the three strikes bakery rule

When trying out a new bakery, I almost always follow the three strikes rule: no matter how I feel about something on the first visit, I'm not allowed to rule it out until I've made two more visits. There are so many variables that could affect the initial impression, ranging from my mood or the weather to an overly salty batch of dough the kitchen made or a slightly stale cookie.* I might visit with a friend and try a few items; in that case, I'll relax the rule a bit.

Last night in the Castro, I told my friend something vaguely upsetting as we were walking back from dinner. Surprising, no. Upsetting, yes. He clutched my arm and, rather than respond to what I'd been saying, demanded cake at that very moment. Let's Go Into Cafe Flore, he said, pointing at the Castro landmark.

image from aweigend.

I've been to Cafe Flore many times, and quite enjoy it for a lingering coffee with friends on a rare sunny-AND-warm San Francisco day, or for late-morning brunches. The eggs are always good, and I respect a tiny postage-stamp of a kitchen that can stay on top of their game. Over the years I've had a couple of their desserts and been lukewarm, most notably for the chocolate violet souffle cake that tastes nothing like violets. Chocolate cake does not need violets, no, not at all. So if you are going to create a violet-chocolate cake, please make sure it actually tastes like something? ok?

We skipped the cheesecake, considered the chocolate cake, and decided to share a slice of the banana foster pie.

What looked like a simple custardy confection ended up being a four-layer pie that, if slightly too sweet, was rich and creamy and perfect for sharing. Deep cookie-crumb crust got a layer of caramel, and another one of rum-vanilla custard. The pie finished with a banana cream and a caramel drizzle. The pie was one of those occasions something tastes better than it looks, the flavors rising above the ho-hum prissy bakery presentation that we all groan over. Lucky for Cafe Flore, this was my third visit.

I'm often considered a snob about food and other things, and I am, sure. That said, there's a place for the ok, the humble, the merely good. The pie was as good as some items I've had from places like Tartine and Citizen Cake. Sometimes we don't want to think that way. It helps, when paying Tartine prices, to believe you are getting the absolute best there can be. There are days when all you want is a sweet and uncomplicated piece of pie, a little sunshine, an outdoor table, and a dose of queers.


*Note to cooks and kitchenworkers: it's actually really important to taste everything you sell every day (sauces and such, maybe every 2 days, unless they're fruit-based). I've seen anglaise go bad in the squeeze bottle during a service. I've also worked at restaurants that serve, day in and out, horribly stale versions of Claudia Fleming's brownie cookies, which is not only gross but completely disrespectful.

the sordid details...

(because the monkey wrangler asked)

1. the "who am I really?": For a long time when you googled me (which is to say when I googled myself) the first thing you saw was this: Toby Reid is a faggot Jew. It was the first sentence of a story I wrote and had published. It's actually a really good piece and I still love it, but I always wondered if people randomly coming across it would think I was a bigot. Also, in grad school I wrote a story on terrorism that involved me googling things like "how to make bombs" and "how to get away with arson" so the government probably thinks I'm nuts. And now you all can as well.

2. the "those crazy queers": When I was a kid and my first lil brother was born I was really upset he wasn't a girl. So one time I dressed him up in some old dress I had and my first communion veil and paraded him around the house. He was pre-mobile at the time so let's hope he has no vague memory of it to trouble his masculinity, because lil brothers are fun.

3. the "gold star": I've only ever seen one man naked and that was because I was 25 and confessed to him that fact. He's actually my oldest friend out here in California...

4. the "stupid pastry assistant, no. 1": At my first restaurant job, my boss was having me make an anglaise and a creme brulee base (or it may have been a pot de creme and brulee, but you get the pictures. eggs tempered, custard, etc). So halfway through the process, when I'd brought everything upstairs to the stove and was just waiting on the cream to come to boil, I became convinced I'd put all the sugar in one of the pots and none in the other (save whatever amount was whisked with the yolks). Rather than admit my stupidity, I went ahead with both projects. Since we made desserts for three restaurants and one of these projects was for a distant location, I never really did find out if it was all in my head or if I really fucked up a lot of food. Oops.

5. the "violence against literature": Recently I took The Last Course out of the library (back in Boston, because SF just has no love for Claudia Fleming) out of the library and photocopied the whole thing because I can't afford to buy a marked-up ebay copy and it's out of print. So I have the most ghetto version of that cookbook, but it's okay, I still love it. Also, years ago when I worked at a bookstore I was so fed up with things in my life that I would rip pages in the back of the travel guides. Customers would be able to bring them back for a new copy...plus people would just take them and read them on the floor so lots were pretty banged up anyway.

