On one of our first dates, Jeff took me to dinner at the now-beloved La Hacienda, where–as luck would have it–a gloriously sequined mariachi band was making its way around the room. Loudly. If you made eye contact with the band leader, they would serenade your table. If you didn’t, they would play on to the next.

I stared down at the menu, trying to will myself invisible. Jeff made eye contact.

“Play something that will make the lady swoon,” he said.

He still makes me swoon.

I tell this story so you will know how much I adore Mexican food. I so wish I had been thrilled with the announcement of this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie group recipe: Caramel-Topped Flan. But, sadly, I am not a flan fan. It’s probably some sort of character flaw.

If you are a flan fan, I suspect this is a good one. The recipe is quick and easy, and the finished dessert is incredibly smooth, a lovely amber. The taste was a little eggy for me, but I’ve got some lemons, limes, and oranges. A little citrus zest could be just what this flan needs to wake it up and make it swoon.

Read More…

Last week, I joined Tuesdays with Dorie, an online baking group committed to making one recipe a week from the same cookbook: “Baking: From My Home to Yours” by Dorie Greenspan. My first assignment? Brioche Raisin Snails.

After a night spent making the lovely, buttery dough and Dorie’s pastry cream, I spent the next morning lost in rolling, shaping and baking the snails. And since I couldn’t let the other half of the brioche dough go to waste, I prepped a quick batch of Dorie’s Pecan Sticky Buns.

A bounty such as this must be shared. As soon as the snails were glazed, I packed them, along with the still-rising sticky buns, and drove the 45 minutes to my parents’ house. Read More…

Does the world need another food blog?

Today the LA Times ran an article classifying blogs by home cooks as “cyber-treacle,” with writers “nattering about what they fed their boyfriends last night, or fuzzily photographing their latest batch of heart-shaped cookies.”

Ouch.

The Times writer prefers blogs written by chefs, who tend “to focus on the story behind the food, on the thought process that original cooking entails.”

In the article, she eventually recognizes that chef-written blogs also can be extremely self-promotional, restaurant-promotional, product-promotional, and (most likely) not written by the chefs whose names are on the blogs. But she lets the insults about home cooks’ food blogs stand.

Really, there are so many good ones. Lovely, informative, helpful, funny. From the practical to the practically pornographic.

And I like to know what they fed their boyfriends last night.

So, what am I going to bring to the proverbial table?

I recently left my position as head pastry chef at a German bakery to get married, move, introduce Henry the dog (mine) to Henry the cat (his), unpack, write thank-you notes, lose my way around town, dance in the kitchen, figure out the TV remotes, unpack some more, commandeer some closet space, and watch “Lost.”

Now, it’s time to figure out what’s next. I’m thinking cake design.
In the meantime, I plan to reach out. Professional cooking can be a competitive sport, where recipes, ingredients, and techniques are guarded, always by understanding and sometimes by contract. Now that I’m a chef-turned-home-cook (a home chef?), I want to drop the competition and be part of a community. Sharing sounds good.

So, this is my space for trying new things and sharing the results. To bake from some of my long-ignored cookbooks. To pass along my favorite recipes. And to join the family of “nattering” food bloggers.

Heart-shaped cookies for everyone!