Catch-up post #2: My Waterloo

I do understand the challenges of writing a recipe for a dessert as rococo as a napoleon, but on this one Rose Levy Beranbaum gets a D-.

The napoleon episode started last week when, in an attempt to entice my grandmother to come for dinner, I promised to make napoleons. My grandmother often alludes to napoleons. Based on passing remarks, I would say that her vision of an elegant and delicious meal consists of an old fashioned with a cherry, cheese souffle, and, for dessert, a napoleon. Someone will pay for the meal with a Charga-Plate.

So, last week, using Beranbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible, I made the fondant and the pastry cream that are essential to a classic napoleon. Then I mixed and rolled and chilled and rolled and chilled and rolled etc etc. the puff pastry. All was well and I had a beautiful slab of buttery dough. Beranbaum calls for weighting the puff pastry with a cookie sheet as it bakes and while I suspected a piece of parchment belonged in there somewhere, she's Rose Levy Beranbaum who wrote her master's thesis on sifting flour and who am I to question? I forged ahead. As I feared, when I tried to lift the top cookie sheet off the baked puff pastry, I ended up with torn, buckled shards.

My grandmother came to dinner anyway. We rued the failed napoleon as we ate hamburgers and Stir french fries.

Aside about Barbara Lynch's fries: excellent. In case you are wondering, the Stir fries are on the left, loathsome frozen Safeway fries on the right.

Since I still had the pastry cream and fondant, I made a new batch of puff pastry the other day -- this time using Jacques Pepin's recipe -- baked it up, and assembled the napoleon according to Beranbaum's directions. I greatly admire Beranbaum, but it is wrong to assume that just because her recipes are written in obsessive, maddening detail they will actually work. The pastry cream was soupy. Her formula for making the chocolate drizzle: addled.

That said, just pouring that fondant and watching it harden into a glossy pearlescent shell on the pastry gave me a thrill I don't get anymore from making a rustic fruit cobbler. Tackling an absurd French pastry dessert was exciting, however lame the results. I want to do more of this.

Catch-up post #1: Wednesday night

Dinner 1: My sister, Justine, and her family came over and we made corn dogs. I used a recipe from Staff Meals at Chanterelle that involves, as all corn dog recipes seem to, dipping hot dogs in a raised sweetened cornbread dough before plunging them into hot fat.

Here's what I wrote about this recipe in the margin of the book in March 2003: "Very crispy-- not too doughy. Tasted good. Quality of the hot dog does matter."

Duh.

Here's what I wrote in March 2006: "Not as great as remembered -- but not bad. Used leftover batter to fry Milano cookies and now those WERE great."

Here's what I wrote in August 2010: "So greasy. Am I over corn dogs?"

Yes. I think we all are. Justine and I used to fetishize corn dogs based on their "treat" status when our parents took us to the rodeo, but at a certain age any food that entails this
becomes vaguely unappealing.

The homemade corn dogs were edible. We ate them. But the frozen corn dogs I bought to compare them to (see suspiciously tidy, symmetrical golden specimen at far right) were repulsive. Someone actually spit out a mouthful, though I won't say who. I tried to get everyone to explain why these were so disgusting and no one could. Even I couldn't. Maybe it's just the concept of a frozen corn dog?

The meal was not all bad. I made a refreshing cole slaw out of Stir, a basic mayonnaise dressed slaw with some carrots. Not worth buying the book for, but very good.
And dessert was fantastic, engineered by Isabel start to finish. She wanted to invent an ice cream and did so: chocolate ice cream with Nutella and marshmallow swirl. I think she froze the Nutella, but I'm not sure.

She also made the cones:A lot of them broke so there weren't enough to go around, but the shards were crunchy and delicious used to scoop ice cream out of a dish. I need to get her to write a guest post to explain how she did it.

It's like they were never gone

My children are home from New England, taller and tanner and worldlier than when we said goodbye on July 2. Isabel has started drinking tea and is of her own volition reading Little Women, which may not sound worldlier than reading, say, The Clique, but absolutely is. Working your way through the schlock to arrive at the classics: worldly.

Our conversation on the subject:

Tipsy: "I loved Little Women! Jo was my favorite character. But of course she's every girl's
favorite character."

Isabel: "Actually, I like Beth."

Tipsy: "Beth? But don't you identify with Jo?"

Isabel: "No, I probably identify most with Meg. Or maybe Beth."

Stunned silence. I didn't realize anyone, ever, identified with Meg or Beth. It's a big, crazy world in our little house.

Anyway, we plunged right back into Stir by making Barbara Lynch's potato gnocchi. It's a basic gnocchi recipe: You boil the potatoes, rice or mash them onto a baking sheet, let cool, mix with salt and eggs, then knead the unruly mass into a shaggy dough.After that, you roll out the dough and cut it into ropes
and then into fat bullet shapes.

For a sauce, I made Lynch's butcher shop Bolognese. Lynch: "The secret ingredient in this rich, meaty, creamy, traditional-style Bolognese sauce is chicken livers. Finely chopped and combined with the ground meat, they contribute an amazing depth of flavor without making the sauce livery (which means their addition can be our little secret.")

Oh Barbara, we're way past that kind of Jessica Seinfeld ruse. Everyone knew about the livers; everyone ate the livers; everyone liked the livers. I was pondering the narrative arc of this blog, such as there is one. Two years ago, dinners regularly involved threats, children throwing themselves on the floor and screaming, parents reaching for alcohol, tears. Today, everyone pretty much eats everything.

