Miracle in a Cast Iron Skillet

Two Potatoes ✓
A Rib-Eye Steak ✓
Some Improvised Dry Rub ✓
Spring Greens ✓
Cast Iron Skillet ✓

A Happy Ending ✓

Shocking French Toast

Sublime French Toast

Nothing Witty Doing

I've spent the past couple of weeks riding the bus around town reading The Diary of Alice James and trying to think up something witty to write about brioche. Turns out a harder task than I expected, and my mind keeps drawing a blank. Also it's the holidays and my nerves are totally undone by the spirit of the season. The lights and the snow and the well-wishing and the tamales my friend Sol's family made on Christmas eve I enjoy a lot, but the music everywhere brings me near to losing my mind.

I am thinking about a movie, and I'm still thinking about it. A version of "Humoresque," with a half loaf of brioche in the role of violinist Paul Boray (John Garfield). A jar of chopped cherry jam in the role of Helen Wright (Joan Crawford). And a stick of butter as the ever ironic Sid Jeffers (Oscar Levant). I am also thinking about recreating a classic romantic winter scene on Lake Michigan. Caspar David Friedrich's "Wreck of the Hope," with shattered slices of brioche French toast heaving skyward encased in the massing white and blue striated glassy shards of the frozen arctic sea.

Big plans for 2011. In the meantime the loaves are wrapped well in plastic biding their time in my freezer.

Bragging Rights

Cherry Cheese Danish Braid

A few months ago I bought a jar of sour cherries at Trader Joe's. I'd been wondering about them for several years but never saw an actual place for them in my diet, so they never made it from the shelf in the store to my cart to my reusable tote bag to the trunk of my iGo car to my kitchen. I don't know what was different this one evening. Probably I was in the mood to splurge, go wild, have an adventure, make a change, live life more on the edge. Whatever the cause, the cherries made it home with me and they were about as disappointing as I expected. Not bad. Just blah. I spooned some over chocolate ice cream. Blah. I spooned some into a container of Cozy Shack rice pudding. Nice color, but the flavor was still blah. Then the jar parked on the inside of my refrigerator door and we settled into a waiting game. I think the cherries and I had both given up on any possible future together beyond a winter smoothie and the recycling bin, but also we weren't able yet to admit our dashed hopes to each other. So we just lingered on, not expecting much, not minding.

Proofed and Ready for the Oven

I've got plenty of blah in my life. I sometimes feel like I have an advanced degree in blah. Blah blah blah. So much blah I don't know what to do with it all. An embarrassment of riches if I could solve that challenge. And this weekend I did make at least a small step in that direction, with the help of the remains in that jar of cherries. I was in a baking frenzy after my book party. Macaroni and cheese. Pizza tre formaggio. Three loaves of brioche (posting pending). And then this Danish pastry. I hesitated to make the dough, uncertain how I would finish it, until that jar of cherries caught the corner of my eye one evening as I did my final survey of the interior of my refrigerator before putting out the lights and getting into bed. Cherry and cheese Danish pastry braid!

I knew right as I was pulling the braid from the oven that blah in this case was become bully and bold and bragging rights all the way. Among the very best things I've ever baked. Insert string of unsurpassable superlatives here. Add some more. Blah blah blah.

The formula for the pastry is from Baking with Julia. The cheese is four ounces of cream cheese, a quarter cup of sugar, an egg yolk, and some orange zezt. The cherries I drained well, reduced the liquid to a syrup, then added back to the cherries with about a tablespoon of seedless raspberry jam.

Three Slices of Heaven