bites out of life

A Cheater’s Chicken Soup

When I have the flu, the blues or both, I always turn to chicken soup. Sure, a can will do in a pinch, but nothing hits the spot like a big bowl of the homemade stuff, full of chunky vegetables, lots of herbs and plenty of chicken. So I decided to make some last week, for restorative purposes.

But well …. every single recipe I could initially find called for making my own stock. Simmering a whole chicken with carrots, celery, onions and herbs for more than an hour sounds like a great idea in theory, but a) an hour for stock + more for the actual soup is a lot of time after a long day, b) I didn’t have a soup pot big enough to hold a 4-pound chicken and more than 2 quarts of liquid, and c) I’m cooking for 2-3 here and most of those recipes had ridiculously high yields.

So instead, I decided to poach the chicken in stock and use that as my soup base. I used a combination of a poached chicken soup recipe from Food & Wine and a simple chicken soup from Emeril as a guide for my own version. (And yes, the entire time I was cooking, I listened to this.)

The soup smelled amazing and in my opinion, tasted pretty darn good. Considering it took less than a half hour from start to finish (minus the chopping, but I’m very slow), it’s now become my go-to recipe — especially since it freezes very nicely.

And in what he assures me was a compliment, my cousin said, “wow, you made this? I thought it was Progresso.”

…

Carrots with Sausage and Rosemary

At the risk of getting carried away (I would never do that … ) with Thanksgiving talk two weeks away from the big day, if you were looking for a side dish to add to your spread, look no further. This. Is. It.

I found this recipe as a part of Food and Wine’s Ultimate Thanksgiving Guide, and they’re not kidding. It’s nicely balanced between the sweet carrots and the meaty sausage, with woody rosemary running through.

Best part: it takes less than a half hour to make and the hardest part is chopping the vegetables. Have you added it to your menu yet?

The only real change I made to the recipe was to use pre-cooked chipotle chicken sausage instead of the recommended uncooked sweet Italian style, mostly because I wanted a contrast between the sweet carrots and the spicy meat. I also halved it, since the original makes 12 servings. My version is below. …

Warm Cauliflower Salad with Chevre

There are a little over two weeks until my favorite holiday of the year. Thanksgiving is the best — cooking for days, eating for hours, shopping the next day. (Was there any surprise that I’d be obsessed with a holiday that celebrates family, football, and above all, food? Please.) Plus, the Friday After Thanksgiving is also the official kickoff of holiday music on the radio and if there’s anything I’m obsessed with, it’s holiday tunes.

All of this is to say that I’m really looking forward to Thursday, November 25. And so is New York magazine, which ran a series of holiday recipes in last week’s issue. Thomas Keller made creamed pearl onions, Mario Batali made apple pie (with real pork lard in the crust — the man has no shame), Tom Colicchio made stuffing, etc.

But I only had eyes for Alfred Portale. Or at least his roasted cauliflower salad with fresh goat cheese. Let’s not lie, he had me at “roasted cauliflower,” but arugula, carrots and apples tossed with an apple cider-Dijon dressing sounded amazing too. It’s a multi-part (read: long) process that makes for a hearty main-course salad, but the effort is worth it. There’s salty and sweet and spicy and crunchy and soft and tangy and healthy all on one plate. For the sake of balance, Keith and I paired it with fries. …

Baked Meatballs with Rigatoni

About once a month, my stomach and my brain wage a war of attrition over my latest food craving. My stomach says, “Must have macarons. All day. Every day,” and my brain says, “think of your favorite jeans! Think of the dress you’ll have to be cut out of!”

My stomach just responds, “talk to the hand!” and proceeds to drag me all over New York City (and even Paris) in search of my next macaron. Some months it’s Greek yogurt, other months it’s DessertTruck Works, sables — you name it. This month, it was meatballs. Sure, I managed to stave my stomach off for a few weeks (it wasn’t cold enough outside, meatballs aren’t fall enough, etc.). But in the end, my stomach won out. As usual.

