on husk cherries

These are husk cherries.

No need to be afraid of them. In fact go straight towards them. They have many names, ground cherries, cape gooseberries, strawberry tomatoes. They are oddly related to the tomatillo, and they grow on a similar plant. But whatever you want to call them, let's just call them tasty.
I could give you recipes- they certainly exist. You could do a salad, a pie, or maybe a jam. But I don't think that you'll get that far. So here's my advice.

Take it out of the husk. Eat. Repeat.

of denver, and the wedding

Okay, do you see how it looks like I'm naked in this picture?

Are you wondering why I would be naked in a ballroom, eating a cappuccino cupcake?
Oh, come on, I'm not giving that one away. Keep wondering.
But yes, Denver was just that wild. Joey has an alter-ego out there. When I first met him in Santa Fe, I had an inexplicable desire to call him "Jo-AY!" with the second syllable shouted across a crowded room. I told Eilen that I could never be his friend because he had too many already. (luckily, he had room for one more) But that's who he is out there, name shouted across countless crowded rooms.
So when we planned to go to Denver for barely two days, and when we decided to leave the girlies at home, I knew I was in for it.
And I was. One of Joey's very dearest friends had finally found a lady, and we spent the weekend gearing up for the knot-tying. And because I was on the arm of Jo-AY!, our schedule was full. I'm lucky that such lovely people love him so much, and because I wasn't running after the girls at the zoo like our other Denver trips, I was able to be there for every minute of it. No sleep, flowing coffee, middle of the night diners, beat poetry readings with his dad, and actually dancing. It was like being sixteen, only it was a lot better because I was happy. And you know what the best part of it all was? Getting out of the car with Joey, grabbing hands, and running down the street to our next destination. Running fast. We barely even took the time to close the car door. For those of you who have not yet reproduced, this highlight might puzzle you. But for the rest of you, you know where I'm coming from, right?
I guess this is a food blog, and honestly, I don't have much to say there. Denver food and I have never really had the urge to go out together. But of course there's green chile, so I stick to that, and it never disappoints. Morning one:

Morning two:
Although maybe I should have tried the fruity pebble pancake at Toast. Baby Israel seemed to be in to it.

And of course, there was the wedding.

I think that you can't beat a good homegrown wedding between two people who you can tell will actually stay married.

There's nothing like being let in on something like that. It was a really good weekend.

why i love baking, or, daring bakers puff the pastry

Why do I love to bake?

I love to bake because the process simultaneously works with absolute truth and mystery. I like that it is so hard, but that there is a path to making it work.


And the path is set out. The alchemy has been described and written out for me, but it takes some mysterious quality injected by my own hands to make it come alive.


I don't really get it. I start to doubt it all. And at some point in the process, I don't believe that I had it right. It couldn't have worked. I flubbed the magic.



And sometimes it doesn't work. But other times, miraculously, victoriously, oh man does it work!

It's not a miracle, though. It's chemistry. It's culture. It's temperature.
It's puff pastry.

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

This was a fabulous empowering super hero creating challenge. And you should do this one to. I'm going to send you over to Steph's blog for the puff pastry recipe, as well as a link to an essential and entertaining instructional video.

And what did my Vols-au-Vent hold? Oh, I'm so glad that you asked. We had big Vols-au-Vent for dinner, and then little ones for dessert. And then, honestly, we had stomachaches to finish off the evening. But it was well worth it.
For dinner, we had Vols-au-Vent with chicken and oyster mushrooms in a sherry cream tarragon sauce.

And for dessert, it was Vols-au-Vent with nectarines and lemon verbena whipped cream.

And yes, you can have the recipes. Remember who you are talking to after all. I couldn't keep them in if I tried.

Vols-au-Vent with Chicken and Oyster Mushrooms in Sherry Cream Tarragon Sauce
1 batch vols-au-vent (4 large or 8 small)
2 boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 shallots, in small dice
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons dry sherry
2 cups oyster mushrooms, loosely broken up into bite-sized pieces
3 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large skillet or sautee pan. Add the shallots and cook, stirring, for about a minute. Add the chicken, and allow to brown slightly, cooking until cooked through, about five minutes. Then add cream and sherry, allowing it to come to a low simmer and scraping off whatever brown has accumulated on the bottom of the pan. Add the oyster mushrooms and tarragon and cook for another minute. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour into pastry cups and serve immediately.


