eat and go seek

It seems like just the other day I was writing about baskets of beautiful August tomatoes, and now suddenly it’s fall. The boxes of berries, piles of tomatoes and crates of peaches at the greenmarket have been replaced by mountains of apples, bunches of dark greens and stacks of squash. And although I don’t particularly like squash, it’s every bit as inspiring and happy-making to ogle on my lunch break as summer fruits.

Fall is my absolute favorite season, not least because my birthday is in September (for which Nick gave me a new digital camera, which should significantly improve the quality of the photography here.) And one of the real joys of the season is apple pie - which is Nick’s favorite, and definitely one of my top five, if not two. So, despite the fact that I have no food processor (my usual pie crust tool) I was determined to make an apple pie before the season escaped me, as peach pie season did. I figured that would entail investing in a $100 food processor, and was just about ready to pony up the cash. Then last week I decided to make empanadas (I need more practice before they become blog-worthy) mostly because I wanted to eat them. Well, the first step in empanada-making is dough-making and, as it turns out, empanada dough is a whole lot like pie dough. Except the empanada dough recipe I was using said to simply pinch the butter into the flour with your fingers. Which I did. And it was while my floury fingers were pinching butter (and begining to get tired) that I realized the technique was equally applicable to pie dough. Now, it wasn’t the first time I’d considered making pie dough by hand, but it was the confirmation I needed that it would probably, most likely, work.

So with that knowledge in mind, I went to the greenmarket last Friday and bought as many apples as I could carry. I usually use Granny Smith for pie - the tartness and texture are both perfect and they don’t turn mealy or into sauce in the oven - but apprently Granny Smith are not one of the several dozen apple varietes grown in the greater (much greater) New York City area. So I went for a mix of giant Mutsus and some red-and-green ones I forget the name of, unfortunately. The Mutsus tasted a little too much like Golden Delicious for my taste, but it didn’t seem to negatively affect the taste of the pie. The red-and-green ones tasted a lot like Macintosh, which have a great flavor but tend to get a little too mushy in pie. I figured combining the perfect-texture apples and the perfect-taste apples would yield a happy-medium delicious pie, and I think I lucked out.

But of course, before apples even enter the apple-pie picture, you must make the dough. I’ve made strawberry-rhubarb pie here before, and the recipe is the same. The only thing I did differently this time was mixing everything by hand. So, if you don’t have a food processor, here’s what you do:

Whisk the dry ingredients together to blend. Cut the butter into small pieces, about 1/4 inch on each side, by standing it on its end and slicing twice, at right angles, lengthwise (so you have 4 long, skinny sticks of butter). Hold the sticks together and cut into 1/4 inch slices. The smaller you make them, the less tired your fingers will be later. I would also advise using a very sharp knife - cutting cold butter with a butter knife makes it break and takes more work, which warms up the butter. You want to keep you butter as cold as possible.

Dump all the little butter pieces into the bowl of dry ingredients and start pinching and squeezing it into the flour. It’s an imprecise process, but you’ll figure it out. Just keep breaking up the butter until the dough resembles coarse meal. The only piece of advice I have is to keep your hands in the bowl at all times, so the butter gets coated in flour as you squeeze it. When you’ve got your coarse meal, slowly pour in the ice water while mixing with a fork. When the dough is uniformly moistened, turn it out onto a clean counter and proceed as usual.

I use my mother’s recipe for the apple filling, which is very simple and mostly apples. Peel the apples and cut them up into large chunks. I like to keep the pieces nice and big so they stay together in the pie. Toss the apple chunks in a VERY LARGE bowl with:

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup flour
the juice of 1/2 a lemon
and 2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon.

Then back to the dough, which has been chilling in the fridge (or freezer if you only have an hour or so.) Roll it out like in the strawberry rhubarb pie recipe, then fill with apples. I like to mound the apples up as high as humanly possible (see photo). My pie was at least 6 inches tall before cooking. I had to take the top rack out of the oven. Don’t worry, they cook down a lot.

On top of your mountain of apples, slice 1 tablespoon of butter. Then cover with the second crust. I usually just do a regular solid crust for apple pie. Trim and crimp the edges. And don’t forget to poke some holes in it! My mom likes five slits with a small knife, in a circle around the top (so of course I do too.) Then coat lightly with a mix of one egg white and a little bit of cream, beaten together (this was where my lack of kitchen tools became a real problem, I’m lacking a pastry brush and had to use my fingers, awkwardly.) Sprinkle with coarse non-melting sugar, and pop it in the oven! Bake for 15 minutes at 400º, then turn the heat down to 350º and bake for another hour, or until brown.

