I left my cart in San Francisco
August 21, 2010 § 3 Comments
Well, I am officially home in San Francisco, a day earlier than I had originally planned. I spent my last week in DC alone in the Georgetown townhouse. The quiet was slightly eerie and because my key to the front door stopped working, I had to enter the house through the back alley every night, where the rats come out after dark. I never got a fully coherent explanation of why the otherwise very nice neighborhood is overrun with rats; this will be the subject of further research. But needless to say, when I had the opportunity to leave for my week home a day early, I jumped on it. Especially since it would mean being able to go to the Street Food Festival today on Folsom.
But as much I wanted to be home, it seems like someone doesn’t want me here. First, United lost my luggage. Luckily, I had only checked one bag with running clothes and cooking magazines. Then, a plywood sign like the one below fell on my and my brother’s heads at the Festival this morning when we stopped to look at “I left my (cart) in San Francisco” T-shirts. As such, we were not in the mood to walk the last block of food carts, which was packed full of mini red velvet cupcakes and chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches — the dessert block —, and instead chose to walk home through the Mission with ice on our heads. We already had the one dessert we were looking for — crème brulée from the Crème Brulée Cart, which I have only been following on Twitter for a year and had yet to pay a visit. Thick and creamy Mexican chocolate and vanilla bean brulées topped off a lunch of curry-fried chickpeas, papusas, veggie empanadas and spinach and cheese pirozhki. Yum. I am so glad to be home.
And…the fire alarm just goes off in my house as my family sautées salmon for dinner. Got to go.
Also, I just realized that you can like and tweet my blog posts. Cool?
De-tartified lemon curd (except amazingly tart)
June 4, 2010 § 3 Comments
Hello from New York City. I am surrounded by highrises and about to give you a little piece of sunshine. Just look at this picture and try to pretend it doesn’t make you happy. I accidentally got one of my feet in the first picture I took of this series and decided to take the rest with both feet in.
It helps that this is positively my favorite thing to eat. I have made this recipe quite a few times, each time with the intention of making a lemon tart. Somehow, the process never really gets that far along and I end up eating this lemon curd by the spoonful. Sometimes, I manage to save some to have on top of my toast for breakfast. But that’s as far as it ever gets. Maybe next time, I should think about making the tart shell first. But you and I both know that is never going to happen.
Lemon Curd
Recipe from David Lebovitz
Makes 1 cup (240 g)
1/2 cup (125 ml) freshly-squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 large egg yolks
2 large eggs
pinch of salt
6 tablespoons (85 g) unsalted butter, cubed
Place a mesh strainer over a bowl, and set aside.
In a medium saucepan, whisk together the lemon juice, sugar, egg yolks, eggs, and salt.
Add the butter cubes and set the pan over low heat, whisking constantly until the butter is melted.
Increase the heat and cook over moderate heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens and just begins to become jelly-like. It’s done when you lift the whisk and the mixture holds its shape when it falls back into the saucepan from the whisk.
Immediately press the curd through the strainer. Once strained, store the lemon curd in the refrigerator. It will keep for up to one week.
Wake up and smell the world
March 29, 2010 § Leave a comment
My kitchen at home has a huge slab of black granite as a counter top. I used to stand on the wooden kiddy chairs, the kind of chairs that came with the kid table set, don an apron decorated with circus animals and grate huge pieces of dark chocolate into warm milk. I liked the way the darkness swirled with the white of the milk, some of the chocolate dissolving in the liquid and some staying as thin shavings. But most of all, I liked eating the concoction with a spoon at the end of the day. I didn’t know then that I had discovered chocolate ganache all on my own. Chocolate ganache remained that fantastical element that always topped my mother’s flour less chocolate torte, so rich that my childhood palette required an extraordinary amount of vanilla ice cream as an accompaniment. Now, I don’t have that granite counter top, I have four square feet of tabletop in a dormitory kitchen. I don’t have unlimited access to the crystallized ginger and bacon-infused chocolate of San Francisco specialty grocery stores, the crates of blackberries and stalks of rhubarb picked from my grandparents’ backyard in late August or the assurance that there will always be butter and eggs in the refrigerator and sugar and flour in the cupboards. But it always amazes me what you can make from almost nothing, how a couple simple ingredients can create a cake that is much more than a sum of its parts. So here goes nothing: welcome to college dormitory baking.
Soufflé Days 