Vols-au-Vent with Nectarines and Lemon Verbena Whipped Cream
1 batch Vols-au-Vent (4 large or eight small)
3 nectarines, cut into one-inch cubes
1 cup heavy cream
20 fresh lemon verbena leaves
1 tablespoon real maple syrup

Two hours before serving, combine the cream and the lemon verbena leaves. Cover and chill. After it has infused the cream (at least two hours), whip the cream to soft peaks, adding the maple syrup as you beat it. Fill the pastry cups with whipped cream, and then top with nectarines.

Thank you Steph for maybe my favorite challenge yet. Go check out the other daring bakers and be inspired!

sadie's summer

Since the new camera has come into our lives, the old camera has been usurped by the girls. It is an endlessly entertaining activity for them, taking pictures of goofy faces and each other's butts. But once in a while, one of them has an artistic moment, and that girl will get a dazed look on her face, and she'll pick up the camera and walk out the back door as if possessed.
Today I unloaded all of these pictures on to the computer and saw them for the first time. And besides their tendency to make everything look like a French brothel with their goofy faces (where do they get this stuff?), I was really taken by some of the photos. Sadie had taken a little series in the late summer, seemingly desperate to capture herself amidst her environment on film.

She has captured summer in the backyard in such an exquisite way. One of the qualities of four-season living is the act of missing the seasons that are not there at the moment. Although the autumn began just yesterday, it is so clearly not summer anymore. It was warm and humid today, but the light, it's unmistakably fall light. And seeing Sadie's summer makes me miss it, even though I love the fall the best.

It's not that I wish it were summer. I just like missing things. Especially when I can hope to have them again.

pie for the equinox

We are one of those families floating in the vague fog of spirituality that you find these days, and that has its ups and downs. Being in a culturally Jewish/ Pagan family with some added Buddism and an Episcopalian grandfather never really bothered me, but something shifted when the girls were born. (Something? What didn't shift?) I started feeling like I wanted rituals to help them through, and I found myself thinking longingly on the nightly prayers of our Christian neighbors and having the first ever drives to go to temple. When Sadie was two or three, she started asking about the world's beginnings and God, and my general New Age energetic "Some thing is looking out for us and loving us" sense of things was hard to translate.
So we've developed rituals of our own, and in these rituals we do our best to reflect our own spirituality. Before we eat, we say, "Shna", and this gives us a chance (hopefully) to take a breath and say hello to each other before we plow through our food. We don't even really know where the word comes from; it seemed to originate around Sadie's babyhood. On Christmas we go outside for the morning and each person gets one gift that we open at lunch. And we always, always acknowledge the change of season.
A while back, Joey found an illustrator who's pictures went right to his heart. He did a series of books based around mice in the woods and their activities through the seasons. They are truly magical books. So we've started a tradition where we read the appropriate book as a celebration of the day. Tonight we had pie, and then it was book time.

Ah yes, the pie. Looks like apple, doesn't it? And of course that was my intention this morning when I started out. But then I realized that apples will keep, but pears will not, and I have so many pears. I had never heard of a pear pie. Have you? Crumbles and crisps, yes, but pies? Who makes the rules on this stuff?
Well, surprise, pear pie is unbelievably good. Apple's got nothing on it. Happy fall.

Pear Pie
loosely adapted from here (see, someone's heard of it!)

one batch of double crust pie pastry (make sure you have enough for two crusts!)
6-8 pears, peeled, cored, and cut into slices
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup all- purpose flour
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a 9- inch pie plate with pastry. Pour the pears into the shell. In a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt and zest. Sprinkle mixture over the pears. Drizzle the lemon juice over it all. Then top with the butter here and there. Finish it off with the top crust, as a lattice if you so desire. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, taking care to cover the crust if it starts to get too brown. Cool a bit before seving.

brioche hamburger buns, and passing the love (updated)

I aspire to be someone who continues to learn new things. I have found that to declare that I am someone who simply does not...(fill in the blank) just does not work for me.

This has really only come about because I find that I am now someone who does many things that I didn't used to do. For example, I am someone who enjoys Math. I am someone who reads comic books on occasion. I am someone who gardens. I am someone who knows how to can a jar of preserves. I am someone who knows the difference between an agent and a manager. I am someone who has been to Morocco.
I am someone who is not afraid of yeast.

