Taking it to the next level.

Every morning for the past week I've been waking early to check if the caramel fairies might have brought me any photo equipment during the night. But every morning I find the piles of books and blue and yellow file folders and index cards covered with purple post-its and keys, phone, wallet, watch, and winning quick pick lottery ticket (prize one dollar; odds of winning one in ten) all untouched on my dining room table. My bicycle parks in a corner, like always. As it often does, my vacuum cleaner curls on the floor in an opposite corner. In my kitchen I see a box of Cut-Rite Wax Paper and one of Saran Wrap on the counter under the window where I've been leaving them lately.

Lots of things everywhere, but nothing new.

Perhaps the caramel fairies are away for the month. Perhaps they don't have internet access. Perhaps their ranks are down due to the recession, which would help to explain some of the guys I've seen recently working at Trader Joe's.

Whatever the reason, my plea to the caramel fairies unanswered, I decided per usual last Friday to take matters into my own hands. A quick search of "tripod" on Craigslist returned the following: "Manfrotto 3001 Tripod with 3265 Pistol Grip Head." A few hours later and the gear was mine.

Fortunately the turtles -- being turtles -- are slow on their feet. At least no motion is visible even with an exposure of a second or more. But they do manage somehow to get around.

And in case anyone is wondering, I did also try searching "Gabriel Porras" on Craigslist. Nothing.

Must there be an exception to every rule?

As a general rule, ‘cute’ and ‘edible’ are words I think should always keep a safe distance from each other. Food should look like food. And taste like food. I accept as self-evident that teddy bears are cute. That puppy dogs and kittens are cute. That babies delivered by caesarean section are cute. 



Consider therefore the following syllogism:


Major Premise:  Teddy bears, puppy dogs and kittens, and babies delivered by caesarean section are cute.


Minor Premise:  Teddy bears, puppy dogs and kittens, and babies delivered by caesarean section are not, by any reasonable person’s definition of the term, edible. Which is to say, teddy bears, puppy dogs and kittens, and babies delivered by caesarean section are not things any reasonable person would choose to eat, even if one could eat them without injury to one’s health.


Conclusion:  Teddy bears, puppy dogs and kittens, and babies delivered by caesarean section don’t belong on the top of a birthday cake or a sugar cookie or a cupcake or any place other than a well-made bed, a green shag carpet, and a changing table respectively.

My knowledge of logic is basic, but I defy even the most experienced analytic philosopher to disprove the soundness of my reasoning.


Just to make the point, here is a brief list of things properly defined as edible:  Arugula, molasses, chicken livers, pearl barley, cinnamon bark, smoked trout, and mango.


Cute. Edible. Never the twain shall meet. Or shall they?

Drat Logic

When I was a teenager, I liked to imagine the possibility of life in a past era. Lying in bed too late on school nights reading Madame Bovary, I would wish myself in provincial France. Hiding in the shade of the basement on summer mornings while everyone else was at the beach, a copy of The Magic Mountain open across my knees, I would wish myself in the Swiss Alps. Lying on the sofa on winter afternoons reading Oliver Twist in the violet dusk, the lights extinguished, a fire burning, I would wish myself in 1830s London. 

Not that I identified my own frustrations with those of Emma Bovary or was tubercular like Hans Castorp or had ever been before a bailiff or suffered the wrath of a beadle like Oliver Twist. No. I was a nephew from Paris visiting his wealthy uncle Rodolphe and amused to discover that he is bedding Madame Bovary. I was a healthy American on the grand tour who just happens to be spending the autumn in Davos-Platz. I was the boy in the brown velvet suit seated in a chaise, a King Charles spaniel in a basket on my lap, wondering what was all that commotion in front of the bookseller’s about. 

Then one day as I was reading it suddenly occurred to me:  If I had lived in another time and place as I so desired, I would be dead now. I wouldn’t be reading now. I wouldn’t be doing anything at all now. Except maybe decomposing. In which case, how could I have made these honey roasted peanut and caramel candies last night?


The thought stopped me cold. It still does.


