Eden

A dear friend of mine passed away about 2 years ago & her husband just brought me a bunch of her recipe cards. I'm looking forward to using them, as a way to stay connected with her & to try some new dishes... It was nice to discover that 3 or 4 were recipes I'd given to her For my own legacy, I want to be sure my china, which is not family china but came down from a "godmother" type friend of the family, similarly goes on to someone who will appreciate it. I'll have to wait & see how my various friends children turn out. I keep telling them to raise me a girly-girl so I can pass on my childhood tea-set at least, but so far it hasn't worked out. I also have a huge library of culinary history research books & papers (many in italian) that will have to go specifically to people who'll can use/read them. Of course someday I hope to leave the world a book or two of my own out of all that research material. Oh and my mandoline has to go to someone who won't cut their hand off using it & then try to sue my ghost for damages

Last nght was one of the tastiest failures I've ever made... I was trying to modify Abra's sesame cake from a few weeks ago by using gluten free flour mix. Then of course half way through I discover I don't have enough GF flour mixed up, and am out of some of the rice flours I use to make it, so I sort of wung it & added a random mix of tapioca flour & potato starch to fill out the measure. I also baked it in my "pie oven" which is a little tempermental (though not lexy's Oven from Hades). Instead of the hour called for in the original recipe this was in the oven for about 2.5 hours total with me sticking in a cake tester every 20 mins or so and they always came out gooey I finally just gave up because, while nicely browned on top, & unquestionably cooked through, the damned thing was clearly never going to become cake Then we tasted it. What we had instead of cake was this gooey sesame pudding with a crunchy top that was just fabulous! incredibly rich & peanutbuttery, with nice bits of raisin and sesame seeds for contrast. I don't think I can ever duplicate it, which is too bad, because while it wasn't the dish I was trying for it was incredibly good, and it made my gluten-free guests very happy

rather than start a new thread, I'll just bring this one to the top A friend & I just candied a bunch of rose petals. normally I use them fairly quickly, but in this case we'd like to save them until october. any tips for storing candied rose petals for several months? We used only sugar & rosewater (no egg) for our candying process if that matters.

you could approximate one of my favorite (16th century) salads, by combining the Butterleaf lettuce, Scallions, Orange, Olives, Capers, Cornichons, dates, raisins and Almonds and a light vinaigrette.

I will have to find some time this week to join the crepe fest. Like Klary, I have some buckwheat sitting about in the pantry, begging to be turned into crepey goodness... I can make buckwheat crepes no problem, but for some reason I have problems making sweet crepes. Any "never-fail" sweet crepe recipes? I tried Julia's & it didn't like me... Oh and since I'm doing a big dinner on monday for the no egg, no wheat, uber allergy crowd, does anyone have an alterna-crepe recipe that works? If so I might turn that into a crepe fest...

salumi here I come! thanks for the heads up Ling. This is certainly among my faves here in seattle.

please do post the white cake recipe, I have a couple Gluten-free friends and would love to make a traditional white cake for them!

stuffing (aka dressing) for poultry of course! Along the same line, savory bread pudding. I make my sweet bread pudding freehand, because different breads & different stages of staleness in your bread will mess with you if you try to follow a recipe anyway. Just add eggs & cream beaten together with sugar and spices (I use mace a lot) till it's goopy enough, but not soupy, and mix in whatever fruit is lying around, and some dots of butter, then bake.

Interesting, I looked a bit at the ChefSimon website but lacking French couldn't tell if they have ingredient lists for the products (I think not?) Beyond the controversial side of "is this cheating?" this would be my biggest concern: what if one of the ingredients is peanut oil? or shellfish? just to name two common food allergies. If you're telling your customers that they're eating truffled pasta, they should be safe in trusting that what they're eating is pasta flavored with truffle and not having to ask "does this contain seafood?" when it's not in the menu description or anyones reasonable assumption of what the dish would include...

a savory sauce for pork made with good stock and cognac! I second the pickled cherry reccomendation - they're awesome!

