jam-time!

I figured out what I want to do with those pluot-plums in the freezer, and the wad of rose petals I ganked from the Albany shoreline trail and my old Fruitvale house. Plum-rose jam!

I haven't made jam in a long time, not since culinary school when we made buckets of jam, any and all flavors. Some of them are still sitting around my Somerville house. Some were given away as presents. Not sure when I will get around to this jam, but likely I'll try to get a sourdough starter going so that my the time I'm jammed up there will be good toast. I am such a bread-brat these days; I only eat Acme.

My favorite jam excursion is from my days on the farm, when I went across the river to my favorite farmer EVER's house and we had gallons of strawberries from the PFP and we made jam all day long, some with pectin and some without. I'm sure we talked about love, and why we love the wrong people or love too soon, too long, or without giving away all of ourselves. But now I only remember the jam.

I've got three fresh burns from last week as a reminder not to work distracted, and worked distracted all day.


I just got to say to a friend Autumn leaves and apples!

This is why I'm going to Boston in October (and hopefully NYC, the city I love to hate, as well). I make up little lists that go something like apples, apple cider, apple cider doughnuts, apples, ICA, Oleana, East Coast Grill, Lydia Shire stories, Herrell's, Harvard square, crunch of leaves
or
finding the Doughnut Plant for real, McNulty's, Bklyn, Grand Central, the 6 train, my two favorite places on Broadway ever, will I ever eat at Gramercy Tavern, I could go to Babbo, maybe I'll go be a line cook like Bill Buford, still haven't been to Cafe Lalo, or the Cloisters, Spuyten Duyvil, did I really ever live here.

God I love apples and I'm so nervous they won't have my apples here.

Thinking of doing utterly crazy things, specifically two, but they are secrets.


No more cooking with herbs. Get over this lavender, rose geranium, lemon verbena, slight thyme kick. Find something else and it better not be a spice.

Ai, forgot to make Chez Panisse reservations. I'm gong to have to put Chez Panisse in my cell phone and that is kind of sad. Determined also to go to another fine restaurant while Leah's here...Where I have been in this town: A16, Delfina, Frisson, Jardiniere.

gastronomic weekend, part 2

Going up to Calistoga today to see Schramsberg and taste some bubbly. Bringing the dog along in the car, so that should be interesting.

A16 was so wonderful. I fell in love with the dimly lit interior and the tiny garden room in back, the ancient foosball table and the open kitchen where a dozen hands toiled away. We ordered big, full bodied Italian wines that tasted like dirt and earth and first sip and mellowed as they sat. Crusty bread and good dipping oil. Soon the fava beans came, and they were divine. They were perfectly seasoned. Every now and then I'd get a bite of crispy mint leaf or a lightly charred pod and shudder in delight. It made me want to go to market and buy a bunch of favas. My only prior experience with favas was disappointing, shucking large pods from the farm where I worked because in upstate New York June they were the only thing ready before I moved back to Boston.

I followed the excellent favas with a quattro formaggio pizza topped with arugula, my favorite bitter green. A little soggy in the middle from the weight of the cheese, and a little light on the arugula for my taste, but still amazing. I could only manage half a pizza, and now I've got leftovers sitting in the mini fridge in the hotel.

The dessert menu was entirely Italian inspired, and that sort of thing usually doesn't moved me. So we settled on the zabaglione with lemon granita and torrone, since I've been thinking of doing a sabayon w/ berries for Frog Hollow anyway. It was excellent as well. A perfectly composed dessert, which is hard, nice flavor balance of tart and sweet, and to discover the fluffy, icy granita lurking underneath creamy, aerated vanilla custard was an amazing sensory experience. For me it's all about taking something familiar and making it new, making it more. Every element of this dessert did that for me...the chopped, toasted buts on top, the really good cookie (and I'm not a cookie person).

Compared to the A16 experience, Jardiniere was disappointing. But that's another post.

gastronomic weekend

I'm glad I read this post on Eggbeater the night before I go to A16! My mother's coming into town this weekend and we're going to:

A16
Jardiniere
Chez Panisse

In return, I have to go shopping.
My cutie-pie gets here, too ;)

Tired baker tonight. Worked doubles, pulling shit together for the craziness of the weekend at both Frog Hollow and the cupcakery. Walking into messy sitations and cleaning them up get stiring. Time for dinner, beer, sleep, waking at 430.

beard awards

Ana Sortun's Spice cookbook is nominated for a Beard! I didn't realize that...I hope they get it because I really love that cookbook. But it's up against Claudia Roden's book Arabesque and it's sort of weird, they have one category for Asian food and then a whole other category that's just International.

I'm going to make reservations at one of the local nominated places for when my mother comes out, and I think I'm going to take my friend to Delfina when she comes in June. The chef at A16's nominated for Rising Star (and is up against David Chang, and Patrick Connolly from Radius and the guy from Eleven Madison Park). So we could go there or Jardiniere (has Traci des Jardins really not won a Beard yet?), or Quince, or Delfina which I'm saving for Leah because I think she'd like to go there and then go to the Lex afterward. Still want to go to Boulevard and Slanted Door and...and...

I made this weirdly disappointing strawberry ice milk yesterday. I made a giant base which only called for 4 yolks per 4.6 c. milk (which I boosted up to 6 yolks), and 1 c. sugar. Split the base in half, made half strawberry with some sugared and pureed strawberry and it came out kind of grainy. So, was it the liquid in the strawberries that made it grainy, or was the base not fat enough or was it not sweet enough, because one cup of sugar seems low for all that dairy plus there isn't a lot of fat from the eggs. The rest of the batch is going to be peppermint cookies and cream and I have some peppermint schnapps here, so the alcohol could help make it not come out grainy, or there's some rosemary simple syrup kicking around the fridge. Double checked my baking book and it could be any of those things--not enough sugar, milk fat or yolks, but which one? Oh, ice milk. According to wikipedia, it has the same sugar content as ice cream but less dairy fat. But I assume ice milk is not supposed to be grainy. The Gourmet recipe also called for 2 T cornstarch which I guess is what, a preservative to keep it from turning grainy? Maybe the containers are just really not airtight and so ice crystals are getting in. All I know is Claudia Fleming's ratios work just fine for me, so maybe this is my first and last experimentation with ice milk and I'll just go back to my 3/4 milk and one dozen yolks, and one of these days buy the Gramercy Tavern cookbook (along with the Tartine cookbook, and the Citizen Cake cookbook whenever it comes out).

Hopefully the schnapps will boost up the second batch but if not I'll be on hand with the simple syrup and with any luck it's be smooth thin mint ice cream!

Tomorrow at work I'm rolling out the David Lebovitz orange poppy cookies, and making strawberry meringues with lemon marmelade, doing more strawberry lavender tart prep and pastry cream and new upside down cakes, and working with tart shells.