easter : an excuse for mimosas

forgive me if you are reading this and you actually celebrate easter (as opposed to consuming large amounts of chocolate). neither jessica nor i are religious, but the allure of the mimosa resulted in an easter celebration.

i'd never had a mimosa before, but it's apparently jessica's favorite champagne drink. lo and behold, easter loomed before us, and gave us the perfect excuse to have mimosas. we thus structured an easter brunch around mimosas. theme : elegant. we invited eva and oded, and vicky and peter.

on the menu:
citrus fruit salad
asparagus with hollandaise sauce
herbed crepes with "spring tomato sauce" (epicurious' name, not mine)
curried egg salad sandwiches
easter eggs!
hamantaschen
apricot souffles with creme anglaise

as usual, we made far too much food. on the bright side, that meant leftover egg salad sandwiches. we had our brunch in the maisonnette with eva, oded, vicky, and betsy (peter was in san diego), who regaled us with stories about her spring break, spent in new mexico teaching little kids.

that's enough details. on to the food... i believe all of our recipes came from epicurious (except for the hollandaise, which was from julia - masterting the art of french cooking). jessica blanched the asparagus and made the hollandaise sauce (so i still have never made hollandaise, only enjoyed eating it. i promise to stop using so many parenthetical phrases soon), while i made the egg salad and the crepes.

crepes! i had never actually made crepes, only watched other people doing it. i can now confidently say that i can make crepes. it took a couple tries at the beginning, but somehow the heat finally got to the right temperature and my crepes were coming off slightly golden and slightly crispy. basically, the recipe was an "herbed" crepe (i bet you thought this would be more exotic, but it just means crepe batter with chopped herbs in it - i used chives, parsley, and tarragon, all fresh, of course) filled with a mixture of ricotta, sauteed, diced bell peppers, and parmesan. changes i made in the recipe included using red, orange, and yellow bell peppers instead of the recipe's green - which also makes them slightly sweeter, and i think better. i also used pecorino romano instead of parmesan, both because it was cheaper and, as i found out later, i like pecorino romano better. anyway, you fill the crepes, lay them in a baking dish, sprinkle them with cheese, and stick them in the oven for a bit - 20 minutes in the recipe, but 10 minutes in reality. i'm not too sure what this does, but ok. maybe the flavors meld? the cheese in the filling has already melted from the heat of the bell peppers... anyway, then there's this "spring tomato sauce" that goes with the crepes - and i recommend definitely serving at least a tomato sauce with the crepes, because it's a surprisingly fantastic combination. the recipe uses some dried herbs, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and then some fresh tomatoes. it tasted only slightly canned to me, but i think i would make the sauce entirely from fresh everything next time - that teaches me to use canned tomatoes.

the curried egg salad sandwiches were also a hit. the mixture is basically eggs, chopped parsley and chives, currants, mayo, and curry powder. it's a great combination - and the currants, provided that they're soft and not hard, are a fabulous addition, and better than craisins, which are too big and a bit too tart. the recipe uses "country bread" but i used my favorite tea-sandwich bread - that arnold's brick oven white bread, which i'm sure has no nutritional value, but is just the right thickness and has square slices.

i love hollandaise. there's just nothing else to say about it. while you lot are thinking, "but what about the calories!" i'm thinking "lemony, buttery goodness..."

i also love hamantaschen - thank you, eva! there are three good triangular foods i know of: hamantaschen, boreg, and tea sandwiches that do not involve copious amounts of cream cheese. (sorry, i don't like baklava.) by the way, if you were wondering, the word "easter" deviates from the latin, hebrew and french (the french is "paques" - and this is the word for both easter and passover) because easter comes from "austron," the northumbrian name for the goddess of fertility and sunrise. yay pagan roots. if austron is the goddess of sunrise, will she bless my architecture project with more light?

and the souffles. they were tart and sweet all at the same time, an exclamation point of a souffle if there ever was one. the combination of the souffle and the creme anglaise was absolutely perfect, with the tartness cut by the cool creamy vanilla. at that point, sadly, i couldn't finish my souffle because i had had one hamantaschen and one egg salad triangle too many.

finally: the mimosas were fabulous. i hope the rest of you ate some chocolate bunnies.

