Jump For Joy!!

Yipee!! All my glimmering has not been in vain! My first round of restaurant reviews for Nature Network Boston is up. The editing process was somewhat painful, but the eating and writing were all pleasure. Any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreciated (congratulations might not be so bad either).

Sizzle And Crunch

The worst sound on this earth is that of crunching fiberglass and caving fenders. Nothing can compare to it. How do I know this? I got into my very first car accident this weekend. Not bad for 13 years of driving. True to type, I hit a completely innocent and perfectly stationary car. D’oh. Oh but that’s not all. The car I so unfairly dented and scraped just happened to be the brand new SUV belonging to my landlady’s father. D’oh. When I realized what I had just done, I saw the goosebump-inducing crunching sound for what it was - a prelude to the giant waive of denial soon to be dwarfed by sheer panic, quickly followed by clammy dread of all the crap I had ahead of me. ____ ( ← please insert the worst curse-word you can think of).

From the worst sound in my world, let’s move on to a few of the best: the tearing of an envelope holding a real old-fashioned, hand-written letter; a cell phone booting up after you accidentally (or intentionally) drop-kick it across the pavement; the tearing, crunching and shattering of a crusty loaf of bread; wine hitting the bottom of a glass as it swirls, bubbles, and settles down; and the sizzle of food cooking on a stovetop.


Sizzling is warm and promising. It sounds like you’re doing something right (as opposed to say, backing into shiny new car), as though progress is being made. It also makes tofu really really good. I happen to adore tofu but I acknowledge that I may be in the minority. I like all tofu – from the squishy and jiggly silken tofu to the dense extra firm. It is the extra firm tofu that benefits most from a good sizzle in some olive oil. Tofu cubes hold their shape much better when their outsides are cauterized, so to speak. The insides remain soft, giving something generally shapeless and textureless a contrast between chewable and meltable.

I can’t pretend to have put together a recipe for this stir fry. I was too hungry while making it to be paying any attention to the amounts of ingredients I impatiently tossed in. I can say that I threw some tofu cubes into very hot olive oil and moved them about till they were golden on most sides. I then added in some chopped ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes. After those became fragrant I added snowpeas and stir fried them until they were bright green but still crunchy. Finally (as I was getting close to dying of hunger) I poured in soy sauce, about two teaspoons of sesame oil, a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds, salt and pepper.


I am now in the process of conquering my new fear of driving and acute paranoia of every crunch being a shattered tail light. The sound is lingering in my head. I wish I could just listen to sizzling tofu all day.

Shhh... Don't Tell

It is with some reservation that I write this post. I always knew that the time would eventually come for me to write it, but it didn’t know it would come so quickly and feel so frightening. Yes, it’s true. I am about to write about my most favorite restaurant in Boston. Since this blog reaches millions and millions of people every day (or maybe it’s just me, checking it millions and millions of times a day… whichever) this favorite place of mine will become flooded with people that I am certain to dislike and I will not be able to ever return. So don’t tell any more people than you absolutely must, ok?

If you must tell people about this glory of a restaurant, please make sure you’re not telling total a-holes... For example, someone who believes HIV was engineered by the government… [oh yes, first and last date with the stupidest man to ever walk this earth] or anyone who has ever done a keg stand. Those people are totally not allowed. I discriminate and am proud of it.

So, with all the disclaimers and subtle threats in place, I shall now proceed to actually write about the restaurant – Audubon Circle, just outside of Kenmore Sq, and perilously close to Fenway Park. It’s my go-to spot. Whenever I don’t know what I feel like eating, whenever there is a concert later on that night, whenever I am meeting friends for drinks, Audubon is always my choice. It’s low key and lacking in pretense, with dark wood paneling on the walls and black slate-topped tables and bar. I know the entire menu by heart (ok, it’s a totally short and never-changing menu, but still…) and have tried close to everything on it. I have yet to feel let down.


Tuscan white bean paste sounds so unappealing, doesn’t it? It’s the word paste. It makes me think of Home Depot and Colgate, in that order. Regardless, the white bean… spread… is so much better than it sounds. Cannelini beans are ground super smooth with olive oil, rosemary, garlic, and whatever other Audubon magic fits in the food processor, sprinkled with Kalamata olives and plopped alongside giant pieces of grilled bread. It’s perfect hangover food… and importantly, the perfect food to consume while earning your hangover.

Their Reuben is more panini than traditional steamed Reuben. It is rich but not overwhelming, crunchy on the outside and melted on the inside, with a perfect ratio of meat to sauerkraut to dressing (not too much of any one thing and not too much filling as a whole… very low risk of spilling down one’s chin or pants), served with a perfectly fresh salad tossed with a mustardy vinaigrette. There is also a green apple and brie pressed sandwich, cubano, black bean and regular burgers, and a grilled turkey breast sandwich that gives turkey rare sex appeal.

I could continue down the entire menu and comment on each entry but no one has that kind of time. I will say that everything is supremely fresh, every sauce and accompaniment (ketchup included) is made in the restaurant with their own twist. The consistency of the food is remarkable. It’s always good and always the same. I know exactly what I am getting every time. The totally aloof and cooler-than-me servers have never once gotten my order wrong even though they never write anything down. Except for game days when Audubon is flooded with the Red Sox fans, it’s never terribly packed, never too loud, perfect for lunch, dinner, or a drink… or a drinking lunch that extends into dinner. It’s been known to happen.



Now my secret restaurant crush is out in the open. I feel exposed. Please share Audubon wisely, should you have to do so.



