Normal Quiet State

Tall ships floating in the Buttermilk Channel. Heartbreak and sunny days. Laughter through tears.

Miriam and Catherine hunt for the horizon, on the Spanish Navy ship B.E. Juan Sebastian de "Elcano."

Catherine and I let the sun beat down, burn us clean.

On the Canadian HMCS Iroquois "Tribal-Class Destroyer" (what?), all was in a Normal Quiet State.

So they let me drive the boat.

I searched for whales, but did not find them...yet.

Doughnuts! On a Stick!

Some of my readers may have deduced that I have a small cookbook problem (one that leads to a large cookbook collection). I never say no to a new cookbook, and while I don't cook from all of them, I get endless pleasure from reading and consulting them. Fads come and go in my house, but there are some stalwarts, many of which can be found on my little Amazon guide to the right of these sage words.  Being on a somewhat limited budget, I try to limit cookbook spending. However, despite the library and self-imposed waiting periods, I do purchase a good many. And sometimes, someone sends me one for free! 


That is exactly what Matt Armendariz and the good people at Quirk Books did. They let me have my very own review copy of On A Stick: 80 Party-Perfect Recipes. That was very very nice of them, and it's perfectly shameful how long it has taken me to actually review the book. But here, at long last, it is, with a bonus section by guest blogger Miriam.

Armendariz's doughnut holes.

Armendariz's book is built around a simple concept, that (yes, good guess) everything tastes better skewered. While he pushes the point to or over the edge of absurdity (there's really no need to impale fish and chips), his overall enthusiasm and expert photography make it possible to withhold snark and just take the book on its own terms, as a kind of entertaining thought experiment. On or off the proverbial prong, Armendariz's recipes are solid, and his expertise really comes out in the dipping sauces and marinated meat section. My expertise, however, is in desserts, so the recipes that I wound up trying came from that chapter. 

Our doughnut holes--via Matthew Korahais.

I made the doughnut holes (p. 145) and the fudge pops (p. 154). Both were good, the recipes simple and clear. Perhaps in reaction to the pristine book photography, my efforts were large, unwieldy, and messy. I eschewed sprinkles and glazes and the stick in my fudge pops was a spoon. I'm sure I'll be back for more, especially as the book kind of screams 'group project' or 'baby-sitting activity.' In the meantime, thanks to Matt and to Eric at Quirk for making this review possible. All photos except the (upcoming) one of my monster doughnut holes, are from the book, and copyright as such. Please contact Quirk for permission to republish.

Wonderful dessert composite. The composite shot of different skewers is also excellent.

A few unconnected other thoughts about On A Stick:

•  Serving sizes--unusually small. Each recipe is intended to serve a few bites to roughly four people. I got only two large popsicles out of my efforts, though the doughnut yield was much larger.
• Best photos are the composite photos. I love seeing all the sauces/skewers/dishes lined up in rows. 

Below is another version of the story, from Miriam, who's coming back to New York after all these years. My comments are in brackets.

"Saturday was really great. After five years of living in New Haven, and one week of stressing out over the Brooklyn rental scene, I found an apartment I wanted to live in! Then I celebrated at Chavella’s with Katya and Catherine, where Catherine mused on the merits of gazpacho while Katya and I discussed when sweet things are “dessert.” Later, sitting on Katya’s roof, we tried to figure out which recipe from “On A Stick” was most important to make right away. We almost went with cake pops, because Katya had some leftover buttercream and ganache, but a dark horse candidate--doughnut holes on a stick--won the day.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I dumped ingredients into a bowl while Catherine stirred and Katya exuded calm and expertise. Then Katya took over and stirred some more. Then we let the dough rise. (While we made butterscotch pudding. And also ate rhubarb custard pie. And were apparently too elderly to hear “The Office” on netflix from two feet away.) The dough practically doubled! After rolling it out in a generally flattish but not too flat way, we cut circles out of it and arranged them on a baking sheet with some dish towels to rise the second time. (Katya called this “proofing.” I think.) We also made a video of Katya and me, fully clothed in the bathtub, thanking Polybe’s donors and getting wrong the name of the play we’re working on. Sometime around this time was the moment when I did not notice it was the rising doughnut holes that I was plopping a stray tote bag on top of, and I fully squished the little babies. [she did, but they were overproofed anyway, and failed to hold their shape at all as they were scooped off of the tray--so they were shaped any which way]


That did not seem to matter once we had them in a wok of hot oil, with Katya frying, Catherine sugaring, and me skewering them two to a stick, even though they were significantly larger than the tasteful popem-size doughnut holes in the book. They were delicious, so delicious, that we had to set an upper limit of three as a reasonable eating amount. And as Katya remarked, they actually did taste better on a stick. Later that night, Catherine texted me to ask whether Katya knew how to make sopaipillas." [I don't, but perhaps I will soon. Catherine is persuasive.]