The last time I needed a fix, I went to The Meatball Shop in the Lower East Side. But this time, I decided to make my own. (Well actually, Keith made them while I took pictures. Same thing, really.) He made this recipe up, and let’s just say he’s a lot better at that kind of thing than I am. These baked meatballs aren’t the most traditional, but they’re easy, delicious and can be made with things we already had on hand — perfect for a weekday night. …

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Filling

I am a woman possessed. (Obsessed? Probably both.) In one recipe after another, from the apple yogurt cake to the cider-braised swiss chard with apples to the butternut squash couscous and here, today, pumpkin whoopie pies with a maple-cream cheese filling, I am utterly consumed by fall flavors. Perhaps I can’t help it — fall is my favorite season after all. The crisp weather, the chunky sweaters, my birthday … what more could you want in three months?

(This is what happens when you don’t allow enough time for chilling … )

Well, if you’re anything like me, you want these. By the dozen. Whoopie pies are cake-like cookie sandwiches with some sort of sweet frosting. Usually, they’re made with chocolate. But after trying the pumpkin cookies at Meredith’s Bread way back when, I decided I needed to make pumpkin ones, stat (er, almost nine months later … ).

I used a combination of recipes: the cookies mostly from Rachael Ray and the filling partly from Rachael and partly from the Brown Eyed Baker. Naturally, I made a few changes but they must’ve been okay because I brought these to a Halloween brunch hosted by a friend and they seemed to be a hit. I personally couldn’t resist the spicy pumpkin cake and the slightly sweet, earthy frosting combo. I may or may not be eating one right now, but only so that I can accurately describe its taste. Only for research purposes, people.

And since I lack an ice cream scoop with a lever, I had to go with the two-spoon method of creating the cookies, hence the exaggeratedly homemade (read: ugly) look. …

Cumin-Scented Butternut Squash Couscous

While I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a picky eater, there are many foods I shy away from. Most seafood, for, uh … one. I also keep my distance from anything licorice-y, raisins, most caramels (but never this one), coconut, tofu, fresh tomatoes and until recently, all forms of butternut squash.

It wasn’t the flavor of the squash itself that turned me off, but rather the way it was so often prepared: with tons of sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Deterred by one too many butternut squash soups that tasted like pumpkin pie filling, I even stayed away from my mom’s squash curry, which is more spicy and smoky — exactly the kind of squash recipe I was looking for — if I had bothered to try it.

When I got a recipe for butternut squash couscous with cumin in my email one morning, I was instantly intrigued. I forwarded the email to my aunt, who is a big couscous fan, and when she showed equal enthusiasm, I knew it was on. My time to conquer butternut squash had come.

This recipe was foolproof and since we bought pre-cut squash, super easy. It’s based loosely on one from Aida Mollenkamp by way of Chowhound, though we of course made plenty of changes. Our version is below. It would be perfect with roast lamb for a very Moroccan-style meal, but we had it with chicken and still enjoyed it immensely. …

Fall + Buttermilk Scones

While growing up, my fall Sundays consisted of three activities: homework, Redskins football and raking. Though our yard is small, there are trees a-plenty and I relished the opportunity to create massive piles of crunchy leaves. The colors amazed me: burnt rust, fiery red, golden yellow, copper, a few splotches of still-emerald green. Every now and then, my family would load into the car and drive a few hours to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. There, a forest full of orange-plumed treetops made the entire mountainside appear aflame. It was a sight to behold, one that I greatly miss in the city.

But in a case of making the most of what’s available to me, I decided to take a stroll this morning on Riverside Drive. By Columbia, there are tree-lined streets, benches, green areas and parks along the Hudson, perfect for a breath of fresh air, a jog (I’ll let you guess how often I actually run here … ) or a mind-clearing walk. While the trees hadn’t quite reached their peak yet (I blame the weirdly warm weather), I did get my leaf-peeping fill. And to top it off, when I came home I made scones.