good eatin' in the neighborhood

you should see our rush video! it has me in it! ok, actually you shouldn't see it just because it has me in it. i can't act and i'm not photogenic. but i made the cake in it, and the video itself very funny. you can see it if you go to the "etc" page of our website: http://web.mit.edu/lmf/www/.

our menus for the week before and after spring break:

11 mars / lisa : legumes en cocotte, mostaccioli alfredo, brown sugar pound cake

13 mars / michelle : salade nicoise, pates au pistou, ratatouille, gratin d'abricots aux amandes

14 mars / jessica lee : rainbow congee, hot + sour cabbage, minced "squab" in lettuce leaves, minced tofu in lettuce leaves, caramelized banana purses

15 mars / manal : fattoush, hummus, mankeesh, rice pudding

16 mars / diana : salad, meat + potato lasagna, vegetable lasagna, apple bundles

17 mars / jessica huot : salad, texas toast, penne rosa, pecan pie

28 mars / george : hommos bi tehini, tabbouleh, fassoliah wa riz, vegetable fassoliah wa riz, ben and jerry's

29 mars / holly : potato gnocchi, stuffed mushrooms, orange sponge cake with meringue and dark chocolate sauce

30 mars / waseem : chickpea salad, boreg, orange juice chicken, chocolate chip cookies

31 mars / marissa : italian menu no. 6 : foccacia with ricotta and olive oil, spaghetti + meatballs, fettuccine with sundried tomato-olive-red pepper cream sauce, creamed spinach, pick-me-ups (aka chocolate chip cookie/chocolate chocolate chip cookie/oatmeal raisin/spice cookie ice cream sandwiches)

1 avril / v : empanadas, tinadtad + rice, pineapple surprise (one should never call anything "[insert random word] surprise." i am sure it will be good, but still...however, v, i forgive you because i love tinadtad.)

spring break : going, going, gone...

i think everyone, myself, included, thought i would be cooking more than i have this spring break. considering my finances, which took a hit after outlet shopping, you would better understand why i haven't cooked that much this spring break. on the upside, i now own a beautiful trifle bowl (i have coveted a trifle bowl for about two years now), many t-shirts and button-down shirts, silver leather sandals, and a beautiful yellow raincoat to keep my iridescent lime green rain jacket company in my closet. i didn't need the sandals, but i find shoes that i like (and can afford) so infrequently that when i do, i am generally compelled to buy them knowing that i will wear them enough to justify the cost (case in point: my black leather flats).

back to food. i have a couple of quickies to impart. in fact, to impart again because blogger really hates me right now and i'm rewriting this post. sadly, it will be abbreviated since i do not desire to rewrite the entire thing, but i encourage you to soldier on, anyway.

i had intended to do more work during break, but of course that's never the way it goes. first, on monday, i departed bright and early with luis for new york city, in order to visit MoMA per my 4.104 TA's instructions. sorry, leo, we didn't make it to dia, but at least i know what it is now. if i could have had my way with spring break, i would like to have gone to marfa, texas, to see donald judd's "100 untitled works in milled aluminum." i think that's what it was called. anyway, see the new york times magazine from last saturday if you're confused.

back to MoMA. the line was looooong. MoMA and the guggenheim are the only museums open on mondays, so go figure. the building itself is gorgeous - all perfect proportions and perfectly placed windows in the way that a beautiful actress is all legs. and because this is my food blog, i will digress and move onto the food. did i mention that every inch of this museum is gorgeous? yoshio taniguchi, i love you and will marry you unless tadao ando asks me first. to get to the point, even the cafe on the second floor - the plebeian, proletarian level eating (as opposed to the restaurant on the top floor for the high rollers). step into cafe 2 and order your food, then sit down at the long, minimalist wooden tables that are delightfully communal. the communal thing was completely unexpected, and we discovered that there are nice people in new york city. or, nice tourists; the people next to us offered us their extra cookie before they left. the food is, of course, expensive, as museum food is wont to be, but it was worth it. plus, i hope part of the price inflation went to the waiters, who don't really get tipped because the turnover of diners is so frenetic. anyway, for lunch i had possibly the best panini of my life. well, not just possibly - i'll take a stand like i'm always being encouraged to do in studio. i had the best panini of my life, in a museum cafe in new york city. if you're italian from italy, you probably want to slap me for saying this, but at least know that i have been to italy and had panini there. the panini i had was a simple prosciutto, fontina, and rocket deal. but it was hot and the bread was wonderfully crusty, and the fontina was so good and melty...rarely do i like designer greens, but the rocket was actually good. i had never actually had fontina before, and now i understand why other people like it so much. and i wasn't really that hungry, so you can't accuse me of enjoying it just because i was ravenous enough for anything to look good.