Enjoy warm, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream if you like. Then go jump in a pile of leaves for me! (I miss real trees.)

When my cousins and I were younger, my grandmother used to give us each a little plot in her garden. We could grow whatever we wanted,which usually included lots of beans, cherry tomatoes and sunflowers (for the sunflower contest, of course.) She’s since reclaimed most of the garden, but when Addie decided she wanted to grow some tomatoes this year, grammie was more than happy to provide the dirt. Sometime in August, big, red sun-drenched tomatoes appeared by the dozen. At least that’s the impression I got from the enormous basket of big, red sun-drenched tomatoes my parents brought when they visited a few weeks ago.

These tomatoes were gorgeous. Like, tomato-hall-of-fame quality tomatoes. But what was I going to do with a garden’s worth of tomatoes? It’s just me and Nick here, and although we can put away more food than you might expect, this was a lot of tomatoes. It was hard to get the basket up the stairs.

What ensued was several days - a week, probably - of tomato-based meals and the production of tomato products. I became a veritable tomato-using factory. First came a spicy tomato-chicken soup, sort of a hybrid between tortilla soup and chili. It was inspired by the ingredients that just happened to be in my kitchen which, besides tomatoes, included chicken, frozen corn, onions, chicken, blue corn tortilla chips and a lot of chili powder. Combining all of the above in my deep cast iron pan (also from grammie) yielded a tasty, if somewhat too spicy, soupy summery stew.

While the soup was delicious, it had hardly made a dent in the tomato mountain. So I made some bruschetta, which was delicious and easy and, once again, inspired by the contents of my kitchen - and fire escape. I just diced a bunch of the tomatoes and mixed in some olive oil, fresh basil, dried oregano and salt and pepper, then heaped a generous amount of that onto little pieces of toast brushed with olive oil and topped with grated Parmesan. (I might have added a little onion or garlic too, I can’t quite remember.)

The bruschetta was delicious but there were still many, many tomatoes left. A project of a larger scale was called for. The obvious answer was tomato sauce.

I make a lot of tomato sauce. It’s easy (although it tends to leave my stove and the side of my fridge covered in tomato splatter) and Nick eats it practically by the gallon. I’ve never used a recipe, I just do what I’ve always watched my parents do at home (tomato sauce is one of the very few things my dad can cook.) But, inspired by the mountain of fresh tomatoes, I decided to try something different. And the result is what I now call “the best roasted tomato sauce ever.”

In all honesty, I have minimal experience with roasted tomato sauces. In fact, this is the first I’ve ever made. Nevertheless, I’ve dubbed it the best ever simply because I can’t imagine anything ever tasting better. Somewhat ironic, really, since I made it up on the spot based, yet again, on what was in my kitchen. Come to think of it, the ingredients are almost identical to those in the bruschetta. But in a hot oven, doused in olive oil, their flavors combine and intensify, creating the most flavorful tomato sauce I think I’ve ever had. Amazing, from such a few simple ingredients. I chalk it up to the Cabot Farm tomatoes.

All I did was slice the tomatoes into nice big chunks - quarters or sixths - from top to bottom. Then I wedged them all into a baking dish like New Yorkers on the subway at rush hour. I threw in a few whole cloves of lightly crushed peeled garlic and a bunch of basil leaves from the fire escape. Then I added a generous amount of dried oregano, some salt and pepper and maybe a dash of onion or garlic powder. Finally, and I think this is the really, really delicious part, I coat everything with about a third an inch of olive oil. I toss them to coat everything in oil, then stick them in the oven around 350º for about half an hour, or until the tomatoes are mushy and surrounded by lots of fragrant juice. Then I like to mush them with a metal spatula and stick them back in the oven for a bit. That’s it! It’s delicious on anything and makes the kitchen smell like an Italian restaurant. And it’s a great way to use up a lot of extra tomatoes!

America never ceases to amaze. Walking through a convenience store the other day, I noticed something called a “breakfast cookie.” Made by Quaker, the oatmeal people, it appears to be nothing more than a large, individually-wrapped oatmeal cookie with the word “breakfast” on it. But I haven’t tried it - I suppose it could be more of a circular granola bar. In any case, it struck me as a pretty shallow marketing ploy.

