April 29, 2010
vanilla bean panna cotta with red wine poached figs and strawberries
indonesian vanilla bean infusion
orange chocolate cake with orange sauce
the workshop group, carefully considering
and then we rewarded our hard work with:
I love my friends. Tonight was so wonderful.
Let me back track a little.
I’m exhausted–like have never been so exhausted in all my life, so sleep deprived that I feel drunk, started shaking in the candy aisle of a CVS at 8 in the morning, working at 4:30 a.m. in the gross Butler Building computer lab, eyes burning exhausted. But here’s the amazing part. Are you ready for this?
MY THESIS IS DONE!
YES YES YES YES YES!!!!
I’m doing a little dance right now. It’s true.
Another wonderful thing: I had Nikki, Sam, Nancy, and Lan come over tonight for a dessert workshop. I wanted them to try a few desserts I’m experimenting with and they were so wonderful and considerate with their suggestions. They took note of everything, taking bites before and after cakes had absorbed their sauces, carefully analyzing the viscosity of my coconut caramel. And what’s more is that they did this even though Sam and Nikki have a thesis due, Nancy had to drive through LA traffic right after tutoring, and Lan has to be up early for work. Seeing these fantastic people felt like just the invigoration I was in desperate need of.
Afterwards we went to Ganda Thai. Why is Thai food especially good after 9 p.m.?
I want this all the time. Dessert first. Involved conversations about cake density and psychic predictions that have and haven’t come true. Friends that I adore.
okay, now I have to sleep because i might die if i don’t. goodnight,
February 15, 2010
Whatever. I don’t care that Valentine’s Day is an invented holiday for Hallmark. Blah blah blah.
I totally think Valentine’s Day is great. What’s wrong with an excuse to have a nice evening with someone? I don’t even buy Hallmark cards. And even if I did, I probably wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Not that there’s anything wrong with feeling morally flummoxed about the whole thing. Good for you.
For our first Valentine’s Day Marcus and I made potato gnocchi. Notice, I used the verb “made”, not “buy”. This was a labor of love. I’m talking boiled potatoes, pureed in a food processor, kneaded with flour, rolled out into long cylinders and then cut individually. Maybe more labor intensive than necessary. Sometimes store bought is just more worth it. We also made a tomato sauce that came highly recommended from Marcella Hazan’s dearly loved “The Essentials of Italian Cooking”.
But really Valentine’s Day is about the dessert. We had port poached pears (ooohhh alliteration!) with lavender honey ice cream and oreo cream cheese ice cream. Poaching sounds so fancy but it’s almost embarrassingly easy–you just let it simmer. And the color is so gorgeous. Everything should be poached in wine! Cereal. Eggs. Shoes. Pajamas. Hair.
Ingredients:
4 Bosc Pears
1 cup Port
3/4 cup sugar
2 strips of orange peel
2 strips of lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups of water
ice cream for serving
1. in a medium pot combine the port, water, zest, cinnamon and sugar and cook at medium heat for about 10 minutes
2. in the meantime, trim 1/4 of an inch from the bottom of the pears and peel them
3. add the pears to the pot and bring the whole thing to a boil
4. lower heat to simmer and leave for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to make sure that all gets cooked through
February 4, 2010
Happy Birthday Janice Lee!
Janice didn’t have her usual whiskey & pie birthday party so I baked it into pie form! Very tart apples, dulce de leche, and bourbon. I also made some hand pies with the leftover apple filling. I like the way the dulce de leche leaked out of a few of the pies.
December 21, 2009
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins are for boring people. Orange, on the other hand….