I truly hope my mom doesn't read this. Now, who to tag?

Budi, even though he probably won't comply because he rarely posts. But every now and then he busts out with an interesting tale from his past, which cracks us all up because now he's spiritual advisor and mediator to the cupcakery.

Richie, because I met him for a half second one day...and because reading his blog I just get the feeling he's got some interesting stories.

Fringe, because this is an ideal project for writers, and I have to post this week so let's conserve out stones, eh?

Jamey, again, with the writers.

and lastly, Maryusa, because she is just so much trouble and who knows what wildness she's committing with her one functional hand!

oh, & the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

edge city: revisionist strategies

Saturday night I took my bike down Folsom to Embarcadero, then down all the way past the Fisherman's Wharf crowd and out to Aquatic Park, then home via Polk to Van Ness with a stop for doughnut sampling at Bob's {I'm serious bout these doughnuts, man}. I meant to stop at Aquatic Park and walk out along the pier but it was blocked off for Flight Week. Some time ago I wrote a story and a pivotal scene ended up happening on that pier (only I didn't know it then, and the logistics of coordinating a story three thousand miles away that I didn't know was messy at best, but it was the only way to try to be here). It's a great place to see the city because you've got the tackiness of Ghirardelli Square at your back, Alcatraz Island lurking in the depths in front of you, and you can look toward the Golden Gate and open ocean beyond. I had some questions I needed to work out, and I needed to put myself in my characters' frame of mind for the stories that get edited once this carousel story is finished. Back to the chef cycle: the line cook, and the sous chef.

All of these pieces and the carousel too are so similar in sentiment. A professor I had once said that there are two plots for stories: A Stranger Comes To Town, and the other one whose name I forget. And all of these pieces are variations on that theme. Sometimes you meet someone so wonderful and you know that the sum of all you have isn't enough for that person but it's all you can give so you stand before them with your hands outstretched, knowing it's futile, knowing you have to. Because you are lovesick, or your mother is ill. Because you love another (you do, right?) but you are compelled. Because you are not enough alone. Because you want to believe in love. Because you are young. Because of her smile. His stutter, his red cheeks. The Stranger Comes To Town, and you are not so ill-prepared.

I needed to feel that painful emptiness and how the city melts around you as you move through it. How the water laps at the shore. How small it makes you feel. How you try to find messages in the street lamps and shards of conversation you overhear. Because at present there is no one that I can act so recklessly for.

I think for one I understand the line cook's story better now (though it is far from being good and will inevitably pose its own problems as I continue), and the carousel story will be easy to complete, but it's the sous chef's story that stumps me because its potential for betrayal is so total.

There is another short piece in the works about the inability to accept love when it's given.

These thoughts all beg another question: how do you know when it's right? How can you take it on faith that you will love something?

When I first found Claudia Fleming's cookbook in the library I loved it. I read it hushed and awed on the T, wanting to understand the ideas behind each choice, looking to decode its clues. I wouldn't return it to the library. I kept renewing it. When it had to go back, I'd wait and then check it out again. It was one of the last items I returned before I moved to Oakland and I'm pretty sure at the time it had late fines. But I only made one recipe from it during all that time. Having recently made a couple others I was confused and saddened when one resulted in an overly sweet confection. And I'm down with sweet things, but this was just wrong.

I don't *love* things frequently, least of all food, my own or anyone's. But I just missed my chance at the Saturday market to tell Mourad Lahlou how exquisitely perfect everything we ate at Aziza was, and how for two full days after every pause in conversation was a return to shared sighs. I made a list of the food I can say I've loved and it came down to six Bay Area chefs and three in Boston (three!) Recently I told someone I loved her food...or, rather I knew I'd love your food before I tasted any of it, and I do. How do you know when it's right when it's just an idea? How can you take it on faith? Why have I only had roast chicken that is PERFECT twice in my life?

And maybe that is what the story is missing. The faith that to heal the structure we first need to break it. Break it down. The guts to go all the way to the problem. Which is probably why I love that first piece so much {the one that takes place on the pier, in part}. It's a devastating scream from someone who has always been in utter control. It's the bid to keep the Stranger even as she's skipping town. It's the recognition that you are not enough, in all your failed grace, that you will not change, that your promises will not be kept.

this one's for aaron

Two nights ago I had the most amazing dream.

I dreamed that the Claudia Fleming cookbook was back in print. In paperback actually. I spied it atop some woman's pile and stole it, and started making my way through the bookstore's aisles so she couldn't find me. Then I realized it was actually a remaindered copy, and only cost 18.99. So I set off to try to find the large stack of Claudia Fleming cookbooks that probably were there, because I knew someone who would exactly appreciate having a copy of that cookbook. Or five.

if only.
More about dinner at Aziza soon, when I can focus enough to write it.

confessions, or "It's a POT show...and this is the nicest pot!"

