Ultimate Chocolate Cake. Really.

Everyone has recipes that are personal to them. It's either a specific flavor combination of a carrot cake that hits all your buttons just right, or an imperfect cookie texture that's exactly like grandma used to make. The more I read cookbooks, the more I realize that everyone's trying to reinterpret recipes to fit their personal taste. As much as Jamie Oliver tries to tell me that he's made the 'Ultimate' cheeseburger, roast chicken, Bakewell tart, etc., I'm not buying it - it's just one that he's really into.

So it is rare that I consider a recipe the quintessential for that food. Having said all that, here is the Archetype of Chocolate Cake.

This is the chocolate cake you've been thinking of since you read the title. This is the cake from Roald Dahl's Matilda. It's the granddaddy of every chocolate cake, ever.  

Of course, such a cake is no secret. It's apparently the most-reviewed recipe on epicurious.com and it's just a matter of time before the commenters join together, apply for tax exempt status and form a religion wherein melted chocolate plays a crucial role. I'd join them.

The dough is gorgeously glossy and looks like a thick chocolate pudding. It bakes up into a dense, intensely dark and not too sweet cake. It's moist, but not fragile and one of the best things about it is that it freezes well, so you can attempt tricky multi-layered cakes with it, you know, those tiered affairs that take a few days to assemble. 

There's no reason to make this cake now, dangerous hings happen when this baby is made without the appropriate number of guests to feed. Don't even bookmark this page. Someday, in the not too far future, when you need a chocolate cake recipe, you will find it. It's that big of a deal.

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My Panna Cotta Journey

What follows is a condensed, fictionalized stream of thought in regards to making a dairy-based gelatin dessert:

Panna Cotta - it's fun to say! It's also easy to make. Except for the small detail that it separates on me. There's the super smooth top portion where all the cream has risen to and a gelatinous, clear section at the bottom. No matter, because it's still delicious. It's delicious and it's easy to make. Yum. With fresh summer fruits. Double yum.

Hm, wait. Since it's easy to make, I'll likely be making it a lot, so is there a way to fix the layer issue?

Out comes Nigel Slater (or rather his remarkable book - Kitchen Diaries - I believe the man himself has been happily out for a while now) - I've made his rosewater yoghurt panna cotta previously and it was perfectly smooth. Let's add yoghurt into the mix!

Harumph. Adding the yoghurt cured my panna cotta of its separation anxiety, but it now has a grainy texture for some reason. What happened?

Scientist nr.1 (my mother) walks by, warily eyes the ever present panna cotta pots in front of me and offhandedly mentions that the yoghurt is curdling from the heat of the milk I am adding it to.
You just bought yourself another batch of panna cotta, Scientist nr.1! (My father will be Scientist nr. 2, I call him for math advice.)

Yes!! Letting the milk/cream/vanilla mix cool before adding the yoghurt, works! But in the course of all the tinkering my gelatin proportions are all off and my dessert is either runny or a Jell-o consistency. Argh!!!!

Grumble. Tinker. Wait. Taste.

Mmmm... Smooth, creamy, tangy from the yoghurt Panna Cotta! With some fruit on top. Yum.

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Fun With Cans - Pea and Shrimp Risotto

So here's a risotto recipe, just in time, while New York is still enjoying some glorious spring weather. In a few weeks summer will be here and the city will become the hellhole I know it to be in July through August.  Standing in front of a pot of something boiling will be inconceivable. For now though, a bowl of something warm and filling is still appreciated on some evenings.

Even though I grew up eating plenty of fish, I've never been very confident cooking it. It sees that fresh fish always requires a more delicate hand than I am willing to extend. Preserved seafood however- smoked mackarel, salted roe, canned salmon and tuna, etc, while often not really in need of cooking, is something I love incorporating into meals.

It can be as simple as having some anchovy filets to add to Pasta Puttanesca. My mother made an awesome, Russian-style, mayo-heavy rice salad with canned salmon. I loved Alton Brown's ode to the sardine with his sardine-avocado sandwich. Once I got sick of that, I simply started breaking up the fish and using it as a sort of sauce with past (just add some red onion or capers, something to brighten up the lot).