Sticky Sticky Toffee with Lemon Peel, Raisins, Dates, and Delicious

The dessert so nice, I blog about it twice.

The last time I brought up Sticky Toffee Pudding around here was back in 2009, when Miriam (then dubbed the 'reluctant foodie,' made David Lebovitz's recipe as a guest post. Time has passed, Miriam has gone from reluctant to as obsessive as the rest of us (she owns a cake stand and hosts several-course dinners), and Rose Levy Beranbaum is bringing sticky back.

Rose's version of Sticky Toffee Pudding, that extra-Brit dessert, begins by boiling a cup of stout, adding baking soda, and pouring the whole thing over a bunch of dates. When well soaked, everything is pureed. My dates were very old, so I was worried that they would be too dried out. That turned out to be only half the problem, as I only had about 2/3 of the amount that I needed for the recipe. The pantry came to the rescue, and in addition to my dry dates I added a few tablespoons each of lemon peel, orange peel, sultanas, and zante currants. Soft and gooey and lemony.

Princess Miriam Miriam Graduates Yale with a Perfect Party Princess Cake

Readers of this site may know or have gathered that I have a dear friend named Miriam. There she is above with the man who made her, Joel. She lives in New Haven. She is one of my oldest friends, and from the ages of five through twenty-one, we attended school together. A few years ago, in a daring move, Miriam broke from the pack and demanded her own institution of learning. She wasn't shy in her demands, either. For her first school post-Katya, she chose none other than the Yale School of Drama. (Can you even say Yale School of Drama sans italics? Well, I did. So there, Yale School of Drama.)

As anyone could have predicted, this brilliant and driven girl has blazed through an outstanding three years at Yale, and is now, as of last weekend, a Master of Dramaturgy, with hood to prove it. Stacey, Catherine and I were lucky enough to spend the day basking in her mortarboarded glory, as I hope to do for years to come.
Following a few hours of the most pompacious pomp imaginable (did you know that Yale has a sceptre crowned with the head of a mythical beast named 'the Yale?' Or that there is a real bulldog? Or that the forestry school are the most wonderful creatures imaginable, and wore most of the the vegetation on the East Coast on their heads?), we headed out to East Rock for a picnic.
We ate many delicious things, sat around, lolled in the sun, and watched bees, and finished off with Miriam's request, a bright pink princess cake shaped like a large hatbox. (My hands are still stained from the food coloring). For the cake layers, I used a TWD assignment from later in June, Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake. Layered with raspberry preserves, pastry cream, and whipped cream, (which mysteriously and marvelously whipped in the containers on the way up on the train), it was an impressive sight. Not quite as impressive as Miriam's diploma, but we can't all be Yalies.
The Perfect Party Cake was good. I think it failed its audition as a wedding cake, but it was indeed the close to a perfect party, so it was well named. Miriam tells me that the remainder of it was consumed at a ladies party the following day, where its fluffy pinkness was so inspiring that there was painting of nails and braiding of hair, followed by intent discussion of the merits of Sweet Valley High vs. The Babysitters' Club.
I am so proud of Princess Master Doctor-to-Be Miriam, and so glad I could be there.
All photos for this post courtesy of Catherine Wallach.

The Reluctant Foodie: Sticky Toffee Pudding

Photo courtesy of Sarah Bishop-Stone. Note Moosewood Cookbook display stand.

Most of my friends are at least semi-foodies--they work in the restaurant industry, they love to cook and talk about restaurants, or they just live in New York, which pretty much qualifies regardless of other factors. The yearly gift exchanges put on by my theater company tend to resemble bridal showers, with all manner of woks and wine glasses and serving bowls and cake stands being passed back and forth. We did have one half-holdout, though, a girl who demanded that her pyrex casserole dishes be accompanied by some big earrings, at least.