Audubon Circle Restaurant and Bar
838 Beacon St
Boston, MA 02215
(617) 421-1910

Learning Is Very Rewarding

My Russian Jew of a mother taught me how to make fried plantains. In my world, this is funny. I had never heard of half the things I eat now when I was little. Not surprisingly, there were not too many plantains… or anything besides apples, really… for sale in Russia close to 20 years ago (oy. 20 years). I had only seen coconuts and pineapples in cartoons before moving to the U.S. To tell the truth, I hardly believed pineapples were real – they were just too alien-looking to be people-food.

There were a few more discoveries to be made along those same lines. For example, we had to learn that limes are not in fact, unripe lemons. If left on the countertop for extended periods of time, they will not miraculously morph into lemons. Also, coconuts are a complete bitch to open if you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. An electric drill may or may not have been called into action. I shall say no more.


A lime's true identity and coconut techniques are things I bet many people take for granted. For myself and my family, however, it was a steep learning curve (for like, a month). I am fully adjusted and adapted now, and can even make fried plantains, the most un-Russian of all foods (I plead the fifth on the coconuts).

My Mom went on a trip to Brazil and brought back an undying love of plantains. [And some great earrings for me, but that’s beside the point.] They turn out to be stupidly simple to make but taste like a dream– peel a very ripe (almost black) plantain and slice on the diagonal, fry in canola oil, drain on a paper towel. That’s it. With frying, the outside of the plantain slices caramelizes, becoming crisp and a little chewy. The inside almost melts. Imagine a hot banana infused with butter… and mixed with a little bit of potato. That’s a fried plantain. Sweet and slightly starchy, they are best eaten oozingly, meltingly, scaldingly hot, sparing neither the skin of your fingertips nor the tip of your tongue.

Variations On A Theme

The good (and very very clever) people at M80 and Nestle sent me a new chocolate to try (Nestle Chocolatier Baking chocolate) as part of what I understand to be a grassroots advertising campaign - they make bloggers do all the work for them. See? Clever. Again, as I understand it (or imagine it), Nestle is trying to compete with Ghirardelli in the upscale chocolate chip market – you know, an option besides the Hershey’s or Tollhouse “chocolate flavored” chips. Ick.

Try out the chocolate I did. I have been a baking machine for the last week. A machine, I tell you. One pain in the ass cake and two batches of brownies later, I am approaching baking burnout (hee) but still have a ton of chocolate left over and some very happy lab-mates, who have been the direct beneficiaries of my baking binge.

So, the pain the in ass cake. I am desperately unoriginal in my desperate love of Julia Child. However, taking in the sight of my kitchen, with every bowl and appliance dirtied from making one of her recipes, I almost (almost) fell out of love. With a splat. The fifteen thousand steps that went into making the Reine de Saba (Queen of Sheeba) cake required the use of pretty much everything in my kitchen. I may be exaggerating (a little), but it was a pain, and close to one of the most complicated things I have ever baked.

The cake consists of almonds ground with sugar, mixed with chocolate, and lightened with beaten egg whites. Sounds simple enough, right? Sure. The instruction that broke the camel’s back was Mrs. Child asking me to sift cake flour. Sift. Cake. Flour. Look, lady – the whole point of cake flour is that is has been twice sifted before packaging. Some nice person in a big plant did it all for me. Why do I have to do it again?? Is this a French thing? A torture-the-grad-student thing (oooh that’s redundant)? What?

But I relented (as in, sifted). The cake was finished, the ganache icing went on, the kitchen was resuscitated, and all was well. The cake itself was light, with some texture provided by the ground almonds. I should have used a little more chocolate in the cake than I did… the consequence of that being that I couldn’t form an opinion on the chocolate that I used (other than tasting the naked chocolate itself).

This is why I made the brownies - to test the chocolate… not at all to make a ton of brownies. Yeah. I first heard about these brownies on an NPR food podcast (I know I am a dork) and they sounded great. Thick and fudgy, stuffed with nuts and chocolate, complete with a fantastical story of their origin – apparently, the recipe was Katharine Hepburn’s own. Whether that is true or not I cannot say, but the brownies sure are good.

I made two batches – one with almonds/almond extract, another with almonds/almond extract and dried sweetened cherries. Mmmmm. Heavy, smooth, just barely set, with a depth of flavor beyond the ordinary brownie (I really wanted to type "pedestrian brownie" but stopped myself. For a second). They were the intersection of brownies and fudge. The striking thing about the brownies was the strong chocolate taste – not the sugary, candy-like chocolate taste, but the slightly bitter, fruity chocolate that grown-ups like, probably from including both cocoa powder and chocolate. The Nestle chocolate chips were very soft and fudgy. Even after the brownies had cooled, the chips were smooth and crunch-less, almost melting into the batter, yet still maintaining their own chocolate chip identity. I am not sure if the depth of chocolate flavor was there in the chips themselves, but they served their purpose marvelously.


Chocolate Fudge… Brownies
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for NPR Food.

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces (or not cut, if you are as unobservant as I am)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 cup toasted almonds, very coarsely chopped (or ¾ cup almonds and ¼ cup chopped, dried cherries)
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
- Butter and flour an 8-inch square baking pan.
- Whisk the flour and salt together.
- Put the butter in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan and place the pan over low heat.
- When the butter starts to melt, sift the cocoa over it while mixing. Continue to cook, stirring, until the butter is melted and the cocoa is blended into it. Remove from the heat and cool for about 3 minutes.
- Using a whisk or a rubber spatula, beat the eggs into the saucepan one at a time. Next, stir in the sugar, vanilla, and almond extracts (don't beat anything too vigorously — you don't want to add air to the batter), followed by the dry ingredients, nuts and chopped chocolate. Scrape the batter into the pan.
- Bake for 30 minutes, at which point the brownies will still be gooey but the top will have a dry papery crust. Transfer the pan to a rack and let the brownies cool for at least 30 minutes.