Moral of the story: You, too, can break your the spirits of your children! Serve enough pig ear salads, Parsi casseroles, octopus, and oxtails stews, and by the time they are in middle school your babies will eat liver sauce without batting an eyelash.

A banana is Burt

Last week, my friend Debra threw a party and I baked this spelt-olive oil-rosemary cake from Good to the Grain for the occasion. Naturally, I worried about bringing a spelt-olive oil-rosemary cake to a party, but reports had been good and I trust Kim Boyce. Plus, this was a crowd -- kombucha-loving females of Marin County, California who met in a spin class -- that might actually embrace an alternative cake. Not that I would EVER stereotype.

The cake was easy to make because you don't have to deal with butter, i.e. no creaming or melting. Two bowls and into the oven it went in about 4 minutes. Cake was unfrosted and firm and traveled well. I brought some creme fraiche for garnish, though I now think whipped cream would have been better, or nothing. As you can see, the cake also contains dark chocolate chunks. I would have preferred it without, but am alone in this aversion.

Although no one at the party took seconds, everyone praised the cake -- which was exotic in flavor, moist, austere, not very sweet. Someone said, "You outdid yourself!" which made me glow. On the face of things, a hit. Certainly not a flop. But for me, at least, there was something quietly wrong.

When I got home I lay in bed and started analyzing what I didn't love about this elegant, arresting dessert. I realized I didn't like this cake as a person . I think I may have still been a little drunk. But it became clear to me, lying there in the dark, that I subconsciously assign genders and personalities to foods. All foods. Steak is an alpha male in his thirties, roast beef is an alpha male over fifty, and potatoes are their brutal, stupid henchmen. Roast pork loin is a pompous bald man, peas are eunuchs, bread is a monk, ice cream in a cone is a fun gay guy, but in a dish is a sensible middle aged woman. Pie is a grandmother, but the kind of grandmother who has too many grandchildren and can never pay specific attention to any one of them. Chocolate chip cookies are tomboys and ginger snaps are great aunts. Dark chocolate is Bea Arthur, milk chocolate is my mother, an uncooked hot dog is Ricky Gervais. Et cetera.

I'm telling you, it was weird! But I don't have to tell you. Here's my question: does everyone subconsciously do this? And if so, do your food personalities match mine at all?

Anyway, I hadn't met this spelt-olive oil-rosemary cake before nor anything like her, so it took me a while to figure her out. And the cake is a her, though that was somewhat unclear at first because she's handsome, angular, and wears drag. I'm fine with all that, but what I didn't like was her hauteur. When I tried to engage with her, she remained cool and contemptuous, perhaps enjoying my bourgeois confusion? I decided I don't want to have dinner with her again, but if you think you might, the recipe is here.

Almost as pretty as Smitten Kitchen

I saw a recipe for rhubarb-rose preserves in Linda Ziedrich's Joy of Jams, Jellies and Other Sweet Preserves and since I have both rhubarb and roses just outside my door, decided to make it.

You simmer fruit, flowers, and sugar and watch as the mixture moves rapidly from beautiful this:
to less beautiful but still beautiful this:And then you put it in jars. Here's what Ziedrich says: "A few minutes before writing these words, I opened a six-year-old jar of rhubarb-rose preserves, and for a moment I thought that the roses were blooming in the garden. These preserves can raise you out of midwinter blues into happy plans for spring."

Hope so!

Our garden is basically a catastrophe this year -- it was an unhappy spring -- but the six rhubarb seeds I planted in the happy spring of 2009 have grown to a lush, waist-high forest. Some people say you should wait until year three to harvest rhubarb, but the stalks are so abundant and thick that I pulled a few anyway. This is the leaf from a single stalk, with a big, fat hardcover book for scale:
Bloggers are always coming up with contests. What contest should I set up so I can send the winner a jar of this jam?

A couple that rarely dines out dines out

The other night we went to Commis, a popular restaurant that San Francisco Chronicle critic Michael Bauer called "a slick, minimalist stage for rising star chef James Syhabout." There was no sign on the restaurant and only when you looked closely at the storefront could you see people moving around inside the small, stark room.

Husband: "I file that under 'precious.'"

Tipsy: "I'm reserving judgment."

The deal was: $59 for three courses, with three selections for each course.

Appetizers:

- cool eggplant soup
- new alliums
- zucchini tartare

(There was more detail about each dish, but I didn't memorize the menu.)

Husband: "For $59 I think they should give you more options."

Tipsy: "I'm getting the alliums."

Husband: "Which do I hate less, eggplant or zucchini?"

Tipsy: "Get the alliums!"

Husband: "You're getting the alliums."

Tipsy: "We can both get alliums."

Husband: "I don't even know what alliums are."

Tipsy: "They're like garlic, or onions, something like that. I'm not really sure. They'll be good."

Husband: "So pompous. They have to make up new names for everything."

Tipsy: "You know what? I'll get the zucchini."

Husband: "But you said you weren't going to get the zucchini."

Tipsy: "But you're right, we should get different things. I want the zucchini."

I didn't want the zucchini, but wanted cool eggplant soup less.