Ingredients
zest of one orange
1/2 tsp pure orange extract
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
3/4 cup sour cream
3/4 cup non fat plain yogurt
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup sugar
10 tablespoons butter ( 1 1/4 stick)
1. preheat oven to 375
2. line 24 cupcake tins
3. sift dry ingredients together
4. cream butter and sugar
5. add eggs one at a time
6. add zest and orange extract and poppy seeds
7. whisk together sour cream and yogurt
8. in 3 alternating additions add the sour cream/yogurt and flour mixtures
9. put an ice cream scoop amount into each cup and bake for about 20-25 minutes
December 11, 2009
Wonderful Nikki Darling has a persimmon tree and invited me to pick from it the other day. Amazing–picking fruit from trees. It was elating! I might quit writing altogether and wander the world, picking fruit where I can find it. They were so ripe that a tug too hard and they’d just explode jam everywhere. I took quite a few due to Nikki’s generosity and made a ton of persimmon bourbon bread. The key ingredient in this bread is maple syrup—also the bourbon, obviously.
November 20, 2009
I’ve been experimenting with new blueberry muffin recipes. I’m pretty happy with this batch except that I think they’re much better served warm and I’d add a little more sugar next time. Or maybe I don’t need to add more sugar. I bought this new toothpaste that is quite zingy and I think it’s killing off my taste buds. I can’t taste anything, which is pretty devastating. Must get new toothpaste, pronto.
But aren’t muffins adorable? I also made mini versions for Willa.
Ingredients:
3 cups of flour
1 cup granulated sugar (I think I’d up it to 1 1/2 next time)
1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups of sour cream (greek yogurt would also work)
1 tbsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups fresh blueberries, washed and dried
1 1/4 sticks of butter
2 large eggs
1. preheat oven to 375
2. sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
3. in a large bowl, beat together sugar and butter until fluffy
4. incorporate eggs and vanilla and beat for 2 more minutes
5. alternately fold in four and sour cream in 3 additions
6. gently fold in blueberries
7. scoop ice cream scoop amounts into lined tins (makes 24 cupcake sized muffins or 12 muffins)
8. bake for 18-20 minutes
November 6, 2009
For the lovely Kate Coltun’s Birthday (age unknown):
Fig & Vanilla Cake
Ingredients:
1/2 cup vanilla Guittard Choc-au-lait chips
10 figs, halved
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 cup of buttermilk
1 egg, room temperature
2/3 cup sugar + 2 tablespoons for sprinkling
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1. preheat oven to 400
2. grease a 9 inch springform cake pan
3. cream butter and sugar for about 3 minutes with an electric mixer
4. add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined
5. sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt
6. take a tablespoon of the flour mixture and toss with the vanilla chips
7. alternate additions of flour and buttermilk into the butter/sugar/egg mixture, folding gently
8. fold in the vanilla chips
9. pour batter into the pan and spread evenly
10. arrange the figs around the cake, cut side up
11. sprinkle cake with 2 tablespoons of sugar
12. bake for 20 minutes
November 3, 2009
finally!
min hee proudly stands by our failed attempts
Okay, I just don’t trust Giada de Lauretiis’ face. There’s something about her sharp features that kind of intimidate me. I don’t know how I momentarily forgot this while I was watching the foodnetwork the other day. She was making apricot almond brittle and I thought: easy! fun! no oven needed!
I excitedly recruited min hee in this endeavor, and oh, we failed terribly. Our brittle was gummy and flabby and not caramelized at all. We tried again, because that’s who we are–we are non giver-up-ers.
Unfortunately we failed a second time.
And because we can attribute it to little other than stupid blind frustration I attempted the brittle a third time. Success!
Now I will confess something. So maybe I didn’t read the recipe very carefully. So maybe I had been cooking the sugar at low heat when I should have been cooking it at medium high heat.
but whatever, Giada still has that mean looking face.
That being said, the brittle was pretty delish–my version included pistachios, sour cherries, almonds, and chocolate chips. Take that, Giada!
