Laura | Carmen

Dearest readers, where has the time gone? First, let me blame technology.  My internet has been down for almost a month which means I can only blog from work, which I really shouldn’t do (although I’m doing it now… don’t tell!).  I live in a 100-year-old building and some hungry creature finally chewed through the wires.  Comcast has repaired the line and the electricians are busy re-wiring it.  They say I’ll be up and running next week.

Second, I’m back in school for the final semester of my MBA program, after a long and leisurely seven-week break.  Free time will be scarce again until I graduate in May.  Wow — May?!  I can’t believe it’s only a few months away.  Meanwhile, I’m buried in case studies, term papers and midterms.

And just as school started back up, I decided to start a little remodel project on a house I own that’s about 100 miles away.  My long distance project management skills have been put to the test, but it’s coming together nicely.  I have a crew of painters, handymen, and general contractors who are all just total gems.

Let’s see, what else?  I’ve started teaching pastry classes once a month!  I would have written about them sooner but the first few classes sold out almost as soon as I posted the schedule and I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off just trying to get things in order.  The first class on basic cake decorating was held in early January, and the next class is tomorrow.  We’ll be making a chocolate ruffle cake for Valentine’s Day… one of my favorites.  My students are some of the most creative and fun women I’ve ever met and we’re having a blast together.   I’ll try to photograph some of the action in tomorrow’s class and post something next week.

And lastly, I’ve become obsessed with filming my own cooking demos.  I had been thinking for months about how to add more engaging media to my blog, and it seemed that there was an absence of good video content out there.  So I asked around and found a great videographer and we started filming all sorts of things.  (You can see the early stuff here.)  The only trouble is that it has taken me forever to get over my camera fright.  I’m so confident and outgoing, it never occurred to me that this would be difficult!  Giada and Rachael make it look easy, that’s for sure.  But I’m getting better. I finally took the plunge and bought some of my own equipment so I can film in my own apartment on my own time, which gives me more time to practice and play around with it.  But getting the equipment set up and learning to use it has been an all-consuming activity.

Here’s my very first self-directed, self-produced video, filmed last weekend.  Now if someone can help me fix the audio, that would be fantastic.

That’s “all” I’ve been up to for the past few weeks.  I do have a delicious recipe for lemon bars to post, just as soon as the electricians are done working their magic.  So please don’t give up on me yet.

I’m on a whole-fruit-as-dessert kick.  There’s just something so elegant and simple about serving a piece of fruit in its whole and natural state, lightly sweetened and topped with nothing but a bit of ice cream or creme chantilly.  After those Baked Apples with Lemony Brown Butter syrup a few weeks ago, I was dying to do something with pears.

Flipping through Donna Hay’s Flavors (yes, again) I found my source of inspiration: Pears poached in sugar syrup with a pinch of saffron.  The saffron not only adds a lovely flavor but also an orange tint to the syrup that stains the pears ever so slightly, giving them a deep, golden glow.

I invited some friends over for dessert after we ate dinner at our favorite restaurant last week and served these pears topped with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with a spoonful of the poaching syrup.  Divine!

Vanilla-Saffron Poached Pears

4 cups water
2 cups sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch saffron
1 whole vanilla bean
4 bartlett pears, ripe but still firm

Combine the water, sugar, lemon juice, and saffron in a medium saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Scrape the vanilla bean seeds into the liquid, then add the scraped bean to the liquid, too.  Bring the liquid to a simmer.  Meanwhile, peel the pears carefully leaving them whole with the stems intact.  Carefully lower the pears into the simmering liquid and simmer, turning occasionally, until the pears are soft and cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Remove the pears from the liquid and set aside.  Remove the vanilla bean.  Bring the remaining liquid to a boil and boil until reduced by about half to a thick syrup.  Serve the pears warm with the syrup, with a scoop of good-quality vanilla ice cream if desired.

 I eat cold cereal for breakfast. I’m not  much of a coffee-and-pastries kind of girl–I like pastries but it’s just so hard to find anything worth the calories in this grab-and-go world. Coffee shop muffins are greasy and tasteless, croissants are dense and dry. They just don’t make ‘em like they used to. Or I might say they just don’t make ‘em like they do in Paris, because Parisians do not mess around with their pastries. Everywhere you go, they’re divine: flaky, buttery, warm, and moist, crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. Just the way they ought to be. Commercially produced pastries in the U.S. don’t hold a candle.