I am out of butter. Again.
Scary.

It's All About Me

It was recently brought to my attention that there is fairly little information about me in my blog. I made the decision to keep it as impersonal as possible when I started the blog but now I can’t figure out why. It seems contrary to the whole concept of blogging. It’s not a lot of fun to read a blog when it is suspended in empty space, so to speak. So in an utterly tacky move, I am tagging myself for a meme that’s been making the rounds (it’s ok! Amanda said I could) – five things you don’t know about me. Assuming you want to know them. If you don't, stop reading now.



Deep Breath (as my cell phone tells me every time I open it). Here I go.


1. I am in grad school, working on my PhD in Virology. I work in a basic science lab studying… ready for it? Herpes. No, not the one “down there”. The other herpes, HSV-1. It’s not as good an ice breaker as one might think. Although I totally win over my friends who study HIV - usually people just back away slowly from them. I should (please please) be done by next winter. And then… Then will be then. Deep Breath.

2. I wear the same bracelet every day. I used to have a bit of a bracelet fetish and still have piles of them but I am now committed to the one perfect bracelet. My parents brought it back for me from Ireland eons ago. It has almost become a part of me, much like my signature scent. I feel odd without it. And the photo was taken in my kitchen, so whatever you see in the background is where I make all the giant messes that serve as preludes to dinner.


3. I love (love love) Jane Austen. Can take or leave the Brontes, Dickens is a’ight, but it’s Austen that I cannot get enough of. I am pacing myself, not letting myself gorge on all her books in one fell swoop because then they will be done and I will have nothing left. That day will, unfortunately, come and it will be a very sad one, matched only by the day when I finish the last Harry Potter book. I am telling you now that I will crying and I am not ashamed to admit it.

4. Now this is getting hard. I am running out of things to say… Oh, I know! I sail and ski. Those are my two big activities. Summer is all about sailing – on the Boston Harbor. I hardly ever get to cruise for fun with a bottle of wine and lots of cheese… ooh I miss that… I have mostly been racing Solings once a week (I’m foredeck).



The boats at the dock are the ones I cruise on (J24), the smaller boats on mooring balls in the background are the ones I race. FYI, I am maybe one step above sucking when it comes to racing. Skiing I love but never do more than twice a year which I am trying in vain to remedy... but I love it.

5. Now I am totally done. Four is the best I can do. Now maybe the food I make and eat can be taken in context. Context of what I am not entirely certain, but you can be sure that I am likely wearing that bracelet.

When I Grow Up...

... I want to be Kelly Liken. Having trained at one of the best restaurants in the country, she is now the chef/owner of her very own posh and fantastic restaurant in uber posh and gastronomically competitive Vail, CO. She is really nice, totally adorable, monstrously talented, and, yeah, she is my age. Bugger.

I was honestly too distracted by the food to take pictures (the three bottles of wine before dinner may have had something to do with the distraction) but suffice it to say that it was a very memorable meal, due to the combination of excellent service, creative and well-executed food, and of course, the wine.

I have Kelly to thank for this, my new most favorite quote, as well as the best duck breast I have ever had in my entire duck breast-eating life.

" "When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said. "

A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner.

Good Things Come To Those Who Work

Nothing comes easy. That is a universal truth, depressing as it may be. Everything worth having takes a lot of work. This holds true for school, jobs, friends, hobbies, and surprisingly, some fruit. Please meet the pomelo.

Pomelos are hugely fragrant and deeply flavorful, like an amplified grapefruit without the bitter grapefruit edge. Each pomelo segment is made up of hundreds of little juice packets that pop when you bite down... almost like fruit caviar. Pomelos are actually the mommies (or daddies) of grapefruit, which are a cross between a pomelo and an orange. Bet you didn’t know that. There are also pomelo/grapefruit crosses for sale (don’t know where) but this just has too many weird and incestuous implications for me to pursue. Pomelos take a lot of work. They are not a project to be undertaken lightly.

Pomelos are giant green globes with light pink flesh encased in an inch-thick rind - this takes a bit of work to remove. I usually set aside a slow evening for my pomelo consumption, when I know I have nothing to do, will not be interrupted, and can happily peel and eat my pomelo, becoming covered in a thin layer of pomelo as I go. The tools required for this activity are numerous (any good hobby begins with a shopping trip for accessories, I think) – you will need a big bowl to fit all the pomelo refuse, a knife (I guess long fingernails can substitute for the knife, but eww), and a big roll of paper towels. A bib may not be a bad idea.

So this is how it goes. You slice into the rind with the knife to get a foothold (fingerhold). Then start peeling away. Only the top layer of rind will come off at first, leaving a good half inch of bitter and foamy pith behind.


The pith is what takes the most work to remove, and it how one gets about a pound of pomelo lodged under one’s fingernails. Eww again, but it’s worth it. So you pick at the pith, clear off as much as you can until you can stick your finger down the middle of the fruit and pull it in half (see top pic). This is all very complicated and slightly gruesome. Again, worth it.


Remove the thick membrane encasing each large pomelo segment – I sometimes have to use a knife to get a fingerhold to peel off the membrane. Now the eating can commence. The eating technique has to be fitted specifically to each pomelo consumer. The more refined pomelo-eaters can pull off and peel each segment individually, before daintily placing small morsels of pomelo in their mouth. Or you can be me and just go for it. I don’t feel the need to convey the mechanics of “going for it.” I will leave it up to your imagination. I will say that I do not recommend the “going for it” technique while sitting on a couch, unless that couch has some form of plastic covering (all class, that).

