Death by chocolate (and salted caramel)

I saw this tart on a few blogs and woah, made it! Most fabulous. If you'd like to see the recipe I followed, it's on The Traveler's Lunchbox, and I don't want to plagiarize. It's a nice discussion of salty desserts, which is kind of a thing, or maybe used to be a thing and I haven't been paying attention enough to the fads.

I made one for the s.o. & I, and then realized (after downing 1/8th each), that 1/16th of the recipe carries with it 522 calories, and about 75% of your daily allowance of saturated fat.

I knew this when I made one for the soup kitchen as well, but thought that we could all use a little indulgence every once in a while, especially around the holidays.

Here it is, basking in the sunlight. Kind of dusty?

halloween, pumpkin pie, and other sweets

this year for halloween i was a taco shell/tortilla with my friends. we had a lady caca/ground beef, a salad and a pencil/cheese. it worked, to an extent...as long as we told people what we were.

so prior to halloween i got an email back informing me that i was due to bake for the soup kitchen, and so i went to the market and bought a wee little pie pumpkin. those guys are so cute. the man who sold it to me made sure i wasn't just buying it because it was pretty, so as an aside, please don't belittle your customer because she might look like she orders takeout and calls that food.

the pies were pretty tasty. the bottom of one stuck (complete accident), so i was able to sample one of them, and it did indeed taste like pumpkin pie. hoo-rah, i still have the touch.

well i had a lot of pumpkin seeds leftover, and nymag had some recipes featured on how to use up pumpkin seeds, other than just roasting them and crunching on them every time you pass the bowl in the kitchen. and so, pumpkin seed and chocolate peanut brittle was born. i will look for the link. the toffee part was by far the easiest thing i have ever cooked. not only that, but it tasted like heaven.

flash forward to a few days ago, and i get another email about baking, this week for apples. i went to bed with the joy of cooking last night trying to find something resembling an apple crumble, but i guess in 1969 there was nothing called apple crumble. i did eventually find a page with apple and peach cobbler, apple/plum cake cockaigne, fresh fruit crisp... i settled on the apple cake cockaigne. i added in some quinces and some pears, put a little extra streusel type mixture on top, and made enough to have a tester mini. i would much prefer sending something i've already tasted, especially if other people will be eating it. see my anxious food post below.

we'll see. don't get much feedback, which is not too much of a problem. matthew thought it was good, and all i can hope is that someone else enjoys it too.

---

halloween happenings also included taking the big bag of freezer composting to the actual north brooklyn compost site. dumped it in, put some leaves in the bin, put some more in...it was rather uneventful, but it was nice to walk around on a pretty warm halloween day and see all the little kiddies dressed up in their adorable costumes.

til next year.

Cooking for Others

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

Or so says Sartre. Cooking for others is not quite hell, but preparing a meal for people you like (and perhaps want to impress), is nerve wracking for me. I'm confident in the kitchen when it's just me, but I'm ok with eating crap if I made it. And I'll eat it for leftovers the next day if I made a lot of it (hello, white bean red sauce 11 p.m. "lasagna" last winter). The only thing I've thrown out in recent memory for poor taste was a custard. I don't know why I made it, but I'm guessing I was too lazy to go outside to actually buy dessert and didn't have any dessert ingredients, like flour or something.

I get almost daily practice by feeding my man whatever I think to cook up, and trying out different recipes I find online. He has helpful suggestions, like, "Those things don't really go together," or, "Maybe we should put cheese in that," or "Maybe we should add/not add that extra clove of garlic." I don't get too crazy and I even surprised him with the cheese-less gratin dauphinois from a few weeks ago. I like healthy eating when it tastes like it's not. He didn't know I was making it until about halfway through, and then liked it.

My dad and stepmother make a lot of curries, stir fries & what one might call stews. These are all delicious and spicy, but living with them, I really abhorred whatever was on the table for dinner unless it was roast chicken or pasta (with puttanesca sauce & lots & lots of grated mozzarella). We had a pretty regular rotation of food at my mom's house, and she was great at those dishes - meatloaf, different kinds of chicken, and a lot of couscous, which became a regular fixture (probably around the time she figured out I liked to make it :) ). Comfort food at mom's was taco night. We ate very balanced meals, and I think that's the reason I feel like something's off if I don't have distinct sections of food on my plate. Food was very different at my two homes, and I made it a point to not like my stepmother's cooking, and sometimes my mom's. I was truly a joy to have around! But, I made it a point only until I realized how freaking good it was after going off to college and experiencing Rutgers' infamous Brower Commons. Bring on the random mixture of veggies and sauces, I don't care if my face burns because it's so spicy, I just need some flavor (and no indigestion, please)! This is coming from the girl who would pick out any "bits" from the taco meat mixture, which my mom made with ground beef and a jar of salsa, which has many, many little bits. Dinner took a while on taco night until I gave in and found out it tastes better with the onion chunks.