But I may now have to rescind my initial derision. For I’ve discovered my own - less duplicitous – way to eat cookies for breakfast. I call them: Chocolate Chip Cookie Muffins.

I woke up Saturday morning wanting muffins, but, not having planned ahead and still lacking in many basic foodstuffs, didn’t know what kind of muffins I could make. Luckily, I have a book called Muffins A to Z (by Marie Simmons). I’ve probably had this book for at least 10 years - my mom gave it to me for my birthday when I was little and we used to make the Lemon Drizzle Lemon muffins from it all the time. They’re really good. The Devil’s Food Chocolate Chip Muffins aren’t bad either - probably because they bear a great resemblance to cupcakes.

But back to the chocolate chip cookie muffins. At the back of the A to Z book is a recipe for “Quickie-Mix Muffins” (she needed something for Q) - just a very simple muffin base you can throw anything into. Lo and Behold, I had all the Quickie Mix ingredients on hand. I also had a bag of chocolate chips. Or thought I did… have I mentioned we’re having a heat wave here in New York? (At least that’s what they say… if you ask me it’s just more of the same oppressive heat we’ve been enjoying for weeks.) But no worries, I broke apart the semi-molten semi-sweet chips to the best of my abilities, and, since my abilities are nothing to shout about, the muffins boasted some nice big chocolaty patches.

Here’s the recipe, if you, too, would like to guiltlessly eat large, soft chocolate chip cookies
for breakfast. Pour yourself a glass of OJ and call it a balanced meal.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Muffins

First, make the quickie mix by whisking together:

10 cups flour
1 cup sugar
3 Tb baking powder
4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt

Unless you want to make a ridiculous quantity of muffins, measure 2 2/3 cups of the dry mix into a bowl. Store the rest at room temperature in something airtight. You can use it next time you wake up wanting muffins.

Preheat the oven to 400º and coat a 12-cup muffin tin with non-stick spray.

Add another 1/4 cup of sugar to the 2 2/3 cups of dry mix in the bowl.

Then, in a separate bowl, whisk together:

1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1/4 vegetable oil
2 large eggs

Add the wet ingredients to the dry. When almost combined, fold in 3/4 cup of chocolate chips.

Divide the batter evenly among the 12 cups - it won’t rise much, so you can fill them up pretty well.

Bake 19-20 minutes, or until slightly browned.

Surprise… more Basil! Also, more prosciutto. Nick has decided he really likes it. Prosciutto, not basil. Although he likes Basil too, thank goodness.

Anyway, this pizza was primarily intended as a vehicle for the aforementioned basil and prosciutto, as well as the remaining mozzarella in my fridge. All three are incredible: the basil is from my fire escape, and the prosciutto and mozzarella are from Italy by way of Agata & Valentina, an absolutely amazing gourmet food store on 79th and 1st. They have at least 4 kinds of prosciutto, exotic cheese offerings and make their own pasta. Needless to say, I love it there.

The pleasant surprise of the evening was how great the pizza itself was. I bought the dough from a pizza place down the street and was a bit shocked to pay $5 for it. Admittedly, it was a HUGE piece of dough, but still. Pizza dough is a dollar in Salem - you could get a whole pizza for $5! But it wouldn’t be as good as this pizza.

Because the dough was so big, it was a kind of thick-crust pizza. And although I usually prefer thin-crust, it was really good. Soft and chewy but not gooey - I don’t know how I did it. All I know is I used some chunky tomato sauce I made last week, tore the mozzarella over that, grated a bunch of Parmesan on top and stuck it in a 500º oven for about 18 minutes.

Then I tore the prosciutto and basil over after it came out of the oven, and it was great!

Two exciting new culinary developments this week.

First, I found a butcher. I’ve always wanted a butcher. It’s nice to be able to get exactly what you want, plus some advice on what to do with it. And I’ve never been particularly fond of buying meat in shrink-wrapped Styrofoam at the grocery store. It’s a kosher butcher, so no pork, but lots of very helpful Jewish men.

Second, I got a Basil plant! I found it at the miniature farmers’ market on 92nd street for only $6. I’ve named him Basil, and he lives on my fire escape. Having a nice green plant waving around outside the window makes me surprisingly happy.

So dinner tonight was in honor of the butcher and the basil. I made chicken stuffed with prosciutto, mozzarella and, you guessed it, basil, and then a cucumber watermelon salad with more basil. Both were based on recipes from epicurious.com, my versions follow.