1. My "I" key has been sticking for days. This is very annoying.

2. I'm really sick of making upside-down cakes. I have been making them every week since March, and I don't like them. They always sell really well at the FB market. Whwn I frst started making them, I tried David Lebovitz's recipe, was unenthused, *did not* try the FH recipe because it was basically the same as DL's recpe, tried a recipe that was in a recent Gourmet, and tried (with most success) the recipe from Chez Panisse Fruit. I've adapted the CP recipe and that is what I have been using since, oh, April, and I've been okay with that until this week. I tasted one this Saturday to make sure it was all right since I had to trek over to the cupcakery before they were finished, and I took one bite and threw the rest out. There's nothing I shouldn't like. Brown sugar caramelly ooze. Pluots and nectarines. The cake part is always disappointing bad, tough enough to endure fruit without getting soggy, kind of bland, the sort of cake that makes people say they don't like cake. And I'm frustrated because I thought I solved this. It makes me wish I were still staging at Oleana, because every single time I told Maura I didn't like something (bread pudding, meringues), she would show me a version of it that would change my mind completely about the item in question. How do I reinvent this cake? It takes a lot of time to make it and I don't want to put the tme into something I don't like. And why don't I like it when it's got everything I should enjoy?

3. I ate pepperoni grease yesterday. The pizzeria across the street sent us over a free pizza, half cheese half pepperoni. And the slice of cheese I picked up had somehow been infected with meat grease, because during the first bite my mouth flooded with that flavor, which I haven't eaten in probably 13 years. I ended up eating about half the piece, because I was hungry, and *minded* the meat flavor, but wasn't really *eating* the meat. Eventually it got to me, so I just pulled off the crust. On the long walk back to my car, I felt the grease all slick on my tongue and that was uncomfortable. I had to endure until I got home. What is pepperoni, anyway?

4. I took one dozen cupcakes from my job and brought them to the Slideluck Potshow. I am allowed to take as many cupcakes as I want, whenever want, but it's kind of mean to do it when it's the last dozen cupcakes and the store is still open and customers want cupcakes. And I could have stickered the box so potluckers could see where the cupcakes that were gone SO fast came form. But I didn't. I also brought lavender walnut shortbread cookies.

5. And I thought for a good ten minutes about stealing the big Le Creuset from the potluck table. That's terribly, horribly wrong and immoral. Yes, those things run about two hundred dollars, and yes, really I want one but I'm not a thief. My friend said he'd take it if I wasn't going to steal it, because he wanted one too. The getaway car was around the corner. t would have been so, so easy especially once they turned off the lights. I always think about stealing things I really want.

6. Did I confess already to having a plot to steal my favorite cookbook out of the Boston Public Library. This plot was hatched in May I guess, and Leah was going to join the BPL, check out the book, and mail it to me. even told her specifically where it was and that it was hard to find, but should be there. She couldn't find it, and the plan never proceeded. At that time, the book was going for about 100 on used book sites. Now it is up to $474.00. Retail cost of $40. I'll never find it. Not even at the Strand.

7. Something odd happened to 2 of the 4 buttercreams I had to make yesterday. I have made a lot of buttercreams and by now I know what they look like when you have whipped your whited with sugar for plenty of time before adding cooked sugar, what it looks like when you add the sugar before the whites have really peaked, how it takes longer or shorter to firm up, and so on. n both of these instances I added a small portion of granulated sugar while shipping whites but they never got to soft peaks. The liquid whirled around in the Hobart bowl looking like skim milk. The first time poured the hot sugar. The next time I just dumped it out. The bad batched settled into white foam on top and yellow white on the bottom. I used a mixture of Eggology whites straight from the jar and some whites cracked in-house for the 4 buttercreams. am kind of glad it happened twice even if it was a waste of product and time, because t makes me feel more like the whites were contaminated (or the bowl was dirty or something) than that I personally fucked it up.

8. I don't enjoy decorative work. Even though my piping skills are now adequate.

9. I'm feeling really sensitive to sugar lately. I'm trying to east less processed sugar and more fruits (!?!?!?!). This is pretty much against my philosophy of living. So I hope this sensitivity goes away soon.

10. This whole week (last Sat. market, Tuesday market, and yesterday's market) I have bought nothing but fruits from the FB market. Yesterday delicious grapes again and some figs from my Sox fan at Knoll Farms.