All the work is worth it. At the end of the pomelo activity, you will be left with a big bowl of pomelo refuse, a lot of sticky juice in splotches all over, and the rewarding feeling of a job well done.

In Denial

Boston has turned itself into a giant ice rink and does not appear to be changing back any time soon. Every surface in the city is evenly covered with 3 inches of ice. Cars are frozen on the streets, the ice half way up the tires. It's not pretty. Even my fancy-pants new snow shoes do nothing to save me from stumbling and slipping with every other step. Oh, and it’s freezing cold. Well, technically, that’s not accurate. Freezing would be comparatively warm right now. It is far past freezing, what I like to refer to as “minus a** degrees.” It’s a fairly accurate (and sensitive) measurement, mind you.

Most people are cocooning themselves in their homes or going out to order beef stew and hot toddies (whatever those actually are. I always forget). Those people make a good deal of sense. I, however, do not. I came home today, all poofy with my giant down jacket, huge scarf, and red hat (complete with pom-pom, naturally), tossed down my bags, had a cup of tea and made… guacamole for dinner. Yes, I make no sense.

Guacamole is the embodiment of summer, fresh produce, and cold beer. It is the very antithesis of the poofy down jacket. So what was I doing with guacamole in the middle of winter? I feel no need to explain myself beyond the fact that I make no sense and was thinking about guacamole all day. I love it and can (and do, on occasion) eat it with a spoon. It is creamy, citrusy, spicy, fresh, and totally addictive. I was going to have guacamole, ice or no ice.

I tried to make up for the obvious deficiencies of the season the best I could. I turned the thermostat up high, checked to make sure that my avocados and tomatoes (courtesy of Boston Organics) were ripe and ready, and the cold beer was (and is) a no-brainer. While I think that eating tomatoes in the middle of winter is completely pointless, I had no choice – they came to me. The tomatoes, not surprisingly, tuned out to be purely decorative. They added nice little flecks of red and a bit of texture but no discernable taste. Asking for flavor from a tomato in February is futile.

I like to make guacamole because it is easy and fast, but most of all, I like making it because I get to use my favorite trick, courtesy of the Jacques Pepin. Once I figure out my fascination with him, I will let you know. I like the taste of garlic in guacamole (and many many other things) but I am not a big fan of biting down on big, smelly garlic pieces. Jacques Pepin to the rescue. He mashes the garlic with salt into a paste which then distributes evenly through the dish, flavoring throughout instead of offering crunchy, painful garlic bites. It’s brilliant!

Denial of winter guacamole
One ripe avocado
Juice of one lime
1 garlic clove, mashed into a paste with a pinch of salt
½ of a tomato, seeded and finely chopped
big handful of roughly chopped fresh cilantro (how’s that for a precise measurement…)
pinch of cayenne
salt and black pepper

Mix all, open a beer, and pretend it’s not winter.

**Mush is really not very photogenic, is it...



Boston has been far colder than today and I am sure it will be again soon. I really wouldn’t mind, if only my car was not, in fact, encased in a giant block of ice that I will have to chip away at tomorrow. Ick.

Simplicity - Not As Easy As It Sounds

It’s so strange how the most simple and basic questions are the most difficult to answer. What is heat, really? Why do airplanes fly? Why does Britney Spears insist on letting me down, time and time again? Well, maybe that one is not so difficult to answer. Regardless, sometimes objectively complicated things can seem easy and turn out well, while something really simple and basic is a complete nightmare to master. Take, for example, the standard French omelette (I must be on an egg kick). It is so much harder than it sounds.

Feeling inspired by Julia Child after watching her on the French Chef (thank you, Netflix!) I decided to have a go at making an omelette, following her lead. I did not have the patience to practice my omelette manipulation technique before jumping in (Julia recommends using dried beans to simulate the motion of the egg mixture in the pan), nor did I have the heart to add nearly as much butter as she did (frankly, I think it’s a medical miracle that she lived to 92). Maybe I should have done both those things. I should have probably also used the right size pan for the job (mine was 2 inches too big in diameter). So many should-haves. Tant pis, as Julia would say (I think).

It looked easy enough. Add the beaten eggs (2 to 3 eggs per omelette, salt, pepper, teaspoon of cold water. No idea why the water) to the pan (7.5 to 8 inches in diameter) once the foaming of the butter (~1 tbsp, but I am pretty sure I used less) begins to subside. Let the eggs sit still for about 5 seconds, then start swirling the pan around to expose more of the eggs to the heat, allowing them to begin to coagulate (her word, not mine… it makes me think of blood). Then begin jerking the pan toward yourself so that the egg “pancake” folds in on itself. Tip the omelette out onto a plate, seam side down. The whole process should take about 20 seconds (!). The eggs should be just barely set, and therefore, creamy and luxurious (my word, not hers).

Well, not so much with the jerking and the folding. I really do think my pan was just too big - my egg pancake was too thin and the jerking did nothing but scramble the whole business instead of making it move it in a single sheet. My omelette looked a little disheveled and generally out of sorts.


After sprinkling a bit of parmesan on top, taking about 20 pictures and sitting down to breakfast, I was pleasantly surprised. While totally ugly, the eggs really were very creamy and closely bordering on luxurious. Cooking them the bare minimum of time is definitely the trick here, I think.