My two homes had a lot of influence on what I cook now, but I am appalled at how I behaved when I was growing up eating it. There is nothing worse than hearing that what you've just slaved over is not good (and I don't care if it took 10 minutes or 200...after a long day of work, it can feel like slaving, or if it's a particularly effort filled dish, same thing). So, here I am, trying to think up a good meal for my boyfriend's family for this Friday, on a very limited budget for a sophisticated palette (this is not sucking up, they have good taste, plus his mum knows how to cook & does it well). Here I am, fretting, while boyfriend is not, because they'll like it! Whatever it is! Ah, optimism.

And that's the biggest problem. Here's a list of my various meal serving anxieties, and why a glass of wine never hurts in the kitchen (for the sauce...and the cook!).

1. Something gets messed up. The bread doesn't rise. The rice burns. Something is rotten. The possibilities are endless, and terrifying.
2. Recipes you tried before somehow don't work when you need them too. Performance anxiety?
3. I'll forget a key ingredient, like eggs in a cake.
4. As much as I could have planned, I've forgotten that one of my guests is not eating/detests a particular food, and lo, it is featured heavily.
5. No one told me they didn't like chocolate! Berries! Quinoa! I have no substitute!
6. Food poisoning. I'd hate to poison guests. Especially if they are staying in my house, because I probably did just clean the bathroom.
7. Someone will make an unflattering comment about the taste. Look, some food is meant to be ugly, comment away, but I'd deflate if I heard that something was disgusting.
8. The food is bad, and I can't shut up about it. I tend to go on the defensive if I feel at all like someone might do number 7. And if you're not cleaning up your plate, there's something wrong.
9. It takes too long to cook, I didn't have enough time, and the conversation has run dry (along with the alcohol). Nightmare situation.
10. The dish is too fancy, and my guests feel like I'm trying to show off.
11. The dish is too plain, and my guests feel like they're having Thursday night, post-yoga, quick-I'm starving-heat-something-up leftovers.

For all of the above fears (and dinners where one or more eventuality has occurred), I've had some successes. Happy, full friends make up for all of the work, all of the worrying, and all of the money.

We'll most likely choose to do something we've been able to replicate (frequently) in the past. Here's hoping for a satisfied audience Friday evening, and if not, there's always dessert...at the ice cream parlor!

Giving, not giving

Most mornings I walk by the "pennies for the homeless" table on the northwest corner of Union Square. Usually it's the same guy. "Help feed the homeless. No man, woman or child should go hungry because they don't have the money to pay for food. Every penny counts." I really like this guy. He's got a great voice and really sends the message home. Unfortunately, I always come up with an excuse. I'm not rolling in dough, I get paid tomorrow, I'll remember tomorrow, My wallet is at the bottom of my bag, I only have a $20, I don't have any cash on me, I never carry cash (why would I?), Is this a real organization? I should look them up on Guidestar... The list goes on.

It struck me this morning as I walked by the same table, different guy. I actually think today's sub, a blond haired guy, might have been there on Monday, and might have admonished me for reading while walking (I was paying attention, thank you very much). Everyone walks by with heads down or eyes averted somehow. Sometimes the substitutes aren't as vocal as the regular, but this guy was pretty loud, not rude, but I just gave him the standard "Sorry" & puppy dog eyes (my apologies, it's a pathetic excuse for stinginess). Well, he responded to that by saying "Finally! Tomorrow?". I don't know why it was so surprising, they always engage passersby.

I've just tried searching to find out what they do, and came up with a NY Post article from December 2008 stating that "the glorified beggars pay the UHO $15 a day for a foldable table and jug and personally pocket whatever else they raise - which can be up to $80 in four or five hours." In addition they are not licensed to be soliciting on the streets. But! They've paid the United Homeless Organization for the setup and they are raising money for themselves. You never really know where your dollars go to a non-profit, unless you have the money to say, here's my million dollars and you are to do X with it. Without that influence, your dollars are probably not going directly to the cause you want to support. So maybe it's a good thing to give to these UHO "representatives." I'm not sure what to think of this now. Here's the link to the article: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/jug_band_keeps_gHTqpQnjbtbhjMaKFNjBXI

Composting!

In other news, I've looked up composting in my community, and found a composting project in North Brooklyn, called the North Brooklyn Compost Project (http://northbrooklyncompostproject.wordpress.com/).