I'm working on the last one, and I'm almost there. See, the thing is, I just don't trust it. I've made a lot of dense loaves of bread that would break a glass coffee table if dropped from a certain height. I have often been known to talk to my yeast- "Froth, god damn it, aren't you alive?" only to kill it with anger. "Rise to double it's bulk" doesn't really jive in my kitchen.
But I'm determined, and it's paying off. More and more, the dough does rise, the bread actually has air in it. And as we come back into the bread baking time of the year, I'm ready to say that I'm someone who makes bread.
These are really fabulous hamburger buns. They are lighter than most, and sweet in a way that goes really well with a pickle. What's that? You're not someone who makes hamburger buns? Oh come on, if I can do it, so can you.

Light Brioche Burger Buns
Adapted from Hidefumi Kubota, Comme Ça, Los Angeles, written about in the New York Times, then made so enticing by Smitten Kitchen
makes 8 buns


3 tablespoons warm milk

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 1/2 tablespoons sugar

2 large eggs

3 cups bread flour

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened.

poppy or sesame seeds, optional

In a glass measuring cup, combine 1 cup warm water, the milk, yeast and sugar. Let stand until foamy, (foam god damn it!) about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, beat 1 egg.

In a large bowl, whisk flours with salt. Add butter and rub into flour between your fingers, making crumbs. Using a dough scraper, stir in yeast mixture and beaten egg until a dough forms. Scrape dough onto clean, unfloured counter and knead, scooping dough up, slapping it on counter and turning it, until smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes.

Shape dough into a ball and return it to bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using dough scraper, divide dough into 8 equal parts. Gently roll each into a ball and arrange 2 to 3 inches apart on baking sheet. Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and let buns rise in a warm place for 1 to 2 hours.

Set a large shallow pan of water on oven floor. Preheat oven to 400 degrees with rack in center. Beat remaining egg with 1 tablespoon water and brush some on top of buns. Bake, turning sheet halfway through baking, until tops are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely.

And now, as promised, it's time to pass on the Lovely Blog Award! Lisa Michele made me giddy with this one last week, and now I'd like to pass on the love. The idea is that you accept the award and acknowledge the giver, and then pass it on to up to fifteen blogs that you have recently discovered and are loving. This one goes to:

Kelly at Sass and Veracity

Mary at One Perfect Bite

Amanda at Slow Like Honey

Kristin at The Kitchen Sink

Emily at Well Fed, Flat Broke

Erica at Cooking For Seven

Lindsay from Cake and Commerce

Erin at House on Hill Road

Go and read these fine ladies, you'll be happy you did...

apple picking

Of all the fruits

that grow,

I think that

apples are my favorite

fruit to pick.

nectarine buttemilk cake with lemon verbena sugar

I had a funny day yesterday. I know that funny is not a good word to describe anything, it might as well be interesting, or nice, and you'd have equally no idea what I was trying to get at. But in reflecting on it, that's all I've got. I'll try to explain.
Yesterday was a home day. I get these sometimes, in between work days and other days, and I cook through these days, and do laundry, and call the health insurance company about confusing bills and things like that. At times, I am wonderfully efficient on these days. They are precious, quiet stretches of useful time that I never could have imagined I would be so fortunate to possess just a few short years ago. These are the joys of working part time and having two kids in school. And I mean joys with all sincerity.
But some sort of strange alchemy has occurred within my work ethic the last few years. I come from a very efficient and working Jewish depression era family, and we all work like crazy. But in the past, I've been pretty good at turning that off. I am a girl who knows how to enjoy my leisure. Or was, at least. As I've gone into in greater detail in the past, I went straight from college into motherhood, and those are my two most recent states. Last year the little one went to school, and these days emerged, and as I said for the most part, they are wonderful, but sometimes, a deep restlessness comes out. I wake up with a long list of things to do, and I just can't bring myself to get through it, and so I pace around, feeling bad about my inefficiency. The truth is, it is hard to bring myself to do what I know I should in these situations, which is give up the to-do list and take a minute, for a walk or a book, or just spacing out on the hammock. I think that having two little kids and various jobs over the years has taught me at the cellular level that I must be doing something useful at every moment.
Which brings us to yesterday. It is Rosh Hashanah, and although we've got nothing in Jewish celebration department, the girls had expressed interest and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. So I was going to make challah. But I didn't. And I didn't do the other things that I set out to do either, so I paced. But yesterday, in my restlessness, I went outside with my new camera. We took a peek at the fall coming.


