I went over my friend Nadine’s last week; in addition to her birthday celebration, it was her turn to volunteer at her weekly CSA pick-up, and I had a play-date with her daughter Kami. When she returned from finishing up the CSA, she was nice enough to bring me lots of leftovers; chard, basil, scallions, anise, plums and peaches. I made a version of this plum sauce two years ago, using Damson plums from Jenkins-Luekens Orchards in New Paltz, NY. It […]
As we’ve discussed before, Tai, although a pastry chef by training, almost never cooks. We have an agreement that he will cook dinner once a week, which, at this time of year is usually sausages on the grill, with some grilled asparagus or kale, and he is an awesome sous chef, especially when I am preserving the harvest. He stirs, chops, lifts, pours and does dishes with the best of them, but as for pulling out a cookbook and actually combining […]
I tried out the Rhubarb Rosemary Jelly recipe from Gourmet (via VanillaGarlic). Of course I had to get all fancy-pants and macerate the rhubarb overnight in sugar (to release more juice), and then decide to use pectin instead of gelatin, for a firmer set and the ability to store at room temperature, and then realize that I couldn’t use pectin, because you need to add the pectin before you add sugar to the juice, and then dig frantically around in the […]
Hallelujah! The oven is fixed. The ‘Oven Guy’ came yesterday, replaced the igniter, and now I should, ostensibly, have much more consistent oven temps during baking. In celebration, I made one of my favorite “one-day” breads, a yeast bread with my favorite all-purpose vegetable, pumpkin. The eggs and pumpkin puree in this bread give it a moist, cakelike texture with the delicious but subtle flavor of pumpkin and a lovely golden color. The eggs also work to give the bread additional structure, […]
OK, so I know it’s Tuesday, not Sunday. But I was away visiting friends for the weekend, and anyway, last week was rough in my kitchen. No cooking other than lots and lots of cake… (Also, I apologize for the lack of pretty pictures, but I still don’t have my camera back from Kami’s birthday party). Trifle is another of those things for which about a billion recipes exist. There are many good things about trifle: it’s truly quick & […]
OK, so that’s not my garden. Although I wish it were.. and I wish that were my bathtub. Alas, I find myself cameraless; the trauma of the Kami’s Birthday Cake FAIL obviously affected my brain in that I left the camera at Kami’s house, after the party (and many glasses of champagne). C’est la vie – but you’ll have to deal without real photos for a few days. Mea culpa, mea culpa. It’s been five weeks since the first seeds were […]
I’ve been testing out cake (and filling, and frosting) recipes for Kami’s birthday celebration this Thursday. Kami is turning five years old this Thursday – and while her parents are certainly dear friends of mine, Kami and I are fast friends in our own right. She has very discriminating taste for an almost-5-year-old, so I generally try to pull out all the stops for her birthday cake. Not as easy as it sounds, when you consider that most “pull out […]
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