This is exciting, as I have been dutifully saving all of my eggshells, onion peels, leek ends, coffee grounds & other kitchen "waste" in my freezer. The bag is damn near full and I need space to freeze the lentil soup I cook in bulk. I was planning on bringing it to the Union Square market, as they have a composting site set up, but I'd rather give my scraps to Brooklyn worms. Then that "worm poop" can go to making the trees in my community that much nicer.

After the first week of keeping all of the refuse from dinner prep, there was a shopping bag nearly full of scraps, and in the 2 months we've been at the new place, the pile has grown. I know I said "dutifully saving" earlier, but I must confess that a few eggshells & coffee grounds have made it to the garbage, but it really is nice to have the onions in the freezer, because they stink up the trash can like you wouldn't believe. Now, what I really want to know is why my family in NJ doesn't compost. They could do this OUTSIDE. They have a gigantic backyard. Then again, they'd have to bring things out every night because their freezer is chock full of...stuff. Food stuff mostly, but they manage to sneak in large bottles of vodka occasionally too. Plus, the sides are stuffed with coffee. This will be something I take up the next time I go home. If I can compost, or at least contribute to a composting effort nearby, in a tiny little apartment where meals are made for 2 but somehow leave piles of wasted organic substance...well, let's just say it would be a small effort and they'd be able to reduce their garbage load by a bit.

Back to beer

Finally, it is October, and that means beer. I made it through September drinking only 1 beer. Granted, I had many many many glasses of wine and a few gin & tonics here & there, but I'm happy with the effort I made!

Things, things, things

I'm not supposed to be buying things this week, but I've been tempted by the Dalaga newsletter, which features some really freaking cute clothing. What to do, what to do?

Answer: Wait. If I want it that badly, I'll still want it in a month. Plus, do I really need another pencil skirt or grey coat? No, I have a few pencil skirts and a grey coat that should get me through the winter. I feel like maybe part of it is being in New York. I have been gripped with a horrible desire to acquire, acquire, acquire. It's a new season, I need new outfits. This, of course, is not true. In fact, I probably need to clear out my closet before even thinking about purchasing another outfit.

I did, in fact, purchase some opera tickets yesterday. Looking forward to La Damnatian de Faust on October 26. Hopefully we'll find Matthew's binoculars before then.

I also made some crappy brownies last night. I really need to make a big note on the recipe that it needs twice the amount of chocolate to taste good. It's more like cake than brownie, but that's also because it's whole wheat. They're "healthy." Should have added raisins, but I'll save that for the next time.

Party (or watch movies) like it's 1999

My Yahoo page thinks it's 1999 and 2009...simultaneously. Interesting to see what I remember and what I've completely forgotten. That being said, I think I saw The Mummy in theaters. Ugh.

Weekend Frenzy, or something of the sort

I mentioned on my last post that I was doing a cake & bread over the weekend. The cake came out great and my boyfriend's been putting it in his lunches all week. First week of work for him, and he doesn't get the same free-lunch treatment I get.

The cake cookbook I have has a number of interesting recipes, savory & sweet, categorized by season, then by month. You can really get the most out of the seasonal offerings, though there might be a few discrepancies between NY & France. When I started as an English assistant in France, almost every Monday some kid would have gone mushroom picking over the weekend (and liked it). I went to The Garden. Not my garden, as I live in a 4th floor walk-up. A boutiquey-organicy-specialty-fancy-pants grocery store down the street. Bought my champignons from the supermarket. The recipe said something about mushrooms by season, but I was quite fine with the mushrooms I got. Used my new scale to measure the cheese, mushrooms & flour, and still had to do math to convert all of the cl measurements.

The mixing in of mushrooms.

Baker's Secret, but not really, 'cause this came from a cheapy store on Graham Avenue.

The bread was stubborn this week, perhaps because it was colder inside. It took a while to rise and then didn't rise as much. It is delicious. I said that a few times while eating it last night. It's got good flavor, what can I say.

I also made a zillion tomato, leek, onion & olive tarts and an eggplant parm for lunches & dinners this week.

Let me just say, it's worth slaving away over the stove making a bunch of different dishes that taste fine cold or reheated. We don't have a microwave, so everything gets a stove top or oven treatment if it needs warming, and while it takes longer, it tastes better. Something about the rubberiness or sogginess that a microwave produces turns me off. Now, I've read that it uses less energy to run a microwave, so apologies Mother Earth, but I a.) don't have room for one and b.) don't feel like schlepping one from the store home.