Prosciutto, Mozzarella and Basil stuffed chicken
Serves 2

2 boneless Chicken Breasts, skin on
4 slices Prosciutto di Parma
1 small ball Fresh Mozzarella
8 large Basil leaves
Coarse grained mustard
Salt & Pepper
Olive Oil

Preheat your oven to 325º

1. First, make a pocket in each chicken breast by carefully cutting a slit three-quarters of the way through, lengthwise.

2. Gently slide 1 or 2 basil leaves under the skin of each chicken breast.

3. Lay your prosciutto slices out flat on a cutting board. Tear or grate some mozzarella over each. Tear some medium sized pieces of basil over the cheese.

4. Roll up each prosciutto slice, then stuff two into the pocket of each chicken breast. Season the chicken with salt & pepper.

5. Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in an ovenproof skillet. Gently place the chicken breasts skin side down in the skillet.

6. Spread about 2 teaspoons coarse-grained mustard on the underside of the chicken.

7. Brown the skin side for a few minutes, then flip. When both sides are slightly browned, put the chicken in the oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until cooked through.

Cucumber Watermelon Salad

2 cups cubed watermelon
1 cucumber, cubed
juice of 1 lime
1 Tb. chopped basil leaves
1 Tb. chopped cilantro
1 Tb. chopped mint

Combine everything in a bowl. Eat.

I know, I know, I’ve been away a very long time. Apologies. But I’ve been busy! Two weeks ago, I moved to New York City with Nick, a very long, very exhausting process that ate up all my time for weeks. But we’re here now and somewhat settled into our apartment, which has, I swear, the best kitchen in Manhattan. Lucky me! I’ve been making good use of it, cooking tasty, if simple, dinners every night. Some of the highlights have been spaghetti and meat balls, blue cheese burgers with cole slaw salad, beef tacos, soba noodle salad with marinated steak and, Nick’s favorite, pork chops with mushroom risotto.

The one thing that’s been lacking is baked goods - it’s about 80 degrees out most days, and the one (tiny) downside to my enormous kitchen is that it’s so big, it’s hard to air condition effectively with our one window unit. So the heat has kind of deterred me from making anything too oven-intensive. The other obstacle was my lack of baking ingredients - flour, sugar and the like. We live in a 5th floor walkup, so I can only buy as much food as I can carry up 4 flights of stairs. I had to forgo the baking essentials in favor of dinner ingredients for many days. But then yesterday Nick came grocery shopping with me, so I stocked up. And this morning, I made pancakes!

Pancakes are, without a doubt, one of my favorite things to make and eat. I’m a total sucker for breakfast foods in all forms (my favorite words are “breakfast served all day”) but pancakes make me especially happy. I think they make other people happy too. And I’m lucky enough to now own a Black & Decker electric griddle, courtesy of my lovely mother, that makes beautiful, evenly cooked pancakes every time. I’ve never had much luck with frying pan pancakes (ironic, given their name) so my griddle is a godsend. (They’re super cheap at Target, if you’re in the market.)

I realized that, although I make them all the time, I’ve never before published my pancake recipe - which is actually my mother’s pancake recipe. It’s not revolutionary or anything, but it makes super fluffy, delicious pancakes that are the best I’ve ever had. I’m going to share it with you now, but in return, you have to promise to treat the pancakes well.

That means you can only flip them once - more and they’ll get tough.

That also means no store-bought frozen blueberries - they don’t taste like anything. My family just happens to have a dozen blueberry bushes in our front yard, which means we have massive quantities of fresh berries in the summer and our freezer is full of flavorful frozen blueberries all winter. Unfortunately most people don’t have that luxury and must buy their blueberries at a store. Fresh berries from a grocery store are fine in the summer, but they can be prohibitively expensive when they’re out of season. So in the fall and winter, try something else. I love apple pancakes, my mom used to make them for my birthday (in September) all the time. Or just throw in some chocolate chips! They’re never out of season, and they’re always a big hit. Even better, mash up a banana and make banana-chocolate chip pancakes. Yum.

Finally, whatever you do, don’t overmix the batter! Only mix until everything is combined - it should still have lumps in it. If you overmix, bad things will happen. And I will be very sad.

That being said, this is really a pretty simple recipe that uses a minimum of ingredients. You should be able to make delicious pancakes on your first try.

