Vegan Beet Rhubarb Ice Cream

Posted on May 21, 2013
Beet Rhubarb ice cream

 

Don’t be scared! Whatever negative thoughts you’re having right now, about vegetables in ice cream (and VEGAN ice cream at that!), you’re wrong, I think. This is not some hippy-dippy plot to get you to eat more vegetables (well, maybe, sort of) and it’s not some pastry chef gone awol in the search for a unique recipe (well, maybe a little). But I’m not the first to do this. It’s been in Saveur, so it’s totally legit.

We’re continuing the beet rhubarb theme this week, because I can’t get enough of the colors, and rhubarb season is so short that I’ve been putting it in everything. The beets are here for the pink. They don’t affect the flavor much, especially since the base for this ice cream is coconut milk, which easily masks any subtle earthiness (not that I was trying to mask it. I think it would be good with dairy, I just didn’t use cow milk because I wanted V. to be able to have some).

The rhubarb gets cooked down quite a bit, to get rid of most of the water in it, which would crystallize and affect the creaminess of the ice cream. It also means that it turns sort of brownish, and I thought it needed the color lift. Feel free to skip the beets, if you don’t care about the color and just want some darn rhubarb ice cream, without so much fuss.

 

PS: Check out the dandelion jam on A Suitcase Full of Mangoes this week. Dandelion ice cream next?

Categories: Recipes

Rhubarb Beet Muffins

Posted on May 15, 2013
Muffins

 

I’m very excited about these. Especially since my first rhubarb experiment of the season went horribly wrong: rhubarb meringue pie, more like rhubarb broth in a soggy crust with floating egg whites. I kind of feel that custard filling and watery, acidic rhubarb should not be mixed, but several great French tarts I’ve had prove me wrong, so the attempt must be left for another time. In the meantime, these muffins are an excellent alternative. The lively fuchsia color, before baking, just has to brighten anyone’s day. It mostly gets lost in the finished product, with the exception of a few popping specks of pink, but the  earthy and nutty flavor, with bursts of sweet fruit, is the surest sign that summer baking is around the corner. Who’s not looking forward to that?

The recipe that inspired these is a cake from Nigel Slater’s “Tender”. I modified the original almost beyond recognition, but the spark that got me going was  seeing beets baked into something other than chocolate cake, for the first time. Like all genius ideas, it seems so obvious in retrospect, when you consider zucchini bread and carrot cake, but what a revelation!

 Muffin tin

Need inspiration for what else to feed your loved ones today? See what’s going on at A Suitcase Full of Mangoes this week.

Categories: Recipes

Pastry Porn NYC: Café Cluny

Posted on May 9, 2013
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This is the place for girlfriend brunches. For chatting in a quiet corner while discreetly eyeing celebrities and other watchable people in the many mirrors, drinking coffee, eating egg sandwiches and banana trifle. I like trifle in almost any form, but this one sets the standard for greatness. The custard is mostly creamy but just thick enough with little vanilla freckles, the cookie crumb layers balance the texture, and the caramelized bananas give off the perfect brulée crack when your spoon hits them.

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Cluny was famous from the moment it opened in 2006 and every New Yorker and tourist with a guidebook has heard of it (partly because it was preceded by the other NYC fixtures, Odeon and Luxembourg…three consecutive stops on the Paris metro, how poetic). It doesn’t really need another review by me. But no one has mentioned the trifle, and I think that’s a mistake.

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The service is usually either indifferent or aloof, but since this is a place for lazy mornings with lots of time and patience, it doesn’t matter so much. At least it’s consistent, whether the restaurant is empty or crowded. The one less than lovely time we had here, during dozens of visits, was when Lou Reed loudly berated someone on his cell phone (and it sounded like it might have been his mother).

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It’s often crowded but we’ve never had to wait to get in. And the food is so good. All the rest of it is just so New York.

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Categories: Pastry Porn

Apple-Pear Pfannkuchen

Posted on April 30, 2013
Apple crepes

Pfannkuchen. It’s the German word for pancake and it usually refers to a slightly thicker version of the French crêpe, cooked in a frying pan, on the stovetop. The thing that is known as a German pancake in America is called a Finnish Pancake in Germany. However, if you went to Berlin and asked for a “Pfannkuchen”, you would get a jelly doughnut (known in the rest of the country as a “Berliner”). If you wanted a pancake in Berlin, you would have to ask for an “Eierkuchen,” or egg-cake, sometimes called “Eierpfannkuchen”. Are you still following me? It’s like an international game of pancake telephone.