"Here's an amuse bouche for you tonight," said the waiter, and set some bowls on the table. Husband gave me a look. I looked back. Yes, it's a twitty term, but what else are you supposed to call it? In any case, it was dazzling: a soft-boiled egg yolk swathed in an opulent, lukewarm onion puree, the whole thing designed to look like a perfect fried egg. It was even more delicious than it was beautiful and it was exceedingly beautiful.

Husband: "I think that dish would be better without the egg yolk which obscures the good tasting stuff underneath."

Tipsy: "You are entitled to your wrong opinion."

Then the alliums came, accompanied by multiple garnishes including some raw tuna that was more luscious and fantastically delicious than any sashimi we'd ever tasted. Bauer describes a similar tuna he sampled at Commis as "so finely chopped it practically melted like snow."

The zucchini had been thinly shaved into ribbons, rolled into coils and plated with chunky porcini mushrooms and assorted vegetables. I gave it 2 Weight Watchers points, which, aside from the mushrooms, was the only great thing about the dish.

My entree: "slow-cooked" Duroc pork, both loin and belly, which arrived in a painterly ensemble with cauliflower foam, new potatoes, and tiny halved turnips. The pork may have been cooked sous vide, as it was suspiciously tidy, tender, and intensely flavored. I have never made pork that delicious. Husband ordered quail, which was tasty, but scant, and came with beets.

Husband: "What I don't understand is why they whipped up your cauliflower but they had to give me plain beets. You're not supposed to eat these things plain unless you're some kind of a farm animal."

Before dessert the waiter brought shot glasses containing rose geranium-blueberry soda and even my husband couldn't think of anything withering to say about the lovely drink.

For dessert, he ordered chocolate brioche and I ordered peach cream. Again, lots of stuff happening on the plates: purees, ovals of sorbet, chunks of fruit, cake, foam. The best garnish of all were some roasted strawberries, which were meaty and fragrant. Roasted strawberries have so much more character than virginal uncooked strawberries and would make an amazing ice cream. Maybe I'll try making it one day.

The check appeared along with two petite, bright green absinthe gelees -- tender cube-shaped confections that tasted like licorice.

Husband: "They're like off-flavored gum drops."

So I ate his.

The dinner was expensive and we probably won't go back, but I felt we got our money's worth.I can cook Chez Panisse food. I can cook Big Sur Bakery food. I can braise short ribs, mash potatoes, make a goat cheese salad and bake a rustic peach crisp. But I can't make foam or nest coddled egg yolks in bowls of puree or assemble multi-part desserts and follow up with absinthe gelees. I enjoyed the kitchen wizardry and my husband got to exercise his caustic man-of-the-people schtick.

We ambled into the night.

Husband: "That was fun."

Tipsy: "Yes, that was really fun."

Id and superego saw Eclipse and guess what? They disagreed.

If Betty MacDonald had seen Eclipse she might have said nicer things about the Native Americans of Washington State.

I walked out of the theater yesterday, called Isabel and told her how much I enjoyed Eclipse. She replied, "Didn't you think it was STUPID?"

I was so proud of her! I said, "Of course it was stupid, but I also loved it." I wanted to tell her that if she were in Bella's shoes I would twist Edward's pale undead head off with my very own hands and insist she get with the werewolf. But it didn't seem appropriate. Time magazine's excellent review -- Mary Pols calls Edward a "maiden"-- says everything I want to say about this berserk movie, but says it better.

One of my favorite bloggers, Kacy Faulconer, recently exhorted sheepish Twilight fans to stand up for themselves. "If you like it, you think it's good, right? I mean, if you think it's dumb then why do you like it?. . .You don't get to love it and be above it at the same time."

I hate to disagree with Kacy, but you totally do! Ambivalence may be the only appropriate response when confronted with a "work" such as Eclipse. While I was scoffing at this movie (man, this is dumb -- the wooden dialogue? the army of glowy-eyed vampires marching out of the water? Jacob never puts on a shirt?) I was also loving it (those vampires marching out of the water! Jacob never puts on a shirt!) Above it and also loved it, which is how I feel about Kenny Rogers, Grey's Anatomy, and Jell-O instant vanilla pudding.

I didn't cook anything yesterday except a grilled cheese sandwich. Tonight we are going to a special (we hope) dinner here. What I am not ordering: zucchini tartare.

Me and The Egg and I

It would be impossible for me to exaggerate how much I love this book. My 1946 library copy had to be retrieved from "in storage" by the librarian, which is a shame. How does anyone ever find a book that's "in storage" if they're not actively looking? This book is worth actively looking for. Don't be deceived by the dated and saccharine jacket photo: Betty MacDonald's autobiography is as vivid and tart and edgy as anything I've ever read.

MacDonald is probably best known today as the author of the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series for children. But she was more famous once upon a time for this best-selling memoir about the early years of her first marriage, when she and her husband Bob moved to a chicken ranch in the mountains of rural coastal Washington, miles from their nearest neighbors -- who happened to be Ma and Pa Kettle. Yes, that Ma and Pa Kettle. Here's MacDonald's description of her initial visit to the Kettle home:

"Mrs. Kettle, a mountainously fat woman in a very dirty housedress, waddled to the corner of the porch and called cordially 'Come in, come in, glad to see you!' but as I drew timidly abreast of the porch my nostrils were dealt such a stinging blow by the outhouse lurking doorless and unlovely directly across from it that I almost staggered. Apparently used to the outhouse, Mrs. Kettle kicked me a little path through the dog bones and chicken manure on the back porch and said, "We was wonderin' how long afore you'd git lonesome and com down to see us," then ushered me into the kitchen, which was enormous, cluttered and smelled deliciously of fresh bread and hot coffee."