I have a lot of practicing to do… although my cleaning lady may quit if I start tossing beans all around the apartment. My kitchen is enough for her to deal with as it is.





P.S. I think this post make take the prize for the most parentheses used (ever).

Poofy Neuroses

I don’t know if y’all have noticed, but I have severe neurotic tendencies. Really, it’s true. Science does nothing to alleviate my neurotic sufferings, but instead amplifies them to a fever pitch, makes them bloom, sprout, and otherwise prosper and multiply. So what better preparation to undertake for a neurotic scientist (is that redundant?) than a soufflé!

Souffles are made of one part milk, two parts eggs, and the rest is worry. Will it rise? Will it be a brick? Will it be an eggy, mushy, foamy concoction with some cheese on top? The trick, as it turns out, is to get a firm grip on one’s neuroses and not check on the soufflé while it’s baking. Not even once. Opening the oven door is a soufflé death sentence. I was so good. I didn’t open the oven, not even once. Of course that’s not to say that I didn’t stand with my face plastered against the oven door with the little light on for the majority of the 50 minutes that the soufflé was interred in its toasty depths.

All my nervous energy must have aided the soufflé in rising to its potential (quiet. Puns are funny). The bragging rights of having made a soufflé are nothing compared to the satisfaction of seeing it rise in the oven, just like it should. Unfortunately, the uncooperative bugger that it was, the soufflé de-souffled itself (i.e. fell) the moment it came out of the oven, making picture taking, serving, and of course, bragging, rather difficult (the picture at top is a slightly de-poofed version of the teaser campaign pic).

If all those things fall into place, and everything works as it should, a soufflé is a marvelous thing. It’s like eating poofy, savory cotton candy, with a slightly eggy tang (unless it’s a sweet cotton candy type of soufflé, in which case you really hope the eggy tang is absent). I messed with the recipe a little. I used cheddar instead of Gruyere and threw in two big handfuls of parsley, scallions, and thyme. The herbs did a great job of cutting through the richness of the soufflé.

My second stab at soufflés (clearly, I had more worrying left in me) was a chocolate soufflé with a cardamom crème anglaise. While the cheese soufflé was for my own consumption (and worry), the chocolate soufflés were for friends – this took the worry component to stratospheric heights. But, all is well that ends well… or should I say, all is well that begins with ginger-wasabi martinis, moves on to three bottles of wine, and tops off with kir royales (there were four of us, FYI). We don’t fool around.

I used semisweet Valrhona chocolate for the soufflés and let me tell you, I needed a moment. I really did. I tried a piece of the chocolate and I realized that I needed a moment. It is positively hypnotic. The soufflés turned out silky, rich, light, and flavorful all at the same time, if that’s possible. Chocolate + cardamom - not an obvious combination, but wonderfully complementary and fantastic. Chocolate souffles with cardamom creme - not very photogenic, and somewhat deflated, and utterly delicious.


Since the recipe led me make about a cubic meter of cheese soufflé, I was eating it for quite a while. Turns out deflated soufflés are a marvelous substitute for scrambled eggs in the morning. Soufflés for breakfast. How amazingly bourgeois of me, right? It was great and lasted me almost a week! Not so much with the chocolate soufflés. Those didn’t last long at all. I had to physically restrain myself from drinking the cardamom crème anglaise. It was that good.

All this soufflé making had a purpose, by the way. It wasn’t simply to exercise my stress response. I was actually making soufflés for an IMBB event. It turned out that remembering the submission deadline was the one challenge I could not meet. I figure it’s all about the baby steps. I made the soufflé. Next time, I may even get the post up in time. Till then, I have another committee meeting to live through. The living through it part is becoming less and less a given as the day draws closer. Grad school has a wonderful way of taking my neuroses and helping them along to absurd heights. Taller than some soufflés, even.

Cheese and Tease

This is what one might call a teaser campaign. Please make do with this preview of an upcoming post while I do battle with yet another committee meeting. Any guesses as to what the post will be of? It's not much of a challenge, I know.

Off The Topic

I had it all planned out. I knew exactly the post I wanted write and how I would set it up. I was going to call it something completely corny, like “A Tale Of Two Chickens,” and would once again go into how I am a kitchen experimenter and like to compare two different preparations of the same thing (dork, I know). I was full of the drive and determination that can only come from a well-laid plan.

I cooked chicken breasts coated with breadcrumbs and parmesan, both in my favorite cast iron skillet and in the oven, to see which I prefer. So far so good. I then sat down to dinner with a piece of each preparation of chicken.

That's the oven-baked chicken on the right and skillet chicken on the left. Oven chicken won by a narrow margin.


This is when I got sidetracked. Problem was that the chicken was painfully unremarkable (and, therefore, un-bloggable) in both cases. My innocuous and unoriginal steamed sweet potato on the other hand, was quite noteworthy.

It wasn’t the potato itself that led to my derailment from the chicken plan – it was the salt I doused the potato with. An ardent supporter of Sunday Night Dinner, (and wonderful friend) Jonathan, had been kind enough to send me a jar of Himalayan Pink salt, for no reason at all (that I can remember). I had the jar stashed away in my spice jungle until a recent shopping binge led me to buy a salt grinder.

I coarsely ground some pink salt on my potato, topped it with some olive oil and black pepper and changed my blogging plans with one bite. Wow. I found that the pink salt isn’t really very salty – it is very mild, both in salt content and flavor, which allows it to be left in larger chunks. The coarse pink salt added crunch to the smooth (and super sweet - thanks Boston Organics!) potato along with a soft, un-intrusive salty taste. That’s the only way I can describe the taste of the salt – soft and smooth, just like it’s pink color.