Metaphysical mysteries aside, the present is much too hot really for candy making. Right when I started the caramel on the stove the mercury outside started also rising. By color I am a fall, but by temperature I am all winter. My dream apartment is a 2500 square foot two bedroom two bath plus walk-in freezer with a six burner professional gas range and unobstructed north and east views of the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan. So I feel a special kinship with my caramel as it struggles to keep its buttery side in check, and my chocolate as it struggles to keep its temper.

I made the caramel, but the chocolate and the nuts are straight from Trader Joe’s. I just lay out the nuts on a sheet pan, heat some of the caramel in an oiled glass bowl in the microwave, then drop it with an oiled tablespoon over the nuts. When the caramel is cool I nudge the mounds into roughly circular shape. Next I run the base of each one over a chocolate coated spatula, and finish by spooning some melted chocolate over the top. 


Nothing fancy. Just a way to pass an hour before bed on a Tuesday night. A sweet and salty break in the present tense. 

Mercury Rising

The past couple of years I’ve been become more and more attracted to the art of less. Less income. Less possessions. Less responsibility. Less stuff demanding attention that it never returns. 

Over a couple of months I got rid of my car. More than half my books. My home phone. A collection of McCoy vases. A low-slung mid-century Scandinavian modern arm chair. Every shirt and pair of pants that doesn’t fit comfortably. An oak mission desk. A Pullman loaf pan. A stack of tartlet molds. An electric coffee maker.  I even sold my second waffle iron -- the heart shaped one, not the Belgian waffler!

But still I find myself pacing my apartment wondering at all the things that remain. A suit I wore exactly once for a job interview five years ago. An overcoat I wore with it. The collected works of Mrs. Humphrey Ward in sixteen volumes. A green umbrella. A terrine mold. A gilt framed mirror. 

In bed as I am drifting toward sleep I imagine that my condo association is on fire and I am rushing out of the building in my bathrobe to the bank to deposit the check from the insurance company. What do I take with me?  My portable hard drive? Probably, though I hesitate. All that work in progress brings to mind an image of Hemingway’s suitcase, and the certainty that there is an infinite supply of sentences in the universe. The Mont Blanc GMT chronograph my brother recently gave me? No reason not to, especially as it travels very well and complements my hands. My iPhone? Definitely not. The purple bound copy of Dame Edna Everage’s My Georgeous Life?  Very tempting. But in my heart I know it is all stuff I can live without, and that more stuff will always take its place.

About my candy thermometer, on the other hand, I don’t hesitate. It is up my sleeve and we are out the door and there is no looking back.

I found it at Broadway Panhandler in New York City, probably in 1996 or 1997. In a golden moment before crazed environmentalists and over-zealous pediatricians declared total war against mercury, Rose Levy Beranbaum commissioned a batch of these laboratory grade thermometers. The only word to describe it is:  unbelievably awesome and life transforming I mean I love this thing and can’t imagine living without it ever ever ever. A mercury thermometer is the culinary equivalent of an atomic clock. The column of quicksilver in glass is an exquisitely sensitive instrument. I’ve never used any other type of thermometer for candy making, and don’t ever want to. I think it was about fifty dollars new. It’s current value I don’t know, but it is the only item specified by name in my estate plan.

The picture was a bit of a challenge, since the thermometer doesn’t fit in the light box and probably a special lens is necessary to make a completely focused image.

The caramel I made a few days ago. It appears diluted with half and half as the sauce on the crème fraiche ice cream in the previous posting. These are just a few bits in their naked youth. The bulk of the batch is destined to mature into a few different candies. The transformation I intend to document in future installments. The recipe is very simple. I boil sugar, corn syrup, and a drop of water. When it turns pale amber I shock it by setting the pan in the sink filled with cold water. Once it has cooled a little I add heavy cream, butter, and fleur de sel (a food fad I hope never ceases) and cook the mixture to 248 degrees fahrenheit. 

I realize, now I am learning more about how to produce these images, that some technical equipment might make a big difference.  In case any caramel fairies are reading this, maybe you will be so kind as to come during the night and leave a Manfrotto tripod with a joystick ball head and a Pentax 50 mm F2.8 macro lens?  Oh, and an assortment of dishes suitable for food styling? And Gabriel Porras? Please?