While that's not the most generous or flattering description (see criticisms of MacDonald below), she develops genuine affection for the Kettles and her portrait of the couple is, I thought, curiously sweet. She has little use for her other neighbors, however, even less use for the chickens, and, one begins to suspect, no use at all for Bob. I make her sound sour and negative, which she isn't. She's smart and funny and outward-looking and has such a genius for describing scenery and people that it came as a surprise when I realized she is also writing about loneliness and a deeply unhappy marriage. The book is breezy and full of "high humor," but it is also quietly sad.

I was so taken with The Egg and I that I went and read all sorts of background material. It turns out that not everyone loves The Egg and I.

Two lines of dissent:

1. Some readers think MacDonald is a snob. They are absolutely correct. She thinks she's smarter than the Kettles and every other bumpkin she meets, and you know what? I'm pretty sure she was. I can see why some readers are annoyed, but her attitude did not bother me. I give her a pass on this one.

2. Some readers think MacDonald is a racist. Sadly, her depictions of Indians are indeed hideous and boil down to: dirty, drunk, shiftless. She was narrow and unsympathetic and stubborn in her prejudices and though she doesn't write much about Native Americans, when she does it will make you flinch. There was one passage that almost made me put down the book.

That said, it's not fair to judge her by contemporary standards. People of her generation did not reflexively try to understand the social and historical factors that might lead to, say, an epidemic of alcoholism among Native Americans. They did not refrain from making racial generalizations. If MacDonald's ethnic biases are going to drive you crazy, which they might, you should definitely skip chapter 16.

Other than that, it's a great book. The Egg and I: A-.

Thanks to the two people who missed me enough to write comments. I am touched. My children have been in New England forever and they will be in New England for weeks yet to come. While at first it was restful, I am now bereft. I will try to dredge up material to write about because losing my children AND my blogging rhythm is just too much to bear.

Even worse food styling than usual

This is how I eat when my family is not around. 

This is how I drink when my family is not around: not at all. Last night I opened a bottle of beer, drank a few sips, realized I didn't want it, and poured it into the cyclamen. Who wants a foggy head when you get to spend the evening on the sofa in a TOTALLY SILENT HOUSE watching In Treatment DVDs, one after the other, until you realize you loathe every single character, most especially Melissa George and Embeth Davidtz? No one. Bliss. I would have made a great spinster.

 

But without my family, I've had no one to cook for, no one to inspire and aggravate me into writing my blog, hence the inactivity.

My children and husband are on the New England seashore eating lobster rolls and french fries. They sent me a picture:

He comes back tonight, but the children will stay for a month with their grandparents and cousins, an annual tradition they look forward to for the other 11 months of the year. As do I -- almost as eagerly as I start looking forward to their return a week or so after leave. I won't be cooking much from Stir until they get back, though I did make Barbara Lynch's citrus cured salmon, which is rich beyond belief. More on that irresistible, sickening salmon later.

In other news, here's my review of Allegra Goodman's new novel The Cookbook Collector which wasn't really about collecting cookbooks. I was sorry about that. While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I also completely agree with this amusing review by a critic who didn't. 

Feeding the goats

Here's a cute video Isabel made:

Do you think I could stretch it into a novel?

 I like to manage expectations. Below you will find an uneventful First World slice-of-life story with no sex, no violence, no dialogue, and one character. 

Once upon a time, there was a woman who had been cooking a lot of fantastic stuff out of Barbara Lynch's superb book Stir for her family. Specifically:

-torn pasta with shrimp polpettini. (See above.) This involved cutting homemade pasta into odd, raggedy shapes, cooking them, then combining with a sumptuous sauce of white beans and poached shrimp dumplings. You can not imagine a more breathtaking pasta -- and it would work almost as well without the shrimp.

-fresh pasta with green beans and potatoes. Exactly what it sounds like and quite tasty. However, the woman and her daughter agreed that pesto made with Lynch's formula had too much bite. 

-pasta envelopes stuffed with Epoisses cheese and tossed with a sauce of celery and apple. This dish was both labor-intensive and expensive, as Epoisses cheese, rich and stinky, costs $26 for a 9-ounce round. The woman's daughter and husband thought the cheese was too stinky. The woman thought the cheese was delicious, but that her unsightly homemade Taleggio was just as rich and stinky and delicious, and cost a lot less. How much less, she did not compute. 

-risotto with aged gouda. A porridgy crowd pleaser.

-yogurt panna cotta. A puddingy crowd pleaser.

The woman wrote a cookbook review blog and she took her unpaid work seriously. She kept meaning to post about each dish as she cooked it, but this was an altogether frantic, anxious time. She had some intense paid work projects to complete, was worrying about settling her recently deceased mother's estate, and got up very day at 5 a.m. to bottle feed warm milk to baby goats. The goats had never once said thank-you. She was also driving children to and from various camps and lessons almost hourly, which made her a 21st century parenting clichee. Sometimes her daughter said thank-you.

 

Whatever. Boring. Everyone was busy. It was the fashion.