Mom’s Blueberry Pancakes

2 cups cake flour (I have to admit, I couldn’t find cake flour at the store yesterday, so I used regular old gold medal flour. It works fine, but try to get some cake flour, as it will make your pancakes lighter and fluffier.)
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt (we use coarse kosher salt, if you’re using regular table salt you might want a tiny bit less, as it’s saltier)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 cups buttermilk (I usually use light or low fat)
3 Tb melted butter (unsalted, always)
2 large eggs, beaten
3/4 pint fresh blueberries, or other fruit (I’ve used strawberries to good effect, and I especially like apples.)

Preheat a griddle - I set mine to about 300º, but you might need to experiment to get the best setting for your griddle. The pancakes should take a few minutes to brown, otherwise the center won’t cook. Play around and see what works.

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

2. Add the buttermilk, butter and eggs and mix just until combined. Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl if necessary. The batter should be thick but still somewhat viscous. If it’s more solid than liquid (sits in a ball in the middle of the bowl, say) it won’t spread out on the griddle and you might need to add a little more buttermilk. But not too much - it should be somewhere in between cake batter and bread dough, consistency wise.

3. Gently fold the blueberries in with the spatula.

4. Butter or spray your griddle. (Even if it’s non-stick.) Scoop about 1/2 cup of pancake batter onto your griddle. It should spread out a bit, gradually, but still retain some height.

5. Let the pancake sit until bubbles begin to pop up on the surface. Gently lift with a spatula to check the underside, when it’s a light golden brown flip the pancake over.

6. Let it sit on the second side for a couple more minutes. It should rise slightly as the center cooks. The second side usually cooks more quickly, so when you think it might be ready, take a peek to see if the bottom is light golden brown. When they’re done, the pancakes should no longer be floppy. If they’re too floppy, the centers aren’t cooking and you need to turn your griddle down.

7. Top with some fresh fruit and maple syrup (not fake “pancake” syrup!), and enjoy!

I just finished Cooking for Mr. Latte, an engrossing, recipe-filled take on the food memoir genre that inspired me to put down the book and pick up a spatula. Admittedly, it also filled me with envy - what I wouldn’t do to have Amanda Hesser’s job. The lucky girl was a food writer for the New York Times, where she initially wrote “Mr. Latte” as a series of columns. They were cobbled together into this episodic book, which remains a series of closely related vignettes. They all focus on food, of course, and each concludes with a handful of promising recipes. Hesser has an MFK Fisher-influenced take on food and life, which is to say that life, love, food and friendship are all closely intertwined for her. She writes about food’s power to bring people together, to create lasting memories, to challenge us and to define us. She’s part of the contingent who truly believe you are what you eat (or cook or bake.)

Inspired by the stories behind her recipes and, admittedly, my envy of her life, I thought I’d try my hand at a few of Hesser’s recipes. Unsurprisingly, because I am me, the two recipes I’ve tried are both baked desserts.

I settled on the first, Amanda’s mother’s Peach Tart, because I found myself in front of a giant pile of apricots at Whole Foods with the book in my purse. This is a really interesting, sort of bizare tart recipe. First of all, it’s made in a square cake pan instead of a tart pan. Second, you mix the dough for the crust right in the pan. Third, there’s olive oil in the dough – I thought this gave the tart and interesting Mediterranean sort of flavor, but my mother didn’t like it (and she loves olive oil.)

I have to admit I kind of screwed up and mixed what Hesser calls “the pebbly mixture” (sugar, flour, salt and butter) into the apricots, rather than sprinkling it on top. Oops. (See picture, then don’t do that.) I kind of liked the effect though, I thought it gave the impression that there was a custard between the apricot slices.

In any case, here’s the recipe, the way I made it.

Judith Hesser’s Peach Tart, with Apricots

1 1/2 cups plus 2 Tb Flour
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup olive oil (you could use vegetable oil if you agree with my mother)
2 Tb milk (I used skim)
1/2 tsp. Vanilla (the recipe says almond extract, but my mom hates almond extract, so we don’t have any in the house)
2 Tb cold unsalted butter
8 or 9 Apricots, thinly sliced

1. Preheat oven to 425º. In an 8-inch square pan, stir together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. sugar.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, milk and vanilla or almond extract.

3. Pour the liquids into the pan and mix gently with a fork, just enough to dampen. Then use your hands to pat out the dough so that it covers the bottom of the pan and goes about 3/4 of an inch up the sides. Amanda says “This will be easy if you pat firmly and confidently, but not if you curl your fingertips into the dough.” (I did as she said, and it was easy.)