I manhandled a ton of figs at the Slideluck Potshow, because I wanted to eat one but only if they were really ripe, plus I was afraid they weren't going to be as good as the ones from Knoll. I ate peanut noodles and homemade noodles and a really sexy key lime tart. I met my first food blogger and he was wearing leather suspenders and he loved my shortbread. When I fessed up to having a food blog myself, he said he'd blogroll me. I was also made to try a vegan{no dairy/no fat} broccoli soup. This man came up to me and my friends and sad to me (and only me) "Hi, how are you, I made this soup, no one's eating it, you should try it." So I did. I told him it needed butter and cream (such a pastry chef), and pepper. Then I told him he needed to try my cookie. We had the most San Francisco conversation, the three of us, it was all about sustainability and markets and not at all about art.

About the art, it was really refreshing to see an art show. It made me a little sad for the artist I used to live with who once made me a cowboy drawing on a lightbox and who had a wall full of drawings of cutie pie. I have such a crush on visual artists. It has always depressed me that I'm not talented in that way (not that being a writer isn't thrilling in its attention to detail and long, lonely hours--kind of like being a chef). Photography has been on my mind a lot since the Leica dream. These days I feel like everyone things they're a photographer because they know how to compose a shot and they've got a digital. If they're one step above that, they can play with the color balance or saturation in Photoshop (confession: I first started playing with Photoshop back in 97, 98...back when digital photography was a little amusement on a day when the darkroom was crowded). What was so refreshing about the slide show for me was the little things that get lost in the automatic digital age...the color balance, the precision of focus, proper use of lighting, nightshots or blurred shots that say something and don't just look cool (and if I said "cable release" would you know what I meant?). I was always drawn to photography because it was a visual art I could do, and I put in enough time to be ok.

What I actually never realized until last night was how narrative photography is, or can be. This despite the fact that I have actually had so many narrative photo projects myself. I must have known instinctually (it's a writer's art, just like pastry cheffing is, and foil-fencing), but until I saw on the cement gallery floor with my knees up and watched the slide show, feeling like a kindergardener at nap-time and about that tired, too, it wasn't anything I could have voiced. My favorite photographers are even narrativists (Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Nikki Lee, Mary Ellen Mark (though she is less), and for old time's sake Dorothea and Ansel). It was a nice realization to come to, even though haven't touched my SLR in two years (it's got an undeveloped roll of California pictures in it, of all things). It made me feel more comfortable with something I have grown so distanced from. And it made me feel like my favorite art still has merit, authenticity and fun. Photography isn't dying in the age of digital. The book isn't dying in the age of internet. {But what of darkrooms and publishing houses?}

I'm totally going to make dinner now and work on some writing. I have so much to do before the Alabama trip including somehow go to Oakland to return my library books (I was happy to realize that if I do this I can use the free printers at the Oakland library instead of the expensve ones at SFPL), go to the SFPL to pick up a book I should have read a long time ago but is now impossibly trendy, made Chez Panisse reservations, get a haircut so don't look like a scruffy teenaged boy in a dress (though that would be a new sight for Alabama)...

you're not here to make my sad songs more sincere

Hot damn, I MISS ME some Berkeley Bowl!! The things I miss about the east bay are the things I expected to miss. So today when I was given the afternoon off from my second job, and I boarded a Richmond-bound BART to Ashby, it felt like cheating on my new city. But the slight shame gave way to home-coming thoughts when the transbay tube shifted to perfect blue skies of the West Oakland industrial land. I knew which way to walk when I got out of the BART, but it felt odd to be on foot in that area. It was a sunny day, gorgeous and hot, and I wanted to walk to Sweet Adeline and to Bakesale Betty and to my old haunt, the Oakland Public Library, and maybe around Lake Merritt for good measure, but there is only so much walking one can reasonably do.


At the Berkeley Bowl, I scored a giant bag of plums and a giant bag of something else--pluots, I thought, for their skin was reddish-pink like the Dapple Dandys from Frog Hollow, but the interior turned out to be bright fuchsia, so plums, perhaps, but more likely not--and a giant bag of mushrooms, all for 79 cents each! That plus some Arborio rice and a little snack mix for me, and then I made myself go before I started buying up loaves of Acme bread or anything more from the bulk aisle.

I went to Ici and hung out for a while. It's really great when people are passionate about what they do. Especially when it's something I'm passionate about too. On the ice cream front, those pluot/plums have been pureed for future sorbet making, the plums have been diced and frozen for something, and I made caramel for the THINGy ice cream and plan to make the base tomorrow, a chocolate base, as was requested.

