Little strawberry shortcakes

This was one of the things I made for Kathryn's shower. The basic idea came from this recipe.

But I wanted to use a more interesting pound cake. After a disastrous pound cake attempt out of the "I Am Almost Always Hungry" cookbook, I decided to go way traditional, and tradition led to...Elvis. This recipe claims to have been Elvis' favorite pound cake, though I don't imagine he ever met a pound cake he didn't like.

Feet and height = a better macaroon

So late yesterday afternoon I was feeling tired and hungry and casting about for an activity which didn't involve Masterpiece Theater reruns (go the complete Jane Austen!), I decided the time was right to try my hand at another round of French macaroons, this time guided by David Lebovitz' chocolate macaroon recipe.

He was very Cook's Illustrated-meets-Jeffrey Steingarten about it and prefaced the recipe with the saga of failures and frustrations that preceded the ultimate triumph of baked goods over raw ingredients. Which was not only entertaining but helpful, since it helped put me in that state of mind one really needs to be in (tentative but quietly determined) before folding beaten egg whites into batter.

And though I let the first batch cook too long and lost that core of moisture that reemerges after the filled macaroon gets to sit and think about things for a few hours, they looked rather nice and tasted good too. They got that necessary foot at the bottom, and even though I didn't have the right tip for my pastry bag (the only one wide enough to do the job had frilly points), the top came out relatively smooth and shiny. The photo shows an unassembled half.

So I'm feeling back on track again, and have totally rethought what I'm going to make for Kathryn's bridal shower. Macaroons, goraybe (a Lebanese shortbread cookie), possibly a checkerboard shortbread, truffles that may or may not be flavored with kumquat (I have to try it out first), little carrot cakes that I also need to try out (and will document here), and pound cake squares topped with strawberries and cream.

But not petites fours. My experimentation with that yielded a one-dimensional, rather ugly, sickeningly sweet little square of regret.

Why are these macaroons so flat?

That's a good question. Certainly not because I intended them to be slipped under doors or smuggled in the pages of books. I'm not sure what happened on my first French macaroon attempt, but the end result was disappointing. I should have known better than to use a Martha Stewart recipe, since they tend not to be standouts (though if their main purpose is to be pretty, things generally go okay). But I found this version and decided to try out the strawberry version, since I would love to make pretty spring-colored (I was originally thinking strawberry and pistachio) macaroons for Kathryn's shower.

The more into the recipe I got, the more warning bells went off in my kitchen-brain: too many egg whites, weird proportions, and I was pretty sure it was going to end up too sweet. I love a breakfast cake called visitandines, which relies on similar ingredients to the French macaroon, so I have a basic understanding of the combination of almond meal, egg whites, and sugar. And things were not seeming right.

This story ends in disappointment, so I'll just cut to the end and say they didn't taste that off, but they were the saddest, flattest macaroons I have ever seen. This happened on the same day of the supremely disappointing petites fours, so I decided to wait a week or so, and then jump back in with the David Lebovitz chocolate macaroon recipe. Which went much better. More on that soon.

Baked penne

This particular food event happened about a month ago but I had to wait for Alexis to send me the photo before posting a description of this fine meal Sean and Sue (Sue by doing the dishes afterward) cooked up for us.

When I was a cold and hungry exchange student living on very little money in London I owned one pot and one pan. Those things were enough to do a very basic version of baked penne, and I loved it because is was warm and cheesy and made for great leftovers.

However, I never took it to the next level the way Sean did here. After eating it, I craved it for three days straight. He made it with a sort of spicy chicken sausage, a sundried-tomato-based sauce, and three kinds of cheeses. I'm missing ingredients because this really was about a month ago, but I'll ask and append the remaining vitals.

Good, easy, and fairly healthy comfort food

Asking my mom for a recipe is always an exercise in ambiguity. Her favorite measurements are some, a good amount, and a little. So it took me a while to get this one just right, even though it's basic.

For two people, I poach one or two chicken breasts in either stock or water. When it's done, I let it cool enough to work with and then I shred it into hearty pieces. I make up a biscuit batter (I haven't found one that I love yet, so I choose a different one every time) and preheat the oven to whatever temperature the recipe recommends.