Berries with a View

Sometimes – not often – things just turn out better than good. The pieces all fall into place. The planets align. The stars smile. And for a little while the bittersweetness of life tastes just right.

The last week of April I spent in Mexico, four nights in Mexico City followed by three nights in Valle de Bravo. Mexico City in recent years has been an obsession, along with banda music and the men who listen to it, the history of the Conquest, telenovela superstar Gabriel Porras, and the migration pathways that join communities in Chicago to remote landscapes south of the border. 

Normally when I travel pretty much as soon as the atavan I take for the plane trip wears off I start to think about getting home. But this time I was weirdly content with my surroundings, perhaps because I had a lot of worries I was glad to leave behind and also because we stayed in a charming hotel right on the border between Roma and Condesa, the two most urbane and hip neighborhoods in Mexico City. The heat, the dust, the birdsong, the bougainvillea spilling over the walls of the rooftop hotel terrace and the purple jacaranda blossoms hanging from the trees lining the street -- even the traffic was mildly intoxicating. Never mind the twilight soccer game on the plaza in Parque Mexico! But the real gem was Valle de Bravo.  

We rented a house a short walk above the town. A dirty poorly ventilated villa (I am being generous with my language), somewhat shabbily furnished, definitely in decline, but with a glorious terrace with a more glorious view. Everywhere in Mexico the food was beautiful, but in Valle it was more beautiful. Walking the steep cobbled street to the Zocalo, the fragrance of mangos from the market filled the air. The only sensation I can recall that compares is a lilac scented breeze on a warm June afternoon many many years ago.

Each day for lunch we had tostadas. A crispy round of tortilla spread with a thin layer of refried beans, topped with shredded chicken and perfectly ripe avocado, and drizzled with a sour cream. A salsa verde on the side completed the picture. For dessert we had berries – strawberries and blackberries – in a similar cream, slightly sweetened. Berries that tasted like the view. Normally when I travel I find the greatest pleasure is to return home. But not this time.  

Last week at the grocery store right at the entrance baskets of California strawberries and blackberries from Mexico were piled high. The fruit fates were speaking to me, remembering me. So I bought a basket of each, and then a container of crème fraiche. At home that night I stirred a bit of honey into a big spoonful of the crème fraiche, poured it over my berries, and sat down to my dessert. As an attempt to return to a moment once past, the result was actually very pleasing, only the crème fraiche was thicker and more sour than I had desired, and the berries weren’t holding the heat of the midday sun. 

It was a nice try, I said to myself, but time to move on. And honestly, the crème fraiche by itself I found just a little disgusting. But it had cost real money – the only good kind of money – and I didn’t want to waste it. I happened also to have a half dozen eggs in the refrigerator, and a container of half and half with a rapidly approaching expiration date. And then it hit me:  crème fraiche ice cream. 

And then what happened?  

I don't like to do anything in a hurry, but the next afternoon I stirred a cup of the half and half into the crème fraiche and let it sit at room temperature for a couple of hours. With a cup of milk, five egg yolks, and three quarters of a cup of sugar I made a simple custard. The two mixtures I combined and froze in my ice cream maker (a Simac Il Gelataio I found used online about eight years ago; definitely my best moment ever on ebay). 

The ice cream right out of the maker is superb, but it is even better after having ripened in the freezer over night. You can’t really taste the crème fraiche on its own. It's been tamed by the cold, though a clever palate might wonder at the source of tang. As I was working I thought I might add some blackberry jam at the finish, but it tasted so clean, so bright, so unadulterated, I stopped myself in time. I did make a little caramel sauce however to finish it off. The serving in the picture was my treat this afternoon. It doesn’t take away my desire to return to Mexico.  But it definitely eases the pain.

Hazelnuts Kind of Suck

My freezer is full of nuts. I like to keep a supply of pecans and walnuts and also slivered almonds handy. Salted cashews for turtles are essential. And honey roasted peanuts and regular salted peanuts are always welcome. Hazelnuts however I've never valued much. Sometime in the 1980s they became all the rage, about the same time the Silver Palate Cookbook and Nutella and raspberry vinaigrette and shoulder pads hit the scene. All I think were drastically over-rated.  

