found myself repeating those lines thatJohnny says to the little boss-man (I believe that’s his official title?) whenthe little boss-man approaches Johnny on the dance floor, and brusquely askshim where Penny is. With his back turned from his dancing partner—that creepyolder woman deemed a “bungalow bunny” by the equally creepy owner ofKellerman’s—Johnny puts his hands in his pockets and shouts back: “Whaddyamean, ‘Where’s Penny’? She’s takinga break. She NEEDS a break!”

I just love the hyper-dramatic indignity with which Johnnyresponds to his boss. How dare he askJohnny, one of his employees, where another one of his employees is! And so,slowly but surely, these lines became a kind of mantra for me this week.Because of work, Matt and I couldn’t go home for the holidays and because weboth had work specifically on Friday (Matt left for his office before 7amFriday morning), we felt we needed the day to ourselves to fully recover andso, opted out of our friends’ potluck gathering. The fact that it was basically our choice to spend the holidays alone didn’t stop me, however, fromspending the beginning of the week in different stages of pouting. I didn’t wantto go grocery shopping. I didn’t want to plan a menu. I wanted what I couldn’thave: to travel someplace where snow was a possibility; to be able to requestmultiple hugs from my toddler-aged niece and nephew, to just show up at somerelative’s house where my laptop (and pending work) was not invited and havesomeone I knew mainly through such holiday gatherings flop turkey meat on myoutstretched plate. I wanted a break. I NEEDED a break!

But then, I turned a corner. I believe it started with theidea of mulled wine. If I could just get some mulled wine simmering on thestovetop… And then, I found the recipe for mashed potatoes with parsley andcream in—you guessed it—Tender. Andthen, the night before, Matt and I tackled Martha Stewart’s Sky-High Apple-Cranberry Pie followed by a viewing of a Mt. Everest documentary, which justmight be required viewing for humans stuck in a rut. In the morning, Mattagreed to handle the chicken, which was our stand-in for turkey. And what doyou know? Come Thanksgiving, after a jog through my neighborhood, a few musicalacts from the Macy’s day parade and a large mug of mulled wine at 1pm, I didn’thave to fake my gratitude.

It ended up being a delicious meal and a beautiful afternoonwell spent. Many thanks to Matt who, as usual, took all of the photos and served up one ofthe best roast chickens I’ve ever eaten. Also many thanks to the camera crewswho have lugged their equipment to the top of Mt. Everest so that people likeme can watch in complete amazement as those wonderful fools traverse the deathzone. Oh, and while I’m at it, thanks tothose who contributed to the Mt. Everest Wikipedia page—I read it in itsentirety before falling asleep on Thanksgiving night. (Fun Fact: Early in ourrelationship, Matt read Into Thin Air aloud to me, in its entirety.) But most of all, I want to thank you, reader, for whom I doctored up this photo last yearas a portrayal of my gratitude. I should really update it though, as mycomplaining has really paid off, and I can happily report that my mother nowreads the blog regularly. In other words, hurrah and happy holidays, friends!YOU’RE WILD!!

Sky-High Apple Cranberry Pie via Martha Stewart
For the Crusts
1 large disk plus 1 small disk Pate Brisee (If you don't use all 10 apples the recipe calls for (Matt and I used 6.), you could probably get away with using two small disks of pate brisee and save yourself the trouble of making two separate batches of dough, as Martha warns against doubling the recipe.)
All-purpose flour, for surface

For the Filling
5 pounds (about 10) heirloom baking apples, such as Arkansas Black, Carpentin, Jonathan, Knobbed Russet, or Northern Spy (We used Granny Smith!)
1 1/2 cups fresh or thawed frozen cranberries
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Salt
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk lightly beaten with 2 tablespoons heavy cream, for egg wash
2 tablespoons sanding sugar

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Make the crusts: Roll out small pate brisee disk to a 1/8-inch thickness on a floured surface. Fit dough into a 9-inch pie plate. Trim edges, leaving a 1-inch overhang. Repeat rolling with large pate brisee disk, and cut out a 12-inch circle; transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate crusts until firm, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the filling: Peel and core apples. Cut each into 1/2- to 1-inch-thick wedges, and transfer to a bowl. Toss in cranberries, granulated sugar, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Transfer filling to bottom crust; dot with butter. Cover with top crust. Fold edges under; crimp. Cut eight 2 1/2-inch vents into dough to let steam escape. Freeze until firm, about 30 minutes.

Gently brush top crust with egg wash; sprinkle with sanding sugar. Bake pie set on a rimmed baking sheet for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees. Bake until crust is golden and juices are bubbling, 1 hour 20 minutes more. (Tent with foil if crust is browning too quickly.) Let pie cool completely in plate set on a wire rack.

Video Attempt: Deep Dish Pumpkin Meringue Pie

2011-11-18T17:09:00.001-08:00

My senior year of college, I made a movie with my parents’ Hi8 camera, which I called: The Senior Documentary. It was nothing special as far as production value goes, hardly anything kids today—with their DSLRs, iMovies, and iClouds—would call Internet-worthy. It was just home-movie style, unedited and unscripted scene after scene that I shot of my roommates and me throughout the year. The whole thing lives on a VHS tape, and though I would love to, I haven’t been able to watch it since Matt and I got rid of our VHS player, 6 or 7 years ago.There was one short, scripted drama, however, titled A Wartime Romance, which starred me and my roommates, one of whom was Mary Anne who I introduced you to last week. Well, without further adieu, I give you Mary Anne and my latest onscreen performance: Bon Appétempt Makes a Pumpkin Pie. Happy Thanksgiving, and hope you enjoy watching our all-day baking adventure as much as we enjoyed this pie!

Deep Dish Pumpkin Meringue Pie via Martha Stewart with many a note from yours truly
For the Crust / a.k.a. Pate Brisee
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt
2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

Pulse flour, sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt in a food processor until combined. Add butter, and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal, about 10 seconds. Drizzle 1/4 cup ice water evenly over mixture. Pulse until mixture holds together when pressed between 2 fingers (dough should not be wet or sticky). If dough is too dry, add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse.

Shape dough into 2 small disks, and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour.
FYI: For this pumpkin pie, you only need one of these disks of dough. You can freeze the other half and use it for your next pie down the road or, you could always make another pie that doesn't require a layer of crust on top! Pecan, perhaps?

Filling
3 large eggs
1 can (15 ounces) pure pumpkin puree
1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk
3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Meringue
2 cups granulated sugar
8 large egg whites, room temperature

Set 8 eggs out so that they can start to think about coming to room temperature. (For the fluffiest meringue, you want room temp. eggs.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Make the crust: Roll out pate brisee to a 1/8-inch thickness on a lightly floured surface. Fit dough into a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. Trim edges, leaving a 1-inch overhang; fold edges under and crimp as desired. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Line crust with parchment, and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake until edges just start to turn golden, about 15 minutes. (Careful taking this out of the oven! You'll notice that with mine, when I grabbed it, I knocked one of the edges in with my oven mitt so it looks kind of smooshed on one side. Minor bummer.) Remove pie weights or beans and parchment. Bake until crust is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes more. Let cool on a wire rack.

Meanwhile, make the filling: Whisk together eggs, pumpkin, evaporated milk, brown sugar, cornstarch, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and the nutmeg in a large bowl. (In the video, I forgot to say brown sugar and cornstarch. SORRY. They're in there!)

Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees. Pour filling into cooled crust. Bake until center is set but still slightly wobbly, 50 to 55 minutes. Let cool in pie plate set on a wire rack. Refrigerate until well chilled, at least 6 hours (preferably overnight). (If possible take your time letting the pie cool completely. In a rush for time, and with Mary Anne leaving early the next morning, we chilled ours for only about 2 hours, and what ends up happening is that the meringue kind of sinks into the middle of the pie a bit. Not the end of the world, but not ideal either)

Just before serving, make the meringue: Combine granulated sugar and egg whites in the heatproof bowl of a mixer set over a pan of simmering water. Whisk until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Transfer bowl to mixer, and whisk on medium speed for 3 minutes. Raise speed to high, and whisk until stiff glossy peaks form, about 6 minutes more. Dollop meringue onto pie, and spread using a swirling motion.

Hold a small handheld kitchen torch at a 90-degree angle 3 to 4 inches from surface of meringue. Move flame back and forth until meringue starts to brown. OR: For those torch-less people out there (like us), blast your oven to 500 and bake the entire pie until the meringue starts to brown. If the oven is hot enough, this should only take a few minutes.

Onion Soup, Madeira, and Gruyère Toasts

2011-11-13T22:23:00.000-08:00

Can I tell you how much I’m enjoying this time of year? Because of Daylight Saving Time, I’ve been waking up almost naturally at 6am. I love this. It makes me feel capable before the day has even begun.

And since we rarely turn on the heat, the mornings in our apartment are really cold. So, after making coffee, I wrap myself in a wool blanket, turn on my computer, and write. (Yeah, right. I wish! I actually get to checking my email and various blogs. At best, after a half hour of this, I make some sort of deal with myself and start writing.) Writing, writing, writing until I get super hungry, usually around 11am.

On days like this (where I need not report to work), I like to make soup for lunch. And, as previously discussed, the soup I’d gathered the ingredients for this time was Nigel Slater’s onion soup from his cookbook Tender. To be clear, I’d gathered all of the ingredients save for the Madeira, a fortified Portuguese wine. I’m sure if I had gone to a proper wine shop, I would have been able to find it, but I already had port at home and figured that would work just fine. Why? Because it was already there at home. Sidebar: did you know that by definition port is a fortified Portuguese wine? Apparently this is true.

I would recommend making this soup for the first step alone: simmering sliced onions in butter with two bay leaves for about 25 minutes. Almost instantly, the cold apartment warmed up and began smelling of the holidays. (Speaking of, if you’re like Matt and grew up celebrating Hanukkah, and sometimes have trouble remembering which day Christmas is, here’s a helpful site: isitchristmas.com.)

The soup was delicious. But let’s talk shop, eh? Why isn’t my soup a dark brown like Nigel’s? I followed his recipe exactly except for substituting a different kind of port. I mean, would the Madeira have really made that much of a difference? Well, my dear friend Mary Anne (pictured below trying out the soup) who happens to bear the last name Madeira and is also quite familiar with her ancestors' style of port, felt very confident that substituting the Madeira had nothing to do with the lighter color. Which begs the question: wtf? And I mean that in the best, most curious sense of the question. Please enlighten me if you have any ideas.

p.s. This soup marked the first time I have ever used our broiler. The reason for this is simple. It was also the first time I had bowls that were broiler-safe. Hurrah for my growing kitchen gadget/tool collection!

It should also be noted that I've just completed the ultra-rare Tender Trifecta, which is when one Bon Appetempts three recipes in a row from the cookbook Tender.

Onion soup, Madeira, and Gruyère Toasts by Nigel Slater via Tender

butter - a good thick slice

large onions - 3, sliced
bay leaves - 2
all-purpose flour - 2 tablespoons
white wine - 1 cup
chicken stock - 4 cups
Madeira - 3 to 4 tablespoons
sourdough bread - 8 small slices
Gruyère - 2 1/2 ounces, thinly sliced

Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan, add the sliced onions and the bay leaves, and let them cook, without coloring, over medium heat. you want them to be soft and slightly stick, which will take a good twenty-five minutes. When the are ready, stir in the flour, cook for a minute or so, then pour in the white wine, followed by the stock. Bring to a boil, season with salt and black pepper, then decrease the heat so that the soup simmers and simmer, with just an occasional stir, for thirty minutes. Add the Madeira and continue simmering for five to ten minutes.

Preheat the broiler. Toast the bread on one side, then cover the other side with the sliced Gruyère. Check the soup for seasoning, then spoon into heatproof bowls. Float the slices of bread on top and place under the broiler for a couple of minutes, until the cheese has melted.

Chocolate-Beet Cake

2011-11-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

As anyone who cooks knows, there are moments in the kitchen when you are moving along gracefully, deftly in sync with the timing of the dish. Your garlic is chopped and ready to be added at a moment’s notice, your parsley has been washed and dried so all you need do is give it a quick chop, and so on. But then, there are those moments when your kitchen feels more like you’re playing Scattergories and the timer has just switched gears to that really unsettling engine-revving sound, which any Scattergories player knows is the signal that you better stop trying to be clever and just get those words on the page. (I hate that sound. It’s always startling no matter how many times you’ve played! And I’ve played a lot.) Well, the majority of making this cake was spent in this latter zone.

I had never worked with beets and was a bit shocked by their power in the pigment department. They turned the water I boiled them in a murky purple, my sink a bright magenta, and my hands a kind of orangey-red. My kitchen was such a mess from all the previous steps that by the time it came to purée them in a food processor, the countertop-space deemed it no longer an option. Instead, I mashed them with a fork, which sent off sparks of beet juice in all directions and hardly worked like mashing an avocado does. This step did, however, result in beautiful bursts of magenta throughout the cake that I didn’t mind at all.

Another hiccup was that we had no parchment paper to line the springform pan with. But some tip I’d read somewhere at some point about using the waxy paper that wraps around sticks of butter in place of parchment emerged from the shallow depths of my brain. And what do you know? It worked. And bonus, I knew I’d done my grandma proud.

Apart from the destruction of my kitchen’s cleanliness, this recipe was rather forgiving. As with the pumpkin in the pumpkin scones, I took another guess at exactly what 8 ounces of beet looked like and went with ½ cup of it mashed. With the chocolate too, I had to estimate as I was working from a bar that was 9.7 ounces. And while I’m doing all of this guesswork, I guess I should really invest in a kitchen scale, huh?

But then again, this cake was so delicious I kind of think the money would be better sent on more ingredients to make more recipes from this book as I’m just as obsessed with it as I was three weeks ago when I first bought it. Though, if I make this cake again, I would alter Mr. Slater’s recipe in the smallest way. I felt like the crème fraiche needed a bit of sugar mixed in. Either that, or I would serve it with sweetened whipped cream. Perhaps it’s my American sugared-out palate, but my taste buds were kind of like: what is this savory-leaning cream doing on top of my beet cake? Just a thought, Mr. Slater! Otherwise, perfection.

For those of us keeping score, Tender is two for two. I’m thinking of trying the French onion soup next. Shall we see if it can go three in a row? SHALL WE?!?!?

An extremely moist chocolate-beet cake with crème fraiche and poppy seeds via Tender by Nigel Slater

beets - 8 ounces (I used 1/2 cup mashed.)
fine dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids) - 7 ounces
hot espresso - 4 tablespoons
butter - 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons
all-purpose flour - 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons
baking powder - a heaping teaspoon
good-quality cocoa powder - 3 tablespoons
eggs - 5 (separated)
superfine sugar - scant 1 cup
creme fraiche and poppy seeds, to serve

Lightly butter an 8-inch springform cake pan and line the bottom with a round of parchment paper (or butter wrappers!). Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Cook the beets, whole and unpeeled, in boiling unsalted water. Depending on their size, they will be tender when pierced with the tip of a knife within 30 to 40 minutes. Young ones may take slightly less. Drain them, let them cool under running water, then peel them, slice off their stem and root, and process in a blender or food processor until a coarse puree.

Melt the chocolate, broken into small pieces, in a small bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Don't stir.

When the chocolate looks almost melted, pour the hot espresso over it and stir once. Cut the butter into small pieces—the smaller the better—and add to the melted chocolate. Push the butter down under the surface of the chocolate with a spoon (as best you can) and let soften.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and cocoa. Separate the eggs, putting the whites in a large mixing bowl. Stir the yolks together.

Now, working quickly but gently, remove the bowl of chocolate from the heat and stir until the butter has melted into the chocolate. Let sit for a few minutes, then stir in the egg yolks. Do this quickly, mixing firmly and evenly so the eggs blend into the mixture. Fold in the beets. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold in the sugar. Firmly but gently, fold the beaten egg whites and sugar into the chocolate mixture. A large metal spoon is what you want here; work in a deep, figure-eight movement but take care not to overmix. Lastly, fold in the flour and cocoa.

Transfer quickly to the prepared cake pan and put in the oven, decreasing the heat immediately to 325 F. Bake for forty minutes. The rim of the cake will feel spongy, the inner part should still wobble a little when the pan is gently shaken.

Set the cake aside to cool (it will sink a tad in the center) loosening it around the edges with a thin icing spatula after half an hour or so. It is not a good idea to remove the cake from its pan until it is completely cold. Serve in thick slices, with creme fraiche and poppy seeds. (Or with sweetened whipped cream?)

Video Attempt: Oysters with Shallot Vinegar & Champagne

2011-10-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

Friends, a few things to note about the above video attempt:
1. I swear again. I’m sorry. I am letting down my in-laws and Grandma. Going forward, I will work on this... I swear. (Pun!)
2. It was very hard to spend a morning of shucking oysters without periodically muttering “oyster smiling” as a non sequitur. If you don’t know the reference, do yourself a favor and watch this Paul Rudd / Tim and Eric video.
3. At last, Matthew makes not one, but TWO cameos! How about that?

Oysters with Shallot Vinegar adapted from John Pawson and Annie Bell's Living and Eating
a scant tablespoon minced shallots
1 tablespoon chopped chives
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
6-12 oysters per person
tools: oyster knife, some manner of work glove, dish towel

Mix shallots, chives, and cider in a small bowl. Set aside.

Shuck oysters!

