Noodles and coconut cream pie

It’s warm and springy here in northern California and the mood at our house is correspondingly warm and springy. I realize the weather elsewhere remains less than tropical so I apologize for crowing. Your time will come, Easterners, and when it does, unlike us you will probably be allowed to water your plants. 

This is  just a quick post so I don’t fall behind: The Momofuku noodles with ginger scallion sauce are tasty, though I agreed with some of the commenters here that the “sauce” could use a little more oil to help coat the noodles. I used fresh ramen from Ranch 99 and added toasted nori and David Chang’s quick-pickled cucumbers. The whole meal took about 20 minutes to prepare, start to finish. Predictably, Owen and his friend didn’t like this, so we gave their leftovers to the chickens who thought the ramen was a pile of worms and went wild with joy.

We don’t need any more desserts in this house, but since it was Pi Day, I baked the Bullocks Wilshire coconut cream pie from Sweet on Friday.  What’s unusual about this pie is that the flavor comes from coconut cream, the stuff from a can that you use to make pina coladas. You mix this sweet, artificial goo into a custard filling that you cook on the stove and then pour into the pie shell and bake. Too much cooking! The custard became very, very firm, losing all its velvety softness. This could be easily fixed by shortening cooking times all around and then I expect this would be a lovely pie.

If I notice any pattern in Sweet it’s that the grand statement desserts tend to fall short while the humbler productions, like the cookies, are generally excellent.