I wish the meal I made tonight was a local meal, but it wasn't. It was amazing though. I used up those beautiful leeks I bought from Ella Bella last week and some of my 79 cent mushrooms, and and old shallot. Cooked them down in butter and olive oil, added some of the arborio rice and the chicken stock (not homemade, sorry) I'd defrosted and made myself some risotto. I tried to find a recipe for the rice-broth ratio but was having trouble, so just decided to wing it. I threw in 2/3 cup of rice and figured I'd either have enough stock for it or I wouldn't and if I didn't I'd use water because I wasn't going to open some of my really nice white wine for the risotto. No joke, it was the best risotto I have ever made. Plenty of black pepper and some salt, and when it was *almost* done, so close that you could taste it just needed a couple more minutes, I tossed in some parmesan cheese. My landlady was quite shocked to find I "just decided to make risotto." Apparently she's been inspired by myself and the other female roommates before me who cooked and has decided she should start cooking for herself more. I preceded the meal with some heaping spoonfuls of the blackberry ice cream...risotto does take some time to cook.

There aren't many things that could tempt me back to New York but Molly O'Neill is one of them {well, I need no temptation back to the Hudson Valley, just a chunk of money to afford the real estate there}. Which upstate town is she kicking around? Is it one I know? Does she live in Red Hook or Rhinebeck, Germantown or Rosendale {somehow, I can't see her on the other side of the bridge}? I just read an essay by her today in an old Best Food Writing anthology (2004, I think) and it reminded me of reading her memoir and feeling like that was my life on the page. I would really love to talk with her one day about food and writing and what the Boston cooking scene was like when she was there. Maybe I'll have my farmer-friend find her, and if she can do this, and if she will go here and eat with me, then yes, I'll go east.

A coworker's husband is going to Tarrytown for a business trip and she was contemplating going with him. I told her the foliage would not be at its peak, and it would be an hour or so from NYC and there wouldn't be much to do. But I didn't tell her I was jealous. There's been a lot lately, making me miss the East coast. The spread on Brooklyn dining in my GQ {Alan Richman, can you really be advising we move to Bushwick?!?}, the profile of North Fork + Table in Food Arts, the Molly O'Neill...

Safe enough to say now that my honeymoon phase with SF is wearing off. Which is good-I've been here five months already, which feels like a long time. Four in the East Bay, one in SF, a few friends to speak of, a job I still like...

Speaking of jobs I think we're going to start making full sized cakes at the cupcakery. ?!?

my mother used to call it "piggy meat"

Yeah that was me this morning at Cafe Flore. EATING BACON. just a bite, but oh, I'm slipping, I'm not me anymore, I'm down the rabbit hole.



There was SO MUCH foodie gossip at the cookout last night in an East Bay suburb. FB gossip too. My boss gave me some more background information on market stuff, the Slow Food fight was discussed, chef ventures rated, farmers markets in many towns discussed. We had many offers, for instant reservations at Quince, job hookups for me at ice cream joints, vacations, dinners, whatnot. Wild times were had.

It was really great to see the family of a dear family friend, which so happens to include my boss (whom I never see) and her husband. And it made me want to be the next Jonathan Franzen so I could write about how an interest seeps its way through one generation of a family, how its roots grow. How the children marry cattle farmers and fruit farmers and become the sort of people who covet reservations at The French Laundry, how the generation after that becomes chefs and bakers and coffee-makers. My own family is fairly small, and no one is quite sure where I got my passion for sweet things or voracious appetite for bookishness.

I'm not doing a very good job of keeping out of the East Bay. Chez Panisse two nights ago (upstairs, this time). Rocket salad with pickled onions and warm figs on toast. Morel ravioli in pea sauce. Warm fig and raspberry tart with honey ice cream (the most well matched flavors I've had in a long time in dessert, though it could just be I'm in a figgy mood). Tomorrow we're walking cutie pie at the Albany shoreline, going to the Tuesday market, hitting up the Berkeley Bowl and stopping by Ici so we can compare it to Bi Rite. In other words, doing all the day off things I normally do.

Bi Rite tonight was better than the Bi Rite we had at work (honey lavender, salted caramel, cookies n cream, all with those Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel chocolate things). The honey lavender was too much lavender for my taste. And I don't like honey ice cream unless it's that amazing honey lavender candied pistachio ice cream I made for my Chez Panisse dinner party. And their salted caramel ice cream is not Claudia Fleming's. Ici, however, does not inspire me to make comparisons to recipes I prefer. It only inspires me to eat ice cream and lots of it. Tonight, though, was a banana split with vanilla ice cream, caramelized bananas, hot fudge sauce, lightly whipped cream and walnuts, made slowly and carefully just for me!