The one I grew up eating is the thicker crêpe version, although it was always a lunch item in our house, never breakfast. My mother and grandmother both used the recipe from this 1964 cookbook, which I’ve modified a little over the years. If you need an authentic 60′s snack idea for your next Mad Men party, the book suggests filling the Pfannkuchen with whipped cream, maraschino cherries and canned mandarin orange slices! When I was little I sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar, but these days a little maple syrup is more appealing.

Pancakes

 

Categories: Recipes

Chocolate Amaretto Cookies

Posted on April 23, 2013
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Standing in a cocoa shed in the the port of Tema, in Ghana, is one of the most memorable moments of my childhood. Because it smelled so bad. So shockingly, brain paralyzingly, finger curlingly bad. Like something very sour that smoldered for weeks.

My dad worked in the port and he had organized a class trip for us. Besides getting close to a big container ship, the cocoa shed was the thing everybody was most looking forward to: a giant warehouse of candy possibility! If you’ve ever had the chance to smell a handful of cocoa beans, you know they don’t smell so great, and there’s very little about them to suggest the sweets they get turned into. But a giant, closed building, filled with thousands of bags of cocoa beans and baking in the West African sun is a full frontal assault on your nose. People that work with cocoa beans regularly, say they get used to it and even learn to love it, but I never made it past the shed’s door.

Luckily, because it’s almost impossible to associate the raw bean with the finished product, it never for a moment turned me off chocolate. If cocoa beans were humanity, then chocolate would be the achievement of world peace: almost indiscernible potential, elevated to its most perfect form.

These cookies are nothing so dramatic. But they are a lovely little treat with coffee or tea. They’ve been especially popular with kids, maybe because what you see is what you get with no hidden surprises like fruits or nuts, just soft little cocoa nuggets with a slight hint of almond.

Categories: Recipes

Scallion, Corn and Parmesan Waffles with Stewed Tomatoes

Posted on April 15, 2013
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I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to step out of one’s comfort zone. I’m trying to figure out how to deal with the constant rejection of being a new real estate agent (who knew it would be so much like being an actor: you’re constantly putting yourself and your efforts out there, but are often met with silence, suspicion or general antipathy). Is this what all salespeople go through? Guaranteed! For me, who has been working, mostly solitary, in my kitchen, it’s a bit of a shock. I keep running into questions I can’t answer, neighborhoods I don’t know well enough, and veteran agents who look at me with disdain. As someone who is shy by inclination but an extrovert by ambition, I sometimes don’t want to get out of bed and face all this. But I do, because I have no choice, and because really, when I stop and think my way past the fear, I really do want to get up.

Yesterday I took out a lovely couple who was looking for a home for them and their soon-to-arrive baby, and I know I can help them. I spoke to another new agent who said she’s sure she will succeed, without a doubt. And I believed her. I looked at dozens of apartments in Brooklyn over the weekend, some small and ugly, some absolutely magnificent, but all of them a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of my favorite city in the world. I talked to at least 6 people I barely knew about food. When you walk around a neighborhood, it’s hard not to talk about where you like to eat. And then you find out that people are adventurous home cooks, and they need an oven big enough to make those hundreds of cookies that they bring to family gatherings. You exchange recipe tips (chocolate cookies with cloves and dates…yes please!), and suddenly you’ve bonded with another broker you thought was stand-offish.

Food brings people together without a single bite being taken. Even better if it leads to sharing a meal later. And if all else fails and you’re feeling anxious, or had a bad day, food is comfort. When I got out of bed yesterday I decided to make waffles. This is something I know how to do, that I’m fully in control of and eating a tasty breakfast set a tone of satisfaction for the whole day, even the part where I left messages for 30 people and none of them called me back.

 

Categories: Recipes

Rum Raisin Crème Brulée

Posted on April 9, 2013
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We were invited to a dinner party a few weeks ago with a request to bring rum raisin crème brulée, which is normally my Thanksgiving go-to dessert. So I put my raisins in a jam jar overnight with a couple of shots of dark rum from Martinique (the dear friends who hosted the party are from Martinique, so they keep us happily and well supplied). When V. and I woke up in the morning we were both miserably sick with a cold, so we had to cancel dinner. The raisins sat in the rum for many days and the silver lining to this particular sick day was the booziest crème brulée ever, when I finally made it for another crowd. So, quick! Go soak some raisins. They’ll be perfect and ready for you whenever you need them, even if it’s weeks away.