Now, stinky, oily fish might not be for everyone (everyone is missing out!). Did you know though, that for just one easy payment of a couple of bucks, you too can be the proud owner of a can of wild small shrimp. These little buggers are minuscule, apparently caught in the Pacific Northwest, and are a really nice, low fat protein boost. Not at all oily, but rather packed up in water, they're a great intro to canned, preserved fish and a nice change up from your regular ol' can of tuna.

In this risotto, I paired the shrimp with frozen peas, and even though we're talking about ingredients that are preserved (the good kind - canned and frozen), their sweetness gives the risotto a fresh, spring-like quality. The hit of wine in the beginning and the Parmesan at the end add some acidity and grounding saltiness to balance things out.

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Red Hot Cauliflower and Some Admissions to Debauchery

 Many moons ago, and more specifically, last September, I returned home from a month long trip to Asia. It was an absolutely amazing trip to countries I'd never been before and with good friends I hadn't seen in years. Traveling with people you trust, who know the country that's beyond foreign to you, is magical, most importantly because they take you to all the good food spots.

In fact, they had so many good food spots on their 'must do' lists that at one point we were having four full meals a day. So when I returned to New York, sun-blistered, extra chubby and exhilarated, I vowed to go vegetarian for a month and to stop smoking. The idea was to detox from all of the meat-heavy dishes I'd been eating for a month and to clear my lungs. (Vietnamese cigarettes are cheap y'all!)

This resolution failed on many levels, but most notably on one evening when after a long, stressful day of moving my work's offices uptown, I went for celebratory drinks with our IT guy. These are snippets of the ordering from that night: "Bacon Bloody Mary, good sir!" I said to the barman, because I can't resist a Bloody Mary on a menu, bacon in a cocktail isn't really meat, right? "Pack of Marlboro Lights, please!" I said to the bodega owner, because willpower and I parted ways amicably earlier in the evening. "Order of Buffalo wings with the next beer!" I said to the next barman, because I love Buffalo wings, and by this point I had either forgotten that chicken was meat, or that I was a vegetarian.

There are a few lessons that I take away from that night. Make friends with the IT guys, they're good peeps. Bacon Bloody Marys are a good idea at any time of day. Smoking is very, very bad for you. Stop it. And most notably for this post, Buffalo wings are usually part of a messy night and an unpleasant morning hangover.

This is shame, since I love Buffalo wings and am currently on a bit of a hot sauce reconnaissance mission. I bought a bottle of Frank's Red Hot Sauce as an impulse buy the other day and had an internal dialogue on whether I was really going to attempt making wings at home. I really don't trust myself with a pot of hot oil, but what else could I bathe in hot sauce just the same way?

Answer: Cauliflower substitution.

Substituting cauliflower for starch, dairy and other things that are good and holy in this life, has been making the rounds. There's cauliflower fried rice, cauliflower mashed potatoes, and cauliflower Alfredo sauce. Some of my friends have been experimenting with cauliflower recipes, but I just never felt the need. If I wanted cauliflower, I had that, and if I wanted a cream sauce I used heavy cream and cheese.

This particular experiment really arose from my absolute craving for the Buffalo wing taste without risk of any questionable decisions that precluded or followed wing consumption. I'm no longer pretending to be a vegetarian, so while I could make Buffalo wings at home, it seems much more labor intensive than I was willing to attempt.

This is a very good solution. Super easy to make with just three (3!!!) ingredients and a hot oven. You really get the vinegary kick of the sauce, and really, that's half the appeal of wings. Cauliflower works here because its florets hold on to the sauce really well and it roasts beautifully. I ate my first batch with some quinoa and avocado. My friend Angie sprinkled some blue cheese on hers and called it a day. You can dress it all up with blue cheese sauce and celery sticks, but then, when you're pretending that much, just go to the bar.

On to the recipe!

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A Five Ingredient Tart with Pedigree

I'd like to talk about a tart. Actually, I like to talk about many tarts, cakes, and doughs, which is the reason behind this space, but in this instance, let's focus on an apple galette.

I've made this apple tart countless times. At first I was intimidated by the Jacques Pepin, Alice Waters and Deb Perelman pedigree that the recipe has attached. I followed all steps to the letter (except Deb's glaze - ain't no one got time for that) - I arranged the apple slices in careful circles. I melted and brushed butter on the edges with a pastry brush. I even measured the sugar for the apple filling!