Here's the thing. I don't know how people shucked oysters for the first time before videos. I mean, I read Pawson and Bell's rather in-depth instructions to a T and feel as though I acquired more knowledge by watching this video. However, that guy in the video is an oyster-shucking champion and made it look way too easy. So, for those of you who have never shucked before, I really hope my video helps. I hope you can see that the real trick is in placing the oyster knife in the hinge area and, with pressure, twisting it up and down... up and down. At first, I was so worried about stabbing myself, but by the end, I realized I was placing too much emphasis on steady pressure and not enough on that leverage-gaining, twisting motion. As soon as the focus was on the twisting motion, I didn't think about gouging my palm as much. Once you're in there, make sure to scrape the top shell with the knife in order to free the oyster from where it has attached itself. And remember: the first one is the hardest. Once you get past that, you will be golden!

Also, once opened, the oyster should look opaque and wet, as if enjoying the soak in its own liquid. It should smell like the sea. I know that I was very afraid of a "bad oyster," but all of mine were great, which is another reason I went with Fanny Bay oysters (as I read online somewhere that you never find a bad Fanny Bay). Lastly, if this is your first time shucking, you are bound to get some shell fragments in the oyster. Just clear the ones you can see and try not to stress too much about the ones you find in your mouth later. At least, that's what I did.

Serve with the shallot vinegar and a glass of champagne, and enjoy!

Pumpkin Scones

2011-10-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

The weather has finally snapped here in Los Angeles, and by snapped, I mean nights and mornings now dip into the 50s even if the days still go up into the high 70s. I know, I know, but those chilly nights and mornings are so crucial. They are also exactly what I needed to get back in the kitchen after my tortilla nightmare.

Well, that and my new cookbook, Tender by Nigel Slater, which I am absolutely and completely in love with. So much so that I would like to take you on a mini book tour. I’m ready whenever you are. Shall we?

Since purchasing the book on Thursday, I've bookmarked five recipes, bought ingredients for two, and attempted the savory pumpkin scones—a recipe that seemed absolutely fated for me. Not only is it high-pumpkin season, but the recipe called for beginning the baking process in a frying pan, flipping the partially baked disc onto a dinner plate and then sliding it back onto the pan to cook the other side. Ring a bell? And if so, do you believe in second chances?

This time, however, I would not be fooled. I chose a small cast iron pan I could lift with ease and, as it turned out, this made all the difference. Sure, it was messy and sure, we left some batter on the dinner plate, but all in all, we flipped that sucker!

Slater says to serve the scones with bacon and a slice of Cheddar sharp enough to make your “lips smart.” I forgot about this during my aforementioned ingredient shopping, but I did have a sad-looking bag of pre-grated cheddar. So, before the last minutes of its baking time, I pulled the pan from the oven, sprinkled the lightly set batter with shredded Cheddar and put it back in for a few minutes until it melted. When we flipped it again onto a plate, the cheese became the (pretty cool) bottom layer.

I’m not lying when I say that this scone made my Sunday. Though its texture hardly reminded me of any scone I’ve ever eaten before. It’s so moist from all that pumpkin that the center is more like that of mashed potatoes. The delicate flavors, however, are where its scone-ness really reveals itself. It’s slightly pumpkiny, a bit buttery and a bit “floury”—a word Slater uses to describe it, which I didn’t think much of when I first read it, but now realize is completely accurate. Oh, and then there are these occasional bursts of thyme. It tasted like autumn. And in this season-less city, that’s worth its weight in gold.

A warm pumpkin scone for a winter's afternoon via Tender by Nigel Slater

peeled and seeded pumpkin - 10 1/2 ounces [We don't have a scale and guesstimated 1 cup of steamed and puréed pumpkin. As you can see, this worked out really, really well for us!]

all-purpose flour - 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons

baking soda - half a teaspoon

salt - half a teaspoon

butter - 5 tablespoons

an egg, beaten

warm milk (All we had was almond milk and it worked fine!) - 6 tablespoons

thyme leaves - 2 teaspoons

a little oil or butter

Cut the pumpkin into large chunks and steam until tender enough to mash. Preheat the oven to 400.

Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Cut the butter into small chunks and rub it in with your fingertips. You could do this in a food processor, but it hardly seems worth the washing up. [I would agree, Nigel!]

Crush the pumpkin with a potato masher, then beat in the egg, followed by the milk and thyme leaves. Scoop this into the flour mixture and mix well. Season with black pepper.

Warm a heavy, nonstick frying pan with a metal handle over low to medium heat. [Should be noted that I used a small (8-inch) cast iron pan as this doesn't make a massive amount of dough.] Melt a little oil or butter in it, then pile in the dough, and smooth it flat. Cook over low heat until the underside is pale gold.

Lightly oil a dinner plate. Loosen the underside of the scone with the help of a spatula. Put the plate over the top of the pan, then, holding the plate in place, tip the pan so that the scone falls onto the plate. Slide the scone back into the frying pan and cook the other side for four or five minutes. Put the pan in the oven for seven minutes, or until the scone is lightly set in the middle.

Turn the scone out of the pan and slice into thick wedges. Serve warm, with cheese or some grilled bacon.

Potato and Salt Cod Tortilla

2011-10-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

When I was 19 and naively not realizing how good I had it living in Madrid for a semester, I basically lived off tortilla española—that egg and potato dish too potato-filled and thick to be compared to an omelette, but too unlike anything else we eat here to be compared to much else.

You could find tortilla just about anywhere there and eat it just about any time of day. I remember finding it funny that for lunch they would often put a slice of it between two pieces of baguette with a layer of mayo and call it a sandwich. Though after I tried it, it lost all sense of novelty and became strictly delicious.

It’s been on my to-make list for years, and I finally found a version that looked very promising in David Tanis’s A Platter of Figs, however, this is the same book from whence came the cold jellied chicken terrine, so all bets were off.

Since the list of ingredients made it feel so simple—eggs, olive oil, and potatoes—I felt compelled to add the optional salt cod to amp up the difficulty/weird level, but man oh man, if ever there was a dish that needed no more difficulty, it was this one. That said, the salt cod ended up being the easiest and coolest part of this tortilla-making operation, even if it made the kitchen momentarily smell like a wet dog had dragged in a dead fish from the sea.

To soften it, Tanis says to “shred the salt cod with your fingers," rinse it in a colander, and then soak it in cold water for 4 to 6 hours or overnight. Well, my salt cod was, in the approximated words of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Leon, stiff as a mother-effing board, Larry. Shredding it with my fingers wasn’t an option. What ended up working was rinsing the fish in water, pulling the meat from the skin in long strips; then, with kitchen shears, cutting the meat into smaller pieces before placing it in the cold water to soak.

Some recipes should come with disclaimers, e.g., do not try this at home if it has suddenly become over 100-degrees outside. Or maybe: do not try to flip this at home if your tortilla has become so large as to become defined by its impossibility to flip. Truthfully, so many things went wrong that I couldn’t blame it on just one or two things. There was the fact that I began this recipe after so thoroughly cleaning the apartment that the tops of our ceiling fans were shining. There was the fact that when it came to simmering the potatoes and onions in two cups of olive oil, I didn’t choose a pan large enough and had to split the mixture into two separate pans, and in this process, splattered hot oil on my arms and legs. There was also the fact that the only pan the final mixture of salt cod, potatoes, onions, and eggs would fit in is this brand new Le Creuset braiser I got for my birthday (Thanks, Dad!), and how the heck are you going to flip something in a pan that large, heavy... and beautiful!?

And as funny as it can be when recipes fall apart right in front of your eyes, sometimes I’m just not in the mood for it. So when the dish ended up looking like this:

I was bummed. A main part of the beauty of this dish for me had always been in its consistency, in the way you sliced it like a cake, and—simply put—in the way it looked. Plus, how was I going to put a clean slice of this in a sandwich?

So, first, I mourned the loss of my perfect tortilla. And then I ate what I’d made. With hot sauce and a side of crisp, cold, arugula salad with lemon juice and olive oil dressing. And guess what? Surprise, surprise. It was delicious. There is a really lovely sweetness from all of that olive oil and the two onions; and the potatoes add a layer of comfort while the salt cod seems to do the same, albeit in a very different, this-meal-is-special kind of way. And as I ate, quite happily, I was reminded of the simple fact that everything need not be so perfect. I mean, isn’t that actually what I’m always going on and on about? Isn’t that my thing? That everything doesn’t have to be so pretty, like in the magazines. Ah, how soon our expectations can shift, and how quickly we can forget who we really are.

OK, friends. So, in short, consider yourself warned. And consider yourself eating some homemade tortilla despite it all! (I truly hope I haven’t scared you off.)

p.s. We are proudly filing this post away under the "aesthetic fail" category in our beautiful new, turn-of-the-century filing system that Matt unexpectedly brought home in about 30 heavy pieces.

p.p.s. Don't let all that olive oil go to waste. You can totally re-use it to fry other things up!

Potato and Salt Cod Tortilla via David Tanis's A Platter of Figs

4 large russet potatoes

2 medium onions

2 cups olive oil

8 medium eggs

1 pound dried salt cod, softened (optional) (see below on how to soften)

salt and pepper

Peel the potatoes and slice into 1/8-inch rounds. Slice the onions about the same thickness. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet [Like, a really really large skillet] and gently simmer the potatoes and onions, without letting them brown. When the potatoes and onions are soft, about 10 minutes, carefully drain them in a colander, reserving the olive oil.

Spread out the potatoes and onions on a baking sheet, season with salt and pepper, and cool to room temperature.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add the shredded cod, if using, and the cooled potato-onion mixture. Stir gently to incorporate.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the reserved olive oil in a large cast iron skillet over medium heat. Pour in the egg mixture and cook gently for 5 minutes, tilting the pan now and then to help the eggs set. Put a dinner plate over the top and carefully invert the tortilla onto the plate [Best of luck to you on this maneuver!].

Add a little more oil to the pan, then slip the tortilla back into the pan to cook for 5 minutes on the other side. Flip the tortilla once more [in my dreams!] and cook for a few more minutes. Insert a small knife into the center of the tortilla to check for doneness--the knife should emerge clean. Put the tortilla on a serving platter and cool to room temperature. To serve, cut the tortilla into small wedges or squares.

To Soften Salt Cod

Shred the salt cod with your fingers. [Or, as I've explained above, place the fish under running water to soften it a bit in order to pull it off the skin. I also didn't have luck shredding it with my fingers so used kitchen shears to cut it up.] Rinse the fish well in a colander, then soak the cod in a large bowl of cold water for 4 to 6 hours (or overnight) to desalinate and soften it. [Tanis doesn't mention the refrigerator, but I put my bowl of soaking cod in the refrigerator and kept it there for two days.] Drain the fish and pat dry.

Video Attempt: Crêpes Suzette

2011-10-09T09:55:00.001-07:00

Hi, friends! Inspired once again by Julia and Jacques, Matt and I made another video of our own. This time, instead of pizza with burnt walnuts, we take you on the epic journey of making our own crêpes and intentionally lighting them on fire. As a bonus, I also let you in on one of Matt's famous URL purchases. (You probably didn't know this, but he is the proud owner of a few very strange URLs.) As always, I hope you enjoy!

Crêpes Suzette (adapted from Food and Wine)
Crêpes
2 large eggs
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup cold water
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon melted unsalted butter, plus more butter for the skillet

Orange Butter
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for buttering
about 1/4 cup of sugar cubes, plus more for sprinkling
1 orange
1/3 cup fresh orange juice (from the aforementioned orange)
1/4 cup Grand Marnier
2 tablespoons Cognac
Long-handle matches

Directions
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, milk, salt and sugar until smooth; the batter will be thick. Whisk in the water, oil and melted butter.

Heat a 6-inch crêpe pan (I used a 9-inch.) or nonstick skillet and rub with a little butter. Add 2 tablespoons of the batter and tilt the skillet to distribute the batter evenly, pouring any excess batter back into the bowl. Cook over moderately high heat until the edges of the crêpe curl up and start to brown -- about 45 seconds. Flip the crêpe(!) and cook for 10 seconds longer, until a few brown spots appear on the bottom. Tap the crêpe out onto a plate. Repeat with the remaining batter to make 12 crêpes, buttering the skillet a few times as necessary.

[Here's where I went off course from the Food & Wine version, and while my crêpes turned out absolutely great, for the much-tested F&W recipe, go here.]

Take 3 to 5 sugar cubes and rub them against the skin of the orange until the cubes are nice and orange-colored/flavored. Then, juice the orange until you get 1/3 cup of the good stuff/juice. Set this aside. Now, melt 6 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. Once it's melted, you can take it off heat or turn it down really low while you dip the crêpes individually into the butter. Take one crêpe and dunk half of the one side in the butter and then the other half of the opposite side. Next, fold it in half in the pan and then fold it in half again so that you are left with this little quarter circle in the pan. (If these directions don't make sense, I encourage you to watch the folding demonstration on either my video or the Julia and Jacques video.) Do this to all of your crêpes. Once they're all in there, turn the heat to medium-low and add all of the sugar cubes--the orange ones and the non-orange ones alike. Add your orange juice too, and wait until the sugar starts to caramelize in the pan. Once the sugar has completely caramelized, you are ready to add the alcohol and light this SOB on fire!

Safety tip: Never pour the alcohol into the pan straight from the bottle. (Even though if you watch the J&J video, Jacques totally wants to pour the alcohol straight from the bottle, but Julia won't let him.)

OK, so from your measuring cup, pour the alcohol on top of your pan full of crêpes. Calmly and with great confidence, light your long-handled match and set the liquid on fire. If possible (This wasn't really possible for me.), take a spoon, and spoon the liquid on top of the crepes so as to baste them. The good news is that the alcohol will eventually burn off, so if you can't get in there, just be patient and soon enough, your lovely crêpes will stop burning. Once this has happened, turn off heat, congratulate yourself, and enjoy a lovely, homemade crêpe suzette!

Curry & Craft Night

2011-10-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

In this life, where we seem to add more items to our to-do list than we have time to check off, I’ve found that planning a craft night with my girlfriends is one sure-fire way to get a craft I’ve been dying to make made, err, at least started.

As far as I’m concerned, there are two guidelines to hosting a craft night: choose a craft and promise dinner. My craft of choice was the Macramé Hanger from my friend’s super cool book, Vintage Craft Workshop: Fresh Takes on Twenty-Four Classic Projects from the '60s and '70s. For dinner, I wanted something simple, something meatless (There was one vegetarian crafter in attendance.) and something autumnal, despite the fact that autumn has been a complete no-show here in Los Angeles. I found all of these requisites well met in a recipe titled Big Curry Noodle Pot in Super Natural Cooking—a cookbook that had eluded me until now. Curry and crafting—here we go!

As you can see, I ended up dyeing my finished product purple. If I had been able to find bright white rope (or bright any-color for that matter), I don’t think I would have gone this extra step, but the rope I had bought was this sad beige color. In the end though, I’m kind of glad that I couldn’t find any colored rope—I’d never dyed anything before and it was a supremely satisfying experience. Almost as satisfying as tying my very first Josephine knot. I guess that’s why the saying goes: “Money can buy you a lot of things, but it cannot buy you the satisfaction of tying your very own Josephine knot.” That is a saying, right?

The curry was a success too, and definitely something I will turn to if Matt and I redo the three-week vegan challenge we did last winter. That said, perhaps the next time I’ll try it with the full fat coconut milk as this version left me hungry a few hours after dinner. But then again, maybe I was just spent from having tied all of those hyper-satisfying J-knots?

Sidebar / craft-night discovery: the definition of macramé is “the art of knotting cord or string in patterns to make decorative articles.” Who knew? This whole time I thought it just meant: weird rope-stuff from the 70s.

Big Curry Noodle Pot via Super Natural Cooking
8 oz. dried udon noodles
2 tbsp coconut oil (Olive oil works fine here too.)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp red curry paste
12 oz. extra firm tofu, cut into 1″ long columns
1 14 oz can coconut milk
2 cups vegetable broth
2 tsp curry powder (or turmeric if you've got it!)
2 tbsp shoyu sauce (Though, you could substitute soy sauce. I think it just might be a little saltier. Full disclosure: I added a pretty good amount of salt to mine anyway.)
1 tbsp natural cane sugar
Juice of 1 lime
2/3 cup peanuts
2 shallots, sliced into rings

Cook noodles according to package directions in lots of boiling water with a dash of salt. Drain and set aside. (Or, you could always go the route of cooking the noodles in the broth at the end as shown in one of the photos above. This makes for slightly less broth, but one less pan to wash!)

Meanwhile, heat the coconut oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the garlic, onion and curry paste, stirring until the curry paste is well incorporated, 1-2 minutes. Add the tofu and gently stir until coated. Stir in the coconut milk, broth, curry powder, shoyu and sugar. Bring to a slow simmer and keep it there for about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the lime juice and noodles, and stir.

Add the noodles and some extra both to each of 4 bowls. Top with the shallots and peanuts.

Thirty

2011-09-25T22:52:00.003-07:00

I have a stack of old journals, which I’m sure I will never throw away, and which are likely destined for an attic-bound cardboard box labeled Mom’s weird journals. Though for now, they’re quite accessible. And on the days before my 30^th birthday, I went through each one to find a specific entry from when I was 20: a sloppily written list of what I hoped for my life in five-years time and also in ten-years time. Not only can I picture the side of the page this is all written on, as well as the green marker I used to write it, I also remember exactly where I was when I wrote it—the third floor office of my parents’ townhouse in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. But after spending a solid afternoon flipping through journal after journal and not finding it, I gave up the search.