this isn't food related, but the people who offered us the cookie left shortly after we sat down. they were replaced by two old women. i usually try not to perpetuate stereotypes, but they sat down and immediately wondered (a) where their food was and (b) if one of the waiters was going to come clear the dishes that were still on the table (after looking at us and wondering in a non-subtle manner if they were ours). the previous party's number was still clipped to the spot, and i started to take it off, to help them, but one of the women stopped me and left it there. and of course, about a minute later a waiter comes with food for table #91. except the old women really had a different number - #91 was the number of the previous party. the wrong food was brought and the two women tell the waiter what they've ordered. he leaves and one woman starts complaining to the other: "really, ursula..." another waiter came by and asked ursula for her receipt. she gave it over extremely reluctantly, testily demanding that he bring it back tout de suite; he looks at the receipt, immediately discerns the problem, and gracefully pretends it's all his fault. oh, ursula.

a note about the lighting - even the lighting in the cafe was perfect. there is no direct light in this building, which is wonderful. yoshio taniguchi, i love you and i will marry you, unless tadao ando asks me first. the lighting in the cafe is such that the fixtures point upwards and the light reflects off these white square panels that extend about 6 inches from the ceiling. the result: square expanses of warm white light.

the second quickie is really a quickie. jessica and i can cross lala rokh off our list of restaurants we need to go to before jessica leaves for oxford. it was pretty good - exotic food is always fun - but slightly less well executed than, say, cafe baraka, which is slightly more exotic than lala rokh. if that's because it was lunch and not dinner, i don't know. the restaurant itself is a nice place to eat, and the food seems to be authentic and wonderfully exotic, but at the end of the day i could have made the same thing myself, at home. i had a great barley soup with shreds of carrot in it, then a wrap with saffron chicken and saffroned potatoes. jessica had this fabulous appetizer of a flourless herb cake, which was great if not quite my speed - it will take me a bit longer before i really like anything that has so many herbs in it. but what lunch at lala rokh really made me do is wish that celina had done another persian menu at lmf before she moved.

and finally, a short plug which i would generally not make. every now and then, my favorite food magazines turn out really spectacular issues. like that issue of gourmet with the extensively footnoted article about the maine lobster festival (footnotes! in a food magazine!) and gorgeous, gorgeous photos of food in the summer. the new issue of gourmet has a great article about a woman who starts celebrating passover just so she can make her grandmother's brisket (a funny parallel: jessica and i are having an easter brunch expressly to have mimosas), and an entertaining article by calvin trillin about two dinners in Paris, one of which involves a deep love for perfect dumplings. then, the new issue of saveur is all about american artisanal cheeses. i love cheese and i hope you do too.

p.s. to my mother: i adore chicken pot pie (and you know it), and i adore it when you bring me your chicken pot pie, which inexplicably gets better every time you make it. thanks, and much love.

review: a legal victory at aujourd'hui

i originally wrote this about a week ago, while i was in studio one early morning. unfortunately, lame-athena (an earlier version that is what scarpa, the uber-old, uber-slow athena machine in studio) wouldn't let me post this then, so here it is now.

