a valentine or two

the weather in philly these days has been dreadful. just absolutely gross out. after a snow and ice storm on thursday, we had a bit of a reprieve on Friday, and now it is wintry-mix-ing all over the place. gross.

what else can one do, in such weather, but hole up inside with some rich, delectable comfort food? it being valentine's day yesterday, will and i had quite the feast planned - we decided to make short rib grilled cheese, with home-pickled-red onions. they were delicious. and as we were cooking in the late afternoon, i decided that we needed some dessert! and this recipe had popped up in my email, for a chocolate pomegranate tart.

forgive the terrible instagram photo - but here the tart is in its glory!

i didn't have any pomegranate juice (the one thing i forgot to buy!!) so I squeezed some blood oranges that I had, and cooked down that 1 cup of juice with some pomegranate seeds in it + 2 tbsp sugar. uh, delicious.

thick, rich, and chocolate-y. a perfect end to valentine's day!

so i threw a dessert party

so, months ago at this point, on my birthday, we were out at the peoples republik, enjoying some tasty cocktails, and talking about how much we like dessert. and making dessert. and wouldnt it be fun if we had a party where everyone made some dessert and brought some and enjoyed it all? so we pulled out our blackberries and looked for the right weekend to do it. settled on one, and i put it in my calendar, and then a few weeks later i sent out invites and we had ourselves a dessert party! i, of course, had to bake a whole bunch of stuff in case no one brought anything. and also because i wanted to use up some ingredients i had lying around. so the first thing i made is this apple molasses cake that sarah hopp gave me the recipe to. spicy and delicious, though it drives me crazy when you cant get a cake out of its pan completely. i think maybe next time i will use parchment paper so that the top is perfect, just have to hope that the caramel doesnt run under it.


after the cake was squared away, i opened up my martha stewart cookie cookbook, and looked for something tasty. and i wanted something chocolate. and so...chocolate peanut butter brownies! this picture is horribly out of focus, but its the only one i took of them. and they were deliciousssssssssss. i dont think you can go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter. i am thinking of making them again tonight, actually.


and then i had to pick a 3rd thing out of the martha stewart cookie cookbook. and i had some figs leftover from when i made the fig sauce for the duck breast from months earlier. so here comes the fig pinwheel cookies. which were obnoxious as hell to make. i dont know if it was because the weather was warm and so the dough was melting too quickly, or what, but even with chilling, it was impossible to work with. so i probably wont make these too often. but they were fairly decent.

party was a total success. allison brought red velvet cupcakes. erin did these amazing brownie-cookie-dough things. malima made cookies. jay made a carrot cake - complete with little orange/green carrots decorating the top. there may have been other things, but that is everything i can remember.

Inaugural entry! Only fitting that it be dessert!

I've been meaning to start this blog for a while, but kept forgetting to actually take pictures of the fun things that i cook. but i had to take a picture of the above, and so it is the perfect opportunity to begin!

So, the above is a dessert that I made this weekend. why? because gordon ramsay is doing an amateur version of master chef, and there was an open casting call in boston, and i just *had* to go. would i leave my job for 5 weeks to be on a reality cooking tv show with gordon ramsay? no! no way. but how could i not audition??

when i was trying to decide what to make as my audition dish, i naturally turned to dessert. i am a dessert person. my original plan was actually to make a fresh fruit tart with a flaky pie crust (pate brisee), a lemon cheesecake-like tart with sweet dough (pate sucre), and then raspberry "marmelata" - aka homemade jam that is done with wine and sugar. all very tasty things. but as the weekend approached, i started thinking about all the effort that goes into making pie dough. let me get one thing straight: i love pies and tarts. they are my favorite things. but i absolutely HATE making pie dough. i hate the feeling of flour on my hands. its gritty and gross and so hard to get off. and i hate making pie dough, because the best way to really do it is to use your hands instead of a pastry cutter or something. i know, i make no sense.

so when trying to think of a simpler dessert to make for the audition, i started thinking about this delicious lemon mousse i made for a party at the old apartment months ago. and i thought...how delicious would it be over a crunchy cookie, with chocolate shavings on top. and the marmelata/jam on the side? i kinda wanted to do chocolate cups with the cookie on the side, but i couldnt get the chocolate cups to come out of the mold. annoying. i need a better way to do that. so chocolate shavings it was!

so, i pulled out my martha stewart cookies cookbook that i got from my godmother for christmas. i thumbed through it then, and there are many exciting things within that i very much want to try. and of course it had just the type of cookie i wanted! a tuile cookie, to be exact. martha's had sour cherries in it, but i just sort of omit them from the recipe, and it turned out perfectly! although man, those things are hard to shape! i wanted to make little bowls, which is totally doable - the other option is to sort of shape like cannoli shells around a dowel. you have to do it right after the cookies come out of the oven, before they cool and harden. AKA when the cookies are burn-your-fingertips-hot. and the cookies melted together all into one long sheet, instead of staying in their little rounds. which almost made it easier to shape them because the middle stayed soft longer, while the sides cracked almost as soon as it was possible to touch. extremely delicious though. ooooh love the tuile cookies!!

as to the audition...oof! i waited outside in the cold. for 4 hours. it is january in boston. it was FREEZING. and i didnt know i would have to wait outside! so i was wearing flats. without socks. and my pretty coat, instead of my ski jacket. there were more than 300 people in line, it was just absurd. there was another hour wait once we were inside. 5 hours of waiting for a 3 minute interview, which i was so not in the mood for at that point! i think i almost got frostbite on my toes. one of the women i waited in line with had some childrens hats in her car, and we wrapped them around my feet so they wouldnt completely freeze. it...sort of worked.