I was bummed. I’d wanted to take a photo of it and share it with you here. I thought it would have been kind of like unearthing a time capsule.

But, as I was telling all of this to Matt and my dear friends on our last night together in their Los Angeles house (since they are moving to the east coast) where Matt and I have countless memories, my friend made a joke to the effect of, “Oh, because you’d written down that you started a food blog, and worked at a store, and had friends with a dog named Gatsby?”

And as I laughed, it dawned on me: what does it matter what I said I wanted for my life when I was 20? For starters, my 20-year-old self thought that 30 was ancient. She would barely have had any tolerance for such a grizzled oldie. She was also crushingly confused and cripplingly naive. So naïve that she couldn’t possibly have imagined the decisions and events that have brought me to my present situation. I’m sure that she imagined my life might be, on the surface, more fabulous—with cooler outfits and a bigger apartment. But when I stop for a moment and consider my life (an inevitable side effect of birthdays), I can see clearly that it’s great. Simply great.

I think of those lines from the poem, “Kitchenette Building”: But could a dream send up through onion fumes / Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes / And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, / Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms.

After 30 years on planet urf… on most days, I am happy to say that I can still smell my dream over the metaphorical stench of garbage ripening in the hall. Admittedly, so much of that is thanks to Matt and my super supportive support system. (Oh, and did I mention Matt?)

In a roundabout way, what I’m saying is that there’s no real “attempt” this week—at least not a recipe-based one. But can’t we say that for this week, the attempt was my twenties? And alas, that it was—dare I say it—a success. No, a complete success! (After all, I did make it through.)

And can I also leave with a challenge for the next decade? To continue to mind the dream? Always with the hope that perhaps, someday, gradually, without even noticing it… I’ll be living it.

A million thank yous to Matt for all of the beautiful photos this week and to Heather and Jeana for one of the best birthday dinners ever. That above pizza? It changed my worldview on root vegetables as a pizza topping.

Lastly, for those of you wondering: I did complete the two concrete goals I’d set out for my 30^th birthday. 1.) I have begun the process of trying to sell my novel. And 2.) We bought plane tickets for a two-week trip to France! More on this later…

Uhm, Hi. I'm 30.

Strawberry Fool & Walnut Sandwiches

2011-09-18T21:56:00.001-07:00

I can’t believe I almost let another summer slip by without having discussed Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking, an unassuming little book I picked up last summer, though it was first published in 1955 (and then again in 1965 with a revised and enlarged edition and then once more in this cuter-than-a-bug’s-ear, 2002 edition.)

I knew nothing of Elizabeth David prior to reading Summer Cooking, but as I soon discovered in the foreword by Molly O’Neill, she’s a pretty big deal. In fact, she’s part of that very select group of mid-century food writers—people like Julia Child, James Beard, and M.F.K. Fisher—who are credited with having “introduced the notion of life beyond duty, nutrition, and habit, suggesting instead the possibility of pleasure.”

Of course, the possibility of food as pleasure in my present-day, Los Angeles-based existence, particularly this week where my mom has been visiting me and where we’ve been restaurant hopping from one insanely delicious place to the next, hardly seems revolutionary, but need I recall this post, or this one, to remind myself that things were, indeed, different back then.

And yet, reading the introduction to the 1955 edition of Summer Cooking out of context, you might just think it was a young Alice Waters talking at you:

My object in writing this book has been to provide recipes…with emphasis on two aspects of cookery which are increasingly disregarded: the suitability of certain foods to certain times of the year, and the pleasure of eating the vegetables, fruits, poultry, meat or fish which is in season, therefore at its best, most plentiful, and cheapest.

Sounds familiar, no?

That said, the book cannot wholly belie David’s mid-century palate and traditional Anglo upbringing. For example, I may not have been totally convinced by her kidney omelette recipe (“Cut a cleaned sheep’s kidney into dice.”). And I may have thought that calling a zucchini a courgette is a bit like calling an eggplant an aubergine. (Something she also does.) However, was her chapter on eggs a creative reminder of the many simple dinners I could make on a hot summer night with just an egg as the main source of inspiration? Most certainly. And did her recipe for Geranium Cream have me writing down ingredients like sweet-scented geranium leaves with enthusiasm and a question-mark after them? You bet.

In fact, so charmed was I by this little paperback that I picked up Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David. This is when I really started to become aware of David's revolutionary-leaning personality.

The best example of her rebellious nature comes in the short chapter aptly titled, “Acting it Out,” which opens with Elizabeth at 18-years-old being presented at “Court by the Countess of Midleton, as arranged by her mother." (Sidebar: “Those to be presented had to wear a headdress with three small white ostrich feathers to which was attached a short tulle veil, a gown with a court train which trailed some eighteen inches behind the wearer, and long white kid gloves.”) Instead of marriage, however, and much to her family’s chagrin, she opted for working in the theater.

The 24-page chapter ends in 1939, and within those seven years, Elizabeth has worked countless odd jobs, traveled much of the world, and taken her share of intriguing lovers. She eventually returns to England and to one man in particular, Charles Gibson Cowan, a married, equally free-spirited, aspiring playwright with whom, in the winter of 1938, she “began to fantasize about buying a boat and sailing away.” With financial help from Elizabeth’s Uncle Jasper, the two ultimately purchase The Evelyn Hope and set sail for France in 1939—the year that also marked the beginning of World War II.

Which is to say: Elizabeth had a mind of her own. To go from tulle and ostrich feathers to setting sail with a married lover at the onset of an international war must be, at the very least, proof of that, right? Ah, and I haven’t even told you about the chapter on Norman Douglas who she met while she and Charles were stuck in Antibes, and who became quite an influence, bidding her adieu to Corsica with the following advice: “‘Always do as you please, and send everybody to Hell, and take the consequences. Damned good rule of life.’” Ironically or oddly enough, Elizabeth was about to take some major consequences… But I don’t want to give the whole story away.

Needless to say, I recommend the book. Specifically, I might recommend reading it in bed on the first cold afternoon of September as the sun is setting and you finally have a quiet moment alone to enjoy Elizabeth’s adventures all to yourself.

This week’s attempt, however, is not a video of Matt and I setting sail. (Major bummer, I know.) No, it’s taken from the dessert section of Summer Cooking, where David writes: “There is nothing more delicious than fruit and cream.”

At the beginning of the season, she recommends not messing with this heroic combination—just serve some fruit alongside some cream and be done with it. But later in the season, “when [berries] get cheaper,” she gives us the green light on turning them into fools, ices, pies, and purées. In a moment of convenience trumping everything, I had purchased some pretty sad-looking strawberries at the grocery store a few blocks away. And despite the price being the same it was at the beginning of summer, as sickly as they appeared, I felt I had David’s complete permission to go ahead and mess with them… Iced Strawberry Fool it was.

In an effort to get into that 1955 state of mind, I made the recommended accompaniment, walnut sandwiches, which David explains, “are very good with ices, instead of the usual biscuits or wafers.” I envisioned the combination of fool and little sandwiches as a late Sunday afternoon snack, but this would be sweet to serve to your friends at your next book club meeting, particularly if that book club were reading something from the fifties, or something about food, or something summery, or something about anything.

The walnut sandwich reminded me of the little jamón y queso sandwiches I would eat on late afternoons when I was living in Argentina, and which always came accompanied by a café con leche. It wasn’t that the sandwiches tasted alike, but they both came with their crusts cut off and seemed to offer that same mix of equal parts indulgence and nourishment.

I know that it’s late in the season, but if you find yourself with one more sun-filled Sunday, I couldn’t recommend making this more. (And, dare I riff on David’s winning combination, but the addition of a glass of prosecco might just turn this into a modern day dream scenario.)

Recipes via Summer Cooking by Elizabeth David

[My personal notes/suggestions are in these brackets so as not to be confused with those of Ms. David’s.]

Walnut Sandwiches

Cream together 1½ oz. butter and 2 tablespoons of shelled and chopped walnuts. [I toasted mine. And, bonus, I didn’t burn them this time.] Sandwich between very thin slices of lightly buttered brown bread. Remove the crusts.

Iced Strawberry Fool

1 lb. of strawberries, 3 oz. sugar, ¼ pint double cream.

Sieve the hulled strawberries. [I hulled and pureed my strawberries, but this puree would not go through my sieve. I'd recommend skipping the sieving altogether.] Stir in the sugar. Add this puree gradually to the whipped cream, so that it is quite smooth. Turn into a shallow crystal or silver dish, and put in the refrigerator for several hours, if possible underneath the ice-trays, so that the fool gets as cold as possible without actually freezing. It is important to cover the bowl, or everything else in the refrigerator will smell of strawberries. [Not the worst thing that could happen.]

Video Attempt: Caramelized-Onion and Gorgonzola P(r)izza

2011-09-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

Friends! For this video attempt, (unlike the Robyn one) I have no real their version to show you. All I can say is that when Matt and I shot this last weekend, I had many sources of inspiration—specifically, I’m talking about Dr. Steve Brule, Barefoot Contessa, Kenny Shopsin, the Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home DVD my grandma sent me a few months ago, and all of my other favorite people and entities who inspire me in the realm of cooking and entertainment.

I hope you can see what I mean, but mostly, I hope you enjoy!

(Warning: This video is rated PG-13 for language.) (Sorry.)

Caramelized-Onion and Gorgonzola Pizza adapted from Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez via Gourmet

ingredients

¼ cup olive oil

1 ¼ pounds onions (2 large), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced

Jamie Oliver’s pizza dough or 14 to 16 ounce purchased pizza dough, thawed if frozen

¼ pound Gorgonzola dolce, crumbled (1 cup)

½ cup walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped

¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

directions

Heat 1/4 cup oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-low heat until it shimmers, then cook onions with 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper, covered, stirring occasionally, until golden, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl and keep warm, covered.

Stretch dough into a roughly 12- by 10-inch rectangle on a large baking sheet. Preheat oven to 500-550 degrees. Let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes while the oven gets hot.

Spread dough evenly with onions and cheese. Place it in the middle of the oven and cook until crusts are brown and cheese has melted, about 7-10 minutes.

Sprinkle cooked pizza with nuts, and parsley. Slice yourself a slice (or have someone else slice you a slice). Enjoy!

Mi Rosa

2011-09-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

Mis amigos, I hope you're having a glorious, long weekend! As for me, I'm due at work in about an hour. But that doesn't mean that I don't have time to share with you the most beautiful cocktail with the most beautiful name ever. I've been trolling the old gourmet.com site recently and happened upon this beverage with the following introduction, which completely won me over:

"'To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess.' —The Life and Death of King John, William Shakespeare.

The rosebud garnish on this delicious cocktail seems a bit like painting the lily. Maybe not as bad as garnishing heaven with a taper-light, but still, probably not necessary."

For Gourmet's version, click here.

Can you tell that Matt and I got a new camera? It happened a few posts ago, and to be honest, I'm kicking myself that we didn't do this earlier. That said, fate had much to do with it. A good friend was selling her old one, and the price was too good to pass up! Anyway, part of the reason why this week is a little bon-appetempt lite is because we've been taking the camera out, learning the ropes, and even shot another fun video(!) that we hope to post soon. We hope you understand.

This week, I also sat down with the LA Times food blog and chatted about this almost three-year-old operation. You can check that out here.
So, if I had the day off, this is what I might do. Arrive at my friend's barbeque with a basket of raspberries, some tequila, orange juice, sparkling wine, and ask (quite politely): "Who is ready to gild the effing lily?"

Mi Rosa via Gourmet
1/4 cup rinsed drained picked-over fresh raspberries
1 oz (2 tablespoons) Tequila
1 teaspoon sugar
6 tablespoons fresh orange juice
6 tablespoons chilled Champagne or other sparkling wine

Garnish if desired: short-stemmed rosebud

In a blender blend raspberries, Tequila, and sugar until smooth and force through a fine sieve into a small bowl.

In a Champagne flute stir together orange juice and sparkling wine and add shaved ice to within 1/2 inch of rim. Carefully spoon raspberry mixture over ice and garnish with rosebud. Makes 1 drink.

Bittersweet Chocolate Pudding

2011-08-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

Sara Foster's Casual Cooking's version:

A friend of mine recently explained to me the simple manner in which she organizes the desktop on her computer. She has a scant three main file folders, curiously titled: Food, Body, and Play. I didn’t inquire about what she puts in the latter two, but the first one, Food, isn’t for what I would have guessed (recipes, food writing, images, PDFs of take-out menus, etc.). The folder is an umbrella for everything that fuels her—creatively, spiritually, and all of the other intangible ways us humans can be fed. Isn’t this the best idea you have ever heard of? After she told me this, I checked out my desktop and counted. I have 19 file folders—randomly titled from the discouraging “unfinished” to the slightly more hopeful “friends”—and 16 loose documents, apparently un-categorizable, scattered in no particular pattern.

Don’t you now want to completely reinvent your desktop and find your own three words? If so, what would they be? I’m still working on mine, though “Unfinished” is looking more and more like a final three possibility. I bring this up because I want to share with you what’s been feeding me this week—both literally and literarily.

1. NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett. Specifically, the episode, “Words that Shimmer.” And even more specifically, this poem, which I dare you to read aloud to yourself right now.

Kitchenette Building

by Gwendolyn Brooks

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,

Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong

Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

But could a dream send up through onion fumes

Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes

And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,

Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in,

Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,

Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!

Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,

We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

2. This chocolate pudding.

You know how sometimes food tastes better because you made it yourself? Well, I think this pudding tasted better because I didn’t make it. From start to finish, Matt made this one. All I had to do was eat it, gratefully and noisily—for some reason, I couldn’t eat a bite without making some weird, part-purring, part-snoring mmmm sound. Matt kept making fun of me. I laughed and then quickly resumed eat-growling. The pudding transcended spousal bickering—mmmm! It was so good.

Speaking of spousal bickering, check out what Matt bought recently via an antique online auction. Her name is Harriet. She hails from 1864. And if you have recently dined with us, she has definitely watched your every move.

Here's to being well fed!

Bittersweet Chocolate Pudding via Sara Foster's Casual Cooking
serves 6

6 ounces good-quality bittersweet chocolate (such as Scharffen Berger or Valrhona), finely chopped
2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons sugar
pinch of kosher or sea salt
4 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
whipped cream

Preheat the oven to 325. Place six 4-ounce ramekins on a rimmed baking sheet and set aside.

Melt the chocolate with 1/2 cup of the cream in the top of a double boiler over medium-low heat or in a metal bowl placed over (but not touching) simmering water, stirring occasionally. Remove the chocolate from the heat and stir until the mixture is smooth.

Bring the remaining 1 1/2 cups of cream to a simmer in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally, and simmer until the cream is scalded (a light skin will have formed on top). Stir in the sugar and salt, remove from the heat and continue stirring until the sugar dissolves.

Add the hot cream to the chocolate mixture and whisk until the mixture is smooth. Slowly whisk the egg yolks into the chocolate mixture, return the mixture to the double boiler, and cook it over low heat (the water should be simmering), stirring constantly for 3 to 4 minutes.

Pour the pudding into the ramekins, dividing it evenly. Cover each ramekin with foil and bake the puddings for 15 to 18 minutes, until the edges are slightly firm but the centers are still soft and jiggle when you shake the pan. Uncover the puddings and place them on a rack to cool for at least 1 hour. If serving warm, dollop the whipped cream on top of the pudding; otherwise, let the puddings cool completely, then cover and refrigerate them until ready to serve. Top with the whipped ream just before serving.

Going for What Hurts: Roast Chicken with Hot-Sauce Butter

2011-08-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

In late May, The New York Times ran an op-ed by Jonathan Franzen titled “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” I read it for the first time while on vacation a few weeks ago, and have been thinking about it ever since. I wanted to like the piece, but something was holding me back, and I wasn’t sure what. This week, I made roast chicken with hot-butter sauce and was finally able to articulate exactly what was bothering me about it…

Bon Appétit's version:

One of the titles for my friend’s as-yet unwritten memoir is Would It Kill You to Like My Link? I imagine the book cover—the author’s face smiling politely, her chin resting on her open palms—and I laugh, just as might any other warm-blooded, workaday Facebook user who has ever posted a link to the deafening silence of zero likes. But of course, that’s not the only reason I laugh. I laugh because it’s ridiculous, because most of us realize by now that the world doesn’t revolve around the status of our virtual walls, especially considering that more often than not, what we choose to put there—“Steve B. just checked in at Rite Aid.”—is hardly likable.

In Jonathan Franzen’s op-ed, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts,” Franzen cautions us against “the narcissistic tendencies of technology” in favor of good old-fashioned, all-consuming, three-dimensional love, and in so doing, takes particular aim at Facebook, where, he writes, “To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.” And where he also believes the verb “to like” has been transformed “from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice.”

And while part of me very much agrees that technology can act as a spoilsport to many of the things I hold dear—a deeper connection with other humans, patience, thoughtfulness, newspapers, magazines—and wants to knock on Franzen’s door (“Amelia Morris just checked in at Jonathan Franzen’s house”!) and shake his hand for calling us users and abusers out, the other part of me wants to shout, “Easy for you to say, Franzen!”