(Okay, so maybe the real reason for my walk was to break in my new boots … )

Keith and I bought a quart of buttermilk to make dip a few weeks ago. We didn’t want to buy a whole quart, but had no choice, as Whole Foods doesn’t sell it anything smaller. After using a little to make the dip, I used a little bit more to make vanilla orange buttermilk cake. And to use up more, I made buttermilk scones, using an old recipe I found on Food Network.

These were so easy, made with ingredients I already had on hand.* I wanted to try the base recipe first, without any additions, to see if I liked the scone. Let me tell you: these were perfect. A crisp, slightly browned crust led way to a soft, crumbly interior that was slightly sweet — the perfect base for any kind of flavored scone you could imagine. I had my heart set on a pecan and maple-glazed version before discovering that pure syrup is exorbitantly priced at my grocery store. So now I’ve got orange cranberry, lemon strawberry, cinnamon chocolate chip, vanilla walnut and apple cinnamon brown sugar ideas floating in my head. If you swapped out the sugar for some salt, a cheddar and chive or jalapeÃ±o cheddar scone would probably be heavenly. I can’t wait to try them all.

For now, a plain one topped with cinnamon-y apple butter was the perfect bite of fall.

*And the best part about this recipe? You get to use your hands!

…

Vanilla Orange Buttermilk Cake

At one point in my life, I ate three oranges a day. Two with lunch and one more when I came home from school. By the time I got to college, I was a little orange-d out, though I never failed to sneak them off people’s plates or drinks (Blue Moon, anyone?). Lately I’ve been feeling the need for a little Vitamin C and wanted something orange. And if you’re looking for fruit, what better place to put it than in cake?

In full disclosure mode, I am totally baffled by this cake. The recipe, from Molly Wizenberg at Orangette, looked foolproof: fresh vanilla bean and tangy buttermilk added to a standard cake recipe with an orange glaze. The word “creamsicle” was tossed around, and I knew I had to make it.

But since I don’t really like vanilla bean, I swapped in pure vanilla extract. Even that was by Molly’s instructions in the comments section of the post. Okay, I made one minor change — I didn’t want to create an orange glaze, so instead I added some orange zest (using a Dorie Greenspan trick of rubbing the zest into the sugar by hand to release the orange’s essential oils) and a teaspoon of orange juice. Not that big of a change right?

Well, this cake didn’t quite turn out as I’d hoped. While mixing the flour in, I thought that the batter looked a little flour-y, but I charged ahead, thinking that it would all work out in the end. After the cake took a full 50 minutes to set in the middle (Molly suggests only 35-38 minutes), I thought maybe my batter was too wet. And then after cutting into the cake, I realized it was overbaked on the edges, drying it out significantly. The vanilla and orange were there, but very subtle. I still can’t figure out what happened.

I will say this: as an accompaniment to coffee, this cake can do no wrong. It is slightly sweet and has subtle flavors that balance well with a strong cup o’ joe. Best of all, the coffee takes care of the cake’s dryness. I can’t stop eating it with my morning cup cups, so perhaps it wasn’t a total failure after all.

My recipe is below. Other than the tweaks above, the only thing I changed was the order in which I did some things, to use fewer bowls. Orangette advises laying out all of the ingredients first and then adding them as needed. But I measured and added in one step, using mostly my measuring cup as a “bowl.” …

Cider-Braised Swiss Chard with Apples

If this cider-braised swiss chard with apples isn’t the most “fall-y” dish ever made, I don’t know what is. It’s got colorful greens (rainbow chard is my favorite kind), crunchy apples and to top it all off, my favorite fall drink, apple cider. I got the recipe from a farmer’s market in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and waited a week to make it. My mistake, as this is exactly the kind of healthy fall eating I needed after a week of rich frittatas and a cake to come later (ooh … intrigue).