While I'm sure she maintains a similar gift-related stance, I think we've finally won Miriam entirely over to the dark side.* Not only did she just admit to watching an NYTimes video about beets, she has baked at least four times in the last month. "People were just so excited to get the cookies," she said, at which I nodded sagely and pointed out that this was a largeish part of my motivation. I'm happy to say that she's taken inspiration from this blog, and two out of four have been World Peace Cookies and Salted Oatmeal Cookies.

For her birthday, Miriam attempted her most ambitious project to date, Sticky Toffee Pudding, and requested to detail her triumph in a guest post. Here she is:

"I spent Passover of 2006 in London, visiting my then-boyfriend's family, which favored lengthy and delicious meals, and kept a fairly loose version of kosher-for-Passover. One day, at a riverside inn an hour outside the city, whose location had something to do with "The Wind in the Willows," I ordered a sticky toffee pudding for dessert, thinking that "pudding" was a safe bet for something flourless. It wasn't until I was halfway through with one of the most extreme desserts I've ever had that I even realized that what I was eating had clearly been leavened and baked, and by that point I was too engrossed to care.

When we got home, Katya was convinced to make a sticky toffee pudding for us, and since then I've had it in the back of my mind as something complicated but not completely impossible to make at home--so my 29th birthday seemed like the right occasion to try. The dates and molasses required advance planning (cf. the delis in New Haven don't sell any food), and I had to sub in half-and-half for one of the cups of cream (there seemed to be one 8-oz carton of heavy cream in all Connecticut), but it was delightful and impressive for my birthday guests. This recipe is something I would never have attempted a year ago.

I hereby give you my adaptation of David Lebovitz's recipe for sticky toffee pudding, with the following notes: 1) half-and-half worked just fine in the toffee sauce, 2) I used regular dark brown sugar and no ginger, 3) I would make extra sauce next time, since I ran out of it before I ran out of pudding, and 4) I was initially worried because the sauce didn't seem to be thickening in the pan, the way he describes, but once I took it off the heat it thickened right up. Definitely serve warm and with vanilla ice cream." - Miriam

Sticky Toffee Pudding
Adapted from David Lebovitz
Adapted in turn from Sweet! (Da Capo) by Mani Niall

For the toffee sauce:
2 cups (500ml) heavy cream
1/2 cup (120g) demerara or muscovado sugar (or another dark brown sugar)
2 1/2 tablespoons golden syrup or molasses
pinch of salt

For the pudding:
6 ounces (180g) pitted dates, snipped or chopped
1 cup (250ml) water
1 teaspoon baking soda
optional: 1/3 cup (40g) candied ginger, chopped
1 1/4 cups (175g) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
4 tablespoons (55g) unsalted butter
3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350F (190C) and butter an 8 1/2-inch baking dish.

2. Make the toffee sauce-bring the cream, demerara or turbinado sugar, golden syrup (or molasses) and salt to a boil in a medium saucepan, stirring often.

3. Lower heat and simmer, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is thick and coats the spoon. Pour half the sauce into the prepared baking dish and place the mold in the freezer, and reserve the other half for serving.

4. To make the pudding, in a medium saucepan, heat the dates and water. Once the water begins to boil, remove from heat and stir in the baking soda. Add the ginger, if using, then set aside, but keep it slightly warm.

5. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

6. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, or by hand, heat the butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, then the vanilla. (Don't be alarmed if the mixture looks a bit curdled.)

7. Stir in half of the flour mixture, then the date mixture, then add the remaining flour mixture until just mixed. Don't overbeat the batter.

8. Scrape the batter into the prepared baking dish and bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs attached.

9. Remove the pudding from the oven, and let cool slightly before serving.

Serving: Spoon portions of the cake into serving bowls and douse with additional warm toffee sauce. Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream are good accompaniments, although I enjoy it just as it is.

Note: To make the pudding in advance, bake the cake without the toffee in the bottom. Let cool, then cover until close to serving time. Poke the cake about fifteen times with a chopstick. Distribute half of the sauce over the top, as shown in the photo, cover with foil, then re-warm in a 300F (150C) oven, for 30 minutes.

*To be clear, Miriam has always cooked, and loved food, she just lacked grocery stores and all cooking implements for a little while there, and so the obsession couldn't take hold with the same rigor.