Library Visit

While home in Montclair, NJ, I stopped in the main library, to return a few books which were obscenely over due. As always, I ended up in the cookbook section. I took home three books: The Cuisine of the Rose by Mireille Johnston, Le Cordon Bleu Classic French Cookbook* and, Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl

The first two books I chose because, I'm a francophile. The obsession probably started when my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bulkin, made us kids imitate french impressionism masterpieces. I remember being so proud when my mother hung up my Cray-Pas version of Monet's lilies on the refrigerator. French impressionism made me think that France was a magical, dream-like place. The last book I chose because of how much I loved Mrs. Reichl's first book, Tender at the Bone. She made me appreciate my food memories while making me think about food completely differently. I plan on making one recipe from each book and sharing here. I don't know about you but, I'm excited!

I would suggest for next time:

Reading Tender at the Bone.

See what cookbooks are in your local library.  

*Julia Child attended Le Cordon Bleu.(I know that's Meryl Streep)

You must read the whole recipe.

Yesterday was was my sweetheart's birthday and I decided to make him a cake. For all birthdays and other special occasions my future mother-in-law bakes a cake: a chocolate cake that deceivingly bears all the hallmarks of a normal homemade double layer cake. Paired with Eight O'Clock coffee and good company her cake makes for the perfect heavenly dessert. It is gloriously rich, moist and diabetes inducing.

I got an Ina Garten recipe that looked simple enough and headed to the store for ingredients. I wouldn't say baking is my strong suit but I'm not a hopeless baker either. Yesterday's endeavor proved I might be slightly more hopeless than I thought.

Here's what happened.

I followed the recipe exactly or, so I thought before the kitchen filled with smoke and the bitter smell of burnt confection. Having recently moved into a new house, I don't have all of my cooking equipment with me. I had to use the one use aluminum cake tins from the super market. I missed in the recipe where Ina specifies to use cake tins of the 2" deep variety. Everyone makes mistakes and my mistake resulted in two smoking rings of chocolate mess at the bottom of the oven where the cake had overflowed.

"Shit"

Emergency mode ensued; doors were opened and I was on all fours with a rubber spatula(that's all they had) scraping the dried, crispy, lava mess out of the oven to the floor. I figure the actual cakes are still OK and leave them in to finish baking. They didn't look so bad when I took them out, a little lop-sided, not so bad. While I let them cool for 45 minutes, as suggested, I made the butter cream frosting. Tip- cream the sugar first and add the confectioners sugar really slowly: a few tbsp. at a time. I take the cake out of the first tin and half of it stays in the mold.

"Shit"

Keeping my wits about me I think 'that's OK Dai, just mold it back together'. I try to frost the layer but the cake is breaking apart and looking even worse. Taking the second layer out of its tin is sort of a disaster too and I am left with the saddest layer cake I've ever seen. I frost what I can and bring it to the birthday boy.

His exact quote?

"What happened?"

My response?

"So much."

After laughing for a while, he provided me with the secret to his mom's cake. She uses spring form pans and makes the cake the day before frosting it! So the cake may not have turned out how it was going to in my head but it did taste great. I will be trying this again.

I would suggest for next time:


Using the correct sized pan. 
Waiting at least a few hours before frosting the cake.
Adding some almond extract to the butter cream frosting for a slightly different taste. 

Exploring endives.

I enjoy eating vegetables.

I want to enjoy eating vegetables.

I really should eat more vegetables.

Stated above is the thought process that usually overcomes me while in the produce department of the supermarket. A process, that usually, ends with me picking up a head of broccoli and calling it a side dish. There is nothing wrong with some steamed broccoli on the side of a tender steak but, holy moley, how boring can we get here?

Last night I tried to be a little more inspired. When I'm in the supermarket things have voices, not in a, 'you should see someone about that' way, just certain ingredients will shine brighter than others. The endives were calling me.

Have I ever used an endive? Have I ever eaten an endive? The answer to both those questions being, no, i wasn't sure how the endive knew my name but, it did. Going from there, I picked up up an especially nice bushel of beets, a cucumber and a lemon.

Here's what happened:

I ripped the roots off the greens and put them to boil for 20 minutes. I like to peel the skin off with my hands under cold water; it feels, primal. After boiling, the skin will come right off; this leaves your hands looking as if you just did something grizzly. (Think shower scene from Psycho.) I diced up the beets and cucumber and ran under cold water. Dressed the veggies with a squirt of lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste and spooned the mixture on to the endive. I poured on a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on top.

The endive was crisp, bright and bitter against the delicate sweetness and clean taste of the cucumber. 
I will be experimenting with endives more in the future but the beets are what really grabbed my attention here. They are a really great veggie. I saved the beet greens to have an adventure with them later.

I would suggest for next time:

Adding apples would add a really nice sweetness.

Serve as an hors d'oeuvre.

Omit Parmesan, sprinkle goat cheese on top.

Use the same mixture but over baby spinach for a nice salad.

An introduction.

I thought that perhaps today would be the day that I would start writing more. I have a certain anxiety when it comes to putting pen to paper and, the only way I can think to combat said anxiety, is to make a mockery of it by writing as often as I can.

Evidently this thought has crossed my mind before because when I entered 'blogger' into the Google tab of Chrome, it automatically came up with this previously constructed blog. I found, to my horror, that I also must of lacked all imagination then and named this blog, All in a Dai's work. It is really upsetting to me that I thought that was cute or something at one point.

Anyway, apologies to everyone for the corniness, but it stays.

I'm currently unemployed and trying to figure out what I want to be doing with my life. So, in the meantime, I'll cook, bake, knit, crochet, find bodies of water, and walking trails and document some of it.

I'm off to cook.