So you can either spend a lot of money and take a trip to Europe, or you can invest a little time and make some good pastries yourself. It’s really not difficult, just a little labor-intensive. The list of ingredients is short: flour, butter, yeast, milk, a bit of sugar and pinch of salt. It’s really a small miracle that these six ingredients combine to make something so wonderful.

I found myself stuck at home on a workday one day last week while my contractor was installing new carpet. With nothing to do but sit around and wait, I started a batch of croissant dough. I used the recipe from the Tartine Bakery Cookbook (a lovely and detailed book, I must say), which begins with a pre-ferment: a mixture of flour, yeast, and milk that gives the croissants a rich and tangy flavor.  The pre-ferment was transformed into dough with the addition of more flour, milk, sugar, and melted butter, and after several sessions of kneading and folding and letting the dough rest, I had a large batch of croissant dough wrapped and sealed in the freezer, ready to be thawed, rolled, and shaped.

While the rolling and folding and resting may seem like a lot of work, the beauty of it is that you can spread all the action over a couple of days.  By refrigerating the dough, you can retard the yeast activity and be quite leisurely about the whole ordeal.  And by letting the dough rise slowly and rest often, you give it a chance to develop a flavor that’s deep and yeasty.  So there’s no need to be frantic about this process or set aside an entire day to do the whole thing in one marathon baking session.

I’m not going to reprint the entire recipe for making croissants here because explaining all the steps of rolling and folding is like writing a short novel.  I highly recommend the recipe in the Tartine Bakery Cookbook, and there’s another good one in Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

My croissants turned out beautifully, and my apartment still smells like heaven… all warm and buttery.  I ate one perfectly flaky croissant for breakfast yesterday with a dollop of raspberry jam, and then wrapped the rest in a cloth to give as a New Year’s gift to my neighbors.  Frequent travelers to Paris that they are, they were delighted.

I know, I know.  It’s pretty cruel of me to post a dessert recipe just as you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to eat a healthier diet.  So here’s the good news: This dessert is light and healthy.  Yes, yes, it has “butter” as part of its name but trust me, there’s  just a smidgen.

And the recipe is so simple and straightforward, it can hardly be called a recipe.

Bakes Apples with Lemony Brown Butter Syrup

Four Red Delicious apples
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup refined sugar
1/2 stick butter
juice of one-half lemon

Slice the apples  in half laterally and place them cut-side-up in a baking dish.  (The apples should fit pretty snugly, so choose your baking dish according to the number of apples you are baking.  I used an 8×8 square ceramic dish.)  Top each half with 1/2 teaspoon butter, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, and 2 teaspoons of refined sugar.  Squeeze the lemon over the prepared apples.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, basting the apples often with the juices from the pan.

Meanwhile, melt a stick of unsalted butter over medium heat and simmer until it is golden brown and bubbly.  Immediately remove from the heat, add the juice of one lemon, 2 tablespoons refined sugar, and a pinch of salt.  Set aside, but keep warm.

Serve the apples warm, drizzled with brown butter syrup.  Pair with good vanilla ice cream if you want to forget about that New Year’s resolution for a moment.  Otherwise, go easy on the brown butter syrup and skip the ice cream.  The apples by themselves are absolutely decadent.

This morning I was flipping through Donna Hay’s gorgeous cookbook, Flavors, and found myself drooling over a photo of caramelized onions.  They looked so sweet and soft and rich with flavor… I had to have them.  Had to have them NOW.

Off I went to the grocery store, and back I came with two bags of fat yellow onions.  Twenty minutes and one box of tissues later, the onions were sliced and sizzling away in a pan of hot oil and butter.  The smell was intoxicating, and it wafted out my kitchen window and into the yard and halfway up the street.  (I know this because my neighbor’s eight-year-old son came by to ask what I was cooking.)

And then, of course, came the question of what to do with a pan full of caramelized onions.  Rummaging around in my refrigerator, I found some flatbread, some cheeses, and a few leaves of sage.  Brilliant!  Pizza.

So I ribboned the sage and stirred it into the onions, then piled the onions onto the flatbread and topped them with crumbled Gorgonzola.  The whole creation went into the oven for just a spell and… voila!  I made a mimosa with leftover Champagne from New Year’s and had a lovely brunch with the most charming eight-year-old sous chef you’ll ever meet.  (Note, he did not have the mimosa.)