It's my birthday soon and I really want some homemade pie and ice cream. Perhaps the rosewater mastic ice cream, or sweet corn, or oatmeal to go with something yummy and fruit. However I don't actually think I'll have time to make myself something for candle-wishing and growing older. I may very well be in Santa Cruz looking for the most perfect beach ever or in Monterrey communing with the fish

(my last birthday actually was also spent at an aquarium and, ahem, if you were with my on the last birthday, this one is sure going to be better). Should we make ice cream next week? If so what kind? Pie? Or would you rather just hit up my favorite spots, go zaatar tasting and remember those perfect desserts?

taste, memory

It's hot out tonight in a sticky, East-coast kind of way, and I miss New York. Tonight while I walked the dog, I pretended I was in Poughkeepsie. It isn't hard. The streets of my neighborhood are alive in the same way the streets of Po-town are alive. The only stores open are places you don't really want to go in, places that hold weird hours. Dudes sit on the street corners and call out to you in a friendly sort of way. You overhear all sorts of sounds--music from the cars or houses, kids you feel like might have better places to be. There are too many liquor stores. There aren't enough places to get fresh produce. Where I am is mostly Mexican, and in Poughkeepsie the dominant culture is an uneasy blend of Italian and West Indian (mostly Jamaican) in the city, and white folks in the town. At the farm market across form Vassar I'd sell tomatoes to old Italian mamas and to the lady who ran the Vietnamese restaurant, and to young families with food stamps, my teachers, my friends.

But if I were in Poughkeepsie right now I'd find a way to get across my favorite bridge



and steal my favorite adventure buddy

away from her job as farmer this farm.



We'd take the train down to the city, and does it ever need another name or an introduction, that city? Then we'd be in my favorite place, Grand Central, and we'd run downstairs and hop one of the express trains downtown to Union Square where we'd wander the Greenmarket and I'd probably still be able to get some of my favorite apples from someone's cold cellar. I'd buy nuts from one of the street vendors. We'd go to Dean and Deluca's (again), because it's my New York ritual and I have to. I mean (of course) the one on Price Street, so that afterward we could go to HousingWorks bookstore and Kate's Paperie, and of course we would not have wandered to Dean and Deluca's without stopping at my other New York ritual, The Strand where with any luck I could finally buy myself a used copy of Claudia Fleming's cookbook and if my Hamptons-house-having friends could host actually eat some Claudia Fleming dessert. Right now. But in New York I'd cut across the Village to the Haagen Daaz by Carmine street and begin wandering the West Village looking for McNulty's. I'd go to Brooklyn. Walk through Prospect Park with my friends. Eat at Sea, and go to the bar with the really good burlesque, and order a pint of Yuengling and then a pint of Lager and drink them slowly. I'd actually visit the Doughnut Plant. I'd go to Fabiane's for some chocolate mousse. I'd remember how the streets smell and how they feel. How it feels to go rushing around like there's always someplace better you have to be, how it feels to put on that stone mask a simple act like getting to work requires, how it feels to be on the train clacketying through the center platform, on your way somewhere, now. How it feels to want so badly to be on your way somewhere. How it feels to be stuck.

I would ride the yellow trains all the way out to Coney Island and stand in that sand ditch, right at the point where the people are hidden and when you look straight ahead all you can see is sand and then ocean. The East Coast.

Maybe it's okay if someone else is doing these things right now. If some other girl is buying roasted nuts on her way home from work. If someone is having a pint with his buddy at Enid's or that black and red bar down by the L train. Some other cute baker is eating at North Fork tonight, or at Sea, or is just walking around listening to the crazy rush of New York and daydreaming of how the fog looks when it hangs low over the Golden Gate Bridge and it feels so good to be in the bright blue air and walking down Marina Blvd after a day of making cupcakes.



I've been doing lots of fiction-writing and it makes me introspective. But maybe it's just the heat, the way tonight feels like a thousand nights spent on the other side of the country.

miette internship over/shuna lydon

I am really impressed with Shuna Lydon's blog. So impressed, actually, that I emailed her to tell her about it. I found the blog after searching for other people who had dome internships at miette, because miette basically fired me for two reasons this week:

1. I voiced concerns over the direction the internship was taking because I wasn't being challenged and there were 5 interns at the same time, and it wasn't really rotating the way it's supposed to rotate or progressing toward anything. Generally, when I asked if I could help with something they'd either let me help or say, umm, no, I don't need help but ask ___ and ___ would either give me something to do or send me over to someone else, who would be similarly flummoxed. But yes, the whole thing was basically running on autopilot and the too-many interns were jamming the machine. And when I tried to be flexible with my time commitment to them and to talk about how to make the situation better I was met with the following

2. "You work for Frog Hollow, anyway, so..."

