A New Review and Other Stuff

An eon has passed and Foggy Foot Review has a new post, this time on John Gardner's Grendel. I also just finished The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, which was amazing, and will be posting a review on that this week-end. Didn't want to shock anyone by putting up two reviews in such close succession :-)

And in Other Stuff: I'm going to a writing workshop at Stanford tomorrow and am both nervous and excited, Facebook continues to tickle me, and so does my super-neat nephew, whom we get to hang out with this week-end. I'm still looking forward to meeting our super-neat niece in Texas - hopefully soon, and James is back from D.C. which makes me happy because being around him makes me happy.

The madeleine experiment continued with Donna Hay's recipe, which turned out like vaguely shell-shaped sponge cakes. Weird. Didn't taste too bad, but didn't taste too good either, so it's on to the recipe my sister-in-law sent, and one in The Joy of Cooking. Incidentally, I found an awesome chocolate chip cookie recipe in there yesterday, and made it with chocolate and dried cherries - ever-so-yummy. Half the dough is frozen in civilized little balls for future use - ever-so-dangerous. I'll post the recipe on that after I've tried baking the frozen dough.

And that's about it. This ends the State of the Me Address. For now.... Mwah Ha Ha!!!!!

Madeleines Pt. 1

In this case, not me but Proust's cookie - those little shell-shaped dealies they're selling at Starbucks. Now, I'm not knocking Starbucks, but the madeleines they sell bear little resemblance (beyond their shape) to actual madeleines. Actual madeleines are not dry and eggy and oily. Actual madeleines are tender and spongy and vanilla-y with an undertone of butter. They are, quite honestly, dangerous and compulsively eatable - if done right. If done wrong, they're pretty whatever.

I have had good madeleines twice in my life, and both times I think I moaned (a little embarrassing, but there you go). Once was at a bakery in North Beach, which specializes in traditional European cookies and desserts, and the other was in New Orleans, at a bakery that specializes in traditional French cookies and desserts. If you sense a theme here, it's because there's a theme here. All other madeleines have paled in comparison to those traditional madeleines. Wow, my mouth is literally watering.

Anyway, the point is that I would love to be able to have mouth-watering madeleines without going to Europe or New Orleans or even into North Beach, as much as I love North Beach. So I'm giving myself a little project: either find a recipe that makes awesome perfect madeleines, or figure one out based on the recipes you don't like.

I've made two batches so far. Both had disappointed, especially because they came from two of my favorite recipe sources - Cook's Illustrated and Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. The Cook's Illustrated madeleines were almond madeleines that swapped out some of the flour for almond meal. The result was a gritty, dry, tough cookie that I actually tossed out.

The Nigella madeleines were even more disappointing. They sat like lumps in the madeleine pan and didn't even spread. Even worse, they tasted like eggy styrofoam - not was I was hoping for. So it's back to the drawing board. I have two more recipes lined up, so we'll see. In the plus column, I'm starting to figure out what makes the cookies work and what doesn't, so it's is educational at least. There are definitely worse things than baking experimentation, although I still hope I find the recipe that justifies Proust's famous recollection.

Good-bye Charlie

I just watched a very nice man hook up Charlie, my 2000 Toyota Echo, to his tow-truck and take him away. Charlie is getting donated to KQED's vehicle donation program. He's been struggling some in recent years. He's only 9, but I've used him hard. He's been shuddering at stop signs and cutting out mysteriously, so it recently became clear that it was time to let him go. 

Charlie was not my first car, but he might as well have been. I got him when I was 22, and he's seen me through a lot - bad relationships, good relationships, a whole bunch of moves - pretty much everything that happened in my 20's has Charlie attached to it somehow. I'm no longer the young woman who slapped "Support Your Local Independent Bookstore" onto Charlie's bumper, nor am I the young woman who stuck a red, fuzzy alien with google eyes onto his dashboard. Letting go of Charlie is letting go of that phase of my life, a phase I'm not necessarily sad to see gone, but that I have affection for all the same. This is a little bit sad. 

Still, Charlie gave me the best years of his vehicular life, and I'm grateful to have had him. So, in the words of my grandfather, I'll say "good-bye Charlie" and be content with that. 

MIng Noodles

Our cat Molly, who now lives with my parents in spoiled, feline splendor, is the only cat I've ever met who routinely pronounced the letter 'g'. In fact, her two favorite words were "Ungow" and something that sort of sounded like "Ming." "Ungow" generally meant "hey, I disapprove". "Ming" meant "ooh! very nice!" These noodles are quite Ming.

The original recipe came from Elise at Simply Recipes. I tweaked and adjusted a little bit for taste, but overall the recipe is hers. The taste is a little bit sweet and a little but sour, thanks to the honey and lemon and vinegars (which I bumped up for James). It's also very savory thanks to the mushrooms - especially if you use Soba noodles or some other wheat pasta. Still, these noodles are light enough to enjoy cold at the end of a hot day, and they won't make you feel rolly-polly. Super easy, and super yummy, this dish is super Ming. I think that Molly, who liked pasta, would agree.