 

One day, in between chauffeuring her children to enriching activities, the woman ran a tedious errand in San Rafael and spotted a cafe she'd heard about called Brazil Marin. In this small ethnic supermarket/diner, a couple of slouchy men were watching the Brazil-Chile game on TV. The woman decided to stop; she never stopped. At the counter, she ordered a "cheese bread" and served herself some stew, rice, and beans from the steam table buffet. On top of it all she sprinkled manioc and vinegary salsa. Then she took the plate outside to eat in the sun and read her novel.*

 

The cheese bread was so delicious it almost made her faint: pale and crusty on the outside, borderline glutinous on the inside, chewy, super-cheesy. She started trying to figure out how to make it at home and then thought: Why? Like she needed more chores? She stopped trying to figure out how to make Brazilian cheese bread at home.

 

Then she began eating the beans and rice and stew. Objectively speaking, none of it was as "good" as the pastas she'd recently made from Barbara Lynch. Still. It was so overwhelmingly pleasant to be sitting in the sun, eating homey food that someone else had cooked, that, to her complete surprise and bemusement, the woman burst into tears. She cried off and on for the rest of the day. Then she was okay.

The End.

Questions for discussion: What did eating rice, beans, and stew mean for this character? Was it about missing her "recently deceased" mother? Or was she simply feeding too much without getting fed? Is that a problem for women in our culture? Would the story have been more exciting if the woman had flirted with one of the Brazilian men watching soccer instead of buying lunch? Do we really believe the cheese bread "almost made her faint?" Discuss.

In other news, Isabel and I made a light, nearly perfect cupcake, using many of your suggestions: oil, cake flour, yogurt.

The cupcake has a macaroon-like top crust that is actually very tasty, but not technically ideal. Still, this is close! Research continues. Thank-you.

*Amy & Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout. Whew. Strong stuff. The Epoisses cheese of Elizabeth Strout novels. Recommend!

Let me entertain you

One night when I was about the age that Isabel is now, my mother marched downstairs and unplugged the TV while I was watching Gypsy because it was past my bedtime and she disapproved of television. This was the pre-VCR era when, if you wanted to see a movie after it left the theaters, you had to catch it on TV at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday or Tuesday night at 10 and you had to watch it right then, start to finish, or you might wait years to find out what happened to Natalie Wood after Rosalind Russell forced her to strip. I still don't know. As a teenager, I felt the same devotion to pop culture that I've recently heard several gay men (Glee producer Ryan Murphy, John Waters) describe on Fresh Air, which is to say, I lived for Dallas, ad-interrupted airings of Rosemary's Baby, the West Side Story soundtrack and Sidney Sheldon novels. That I am not a nattily dressed Hollywood "creative" chuckling with Terry on NPR is a both a mystery and a crime. 

I will draw a curtain over what happened after my mother unplugged the TV. Suffice it to say, we did not speak for days. It was one of our six worst fights ever. She used say to me, I can't wait until YOU have a daughter of your own and I hope she's as blah blah blah and blah blah blah as you are! Furiously. Perhaps while brandishing a wooden spoon and chasing me out the front door. 

You're wondering if I'm kidding. I'll leave you to wonder. But I can assure you, if my mother did chase me out the door with a wooden spoon, and I'm not saying she did, I fully deserved it. We were very different people. She was (then) stern, judgmental, and baffled by me. I was (then) resentful, rebellious, and baffled by her.

 

In recent decades we both softened and grew very, very close. I miss my mother more than I can say, and think of her hourly. But I have spent the last 13 years waiting for her curse to come true, for the epic battles between Isabel and me to commence.

Recently, though, it dawned on me that while various misfortunes lie in store for me, as they do for all of us, a dysfunctional relationship with my daughter is unlikely to be among them. Isabel is well into the Abercrombie/eye shadow/Gossip Girl phase but there's still this rainbow over the two of us that's been there since she was seven or eight. I had no idea this was even possible.

Anyway, that's my long way of introducing the cupcake bake-off we held the other afternoon, during the brief hiatus between the end of the school year and camp. A cupcake bake-off is my idea of a good time and it turns out Isabel feels exactly the same way. We're trying to find the perfect cupcake recipe and we were sure we'd do so by the end of the escapade. 

We did not. Although we had a very august tasting panel, it reached no firm conclusions except that we must work harder to achieve a cupcake that tastes like Thomas Keller's but has the texture of Duncan Hines.

Ranked from best to worst cupcake:

1. Thomas Keller's vanilla cupcake from Ad Hoc At Home. This estimable cupcake, which calls for the whites of the eggs rather than whole eggs, was a bit dry. But the vanilla flavor was intense and perfectly articulated.

2. 1-2-3-4 cupcakes. This is the formula underlying many butter cake recipes: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 4 eggs -- plus 1 cup of milk, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and some vanilla. The resulting cupcakes were richer and moister (more moist?) than the Keller cakes, but lacked the purity of flavor.

3. Susan Purdy's yellow cake from The Perfect Cake. This is a modified 1-2-3-4 cake, and was hard to distinguish from 1-2-3-4, but everyone liked it slightly less.

4. Duncan Hines mix. My husband's favorite. All other tasters were put off by the 

factory fragrance, including two 9-year-old boys. On the plus side, these were fluffy and incredibly light. Placed on a scale, the mix cupcakes weigh about a third less than any of the others. So how do you get the airiness of mix with the flavor of homemade? Ideas?

 

Is it just me or is it salty in here?