At the risk of exposing much of what I try to hide from the world, allow me to explain:

Of late, a seemingly harmless request from my employer sent me reeling down a dark path of job searches and career re-imaginings that included but weren’t limited to: massage therapy, how to acquire the necessary credentials to teach high school, and selling coins on the Internet. The request? They needed a photograph of me for their newly revamped website. I didn’t like the sound of it. I’ve basically avoided any kind of a real job with salary and benefits ever since I had one and quit it almost six years ago. And now, this job, which has been very good to me and fits my writerly life so well in so many ways, but which I’ve struggled with convincing myself doesn’t define me as a person, needed a photo of me in the workplace, ideally one that, upon looking at, represented my role in some way, shape or form.

Let’s first imagine Jonathan Franzen’s staff photo. I picture an image of a confident man, at home, sitting at his computer, typing. His computer sits on his desk, which faces a large window that allows light to stream in at all sorts of elegant angles. And if you look to the left of this window you can see, posted on his wall, a few letters and notes from some of his friends: Freedom was even better on the second read. –Salman; and Just send us whatever, whenever. –The New Yorker; and Look how far we’ve come! ;) –O., next to an Oprah Book Club Selection sticker.

As for my staff photo? I can tell you exactly what it looks like: an image of me trying to smile while silently repeating: This job doesn’t define you. This job doesn’t define you, against the backdrop of a wall of beautiful, Belgian linens.

See, it’s easier to tell yourself it’s just a part-time job to support your art when you aren’t having to pose for a photo that will be posted online in all of its bad lighting and fear-behind-the-eyes to indefinitely serve as proof that this is your day-to-day existence.

In the world of Facebook, however, that photo would have never made its way online. That photo is anathema to Facebook, because Facebook is our opportunity to present ourselves exactly as we’d like to be presented.

In his essay, “How to Make a Universe,” John Barth argues against the notion that an artist must fit into the bohemian hobo stereotype. He scoffs at the idea that great art can’t “come from a person who works decent hours for a decent wage and owns an automobile and supports a family.” He quotes a Thomas Mann story:

Do you want me to go about in a ragged velveteen jacket and a red waistcoat? Every artist is as bohemian as the deuce, inside! Let him at least wear proper clothes and behave outwardly like a respectable being.

And in this electronic age in which I’ve chosen to try to be, of all things, a novelist, I beg of you, Mr. Franzen: Don’t post that photo of me in the ragged velveteen jacket. Let me have some fun in this one space that I can control, huh? Let me trick the friends who haven’t seen me since high school and don’t know where I work. Let me amplify my small successes and occasional press. Let them think that the camera only captures me at my thinnest and prettiest. Not everything has to be so accurate, does it? Not everyone needs to know I watch Big Brother and play Can Knock Down late at night. In return, I promise to meditate in the morning and continue purchasing literary fiction at my local bookstore.

And as for the like button, in today’s world where most people’s first response is: No, or Double-Dip Recession, or You Need to Think about Having Kids Before Your Eggs Get Too Old, a little support and kindness goes a long way. It’s nice to post a link on your wall to something that’s moved you, or perhaps to something you’ve written, and the next day, see those little digital thumbs-up with a few of your friends’ names by it. Oh, you think to yourself. He or she likes that? And suddenly, you feel a bit better knowing you have connected with someone, albeit for a moment and on a superficial level, but it’s something, isn’t it? A friend liking another person’s link about the beauty and mystery of cephalopods can hardly be deemed an “assertion of consumer choice.” Can it, Mr. Franzen? I mean, honestly, would it kill you to like that link?

But let’s steer this ship in another direction for a few moments and talk about chicken and hot sauce—which, by the way, falls right in line with going for what hurts as I’m hard pressed to think of a physical action that better encompasses this notion than the halving and seeding of ten habanero chili peppers by hand.

Even wearing gloves, I couldn’t avoid the stinging heat of these tiny but potent peppers. My eyes watered and my throat itched, causing me to walk away from them in a coughing fit on more than one occasion. Once I got them puréed in the blender, I thought I was in the clear, but my gloved-habanero-ey hand must have touched a few things in the kitchen before I rinsed it off because a few minutes later, after I had scraped the mixture into a bowl, covered it with plastic wrap, and set it on the kitchen table to ferment for 12 hours, my index finger started to burn. It wasn’t unbearable by any means—not anything close to the time I seeded two jalapenos sans gloves—but just a subtle, painful message from the ten habaneros that they were not going quietly into the night.

I finished this step at 4pm and wasn’t about to set my alarm for 4am to move it from the counter to the refrigerator, so to be accurate, this mixture fermented for more like 15 hours. And to be even more accurate, our dinner plans changed, and we didn’t move on to the next step for a few more days. In other words, this is a resilient little mixture that you don’t have to rush.

So, when I finally got around to it, I went on to the next step: puréeing this mixture with the vinegar, remaining liqueur and salt. And again, I was reminded of who was in charge. I had the faintest of paper cuts on my finger, but those fermented habaneros managed to find it. And as my finger burned once more, I kept thinking: I can’t believe I’m going to ingest this.

However, after straining the mixture and simmering it and adding the butter, it really began to look and smell like something I wanted to eat, or at least, put on my food. It smelled shockingly spicy, yes, but it also smelled of oranges, vinegar, and butter. And as the chicken roasted away in the oven and the thermometer in our apartment rose to an uncomfortable 88 degrees, I knew there was nothing that was going to be more refreshing than this brightly colored blast of hot sauce, which by now was three days in the making.

And you know what? I was right. This sauce was one of the most flavorful items of food I’ve ever made from scratch. Matt—who is famous for having broken his four-year-long streak of vegetarianism with, of all things, hot wings, and who blames this moment of weakness on the unbeatable combination of Frank’s RedHot, butter, and chicken—concurs.

The sauce was hot, but, as suspected, the vinegar and butter rounded out the heat to perfection. Matt and I had put the sauce in one ramekin between us, but this turned out to be a big mistake as there was a constant, detour-less traffic jam at that poor lonely ramekin. We couldn’t get enough of it, taking the pieces of chicken and dunking them entirely into the Sunny D-colored jus. And what was even better? We have plenty left over for the rest of the week.

So, after all of this, what can we conclude here? For me, it’s this: my friends and I do (and will continue to) go for “what hurts.” We’ll continue to be inspired, to create, to put ourselves out there, to be rejected, and to do it all over again, because stopping isn’t really an option. We’re not paid, so we create what we want. We have fun doing it. And though we may not have a platform like, say, the The New York Times to express ourselves and share our ideas, we have created and found other ways to connect. We have our blogs, we have email, and yes, we have Facebook. The support and exchange of work from like-minded friends sustains our creative impulses and also serves as the reward to a job well done, story well told, and meal well cooked. So yeah, we like each others’ links. Perhaps that doesn't mean anything to some people, but for me, it's a move away from cynicism and towards embracing the struggle. And I would say there’s nothing cowardly about that.

But what do you think, readers? I’d love to hear from you.

Roast Chicken with Hot-Sauce Butter via Bon Appetit
Recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Dan Kluger

Ingredients
3 ounces orange Scotch bonnet or habanero chiles (about 10)
1 orange bell pepper, halved, seeded, coarsely chopped
4 1x3" strips orange zest
4 tablespoons St-Germain liqueur, divided (I substituted Grand Marnier.)
2 tablespoons kosher salt, divided, plus more for seasoning
1 garlic clove, smashed
1 cup Champagne vinegar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened, divided
1 3-pound chicken, cut into 4 pieces, backbone removed
Freshly ground black pepper

Preparation
Wearing gloves, halve and seed chiles. Purée chiles, pepper, zest, 2 tablespoons liqueur, 1 tablespoon salt, and garlic in a blender. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let ferment at room temperature for 12 hours.

Purée chile mixture in a blender with vinegar, remaining 2 tablespoons liqueur, and remaining 1 tablespoon salt until smooth. Set a fine-mesh strainer over a small saucepan. Strain mixture, pressing on solids. Heat hot sauce over medium heat. Stir cornstarch and 2 teaspoons water in a small bowl until smooth. Whisk cornstarch mixture into hot sauce. Simmer, whisking constantly, until thickened, about 2 minutes. Whisk in 3 tablespoons butter. Season to taste with salt. Keep warm.

Preheat oven to 450°. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon butter in a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Cook chicken, skin side down, until golden, about 5 minutes. Turn chicken and cook 6 minutes. Remove breasts from pan and transfer to a plate. Place skillet in oven and roast legs for 12 minutes. Return breasts to skillet; roast legs until legs and breasts are cooked through, about 10 minutes longer. Serve with hot-sauce butter.

White Gazpacho & Yogurt and Berry Mexican Ice Pops

2011-08-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

Our version above.

Tartine's version below:

Sometimes—No—a lot of times in life, I fail to see the forest for the trees. This is especially true when it comes to following recipes. And actually, I think this is one of the reasons I was so drawn to cooking in the first place, because, with all of the specific steps—the precise measurements and directions inherent to most recipes—it’s practically encouraged to lose yourself amidst the perfect execution of details and forget the endgame entirely.

Well, this—let’s call it my natural predilection—really caused this white gazpacho to go from what could’ve been a simple summer soup into a messy, complicated afternoon in the kitchen. This particularly stung as I was having friends over for dinner and thought I had planned the perfect no-stress summer menu: white gazpacho, Pizzeria Mozza pizza delivered to the apartment, and paletas de yogurt con moras (yogurt and berry Mexican ice pops) that I had made the previous day.

Little did I know that I went off the no-stress path with the very first step to the gazpacho, which was to add almonds and garlic to a pot of boiling water and cook for 2 minutes. Had I been thinking of the larger picture, the fact that I was going to be puréeing these almonds down to a soup with the consistency of heavy cream, I would have erred on the side of boiling longer than 2 minutes to ensure that the almonds had softened up enough for quality puréeing. Unfortunately, and without the guide of a kitchen timer, I placed the emphasis on making sure I didn’t go over 2 minutes.

Once I moved on to the puréeing step, the repercussions of this too-quick bath in boiling water made itself extremely known. In short, my purée equaled a grainy mixture the consistency of hummus that would barely and only after much effort and coaxing find its way through my strainer. What ensued was a solid hour of re-blending with more water and oil and then re-straining. Many times during this hour, I contemplated giving up the straining part altogether, but if you’ve ever had an almond smoothie that has left little almond bits on your tongue and you didn’t enjoy that aspect of the smoothie, you would agree that the mixture needed to be strained. In short, what I’m trying to tell you is: let those almonds boil for at least 2 minutes. They want to boil for longer than two minutes. So just let them.

After I recovered from this step (I recommend a hike or yoga session.), the rest, the red gazpacho garnish, was a breeze; and the combination of the soup and garnish, which you must serve ice cold, was brilliant—super refreshing, delicious, and beautiful.

The paletas, too, make quite a first impression. And as for their process, it couldn’t have been more opposite from the white gazpacho. The recipe called for “blackberries, or the berry of your choice.” So, in keeping with the white-and-red food theme of the night, we chose strawberries. Lies! We just had strawberries on hand.

I’m not sure what the weather’s like where you, dear readers, currently reside, but in Los Angeles, it’s still heating up (so much so that we’re back to using the blow-up mattress in the living / air-conditioned room). And September and October are typically hot and dry months for us here, so these paletas haven’t seen the last of me. As for the soup, I’d absolutely love some right now, but I may need some more time to heal before we face off again.
White Gazpacho adapted from Tartine Bread

for white gazpacho:
2 pounds raw almonds (skin off if you really want them white and don't want the hassle of having to take the skin off.)
2 cloves garlic
4 slices of 1/2 inch thick day-old bread
6 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup olive oil
1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice

for red gazpacho garnish:
2 cups cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 English cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper

To make the white gazpacho, bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the almonds and garlic and cook for at least 2 minutes. Drain. If you want a pure white gazpacho, remove the skins from the almonds when they are cool enough to handle and trim the crusts from the bread. (Removing the skins from almonds can be particularly tedious. You may want to instead, as previously mentioned, buy almonds with the skins already off.)

Transfer half of the almonds and garlic to a blender. Add half of the bread and water, along with the salt. Blend on high speed until the mixture is thick and smooth. Add half of the oil and blend again. Pass the gazpacho through a strainer into a large bowl. Repeat with the remaining almonds, garlic, bread, water, and oil. Stir in the vinegar and lemon juice. The gazpacho should have the consistency of heavy cream. Stir in more water if it is too thick. Season with salt if needed. Chill the soup in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 hours.

To make the garnish, in a bowl, combine the tomatoes and cucumber. Stir in the olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. To serve, spoon the cold white gazpacho into shallow bowls and top with a few spoonfuls of the red gazpacho.

For paletas recipe, click here!

Guest Attempt: To Catch a Leprechaun

2011-08-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers: Let it be known that I'm not solely interested in guest posts from friends making rainbow-centric cakes. I swear, it's just a coincidence! In fact, as you'll see, the impetus behind these various rainbow-themed cakes couldn't be more different. In short, I'm so very excited to bring you this guest attempt from my good friend Kara who happens to also be the author of one of my most favorite blogs.

***

The Envy
When I first saw the Leprechaun Trap Cake on Not Martha, I made brutal fun of it. Boy, does someone need to get laid! I thought. I joked in this way to Amelia, and thought more and more about the cake.

Not Martha's version:

photos via Not Martha

And then it happened—that thing that always happens when I am making fun of someone else's creation: I realize that I am envious. I want to make Leprechaun Trap Cakes. I want a job where I can make anything I want. I want to play so abundantly, detailishly, and colorfully, especially in my kitchen.

The Humbling
It happened on a trip to Alaska with my husband. We were traveling with his parents for two weeks, joined by his brother and brother's wife for one of those. We stayed in exquisite summer cabins, zapped mosquitoes with electronic wands, goofed off with sea otters, and generally explored all you have heard about Alaska: its wild, pristine loveliness, its lack of supermarkets, its mountains-meet-the-sea, Holy Bananas, This Is Our Country?-ness. It was epic—in a quiet sort of way. The way you know when you've met someone you will love forever, but it will be months or years until you can tell him so.

I am not finished with Alaska. I just don't know when we will see each other again.

That is neither here nor there, except that, sometimes, you DON'T know when you've met someone you will love forever. They sneak up on you. Like a leprechaun.

On a particularly stormy-inside, drizzly grey-outside day in the middle of our trip, we drove through a valley called Hatcher's Pass. Hatcher's Pass made everyone think of Ireland, though none of us had been there before. It looked just like the Ireland we all carried in our souls, from a combination of National Geographic photos, mysterious Celtic lineage, or, perhaps more truthfully, Far and Away.

In any case, I was bored and cranky, crunched up in the backseat. I was typing on my laptop—in Alaska! I know, I know, but I can only ride in a car for so many hours without absolutely going out of my mind. It has to do with private head-space, I think. Or control. It's not totally attractive. But I have learned over the years, and dozens of road trips with my husband, to accept it, to plug in the headphones, and go to work. It is better to deal with looking like a workaholic, or to actually be a workaholic, than to throw a tantrum.

So there I was in the backseat, typing away. I was hoping to stay sane, and also, record different ways to develop my creative ideas when I got back home. (One of the biggest boons to vacation, which should be put into Amelia's commercial, is getting fresh ideas for stuck projects waiting back at home.) In the middle of all this brainstorming, I looked out the window at a rain-slick rock nestled into a bunker of moss. I knew then and there that I could not deny my fascination with the Leprechaun Trap Cake any longer. The message was clear, taunting me from a nook behind that glistening rock: I must heed the call and attempt to catch my own leprechaun. And I must do it swiftly, upon my return home, and I must do it with cake.

The Reality (Or, My Continued Struggle To Make Sense of My Desires, And Respect the Wisdom of Their Spontaneous Appearances)
Once I decided to make this cake, I had to confront two issues:

1. I radically cut sugar from my diet in July, after a three-week cleanse that eliminated indecision, depression, and melancholy from my life entirely. Was I really about to dedicate a day or more to crafting something invented to house sugar; voluntarily make electric green icing without the excuse of throwing a child’s birthday party; and serve this creation to myself and others I love, knowing how sugar sucker-punches the digestive system?

2. I did not own an Angel Food Cake pan, nor did I want to own one. But a Bundt Cake Pan was clearly not going to suffice—I had seen the wobbly rainbows produced by such a pan. And if catching a leprechaun is the goal, the integrity of the rainbow inside the cake could not be compromised. I was obsessed by its vibrancy in Not Martha's version. And rainbows always remind me of the chakra system—one color for each of the chakras, starting with red at the root.

With issue Number 1, I decided that anything themed around a vibrant rainbow could not be all bad. Besides, I didn't have to eat it. I could just make it and celebrate it—freaky icing and all—and go about my merry way, tra la la.

With issue Number 2, I had to confront the weird thing I do when I pit creative urges against practical reasoning, which in this case manifested itself in price-comparing the varieties of Angel Food Cake pans for a week, trolling thrift stores to find a cheap one (thus justifying my weird urge to make a cake I do not want to eat), and poll relatives and neighbors (who I don’t know) whether anyone has an AFC pan I could borrow.

What a surprise! They did not.