* * *
when they asked us if we were celebrating a special occasion, keith glibly replied "a legal victory." no need to elaborate that it was waseem's collection of the award from his small claims telemarketing claim. shortly thereafter, keith was mortified when they asked if we were all overage; soon after that, keith was mortified when he asked for a glass of milk...en francais. the waiter: "sorry, i don't speak french."

a brief word or two about the decor and atmosphere before the important stuff (the food, naturally). i would have to say that the lighting was absolutely perfect. i wasn't really a fan of the decor in general, though - probably because i don't tend to like patterns, especially patterns with flowers. the colors were great, though - all muted grays, blues, and browns, and i did like the fact that one wall was the wine collection.

and on to the food. first of all, they had a rather unusual bread selection - white roll, potato roll, rosemary flatbread, and walnut bread. a little different than sel de la terre, which is the gold standard in restaurant bread - especially in the choice of that flatbread. it was kind of odd - and not to say that it wasn't good, since it was great - it was nevertheless incongruous with the general idea of bread to start a meal. the potato roll was surprisingly potato-y, for those of us who are accustomed to the egg-yolk-yellow of sliced potato bread from the supermarket. it was rather nice, and in my opinion the best of the bread.

and first courses - i had the pork shank as an appetizer. the thing that surprised me most was the sheer quantity of food at this restaurant. It was a little bit too much - granted, it was expensive, but you're paying for the experience of the meal and perfect proportions - it's not an all-you-can-eat. your money's worth is a perfectly orchestrated meal, not an overfull stomach.

that aside, the appetizer was great. it came on top of a bed of green...stuff...i forget exactly what it was...as well as a tiny salad of mache, and a few pieces of sauteed leek. the plate was also drizzled with truffle cream, which was really the reason why i'd picked that appetizer, having never had truffle cream before. it was quite lovely, especially with the truffle cream, which tasted wonderfully earthy.

oh! we had an amuse-bouche (which touched us off on the topic of the phrase amuse-guele, which is sometimes used in place of amuse-bouche, though guele is a pejorative word) of onions with pastis and a bit of...darn, i forget what the green stuff was. i believe there was the word carrot in there too, somewhere. anyway, it was a surprisingly good combination of flavors - very clean and refreshing.

on to the second course. jessica had the vegetable gnocchi, natalia and keith had the venison, carrie had the veal, waseem had the beef tenderloin, and i had the duck. jessica and i also shared "forbidden rice risotto," which was really great with all of the cheese in it. i'm not so sure it had enough forbidden rice in it to call it "forbidden rice risotto," but it was good nonetheless. jessica's gnocchi had truffle foam on it, which was one of the spectacular accomplishments of the meal - the actual texture in your mouth was so emphemeral, but the flavor was stunning. It's too bad they don't sell essence of truffle in bottles.

the duck i got was done two ways - a leg and a breast - which seemed like an enormous amount of duck, as i'm used to just a breast. it was nice to have both light and dark meat, though the leg was slightly oversalted. the leg came over a toasted piece of brioche, which i'm not convinced was actually brioche, but which was a fabulous combination with the duck, and a clever way (i have no idea if this was actually the intention of the chef) of paying homage to the way that the French use bread to sop up
anything and everything. the duck also came with sauteed endives with a watermelon relish. i have to say that i wasn't impressed with the watermelon relish, but the taste of endives has really grown on me in the past couple of years. the duck breast, however, was perfect. i had a glass of hang time (robert mondavi really has his fingers in everything) with my meal, and even that seemed enormous even when taking into account that the glass was large.

and finally, dessert. i can confidently say that there have been a few truly fabulous desserts in my life. in random order: the grand marnier chocolate pot de creme at cyclops in seattle, jessica's rote gruze and iles flottantes, ice cream at craigie street bistrot, the hazelnut souffle at l'espalier, and now the honey cake at aujourd'hui. the dessert consisted of a small honey cake shaped like a fez in the middle of a long rectangular plate. the cake, about the size of a dixie cup, sat on a smear of a cassis sauce (great color). to the left was a small glass cup (shaped like the holy grail from indiana jones and the holy grail) with a scoop of chai ice cream sitting on top of a small pool of cassis sauce with blackberries in it. to the right was two tiny slices of sauteed (or perhaps poached) anjou pears with a dollop of whipped mascarpone that had definitely been infused with something, possibly the pear poaching liquid. i say that this was perfect not because it was beautiful, but because the combination of eating all three part was absolutely wonderful at the end of the meal, which had been a tad heavy - refreshing, perfectly balanced, and actually the embodiment of ethereal. i have not had such a good dessert in quite a while.