As yummy as the swiss chard is, the actual cooking did not go as easily as planned. The recipe didn’t specify which type of apple to use, so I went with Suncrisps from Samascott Orchards. They perhaps were a little too juicy for this dish, so I’d recommend a more traditional cooking apple, like a Jonathan or a Golden Delicious.

Maybe I braised my chard for too long or was too impatient to wait for the liquid to cook off, but after 20 minutes of waiting, there were still puddles of liquid. My chard was already well cooked at this point and the apples were perfectly soft, so I just took them out of the skillet. I’m not sure if it was the extra apples (I doubled the recipe’s amount) or the type of apple or what, but if you see that your veggies look done but there’s still liquid, just remove the veggies (a slotted spoon works great here) and toss the remaining water.

Oddly enough, the recipe didn’t call for seasoning at any point. I added some salt and pepper after the braise, when I could stir it evenly into the chard. I’m sure some cinnamon and nutmeg would complement the flavors of the cider and the apples nicely. A little crushed red pepper would also be welcome, as it would cut some of the sugariness.

The final product is sweet, earthy, crunchy and delicious. I had it for lunch yesterday and I’m looking forward to having it for lunch again today. Though I wasn’t much of a greens-eater before, this dish may have converted me. …

Bacon (or Pancetta) Frittata

There’s something about weekday mornings that makes them consistently stressful. I don’t even work until 2 p.m. and still I find myself running around from place to place, with nary a second for breakfast and barely a minute for lunch.

So sometimes, it’s nice to sit back, relax and enjoy a quiet morning. And what better way to pass the time than by watching Food Network and making a delicious and hearty brunch? Frittatas are the Italian version of an omelette, with creamy eggs started on the stove and often finished in the oven. Keith saw this recipe for a frittata club sandwich on Giada’s show yesterday, and I thought it would be a perfect way to celebrate a peaceful weekday morning. Of course, because I wanted to be able to eat again at some point that day, I nixed the sandwich part of the recipe, and just made the frittata, served on a slice of buttered bread.

This is the first frittata I’ve ever made, and aside from the issues Keith and I had while flipping, it was super easy. It would be great to serve at a brunch party instead of individual omelettes and can be eaten warm or cold. You better believe I have a thousand ideas for my next one! …

Lemony Roasted Cauliflower: AÂ Haiku

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for cauliflower. My mom made it a hundred ways — spicy curries, sautees with potatoes and peas, even whole cauliflower roasts with an Indian spice rub — and I ate them all with glee. So it was surprising to realize that while I’ve roasted vegetables aplenty, I had yet to write an ode to the cauliflower on this here blog. Well …

Cauliflower roasts
so well with lemon, oil, salt,
pepper, red and black.

(In case you didn’t already know, I am a Haiku-writing champion.)

I kid you not: I ate a whole plate of this yesterday. …

A Mayo-Free Chicken Salad

I come from the school of improvisational cooking. My parents, grandparents, aunts — everyone I’ve ever seen cook pretty much — throws things into a pot and hopes it turns out tasty. It makes posting family recipes a total nightmare, as everyone does things a little bit differently and no one can quantify amounts of anything. But it makes for a lot of fun in the kitchen and a lifetime of delicious meals.

Of course, with my barely one year of actual cooking experience (not counting baking), I have none of the intuition for flavor and technique that my family does. But I’ve been in a total lunch rut the past few weeks. Baking and other morning activities leave me with little time to make something before work, and by the time I get downtown to my office, I have barely enough time to grab an overpriced, underwhelming sandwich before rushing to my desk. Needless to say, both my wallet and my stomach end up unsatisfied.

When contemplating fast lunch options that I could make the night before, chicken salad popped into my head. One night this summer, Keith and I made a huge batch of chicken salad to take with us to the beach the next day. Ultimately we didn’t end up taking the salad with us, but boy was it delicious! A diced red onion, a jalapeÃ±o, cilantro and hot sauce, mixed with plenty of mayo and a rotisserie chicken created a rich, creamy salad with a nice kick.

