November 2007 archives

It’s that time of the year, folks, when everyone’s thoughts turn to baking. Coincidentally it’s when the new crop of baking books are released, just in time for the sweet surge. This has been a pretty interesting year for cookbooks as the trends seem to be returning to books geared towards home bakers and cooks. Thankfully in my opinion.

Although some of these books were written by pastry chefs, all are geared towards the home cook. I’ve been making notes in each of them which desserts I plan to try in the upcoming months and I hope to share them with you as well.

The long-awaited book from pastry chef Elizabeth Falkner, Demolition Desserts show how this very talented San Francisco baker breaks down classic desserts, and reconstructions them into whimsical, yet sophisticated presentations.

Although at first glance these look complicated, I envision many of these recipes being adaptable and great on their own. Tapioca with Concord Grapes is one winning combination I’m eyeing.

But there’s also simple Citizen Cake bakery classics: Chocolate Chip Cookies, Sticky Toffee Cupcakes, and puffy marshmallows which get dipped in a thin layer of dark chocolate at her bakery. If you’re not afraid to tackle some projects in the kitchen—and many recipes aren’t all that complicated—Elizabeth’s book is a wild, wacky ride through the world of modern baking.

When Alice Medrich releases a new book, it’s always a special event. And I’ve never made a recipe of hers that didn’t go instantly into my ‘winner’ category.

Continue Reading Favorite Baking Books…

This dessert is the result of a happy accident. I’ve been working with a liquor company on developing some recipes and after a couple furious days of recipe-testing, I had a zillion containers of various odds-and-ends lying around.

Some had banana, some chocolate. Most were spiked with various quantities of liquor and there were a number of orphans that I had no idea where they came from. And there was that bottle of dark rum that I needed to finish the last little sip of.

So what did I do?

I mixed them all up, tossed them in my ice cream machine and let ‘er rip. After 30 minutes or so, I dug in my spoon in and tasted the most delicious batch of ice cream I’d churned up in a while.

But soon after, I got to work and discovered something—the world’s easiest Chocolate Ice Cream…with no machine required!

Continue Reading The Easiest Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe…Ever…

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Xmas in Frisco

It’s back! SomaFM presents Xmas in Frisco for your holiday listening pleasure—or displeasure…

Newsletter

If you’ve subscribed to the newsletter, the most recent went out on November 17th. If you signed up and didn’t receive it, you may have a firewall or some anti-spam program with your ISP which prevents bulk emails from coming through.

Continue Reading Blog Notes…

I woke up yesterday around 6am, and all I could think about was food.

Of course it was Thanksgiving, and there was so much to do. In spite of the strike, my friend David did manage to arrive just in time for dinner, a little sleep, and a early-morning trip to the outdoor market to load up on everything for a full day of cooking. And to explain to a lot of French people what Thanksgiving was all about.

We bought every kind of root vegetable we could find. And l’autre David, who’s also a cook, insisted on roasting each one individually then combining them. I’m not sure that was necessary, but they were sure good since later on I happily ate my words. Our chestnut stuffing was another hit; French people don’t eat big mounds of stuffing but hardly a bit was leftover. But what’s not to like about buttery cubes of levain with roasted chestnuts, leeks, pruneaux d’Agen, and lots and lots of fresh sage and thyme?

It got me thinking about what makes a good cook since Thanksgiving food is some of the simplest fare there is.

Take mashed potatoes. There’s very few ingredients. But if you have good russet potatoes, terrific butter, fromage blanc, sea salt, and freshly-cracked white pepper, you really can’t go wrong. Indeed, one of the non-secrets of good cooking is to buy good ingredients and do as little to them as possible. You don’t need me to tell you a nice ripe peach tastes much better than a hard, out-of-season one. Or freshly-made mashed potatoes tastes better than those goofy flakes from the box.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately since Michael Ruhlman, whose just released a new book book Elements of Cooking, and who began a new blog as well—Elements of Cooking, got me thinking. In his words, he writes in his new blog…

“(it’s)…not a recipe blog–I’m interested in what doesn’t change, what can’t change, what is permanent, what is fundamental to the act of cooking. I am interested in not needing recipes.”

Continue Reading 10 Easy Ways To Improve Your Cooking…

I opened my jar of molasses to start my Thanksgiving baking…

I hope this isn’t a bad omen.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

(And wish me luck…)

‘Tis the beginning of the season for holiday baking. Years ago I gave the much-maligned fruitcake a makeover, dressing it up with plumped-up sour cherries, an overload of chocolate, and a boozy bath of liquor added at the end.

You may remember my fruitcake disaster, so I’m not about to give anyone advice on preservation techniques. And you’ll notice my cake dipped a bit in the middle since I was playing around with French flour, which is softer than it’s American counterpart.*

But in looking at it afresh, I like the graceful little dip, which I find rather appealing. And since everything else in Paris is on strike today, I thought I’d let Photoshop take the day off as well.

Continue Reading Chocolate-Cherry Fruitcake Recipe…

Something around here stinks.
And it’s not just my neighbor.

When I moved to Paris, I remember my first load of laundry that I proudly pulled out of my little machine tucked in the corner.

After I figured out the seven different dials and nine different buttons on the machine (actually, I’ve still only managed to figure out what about a third of them do), I remember extracting my clothes from the machine and hanging them all out to dry on my shiny new rack that took me a few hours to buy at the BHV. In Paris, few people have dryers since it’s verboten to cut holes in buildings to vent to the outside. And even though each load of laundry takes me the better part of 3 days instead of…say, an hour…I’m happy to report I’ve reduced my carbon footprint.

And I’ve also reduced my productivity at doing anything else.

Continue Reading The Not-So-Sweet Smell of Excess…

In terms of desserts, it doesn’t get much easier than this.

Affogato means ‘drowned’ in Italian, and any frozen dessert can meet this fate by tippling a little liquor or coffee over it. Classically, espresso is poured over Vanilla Ice Cream, but you’d have to be pretty hard-core to pour espresso over Espresso Granita. If I did that, I’d be ricocheting off the walls around here.

And because I live on the roof, I’m one caffeine-fueled tumble away from meeting my maker. Not my coffee-maker, mind you.
And we wouldn’t want that to happen, now. Would we?

I still have so much to accomplish…like tackling those chocolate marshmallows…

Continue Reading Espresso Granita Affogato Recipe…