So we've been eating pretty well this week. We purchased some wine glasses on Sunday after the book festival, and got some Bear Flag red wine (http://bearflagwine.com/ourwine.html). It was $10 dollars and tasty, in addition to having lovely artwork on the bottle. I'm really pleased with the wine shop discovery we made a few weeks ago. We stopped in at Dandelion Wine (http://www.dandelionwinenyc.com/) for a tasting one night, and found a real gem in our neighborhood. The staff is somewhat more knowledgable than the guy across the street who said a $6, dusty, Moldavian wine was going to taste good (Side note: I bought it, yes, but that was partially because I knew it wouldn't taste good and would be a good excuse to buy a wine for sauces). I was intrigued by the display that was up originally, featuring a few skull bottles of vodka (produced by Dan Ackroyd???) with handwritten, pink poster board signs saying "Come join us...you'll love it." I'm kicking myself that I didn't get a picture.

Going out to dinner this weekend, so might not be as baking crazy. I would like to get a lot of basil while it's still fresh & make some pesto for the winter months. Pesto is one of my favorite things, probably because it's full of garlic which is definitely towards the top of the list of things I'd be sad to live without.

No TV and no beer make Homer something, something...

I decided that in September I would not be drinking beer after the ridiculous amount of leftover beer from our housewarming. Ok, it wasn't ridiculous, but it was enough that I didn't feel like I needed to ration and Matthew was able to test the hair of the dog hangover cure. He was worried it wouldn't work, but it sort of did, and we were sort of less hungover that day.

Regardless, I decided that I owed it to my body to avoid beer for some time. And so far, I've been pretty good, except that one beer last week. But it was a Peak Organic something or other and it was delicious. This is also why I've been upping the wine intake, though I'm not really regretting that. I love wine, and it's fun to drink with dinner. Red wine, white wine, rosé wine...it's all good.

On buying things we don't need

This week began an adventure in trying not to buy things. How easy is it? So far, so good. Though I'm looking at opera ticket packages & a bread class & possibly going out this weekend (dinner, mentioned above), I don't think those count in the same way as objects. It's hard to figure out. I'd like to save some money for more exciting adventures (China is my goal for the winter/spring travel), but I'd also like to enjoy my apartment & my life. I don't need curtains to enjoy my kitchen, but it's going to get cold soon and maybe a heavy set of curtains will help keep some heat in. Maybe not. Does that make it a need? Or is it just a want with a good defense? I have a feeling a lot of my "needs" are just wants with good defenses.

Yule logs & other adventures

We went camping a few weekends ago and I decided to capture a yule log video for our non-working fireplace.




Ok, so not really great at the end, due to my laughing and shaking, but with the soundtrack it will make an excellent yule log.

Here is a cake from a few weeks ago. It's the test version of the one I made for my Dad's birthday party, because I had a lot of trouble successfully converting the recipes. Now I have a scale! Hurrah.

Leek, spinach & onion cake. The feta & red pepper was the real crowd pleaser, but, alas, no photos.

how to start

I want to post pictures of my food experiments in addition to an occasional rant or rave from all corners of my existence. I have one small counter in my current kitchen, and an incomplete but growing collection of things to help me cook/bake. I'm untrained, but I am not bad at following a recipe. I try to take a good photo of whatever it is that comes out, but this is not always successful with my camera.

I'm not, in any way shape or form, a professional, as evidenced in all of my failed experiments. They might taste good, but they're ugly. Or they might look good, and taste ugly. Sometimes though, they taste good & look great!

So, as my inaugural blog post, I'll talk about the cheesecake and bread I made this weekend, and post some pictures & dig up the links or rewrite the recipes out, as I did adjust them slightly to my budgetary & taste requirements.

Cheesecake
One of my favorite foods. A diner staple, whether with a mound of jelly smothered strawberries, or just plain with an extra side of whipped cream, I ate a lot of it in high school. This fell off a bit after I moved to college & didn't have a diner in walking distance. I had the pleasure of being introduced to a delicious mascarpone cheesecake that my stepmother would whip up. My dad brought over her recipe on a trip back from England, that or she served it in the restaurant she ran a few nights a week. It was similar to a cream cheese based cheesecake, and my memory is fuzzy on the details, other than my mother thought it was silly to spend so much on mascarpone when you could just by the Philadelphia cream cheese and use the recipe on the box. I was insistent on being a food snob when I was 13, which my mother probably saw through but did an excellent job trying to appease. She's a good mother, my mom. She even got us a Brita filter.