Incidentally, they’re also delicious in oatmeal or over fruit salad, and you should definitely pour the leftover soaking rum in your tea. You know, for good health! I made mine in a 10″ tart dish, but you could easily turn it into 8 individual portions.

Categories: Uncategorized

Cherry-Chocolate-Almond Energy Bars

Posted on April 1, 2013
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I ate too many chocolate Easter eggs. It’s my mother’s fault (thanks mom!). She sent a huge package of my favorite German marzipan and egg-nogg filled eggs. I can’t resist them, and I definitely can’t eat just one. Or just 3. They’re finally all gone now and it’s time for austerity mode in the kitchen for a little while.

But of course the craving for a 4 o’clock snack doesn’t just go away, so I made these healthy little fruit and nut bars. They’re also the right size for a pre- or post-work-out bite. You could vary them endlessly with different fruits, seeds and nuts, but the cherry-cacao combo is doing the trick for me at the moment. Next time I might try adding whole walnuts or toasted pecans. Let me know if you come up with other winning combinations (and in the same vein, see my friend Erica’s recipe for cashew cardamom balls over here).

Categories: Recipes

Pastry Porn: NYC – Café Sabarsky

Posted on March 22, 2013

It’s time for the second installment of NYC Pastry Porn.

Billy Wilder once said “you have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.” On Saturday mornings, for me, that dream is Café Sabarsky on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Sometime last year, it became a weekly ritual for V. and I to eat a light lunch here, and then share a dessert. As you can see, we’ve tried quite a few. There’s Mozarttorte (chocolate pistachio cake):

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and Feuilletine (crispy chocolate hazelnut cake) :

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Vienna 1900 tea:

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Rehrücken (“deer spine” – chocolate orange cake with marzipan):

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and Schwarzwälderkirschtorte (black forest cake):

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There is no better cake in New York, in my opinion.

Read more about it here, just enjoy the visuals, or GO eat some!

Categories: Uncategorized

Orange Scented Strawberry Trifle

Posted on March 7, 2013
Strawberry trifle

Yesterday I went to a café on my lunchbreak and the two young women next to me were talking about how excited they were to start pastry school. It brought back so many memories. I remember very clearly that my first day at Le Cordon Bleu was just filled with so much expectation. My mother had helped to move me and twelve bags from 3 years of college in Montreal, via a tiny Paris hotel with brown carpet on the walls (but beautiful rooftop views), up the stairs to my equally minute studio apartment, owned and rented by my downstairs neighbor, the even more diminutive Mme Grosfilex. I would bring my 78-year old landlady huge tubs of whatever I made at school: croissants, tarts, truffles, cream puffs and bread. I think she must have secretly fed it to some neighborhood dog, because there is no way she could have eaten the mountains of pastry that showed up on her doorstep every day. There was one memorable commute when I carried a clear tupperware of at least four kilos of mixed chocolates on the bus. I got so many smiles and envious looks. If I had been a more outgoing 21-year old I could have made so many friends that day and my overall experience of Paris might have been very different. Instead, it all went to my tiny landlady.

Mme. Grosfilex was my favorite person in Paris. She was a potter and all her friends were artists, so when I wasn’t in school, she would take me on studio tours and to museums, and for a long weekend to her house on the Normandy coast. She even tried to set me up with an artist friend’s son, but he took me to a Jean-Michel Jarre concert at the Eiffel Tower and that was the end of that (talk about ruining the most romantic setting in the world). She was such a spirited and wonderful lady, but we lost touch and when I tried to look her up on a subsequent trip the building where we used to live had been torn down. She would be well into her 90′s now. I hope she’s still alive and retired permanently in her little coastal cottage with the artichokes in the garden, and the view of the ocean.

One of her favorite things was crème pâtissière. It’s essential to so many French desserts, and I made a lot of it at school. Whenever I cook up a batch now, I think of her, even if it’s for something as un-French as a a trifle (she would have liked it anyway).

Do not be alarmed by the length of this recipe. The individual components are incredibly simple to make and the assembly is but a trifle (sorry)!

Categories: Recipes