Flavors 518

Dear Mrs. London's , I love you so much. I love your baguette (pictured above) - so crispy and flaky on the outside and yet chewy and moist on the inside. It is a marvel of baking perfection that I can't accomplish since I spend my days running around a museum, but payng you $4 is well worth the price. I love croissants too (I haven't tried them, but Daniel has ). I love the look of all of your pastries, and simply just being in your store. I love that stopping for anything, not only gives me something that tastes great and vastly improves the sophistication level of whatever I am having for dinner, but makes me feel vaguely glamorous - like I should be carrying a hat box and going to pick up my poodles from the groomer (yes, I will take a pistachio macaron, thank you!). I love you like I love a sparking rosé wine on a hot and humid day. I love you like I love Valentine's Day. I love you like I love meeting a girl who loves watching "13 going on ...

My friend Elizabeth said twice on Sunday "if you want to be a food blogger then you have to try Jake Moon at least once." It is a ways out from Albany on the way to Thatcher Park. It is a "destination eatery in the Heldebergs" according to their website. For me, this past weekend was really feeling like the end of summer. We were going to head back out to the Finger Lakes for a special event at the vineyard where we joined the wine club in July (it is Damiani and their reds are fabulous), but thunderstorm warnings caused us to change our plans. I started to realize that my wanting to go back to the Finger Lakes was me wanting to revisit summer vacation just a bit more, and with bad weather it wouldn't have been the same at all. So we stayed back, and when we picked up my friend Elizabeth and her fellow for brunch she was dressed like summer was already over (very sharp looking in tights and boots). I, on the other hand, kept the last pretend bit of summe...

I've become totally obsessed with cucumbers lately. I'm not sure why, but every summer I seem to get totally obsessed with one thing that is refreshing, easy, and does not require turning on the oven. It is as though being obsessed with one item takes away the work of coming up with what to eat when the heat makes you not hungry at all. Last year, I ate watermelon gazpacho every day. I totally got sick of it at the end of the summer, which will probably happen to cucumbers too. But for the time being, check it out! Here is the first one I made. My goal here was to copy the sauce my sister made for the bacon wrapped asparagus . I also didn't bother peeling the cucumbers completely or scraping out the seeds, but I think after the cucumbers are in the fridge in a dressing even over night it makes it much less soggy to complete those two steps. So pretty much: cucumbers, ginger, jalapenos, sesame seeds, and a dressing of sesame oil, lime juice, rice vinegar, little bit of...

As part of Tuesdays with Dorie using the book Baking with Julia , I made the Oasis Naan. I've made naan before , and this recipe is better. You can find the recipe at Always Add More Butter and at Of Cabbages and King Cakes . Check out all the other bakers here! My thoughts: We served it with lamb with vinegar and min t , and that worked out great. I thought the dough was very pliable and easy to work with, much like a pizza crust . I loved how pricking the dough with a fork creates some areas with a texture that is sponge-like and other areas with a crispier texture. It was a nice contrast.  I also really liked the addition of the scallions. I think this could also be great with some garlic, ginger, or jalapenos sprinkled on top before baking.  Overall, definitely a keeper. This recipe is so easy (you don't even need to get out a mixer or food processor) and delicious, that I think it will encourage us to cook more Indian food in the future.

Now, it is well established in the 518 blogosphere that All Good Bakers is delicious. We've got derryX , the From Scratch Club gals, Albany Jane , Jen is Green , DelSo , Capital to Capital - just to name a handful. Scott and I also tried their foods before at the Albany Wine & Dine Festival . From my point of view, I'm not so much in the market for baked goods as I am usually looking for friends who I can drop off rugelach or cakepops at their houses because I have made too many of something that sounded interesting. It is funny that baking things has pretty much become my hobby considering that I'd probably be fine with a diet of oatmeal, chicken noodle soup, penne alla vodka and BLTs. Most nights I'd rather have a small bit of sherry before bed than a slice of anything sweet. But, my interest in baking has grown so much in recent years that I have a couple of times read Dorie Greenspan in the bathtub. I think that says it all right there. Baking things m...