But enough of my family history. On a trolling spree to find something to read in French on a regular basis, I found a food blog with a recipe calling for St. Moret cheese, which didn't really seem worth looking for in the States because it would be ridiculously expensive, and a cheesecake is going to taste good if you put the right amount of the good stuff in. So I bought nearly 3 pounds of mascarpone and cream cheese to make the bulk of the filling. It's a lot of cheese, and it's really fun putting through the blender. I bought a huge chunk of chocolate from Whole Foods, which I found a bit sweet ("68% cocoa solids"), but my boyfriend assured me it was dark enough. On a side note, he's an excellent sous chef. He did a great job stirring the chocolate while it melted. Thanks! The chocolate mix half went back in the blender, and I had a lovely surprise when the rest of the chocolate chunk I decided to melt fell into my bowl and sprayed everything (including my hair, face, shirt) with cheesecake filling. Then, I dropped the chocolate stirring spoon, which also splattered, but not on my hair, face & shirt. I mopped on Sunday, it's all cleaned up.

I'll mention too that it took 5 eggs. I should have known that this thing would be huge, but I have a set of 6 mini tart tins, so I have a huge amount of leftover cheesecake at home, which we'll be eating for days to come.

The crust was incredibly easy to make. The particular recipe reduced graham crackers to dog biscuits, but really, they aren't that bad. Plus, finding fancy pants Belgian cookies was not going to happen, given how much I'd spent on the 3 pounds of cheese already. It would have been another store to go to, and I was already carrying what felt like over 20 pounds of groceries in one bag. I used graham crackers. And walnuts! I don't think it really changed the taste, but I probably didn't use enough. Maybe next time I'll try pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds for a bit different of a taste. I did put a bit of ground ginger in the crumbs, so there's a bit of a kick (I know I should be using fresh, but too lazy for now...). The butter wasn't quite doing the trick on keeping it together, so I added a squeeze of honey. It's still super crumbly, but it's a tasty crust.

I over chocolated the mix, so I ended up with not really marble cheesecake, more like chocolate cheesecake with some white bits (I imagined people thinking, "Did you even attempt to mix it, lady?" "Have you ever heard of marble cake, jerk?" Ok, this didn't happen, but it would have if I were on tv). It's kind of marbled, but the big version was mostly chocolate, and all delicious.

Since I usually don't make huge amounts of dessert for just the two of us, I should disclose that the big guy came with us to a Labor Day party, and was a success. It wasn't finished (there was competition from a pear tart!), but I did get compliments on the taste, texture, chocolateyness, and cheescakiness. I knew it tasted good, so ha. Success.

The small and large format after spending 1h45 in a 250 degree oven.

B is for Bread, Bold, Butter, blah, blah blah...

In addition to the cheesecake, I made a loaf of bread. Hoorah, bread! I like to make my own because generally it is heartier and tastier than the fluffy sliced stuff, and I can't bear to part with $3 dollars for a "baguette." Really, it's just long bread, not that good, you did something wrong bakers. So I'm happy to buy my ingredients and make my healthy, delicious, I know all the ingredients & take responsibility when it's bad, bread.

I was using the same recipe throughout the winter, which I got from a vegetarian cookbook I found at Strand last year. I wasn't always pleased with the recipe, but I think maybe the ingredients are a little off in terms of measurments. The first time I made it, it was lacking salt, and I played around with salt, yeast & whole wheat / white flour combinations. It just never stayed together.

So I went in search of a sandwich bread recipe on the internet, and found the "basic" recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart on here: http://www.bakingandbooks.com/2007/09/22/simplicity-48-hours-in-the-making/. I was intrigued the first time by the word biga, which is fun to say and even more fun to make. This bread takes forever and you need to have some time aside to make sure you get the timing right. I put the biga & the soaker together on Friday afternoon and then brought the biga to room temperature while I prepared the cheesecake.

Baking bread in any kind of heat is one of the silly things I do to ensure that I have something tasty during the week. Have you ever kneaded dough for more than 2 minutes while the oven is on and there's not much of a breeze? I put a fan on facing me, so it wasn't so bad. I think what makes artisanal bread so tasty is the sweat that goes into it. Gross.

Hanging out, waiting to rise.

The dough did an excellent job rising in the heat and then took the normal amount of time to cook.

I find this bread is at its best right out of the oven, but it keeps fairly well. There's just something about a fresh baked loaf of whole wheat bread with butter or cheese that's so comforting, even in a summery hot apartment.

And that is all for now. Making a savory mushroom cake tomorrow* from the Cakes de Sophie recipe book Matthew brought me as an I'm-back-from-France-for-good-finally-sorry present. And remaking some bread for this week. Yum.

*This part was actually written on September 12, but I was too busy to post the rest of this until the afternoon.