The contrast between mineral-rich salt like this one and the common Morton’s salt is striking. The stuff in the cylindrical paper containers tastes bitter and acidic to me. Chemical, even. For delicate applications that can allow the salt to shine through, such as grinding salt on top of a salad or something simple like a potato, this stuff can’t be beat. It’s a condiment more than a spice. I could almost eat the crystals like hard candy. That’s probably not a good idea, right?

Just goes to show you, even the best-laid plans… Eh. “Tale of Two Chickens” was a lame title anyway.







P.S. As an update, I have already managed to break the salt grinder. I don't know how.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Like any 28 year-old on a Friday night, I just spent half an hour washing a leaning tower of dishes. My fingers have gone all pruney. Is that not a normal Friday night activity? Huh.

Regardless, I bought a new dish set! I am very, very excited about this. It was way past time for me to get grown-up dishes. Not only did I have to borrow dishes in order to host Thanksgiving this year (because I had none), but I am also starting to get tired of my pink hula girl bowl (and matching plastic glass)… although my Tony the Tiger bowl will never get old. I am now the happy, pruney-fingered owner of a simple, all white dish set with eight place settings.

Getting said dish set into my apartment was far more difficult than picking it out, unfortunately. The box that some geometry and jigsaw puzzle genius shoved the dish set into weighed a *ton*. It was a miracle of physics, really, how something relatively small could weigh so damn much. Did I mention that I live on the top floor? Without an elevator? With a car trunk, three doors, three locks, and three flights of stairs separating me from a well-earned collapse onto my floor? Well, now you know.

Now that my dishes and I are both clean and safely stowed, I can take stock of my kitchen (pun intended). I have the tools and toys necessary for 98% of all recipes I attempt, my pantry is stuffed to the gills with obscure and interesting food stuffs (four different types of salt and four different types of rice, to start), and I have two book shelves filled with cookbooks and food-related books. I am happy with the current state of affairs in my kitchen. It’s full of the meaningful, the functional, the unnecessary, and the fun.

The meaningful: my grandmother gave me this wooden mallet when I first started cooking in college. I am not entirely sure if it’s meant to be decorative or functional but I have been giving the benefit of the doubt for a while now. I am sure the porous wood is harboring the worst kind of chicken-borne bacteria, the head tends to fly off the handle like a small missile, and it doesn’t really weigh enough to flatten anything but it has sentimental value. So there.


The functional: one of my most favorite appliances of all time - electric tea kettle. I drink absurd amounts of tea. I have an entire kitchen drawer devoted to teas. That’s really all there is to say. Functional isn’t terribly entertaining.

The unnecessary and/or fun inhabitants of my kitchen will be covered in future installments of “my favorite things”. Now I have to go to sleep and dream about what it would be like to spend an entire day without going into lab, not even once.

Glimmers and Twinkies

Every once in a while, the drudgery and regular disillusionment that are adulthood step aside. Every once in a while you get a glimmer, a little sparkle of something so completely awesome and uplifting that for a while, all the angry noise subsides. I, ladies and gentlemen, am experiencing a glimmer. I am, at this very moment, glimmering.

Let me start at the beginning. First off, a confession. I have been leading a double life for the past month or so. I have been cheating on Sunday Night Dinner… with another blog. Gasp! Yes, I have another blog. It’s a science-y blog on a Nature Publishing Group website. I write mostly about lab life and lab dynamics, sometimes I throw in a post on an interesting paper that I happened to come across.

The editor of the website, the infinitely cool (and ridiculously well-spoken) Corie, asked me to write an article for the website, in addition to my blog. The article would be a monthly feature on a freelance basis, and the subject? Aaah yes, the subject. The article is to be a review of restaurants in the areas immediately surrounding major convention areas in Boston. Five restaurants per area, per month. Yes, you heard right. I am now an official, full-fledged restaurant critic and food writer, with all the inherent bragging rights, pride, and occasional food stains.


This may be the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. I am not exaggerating. Food writing is a dream and I am afraid to wake up. I plan on drinking, gulping, and chugging this glimmer for as long as I can.

I wasted no time in beginning my assignment. This did not involve me going out of my way or modifying my routine in any way, since I eat out at least three times a week as it is. Today, I went to the Linwood Grill for lunch. I have been there a number of times before, but never with the goal of writing it up. I took careful notes, multiple pictures, all while trying to hide what I was doing the best I could – reviewer bragging rights are to be exercised on friends only. There is no point in irritating the wait staff.


The food (barbeque) was good as always, but the best bit came at the end. The meal was large but so was the dessert menu. I kept staring at it. My friend jokingly asked if I would like a deep-fried Twinkie for dessert. Silly girl. I think she was seriously expecting me to say no. So, obviously, we ordered a deep-fried Twinkie.

So here’s the thing – I don’t think Twinkies are food. They are the cockroaches of the food world – they never go bad, you can’t kill them, and they all look the same. They are not made out of food. They don’t even taste like food. This turned out to be empty talk once I tasted a deep-fried Twinkie. It was warm and melty, almost custard-like. The fried shell was a bit salty and crunchy and, well, fried. It was a Twinkie transformed, a reverse metamorphosis from miserable cockroach to the sublime.


I had about a spoonful of fried Twinkie before my body reacted with a “what the hell are you doing to me??” I told it to shut up and had another bite. And then I had to admit defeat. That stuff is potent. I would recommend having an angioplasty scheduled prior to ordering a fried Twinkie. You will be sure to enjoy it all the way to the hospital.


More adventures in semi-professional food writing to come! I am holding on to my glimmer (and my breath).