Ingredients:

- Lemon Ginger Dressing-

- 1/4 - 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you like it)

- Grated zest of 1 lemon

- 1 tbs. fresh lemon juice

- 1 inch section of ginger, peeled and grated

- 1/4 rice vinegar

- conservative 1/4 cup soy sauce (low sodium is ok)

- 1 tbs. honey

- 1 tbs. toasted sesame oil

- 3 tbs. olive oil

-The Noodles-

- 9 oz. dried noodles (whole wheat linguini, or Udon or Soba)

- 7 oz. fresh mushrooms (sliced button or shitaki etc.) 

- 1 1/2 tbs. butter

- 1 tbs. chopped fresh herbs (parsley, basil, mint, cilantro, or green onion)

- 1 tbs. toasted sesame seeds

Process:

1. Make the dressing by putting all of the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor / blender, except for the sesame oil and olive oil. Pulse a couple of times, until combined. Then, with the machine running, drizzle in the oil.

2. Cook the dried noodles according to instructions. Drain and put back in the pot. Toss with the dressing. Set aside.

3. Heat a pan over medium heat. Add the butter and when the butter starts to foam, add the mushrooms. Saute until they are tender but still firm - about 3ish minutes.

4. Add the mushrooms and butter to the pot with the noodles and dressing. Toss. Serve at room temp. or cold with a sprinkling of fresh herbs and sesame seeds. 

Note:

The dressing recipe makes more than is needed for this amount of noodles. Set the left-over dressing aside and use it as a marinade for chicken or tofu later that week.

Sotomayor and the Great Waste of Airtime

Just a brief note. 

Maybe I'm horribly cynical, but  I can't feeling that Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing is just a public circus. The media blitz that started in the mid-twentieth century sort of guarantees that these things usually are. Public confirmation hearings have become politically motivated efforts at making the American Public feel cozy and involved, when really, the deals already been done. The entire thing is a big waste of airtime for which I'm missing Marketplace and even FreshAir (which doesn't always suck). 

Cynical? Probably. But if I'm going to be shown how the sausage is made, I want to actually be shown. That would be worth airtime. But being fed some Disneyfied version of the political sausage-process with happy, vacuous pigs? Not so much.

There. Note Over.

Nigella's Squidgy Chocolate Cake

This cake is dense. It's dense and fudgy and moist and squidgy. It is not, however, fancy. It's a very basic chocolate loaf cake, except that the chocolate gets really cranked up. The basic recipe is from Nigella's Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess, which is such a very good book. I tweaked a few things here and there, mostly adding in a little more vanilla, a pinch of salt and two tablespoons of cocoa powder. It's easy, easy to make, although it takes a little leap of faith in the baking (you'll swear you're under-baking it when it's actually just right and perfectly squidgy inside), and you'll die happy death by chocolate. But you should definitely be at least a little into chocolate for this one. Here's a little test. If the thought of moist, fudgy cake doesn't make you feel squidgy inside, best skip it and hit the vanilla ice cream instead.

Ingredients:

- 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour

- 1 tsp. baking soda

- 1 2/3 cup brown sugar, dark or light

- 2 sticks unsalted butter (1 cup) at room temp.

- 1 cup plus 2 tbs. boiling water

- 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, melted. I used 70% Ghiradelli's, although Lindt and Scharffenberger are lovely too. As long as the percentage is between 62% and 80%, and you love the way it tastes broken right from the bar, you're in business.

- 2 tbs. cocoa powder. Again, use one that you love the taste of.

- 2 large eggs, whisked.

- 1 tsp. vanilla

*** For a Mexican Chocolate Squidgy Cake, add cinnemon and clove and a pinch of chili powder to taste ***

Process:

1. Preheat the over to 375.

2. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper. The lining is important beceause the cake is super moist and will want to stick.

4. Combine the flour, salt, cocoa powder and baking soda in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Cream the butter and the brown sugar with an electric mixer or a spoon until roughly incorporated. Resist the urge to over-mix.

4. Beat in the vanilla and the eggs until well incorporated.

5. By hand, fold in the melted chocolate. It should be a little bit cooled, but still warm.

6. By hand, fold in the flour mixture 1/3 cup at a time, alternating with the boiling water and mixing after each addition. Don't over-mix. The batter should end up being dark and fragrant and quite liquid.

7. Pour the batter in the prepared pan and bake on the middle rack for 30 min.

8. At 30 min., turn the heat down to 325 and bake for another 15 min.

9. The cake is done when a toothpick into the sides comes out clean, but a toothpick into the middle comes out with a nice, moist drag of crumb. If the center is still batter, leave in for another five minutes, then check again. Don't over-bake. The center will seem barely set, and that's when it's done.

10. Allow the cake to cool in the pan completely. Don't unmold it until it's completely cold. You can even leave it over-night - it just keeps developing flavor, and believe me, wrapped or covered, this cake will not dry out.

11. Serve any time, for anything. It's really yummy plain with a nice glass of milk, or you could be really decadent and toss on some ice cream or pouring cream. Any way you slice it (sorry for pun), this cake defies the loaf cake's general legacy of 'meh'.