 |
Young & HungryIf you can't take the heat, get outta the kitchen! |
| 15 January |
I remember being a teenager and stocking up on merino wool-silk blend sweaters at the mall. They felt soft, cozy, luxurious, and I loved them. Then one day, someone slipped me a four-ply Ralph Lauren cashmere cable knit and my view of the world (and textiles) radically shifted. The same thing happened the first time I tried Tom Colicchio’s gnocchi.
| 13 January |
There are many outlets in life: martial arts, shopping, anger management classes. When I need to unwind, I seek mental escape through the practice of executing a complex recipe; somehow, the numerous steps and rigmarole ease my mind while I focus on the task at hand. Bonus points for finding a complex recipe for a dish that is traditionally simple. Enter Tom Colicchio’s chickpea salad recipe from my favorite cookbook, The Craft of Cooking. Now, I have been making chickpea salad for years (also called chi chi beans in my family) and find it no harder than opening up a few cans of naked beans and jazzing them up with some oil, vinegar, and seasonings. Delicious. Simple. Too simple.
| 21 December |
Holidays: Christmas; Christmas Eve; stockings and bows and garland and tinsel; good tidings and trips home. The holidays are by far, without doubt, my most favorite time of the year, and the food is just the icing on that glorious yuletide cake. Holiday dishes call for, of course, decadence. I hotly anticipate this season all year, and naturally want it to be worth the wait. This is not the time to sub in Splenda or wonder if margarine will do. It will not. Bring on the cheese, the nuts, the fudge, all the richer the better. What follows is an account of one young and hungry girl’s attempt to create memorable Christmas desserts, desserts basking in unbridled dietary depravity. A grand finale worth the mea culpas.Gloriously decadent figgy pudding
My baking began with the proverbial question of what to make. Sure, I could easily toss together a simple-yet-delicious gingerbread trifle or whip up a batch quick peppermint brownies, but those endeavors seem so….everyday. Nay, my favorite holiday calls for desserts demanding fastidious attention to detail and hours of kitchen toil (there are few things I love better than kitchen toil.) And so here are my two picks for Christmas ’09, one classic and one decidedly untraditional, both equally resplendent in their copious steps: Steamed Toffee Pudding and Cuatro Leches Cake. They are both so mind-blowingly rich and full of carefully nurtured, gorgeous flavors that I may just make them again come Valentine’s Day. Memorable indeed.
For Christmas Eve I chose the quintessential Christmas dessert of yore, Steamed Toffee Pudding, a recipe I took straight from my Craft of Cooking cookbook. One of my most favorite restaurants and home to innumerable memorable meals, Craft, to me, epitomizes the essence of fine dining, and I’d trust any of the recipes in Chef Colicchio’s book. And seriously, how much more Christmas can you get than to hear your family clamoring for more figgy pudding? I half expected Tiny Tim to walk through my door.
Top