Often people aren’t sure what to do with persimmons. While Fuyu persimmons are eaten while crunchy and are good in fruit compotes and wintery salads, Hachiya persimmons are abruptly tannic when unripe and must be squishy soft before eaten. And if you’ve even tried an unripe one, you’ll know that I’m being kind when I say “abruptly.” Fully ripe, they’re quite sweet and even though…
2010 was a very big year for cookbooks. And when I say “big”, I don’t just mean there were plenty of great cookbooks published this year, but some of them were huge. Ready for Dessert tipped the baker’s scale at over 3-pounds, and subsequent books that continued throughout the year tested the limits of my strength, such as Bon Appétit Desserts, which weighs in at…
Cocktail culture has landed in Paris. It took a while, though. France has always been known for its wine and beer, rather than Torontos, Cosmopolitans, and Martinis. And many of us have memories of trying to explain to a very confused café waiter how to make a martini, when they want to serve you a glass of Martini & Rossi (vermouth).
I have a stack (actually, about four stacks) of cookbooks that arrived this year, many of them riddled with bookmarks for recipes. Some of them I managed to get to, presenting recipes on the blog or baking for friends and neighbors, and a few I didn’t get around to yet. In this year’s round up, I did sneak in a few recipes from favorite classics…
I don’t know when it took hold, but le Brunch has become popular in Paris. Unlike the Bloody Mary and Mimosa-fueled repasts we had when I lived in San Francisco, in Paris, the concept is a little different. For one thing, Sundays are blissfully “sacred” and no one seems to want to wake up and go anywhere until — well, Monday. And the places that do…
In my high school locker room, when the jocks congregated after winning a big game, they’d all jump around, yelling the word, “Sah-weet! Sah-weet!“ adding a big, tight, thumbs-up for emphasis, while jumping all over each other celebrating their victory. While not as exciting as a group of sweaty, nearly-naked high school athletes jumping all over each other, I don’t know about you, but what…
Here’s a round-up of some of my favorite cookbooks and recipes that I presented on the site in 2008. A few are books that I’ve been devouring, and others are those I’ve been bookmarking recipes in, to make on the site in the upcoming months. All in all, the best of the year… When they start cloning humans, they’d better start with Flo Braker. One…
I promised a bunch of holiday-friendly recipes this month, and this one is a doozy! Peanut butter cookies, filled with salted peanut caramel—do those sound as good to you as they do to me? The recipe is from The Art and Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet, who is one of America’s best bakers. Her name might not be on the edge of your tongue,…
When I was in New York City in October I fell in love. Deeply and madly. I’d swapped apartments with a friend and as I was leafing through her stack of new baking books, I became hopelessly smitten with one in particular: Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. And even though both my suitcases were dangerously over-packed (although my new iMac was more than worth the…
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