But I was unsatisfied. I’m not a huge mayo fan to begin with, and well … it was bathing suit season. There had to be a way to lighten the salad up. I immediately thought of Greek yogurt, and as hard as I tried, I could not shake the idea out of my head. It’s creamy and had plenty of tang (Lord knows, I love it so) and I assumed that it would be the perfect low-fat, low-cholesterol alternative to mayo. When I couldn’t find a mayo-free chicken salad on the Interwebs, I was undeterred. “I come from improvising stock. I can do this,” I told myself on the way to the grocery store, in the checkout line and in my aunt’s kitchen.

Well, perhaps I need a little more practice on that whole “make your own recipe” thing. While I’m not going to write this experiment off as a total disaster (it is my lunch today, after all), the chicken salad wasn’t what I remember from Keith’s version, and I have to say, I kind of miss some of the mayo. I never realized that there’s a lot of flavor in it, flavor that Greek yogurt just cannot match.

This version was a little lacking on punch. Perhaps more lemon juice would do the trick. Or a tablespoon of hot sauce, which I didn’t have. But I like this version enough to try again, maybe fooling around more with proportions, flavors, different textures, different herbs. Hopefully I’ll find The One soon, and both my wallet and my stomach will thank me. Until then, I’ll stick to chickpea salad. (Yum!) …

Recipe Index Now Up

In an attempt to make this site more useful, I’ve posted a recipe page that indexes all of the food I’ve tried to make by type. I’m also slowly working my way through the archives to update posts with more detailed/complete recipes. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see me add as I go through this “cleaning” of the site!

Note (from 10/19): In case you’re looking for an old post, I’ve also added a Search bar at the top of the right sidebar.

Polka-Dotted Pink Lady Cake

Since turning 22 is really not that big of a deal, I got it in my head this year that I wanted to bake my own birthday cake. A cute layer cake can turn even the smallest party into a celebration, and I figured it would be a good way to get in the birthday cake-baking game. People questioned my sanity, especially because I wouldn’t stop talking about it, but I’m used to that by now. This was a test of my kitchen mettle.

Given that I tend to make things very complicated for myself, it’s no surprise that this birthday cake turned out to be a bigger challenge than I thought. Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for Pink Lady Cake looked more or less doable (especially with Deb’s layer cake tips), and I even created a schedule for myself: bake the layers before work on Monday and then freeze them, and frost and finish on Wednesday before work, so that the cake would be ready for dinner that night.

My first problem arose when I realized that Deb’s recipe is for a 9-inch triple-layer cake, which was simply too much cake for the small family dinner I was having. So I halved the recipe (after deciding that two-thirds-ing it created too many fraction equations that I’d have to figure out) to make a 6-inch cake.

But I didn’t realize until Monday morning that I didn’t have the right baking pans for the cake that I wanted. Of course, I plowed ahead with the batter anyway. I put it in the fridge so that I could go to work/make my first visit to the New York Cake & Baking Distributors store on 22nd Street, which may be my new favorite store in the city — sorry, Broadway Panhandlers. The store has anything you’d ever need to bake, plenty of things you don’t need but kind of want, and I can’t wait to go back and explore when I’m not rushing to get to work on time.

I baked and froze the layers Monday night, thanks to a last-minute save from my aunt (I still don’t have the flip-and-bang technique for removing cakes from their pans yet, and of course forgot to buy parchment paper like the recipe recommends). Frosting was a much smoother process, though I ended up with powdered sugar everywhere, including on my camera.

I used a drop and a half of red food dye to make my remaining frosting pink, then spooned it into a Ziploc bag and nipped off a corner to create a very rudimentary piping bag. You could also write a “Happy Birthday” message, but I considered that past the point of acceptable. I mean, creating your own birthday cake is one thing, but wishing yourself a happy birthday on said cake? Even I have limits.