Apparently the miette people believe the ex-frog hollow pastry chef tried to steal their recipes. Like, he'd walk over to their stand and see they were doing pot de cremes and then the following week be selling his own pot de creme. In defense of Frog Hollow I told Meg if that was happening I was sure it was without the knowledge of the farmers and that I wasn't interested in doing such a thing, but they didn't trust me after that not to steal their recipes.

I am also left wondering if it was just an aesthetic choice, as well. I didn't fit in with the miette vibe. I'm no cute, straight girl interested in talking about sex and Britney Spears. The only person I bonded with was the 60 year old man interning there who was similarly othered, and we would talk about how we felt ignored by the girl squad.

Moving on from miette, I loved this gramercy memoir of Shuna's about working with rhubarb and Claudia Fleming. And how open she is about the fact that she's still learning and the need to grow with what we know and to share.

Which makes miette's paranoia even weirder. The chefs I learn the most from are the generous and open ones--Delphin, Maura. I remember what Maura said to me about Hi-Rise Renee, about how you need to treat people well in this business because you never know where they'll end up and what you might need from them in the future. As I was trying to do with miette, exhaust all possibility of improvement for the better before throwing in the towel.

Who knows where I'll be, relative to the miette people, but I'll pass on the truth of my experience there. Ideally I'll come up with something really amazing to serve at Frog Hollow that they'll be jealous. But it isn't about jealousy. I didn't come out here for jealousy. I came out here to learn about organic baking, and I came out here because all of a sudden I couldn't stand NOT to be in california. I came out here for the next step of my career and to learn about food, as much as I can. As I am trying to do.

so nice to have a job I like finally

I was just drooling over the Tartine cookbook today in Sur La Table while I waited for my knives to get sharpened. Absolutely and without shame drooling.

The girls who work the farm market are really taken with my strawberry lavender tarts. I brought some out today and they got all "oh, yay! you made those! i was hoping you did!" and then later, sidled up to me all flirty asking were there more of them? not just cause they wanted to eat them, but cause they recommended them to customers. I've been dolloping them with a really fatty quenelle of lavender whipped cream and a sprinkle of dried lavender on top. I really have to bring my camera and start taking pics for my portfolio. But it's really rewarding to see things sell. Like the rhubarb orange upside down cakes, which are so PRETTY with the dark red of the blood oranges and the pale rhubarb pink, and sold down to 2.

I'd like my things to sell more although it's difficult to get a lot of things made, what with all the standard baking off and mising for saturday items. I guess I'll just have to get through my prep faster, but it has been difficult to get a lot done when each time I want to do something I'm getting the frozen butter and heating it up until it's soft enough to cream. Oh well.

There's an apricot jam and hazelnut tart I'd like to try, and I still do want to make a bavarian and do some chocolate cherry tarts when the cherries come in. Maybe this week I'll look for something I'd be really excited to try out. I should look through Chef's recipes, too. I've got all this great French training and I'm just running around after Elizabeth Faulkner, Lindsey Shere and Claudia Fleming like and wondering what Maura would do. Maybe it's just the aesthetic of traditional French pastries that don't appeal to me or maybe they're too involved. But there's got to be something I can adapt...a lot of Cheffy's stuff was really, really good.

I am glad to finally have a job I enjoy and look forward to. Especially when I get to be so creative. Hopefully I'll learn a lot from it, but I still would like to go somewhere else and get the organic bakery experience thing, though the being-my-own-boss thing will be useful down the line too.

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.

sorbet/egg test

Making Claudia Fleming's grapefruit-rosemary sorbet right now, with rosemary I ganked from the neighbor's yard. Ahh, the bounty of California. I cut off the grapefruit peels after I juiced the fruit and now I'm candying those as well. If only I made some rosemary shortbread cookies the whole thing would be so cute! Maybe tomorrow...

I used the egg test for this batch of sorbet since it seems to be my lot to flail with sorbets. Float a cleaned raw egg in your solution, and you want a dime-sized portion of the egg to remain afloat. If less egg's showing you need sugar and if you've got more like a quarter patch of egg, add water. I hope it's going to be good. The grapefruit seems to balance out the rosemary and I wonder if maybe I didn't use enough, but I picked a good handful--and quickly, so I didn't get caught--and had maybe four or five short stalks, rather than 2 long ones. Ah well, it tastes good.

The roommates are raving about the strawberry meringue cookies. I watched Robin eat one with this look of total bliss on her face. Yeah, they're really good. And normally I'm modest about that kind of thing. "She just made them, while I was sitting right there," Robin said.