Addiction: A Photoessay

It's time for another photoessay. It's been a while since the last one. The theme is equally depraved: addiction.

Now, for the soundtrack... I suggest something (anything, really) by Velvet Underground or Babyshambles. Those guys know addiction.

My deep dark secret, my addiction - bread. Any day, any time, any kind. Well, maybe not any kind.

*

This guy right here? He's the dealer. I break down every time, no matter how much I try to resist him. The shop is all light and shiny and pretty... I just can't walk by. The carbohydrate heaven that is Truly Jorg's** holds an unnatural and magnetic power over me.

All the bread above? That's the gateway drug of baked-good addiction -- the pot, if you will, to the heroin that is pastry:

Flourless chocolate cake and pumpkin cheesecake tart.

I stay away from the hard stuff. Once in a while is ok, but I don't need any more bad habits. Bread is addictive enough.

How's this for trippy - the owner and namesake of the shop, Jorg Amsler, takes part in an annual chocolate fashion show in NY where he designs an outfit made of at least 30% chocolate to be walked down the runway. The focus of the shop is not bread - it's pastries. They are gorgeous and indulgent but not so architectural and complex as to be off-putting. The shop also makes wedding cakes to order - you can ask them to make pretty much anything. If you would like your wedding cake to look like a big tractor, they will be more than happy to oblige, and it will be gorgeous... for a tractor.

On a more serious note, I realized recently that I cannot go a day without eating bread. My meals don't feel complete without it. There are few things better in this world than tearing into a fresh loaf of bread, crusty and chewy on the outside, covered with a bit of flour, moist and fragrant on the inside. That has to be one of the top ten most fantastic sensations. The other sensations? Those are topics for other photoessays of depravity.




* In the interest of full disclosure, the last loaf of bread - the spiky one - was actually Iggy's from Whole Foods. It was fantastically good and I couldn't leave it out. The crust to flesh ratio on that loaf was awesome... Crust is the best part, after all.

**Warning: website contains highly graphic pastry material - not for the faint of heart.

Dinner Of Champions

You know those evenings when you just barely make it home from a long day (ok, month) and you're beyond tired and your whole body hurts and the mere thought of cooking sends a crushing wave of dread over you? Well, I know those evenings. Intimately.

Since I don't much fancy a painful death by starvation while waiting for a delivery man, I go to my stand-by, my dinner of champions: bread, cheese, olives and yep, booze (you can't see the beer in the picture). No cooking required.

I just had one of those evenings, in case that wasn't made clear enough. This time though, I lucked out - the very few things I have in my fridge turned out to be really good things - very aged (read: smelly) English cheddar, good bread, pickled asparagus, and some good whole grain mustard all piled on a plate. One wouldn't think that cheese and mustard go together and yet they do, marvelously.

Pickled asparagus isn't the most common of pantry items, but it should be. I first had it in a bloody Mary in Seattle and swore I would find myself a jar. The asparagus is slightly sweet and crunchy. Tastes a little like asparagus and a lot like pickle. It's a great substitute for cornichon on a cheese plate. I highly recommend it, if you can find it. I stumbled upon it in a posh grocery store in a strikingly un-posh neighborhood.

It took me about ten of these evenings before I figured out that there are a few things that I must have in my apartment at all times: bread, tons of cheese, olives, and...yes, every grad student's best friend in a bottle. Current favorite: Smithwick's.

The Bridesmaid's Moment In The Spotlight

To continue on the theme, if goose is the neglected bird, then I think carrots are the neglected vegetable. Carrots are always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Carrots are in everything, at the core of everything. No stock is complete without carrots, no Thanksgiving turkey goes without a carrot up its bum (not in my house, anyway) and chicken soup is a pale version of itself without the carrots floating about. Yet, carrots are rarely the star ingredient… unless they are smothered in honey and resemble dessert. That’s just a shame, an oversight.

I happen to really like carrots, and not just in the background. I figured this out a couple of months ago when I was inundated with carrots by Boston Organics and had nothing left to do but… cook them. Yes, cook them. Just the carrots, all by themselves, as a side. Carrots and ginger are a classic combination, ginger and lemon get along well and I believe anything and everything benefits from a sprinkling of cayenne, and there you go! Ginger-lemon-spicy carrots (GLS-carrots, for short).

My last Boston Organics box had the most beautiful and weird-looking carrots I have seen. They were psychedelic, blemish-free, very thin-skinned, and looking very much like perfect marzipan versions of themselves. A bit of internet sleuthing led me to discover that they are rainbow carrots, bred for color. Incidentally, carrots were purple originally but were bred to be orange by the Dutch to resemble the House of Orange. I am highly suspicious of that last bit. Can’t always trust the internet, even if the source is the World Carrot Museum (World, mind you). Even carrots have a fan site.

Having never had rainbow carrots before, I had no idea what to expect. Are the purple ones purple all through? Does each color have its own flavor, like Skittles? The answers turned out to be no and, um, no. Bet you’re surprised about the last one. I was.


The purple carrots had a thin layer of purple just under the skin but they were orange at the core. The orange carrots were intensely orange and the albino carrots were just kinda white. The GLS formula was applied to the rainbow carrots with great success. The carrots were sweeter than any I have had. So sweet, in fact, that the lime juice and carrot juice made a thick syrup at the bottom of the pan. Sweet, sour, spicy GLS-carrots herald the bridesmaid’s moment to shine. In the shadows no longer, GLS-carrots (of the Skittle variety or not) hold their own.