Caramelized Onion Flatbread with Gorgonzola and Sage

4 yellow onions
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
6 sage leaves, cut into ribbons
1 12-inch flatbread or packaged pre-baked pizza crust
1/4 cup crumbled Gorgonzola
honey, for drizzling

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large, shallow saucepan until hot.  Meanwhile, peel and slice the onions into 1/4-inch-thick rings.  Add the onions to the pan and cook over medium heat until they just begin to soften.  Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the vinegar, sugar, salt and sage.  Cook the onions until they are soft and deep brown, stirring often, about 20 minutes.

Remove the onions from the heat and allow to cool slightly.  Spread the onion mixture over the top of the flatbread and sprinkle with Gorgonzola.  Bake in an oven preheated to 325F for 10 minutes, just until the cheese begins to melt and the crust is crispy.  (If the crust is fully pre-baked, be sure to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn.)  Serve warm, drizzled very lightly with honey and garnished with a sprig of fresh sage.

Tip: This recipe would work well for an hors d’oeuvres course.  Instead of making one big pizza pie, cut the flatbread into bite-size pieces (or use crackers) and then top with a spoonful of the onion mixture and a crumble of Gorgonzola.  Bake on a cookie sheet and serve warm.

Here, dear readers, is my belated Christmas gift to you: Sunny, sandy photos from the Virgin Islands, intended to pluck you straight out of whatever dreary, post-Christmas winter funk you might presently find yourself in.  I spent five days there last week; the first time I’ve spent Christmas in the tropics.  I have to admit it was a little odd to see palm trees glittering in Christmas lights, but all in all it wasn’t so bad.

We stayed at the Ritz Carlton (oo-la-la!), which is situated on the eastern shore of St. Thomas.  Now, I hesitate to complain about a Ritz Carlton, lest I sound like a completely ungrateful travel snob, but this resort was way too big and crowded for my taste.  If I went again, I’d stay at a smaller, more modest property with more beach and fewer people.  Nonetheless, we managed to have a great time, mostly by getting off the island, away from the crowds, and into the water.  The scuba diving on St. Thomas and the surrounding islands is fantastic… fish in every color, sea turtles, and fantastic coral.  We chartered a boat for a day and visited the islands of Jost Van Dyke, St. John, and Tortola, stopping to snorkel and scuba wherever we could.  My favorite stop on land was a joint called Ivan’s Stress Free Bar on Jost.  On Christmas Day, we scuba dived at a spot appropriately named Christmas Cove off the northern shore of Great St. James.  I didn’t have an underwater camera, but here’s a pretty good video from Lonely Planet.  It was a breathtaking dive.  (No pun intended.)

The food on the islands is great.  Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of seafood.   The specialty is “local lobster,” which is served in everything from omelettes to pasta to quesadillas.  It’s flavorful and tender, though not quite as rich and buttery as the cold water lobster we eat here on the mainland.  Comparatively speaking, it makes for a lighter meal, which is not such a bad idea when you’re spending a lot of time in your bathing suit.  Our most unforgettable dinner was at a fabulous little restaurant called Herve in Charlotte Amalie, the capital of St. Thomas.  One of the specials that night was a wilted spinach salad with a shallot vinaigrette, which we paired with conch fritters to start.  For our entrees, I ordered the local lobster (but of course) and my companions ordered seafood linguine, broiled shrimp, and Norweigan salmon.  The food was fabulous and the ambiance was lovely… the owner, Herve Chassin, personally greets his guests at the door and leads them to an open-air dining room with panoramic views of the harbor.

I’m back in foggy San Francisco now, with an interesting task ahead:  I found a conch shell during that dive at Christmas Cove and carried it all the way home in my suitcase.  Now I’m trying to figure out how to get the dead animal out of the shell so I can polish it and keep it as a souvenir.  The thing stinks to high heaven and I’m too squeamish to touch it.  I’ve done some preliminary research online and have learned that the best thing to do is to leave it near an anthill and let the ants clean out the flesh before soaking the shell in a diluted bleach solution to loosen the debris.  The other option is to boil the creature so it “cooks” and then pull it out of the shell with my fingers.  I think not!  So I’m off to find an anthill, I guess.

I think I’d rather be scuba diving off the shores of St. Thomas.