Aside from its undeniable cuteness, the cake was slightly sweet, tangy from the cream cheese, moist and lovely. It was a little light on strawberry flavor, so I’d like to try swapping out more (or even all) of the milk for the puree. Perhaps for pink polka-dotted cupcakes?

All in all, it was a fun experiment — one that I’d gladly do again and again. So if you’ve got a birthday coming up, put in your cake requests now! …

Rosemary RoastedÂ Potatoes

My favorite way to eat vegetables is to toss them with a little olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, some minced garlic, salt and pepper and roast them in the oven. This method works wonders for all sorts of vegetables: asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts. But I had never tried to roast my own potatoes.

While suffering through a weekend of weird food cravings, I decided I had to have roasted potatoes for lunch last Sunday. Ina Garten came to my rescue, with this delicious recipe for rosemary roasted potatoes. Like the broccoli, they’re an excellent and easy side dish — important to keep in mind as we near Thanksgiving season (yes, it has become it’s own season now, especially since I’ve already started seeing Thanksgiving-related food ads … ) …

Birthday Cake Ideas

It’s less than a week until my birthday (next Wednesday, October 6, if you haven’t heard me babble about it yet), so naturally I’m already wondering what the cake will be like. I’m not planning anything, but I kind of want to make my own birthday cake. I’ve never actually made a layer cake before, but I figure, if I’m gonna mess a birthday cake up, might as well be my own. Plus, I’d like to practice my layer-caking abilities before Thanksgiving and the holiday season.

My inspiration comes from, of course, Deb at smitten kitchen. It’s probably a little embarrassing how often I read her blog, and she is a celebration cake extraordinaire. For convenience, she recommends baking the cake layers in advance and then freezing them tightly wrapped, which makes them a) easier to frost, and b) allows me to bake them ahead of time. I’ve had my eye on her Pink Lady cake for a while (strawberries! pink!), so I think I’ll test it out. I’m not a huge fan of cream cheese frostings, so maybe I’ll swap in the swiss buttercream frosting that she lavishes such praise on.

But I’m not tied down to any one thing yet, so if you’ve got a favorite birthday cake recipe, please send it my way! Also, layer cake-baking tips would be VERY much appreciated!

Salty, Sweet Sables

Does the title make you want to try them yet? I had been craving sablÃ©s something fierce in the days and weeks (sob) after coming home from Paris. Oddly enough, I didn’t try them until the very end of my trip, when Keith ran to get a coffee and something to munch on while we waited to board our flight. Even the airport sables were crisp, slightly sandy and a little salty, the perfect accompaniment to a last cafÃ© crÃ¨me.

The secret to their success? Salted butter. (Or the addition of sea salt to the cookie dough, to have more control over the amount of salt that goes in, but that depends on which recipe you follow.) I had had such … uh, success … with my last use of salted butter that I was slightly skeptical at first about creating my own sables. Rooting around the Internet, I found this New York Times mag feature on Dorie Greenspan, the cookie master, cookbook author and blogger extraordinaire, where she insisted that the dough be worked as little as possible. How would I know when the dough would come together? What would happen if it were overworked? Would anyone eat my cookies?? (Ahh paranoia — my dearest friend … )

After trying to get sables off my mind for a few days, I finally caved on Monday afternoon. I settled on this recipe from Pierre HermÃ© (he of macaron fame) at Food & Wine and simply got to baking. I halved the recipe because a) I didn’t buy enough butter, and b) my mom would have killed me if I had baked four dozen cookies. The halved recipe is below.