And then we enjoyed the sky, and the land behind the house.



We played with f-stops for a while, and my restlessness oozed away. All of the sudden I was so motivated. I hadn't made challah, but I wanted to make something to surprise the girls when they got home. The two things that I know about Rosh Hashanah are that it is a holiday of sweets (thank you Aunt Cindy) and a time for reflection (thank you Uncle Michael). So I'd make a lovely sweet, a poor substitute for challah with honey, and we'd have a lovely picnic when we got home, and talk about reflection on the year. It was all set out in my head, and it was beautiful.
You can see where this is going by now, I'm sure.
So I pick up the ladies at school, and Sadie says, "Are we doing anything special today?" And I say yes, and that perhaps they would want to save their granola bars that I had packed for the car for another time, because there was something nice at home waiting for them.
You'd think this might be good news?
No, not on a Friday afternoon with tired and unpleasant children. They got the plan out of me. Rosie said that she wanted her car snack instead, that she didn't want a picnic or cake. Of course she felt quite a bit of emotion about this declaration, so she screamed it the whole way home. Sadie was more excited, and patiently sat in her seat, thinking about the picnic to come. But of course when Sadie starts thinking, we get into some trouble, because she has some very unique anxieties.
"Momma?"
"Yes, Sadie?"
"I'm feeling worried that we're going to go home and have cake now, and then Daddy will come home and he'll have cake after dinner, and we will have already had our cake and so won't be able to have any more and that won't be fair and I'll be upset."
Yeah, I know. I'm starting to think that this whole thing was a bad idea.
But we made it home, and set out our blanket, and made a bit of tea, and had a picnic under a threat of rain. Rosie had a little piece after all, and everyone was happy for cake.


And I think even a bit of reflection might have happened, at least for the big one.

Rosie reflected in her own way too, I think.

Maybe I'll make Challah next year.


Nectarine Buttermilk Cake with Lemon Verbena Sugar
adapted from Gourmet, June 2009

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
3 medium nectarines, pitted and sliced
1 tablespoon lemon verbena sugar

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Beat butter and 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then beat in vanilla. Add egg and beat well. At low speed, mix in flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Arrange nectarines in a pattern on the top, gently pressing them in to the cake, and sprinkle the lemon verbena sugar over the nectarines. Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.

amaranth, quinoa, and corn chowder

Lorna Sass has written many cookbooks, but she has one book called Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way. This is an amazing book, and for anyone interested in venturing beyond white rice and wonder bread, this is required reading. I know many people who are interested in cooking with different grains, but there are just too many unknowns. They pick up their granola from the bulk section at the store, sneaking a glance at the quinoa and bulgur with a little bit of interest and a little bit of guilt. Do you have to soak it? How do I cook it? And most importantly, does it taste good?
This book is an encyclopedia of the whole grain, a book that you can pick up to answer any of these questions. The entire first section separates each grain, defining the different forms that you might find it in, how to cook it, clean it and even store it.
And the recipes! One of my favorite things about this book is that it is directed at the average carnivorous American, and is filled with recipes like kamut with mussels in tomato broth, quinoa and turkey cutlets with fusion flavors, and millet-chocolate crunch. I've made many of her recipes, and I haven't had a loser yet. But my absolute favorite is amaranth, quinoa, and corn chowder.
Quinoa has nutty flavor, and is off-putting to many people, especially if it isn't prepared well. I find that there are specific combinations that really support quinoa, and corn and red pepper is one of them. Amaranth is a grain that not many people have tried, and when prepared on it's own is, well, very sticky. Both amaranth and quinoa are so packed with nutrition as to make you into a superhero, so they are well worth trying out.
Which brings me to this soup. For those who are wary of these new and crazy grains, this is perfect. Why? Honestly, because you just can't taste them. The soup has a grainy texture, and if you inspect the contents of your spoon, you'll find the little tadpole like grains, but this just tastes like really fabulous corn chowder. It comes together pretty quickly- just don't tell anyone what's in it.

