so sorry

About two years ago, I received a comment on a short story I wrote that was published online. Apparently.

I just noticed this comment tonight.

Someone named Tricia begged me for the recipe for the brown butter bread pudding with milk jam from Oleana, the beloved Cambridge restaurant. How Tricia knew I'd spent time in the Oleana kitchen is a mystery...maybe she read the story, googled me, found the blog? Or the other way around?

Anyway, Tricia--who I'm sure will never read these words, not unless she's still out there googling toward Oleana's decadent yet homey brown butter bread pudding, I'm sorry. I do have that recipe tucked in a tiny pink notebook. I used to make that bread puding at Frog Hollow all the time, a brown butter version with pears and dried fruit, and a vanilla custard version with stone fruit. It was pretty universally loved.

I've got the recipe for milk jam also, a Middle Eastern confection similar to dulce de leche, made on an all-day slow simmering stove. I haven't made milk jam since those days, but I know that I will one day.

Three weeks and counting til I get to go to Sofra myself and maybe, if I'm very lucky, they'll have a version of that bread pudding for sale. In the meantime, two years too late, sorry.