I knew they would not. I knew I needed to buy one, if I had a chance of making such a perfect rainbow cake as Not Martha’s. But first, I had to struggle. I think this relates to a perverted attachment to drama, at least, Home Economically-leaning, Kara versus The World drama, which plays itself out in unnecessary ways a hundred times a day. I also think I get confused by my husband's upbringing, which prized frugality. I grew up in a different way—a way I think is fair to say prized aesthetics as much as anything else. When I try to play by the Midwestern customs I married into, I get poor results, like the time I borrowed my best friend's sneakers to run the mile in fourth grade, because they were supposed to be more aerodynamic. If I had just stuck to my own ways, I might have been fine. But I like to experiment. And sometimes, that creates confusion and a little discomfort. And then sometimes, it makes me finish dead last.

If we could all call this habit to explode little details into paralyzing life decisions a facet of the novelist in me, that would be awesome. Thanks.

The Reckoning (Or, How I Discovered For the One Millionth Time That Recipes Are Cool, and, How I Discovered That Sugar Is A Hot Lover, Good For Occasional Romps, But I'm Looking For A Better Man)

When I purchased the food coloring for this cake, my mouth went dry and my palms itched. I was so close to the rainbow, my adrenaline started pumping. Next, I looked up recipes.

Because I had invited my vegan friend for dinner, I decided to bake a vegan version of the cake. How hard could it be? I had baked vegan things before. They were all edible. Some were even fantastic. So I plunged ahead with flippant confidence, forgetting one thing about vegan cakes.

Naively clearing just one afternoon for this cake, I began. The vegan recipes I pulled from the Internet were so mediocre that I hesitate to include them here. Instead, I say: pick your favorite vanilla cake recipe, and Magnolia Bakery’s frosting recipe, and go to town. Double the cake recipe for a taller, possibly more rewarding cake.

I sifted flour with the other dry ingredients, and combined liquid ingredients in a separate bowl. As I prepared to add the liquid ingredients to the dry ones, I realized with a sinking feeling why I should have dug further into the website for a proper cake recipe. That was, simply: vinegar. Vinegar, often the final ingredient to vegan baked goods, catalyses the rising agents in baking powder and soda, standing in for the job eggs normally perform in veganless baking. Ideally, one adds vinegar seconds before putting a cake in the oven. But I had to separate the batter before pouring it into the pan, in order to create the different rainbow colors. Shee-it.

Luckily, I have vague ambitions of having a home apothecary someday and snatch whatever eyedroppers cross my path. I added all the ingredients I could without the vinegar, then separated the batter and created my rainbow colors. (The cake recipe I used called for 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract, which I happily added, not thinking of how it would make my batter beige, and thus affect the coloring process. After all, what painters start with a beige canvas? I suggest keeping the extract at a strict teaspoon if your recipe calls for it, or substituting seeds from a vanilla bean, and amping up the food coloring until the colors of your various batters really pop.)

Finally, I added the vinegar by drops to whatever color I needed to pour in next, moments before I poured it. It was sort of tedious, but also sort of the most exciting part of the whole day. Excitement around eyedroppers bodes well for a future apothecary, no?

I baked the cake, took it out, and stared at the hot pink blob that should have been blood red. I was slightly disappointed but since Rome was not built in a day (something I sadly often forget), I moved on. I cooled the cake on a rack and made the icing. I was both mesmerized by the bright green possibilities for the icing, and certain I needed a way around using a pastry bag. I settled on the old coconut trick my mom used for our birthday cakes growing up and dyed a bowlful of shaved coconut by soaking it in tinted water. (This water leered at me from the corner of the counter, growing scarier and blobbier by the hour, by the way. I only had the courage to use it because of my husband's assurance that it would not, in fact, bite me.)

Making the icing proper, I lamented the gobs of powder sugar required for icing and felt how permanent—or grave—the changes in my diet had become. I was actually dreading eating this cake.

I set cake efforts aside and embraced making real food for my friend who was coming to dinner. I was beginning to regret spending so much time on something that was going to turn my mouth weird colors, and not even really feed me. I hesitate to write this on a food blog at all, because I believe in all food as nutrition, and am uncomfortable labeling anything as bad. But balance is the goal here, for me anyway. After many decades of being somewhat addicted to sugar, I am taking a step back. So that I can return to our relationship someday, with appreciation and see all the ways we were there for each other. Remember all those slushies? Fourth of July cakes with fresh blueberries? What about that night you went skinny dipping with friends? Surely that was a sugar-addled decision! Etc, etc. However, I am in my Please-Don't-Call-Me phase with sugar right now. I just need a break.

There is this incredible essay in a collection called (somewhat ludicrously) Roar Softly And Carry a Great Lipstick: 28 Women Writers on Life, Sex, and Survival. The essay, by Anne Lamott, is about drinking and getting sober. The essay's main action takes place on a day that the author was still drinking and follows her mind as she justifies all kinds of drinking as part of her plan to get sober.

I think that making this cake might have been my flirtation with that same kind of thinking: how far do I want to take this new resolve towards health? What are the ways I can tempt fate?

After a satisfying dinner (toasted walnut mushroom burgers, corn on the cob), my friend and husband and I assembled the rest of the cake. At this point, I needed serious reinforcements, because I was in a spiritual tailspin and our un-air-conditioned house hovered around ninety degrees. Our one box fan whirred behind us as I delegated every task I could, yelling out encouragements like, Come on, team! Almost there!

My friend wrapped gold foil around quarters that my husband had reluctantly lent for this project and only agreed to do so if I returned them upon completion. My husband took photographs of the finished cake, growing as obsessed with this task as I had been with recreating the vibrant rainbow. I carpeted the cake with coconut. The ladder was ready (built out of pretzels and—cheat alert!—craft glue). Finally, I drew the crucial sign, advertising the gold a leprechaun might find in the center of our cake.

Presto! A Leprechaun Trap Cake. Nothing to it. I swear.

The Wrap-Up
In the end, I believe that all situations are neutral. It is our relationship to them that defines them and empowers our relationships to ourselves. I was once introduced in a lecture on Buddhism to the idea that everything we experience right now builds on what has come before it. I thought of this often, when I met my husband. I was in a draining relationship I desperately wanted to end at the time, and did not know how to do it. Whenever I am tempted to curse the days I spent in that dead-end, I am able to see the blessings of its occurrence: the ways that being unhappy prepared me for my recognition of profound love and the ways that I was still becoming the woman my husband was to meet in those times I felt unhappy.

Making this cake was a little like that. Over the past two years since finishing graduate school, I have simplified my ambitions in profound ways. Spending so much time on this cake, something I didn't really believe in—other than ironically, or competitively—was a gift of awakening, highlighting what activities I do care about and showing me that I don't enjoy messing around anymore in areas I don't care about. It was also a way to rediscover the happiness that I have built without loads of sugar in my diet. I missed the emotional equilibrium and mental clarity I had come to depend upon and recognized its departure as soon as I finished a solitary piece of the (somewhat oily, too-sweet, but very colorful) cake.

It feels a little weird to report on the experiment in this way. I feel a little traitorous, especially imagining all the beautiful treats that you, talented readers, are making. All the berries going into festive pies. All the birthdays celebrated with cake and skinny dipping. But I feel like I need to tell the truth, as soberly as possible, in order to come to terms with the social culture around certain foods and my own relationship to that culture, or those foods, and learn to accept that something beautiful in my mind may not feed my body as well. Sometimes a picture works as well as the real thing. Like in love, sometimes it is healing just to flirt for a night, or a season. (This is one of the miracles of fiction.) Other times, it is good to marry that love—to play games through its grace for as long as possible. The gift in this life is the chance to discover that knife's edge of difference, to navigate by our own gut reactions. Literally. Profoundly. And, ultimately, without remorse.

To your own awakening,
Kara

St. Michaels, Maryland: Part 2

2011-07-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

"If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting." - Kent Nerburn on traveling from Letters to my Son

For someone who begins the first moments of every morning with a bowl of Barbara’s brand cereal with original-flavored almond milk followed by a cup of strong coffee, mildly diluted with half and half and sugar, I can speak candidly about finding comfort in routine. And while I love to travel, I am also shamefully famous for on-the-road food-related tantrums like the time I woke up at a bed and breakfast in Ojai to discover that no breakfast basket had arrived at the door like it had the previous morning at eight o’clock sharp. I thought perhaps the breakfast folks were running late, so while Matt tried to sleep, I anxiously waited for thirty minutes before finally calling the front desk, only to receive the information that they delivered complimentary breakfasts on the weekend, and since it was Monday, there would be no breakfast. What did that even mean—there would be no breakfast? At this, I took the next logical step. I ran and leapt into the air, throwing myself in what Matt describes as a sloppy, swan dive onto the bed and buried my face in the pillow in such dramatic fashion that the memory of it still makes him laugh. Needless to say, driving across the country with me was also difficult on him. A scene at the Hampton Inn in Flagstaff comes to mind. No skim milk? Excuse me while I go upstairs and destroy my hotel room.

But despite securing my breakfast staples at the beginning of this week’s vacation on the Chesapeake—“I’ll go to the grocery store! I don’t mind!”—I couldn’t help but feel hyper aware of all the ways that my world in this giant city of Los Angeles has indeed become very small. Starting with the east coast humidity. I grew up on the east coast and go home at least once a year but how quickly do I forget about that thick, hot air that kind of just lands on your skin and stays there indefinitely?

Then there were all the conversations and catching up at the wedding with all of Matt’s and my distant relatives we rarely get to see and whose lives are so rich and so different from ours. Speaking of different than ours, there was a smattering of b-a-b-i-e-s. While in Philadelphia for the wedding, I met up with my best friend from college who I hadn’t seen in over a year and who had just had her second baby a mere ten days earlier. It was so wonderful to see how she hasn’t changed a bit yet has this entire beautiful family at the same time. And then, we spent the week with our adorable nephew (whose toe point is highlighted in Part 1 of this wrap-up) and super cute niece, Isabel, who, plain as the eye can see, took to her aunt quite naturally.

I did, however, feel instantly comfortable in the enormous kitchen with the Viking range, granite countertops and dishwasher. So much so that when Matt and I left for the grocery store on the last day of vacation to shop for ingredients for dinner that night, we had only a vague game plan as to what we would make. We’d had the most amazing grilled rockfish at a local restaurant the previous night so we thought we might attempt that. If they had oysters, we thought we could grill those. Basically, we were very into the idea of grilling something, but we were comfortable with not knowing what that would be exactly. But then we arrived at Captain’s Ketch and the fresh jumbo lump crabmeat and the idea of some classic Maryland crab cakes called to us. (We would’ve had to catch a lot of crab to have acquired enough crabmeat to make one crab cake let alone enough to feed the seven of us.)

And so we returned home very nourished and with the edge back on our experiences—at least for the time being. We got in really late last Saturday night without enough energy to pick up either cereal or almond milk. Fortunately for everyone though, we did have some oatmeal and somehow, I managed to keep it together.

Crab Cakes adapted from recipe by Paula Deen
serves 8

2 pounds jumbo lump crabmeat
6 to 8 crackers, crushed
4 scallions (green and white parts), finely chopped
2-3 tablespoons of chives, finely chopped
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 egg
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon salt
fresh ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon seafood seasoning (The house came equipped with this tub of seasoning, which we taste-tested and feel semi-confident in saying that it was probably a mix of salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and cayenne.)
tartar sauce, for serving
olive oil

Directions
In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except olive oil. Shape into patties. (We found that the smaller the patties, the more manageable they were to flip and keep from falling apart. I’d say to aim for a size slightly smaller than an English muffin.)

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When oil is hot, carefully place crab cakes, in batches, in pan and fry until browned, about 4 to 5 minutes. Carefully flip crab cakes and fry on other side until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Serve warm with tartar sauce.

St. Michaels, Maryland: Part 1

2011-07-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

In terms of feeling better about life in general, let's face it, vacation works. So much so that I’d like to shoot a commercial for it. It'd be like one of those psuedo-spiritual, super general ads you watch and aren’t sure what’s being pitched until the very end when white letters appear over a calm scene and spell out Nike. Or Cotton. Or Cialis. But at the end of my commercial, that word would be vacation.
This vacation began with a wedding. These guys below? Why, they're the Manhattan boys, of course, pictured clutching their signature drink, The Manhattan.
The following morning it was onward and eastward to St. Michaels, Maryland where we would be staying for the week in a beautiful house sitting on a 160 acre farm on the Chesapeake Bay.

(This is what humidity looks like.)

When the owner of the house stopped by to show us how to use the fairly intense stereo system, he told us that he'd built the house so that the front faced the bay. Matt took the below photo from a kayak-in-motion. The place could probably be described as pretty, no?

Being on the Chesapeake, I had major designs on a crab-related attempt. In fact, that's what I'm thinking about here in my temporary Ina Garten-esque kitchen. So when the owner also told us about the crab pots at the end of our dock, Matt and my heads nearly exploded. You have what now? Tell us more. This sounds like a job for the Manhattan boys. Do you have bitters and a jigger of vermouth?

We quickly learned the ropes of dockside crabbing. Step 1: Purchase chicken necks. Step 2: Fill the pots with our newly acquired chicken necks. Step 3: Give the pots an overnight soak. Step 4: Check the pots early in the morning for terrapins. If you see a terrapin, set it free. No questions asked. Step 5: If you see crabs, grab them with gloved hands and put them in a green bucket, filled with bay water. Also, by no means kick in more than two pots—each dock is allowed two, any more and the professional crabbers will come by and cut your ropes!
This next part was the trickiest. We had to kill them. David Foster Wallace's essay, "Consider the Lobster" immediately came to mind. Namely, the part where he asks: "Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" Well, having been firmly faced with this task for the first time in my life, I can tell you that it certainly didn't feel all right, which is strange for any number of reasons, but particularly so considering that just the other week I basked in the retelling of the deliciousness of linguine and clams—fundamental to which, is the killing of live clams.

A few pages later, however, Foster Wallace offers this: "The whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it's also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing." And see, that's the problem with a live crab or lobster. The fact that they are moving and you are the one that is going to stop them from moving ever again makes this notion of you as a cruel or unfeeling person unavoidable. But if we want to eat them, we should, at least in some circumstances, be able to deal with this unpleasantness. Otherwise, we shouldn't be eating them at all, right?

In the end, we killed them. They didn't move around for long. And yes, they were delicious. And yes, it feels wrong to say that. However, I feel I've made some awkward strides in the never-ending journey of understanding the food I eat and where it comes from and tried my best to honor the lives of those blue crabs. Now, can we please talk about the corn? Oh, the corn! The Mexican-style roasted corn! I loved it so much.

There were so many reasons to love this corn. For starters, there was no moral dilemma tied to it. Secondly, it was covered in mayonnaise and topped with cheese, cilantro, chile powder, and lime juice. It was both indulgent and fresh-tasting at the same time, and our amazingly cute nephew, Henry, unexpectedly boasted a perfect toe point during the grilling process.

So much more to come. Stay tuned for St. Michaels, Maryland: Part 2!

Mexican-Style Roasted Corn via Saveur
serves 4

4 large ears corn, with husks still attached
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 cups crumbled cotija cheese (We substituted shredded cheddar.)
4 tbsp. minced fresh cilantro
4 tsp. ancho chile powder
Kosher salt and freshly ground black
pepper, to taste
1 lime, cut into four wedges

1. Working with one ear of corn at a time, peel back the husks to expose the kernels, leaving husks attached at the base; remove the silk threads and tie husks together with kitchen twine around base of cob to form a handle. Repeat with remaining ears. (We didn't do this step and it turned out all right.) Transfer corn to a large bowl or pot of water and let soak for 30 minutes. FYI: this includes the husks! (We only soaked the corn and the husks kept catching fire on the grill.)

2. Build a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill or heat a gas grill over medium-high heat. Transfer corn to grill; cook, turning occasionally, until charred and cooked through, about 20 minutes. Remove corn from grill and brush with mayonnaise. Place cheese on a plate and roll each ear of corn in cheese to coat. Sprinkle corn evenly with some of the cilantro, chile powder, and salt and pepper, pressing the corn so that seasonings and cheese will adhere to the mayonnaise. Serve with lime wedges.

Summer Pudding

2011-07-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

We're traveling, dear readers! We're on the east coast for a beautiful wedding that took place last night and now we have a week with our family at the Chesapeake Bay. And while it's only the end of our first day here, I already know that it's going to be a spectacular week. How do I know this? Because I can feel the stress leaving my body—and even see traces of it gone from my face. Because I was relaxed enough to have a beer with my lunch. Because I was relaxed enough to leave my cell phone at the house while we grocery shopped. Because I have checked my email only a handful of times since we left on Saturday. (That's a lie. I'm sure I've checked it thirty times or so, but it feels like a handful.) Because I prioritized reading the short story from this week's New Yorker instead of the nonfiction like I usually do. Because right now, I'm about to publish this post without having edited it half as much as I normally do.

The only minor glitch in this whole scenario is that before I left town I forgot to take a photo of Ina's version of this summer pudding, and I really wanted to show it to you as it's clearly the most beautiful dessert in the world. And well, our version doesn't quite do it justice.

our version:

photo by Sean Moe

For one, I didn't cut the crusts off the bread as directed. I thought leaving them on might add for a more interesting texture. I was wrong. The texture was virtually the same throughout so all this really did was make it look less pretty once it was unmolded. And secondly, I didn't fully saturate the bread with all of the berry juice. Thus, those non-purple spots above there.