My cookies were a little bit thinner than a 1/4 inch thick, so they were crisper than what I assume M. HermÃ©’s were. They also baked much faster, in about 10 minutes. When I make them again, I may leave them in for a few minutes longer to get a more golden color to them, but I was too afraid of burning them on this try. But they were delicious — buttery, with a slight touch of salt. I heartily recommend tasting the butter beforehand to gauge its salt content. I used Breakstone’s this time (my mom balked at the idea of buying $4 imported butter and in a moment that would make Glenn Beck proud, declared, “American butter is just as good as European!”), and I think I could have tossed in a sprinkle or two of kosher salt to really up the flavor.

These sables can be adapted in a thousand different ways. You could add some almond or vanilla extract, lemon or orange zest or even Parmesan cheese, as Ms. Greenspan suggests in the NYT mag article. Pierre HermÃ© is known for his chocolate and fleur de sel version. I’m sure dipping them in dark chocolate or even using them as sandwich cookies would be delicious (we tried it with Nutella, but either there was too much Nutella or the cookies were too light, but they were overwhelmed completely by the chocolaty hazelnut. But really, what isn’t overwhelmed by the deliciousness that is Nutella?). I can’t wait to make them again! …

Parmesan RoastedÂ Broccoli

Sometimes, all I really want a vegetable. After a decadent Sunday brunch at The Smith, I needed some vitamins and minerals, and had to have this parmesan roasted broccoli from Ina Garten. Granted, I didn’t end up making it until Wednesday night, but it was so worth the wait. Quick and delicious, it would be the perfect side dish for any meal. Or, you know, your entire dinner, if you’re lazy and you really like broccoli.

It would be great tossed with a little extra oil and some penne, if you wanted it to be, you know, an actual meal. You could also add some crushed red pepper flakes for a little heat. …

A Salted Caramel Disaster

If ever there was an oxymoron, it would be “salted butter caramel disaster.” Anything that is sweet, slightly salty and a bit nutty all at the same time could never be a disaster. Especially something that has Plugra in it, which may be my new obsession. The extra-rich European butter is an expensive indulgence, but so worth it in this sauce, which is all about indulgence.

After a long day of apple cake-baking and work and running around the city, I needed a pick-me-up on Thursday night. I don’t think I need to remind you how much I love salted caramels (I ate my weight’s worth in Paris, natch), and I’d had my eye on this salted butter caramel sauce from Smitten Kitchen for months. It may or may not have everything to do with my obsessive reading of her blog.

But something went so horribly wrong. The sugar melted perfectly and browned to a beautiful deep chestnut color and the butter melted perfectly and Keith’s apartment smelled amazing and somewhere between the melted butter and the cream, we ended up with a huge glob of rock-hard caramel brittle that stuck to the whisk and the pot and made me very sad.

Granted the sauce around it was delicious, especially over vanilla ice cream. But I couldn’t help kicking myself over the botching of such an easy-looking recipe. After I poured the rest of the sauce into a container, Keith decided to microwave the caramel brittle, and somehow (I think he’s magic), it melted into perfect caramel sauce. I have no idea what went wrong, though maybe the cream was too cold and seized the caramel up. Either way, it was perfect, buttery and rich from the Plugra, nutty from the extra-long browning and exactly what I needed at the end of a long day. …

Apple Yogurt Cake

I had two different things I wanted to accomplish on Thursday morning. 1) Though today’s temps missed the memo (thanks global warming for an 85-degree day … ), I wanted to make something fall-y to bring home with me this weekend. 2) I had some yogurt that I bought last week at the farmer’s market that I needed to finish before I left.

I’d never considered yogurt as a baking resource, so I was surprised to find so many recipes for yogurt cake, with berries, citrus fruits, apples, nuts — you name it. After browsing for days, I settled on this Epicurious recipe for Grandmother’s Apple Cake, mostly because it’s from the Van Gogh’s Table cookbook and I like to pretend that this means that Van Gogh’s grandmother baked this up while Vincent was painting. Riiight.