As part of Tuesdays with Dorie using the book Baking with Julia I made Irish soda bread. Check out the discussion about the recipe here . You can read the recipe here . Here's mine: And served with bacon, eggs, and salad: Here is what I thought about the recipe: It was super easy, took about an hour to make, and has little fat in it. All wins. Mark Bittman has a yeast bread recipe that just rises while the oven preheats, and I never thought it was that great of a recipe since it did not have time to develop. With this soda bread it isn't like you are hurrying it along, it is just meant to not take that much time to make. We love buttermilk (like in buttermilk poundcake !) and we are always looking for ways to use leftover buttermilk. We think it adds a good flavor without a lot of fat. Next time I have 2 extra cups of buttermilk I will just make this. The recipe says it is only good for a few hours, but I made mine on Sunday and it was still good for breakf...

We went to a dinner party tonight at our friend's house who did a great job at putting together an Indian meal. We have a couple Indian cookbooks, but we have only made two things. We made a swordfish with a yogurt-ginger marinade once that gets thrown on the grill, and I made chicken tikka back when we first moved in together . For some reason, I've had some weird idea that we'd have to go to an Indian market to get certain items, or that it would be really complicated. I offered to make naan for the dinner, and I used the cookbook An Invitation to Indian Cooking . I'm quickly becoming the girl who offers to make a bread that goes along with the meal you are making for me, which is kind of funny. Here's what I think about making naan: It's got yogurt in it and warmed milk, and you can immediately tell the texture is going to be different than other breads - flakier and not hugely doughy (not like the way the challah rose all over everything and looked l...

As part of Tuesdays with Dorie using the book Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan , I made the white loaves recipe. You can check out the recipe here . I enjoyed this recipe and was able to use some of my dough agitation techniques I learned from my King Arthur Flour pizza making class . Dealing with the sticky dough made me appreciate the bench scraper we had at the class ( like this one ), and I headed out to Different Drummer's Kitchen afterwards to pick up one for future bread making projects. I love my Roll'pat for projects like this, as it helps to keep the counter clean, and it is really quick and easy to rinse off afterward. First I gathered up the dough by mixing together warm water and yeast and then adding flour, sugar, and salt. You beat in some butter, and then put it in a bowl to rise. After an hour (ah - breadlove!): Then take that out and divide it in two on the counter. Then we are patting them out, rolling them up, and sealing the seam...

The winter holidays obviously can cause a whole range of emotions in people - they are weighed down with memories of past Christmases, especially if people or things are now gone. Also, places that mean one thing on other days of the year can have other connotations on Christmas. They are weighed down with expectations, pressures, and comparisons. The sentence "But its Christmas!" seems so much of a stronger thing to say than "But it is President's Day!" It seems a bit like weddings - what other thing has such strong expectations attached to it because it happens to be a certain day on the calender? That being said, most other Christmas breaks I have had I have traveled farther than this year. The college where I work does a campus shut down during this week to save money with energy costs. It is the sort of thing where you don't want to know what day it is, because you don't want to know how fast it is going by ( like our honeymoon ). It makes me thin...

The other day I was making some of Mark Bittman's whole wheat sandwich bread from How to Make Everything , and I realized that the same recipe of dough makes English muffins. We were undecided about what to have for dinner, so I thought maybe a sort of homemade egg McMuffin would be fun. I let the dough rise for hours, deflated the dough, and cut it into 12 pieces. I flattened them into little discs. Then I spread some cornmeal on a skillet set on low heat and cooked them in batches. I made sure they were lightly browned (about 15 minutes). Then we cooked up some bacon and eggs and served it with spinach. I have long fantasized about homemade breakfast sandwiches that are not greasy, but just as delicious as fast food versions, and this really lived up to expectations- especially with some hot sauce and sea salt sprinkled on the eggs. Then we had quite a bit of English muffins leftover. I wasn't sure we'd be able to finish them in time for them to still ...

This is amazing. I had heard about it for a few years and never tried it myself. But I read it in the Essential New York Times Cookbook , and decided to give it a try. There it is served with Veal Saltimbocca from the same cookbook. This recipe is revolutionary. Dead easy. The least amount of work I have ever put forth in regards to a baked good, and also better than any bread I have ever made before. The elasticity and texture is amazing. The crust is fabulous. It is like bread from an expensive restaurant, fresh as can be. And it was so easy – all I did was mix the ingredients together, leave the dough in the bowl for 18 hours, shape it into a ball and leave for two hours, put it in a dutch oven in then oven for half an hour, take the lid off and cook for about 20 minutes more – and viola – fabulous, rustic style bread with barely any effort. No mess either – you don’t even have to use the food processor. Amazing. I think I'll be making this all the time now.