As one becomes familiar with recipes over time, things became much more relaxed. This is 5 ingredient dessert and once you make it once or twice with a recipe guiding you through, you should be able to give it a firm place in your repertoire. The apples will not be evenly cooked if you do not arrange them in circles, but I like the textural contrast of slightly caramelized top apples to the saucy situation underneath. What makes me come back to this over and over again is the comforting baked apple smell that comes from the oven, and that simple, vaguely sweet and intensely flaky pastry.

Essentially the dough is a pâte brisée sucrée. If my French serves me right, this is translated as 'broken sugared dough' and I think it's nice of the French to offer sugar after a beating. The beauty of not incorporating the butter fully into the flour becomes visible when you roll out the dough and the intact pieces of butter are stretched throughout the disk. Those little buggers melt in the oven, leaving behind pockets of air which make the dough so flaky that it verges on a puff pastry. 

I am not sure that I need to sell the finished product much. It is a warm, comforting tart, perfect for after dinner, as it can bake while you eat. It's also not a dessert that lingers. It rarely survives until the next morning as it's so light that a group of 3 or 4 will finish it easily and then wish there was more.

As a bonus, here is a video of the always charming Jacques Pepin making a version of the dough to use for simple fruit tarts and a the more complex Tarte Tatin.

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The pancakes I have known and loved

Have you ever considered how many incarnations of pancakes there are in the world?

I grew up with fatty, thin, large blini. I would spread sour cream or carefully distribute lox on mine and fold them up into neat quarters. The contrast of the mildly sweet dough with the sour or salty filling is one of my cherished childhood food memories.

I can't say that the French crepe had much hold on my heart, but the next pancake that took my fancy is the good old American diner pancake.

When I moved to the States I brought some expectations with me. Lockers in High School were the coolest thing ever. Jelly Beans must be the most delicious candy invented and David Letterman is the cornerstone of comedy.

I really don't know where the high regard for Dave came from, but while I appreciate his weary presence on late night TV, I quickly discovered much more worthy comedy gods. Jelly Beans were also a let-down. Waxy and oddly-flavored, they weren't the Willy Wonka creations I had hyped them up to be. Lockers were still the coolest thing ever.

With some of my American dreams shattered, I quickly looked around for new ones and the imagery of an American Diner and its contents quickly took hold of me. My friends and I would meet up before school in an incredibly basic, uninspiring diner by our school. We sat at the long counter and I watched the guy at the griddle station squeeze out portions of dough onto the hot surface. I saw that round plop of dough transform into a curiously yellow-tinted, fluffy pancake. These got served up with some crispy bacon, a small glass of orange juice and acidic coffee. You helped yourself to the sticky bottle of fake syrup. I loved it.

 

Cut to years later when I was living in a slightly hippy-ish part of San Francisco. I was an adult, I had a job, a cold studio apartment and a minor food blog obsession. The humble diner pancake no longer held my interest. I had by that point absorbed most of mainstream American food culture and was now delving deeper into different muffin-making methods, into types of frosting and Thanksgiving turkey preparations.

It was in this California kitchen that I first made these puppies. The idea of throwing whole grains into my pancake batter was wholly foreign to me. The words 'oatmeal pancakes' had me imagine grey, gummy disks with dry oats throughout. It was my trust in Molly Wizenberg, the allure of using buttermilk for a project, and there being something suitably health-foodish about them that fit in with my new surroundings, which made me take the leap.

You mix two cups of oats together with two cups of buttermilk and let the bowl hang out in your fridge overnight. The next morning, the two ingredients have melded into a sloppy white mass that will be the base of your batter. You mix this with a decidedly un-health-foodish amount of melted butter and the rest of the ingredients and end up with a thick batter that can be spooned onto your hot pan.

Interestingly, the finished product has many of the same good qualities as my fluffy diner pancake. They're good for soaking in syrup (a vital griddle cake quality), they marry well with bacon, or other breakfast meats. They also store incredibly well and are a good snack cold out of the fridge, but can also be enlivened with a quick microwave sojourn. In fact, that's what I do with my pile of cakes: each morning, one or two on a plate get heaped with frozen raspberries and go for a brief spin in the microwave. Some maple syrup gets poured on top and I have a wholesome breakfast.

Same as with the diner pancakes, the newness factor of these has long worn off. My affection for this marvelously solid breakfast recipe remains strong though.