Since I was taking it home with me, I wanted something that would travel easy and taste just as fresh the next day. This recipe fit the bill, since it gets better the day after you make it. And coincidentally, the farmer’s market happened to be at Columbia on Thursday morning, so I could pick up fresh apples for the cake. Clearly, it was fate.

The cake was moist, slightly sweet but mostly spicy — a perfect accompaniment to coffee or tea. The only thing I might change the next time I make it is swapping either brown sugar, honey or even maple syrup for some of the sugar, but the cake had plenty of flavor without it. Another plus: the cake gets better with time. It’s a little spicier, more moist and more apple-y — it’s like the pieces of apple have smushed their flavor into the cake itself. (Yes, smushed is the technical term.) …

Fall, Farmerâ€™sÂ Market-Style

Tomorrow is officially the first day of fall. But since I got back from Paris last week (tear tear), I’ve noticed fall everywhere. The leaves have started to turn yellow and orange and red, it’s been brisk in the mornings, and I had my first hot coffee of the season the other day.

But fall really made its presence known at the farmer’s market near Columbia last week. Yes, this is the same market I’ve been talking about since February, but never got around to posting about because first it was too cold, then it wasn’t sunny enough for pictures, then I had too much work, then it was too hot … I can convince myself out of anything.

Last Thursday there was sun, a breeze, pumpkins — clearly the stars had aligned. So I grabbed my camera and began clicking away. Naturally, there were still tomatoes and zucchini and a few strawberries at the market (it’s not jacket weather yet, duh) but fall’s first apples, pumpkins, squash and co. made their welcome appearance.

I’ve got a few fall recipes on the back burner (ha — bad food pun). Good news: they look too good for me to convince myself to do anything other than make them.

Paris,Â InÂ Photos

I’ve already written about my Paris trip, but I was super excited to use my new camera and came home with a ton of pictures. While I wasn’t able to capture everything on film (darn you, propriety!), here’s a sampling of where I went, and more importantly what I ate, in Paris.

Paris Recommendations: Snails, Fails and Plenty of Tales

Unfortunately, I had to come back. Paris was amazing — sunny weather, beautiful sights, awesome people, a language that is tres amusant (at least when I try to speak it) and my goodness, delicious food! We had modern and traditional French, haute cuisine and country-style food, Italian, street food (okay, just street crepes), so much gelato, baguette, croissants, macarons … and maybe one espresso too many.

We generally had breakfast at home with Madame, who was Keith’s house mom when he studied abroad in Paris and who graciously offered to house us for the week. I rarely eat breakfast here in America, so I kept it pretty simple: slices of buttery sweet brioche topped with more butter and lots of berry jam. Perhaps not the breakfast that builds champions (or anything other than a Pillsbury dough boy), but it was so delicious I couldn’t stop eating.

Lunch was a pretty straightforward affair most days too — a pop into a small cafe or bistro for a tarte du jour and a simple salad. The salad dressing was easy and delicious: dijon mustard (mixing both smooth and coarse works wonders), a little lemon juice, a splash of olive oil and some pepper and voila! A perfect topping for greens.

After chickening out on escargot during my first visit to Paris, I finally tried them at Cafe Beaux Arts in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Truth be told, the snail shells on a plate freaked me out a little at first. But the parsley-garlic-lemon-butter sauce was amazing, and the snails themselves weren’t half bad. They taste almost like mussels — a little chewy and salty, and very earthy. My favorite part of the meal was dipping pieces of fresh baguette into the sauce, which I bet would go great with angel hair pasta.

A close second was the traditional French meal we had at Cafe Le Lutece in the Saint-Michel area. I had been dying to try steak frites, despite the repeated warnings that the French eat their meat very, very rare. I like my steak cooked, and finding a place that served even medium rare was a bit of a challenge. Luckily, Le Lutece did, though their idea of medium was still way too pink for me. The potatoes gratin were delicious though, and the parts of the steak I did eat were really good, butter-basted and perfectly seared. …

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