(whoa, I’m super sassy right now)
October 30, 2009
I recently bought a large amount of dried sour cherries and immediately thought of black forest flavors: dark chocolate, cherries, and coffee. I adapted a recipe from Joy The Baker for a mocha rum cake and just added the cherries. I made a rum icing but I have to admit, the rum was a bit overly present. I think I might opt for a vanilla icing next time, or maybe a chocolate ganache. But the cake itself? Quite good.
Ingredients:
3 cups all purpose flour
12 oz bittersweet chocolate (use good chocolate, at least 60% cacao–my favorite is Valhrona)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup rum
3 sticks of butter
1 1/3 cup freshly brewed coffee
2 large eggs, room temp
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1. preheat oven to 300
2. grease and dust the a bundt pan with cocoa powder
3. melt the chocolate and butter in a double broiler under very low heat, stirring often
4. add in rum, coffee, vanilla, and sugar
5. sift together flour, baking soda and salt and stir gradually into chocolate mixture
6. beat eggs slightly and add to batter
7. pour into bundt pan and bake until toothpick comes out cleanly, about 1 hour
October 17, 2009
Today was wonderful Christina Wood’s birthday. Felipe planned a surprise birthday party for her where we were to gather in San Diego and be waiting to surprise her at a screening of “Where The Wild Things Are” and then all have lunch together. The whole event was really very sweet and it was really soothing in a way to see friends and even just be in San Diego. I’m not even sure why because the city of San Diego itself doesn’t have any sort of strong gravitational pull for me but once in a while I really love visiting.
I’m sentimental, there’s no doubting that and driving down there today made me all nostalgic and warm and happy. There’s this amazing stretch of beach about 10 miles north of Oceanside that I can never believe when I’ve driving on the freeway, like these sort of views should be impossible while driving. It’s surprising each time. And it’s especially great in the mornings.
While I was passing that bit of ocean I thought about the last time I had seen Prayer and Albert. It was a few days before I was moving to Los Angeles, Prayer to Bangkok, and Albert back to Barcelona and we were drinking a bottle of red wine at a a wine bar in downtown and it felt like we were mimicking the feeling of an end without really processing the end. I knew I wouldn’t see them for a while but for some reason I couldn’t really access the real feeling of that. I just knew we had to say our goodbyes. And now more than a year and a half later I am feeling it, and sort of really lamenting the days of San Diego and Wilson Ave and the “dance floor” in the room that Joseph and I shared, and seal beach, and Salk Institute, and Nancy on the futon, and making summery tomato basil pasta with Thomas.
I think I want to go back more often, if nothing else just to visit the lovely friends that live there. I thought about it today, and there’s nothing even mildly objectionable about Felipe or Christina, which is kind of amazing. How are people so well adjusted?! And how do they find each other and become a super couple of super adjustedness?
Oh and the cake? It’s a marbled chocolate orange cake. I emailed Felipe listing several very specific cake options for Christina and he responded that she was a “fruit or chocolate girl” which struck me as vague and funny. So I decided to fulfill both sides of Christina and use fruit and chocolate in the same cake. And also, as Thomas pointed out, it seemed like appropriately lighter “lunch cake.”
Chocolate Orange Cake (recipe adapted from Joy The Baker)
3 1/2 cups of cake flour
2 cups of sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons of cocoa powder (I think I’d up this to 5 for next time)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
zest of one orange
4 large eggs
2 sticks of butter
2 cups of sour cream
1. preheat oven to 350
2. grease a bundt pan
3. sift together flour, baking powder and soda, and salt–set aside
4. cream the butter and sugar together
5. add the eggs one at a time
5. add the vanilla
6. add the sour cream
7. fold in the flour mixture in three separate additions
8. divide the batter in half
9. in one half of the batter, add the orange extract and zest
10. in the other half add the cocoa and chocolate chips
11. drop alternate spoonfuls of batter in the bundt pan and every once in a while swirl gently with a butter knife
12. tap the cake pan on a hard surface to get rid of air bubbles
13. bake for 5o minutes or until a toothpick comes out cleanly and the cake springs back
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