On Friday, Isabel baked these chocolate cookies from Barbara Lynch's Stir and they are blockbusters. I don't even like chocolate, and I particularly don't like chocolate with cinnamon, which these also contain, but trust me: they are cookies for the scrapbook. Somehow, Lynch strikes the perfect balance of overbearing chocolate and obnoxious cinnamon, enabling the two flavors to neutralize and complement one another. But what really takes these cookies over the edge is the sprinkling of sea salt on top -- just like in the famous New York Times chocolate chip cookie recipe. The recipe for Lynch's cookies can be found here. 

We were so enthusiastic about these cookies that on Saturday, when asked to bring a dessert to my cousin's house, I made salted caramel cupcakes, the wonderful recipe for which comes from Cakewalk author Kate Moses's blog. As my friend Zorina put it, the caramel icing tastes exactly like the inside of a See's Bordeaux chocolate. But better! Because of the salt. After a day or two the salt melts into the frosting which doesn't look so pretty, but you shouldn't have many cupcakes left. 

If this keeps up I'm going to find it just as unthinkable to eat an unsalted dessert as I do an unsalted steak. This can't be a good thing. 

A perfect Berkeley day

That's not a Novella Carpenter cardboard cut-out Owen is standing behind, it's the real Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City. We took her Urban Goats class yesterday in Berkeley and she was absolutely great, every bit as straightforward and droll and cant-free as you'd expect after reading her book. She gave a PowerPoint presentation about breeds, feed, shelter, etc., then did a hands-on demo of vaccine injecting, hoof trimming, and milking. I've read so much about goat husbandry over the last few months that little of it was new to me, but I'm glad we took the class. She's inspiring.

After that, Owen and I went to a take-out shop I'd heard about called La Bedaine and bought a wild boar terrine sandwich with cornichons and mustard, which is a very Berkeley kind of sandwich. 

Owen talked so much he hardly touched his portion, so I ate for two, which was okay because there's no food I'd rather get fat on than Berkeley food. 

 

I figured since we were in Berkeley, we might as well make a day of it, so I signed us up for a hippie fermented foods class in the afternoon. As you can imagine, Owen was totally stoked. Who wants to see Toy Story 3 when you can learn to make sauerkraut?

Actually, he went along with it very cheerfully, probably because I was listening so attentively to his monologues. It's amazing what undivided attention can accomplish. 

Our fermentation teacher was named Nishanga Bliss. That's a name you either have to live up to or live down, I can't decide. Whichever it is, Nishanga managed. She convinced me of the virtues of fermentation (probiotics) over canning and made a fantastic dill pickle that took about 5 minutes flat (not counting fermentation time) before moving on to kim chi. She also sang the praises of a very pure salt from Utah mined from "ancient oceans" and talked a lot about making her own soda pop. Owen wanted to leave halfway through the class, which I'd expected, but in the car he told me he wants to make pickles this week, which I had not. 

Pickle tutorial coming soon.

Poulet au pie crust

Wednesday night I wrapped a whole chicken in "bread" dough (poulet au pain from Stir), except it wasn't really bread dough, it was pie dough. Flour + butter + water = pie dough, no? So cool! The chicken was completely sealed in dough when it went into the oven, but there must have been a breach because juices oozed forth to make a rich, salty, gooey sauce that was very delicious mopped from the bottom of the pan with shards of pastry. My husband said: "It's not as good as chicken a la king." I think he just said it because he wanted to be quoted on the blog. Even he couldn't believe it. This chicken was special.

I also creamed some spinach per Barbara Lynch's recipe. Creamed spinach should contain cream, of course, but should also be pureed or finely chopped -- creamed -- to minimize the distinction between solid spinach and liquid cream. This creamed spinach failed in that regard, but I am like Popeye in my fondness for spinach in all forms, save salad. Remember how Popeye would punch a hole in a can and pour it down his throat? That used to make me hungry.

Thursday night, it was just Owen and me and neither of us wanted much for dinner, so we ate homemade camembert on toast. The first bites of camembert were fantastic, but it got a bit stinky and intense towards the end. You need to pace yourself with the house camembert.

Alton Brown cookies

I don't know anything about Alton Brown, except that his English muffins let me down and his granola is the most stupidly delicious I've ever tasted. My sister calls once a month to curse me for telling her about it. 

Isabel gave Brown's chocolate chip cookies a high ranking -- too high, imho. But I'm just the secretary. I thought they were lumpish and undistinguished and would rather eat a pound of granola. I just tested two more cookies to confirm my judgment. Yes, very, very bad.

Anyway, here's Isabel's revised ranking:

1. Cakewalk by Kate Moses (Robust cookies flavored with espresso powder, irresistible and possibly unbeatable.)

2. Baking by Dorie Greenspan (The classic -- but better.) 

3. Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce (Crisp, butterscotchy)

4. Alton's Brown "The Chewy" (Thick, soft.) 

5.  New York Times (Fussy to make; thick; salted on top)

6. All Recipes (Stout, chewy, more-ish)

7. Silver Palate (Chewy, butterscotchy)

8. Ready to Bake by David Lebovitz. (Very good -- plus, they contain nuts, which we like.)

9.  Toll House (The classic.)

10. Ad Hoc at Home (Too much severe chocolate, too little cookie)

11. Joy of Cooking, 1975 (Thin, pale, unimpressive.)

In other news, I made a green bean and seared shrimp salad from Stir the other night. You can extrapolate a lot from the name alone, but not the toasted hazelnuts, big handfuls of cilantro, sliced radishes and dressing made with Thai red curry paste and creme fraiche. One day I'm going to quit trying to peel toasted hazelnuts by rubbing them in a towel because it doesn't work. Do hazelnut skins even taste bad? I like this book a lot. I like that Barbara Lynch tells me how to do crazy stuff I've never done before, like wrap a chicken in bread dough, which I did tonight. Haven't eaten yet, or I'd tell you how it turned out.