4. In a bowl, combine 3/4 cup sugar, 2 Tb. flour, 1/4 tsp. salt and the butter. (I might’ve skimped on the flour a bit because the apricots weren’t juicy at all.) Use your fingers to pinch the butter into the dry ingredients until crumbly, with a mixture of fine granules and tiny pebbles.

5. If you’re Amanda: “arrange the peaches in rows over the pastry; they should fit snugly. Sprinkle the pebbly mixture over the top.” But if you’re me, toss the apricots with the pebbly mixture then dump the whole thing into the pan.

6. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, “until shiny, thick bubbles begin enveloping the fruit and the crust is nut brown.” Or until it looks like this:

I thought it was delicious, my mom thought it was a bit too tart and had the aforementioned olive oil issue. Obviously, in order to really decide what we thought of Ms. Hesser, we had to make another recipe. Also, I needed something to give Miranda, who is kindly allowing me to crash on her couch in New York again tonight. We decided on the Chocolate Chunk-Pecan-Coconut Cookies on page 303.

Perhaps because they were devised as a cleaning-out-the-pantry project, these cookies call for a ridiculous amount of chocolate. Twenty-four ounces, to be exact. That’s a lot of chocolate. Luckily, my mom keeps industrial amounts of baking supplies around the house. Also luckily, Julia was there to help me chop it all. Although she left before it was time to fold the chocolate, pecans and coconut into the dough, which was exhausting. As Amanda says, these cookies are really chocolate and pecans held together by some shreds of dough. My mom argued that it’s okay to mix chocolate chunks in with the Kitchen Aid, but I didn’t want them to be chocolate cookies. And the workout was worth it: the shards of chocolate made a nice pattern on the finished cookies that reminds me of straciatella gelato. They’re really quite attractive, for cookies with everything but the kitchen sink in them. They’re also, and this is key, delicious. The coconut makes them incredibly chewy, even the next day. They’re not too sweet, but still have that great brown sugar taste. And, unsurprisingly, the ridiculous amount of chocolate was just enough. Congratulations Ms. Hesser, you’ve won.

(P.S. I don’t have time right now to write out the cookie recipe, but would be happy to if anyone wants to make them. Or you could buy the book - it’s awesome!)

This cake was a hit from the time it left the oven in Providence Thursday morning to the time I left Addie’s apartment at 11:30 that night. It even attracted the attention of an MBTA conductor who would have given me a free ride if I’d only be willing to cut her a slice. I would have, but a cake less one slice isn’t a very nice thing to bring to a dinner party.

Addie and Alexis were having an “apartment cooling” party before they moved out of their loft, since they had never had an apartment warming. They made stuffed Cornish game hens,
asparagus and potatoes, which were all delicious. The meal was rounded out with several bottles of wine and their homemade beer and mead.

Addie offered to let me bring dessert, so of course I spent the next 24 hours thinking about what I would make. I think cakes are nice for celebratory occasions, but it had to be able to survive the train ride from Providence to Boston, then the subway, and finally, several blocks of walking - during which it just happened to be raining. So layers were out. Anything unstable at a range of temperatures was probably a poor idea. Nothing that could fall over or deflate. Finally, I had a pie-sized pasty box lying around, but no cake boxes, so it would be nice if it was no more than 2 inches tall.

These constraints led me to one of the most decadent, chocolatiest caffeinated desserts this side of a heart attack. The recipe (on epicurious.com) is from the September 1995 issue of Bon Appétit, and it’s as good now as it was then. I know it’s not exactly health food… but this is one of those cakes you don’t need more than a sliver of, so you won’t be eating more than a fraction of the ingredients (especially if you leave the leftovers with your dinner party hosts.) Since there’s so much chocolate in the cake, it’s important to use the good stuff. I used half Scharffen Berger bittersweet (70% cacao) and half Ghirardelli. I also sprung for real espresso from a café in Wayland Square where I know its good. However, I wasn’t sure how many shots were in a cup, so the guy working the register guessed 4 for me… which was only half right. Turns out a cup is about 8 shots, so I made half a cup of instant espresso and mixed the two (sacrilege, I know.)

You may notice, as it’s baking, that the top of the cake is really ugly. Like a mud pie, or perhaps a sinkhole. But never fear! The cake is served upside-down, presenting a beautiful mousse-y surface begging to be decorated with raspberries. Just don’t let anyone flip their piece over.