Amaranth, Quinoa, and Corn Chowder
from Lorna Sass, Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way
serves 6

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups finely chopped leeks, whites and light green parts
1 cup finely diced celery
1/2 cup finely diced red bell pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 cup amaranth
1/2 cup ivory quinoa, thoroughly rinsed
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
4 cups fresh or thawed frozen corn kernels
1 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons chopped flat leaf parsley


In a large, heavy pot, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium-high heat. Stir in the leeks, celery and red pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes.
Stir in the amaranth and three cups of water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in the quinoa and thyme. Return to a boil. Reduce the heat slightly and cook at a gentle boil, partially covered, for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a blender or food processor, puree 3 cups of the corn kernels with 1 cup of water. When the quinoa has cooked for 10 minutes, stir the corn puree and the remaining corn kernels into the soup. Add salt to taste. Reduce the heat and simmer until the quinoa and amaranth are tender, 3 to 5 more minutes. When the quinoa is done, there will be no starchy white dot in the center of each grain, and some of the little tails may unfurl. The amaranth will look like tiny white bubbles floating on the surface.
Stir in the milk and the remaining tablespoon of butter. Add more salt, if needed. Garnish each bowl with a little parsley.

free thursday luxuries

Have you played Scrabble lately?

Or if Scrabble isn't your game of choice, maybe Boggle? Monopoly?

There are so many other things to do, I know, but sometimes the luxury is just taking the time, don't you think?

3 butters

I like fancy things. I make no secret of that. My favorite fancy things are those that are ordinary and then made fancy with minimal effort. I'm kind of a lazy princess in that way, I guess. (And come to think of it, I'm not the only one of those around here)
Herb butter is definitely the sustenance of lazy princesses. Plain old stick of butter, chopped herbs, and you're in fancy town. You might want bread, I guess, just as a means of getting the butter into your belly.

3 Butters

Or hell, make it 4, 5 10! You decide. The most essential part is that the butter be at room temperature. Cut the butter into 2 tablespoon chunks, put each chunk into a bowl. Add 2 tablespoons chopped herbs, garlic or shallot, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of salt. Mix, mix, mix. Serve with bread, or melt on just about anything.

The 3 butters up there are:

Nasturtium butter (2 T chopped nasturtium petals)
Shallot butter (1 chopped shallot)
Basil Parsley butter (1 T each of finely chopped basil and parsley)


Oh, and one more thing! The lovely and amazing Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives has brought on the blush over here with the One Lovely Blog Award. Lisa Michele is a kitchen goddess, not to mention downright hilarious, and to be chosen by her of all people leaves me (for once) speechless. I'll pass the award on this week, I promise.

i did it again

You've got to try this dinner party thing, I'm serious. Like newspapers, and playing outside; this is one tradition that we should keep around.

I actually got to take part in two salon challenges this time. While we were in Portland, Sarah and Jefferson took the challenge, and everyone there was new to me. It was Sarah's birthday, and we made little lamb meatloafs (meatloaves? how often to you put that one in the plural?) with spicy yogurt sauce, feta mint corn and roasted vegetables. We started off with oysters, and finished with ricotta chocolate mousse. I didn't take any pictures, because it was 130 degrees in the kitchen, and the camera would have slipped right out of my hands. But have you had oysters? They make my heart beat really fast. They are thrilling. It was a lovely dinner.
A few weeks later, I threw my party. The challenge was local, and of course I chose that because in late August, I knew it would be a cinch.

There were some good friends there, and some hopefully to be friends, and a poor unsuspecting couple who called me for some work advice and ended up getting invited to dinner. I applauded their courage at coming over even though they had never even met me, and altogether it was a fabulous group.
And what did we eat? It was a cold and rainy day, and we started off with gin and tonics with local gin and far away tonic and lime. I made two galettes, one with the old favorites: roasted potatoes, red peppers, onions, and brebis blanche. The other had caramelized leeks, Monterey chevre, roasted turnips, and prosciutto. There were little pickled vegetables and roasted garlic. And I roasted a big box of tomatoes and made a stew with summer squash, onions, herbs, and local lamb chorizo. We had sourdough ciabatta with two different herb butters. Green salad with beets and goat cheese. And for dessert, mint and blueberry ice cream cake with maple whipped cream and lemon verbena tea from the garden. Recipes to come, I promise. But I'll give you a few pictures to tide you over.









It's in my nature to give unwanted advice, and sometimes I get pushy. I know, I'm working on it. But don't just take my word on this one, throw yourself a dinner party. I'll post the next challenge on October 1.