Speaking of chicken, this story about pollutants and free-range eggs is a real bummer. It doesn't change my feelings about keeping hens or letting them run around in the yard or eating their eggs. I didn't believe that "pastured" eggs were much healthier to begin with, and now I don't believe the opposite. Still, depressing.

Making cheese

Those are blue cheeses I made last Thursday and decided to age in the refrigerator. Apparently, they're going to be late bloomers.

See this?

A chunk of the very same blue cheese that I decided to age in the "cave." This hussy is already wearing a tube top and watermelon lip gloss. She smells like blue cheese dressing; I have a feeling she's growing up too fast.

This is the cheese cave:

The temperature reads 64 degrees on a hot day and in the low fifties on a cold day -- overall, just a bit too warm for optimal cheese ripening. But I have limited refrigerator space and some of the cheeses -- camembert, cheddar -- have come out of the cave in spectacular condition.

I started making cheese after taking a Davis Co-op camembert workshop back in April and it's my favorite thing ever. If you have any interest at all -- even a flicker of interest -- you should try it. Don't be intimidated. Buy this book and order supplies from this guy. Take a class, if you can. Improvise your cheese molds using soup cans and strawberry baskets. It's harder than baking bread, but easier than stuffing sausage or decorating a cake and far more gratifying, at least to me. Watching a pinch of powder and a few drops of rennet effect transformations on a gallon of supermarket milk is the closest I've ever come to performing magic. I've been about 50% successful with the cheeses, which is 100% more successful than I'd expected.

No verdict yet on either the blue cheese or the Taleggio.

You wash down the rind of a Taleggio every few days with salt water to control the mold, but these babies have still been growing an awful lot of fur.

Chocolate chip cookie update coming soon.

This and that

This is the olive and ricotta pizza from Stir that I made the other night using leftover brioche pizza dough. You bake a hot, zesty, salty pie and then top with cool ricotta and chopped scallions. Quite delicious, though it reinforced my preference for a lean, chewy pizza crust. 

That's it. That's all I've cooked from Stir in the last week. I don't know why. Busy. Distracted. Unmotivated. We've been dining on leftovers and cereal and, last night, take-out from the glamorous new Whole Foods of which half the floor space is devoted to prepared foods: salad bar, pizza counter, deli, sushi bar, burrito bar. Crafty! Because while there were long lines in the food court, absolutely no one was buying rump roasts or flaxseed or sugar or flour.  It's like the whole town is a giant campus and this is our fancy canteen. It depressed me.

 

Sunday supper:

Alice Waters would not approve. I don't approve. 

Meanwhile, I've done some baking from Good to the Grain:

Currant scones. Made with spelt flour, these tasted healthy, and I don't mean that in no nice way.

Banana walnut cake. 

Rich and moist, but a bit to sweet. Not a replacement for banana bread. It is not flying out the door.

Graham crackers. 

These did fly out the door. Made with a combination of graham and teff flours, they're less like graham crackers than assertive, swarthy, super-snappy gingersnaps.  Last night I ate the last of them spread with leftover whipped mascarpone.

 

I posted about this before, but have you all experienced whipped, sweetened mascarpone? It's like a miraculous cross between whipped cream and buttercream frosting, but tangier, fluffier, more maddeningly delicious than either. I do not hate myself enough to ever make it again. 

Does that look heavy to you?

Capital letters denote words spoken in anger.

Tipsy: Owen, it's time to feed the goats.

Owen: Why do I have to do EVERYTHING. 

Tipsy: You don't. Just feed the goats. 

Owen: Can you carry the bottles down? 

Tipsy: You can carry the bottles.

Owen: But they're SO HEAVY.

Tipsy: I think you're strong enough.

Owen: I think I'm going to drop them.

Tipsy: Please don't drop them.

Owen: I'm going to drop them on the floor. I know I am. I won't be able to help it.

Tipsy: You're not going to drop them.

Owen: Yes I AM.

Tipsy: If you drop them I'M GOING TO THROW AWAY ALL YOUR LEGOS.

Owen IF I DROP THEM I'M GOING TO BLAME YOU.

Tipsy (opening a beer): Please, just go feed the goats.

He didn't drop the bottles. He fed the goats. And once outside, he happily futzed around for 45 minutes and came back chatty and agreeable. It was just the two of us. He ate cereal for dinner, we watched a back episode of Lost, and I let him go to sleep in my bed. I think we're all ready to wean these goats.

If you're sensitive, skim down

We ate turkey the other night. One of our turkeys. Specifically, the overbred broad-breasted white who was so very broad-breasted she could barely hobble, wheezing, from feeder to watering dish. She couldn't roost either -- too bulbous to hop onto the perch where all the other birds, including the other turkey -- spent the night. So we created a little "perch" for her on a small step stool in the corner. Alas, she preferred to sleep as close as possible to the others and would huddle directly underneath them on the floor. You can imagine. Or, if you can't: We had to hose her off when she emerged from the coop every morning. Turkeys like this should not exist. Humankind should be ashamed.