Then I saute an onion in a pot, then add broth and cut up potatoes. It doesn't really matter whether the skins are on or off. Wait a minute, I'm getting pretty vague here and starting to sound like her. So when the potatoes are inching towards ready, I add green beans and whatever other vegetables suit my fancy, throw the chicken in to warm it up. I thicken it with flour or corn starch, then put it in a casserole dish (for two people I use the little square one), and then scoop drop biscuits and place them around the top of the stew. Into the oven to bake the biscuits, wait until the tops are golden, and there you have it.

The chard taco experiment

I don't remember how I first found this approximation of a recipe on the Bunny Pie blog, but it struck my fancy, so I printed it out and filed it away for future use. Well, the future was last night, after I took my new bicycle down to Monterey Market (walking, I never realized just how completely downhill it is one way and totally uphill it is on the grocery-laden way back) and picked up tomatillos, chard, and though it wasn't mentioned in the recipe, a sweet potato for good measure.

Since the recipe I was working off of had no measurements (she wrote it down as she was watching Rick Bayliss' show on PBS), I'll summarize my version here. I took 10 tomatillos and roasted them in a 350 degree oven for an hour. I should have used more, say 20, and left them in the oven for closer to 40 minutes. Ah yes, and at the same time, I roasted a garlic clove. When everything was nice and soft and golden-topped, I let it cool for a bit and then threw it in the food processor along with a canned chipotle pepper (I happened to have opened a can of the chipotles in adobo sauce to make a delicious, junk-foody chicken taco filling just a few days before) and a bit of the adobo sauce, and made salsa.

Next, I chopped and grilled a yellow onion, then washed and removed the thick spines of two bunches of swiss chard, then rolled the leaves together (Whenever I do this some part of me pretends I'm rolling cigars. Or dolmas.) and roughly chopped it before adding it to the onions and wilting it. I tossed in a bit of salt at the end, and then assembled the tacos.

But I'm forgetting the sweet potato! It wasn't in the recipe, but I thought as long as I was making a chard-based taco, which is already a little unusual in my book, that a little thinly sliced sweet potato might be good. And it was! My mom is always going on about how well sweet potatoes cook in the microwave, so I called her and asked her how to do it. She said wash, poke, then put it on the potato microwave setting. I didn't have that setting, so I put it in for five minutes, which worked perfectly.

So then I heated corn tortillas, laid down a foundation of the chard-and-onion mixture, balanced a few thin slices of sweet potatoes on top, added the salsa and a bit of sharp aged cheddar, and (pronounced a la Mr. Dyson, inventor of the Dyson vacuum, in those commercials where he details making thousands of suction-losing prototypes before getting his first-vacuum-that-doesn't-lose-suction version right) I had it! I was surprised at how good it was: hearty, savory and a little sweet, slightly spicy, and texturally complex.

Family-style at Walzwerk

For Kathryn's birthday, we went to the Tactile Dome (fun, but also scarier than I remember from my visits as a wee lass), and then to the East German restaurant Walzwerk. If you've got 10 or more people, you can preorder a family-style dinner that provides a ridiculous amount of food (not a true cultural experience, I suspect). Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, and braised red cabbage aren't really my thing, so I've always assumed that I just don't really like German food, but getting to try so many things in one sitting meant I actually found stuff I liked, and would eat again.

Kathryn is holding one of two giant plates of delicious and heart-attack-inducing cheese spätzle that came along with all the other salads, appetizers, and main courses that you get for a rather reasonable $20 a person. Other newly discovered favorites include Thüringer Salad, Matjes herring in sour cream with apples, onions and pickles, and a particularly good rendition of potato pancakes with chivey sour cream.

That's the second time I've been to Walzwerk, and again because I came as part of a larger group, we had to sit in the cold, linoleum-tiled, folding-chair-and-metal-tables back room, instead of the cozy and lively front. So family-style is sort of a trade off. Yes, you get more food choices, but the ambiance is maybe a little too authentic.