I could have fully saturated the bread, but I was greedy. See, we were taking the larger summer pudding to our friends house for dinner and I wanted to make a couple of individual-sized ones to leave at home in case we ate it all and, God forbid, Matt and I were left Summer Pudding-less the following night.

above two photos by Sean Moe

Two aspects really made this dish go from standard-delicious to over-the-top amazing. The first is the rum whipped cream. The second is the temperature outside versus the temperature of the pudding. We ate this refreshing, ice cold pudding on one of those hot Los Angeles afternoons that have the ability of turning our old 1920s-era apartment buildings and houses into tropical havens of hot air. For posterity, it should probably also be noted that we enjoyed it after a few plates of food that looked like this:

Oh, and the following night, the mini version didn't let us down either.

My suggestion: make this today. (It won't be ready until tomorrow, but it's so worth it.) See you after vacation!

UPDATE: For the slaw component from the above taco photos, click here. For the rest of the recipe, check back. I'll post it as soon as possible!

Summer Pudding via Barefoot Contessa Family Style
ingredients
1 pint fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 half-pints fresh raspberries, divided
2 half-pints fresh blueberries
2 tablespoons framboise (raspberry brandy)
1 loaf brioche or egg bread (1 to 1 1/2 pounds)

directions
Combine the strawberries, sugar, and 1/4 cup of water in a medium saucepan and cook uncovered over medium-low heat for 5 minutes. Add 2 half-pints of raspberries and all the blueberries and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture reaches a simmer. Cook for one minute. Off the heat, stir in the remaining raspberries and the framboise.

Slice the bread in 1/2-inch-thick slices and remove the crusts. In the bottom of a 7 1/2-inch round by 3-inch high souffle or baking dish, ladle about 1/2 cup of the cooked berry mixture. Arrange slices of bread in a pattern (this will become the top when it's unmolded) and then add more berry mixture to saturate. Continue adding bread, cutting it to fit the mold, and berries. Finish with bread and cooked berries, using all of the fruit and syrup.

Place a sheet of plastic wrap loosely over the pudding. Find a plate approximately the same diameter as the inside of the mold and place it on top. Weight the mold with a heavy can and refrigerate. Remove the weight after 6 to 8 hours. Cover the pudding with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Just before serving, run a knife around the outside of the pudding and unmold it upside down onto a serving plate. Serve in wedges with rum whipped cream.

Rum Whipped Cream:
1 cup (1/2 pint) cold heavy cream
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon dark rum

Whip the cream in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. When it starts to thicken, add the sugar, vanilla, and rum. Continue to whip until it forms stiff peaks. Serve cold.

Bon Appetempt on Saveur's Sites We Love!

2011-07-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm interrupting the Robyn love-fest with a bit of exciting news: Saveur has included this little space as a site they love in part of an ongoing series aptly titled Sites We Love. It's a great series that has profiled some of my favorite food bloggers. Please check out my interview HERE! But first, let me thank you... Thank you so very much for the recent and not so recent outpouring of love and support! Also thank you to the online team at Saveur. They are seriously the best when it comes to recognizing us bloggers.

p.s. Saveur needed a bio photo. Here are two that Matt and I found that didn't quite make the cut.

By the way, who's that woman on the super serious headphone tour?

Oh, it's my mom.

Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend"

2011-07-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

How else to explain this week's post other than the fact that I couldn't get this music video out of my head? I kept watching it over and over again until eventually I found myself emailing my friends sentences like: "I want to bon appetempt this video." And I guess when you say this kind of thing to people who happen to be talented and hilarious go-getters that will also allow you to take over a room of their house for the afternoon, borrow their clothes, and helpfully shout directions at you while you dance, the below happens—the below being Bon Appetempt's first music video.

Robyn's version:

my version:

Many many thanks to Heather, Jeana, and Brad for what was easily one of the most fun afternoons I've had in a long time. Let's do it again sometime?

Linguine with Clams

2011-07-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

For the most part, the recipes I share here are one-offs—I try the recipe, photograph the process, eat the results, write all about it, and then rarely, if ever, make it again. So, given the fact that I made this pasta for the first time months ago and have made it three times since, I had to ask myself: why oh why have I not shared this one already? Or, as Matt put it: “You must really have something against this delicious meal, huh?”

But I don’t. It’s my current favorite make-at-home dinner. So, what’s the hold up? Well, I got it from GOOP—Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle site. And thus, to write about this recipe, I would have to tackle the trifecta that is Gwyneth, GOOP, and her new cookbook, which seems to bring out strong opinions in people. And not only did I find myself lacking anything remarkable to contribute to this discussion, I realized that Gwyneth just doesn’t get me talking people’s ears off like other topics do. Other topics, like, say, Hunger Games or the amazing music coming out of Sweden or the inconsistencies between how the producers of The Bachelorette handled the whole Bentley thing versus the way they handled that woman who got kicked off The Bachelor for allegedly flirting with one of the producers (so lame!).

That said, I think I have a couple of things to share that we can all agree on.
1. GOOP gave me free access to an inspiring Mario Batali recipe I would have otherwise had to pay for, and a recipe that has since made its way into my weekday life, which is basically, as previously discussed, the best case scenario in new recipe-testing, and that is pretty cool.
2. Gwyneth’s hair is pretty.

If you’ve never purchased live clams before, I can understand the hesitation, but guess what? Prior to this, I hadn’t either. And now that I’ve purchased them on four separate occasions, please allow me to share my experience-based knowledge. For starters, the recipe calls for “small clams, such as Manila, or cockles,” but my local grocery store only had littlenecks, a.k.a. larger clams. (The descriptor littleneck simply refers to a clam’s size—not an area on the east coast lousy with clams or something like that, which is what I previously thought.) And the first time I bought these littlenecks, I did just as the recipe told me and bought one pound. Guess how many littlenecks were in one pound? Five. Kind of a bummer, which brings us to my next tip: Get more than a pound if you’re buying littlenecks and would like to serve people more than one clam.

Once you’re home, give these clams a nice rinse and a bit of a scrub. This gets the dirt and/or sand off and can actually be kind of nice because it might remind you of where they came from—Whole Foods! (Just kidding, the correct answer is the ocean floor.) If any of them are slightly open, give those ones a little tap and kindly ask them to close on up. If they do, they’re good to go. If not, you must toss them and hopefully not be down to four total clams.

Once everything is prepped, this meal comes together really quickly. And if all goes well, the result should look something like this:

Don’t even think of forgetting or skimping on the parsley. It makes the dish.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is: Thanks for the recipe, Gwyneth and Mario! The three of us should all hang out again soon, yeah? xoxo

Linguine Con Le Vongole / Linguine with Clams via Goop / Mario Batali
Serves: 4-6
1 pound dried linguine
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1 pound small clams, such as Manila, or cockles, scrubbed
1 tablespoon red chile flakes (optional)
1 cup dry white wine
1 bunch Italian parsley
3 tablespoons Kosher salt

Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil. Salt the water. Drop the linguine into the boiling water.

While pasta cooks, make the sauce. In a 12- to 14-inch sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the sliced garlic.

Cook the garlic until it's fragrant. Before the garlic gets too brown, add in the clams. Add the chili flakes and white wine. Cover the pan and cook until the clams steam open.

While cooking, coarsely chop parsley, including stems.

Drain the linguine when it is one minute short of the cooking time on the package instructions and put it in the sauté pan with the clams. Toss the pasta in the pan to allow it to absorb the broth.

Remove any unopened clams. Add parsley and toss together. Serve the pasta. Finish with a pinch of chiles.

English Muffin Week

2011-06-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

In the indoor cycling (a.k.a. spinning) class I attend with great fervor and cult-like loyalty, there is a saying: "Every bike is different," which refers to the fact that some days you might have the tension on your bike turned up four revolutions before you hit your wall and some days only two because, literally, every bike is different, and what matters isn't necessarily the number of turns on your bike but rather the idea of listening to your body to ensure you are neither taking the easy way out nor setting yourself up to fail. But sneakily and over time, the saying has made its way into my everyday, non-spinning life, morphing and twisting itself to apply to any situation where you encounter others going about things differently than how you might—be it your grandma, friend, coworker or the writers of a critically-acclaimed television show. (Specifically, those of the finale episode of The Killing.) An example of this in action might look like:
"I can't believe they just did that!"
"Every bike is so different."

All of this is to say that this week I was sick. My appetite was off. And "listening to my body" led me down a strange path of consecutive English muffin-based meals. With that, I bring you: The evolution of being sick as portrayed by variations on the English muffin. Fair warning: Every bike is different.

Day one:

Butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

Day Two:

Apricot jam and peanut butter.

Day Three (getting more curious):

Nutella and bananas with a side of Emergen-C.

Day Four:

Poached egg and sautéed spinach.

Day Five (I suddenly got really hungry):

Fried egg, cheddar, and prosciutto.

On that note, today is day six; I'm on the mend and have moved on to something else notoriously English! (Let's go Mardy Fish!)

Gaufres de Liege (Belgian Sugar Waffles)

2011-06-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

Friends! I made some waffles for the annual No Cookie Left Behind bake sale. They turned out fairly pretty, no? Though I do have a few hot tips to share if you are planning on making a batch of these on your own.

1. Get your friends to help you. (Thank you, Heather and Jeana!) This is especially key if you enjoy a friendship with a proud owner of a waffle iron.

2. If you can't find pearl sugar, sprinkle the turbinado sugar on the dough right before pressing it in the iron—that way, we discovered, you can still get the nice melty, caramelization effect on top.

3. Eat them while they're nice and hot. Either that or toast them up later and pair with cream—iced or whipped, the choice is yours.

Also, for those who couldn't make it to the bake sale but would still like to donate to Share Our Strength, click here! And thank you!

Gaufres de Liege via The Kitchn (with more helpful tips via Not Martha)
makes 12 waffles
6 tablespoons warm milk (no hotter than 110°F)
1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar  
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 1/2 cups (230 grams) bread flour, sifted
1 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 medium egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup (4 oz) unsalted butter, at slightly cooler than room temperature
140 grams (3/4 cup) turbinado sugar, or pearl sugar if you choose
Cooking spray

Dissolve the sugar in the warm milk; then add the yeast. Make sure that the milk is not too hot, lest it kill the yeast instead of promoting its growth. Place a plate or some kind of cover on top of the bowl with the milk, sugar and yeast. Set aside for about five minutes. When you check on it, the yeast should have bubbled up, looking light brown and spongy. (See first photo above.)

Meanwhile, mix the sifted bread flour with the cinnamon, vanilla extract, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Pour in the yeast mixture; then add the whole egg and egg yolk. Mix on medium speed until it is fully combined. The dough will be yellow and stiff, yielding only slightly to a poke.

Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest in a warm place for about thirty minutes.

Beat in the butter piece by piece; you do not have to wait for the prior piece to be fully incorporated before adding the next. When the dough has incorporated about half of the butter, the mixture will be like a very thick, somewhat broken-up paste. If you keep engaging the mixer on medium-high speed, the dough will eventually become a cohesive whole, looking smoother and more feeling more elastic. Scrape the sides of the bowl if needed.

Kneading very gently, incorporate the sugar crystals just enough to get them evenly distributed. Work quickly so as not to soften the buttery dough too much.

Divide the dough into a dozen equal pieces, gently forming them into balls.

Place the balls of dough on a cutting board in a warmish place for fifteen minutes or so. During the last two minutes of this resting time, preheat your waffle iron until it is very warm, but not hot.

Spray the griddles with cooking oil. Place each ball of dough in a whole square or section of the waffle iron. Like regular waffle batter, the dough will start to puff up. Cook the waffles until the surface is golden to dark brown. Be sure that the waffle iron you are using is appropriately deep, or else the interior of the waffle will not be cooked through. If you are using a vintage stovetop waffle iron, flip the iron every thirty to forty seconds, lifting the iron to check the rate of browning. The browning should be gradual to allow the interior to fully develop.

Set the waffles on a cooling rack as they come out of the iron to promote a crispy exterior. Serve immediately with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

Any leftover waffles, if they are not dark brown, can be carefully re-cooked in a toaster for approximately thirty to sixty seconds. Leftover waffles may also be kept in an airtight container between sheets of parchment paper, for up to three days.

No Cookie Left Behind Annual Charity Bake Sale

2011-06-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

See you all Sunday, right?! (For more info, click here.)

Matt's 30th Birthday Meal

2011-06-12T21:21:00.000-07:00

In case you haven’t noticed, my husband Matt factors in quite heavily to this blog. (Matt is to Bon Appetempt what Jeffrey is to Ina?) Point being, Matt turned 30 a couple of weeks ago, and like last year, this post chronicles his yearly bon appetempt birthday meal.

Being extremely familiar with Matt’s likes and dislikes, I began brainstorming potential less-than-healthy, meat-centric menu ideas. We had recently had the most amazing dish of sausage and clams at Salt's Cure and without consulting Matt, I began to scour recipes to see if I could recreate it. I found a homemade sausage recipe and another for clams in a broth that seemed like what we'd eaten. I printed them out and was about to leave for the store when I realized I hadn’t yet run this idea by Matt. I sent him a quick email and got a reply with much enthusiasm but also some other ideas—dishes with more cheese and less fuss. Right, I remembered. This is Matt's birthday.

His birthday dinner had already been postponed a week because of our Sonoma trip, and having wasted much of the morning on the sausage and clams, I didn’t have time to mess around. I went straight to the woman who has always gotten it right when it comes to Matt’s dream meals: the aforementioned Ina Garten. And in less than fifteen minutes, she helped me pull together a winning menu comprised of steaks, onion rings, salad, and a non-Ina dessert he’d requested months earlier, Crack Pie. Maybe it wasn’t my dream menu, but let’s be honest, it didn’t sound too bad.

The bummer about Crack Pie, apart from the name conjuring images of Bubs, is that it calls for one night in the refrigerator before eating. This time around, I decided to skip this 24-hour step. I made it in the morning, put it in the fridge by 1pm, and at 8pm, served it up to fantastic results. And while I’m sure that the overnight chill does serve some mysterious purpose, for those of you who need their dose of Crack Pie that day, there’s hope—a lot of hope.
With the Crack Pie in the fridge, I ventured out to Lindy and Grundy, a new butcher shop I keep hearing great things about. And while I found the store to be impressively cute and almost shiny in its newness, I’d arrived a few days after Memorial Day weekend, and they were completely sold out of most cuts of meat including the filet mignons that Ina’s recipe called for. Not wanting to make another trip, I asked if there was anything else I might be able to substitute and was soon introduced to the faux hanger steak, a long and skinny cut of meat that didn’t resemble a filet at all. I was skeptical, but the nice guy behind the counter assured me that I could prepare it the same way I would the filets—by searing it on all sides and then finishing it off in the oven. They had two left, and I had only a few hours until dinner, so I took them. Besides, I had a feeling this dinner was going to be all about the onion rings.

Home again, I sliced the onions and began soaking them in buttermilk. I washed the romaine and made the salad dressing—a vinegary, lemony, creamy dressing I hoped would stand up against steak and fried food. By the time I got back to the rings, all I had to do was heat up the oil, dredge them in a flour and cornmeal mixture, and then, in small batches, fry them into delicious crisps. Unfortunately, the candy thermometer I had planned on using to watch the oil temperature was too big for the pan I’d chosen. This, combined with having recently read a story about kitchen traumas (warning: graphic!), made for nervous frying. So nervous that when Matt came home from work, I was deep in the weeds with a few batches of overcooked onion rings, a few batches of undercooked ones, and a question: “Did you know that hot oil burns are the worst kind of burns?” Having not read the article and being a very nice person, Matt changed out of his work clothes, grabbed the tongs, and cooked the rest of the rings to perfection. Meanwhile, I seared the steaks, dressed the salad, and mixed a Manhattan with extra cherry juice. And very soon, we sat down to plates that looked something like this:

The only thing better than trying a new recipe to fantastic results is trying a new recipe to the realization that you have found something you are going to make for the rest of your life—a recipe that is going to break through from the world of rarely enjoyed, special occasion food to the world of staples that get you through the work week a couple of times a month. Of the above four components, can you believe that I’m talking about the salad? It's from one of my current favorite cookbooks, Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, and it's seriously delicious. (Plus, when you buy heavy cream for some endeavor, don't you always end up with extra just sitting in the fridge?) The recipe is below. Make it immediately and find out what I'm talking about.

Hearts of Romaine with Creamy Dressing from The Art of Simple Food

4 servings

This salad is best made with whole uncut leaves of romaine. You may need to remove quite a few of the large outer leaves to expose the smaller pale green sweet leaves at the heart. There are tender small varieties called Little Gem and Winter Density that make incredible salads. Look for them at your farmers' market.

Remove the outer darker green leaves from:

2 heads of romaine lettuce

Cut off the stem end and separate the leaves. Wash them thoroughly and spin-dry in batches.

To make the dressing, stir together in a large bowl:

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

Grated zest of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

salt

fresh-ground black pepper

Taste, and adjust as needed. Whisk in:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 tablespons heavy cream

Cornmeal-Fried Onion Rings via Barefoot Contessa
2 large Spanish onions (or 3 yellow onions)
2 cups buttermilk
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (medium) yellow cornmeal
1 quart vegetable oil

Directions
Peel the onions, slice them 1/2 to 3/4-inch thick, and separate them into rings. Combine the buttermilk, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon pepper in a medium bowl. Add the onion rings, toss well, and allow to marinate for at least 15 minutes. (The onion rings can sit in the buttermilk for a few hours.) In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Set aside.