Finally, whatever you do, don’t skip the raspberry sauce. No matter how much you love chocolate and coffee (which I do, very, very much) the raspberry sauce is key for elevating this cake into the realm of the divine. That said, I didn’t follow the Bon Appétit recipe, which calls for frozen raspberries in syrup. Instead, I stirred a couple tablespoons of sugar and a little cornstarch in a pot, then added two thawed bags of frozen raspberries (Ingredients: raspberries) and mashed them with a wooden spoon while it cooked. I let the liquid thicken a bit and mashed the raspberries pretty well, then strained the whole shebang into a bowl, which involved more mashing with the wooden spoon and a good deal of waiting. But I wound up with a cup and a half or so of beautiful, seedless raspberry sauce (and one very red wooden spoon.)

Unsurprisingly, the results were absolutely delicious and satisfyingly decadent. And very appropriate after an equally delicious dinner, especially if you need to wake up a bit before heading home! Anyway, I’m determined to make this cake again soon, so if anyone wants to have a dinner party….

My springform pan is quickly becoming the official cake pan of birthdays at 106 Governor Street. As you may remember, I bought it for Nick’s Ice Cream Cake, a delicious if unwieldy creation. Sunday was Dana’s birthday, and although she’s game for pretty much anything sweet, fluffy and delicious, she has a soft spot for cheesecake.

I’ve never made a cheesecake before, in fact, I don’t even like cheesecake that much. Dana, on the other hand, considers herself something of a cheesecake connoisseur, so I was understandably nervous. But then I found this easy recipe on the Bon Appetit Project Recipe Blog, and figured if Bridget could do it, I could too. (I even have a metal food processor blade! Actually, it’s Vicky’s, so I only have it for another 6 days.)

Conveniently, Seth had whisked Dana away to Cape Cod for her birthday, so I had all of Sunday to work on my cakes. I dragged Nick through the grocery store Sunday morning and got started right away.

As the Bon Appetit bloggers pointed out, the theme of this cheesecake is food processing. First, in go the butter and shortbread cookies (I used Walker’s, and while it didn’t resemble a crust at first, it turned out delicious. Even Dana thought so.)

The rest of the ingredients are basically just thrown into the food processor together, then poured into the pre-baked crust. Although Bon Appetit blogger Chris cautions against using too many pre-processed ingredients, I used Philadelphia cream cheese because that’s what my mom bakes with. (And if you’ve ever eaten something she’s baked, you understand why this is reason enough.) I did take Chris up on his suggestion to leave out the almond extract, mostly because I’m moving out in a week and already have an almost-full bottle of bourbon extract to use up somehow (if I added it to cheap vodka would it taste like whiskey?)

I had no idea how to tell when a cheesecake was done, but apparently I guessed right, because the cheesecake received rave reviews. Even Dana, cheesecake connoisseur, said it was among the best cheesecakes she’d ever had. Victory!

My mom used to grow rhubarb in our front yard when I was little. Sometime in May, the stalks would begin to turn bright red, and I could traipse out front as I pleased and yank out a stalk to much on. I remember pulling so hard at times that I would fall over backward when the stalk finally came free. (Only recently did my grandmother - the gardener, not the baker - inform me that this can easily be avoided by pulling the stalk at an angle to the ground. But where’s the fun in that?)

Every year (or on two separate occasions at the very least) this gangly plant became the star of the Rhubarb Olympics – a series of pint-sized sporting events featuring rhubarb in some way. I can’t actually remember what they were, but one definitely entailed running with rhubarb and another somehow involved wearing its giant leaf as a hat.

For those too old to enjoy running around with poisonous leaves on their heads, rhubarb season meant strawberry-rhubarb pie – and lots of it.

But despite my long history of pie-eating, this May marked the first rhubarb season of my pie-making life. Remembering the taste of my mother’s pies, I made several pilgrimages to the grocery store in search of that flavor. The first few trips turned up nothing but the same root vegetables of Winter and asparagus of early Spring. But as the price of strawberries began to fall toward affordable levels, I knew it couldn’t be long. And then, one day, lo and behold! Rhubarb! It had been denuded of its poisonous leaves and sat unassumingly in a small basket, dwarfed by the towers of more popular vegetables. But among the floppy ruby-colored pieces and the thin green ones were a handful of the firm candy-apple colored stalks of my childhood. I gathered them up, brought them home and attempted to cajole my roommates into eating some. Vicky was the only taker, and was pleasantly surprised to find it did not taste like celery. I knew what it tasted like, but I wasn’t expecting to feel eight years old after the first bite. It was such a throwback to my childhood I half expected to shrink until my eyes were level with the counters (although I’m probably underestimating my eight-year-old height.)