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Fast Food and Carrot Cake

First, I wrote a little love letter to Pret a Manger. You know, a cutesy thing of how a casual acquaintance (rushed tomato, cheese and bacon croissant in the morning) grew into a full-fledged love affair (hoisin duck wrap and chocolate mousse pot for lunch). The back story here is that since I started working at my current company, whose London offices were just two blocks away from a Pret store, I've eaten the chain's food consistently for the last 5 years. Not only do I love their food, I am fully 'sold' on their aesthetics and their advertised brand values.

However, before putting my little note out into the world, I became a little hesitant. I am very aware of my weakness for ecomarketing - I will absolutely purchase a product that's packaged in a brown and green container, over a brightly coloured one. That is what my brain equates with concious consumerism.

Of course it is not. Concious consumerism requires much more than that. It requires an awareness of how the things are made and where they are shipped from. If it is food we're buying, a basic understanding of how it is grown is needed. What pesticides were used on my lettuce? What hormones were pumped into this chicken?

Problem is, I don't have all the facts and realistically, what I end up basing decisions on, is pure emotion. Even when I eat at a restaurant as questionable on all of those points as McDonalds, I can still forget the nasty bits by focusing on my emotional response. How happy I am that my salt and fat cravings can be quickly, and cheaply satisfied. How the never changing texture of the food takes me right back to eating that same burger as when I was a kid. Visions of Happy Meal My Little Ponies start crowding in my head.

So if I can be lulled into the red and yellow fantasy land of Micky D's, did I get duped into promoting (to my VAST and varied audience) what could amount to just another deceitfully unhealthy, ethically ambiguous, albeit cleverly branded fast food store?

And here's where I get to the end, and this week's recipe. When I was moving from London to San Francisco for work, I wrote an email to Pret's customer service. I professed my love, urged them to consider a swift expansion into Northern California and I asked for two recipes for my favorite Pret desserts - their double chocolate mousse and their carrot cake.

Within days I received a lovely note and my two recipes.

I will not question the online customer service skills of the good people at McDonalds Corp, since I have not had the pleasure. I will however, question their willingness to provide me with their Filet o' Fish recipe and my ability to recreate it faithfully.

I have made the below carrot cake several times. By no means can it be considered 'healthy', but it is absolutely delicious, the best carrot cake I have ever had and it tastes exactly the same homemade as in the store. This makes me feel very good about Pret, for a good reason.

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D'Oh (homemade) Butterfingers

Let's not talk about the fact that after three maiden posts, I have been absent from this here blog thingie.

Let's set aside my dissatisfaction with my current photography equipment and it's inability to produce clear, appetizing pictures.

Let's also ignore the fact that this post came about from a Google image search for Simpsons references. (Let's not even ask ourselves why that was happening).

Instead, let me tell you how to fashion a homemade Butterfinger candy.

Start off with this recipe.
Remember that you have butterscotch chips left over from your Compost cookie attempts.
Declare loudly and frequently to your roommate that you are a genius.
Purchase a box of square Ritz crackers and some Skippy smooth peanut butter.
Melt two handfuls of butterscotch chips in a microwave and mix the melted chips with twice as much peanut butter. (The ratio here is endlessly variable!)
Sandwich a dollop of the mix in between two Ritz crackers.
Put a plate of the prepared squares into the freezer to firm up.
Melt some chocolate chips in the microwave.
Spread or drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookies.
Store in an airtight container in the fridge and practice self-restraint.

***

What's amazing about these: 

• They are salty, sweet, and literally melt in your mouth, leaving behind a taste of caramelly peanut butter and some bitterness from the chocolate cap - I strongly encourage bittersweet chocolate here.
• They have no spiky or chewy caramel that makes most candy bars feel like an assault on your teeth.
• They're tiny, and a few of them with a cup of tea or coffee feel like a fancy treat. 
• Considering the amount of preservatives in the original ingredients, they're likely to last for a long time in the fridge. 
• Leftover peanut butter/butterscotch mix can be reused as a sandwich spread. 

What's not so great about these:

• Nothing!

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The esteemed crumble

I underestimated the apple crumble.

I was arrogant enough to attempt a crumble without a recipe. After all, it's just some sugared apples, with a topping of flour, butter and sugar. Dump one on top of the other, stick the mess into a hot oven and take it out when you think it's done, right?