In December, we killed the turkeys. Plucked and cleaned, the heritage tom weighed five pounds; the hen, twelve pounds. I put them in trash bags in the freezer for six months so we could forget where our food comes from. We hadn't quite, but the hen took up so much space that the freezer door kept getting jammed. So I brined, roasted, and served her to my in-laws the other night. That sounds kind of hostile doesn't it. Hmm. Wasn't! We just needed a crowd. In any case, she tasted absolutely okay -- dry, bland -- exactly like a supermarket turkey. I will never raise or kill another turkey. I would rather do without.

On to more appetizing subjects, like chocolate chip cookies. 

Since I last posted on the subject, Isabel has baked chocolate chip cookies from David Lebovitz and The Silver Palate. Both were delicious, but neither are contenders for the top slot. She also baked the famous, fussy New York Times cookies, though she did not use the specified chocolate, which was was prohibitively expensive. Personally, I do not agree with this new ranking -- I would put All Recipes above the NYT -- but Isabel's the boss.

Revised ranking:

1. Cakewalk by Kate Moses (Robust cookies flavored with espresso powder, irresistible and possibly unbeatable.)

2. Baking by Dorie Greenspan (The classic -- but better.) 

3. Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce (Crisp, butterscotchy)

4. New York Times (fussy to make; thick; salted on top)

5. All Recipes (Stout, chewy, more-ish)

6. Silver Palate (Chewy, butterscotchy)

7. Ready to Bake by David Lebovitz. (Very good -- plus, they contain nuts, which we like.)

8.  Toll House (The classic.)

9. Ad Hoc at Home (Too much severe chocolate, too little cookie)

10. Joy of Cooking, 1975 (Thin, pale, unimpressive.)

They're laughing and drinking and having a party

One thing I don't miss about Gourmet magazine: the party pictures in which gorgeous people were always smiling, lifting Lalique champagne flutes in lush green gardens where the tables were artfully set to look beautifully artless. Idealized parties make me feel a little sheepish about my actual parties which tend to look more like the photo above.

The guests were our neighbors JoAn and Bill, and my parents-in-law, David and Mary, who are visiting from Boston. The two couples are going to swap houses in the fall and we thought a get-together was indicated. Topics of conversation: New England weather, Elizabeth Taylor's eyes, my adolescent adoration of Lady Di, Bill's childhood pet bantam rooster, neighbors not there to defend themselves. I cooked an all-Stir menu:

Brioche pizza with fried pistachios, fresh ricotta and honey. To me, probably the most tempting dish in the entire book. You make a soft, buttery dough, let it rise, roll out to pizza dimensions, top with garlic-infused olive oil, fresh ricotta, and fried pistachios. Bake. When it comes out of the oven, sprinkle with sea salt and drizzle with honey. The crust was soft, supple and rich and it stopped me short. Not like pizza crust, which is chewy and lean; more like puff pastry. People loved this. I almost loved it but didn't quite. 

Steaks with cheese sauce.

 

You sear thick sirloins, add butter and thyme for calories and flavor. Saute wild mushrooms and roast onions to serve on the side. Then make a decadent sauce with aged gouda and cream, which is very, very delicious poured over the meat, as fat on fat tends to be.

Roasted fennel and green beans. Fine. Plain. Forgettable.

Wild rice salad. Wild rice, chopped vegetables, pine nuts, feta. Delicious. Forgettable.

Peaches and cream. You poach peaches in white wine and sugar, then serve with mascarpone whipped with powdered sugar. Mascarpone whipped with powdered sugar: unforgettable. This was a spectacularly beautiful dish -- when poached, the peaches turned a radiant pink-gold.  To go alongside, I served butter cookies.

Perfect cookies, if not innovative.

 

I was telling my husband afterwards that while I was proud of this meal, a lot of it -- steak and cheese sauce, in particular -- isn't my kind of food. I wasn't complaining. Like trying on a dress, it's how you figure out who you are.

All better and then some

We're having a party tonight. I was going to braise a pork shoulder, buy some tortillas, serve tacos and make it all really easy for myself. But then I woke up feeling so energetic I decided to tackle an ambitious Stir-based menu. I haven't done anything like it in ages:

brioche pizza with fresh ricotta, fried pistachios and honey

--

seared steaks with cheese sauce and roasted onions

roasted fennel and green beans

wild rice salad

--

peaches & cream (photo)

butter cookies

To me, this sounds like a dream dinner. We'll see how it tastes.

Why so quiet

I haven't been cooking or blogging because I was busy and then I was sick. Still sickish. The only good part about getting sick is that it renews your appreciation for health.

During this downtime, we finally started watching Glee. Cory Monteith is my new boyfriend. To try to become smarter, I read a Michael Pollan book about building a writing hut and while I know it's not as important and influential as his food work, I enjoyed it more. It's one of those books that has me seeing the world anew, actually thinking about windows and roofs and walls and wood and water. I also read Sarah Silverman's The Bedwetter, which has me seeing Sarah Silverman exactly as I did before: not that funny.  

The next cookbook I'll start, hopefully tomorrow, is Stir by Barbara Lynch, which both my mother and mother-in-law gave me for my birthday.

It has a huge pasta section (!), a tiny dessert section (boo), and I'm just waiting for a burst of vigor to begin.