"Actually I was sitting on the floor of my room and you poked your head in," I reminded her. Now my Kitchen Aid's in the kitchen and all's right.

knife bliss

I got a new knife today! Finally used up my Sur La Table gift certificate after work, to buy a Global Santoko. I tried the Shun on the staff's insistence, but I can't use a Shun. Reminds me too much of the grim old boss, plus the handle's too big. The Wusthof handles were likewise weird, overly large in my small girlish hands. I just went to the kitchen to pick up my bread knife and even that feels odd in my hands and that is the sexiest knife I own.

My Global's really awesome. I'm not into them for being trendy, and if I were into trendy knives I'd get a Shun or something, but it fits so naturally in my hand and it's really lightweight esp. when compared to my chef's knife. Knives, boring, right.

The last Fauchon in NYC's closing. I read the Beard dateline pages for three cities now, Boston, NYC and SF. I was thinking yesterday about what my life would be like if instead of coming west I'd gone back to New York to beg a stage out of Claudia Fleming or someone else. How I'd be crashing on the apartments of friends, how I wouldn't have gotten the chance to see a Michael Pollan reading like I did last night, and how I probably wouldn't have been as writerly as I've been here. Enjoying myself.

Today at work, I made quince-rhubarb upside down cakes, using David Lebovitz's recipe. The fruit part is yummy, but the cake is stiff and sort of flavorless. I'd like more of a brown sugary, burnt-buttery cake, but it's hard because I've onyl got one day to make anything I could want and even then a good chunk of that day's spent prepping for the standards and baking things off. Still, I've got a good five hours to do ANYTHING I WANT. What else did I make today...Maura's strawberry lavender cream tarts (got to try one tomorrow, that's been on my list to make for a long time). Pastry cream for fresh fruit tarts. Shortcakes for blood-orange and quince shortcakes.

I'm thinking of a Bavarian for next week. Still haven't tried one. Maybe with the asian pear chutney, or a caramel and apricot marmalade, or a lemon bavarian with something, maybe strawberry plum jam. The caramel idea is my favorite, but do those things all go? According to my handy flavor profile list, cardamom, caramel, vanilla nuts and stone fruits all go well with apricots. So vanilla bavarian with caramel and jam layer. Also some poppy orange cookies with blackberry jam. The strawberry tiramisu (Paul Bertolli's recipe, I presume) if Becky does fax over the hot milk sponge recipe.

I should just make larger batches. I made the shortbread today and it made 18 cakes. Enough for two weeks, but I could have made double that and frozen most, but the recipes really don't indicate quantity at all. I'd just like to be more effective. I'd like to not have to spend so much time baking tart shells and cutting up fruit and more time making muffins and custards and cakes and cookies. I'll get more efficient with time. Today was only day three. Sheesh.

Bad thing: I got a chicken burrito from the cart outside my street last night and i was SO SICK today. ugggh. Like, really I shouldn't have been working kind of sick. That is until Rafael made me a magic drink. Sparkling water, salt, half a lemon and baking soda. He promised me I'd feel better and I didn't believe him. I don't want to think about what meatiness founds its way into my burrito: pork skin, brains, tongue...this, and I'd daydreaming of bacon ice cream and foie.

Custards and Doughs

I'm having the ice cream maker and the Kitchen aid sent out here. Can't live without them. Should have brought them, originally, but I guess at the time I wasn't willing to make the commitment even though they really don't take up a lot of room in the car. I'm planning what to make, when I get them:

the oleana strawberry lavender tart, with Maura's favorite dough
Claudia Fleming's grapefruit rosemary sorbet
mint ice cream with thin mints
some kind of bavarian-again, per Maura, and to give it a second chance
Fran Bigelow's chocolate dough and chocolate sable, and Maura's chocolate dough...but what to fill them with? Not a big fan of ganache tarts. There's a baked chocolate tart in Fran's book. I could play with a chocolate brulee tart. Choco-pecan pie is always great. Really it's about expanding my repertoire of doughs. Delphin's pate sucree, yeah it's wonderful. But sometimes other dessert crusts are necessary.

Also, do more with custards and puddings. I think puddings and custards are about all I can make until the kitchen aid gets here--no cakes, no cookies, no ice creams, no choux. So, yes, make some chocolate pot de cremes...flavored how, with booze? choco-rum? maybe...sure, why not. Choco-amaretto? Choco-ginger? Choco-lemon, with candied lemon strips? Custard, it's easy enough, yes. But I think I need to make some slamming custards, flans, p.d.c.

My miette internship begins tomorrow. I think I'll actually feel better about things being back in the kitchen. I think there's some book Maura was recommending about flavor profiles...got to dig through my notes.