I’m not sure what exactly possessed me to set to work on a recipe for Angel Food Cake. Maybe its light, airiness seemed right for summer? Maybe…. Okay, I’d come up with other “maybe”s, but truly I have no idea. Once I got it in my head, however, it stuck. And I’m glad it did.
If you know me even a little or have been reading this blog for more than half a second, you probably know that I love to make things from scratch. Part of it is the sense of adventure in the undertaking, part of it the feeling of accomplishment when it’s done. Ultimately, it’s about the eating: fresh and homemade always tastes so much better.
Since making ricotta a couple years ago, I can’t help but feel mildly offended by the flavorless, chalky storebought tubs, canned beans taste as much of the can to me as they do of beans, and the mere thought of bottled salad dressing turns my stomach. Not that there is inherently anything wrong with purchasing prepared versions of these and other things—and I do for the sake of convenience from time to time—it’s just that, once you know what something can (and is arguably supposed to) taste like, it’s hard to go back.
So it would stand to reason that I would be up for, eager, maybe even experienced in making homemade ice cream. Right? Well….
What do strawberry shortcake and cobbler have in common? Yes they’re both delicious, but think harder….
That’s right! Biscuits. You guys are smart! (Or my creativity just runs out quickly when fabricating one-sided conversations.)
I did something kinda cheeky today. I made a strawberry cobbler using my sweet cream shortcake biscuits. Then I topped it off with whipped cream (okay, mascarpone). Then I ate it and nearly died. And now I’m sharing it with you.
And I’m calling it Strawberry Shortcobbler.
I didn’t make it through the entire magazine before deciding which recipe I was going to adapt from this month’s Bon Appetit. I made it to page 54, a page that it is now easy to find and difficult to open because it’s been splattered repeatedly with honey syrup. The recipe on that page is for an olive-oil cake with candied orange, and I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to make it for a multitude of reasons.
First, I love olive oil cake. I mean, olive oil. That’s enough right there. But there’s also the fact that olive oil cakes remind me of my friend Carolyn, my maid of honor and partner in silliness and unrelenting laughter. She once sent me an olive oil cake recipe and asked if I could adapt it to gluten-free (she doesn’t have to eat that way, but she’s played around with it from time to time). After an initial failure, it took me more than a year to get around to finishing the recipe for her, which I wound up doing as a gift for her standing up with me at our wedding. I actually wrote recipes for all my bridesmaids—I’ll share them with you sometime. And lucky for me and for New York, after a stint down south and some time on the west coast, Carolyn is once more just a borough away from me. Which reminds me: I need to get off my agoraphobic butt and bring her some cake already.
We are big fans of garlic around here. If you browse through the recipe index, you'll find that I rarely cook without it. In fact, since I mince or slice up several cloves on an almost daily basis, my fingertips smell distinctly of garlic more than 90% of the time. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I like it.
I love garlic for all that it is just as it is, but I'd be lying by omission if I didn't also tell you that I love it even more for what it can become. With a teeny bit of prep work and a little bit of time in a toasty hot oven, garlic goes from being wonderfully potent and pungent to meltingly buttery-sweet. Roasted garlic, my friends, is something that no cooking repertoire should be without. It's too easy and it makes even the most simple dishes groan-worthy.
The hedge fund that I used to work at was a small company, personnel-wise. At the time that I left, there were only 40 or so employees between the New York and west coast offices, most of whom, unsurprisingly, were men. For the most part, the guys that I worked with were great, but there was still a good deal of chest-beating and explosive, testosterone-fueled aggression (or straight-up sociopathy, depending on exactly who we’re talking about). Finance is insanely stressful, money makes people crazy, and every guy wants to make it known that he has the biggest d…esk. I get it, but sometimes us poor outnumbered girls just needed a break. So, every few months, the women in the office would head out for a Ladies’ Night.
Ladies’ Nights usually involved going out to a nice restaurant, eating good food, gossiping, and drinking way too much. There may have been a call out "sick" or two made the following day--the Irish flu, as my boss liked to call it. And when we weren’t over-imbibing, efforts were being made to keep certain sets of claws in check. (Hey, I never said our gender was perfect.) At the end of it all, though, we could say that we had a good time, just us girls, and the knowing glances the next morning were always worth it.
Dill from the garden.
On the last Ladies’ Night that I attended, one of the more low-key occasions, we went to a restaurant in Soho called the Antique Garage. The place is colored of burgundy and wood, the exposed brick walls hung with mirrors, ceiling sparkling with chandeliers. It’s that intriguing combination of opulent and decrepit that only antiques can possess. The menu features Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavors—olive oil, feta, hummus, olives, oregano and tzatziki.
Sometimes, just when you think you’ve figured out how something works, you realize that the rules aren’t so hard and fast. That they maybe only apply in certain situations. That, on occasion, you need to break them entirely.
Last year, I published this post on cooking with dried beans. In it I describe the soak, drain, cook method of cooking dried beans. I still stand by it for use in certain recipes and especially if you’re looking to replace canned beans. But as soon as I thought that was all I’d ever need to know about cooking with dried beans, I realized that there are some cases in which you don’t need or want to soak your beans.
My realization occurred a couple months after that post, when working on a recipe for black bean soup. Every iteration of the soup was good, but it took three tries get it just right. More of this spice, less of that. As it turned out, however, the biggest factor in achieving the soup I wanted wound up having very little to do with seasoning and a whole lot more to do with my approach to the beans.
2 parts water : 1 part butter : 1 part flour : 2 part eggs
I’m going to keep this simple today. I don’t have a story to tell, no anecdote about what this recipe means to me or how it relates to my life. I only have one urgent and important thing to say:
Make pâte à choux.
I love my food magazine subscriptions. I love them so much that the shelf under our coffee table is stacked so full that I won’t be at all surprised when it finally slams to the floor under the weight. We keep talking about how I have to go through and get rid of some of them. We’ll probably keep talking about it too. I don’t see it happening any time soon.
The true, awful shame in the thing, though, is that I don’t even keep up with them anymore.
Each month, I fan out the current issues on top of the table. Most months they sit there looking nice...and unopened. If we’re traveling, I’ll gather up the ones I haven’t yet read and catch up on the plane or train, but that’s really the only time I get around to them. It feels too much like leisure, like self-indulgence, for me to justify sitting down and diving into a magazine when I should be writing, doing dishes, or ironing that damned duvet cover.
But I think I’ve found a way to have my magazines back and take that leisure time for myself without feeling like I’m slacking off. I’ve decided to give myself a monthly assignment.
Lately, the days of rain have outnumbered the days of sun. The gray skies might be depressing, but a glance outside remembers that the dreary weather is worthwhile because everything’s gone green. It’s time to trade in coats for light sweaters, time to leave the windows open while the air is still cool. It’s time for asparagus, fiddleheads, rhubarb, and strawberries—the latter two baked in a pie.
It’s spring.
And yet, all I want is lentil soup.