When cooking for my (dairy, soy, wheat, egg, chocolate, etc) allergic friend I use Wendy Wark's gluten free flour substitute for a lot of desserts. they end up slightly fussier than regular flour products, but good enough and you should ask if that dairy allergies is cow only or aslo goat & sheep because you can get really good goat butter from Meyerberg? Otherwise just use a crisco like product for your shortening. For sugar try subbing granulated fructose we discussed a similar set of allergies here recently, and if you ignore the chocolate cake part of the discussion many of the recipes are relevent to your situation, if you sub out the flour. Sorbets are great. Also you can make a killer coconut ice-cream by mixing "Cream of coconut" and rice-milk And good for you for trying to do something nice for this little girl - I'm sure she will appreciate your efforts!

pricey! $150 for one little pot that I like Actually the plain white ones break out to about $6-7 each, which isn't so bad, but still adds up when you like to buy your serving dishes in sets of 12... They sure are cuteness personified though!

for a birthday cake I second the War-era cake reccomendation. It's great! For more general snacks I make Eggless Ginger Cookies or Eggless Oatmeal cookies. you can either use a soy-free crisco like product or shell out the bucks for goat butter if that's an option (Meyerburg? makes one that's pricey, but not at all goaty) I know it seems daunting at first glance to avoid all those, but it's not that hard - there are a ton of online resources these days to help - and your friends with allergies will really appreciate the effort!

I think that's the June issue. the Pizza Margherita is in the July/August issue. As a subscriber I seem to get them notably earlier than the news-stands...

inspired by lexy's beautiful tarts from a week or so back, I made a test batch with a recipe where the apples are cooked in wine first. They don't compare to lexy's but they were awfully cute nonetheless: 1.5 inch tart: four inch tart: I think the four inch is prettier, but the smaller tart had a much better apple to crust ratio. I think I might try a two inch tart next time just to get a little more "flower power" without changing the crust ratio too much... hand made crusts without the edging would also help make them look prettier I think...

We used DarcieB's recipe* from here on eG. Bill didn't mention any deviations. FWED as always your work is beautiful! And I know from experience that it must taste as good as it looks *do a search on basil to find it on the page. For some reason the direct link is broken...

No photo because it was not the most visually appealing, but tonights eventual desset was a real winner for taste. After seeing the Strawberry Bruschetta thread I decided to try it. not the greatest ever since the berries weren't the best, but the grilled pound cake and a a dollop of sweetened sour cream made for a nice enough combo. However we then added a scoop of home-made basil ice-cream & suddenly WOW! the warm berries against the sweet cold basil were plate licking good I will have to revisit this later in the summer when we actually have decent berries available.

This month's Cook's Illustrated has an interesting article on making neapolitan style pizza at home. They use a 2:1 ratio of AP to cake flour, and further adapt the recipe quite a bit to make it work in a home oven. They claim the results are similar to those of a traditional dough in an 800 degree oven. I haven't tried it to judge, but I did find their explanations of some of the changes they made reasonable.

Any word on what's going into the InnBinn space? It will be odd to see something else on that corner - it's been there forever...

Based on Ling's raves I deviated from my usual order and tried Cafe Besalu's strawberry danish Friday morning. It was VERY good, but I think their pain au chocolat edges it out in my book. Maybe it was just mine, but I would have liked just a little more berry on it. beautiful flavors though. Next time I'll have to go when I'm more hungry & do a side by side to be sure edited to specify which bakery...

With a limited dining budget, food allergies, and so many places I already know are good, I really appreciate seeing an online menu w/prices when I'm trying to decide if I want to try someplace new. From the restaurant's point of view I know it must seem like a hassle sometimes to keep these pages up to date, but really isn't it worth it to get your vision of your restaurant out there, rather than leaving potential customers dependant on other folks reviews? When I Google a restaurant I'll always go to the direct webpage first if it's an option...

Besalu for breakfast snacks (but I always want them on mondays & tuesdays ) Mayuri - total comfort food for me. Gorditos - we've been going since they opened & the owners are sweethearts Mandalay Cafe (most entertaining wine list?) Kabul Chili pepper for the purple ancho chili rellenos When we're feeling really flush we go to LeGourmand Oh and yes, we go to exRositas/Luisa's if it's really hot out because it's nearby & it's got AC

My wonderful husband made Basil icecream for dessert tonight. if I hadn't done it already, I'd marry him for this one - it's SO lush! Lexy those apple tarts are an inspiration! And Desiderio's lobster tails make me think of my favorite pastry shop in Positano

I thought Au Bouchon was dead, did they reopen in Fremont & I missed it???

we made a special trip down to the mexican grocery yesterday to get pepino-chili popsicles So is there a trick to making popsicles besides pouring some juice into the little molds? I've got some pomegranate juice, which i was thinking of mixing with a little limeade...