Hazenuts I find a bit more woodsy than nutty, and not in a good way, beside which the paper skins are a drag to remove, though a quick bath in boiling water loaded with baking soda loosens them nicely. I just don't like them, and also I associate them unpleasantly with the Pacific northwest, so I can't explain why I had a bag in my freezer. I assume that the hazelnut grinch didn't put them there, that I must have bought them for some recipe that made little enough impression that I don't remember it.

Every few months I find myself standing in front of my freezer, rummaging through all the little ziplocked bags I've collected, reviewing them like a set of frozen notes to self, a polar to do list. The hazelnuts caught me off guard. Normally I am hoarding stuff because I like it, because I am saving it for a special occasion or because it is so good I am pacing myself. Much less ordinary is to find something I don't care about. But I don't like waste. And like everyone else these days, I am enjoying as best I can (actually I could do better) the pleasures of frugality demanded by necessity.

The hazelnuts were a challenge, not of the life-altering sort, or even the gee I am pleased with myself for doing that sort, like a mountain in Oaxaca I once climbed, but still it was a challenge to skin them comprehensively and find a recipe that would play well on their modest appeal. These bars are the result. A honey caramel lays over a crust that falls at about the midpoint between shortbread and sugar cookie, which is to say it uses an egg yolk and has a fairly moist crumb. Some milk chocolate left over from a candy making session tops them off.

I think I dispatched the hazelnuts reasonably successfully. But now instead of a twelve ounce bag tucked into a corner, I find a big rectangular container of these bars hogging precious freezer real estate.

On a different note, here is a picture of the improvised light box I am using to take my pictures. The umbrella has been in my closet for about a decade, and was in the trunk of my car for about a decade before that. They are clumsy devices I think to carry and just a source of worry. Umbrellas are for the Avengers and Princess Diana and persons with manservants. Everyone else should get a raincoat with a hood. So I am especially pleased finally to put it to some good use. Now I need to learn how to use Photoshop to take down some of the unpleasant  orange glow on the reflector of the clip lamp on the right side.

I Begin

It seems like everyone I know at some point or another in the past several years has said to me, "Why don't you open a bakery?" The short answer is that I sleep too much I think to live a professional baker's life. Actually I probably sleep too much to live any kind of professional life. But that doesn't seem a reason not to share some images and anecdotes from my home kitchen more widely. Especially since I can do it directly from bed on my laptop if I feel like it. Not the baking of course -- though it often happens in my pajamas (or more technically lounge wear) and sometimes even my bath robe.

I am officially underemployed and middle aged, and I have lots of academic projects I could be working on for which no one is paying me in support of a career that isn't exactly happening. Therefore I say:  Let the blogging begin.

These jumbo chocolate chip cookies I made over the last weekend. I had a demoralizing episode in the kitchen a few days previous. I was craving some cookies and needing also to do something else with my hands, so I made my standard dough, refrigerated it overnight (for the record, I refrigerate pretty much everything  a day or two or more before it ever hits the oven), but when I baked the cookies the next day they were puffy nuggets, almost like hermits, not at all the delicate crispy caramelized treats I was anticipating. I tried at first to make the best of them, to tell myself they were "homey," but in my heart I wasn't fooled, wasn't letting myself be fooled. So I tossed the whole batch and took an Ambien and wished the whole episode into oblivion, but when I woke the next morning the memory remained. I was haunted by my failure. Only I knew what had happened, but my sense of isolation just added to my sense of disappointment. So I pulled myself together and put myself back in front of my Kitchen Aid.

The new batch I baked in two sizes, one with a number 50 scoop, the other with a muffin scoop. They turned out fine, but still not as crispy on the base and around the edges as I would have liked. Here's a photo of the smaller cookies.

The pictures I made in a light box using a DSLR that I didn't need and shouldn't have purchased but did anyway. About a month ago at dinner as I was showing the blurry photos I've been taking with my iPhone someone said that my food deserved better. I took the comment personally and decided it was time for a change. I need to work a bit on the sharpening and focus and white balance and everything else to do with making a decent digital image, and don't expect to win any awards for my amateur food styling, but compared to the photos I had been taking it is now at least possible to make out some of the texture and color and finer detail.