All Photos by Lauren Weisenthal
Cold temperatures can limit our produce choices, but citrus comes into season just in time to save the day. I’ve been featuring a variety of winter fruit pies for my column over at Serious Eats, including the Key Lime Pie pictured above, and the banana cream and lemon meringue pies below. Click through for full posts and recipes.
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
A few weeks back, I did a post for my column Sweet Techniques over at Serious Eats about how to make orangettes. Even though I’m not a big fan of the chocolate on orange flavor combination (I think it has something to do with my aversion to those chocolate oranges that you see in the drugstores around Christmastime), I did enjoy the opportunity to temper chocolate for the first time in a while, and I love the look of the finished product. To make your own, check out my post over at SE.
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
Leading up to Christmas, I’ve been doing some new techniques posts over at Serious Eats. There are some slideshows to help folks through the process of making a classic French yule log cake, the Bouche de Noel.
My favorite part of this cake is, of course, the mushroom meringues. I love Maida Heatter’s recipe in her Book of Great Desserts.
Speaking of Christmas candy, I also had a lot of fun messing around with recipes for torrone, the Italian nougat candy. Watch for that recipe over on Serious Eats on Monday. Merry, Happy!
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
Over at Serious Eats this week, I featured a couple of pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. In the photo above you can check out the Pumpkin Mousse Pie, and below a Classic Pumpkin Pie. Both versions are similar in flavor, but the mousse pie has a much lighter consistency. Follow the links to the full article and recipes, and watch for a special edition of Pie of the Week – featuring five days of pie in a row! My rolling pin is getting pretty fatigued.
On Wednesday it will be two months since my last post. I love this blog and it’s readers, and I’m not feeling great about the fact that I’ve neglected it for so long.
Here’s what’s been going on:
- I’m getting married! In just under three weeks. I’ve been trying to play it cool and pretend that wedding planning is no big deal, but IT IS. I’m not having fun with it. It’s really not my bag. I just want the day to come already!
- (Probably more relevant to the blog) I’ve got a (full time) (paying) job at an awesome neighborhood restaurant. I’ve been put in charge of their pastry menu. It’s dizzying. It’s making me bonkers. It’s amazing. It’s exhausting. I can’t wait to tell you about it.
I’m not going to make any bold statements along the lines of “I promise to write” or “watch for the next post on Wednesday”. But know that I miss it here and I miss hearing from the people who take the time to read, and that, more likely than not, will have me coming back again more often, especially after life settles down a bit.
See you soon!
This post is an installment from the ongoing Dessert FourPlay project, in which I prepare and write about all of the desserts in Dessert FourPlay: Sweet Quartets from a Four-Star Pastry Chef
These photos are almost two months old. That’s about the length of time I’ve been experiencing problems with my website that have kept me from being able to post.
Directly after my big I’M BACK!!! announcement, I began having problems related to a server crashing that continue to plague the site even now. For a while there I was worried that I’d never see the EVK logo again, but thanks to the tech team, it’s back. There are still problems; if you scroll down, you’ll probably notice that I’m missing four whole pages worth of photos. I’m not going to keep talking about it because it makes me emotional, but in a few weeks I hope to have all of those photos back up on the site.
But more to the point, a long long time ago, in my humble kitchen in the East Village of New York City, I make this frozen treat from Dessert FourPlay
For the past few weeks, I’ve been inching slowly (and sometimes, painfully) back into the robust workout routine that I observed before I got myself involved with all this culinary school business. These new miles of pounded pavement have been making me feel ravenous between meals, and I’ve been on the lookout for snacks that can satisfy, while being tasty, nutritious, and low in calories and fat.
Ironically, when I first encountered this healthy, nutritious snack, I was sitting down to a celebratory dinner of epic and caloric proportions at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant/working farm/theme park for food dorks like me who are into sustainable, farm-to-table cuisine. Tuscan kale chips, artfully suspended above antique wooden blocks by a thin piece of wire, were the first of the parade of amuse bouche that we enjoyed that night. Everyone in our party was delighted by their simple beauty and surprised by how delicious they were. They were the perfect introduction to the flavor and feel of the restaurant.
Shorter days and chilly nights be damned, this year I’m just not feeling ready to say goodbye to summer yet. I’m still buying the last ears of corn from the market, no matter how anemic. And I’ll continue buying tomatoes too, even the ugliest, most bruised ones, if it means that I can eat fresh tomatoes for one more meal as we ease into a winter filled with those lackluster replacements we call “hot house” or “canned tomatoes”.
How appropo, a green hummus posted, today of all days. And while I had not planned on posting something so strikingly green for St. Patty’s Day, the act of posting something green was calculated and completely deliberate. After madeleines and cake, let’s pause to cleanse our paletes, shall we?