the meal ended with a two-tiered tea plate of tiny sweets - tiny (the size of a nickel) pistachio butter cookies, peach gummies (go figure, i have no idea why), tiny chocolates made of meringue and hazelnut ganache, tiny pink meringues, and little clusters of what looked to be coconut and white chocolate. i first had this sort of thing at l'espalier, and i must say that it's a wonderful thing to have at the end of a meal - having everyone share tiny tidbits of fun things. it was quite the surprise when they came out with another basket of sweets, after the tea service - a little basket of house-made marzipan with a raspberry chocolate filling, dipped in chocolate. the mark of a good chocolate is a thin coating of chocolate around the filling - too many chocolates have very thick coatings of chocolate. anyway, the marzipan bit was probably my favorite of the sweets at the the end, though i am rather biased since i am slowly eating away at the chunk of marzipan that jessica gave me back in january (that one would usually cook with, or at least use for something more glamourous than eating).

in retrospect, i am glad to have gone to aujourd'hui. i believe that that was the best service i've ever had at a restaurant, but i think that the balance of the food was slightly off. i enjoyed the food at craigie street bistrot more - it seemed to be more simple, even if it wasn't. jessica tells me that aujourd'hui and sibling rivalry are on the list of gourmet's top four restaurants in boston. i would say that the food may be slightly better at sibling rivarly in terms of flavor combinations - again, simpler - but the preparations are better at aujourd'hui, as are the desserts. i would say that my favorite restaurants are still pigalle and craigie street bistrot in boston, and cyclops in seattle. i'm not trying to perpetuate the stereotype that the best food you can get is really expensive, because you're not paying for food - you're paying for a meal. a meal you make at home can be just as good as restaurant food; it's just a different experience, and you have different expectations.

supersnazzy versus plain jane

i decided on tuesday afternoon that i'd had enough of studio and classes (i have this feeling that i'm supposed to go to studio every day, even though it's not true), and skipped 11.012 in favor of taking care of my shriveled bananas. i poked one of the clementines that was on top of them, and surmised that since they were quite squishy - in that way that the peel is still tough but you just know it's squishy inside - i should skip peeling them for fear of finding them completely greenish black inside.

anyway, this is all just a very convoluted and longhand way of saying that i stayed home and baked a (1) supersnazzy banana cake and a (2) plain jane banana bread with my seven shriveled bananas.

i had really wanted to make a layer cake - something elaborate to relax myself - but i had these bananas that were begging to be used and didn't really want to go all the way to star just for a cake i was going to sacrifice. there's no reason, i concluded, why i couldn't make my layer cake out of the banana bread (which is not really bread, anyway). consequently, the banana bread batter got scraped into a jelly roll pan and a 9x13 pan - the jelly roll bread for the layer cake, and the 9x13 pan for those not adventurous enough to eat the layer cake. of course, the 9x13 pan of banana bread was also a contingency plan, in the case that the layer cake was a disaster.

the idea for the banana layer cake - with thin layers because when you're in the mood for making layer cakes it must be thin layers - comes from a photo i saw in my sister's most recent issue of food & wine, in which there is a round banana cake layered with what i believe was whipped cream, coconut, and maybe some other stuff. at any rate, it was quite pretty, and as i didn't have any cream, i settled upon some sort of chocolate confection. much as i like chocolate chip banana bread, i seem to be unable to put any in mine.

the chocolate confection was, at first, just chocolate and butter. but chocolate and butter seemed to be a pretty one-dimensional combination. there was the chocolate for, well, chocolate, and butter for melt-in-your-mouth-could-only-be-butter texture, but nothing else, really. the chocolate was just chocolate chips, so we wouldn't be getting a particularly exciting chocolate taste - not that you would really need sophisticated chocolate for a banana cake. the easy fix, after scouting out the pantry, was cocoa powder (sifted in the lazy method with my left hand) and a can of coconut milk leftover from someone's menu back in mid-february. both cut the sweetness of the chocolate rather nicely, with the cocoa adding some punch to the chocolate factor.

the end result: 1/2" thick layers of cake, spread with chocolate "ganache," then scattered with thinly-sliced banana.

the (other) end result: a regular, rectangular banana bread. the nice thing about banana bread is that you really have to overbake it for a long time before you ruin it.

the end result in the morning: pans gone, and an uncharacteristically clean table left behind.