When you're ready to fry the onion rings, preheat the oven to 200 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with paper towels.

Heat the oil to 350 degrees F in a large pot or Dutch oven. (A candy thermometer attached to the side of the pot will help you maintain the proper temperature.) Working in batches, lift some onions out of the buttermilk and dredge them in the flour mixture. Drop into the hot oil and fry for 2 minutes, until golden brown, turning them once with tongs. Don't crowd them! Place the finished onion rings on the baking sheet, sprinkle liberally with salt, and keep them warm in the oven while you fry the next batch. Continue frying the onion rings and placing them in the warm oven until all the onions are fried. They will remain crisp in the oven for up to 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Old World Winery & A Wedding

2011-06-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

While this blog hasn't necessarily been a place for oenophiles, and despite the fact that I’ve recently made ricotta cheese, onion rings, and the most delicious salad dressing ever, all I want to do right now is talk about wine. This may have something to do with my recent trip to Sonoma, the kind of place where asking our server to uncork a bottle of rosé we’d brought in at 10:30 a.m. doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.

Now, I don’t know a lot about wine. (I had to Google wine lover –phile just now to come up with the word oenophile.) If it’s between white or red, I usually choose champagne, but I was in Sonoma for a long wedding weekend and… when in Rome!

We arrived at Santa Rosa’s Peanuts-themed Charles Schultz airport on Friday morning, and after a long lunch in downtown Healdsburg, we still had a few hours before we could check into our rental house—a perfect window of time for wine tasting. And though there were signs pointing to tasting rooms through the little strip of establishments downtown, we all agreed we wanted to go straight to a vineyard. But which one? How does a seven-person group, six of which are carrying smart phones, decide anything? They Google and Yelp and then go to the nearest vineyard with good reviews via Google Maps. Ironically, all of our technology brought us to the tasting room of a place called Old World Winery.
Though I’m not a wine expert, since moving to Los Angeles many years ago, I’ve had the extreme pleasure of tasting wines up and down the coast of California, and one thing remains the same: Wine tastings are special. And wine tasting on a sunny, 74-degree afternoon when you should be at work? It's particularly special. Suddenly, your mind is clear and all you need to do is study a few sips of wine, and perhaps, make very vague statements on the taste. For me, “Mmm,” and “That’s nice,” are go-to reactions. But I loved hearing a few of my more well-versed-in-wine friends pull back from their glasses with an air of shock and say, “Wow, that’s like no Chardonnay I’ve ever tasted!” We soon learn that the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc at Old World Winery both receive 24 hours of skin contact before pressing, which is the first time I’ve ever heard about “skin contact,” but infer that this is a very long time for white wine grape skins to hang out with one another.

The tasting includes seven wines, but somehow Matt and I don’t hear this, and by the time we get to the fifth wine, we are feeling a bit lightheaded and attempt to place an order for a bottle of the 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, Bon Temps LeBlanc. (It’s a delicious, sharp white wine and “Bon Temps” sounds way too much like Bon Appetempt for us to pass it up.) Around this time—right after we learn we actually have two more wines to taste—someone not in our party wanders into the tasting room. As it turns out, it’s the winemaker/owner Darek Trowbridge. So far we’ve learned that the Old World Winery is a small company made up of just three people and with a familiarity only possible in such a tight operation, the woman pouring our wines asks him, “Do you want to give these guys a tour?”

Darek is tall and thin, maybe in his late thirties, and dressed in faded army green pants and a plaid flannel shirt. He has his hands in his pockets and seems the picture of contentment as he leans back on his heels, smiles, and shrugs. “Sure. Yeah.” We take our wine glasses with us as he walks us outside. The property isn’t very big so it only takes a few moments to make our way across the part dirt, part gravel driveway to what looks to be a stand-alone garage. Inside, we find it stuffed to the gills with barrels of wine in bunk-bed-like formations. The ceilings aren’t very tall and the highest barrel almost scrapes against the ceiling. The tasting continues as we stand in a tiny open area among them, and we ask Darek every basic wine-related question we can come up. “How many bottles are in one barrel?” “Which do you prefer: red or white?” “Do you attend tradeshows? Oh yeah? Which ones?” “Tell me everything about you and your business!!”

The tasting continues. It’s dreamy.

When we finish the last wine, Darek looks to his associate. “We should show them the Abouriou." We quickly find out that this is a wine Darek has been passionately working on, and though he has sold some of the futures, it’s not bottled or labeled or available for immediate purchase. We walk back out into the daylight and down the driveway to another unassuming barrel room, which Darek explains is made entirely out of re-purposed material and which adds to what is surely becoming a theme of OWW’s products: environmentally-friendly, organic, personally cared for (with grapes personally stomped on), etc. For us to try it, Darek has to climb over a stack of boxes and siphon the wine straight from the barrel. He pours a few sips into each of our glasses. And then something truly magical happens.

All seven of us taste the wine and have the exact same reaction. It is delicious. Sure, there are nuanced things to say about it. It’s juicy. It’s bright. It’s caramel-y. But I’ve never witnessed such an intense, unanimous reaction to a wine. We all love it. And at once, we feel as though we’ve been let in on a secret: Is this the future of red wine?!

And what’s even more special is Darek’s reaction to our unbridled praise. He seems completely and utterly grateful to hear our shouts of approval. “Thank you. Thank you,” he keeps saying. It’s the kind of reaction that feels almost inherent to humble, hard work being recognized. And as we wrap up our tasting and go inside to buy our bottles (After some minor arm-twisting, Darek soft-corks a bottle of the Abouriou.), I know that this is the kind of experience that is going to stay with me long after we’ve left the winery. In fact, that whole evening and the following morning, I can’t seem to get it out of my mind.

Not just the deliciousness of the wine, but this idea of the long process of what must go into creating a wine and the fulfillment of a winemaker being able to see the impressed look on of a bunch of strangers’ faces upon them tasting that creation.

It was a great weekend of food indulgences and wine tasting, but nothing in the fabled Russian River Valley touched the small batches of wine coming out of the Old World Winery. If you get a chance, I implore you to try it, and if you’re in the area, see if you can get a glimpse of that secret barrel room—it’s well worth the trip to the central coast!

And if that's not enough to convince you, here are some more reasons:

Bread Pudding French Toast

2011-05-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

I hope you guys had a great Memorial Day weekend! I just got back from a beautiful trip to Sonoma, California, which I'm going to do a whole wrap-up of food-and-drink-wise, but until then, I give you Matt's birthday breakfast: bread pudding French toast and bacon. Try it! It was delicious—both on the first day and then again on the second, heated up and sprinkled with some granulated sugar.

Kenny Shopsin's version:

our version:

Bread Pudding French Toast via Kenny Shopsin's Eat Me
6 extra-large eggs
¼ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon Fox's U-bet Vanilla Syrup or 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract. (I would recommend using the full teaspoon of vanilla extract.)
1 foot of baguette, roughly chopped into chunks (about 1¼ inches)
Peanut oil for the griddle
Butter for the griddle and for serving
Warm Grade B maple syrup for serving

NOTE: The below is straight from the book/Kenny. Enjoy!
Whisk the eggs, cream, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Add the bread chunks and use your fingers to macerate the chunks so you have atomic bread particles in with the egg. Continue adding the bread and macerating it, a handful at a time, until you have added it all. Prepare the griddle according to The Art of Griddling, dump the bread chunks on the griddle, and then pour the eggy stuff left in the bowl over the chunks, Leave it all to cook for 2 minutes to set. Take a large spatula, slide it under the bread-egg mound, and turn the thing over en masse, leaving it as intact as you can. Cook for a minute on the other side and then break it up with the spatula and toss the pieces around so the edges get cooked a bit. Get a wide-mouthed bowl (I put a little spinach in it because I like the color) and scoop the whole mess into the bowl. (I use a French fry scoop for this, but since you probably don't own one, use whatever you feel will work best.) Serve with butter and warm maple syrup.

Strawberry Cake & A Big Fat Thank You

2011-05-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers, Friends, and Dogs who can read: I'm going to tell you a story about a little cake that tasted like a strawberry Scooter Crunch ice cream bar. (So far I am the only person I know who remembers enjoying Scooter Crunches as a child.) The cake came to me from the pages of Saveur and there was something about it that spoke to me. It called for red dye and strawberry extract, two elements that people might snub their noses at, but I was so drawn to the below photo that the recipe could have called for a cup of hydrogenated soybean oil and a dash of MSG and I still would've made it.

photo by Todd Coleman

I just love how it's kind of sphere-shaped and how the two layers are so fat and outlined in a coat of darker crust. I also love the jagged cuts, the paper plate, and what looks to be a plastic lid or tray or frisbee that it's sitting on. It looks delicious, fun, approachable, and unreal all at the same time.

After two trips to two grocery stores and no strawberry extract, I sally-forthed. The extract was for the icing layer anyway, which I wasn't even going to tackle until the following night. In 24 hours, surely, I could find some strawberry extract.

I didn't. And as much as I would love to blame someone for this extract shortage, I have only myself. I simply couldn't make another grocery trip. And so, just like Kristen Wiig's character drives right by that cop (over and over again) in Bridesmaids, I drove right by two grocery stores on my way home from work. Besides, I knew I had fresh strawberries at home. Couldn't I just mash some of those up and use them?

My favorite part of this whole cake was what happened when Matt found it fully assembled and sitting in our refrigerator in the cake carrier. "Wait. What's our cake doing in the cake carrier?" It had been a busy week and I guess I'd forgotten to tell him that I was taking it to a dinner with my lady friends. It was a double blow. Not only did he realize that he was on his own for dinner (hardly very young-wife of me), but I was taking the cake with me too.

And so, that's how I ended up arriving to dinner with the below, what I call the Pac-Man presentation.

Luckily, the cake was so delicious no one cared that Matt had scored first dibs at home hours earlier. And, if you'd like to see a photo of the cake fully intact with strawberry extract as it was intended to be, hop over to Lottie + Doof. He knocked it out of the park.

And while I'm directing you to other sites, did you guys see this, or that badge my site is now wearing over towards the right of the screen? I won Saveur's Best Culinary Essay! Many many many thanks to everyone who voted for "In The Kitchen With Grandma" and to Saveur for recognizing all of the amazing blogs that create such great, thoughtful content week after week.

Strawberry Cake via Saveur (with a Bon-Appetempt option)
serves 12

16 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing pans
3 cups flour, plus more for pans
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup seedless strawberry jam
3 tbsp. red food coloring (optional)
2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 eggs
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 1-lb. box confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 tsp. strawberry extract (or, for the extract-challenged, 1/4 cup mashed fresh strawberries?)

Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9″ round cake pans; set aside. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside. Whisk together milk, jam, and 2 tbsp. food coloring in a small bowl; set aside. Beat together sugar, oil, vanilla, and eggs in a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and smooth, 2–3 minutes. In 3 additions, alternately add dry and wet ingredients to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with dry; mix until combined. Divide batter between prepared pans and smooth tops; bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle of cakes comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Let cool 15 minutes, unmold, then cool completely.

In a large bowl, beat butter and cream cheese on high speed of a mixer until smooth and fluffy, 1–2 minutes. Add remaining food coloring, confectioners' sugar, and strawberry extract; beat until smooth. Place one cake upside down on a cake stand, and spread a healthy amount of frosting over top. Cover with second cake, top side up; frost top and sides of cakes with remaining frosting; refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. Serve at room temperature.

Herb Garden Lasagna

2011-05-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

Did you know that a couple celebrating any wedding anniversary on or after their 50th is entitled to a greeting from the president? Hot dog! This is one of those Wikipedia facts I came across while searching for the list of traditional anniversary gifts by year (first year paper, second year cotton, etc). I'd forgotten that there are now two categories to choose from—a modern list, which calls for glass or crystal for the third year, and the traditional list, which says it’s leather. The question of which category to follow quickly led to: What kind of a leather or crystal gift would Matt even want? Which led to exactly zero ideas, which led to thinking that it would be more fun if instead of a list of these broad materials like crystal and wood and silver, the list was instead made up of different landmark meals. The first anniversary (as they say it’s the hardest) could be something classically celebratory like steak. And for the second, how about something a bit more run-of–the-mill but still special, like a whole roasted chicken? And for the third—how about lasagna? To be honest, I had had a particular lasagna in mind for a while now, one from Jerry Traunfeld's The Herbal Kitchen. Instead of meat, there's tons of basil and béchamel. And the greatest thing about lasagna? You can make it ahead of time, come home from work, put it in the oven, and have a delicious, special Friday night anniversary meal in no time.

Of course, the prep doesn't exactly happen in no time. No, this lasagna will definitely take a couple of hours to put together. But here's what I would recommend: Free up a space on your kitchen counter and set your computer there. Dial up your best friend via video chat and begin the work of lasagna-ing. Tell your friend that there may be moments when you will be more concerned about burning your béchamel than conversing, and that at times, you will be in another room completely, but not to worry, you will be listening the whole time!

One of my favorite ways to make fun of myself is to describe myself as a young wife. I do this so much that a conversation between me and a friend might go something like this:

Friend: What are you doing tonight?
Me: Well, I'm making dinner for Matt and then we'll probably watch back to back episodes of The West Wing.
Friend: Oh, young wife stuff.

And while watching ancient episodes of The West Wing—we started at season one a month ago—may not fall under the young-wife category, I can completely trace my cooking beginnings to getting married three years ago. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I can directly correlate marriage to the start of this blog. Because when I first began to cook, I was so enamored of the results of following a few simple steps that I would take pictures of the dishes before we ate. I still remember the menu for the birthday meal I made Matt just eight days after the wedding: pork chops, asparagus, and peaches sautéed in butter with freshly whipped cream for dessert. I'd never purchased pork chops let alone any raw meat that required being wrapped in butcher paper, and so I remember reading the description exactly as it was written in the recipe to the man behind the counter: "Yes, I'd like two bone-in center-cut pork chops, please." It was a novelty and I felt supremely adult and truly domestic. This was also in the days before I had acquired my mom's old electric mixer, and I distinctly remember Matt and I passing the heavy cream between one another taking turns to whip it, cheering the other one on as if it were a high school sports event: "C'mon, Matt! You got this! I know you've got this!" I look back at those photos and think: We were so young! And yet, it’s only been three years. I can't imagine what I'll think at our ten year.

Although there is one photo that feels very much like us and I think it always will. Is that fear in Matt's eyes or the shock of marital bliss?

What do you say, Matt? If the next 47 years are anything like our first three, I think we’ll be a shoo-in for that presidential greeting, don’t you?

Herb Garden Lasagna via The Herbal Kitchen

One 28-ounce can plus one 14.5-ounce can crushed tomatoes

¼ cup chopped marjoram

Kosher salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

½ cup all-purpose flour

3 cups milk, whole or low fat

1 pound whole milk ricotta

4 ounces basil, stems removed (2 cups gently packed)

1 cup flat-leaf parsley, gently packed

2 cloves garlic

½ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

8 ounces oven-ready lasagna noodles (12 noodles)

8 ounces fresh mozzarella, shredded

Boil the tomatoes in a large skillet over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes, or until they turn into a thick sauce. Stir in the marjoram and 1 teaspoon salt.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook the roux for about a minute. Pour in the cold milk all at once. Whisk until all the lumps disappear, then occasionally until the sauce comes to a full boil and thickens. Season with 1 ½ teaspoons salt.

Blend the ricotta with one-third of the white sauce in a food processor until smooth. Scrape the cheese out into a bowl.

Without washing the food processor, pulse the basil, parsley, garlic, and ½ teaspoon salt until finely chopped. Add the remaining white sauce and the Parmesan and process until well combined.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

If it’s your first time dealing with oven-ready noodles the process will seem strange, but just trust it. Spread half of the tomato sauce in the bottom of a 9x13-inch baking dish. Arrange 3 noodles on top of the sauce; they should fit without touching each other or the sides of the pan. Dab half of the basil sauce over the noodles, covering the pasta as best you can. As you build the lasagna think about layering the ingredients in 3 stacks, spreading the filling just over the noodles rather than worrying about the gaps between and around the noodles, but if some spills over that’s fine. Top the basil sauce with 3 more noodles in the same position. For the next layer, distribute the entire amount of ricotta by scooping it in spoonfuls onto the top noodles and spreading it a bit, pressing down as little as possible. Top with 3 more noodles, then the remaining tomato sauce. Finally, put the last 3 noodles in place and spread the top with the remaining pesto sauce.

Cover the dish with aluminum foil, tenting it a little so it doesn’t touch the lasagna, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and sprinkle the mozzarella evenly over the top. Bake an additional 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cheese is evenly browned. Let the lasagna rest for at least 15 minutes before you serve it; it will be very loose at first, but will firm up as it sits. The lasagna can be assembled ahead and kept refrigerated until you are ready to bake it (allow an extra 10 minutes in the oven under the foil), or baked ahead of time and reheated in a 350 degree oven.

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

My mom's been in town visiting all week. In the words of Saturday Night Live's Miley Cyrus Show, it's been pretty cool. This time around, her biannual west coast visit included a trip to the Getty Villa, seafood in Malibu, Malo's tacos, a date shake, a couple of days in Palm Springs, and of course, an attempt or two. Happy Mother's Day!

from top to bottom:

1. Martha Stewart's version of edible flowers in ice cubes.

2. My version.

3. Edible flowers ready to get an ice bath.

4. I used plastic cups instead of the large ice cube mold Martha recommended purchasing—hence, the cylindrical ice cubes.