Wrong.

What I got was undercooked apples under soggy coat of sugary flour. It was edible but acted more as a topping to ice cream, rather than the intended reverse. I decided to give the crumble a bit more respect next time around.

Apple crumbles have an unmistakably British association for me. Never a fan of fruit-heavy desserts, I was first converted to the crumble by a London flatmate's girlfriend. Every once in a while she would effortlessly pull together a giant pan of the stuff in what seemed like seconds. We ate it for 'pudding' at the end of our Sunday dinners with vanilla custard out of a carton. Another friend worked at the Harrods food hall and if I dropped by at the end of his shift, one or two apple and blueberry crumbles would find their way into my bag.

I wanted to somehow recreate those two memories. Adding berries to the apples was a no-brainer. It brightens up the filing and makes it more interesting. (Thank you Harrods!) I then looked around for a fool-proof topping recipe. I'm pleased that I was able to find it on that side of the pond - in the Guardian.

Felicity Cloake is a recipe tester and developer at the Guardian's 'Word of Mouth' blog. I found it recently when searching for another English recipe, and became a fan immediately. For each project she consults the who's who of British cookbook authors and combines the best features of each into her final result. Essentially, she did all of the legwork for me, and all I had to do was follow her recipe, and enjoy the best (out of two) crumble I ever made!

Unmixed feelings

Not to overstate things, but when I first learned about egg pie in a New York Times article, it blew my mind. Apparently it is a New Zealand specialty. Most like a quiche encased fully in pie crust, instead of mixing the eggs with cream, they go in whole! When you slice the pie open you are confronted with a startling cross-section of egg whites and yolks. The very best part of the entire article was Melissa Clarke's bastardization of the classic recipe by adding Sriracha sauce to the filling.

The red and green Sriracha bottle is now beloved (by hipsters and foodies) everywhere. Compared to some fanatics I use it sparingly. My bottle has been around for so long that I'm not even sure where I got it from. I have a suspicion that it came with the fridge...

When it comes to eggs though, Sriracha is a necessity for me. Every single fried egg I have prepared in the past couple of years has been embellished with an artistic squirt of the sauce. It cuts the greasiness of the fry-up while distracting from that certain blandness of the egg with a tangy heat.

This is the long-winded way of saying that when I came across this crazy pie, I knew it was meant to be. This pie gets me, I thought.

There was no doubt that it would be fun to attempt this, simply for the novelty of the whole eggs, but would it be tasty?

It would, and it was. Fresh from the oven, the pie is warming and comforting. The crust is flaky and buttery without being oily. There's that heat from the Sriracha and scallions. Yes, the filling is just eggs, but in the funnest, most picnic-appropriate package ever. In fact, if anyone is planning a picnic in the warmer months - invite me and I'll bring one of these along. Your mind will be blown!

Chocolate and Peas - pantry essentials

Impulse buyers will sympathize with me. Well, some impulse buyers. I have good enough self-restraint to resist buying another bottle of glittery nail polish, or just one more cardigan (alright, fine, I still own too many cardigans, you got me). However, I don't have any self-control when it comes to super market aisles.

I'm not being precious here either, I'm not at Eataly every week picking up truffle oil and seasoned salts. Instead, I'd happily spend a morning browsing Fairway's shelves throwing this and that into my cart. (Shopping carts are essential for my kind of grocery shopping! Those handheld baskets get too heavy, too quickly and limit the amount of time you can linger in front of the deli meat counter). My biggest  tempters currently are the flour and the dried beans sections. I consider it a show of great willpower that I don't own every single one of Bob's Red Mill flours.

Anyway, what my impulse shopping has resulted in, is that I have one of those kitchens out of which one can extract a week's worth of meals without leaving the house. My baking projects usually start with a decision on whether I want to bake with fruit or not, and only if the answer is yes, will I go to the store. Well, that and whether or not we're out of butter - a terrifying prospect!

Having just come back to my apartment after a work trip to San Francisco, I settled into the kitchen with a cheese omelet and a cup of tea. Then, faced with another week of Whole Foods lunches, and Monday morning without any souvenirs for my colleagues, I checked my cupboards for suitable ingredients and then made some soup and cookies - using only what I had in the pantry.