Luckily, I stayed tall enough to roll out dough, because the pie that resulted was a much bigger hit with the roomies than the raw rhubarb had been. To make your own slice of childhood, you’ll need enough rhubarb and strawberries to fill your pie dish. You want the fruit to make a nice big mound, because it will cook down a lot. I like to do half rhubarb and half strawberries, but if you’re not sure how you feel about rhubarb, feel free to tilt the balance toward strawberries. Just compensate by cutting down on the sugar. Alternatively, put in twice as much rhubarb as strawberries, and add a half-cup of sugar. For my 9″ pie, I probably used about 9 firm pink rhubarb stalks and a pound and a half of strawberries.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

For Pie Crust:
2 1/2 cups Flour
1 tsp. Salt
1 1/2 tsp. Sugar
2 sticks cold Unsalted Butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup ice water

For Filling:
Strawberries, washed, hulled and sliced in half (or smaller pieces if very large)
Rhubarb, washed and cut into 1/2-inch slices
3/4 cup Sugar (if doing half-and-half)
1/3 cup Flour

For Finishing:
1 Egg White
Light Cream (or some other kind of cream, it doesn’t seem to matter)
Sparkling Sugar

Making pie is a two-step process best spread over two days (in my opinion.) The first day is for making the dough, the second is for making it into a pie. In between, the dough sits in the fridge and gets nice and cold, which makes it much easier to roll without it breaking into a million pieces.

Day One:

Blend flour, salt, sugar and butter in a food processor just until butter forms pea-sized balls. Do not overmix. Pour water (no ice!) into running food processor in a steady stream (pour slowly, but it should take no more than three seconds or so.)

Turn crumbly dough out onto a clean surface and divide into two piles, one slightly smaller than the other. With your hands, forcefully but quickly knead each pile into a cohesive cake of dough, shoring up the sides as necessary to prevent cracking. This took me many pies to master, but never fear, even if your dough is a disaster, the pie usually still tastes great.

Slide each cake into the corner of a separate plastic bag and, if necessary, press down until it is about 1/2 inch thick. The thinner your dough cake is, the easier it will be to roll out. That being said, if it gets too thin, it will fall apart. Use your judgment.

Place both doughs in the fridge, on a flat surface, with nothing on top of them.

Day Two:

Preheat the oven to 400º. Place a piece of tinfoil on the top rack, to catch dripping juices from the pie.

First, make the filling. You might want to sprinkle the rhubarb with a little water first so the flour sticks better, or you can just toss it with the strawberries if they’re damp. Then mix in the flour and sugar.

Now it’s time to roll the dough. When I do this at home, I start by covering one of my mother’s lovely marble counter tops with ice packs first to let it get nice and cold. But my counters here are some sort of laminate that is a pretty much constant temperature, besides which they’re too small to accommodate dough rolling. So instead I use a cheapo fake wood desk that was in the hallway when we moved in (it’s in the kitchen now and I’ve cleaned it thoroughly.) Not only is the desk a good height for putting your whole weight behind the rolling (my arms are skinny weak little things) but the fake wood laminate seems to have magical non-stick properties. All in all, I’m surprised to say I’m going to miss it.

In any case, you can use whatever you like to roll out your dough, just sprinkle it with a little flour first. Also sprinkle your rolling pin. (Mine is OXO from Target and I love it!) Then take the larger dough cake out of the fridge and sprinkle it with a little flour too. Roll the dough out to about 1/8 inch thick, flouring the top and bottom as needed to prevent sticking. Cut out a circle about an inch larger than your pie dish, then gently lift the dough into the dish.

Fill the dish with your strawberry and rhubarb filling, and slice a tablespoon of butter over the top.

To make a lattice crust, roll out the second dough then slice it into strips. A lattice is actually easier to make than you might think – check out this video on bonappetit.com if you’ve never done it before. (Oh, how I wish I had a pastry wheel!)

Finally, to finish off the pie, curl the bottom crust up over the edges of the lattice strips, or tuck them under if you’d rather. Use a pastry brush to lightly brush the top crust with a mixture of egg white and a little cream, then sprinkle with sparkling sugar.

Slide the pie into the oven, on top of the tinfoil. Bake for 15 minutes at 400º, then turn the oven down to 350º and bake for another hour, or until the crust is golden brown.