5. Drink on the (flowery) rocks.

6. One of the many spectacular ceilings at the Getty Villa. (If you are in the L.A. area, you must go.)

7. View from our lunch table at the Reel Inn Restaurant in Malibu.

8. Mom's lunch at the Reel Inn Restaurant in Malibu.

9. Famous ground beef and pickle tacos at Malo restaurant in Silver Lake.

10. Part of the dinner I cooked for Mom. (More on this later.)

11. Hadley's famous date shake en route to Palm Springs with Mom.

12. Hadley's famous(?) fresh ostrich and emu eggs. (By the way, are those fair market prices?)

13. Palm Springs at last!

14. Mom. I got to spend Mother's Day with my mom! I can't remember the last time that happened. Unfortunately, Grandma couldn't make the trip. Which of course, brings us to...

15. Printed out comments from the In the Kitchen with Grandma post. As Grandma's house isn't exactly Internet-ready, I put these in the mail and sent them to her. She should get them tomorrow, which of course reminds me of the fact that there are only a few days left to vote in Saveur's Food Blog awards. Check out all the categories here and vote for your favorites!

Dulce de Leche Layer Cake

2011-05-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

After college, I lived in Argentina for five months while teaching English. It was sweeeet. What was sweeter was the ubiquitous, grocery store staple dulce de leche. My host family put it on everything. Breakfast was fresh baguette slices and dulce de leche. For an afternoon snack, it was a couple of alfajores (sandwich cookie with dulce de leche filling), and after dinner, there was simple vanilla cake baked in a rimmed baking sheet with dulce de leche spread on top as icing.

I had been looking to make any version of the above for a while now, but all of the recipes I found called for buying a jar of dulce de leche at a specialty market. Hardly a bon appetempt. So, when I took on the responsibility of making the cake for my good friend's bridal shower, which was set to be a Mexican feast, I knew exactly what kind of Latin American-inspired cake I wanted to bake. And after much searching, I finally found a cake recipe that called for making your own dulce de leche. The directions went a little something like this: Take an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk, put it in simmering water for two hours, and open. That was it—the transformation from condensed milk to dulce de leche seemed incredibly improbable and magical. I couldn't wait to try it.

My can of sweetened condensed milk had this stern warning: "Do not heat in can."

What? You mean like this?

Surely what the warning meant to say was, "Heat in can!!!" because two hours later, this happened:

I'm proud to report that the cake did not fall as we put it together. It didn't fall in transport either. No. It made it there all in one piece.

If I were you, I would get a can of sweetened condensed milk submerged in simmering water as soon as possible.

Dulce de Leche Layer Cake (adapted from recipe by Food and Wine/ Scott Conant)

Ingredients
Filling
One 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

Cake
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups plus 6 tablespoons sugar
4 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Vanilla Whipped Buttercream Icing via Organic & Chic by Sarah Magid

(makes enough to ice the cake and a little more for decorating it.)

2 sticks (1 cup) organic unsalted butter, softened
1 cup organic cane sugar
1 cup organic whole milk
1/4 cup sifted organic all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons organic vanilla extract

Directions
1. Submerge the unopened can of condensed milk in a large, deep pot of water and bring to a boil. Simmer over moderately low heat for 2 hours, adding water as needed to keep the can completely submerged. Carefully remove the can and let cool slightly. Carefully open the can with tongs and transfer the dulce de leche to a bowl: It should resemble creamy caramel. Whisk until smooth. Let cool completely.

2. Preheat the oven to 350° and butter two 9-inch cake pans. Line with parchment paper and butter and flour the pans. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour with the baking powder and salt. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the butter with the 1 1/2 cups of sugar at medium speed until fluffy. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and beat until smooth. Beat in the dry ingredients and the milk in 3 alternating batches, scraping down the side of the bowl occasionally.

3. In a clean bowl, using clean beaters, beat the egg whites at medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add the remaining 6 tablespoons of sugar and beat until glossy. Fold the egg whites into the batter.

4. Scrape the batter into the prepared pans. Bake in the center of the oven for 40 to 45 minutes, until the cakes are golden and a toothpick in the centers comes out clean. Transfer the cakes to a rack to cool slightly. Run the tip of a knife around the edges and invert the cakes onto the rack to cool completely. Using a serrated knife (or floss--seriously!), split each layer horizontally in half.

5. Make the icing. Cream the butter on medium speed, 3 to 5 minutes. in a standing mixer or with a hand mixer until soft, about 30 seconds. Add the sugar and beat on high speed until light and fluffy, 5 to 7 minutes.

In a small saucepan, combine 1/4 cup of the milk, the flour and the vanilla extract, and whisk until there are no lumps. Over medium heat, slowly add the remaining 3/4 cup milk, whisking constantly, and cook until the mixture comes to a low boil. Then reduce the heat to low and keep whisking for a few more minutes, until the mixture starts to thicken.

Immediately remove the pan from the heat, but keep stirring. (After you have removed the pan from the heat, the mixture will continue to cook for a minute or two on its own. If you overheat it and get small lumps, try to whisk vigorously to get them out.) If necessary, place the pan over a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process and allow the mixture to cool.

Once the milk mixture has thickened, set it aside to cool to room temperature. You can stick it in the freezer to rush the cooling.

With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour the milk mixture into the butter-sugar mixture. Increase the speed to medium and beat until the frosting is light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes.

6. Place a cake layer on a large cake plate and top with one-third of the dulce de leche filling. Repeat with the remaining layers and filling, ending with a layer of cake. Spread the frosting all over the cake. Let stand at room temperature for at least 2 hours before serving.

Saveur's Best Food Blog Awards Nomination!

2011-04-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

I have some good news! Bon Appetempt has been nominated under the "Best Culinary Essay" category in Saveur's Best Food Blog Awards! So, first off: I want to say thank you for those who nominated the essay! Thank you very very much! Secondly, I'd like to report that Grandma has read the essay, which I printed out and mailed to her, and she has since written me a letter in which the topic comes up, eventually. Three paragraphs in, she finally says: "I enjoyed the Blog [sic]. I would be interested in the response the readers had." Awwwwwww. Those are high praises from my grandma!

And so before I ask for your vote, I thought now would be as perfect a time as any to post what I find to be a fairly hilarious video of the Kitchen Visit with Grandma in progress. Allow me to set the clip up for you: We are making pizzelles. My mom and I begin pressing the dough in the duo of pizzelle presses set up in the dining room—Mom has brought her press over today to help, but as you will see, it's a little rusty and needs a bit of, well, tweaking. Meanwhile, I am chasing the perfect pizzelle, which to me means one that is the exact size of the mold, but on my path to this perfect pizzelledom, I’m losing some dough that’s popping out of the sides of the press. Grandma disagrees with this method as it is "wasting" dough. Well, you'll see:

Anyway, if you feel so inclined: Vote for the essay here! You have to sign up, but it's painless and easy(!). Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Spicy Egg Easter Salad, Cee Lo References, & Things to Do Before I turn 30

2011-04-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

I know that Julia Child said to never apologize for the food you serve, but how can I not when I'm trying to sneak by Easter without offering up my annual failed batch of Martha-Stewart-inspired dyed Easter eggs? And instead, I give you egg salad—as if it's an equivalent substitute? As if instead of spending Saturday morning dyeing eggs with your kids/friends/craft gang you might rather peel hard-boiled eggs, mash them up with some mayo and call it Easter?

Even my photos feel guilty. I tried to make this egg salad glamorous, to make it something more than it was. But alas, I must conclude: egg salad is not glamorous. It's delicious and nostalgic, but it's not going to win “the most photogenic salad” superlative in the food yearbook, even with the arguably glamorous additions of crisp smoky bacon and spicy horseradish, and even if it was tastier than your average egg salad and turned my workday lunch into a midday triumph. In fact, I would go as far to say that egg salad is to Cee Lo (good but not exactly sexy) as Martha Stewart's Easter eggs are to Gwyneth Paltrow (gorgeous, Waspy, and gluten-free).

Speaking of Cee Lo, he’s doing pretty well for himself these days—wouldn't you say? He's collaborating with the aforementioned Gwyneth, co-hosting a television show, wearing some pretty cool outfits, and well, that girl that broke up with him for financial reasons is probably feeling pretty stupid right about now. Though, to be fair, Matt believes there may have been non-monetary issues plaguing that relationship.

But let's get back to Easter. Easter is all about new beginnings, right? And there are a few things that have been hanging over my head that I have wanted to share, been meaning to share, and after reading this Mary Oliver poem, I feel like I cannot put them off another day. (I can however, tuck these disclosures way down here in the post below the Cee Lo jokes.)

OK, here goes: In exactly five months from today, I’m turning 30, and while they say that age is just a number, 30 feels like more than that. It feels very adult, very weighty. And that’s probably because I’ve put so much weight on it. I’ve heard myself answer questions as to when Matt and I might start having kids by saying: “I’m not really going to think about it until I’m 30.” Because my past self rationalized that by the time I turned 30, I would be more settled. By 30, I would be putting money into my savings account without taking it right back out months later. Once I was as old as 30, I wouldn’t have such a panicky feeling when I thought about the future. Of course, now that it’s five months away, I’m a little annoyed with my past self’s great expectations.

However, I also realize that I have five months, five precious months to get some things in order. So, I would like to set about a few attainable goals here, in public, where it’s scary, where it’s in plain view and thus, where I cannot turn my back on them and try to forget that I made them in the first place. But with this, comes another reveal—something that feels so silly to talk about sometimes and I wish I knew why exactly except that it’s probably because I’ve poured my whole life/heart/self into it. Can I run away now before saying anything else? OK, great. Enjoy the recipe! Bye!!

Spicy Egg Salad via Buttermilk Press

6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 cup mayonnaise, plus a little extra for spreading
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
3 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
Salt and Pepper, to taste

In medium bowl, combine eggs, 1/2 cup mayonnaise, horseradish, and bacon. Add salt and pepper to taste. Lightly spread mayonnaise on bread slices, then spread the egg salad, and build your sandwich!

------------------

Just kidding. I’ll finish. Maybe you know what I’m talking about already because I mention it in the about me section of this blog, but I have been steadily revising a novel—my thesis from graduate school—since November of 2009.

I love what one of my writing professors said about her now published novel, which was something to the effect of, “I can keep working on it after it's published....They can't stop me!" Every time I open that Word document, there is something to change. It’s this enormous, living document that simply won’t sit still. At first, the revisions were large and swooping—rearranging chapters, changing characters entirely, cutting large blocks of text. Now the revisions are getting smaller and smaller but they’re still there. And I suspect they always will be. Of course, the main difference between me and my writing professor being that she had a publisher. We'll see how I feel if I ever get to that point, which brings us to goal number one.

1. Firmly begin the process of trying to publish the book.

Number two:

2. Book a trip outside of the United States. Four years ago, without an international trip on the horizon, I optimistically renewed my passport. I thought it might be one of those power-of-positive-thinking acts. But I haven’t used it since, and I really really want to get out of this country, if only for a few days. I think I can make this happen (just booking it mind you) by the time I’m 30.

I could add more to this list—there’s a Kitchen Visit video I’m dying to make and the beginnings of a nonfiction book proposal on my computer’s desktop—but I really want to stay firm on these first two. They are both doable and within my control. So, dear readers, I hope this helps to keep me accountable! After all, in the words of Mary Oliver, “Be ignited, or be gone.”

p.s. All apologies to my Passover-celebrating friends! This bacon-laden sandwich will hardly work. How about this leek and ginger matzo ball soup instead?

Brownies

2011-04-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about everything that goes into saying yes. Take this notion in the simple terms of saying yes to making brownies. From the moment I saw these in Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home over a year ago, I was sold. I had said yes, which is an accomplishment itself—think of all the recipes you see but for some reason or another, don't feel compelled to make. But saying yes to brownies means also saying yes to the grocery store; the grocery store parking lot; re-securing a parking spot on your street, which is having its sidewalks repaved so there are tow-away signs up and down the entire block complete with convoluted, handwritten fine-print as to exactly when parking is permitted and when they're going to tow your ass; the heaving of your two overloaded canvas bags (You remembered them! Yay!) from the car through the little courtyard area of your apartment building where the 14-year-old, almost deaf neighborhood cat likes to inconspicuously hang out (Watch your step!), and finally, up the stairs to your little apartment. Great! Ingredients, check. Only it’s your day off and the afternoon slips away as you waste too much time going down unplanned, weird Internet search alleys so that it's almost 11 by the time you get started on your non-work-related writing, and then it's lunchtime, and then you have to go back to work because of the aforementioned time you wasted on the Internet, and then it's 4:30, and you really should think about dinner before you start thinking about brownies, and besides, there is still enough cookies and cream ice cream in the freezer to provide dessert for tonight. And so, it's not like you have said no to the recipe, but the recipe doesn't get made... and you basically have.

And I truly don't want to sound like I'm complaining—I live for this stuff—but it just really makes you think about all that goes into saying yes when sometimes it's just so much easier to say no. Yes equals work. No equals nothing.

Ad Hoc's version:

our version:

Brownies can be a tricky thing to find time to make when you live within walking distance of Sweet Lady Jane and Urth Caffe, the former of which offers squares of sea salt brownies for a dollar a piece. I guess it would fall under: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for a dollar? Maybe. At some point though, around a month ago, Matt came across the recipe I’d printed out and taken with me to the grocery store. “Oh! Are you going to make these?”

A week later, this question became: “Hey, weren’t you going to make those brownies?” And then: “Whatever happened to those brownies you were going to make?” And so, with Matt’s newfound involvement and general enthusiasm for some homemade Thomas Keller-esque brownies, a year later and a month after gathering the ingredients, I finally finished what I'd started.

But during this latency period, I must have forgotten that Mr. Keller’s brownies require three sticks of butter. Anyone who is into spontaneous acts of baking—which is basically what this endeavor had become—knows that most recipes call for two sticks of butter. I honestly cannot think of a recipe that calls for more unless it’s for an unusually large serving size or unless you are doubling or quadrupling (Anything less is waste time.) the recipe.

I had two and a half sticks of butter and everything else the recipe called for on hand. But more than that, I was at that point where I felt no other option but to cross these brownies off my to-do list. After all, I had already said yes to them, grocery-shopped, procrastinated for weeks, and had another person involved, another person who was not only living testament to my procrastination, but was also excitedly awaiting the results. And so, I made due. I winged it a bit. I haphazardly cut each ingredient’s measurement by what I non-mathematically felt was equivalent to the missing half stick. (See the recipe below for details on what this meant.)

What I failed to haphazardly cut was the baking time. The brownies were a little overcooked. But even so, they were really, really good. I can hardly imagine them being any better. With thoughts on the Sweet Lady Jane sea salt versions, we sprinkled some Himalayan salt on top before baking. Matt really loved this added saltiness, though I thought it didn’t really work the way it does with the SLJ version—their salt chunks are chunkier so the salt comes in subtle and lovely bursts. Of course, it didn’t stop me from eating brownies for dessert three nights in a row. Oh, and all of this Ad Hoc/Thomas Keller talk reminds me: Matt and I are headed up to Sonoma for a wedding next month. Maybe we can stop by the real Ad Hoc and see just how far we were off? C’mon, Matt—what do you say?!

And so, we’ve come full circle: How can I take what I’ve learned and turn it into getting Matt to say yes to this side trip to Yountville, which Google Maps says is just an hour from the Sonoma airport we’re flying into? Hmm…

Brownies via NPR via Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc

3/4 cup all-purpose flour (I used 2/3 cup.)
1 cup unsweetened alkalized cocoa powder (I used 3/4 cup.)
1 teaspoon kosher salt (I used 3/4 teaspoon.)
3/4 pound (or 3 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces (I used 2 1/2 sticks.)
3 large eggs (I used 3 too.)
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar (I used 1 1/2 cups.)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or pure vanilla extract (I used scant 1/2 teaspoon.)
6 ounces 61- to 64- percent chocolate, chopped into chip-sized pieces (about 1 1/2 cups) (I used 1 1/4 cups.)
Powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. We use a 9-inch square silicone mold, because it keeps the edges from overcooking; if you use a metal or glass baking pan, butter and our it. Set aside. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt; set aside.

Melt half the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Put the remaining butter in a medium bowl. Pour the melted butter over the bowl of butter and stir to melt the butter. The butter should look creamy, with small bits of unmelted butter, and be at room temperature.

In the bowl of a stand mixer tted with the paddle, mix together the eggs and sugar on medium speed for about 3 minutes, or until thick and very pale. Mix in the vanilla. On low speed, add about one-third of the dry ingredients, then add one-third of the butter, and continue alternating the remaining our and butter. Add the chocolate and mix to combine. (The batter can be refrigerated for up to 1 week.)

Spread the batter evenly in the pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until a cake tester or wooden skewer poked into the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs sticking to it. If the pick comes out wet, test a second time, because you may have hit a piece of chocolate chip; then bake for a few minutes longer if necessary. Cool in the pan until the brownie is just a bit warmer than room temperature. Run a knife around the edges if not using a silicone mold, and invert the brownie onto a cutting board. Cut into 12 rectangles. Dust the tops with powdered sugar just before serving. (The brownies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.)