I’d like to give a recipe here but I don’t really know what I did. Don’t you love it when people say that? The broad strokes of GLS-carrots are as follows:

Put inch-sized chunks of carrots in a pan with a little bit of water and a drizzle of olive oil. Grate fresh ginger over the top and add a dash of cayenne pepper. Steam with the lid on over medium heat until most of the water evaporates. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the carrots and add the zest of one whole lemon. Steam again until the liquid evaporates. The carrots should still be firm, not mushy.

How’s that for precise instructions? Sorry. I will pay attention next time I do this.

The Neglected Bird

Do people eat goose (geese?) around Christmas? I have a vague notion that they do or did at some point in time. Being the good Jewish women that we are, my Mom and I cooked a goose this Christmas day, just to say we did. It was an experience.

Let me preface by saying that I now know enough to stay away from cooking whole birds. This year’s Thanksgiving turkey experience is likely to stay with me for years - anything larger than a chicken now paralyzes me with fear. When I say that my Mom and I cooked a goose, I mean that she let me chop things while she cooked a goose. I am an excellent chopper.

I had never seen a goose wrapped in plastic before and, therefore, feel the need to describe it. Ours resembled a small, elongated turkey. Its body was long, its wings were long, its neck (stuffed where it wouldn’t reach under normal circumstances) was long. I found the sight of the long wings somewhat disquieting but I am not sure why. Perhaps they were too arm-like for my comfort. The breast of the goose seemed atrophied as compared to a turkey - there was not a lot of meat there.


The key thing about geese is this – they are basically bags of fat. This wasn’t even one of them force-fed geese that are now inaccessible to Chicago’s dining community (I will have to leave Boston if they ever ban foie gras here. I am not kidding). Ours was a farm-raised, free range, organic, hippie, happy goose and it was still a bag of fat. I know, I know – fat is flavor, but wow. Trimming the bird took a bit of time. (Please note that I abstained from posting a picture of a pile of goose fat. Said picture can be produced upon request).

We followed Emeril’s recipe for roasting the goose. His approach involves the thoroughly gruesome step of poking holes all over the bird to allow rendering fat to escape during cooking and dousing the goose with boiling water every half hour to help that fat render. And render it did. There was goose fat all over the oven door, on the floor by the oven, and hanging in the kitchen air. There must have been an inch of fat at the bottom of the roasting pan. After the cooking was done I felt as though I was covered in a thin layer of goose fat. I smelled goose everywhere I turned for a day following.

So how did it taste? Like a cross between a turkey and a duck - not as gamey as duck but more flavorful that turkey. It was dark meat all over like a duck, more fatty (for discussion, see above), and more chewy. The breast meat was great – juicy, tender, and flavorful. The rest of the bird, however – the legs and all other accessory parts – were rather tough and not very pleasant to eat, although the wonderful mild duck flavor was still there.

We were surprised to find that our 12 pound goose really only fed three people. That’s a lot of inedible goose! The ever-wise they say that a four pound chicken can feed four people while a four pound duck can feed just two. I would say that a four pound goose, if such a thing existed, would feed only one.

Ever seen goose on a restaurant menu? I haven’t, not once. Maybe it’s not economically sound to offer goose when only a fourth of it (breast meat) is desirable. It does seem odd for the restaurant industry to neglect an entire species of farmed bird, though it does explain why the high schoolers at the Whole Foods checkout counter didn’t know that people eat geese.

At the end of the night, with the goose experience behind us, my Mom decided that she doesn’t like goose and I decided that I need a shower to wash that goose off. I think that the tougher texture and more delicate flavor of goose is better suited to slower cooking methods as opposed to roasting. Goose confit would be fantastic, especially since the fat can be removed once the confit is chilled. Food (goose) for thought.


Update: I asked an actual chef why actual restaurants don't serve goose. This was Chef Josh's response : "Because it's a pain in the ass." Concise and to the point. I couldn't have said it better myself.

First Time For Everything

I, much to the horror and disbelief of my friend Ben, have never had Taco Bell. Have I been deprived? No. Uninitiated? Yes. Well, I am innocent no longer. Yesterday, I had Taco Bell for the first time.

After a night of bowling… Aah let me rephrase. After a night of watching my friends bowl while drinking beer in a bowling alley in Virginia (an experience that is difficult to convey without pictures. You just wouldn’t believe me), it was decided that the time had come for me to experience the wonder and potential stomachache that is Taco Bell. And so I did. Pulling up to a Taco Bell drive-through in one of the million strip malls that make up the entirety of Northern Virginia, I let Ben take the reigns and order his favorites. A giant bag of his favorites.

My gastronomic curiosity did not get the best of me – I stayed away from things containing lettuce and/or beef… if beef it be. I stuck to chicken – spicy chicken taco, I think. Or burrito. Don’t remember. I have to say, it wasn’t terrible. It was certainly not as bad as I was expecting, having programmed myself to believe that Taco Bell is the representation of all that is wrong with fast food. It was better drowned in hot sauce, but not awful. The rice was on the crunchy side and the tortilla tasted slightly raw, but the chicken pieces were blessedly small enough that I didn’t have to have an opinion on their quality.

I don’t know if it was the late hour or the bowling alley or the beer that didn’t sit well with me, but I admit that it may have been the Taco Bell. I felt a little wonky for about an hour but was perfectly ok in the morning. No doom or major gastro-intestinal distress to speak of, even though I was told to expect it by people less enthusiastic than Ben to have me try the Bell. I don’t think my body was all that surprised at what it was given, considering my never-ending love of fried pickles. I am not an haute cuisine 24-7 kind of girl. There is too much to eat all around me to confine myself to organics.