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)...

well, brandade it ain't but...!

I tried bacalaitos tonight.

All my life, I have never understood eating things that smell bad. (Or are raw, or rotten, like cheese or sushi or so many gourmand items). And there's not much that stinks more than salt cod someone's rehydrating. I'm reading Mark Kurlansky's Salt at the moment, so I'm learning historically about why salted fish was/is important economically and to the survival of human history, but still, salt cod is a white leathery piece of fish that's wooden and dried out, and when you cook it to rehydrate you get this briney, sea smell. Not a beach smell (god, I've really been missing the beach lately.

At Sonsie the guys used to make brandade, and they'd always end up pureeing the cod with potatoes right near me, and it just smelled like bad fish that washed up on the beach somewhere.

But somewhere along the line of eating things in general and fish in particular, I owned up to brandade curiosity. I didn't expect to like it. I didn't expect to get near it anytime soon with any adventuresome friends. But they had bacalaitos at this Puerto Rican restaurant I was getting takeout from tonight, and I did it. I was going to get a filled churros from the lady by the BART, too, but decided salt cod was more of a challenge. How was it? Bizzarely, the texture was like fried eggplant in my mouth, only I could see the little fishy protein fibers. It wasn't overwhelmingly salty; it didn't taste like it smelled while cooking. It didn't taste like much I could pick out, more like a salty, deep undercurrent. Like something I'm not smart enough to know. It had gotten soggy, too, in the takeout container. Probably not the best salt cod.

Certainly the maduros and the pollo guisado were really not impressive. Which is to say, I guess, I miss Cuba, because their stewed meat dishes are much more flavorful (mine was a little congealed, too, from sitting there, even though the chicken was very moist), and the maduros really weren't ripe enough or else not cooked long enough to let the sweetness bleed out.

Work today was:
blackberry financiers w/browned butter, tasting pleasantly of almonds
more upside down cakes, again with rhubarb and blood orange, this time with the chez panisse fruit book recipe
orange chocolate meringues, to be filled with orange jam
strawberry-mascarpone filling for strawberry tiramusi a la olivetto
more fresh fruit tarts
more strawberry lavender tarts
shortcakes, maybe, blackberry-strawberry?
butter cookies

I burned myself again, once on each hand actually. Did not sleep well last night. I was wondering about a lot of things today. The physics of pastry, and such. Where to find something to make my rhubarb tarte tatin in. How lemongrass would taste with rhubarb. How substituting honey for sugar would work in cakes and what spice would rough up those blackberries in the financier (pepper. cinnamon. citrus. berries.), and what made Cheffy's financiers so much better than the David Lebovitz recipe I tried because I'd rather make a dozen of something that 50.

I tried almond extract plain today. Last week, I tried raw rhubarb. I need to learn bitterness. And then sweeten appropriately.

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.

strawberry meringues

Just made strawberry meringues this afternoon. Aside from being a good way to make sure I never leave the house (takes a long time for meringue to dry), they were wicked good.

Whip:
3 whites
1 1/4 c. 10x

to stiff, shiny peaks. Fold in 2 mashed up strawberries. Plop out in tiny cookie-cups. Bake.

I tested them to see if I want to make them for Frog Hollow and fill them with lemon marmelade. I think I do. I think the marmelade will be tangy enough to counteract the sweet, saccharine meringue taste.

It also brought back Oleana for me. I never liked meringue cookies (macaroons, exception, though so similar in texture and taste). Mostly because they're always cooked to the point of being brittle and crackly and then they taste like dust. The chocolate chip vacherins that we made at Sonsie were that way. Dusty chocolate fingers with an ugly, cracked texture. But when you make them with confectioners' sugar, and if you don't overbake them as I did just slightly, they taste like cotton candy clouds when you bite down on them, the sugar all hot and caramely, and they don't turn dusty and dry. So, mine somewhat dry, but still way better than most meringues, and upon my roommates' suggestion, I dipped the bottoms in chocolate, which ended up being really yummy. That's the good thing about living with people who tell you: we have this discolored, white-streaked chocolate you can totally use.

This weekend went really well at the market. I made strawberry lavender tarts with giant quenelles of lavender whipped cream, all luscious on top. Cute kiwi strawberry fresh fruit tarts. And the quince rhubarb upside down cakes sold really well also. Do I want to find a moister cake for those, or do I just want to soak them in a brown sugary syrup? Both maybe, Cake is so difficult. It's so rarely moist and good. Why I always end up making the 1234 cake from Joy. I think Gourmet just had an upside down cake recipe though, maybe I'll look it at. Or just try subbing half cake flour in my recipe.

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.

David Lebovitz saved me

Emergency cake-making for people who've invited you for dinner is REALLY, REALLY challenging when you don't have a kitchen aid or electric beaters or anything to either cream butter and sugar really well, or to beat egg whites. it also makes the buttercreams and other frostings pretty impossible. Luckily I borrowed David Lebovitz's Room for Dessert from my new boss, and figured I could at least make Orbit Cake.

Orbit Cake: 2 sticks butter, 12 oz. bittersweet, i cup sugar, 6 eggs

Mix together eggs and sugar, melt chocolate with butter, add chocolate to eggs, bake in a water bath. What could be easier, and still taste like dense, rich, high class chocolate that you'll devour so fast you won't know for hours you've got chocoalte on your mouth?


Granted, it would have been a lot better if I'd used Scharffen Berger chocolate. But, Albertson's doesn't carry a lot. This was 2/3 62%, plus 1/3 Guittard semisweet. Well, next time, if it's only for me, I'll splurge ;)

Also made some vanilla pastry cream for a kiwi-strawberry fresh fruit tart. I bought a gallon of organic milk, since it was only a dollar more than then non-organic, and only found out when I got home it was fat free! Skim milk has no presence in a baking kitchen. I freaked out about how the texture of the pastry cream would be and if it would taste fatty enough or if it would be too watery and ditched Delphin's recipe for something I found online crafted specifically for skim milk. It ended up tasting okay.

skim milk pastry cream, for eemrgency use only:
2 c. milk
qs vanilla
4 T starch (I used AP flour here)
6 T sugar
4 yolks

Cook milk, vanilla and half sugar to boil. Ribbon remaining sugar and starch with yolks. Temper yolks into milk mixture and bring to boil, whisking vigorously. Strain--that is if your house has a strainer--and chill. May need more vanilla or butter if you like fattier things. But it is acceptable.

Today at work today I made Chocolate Cherry cakes (also a David Lebovitz recipe, on my boss's request), and Banana Date bread (bastardized Hi Rise recipe) and pastry cream for blood-orange kiwi fresh fruit tarts. It was a pretty good first day in the I-get-to-do-whatever-I-want school of baking.