November 2010:
Apple pie. After the guava/cheese pie debacle, I decided to stick to what I know. This is one in a series.

 

November 2010:
Strawberry granola pancakes with a side of honey-sweetened Greek yogurt and maple syrup brought back from a recent trip to Vermont. I didn't intend to take pictures of this, but the patterns that emerged on the surface of the pancakes as they cooked were amazing.

 

November 2010:
Guava and cheese pie. I was living in Miami for a couple of months last year, and got to eat lots of amazing Cuban food....bubblegum-pink mamey milkshakes, syrupy shots of espresso and sugar, fried everything! My favorite though was guava and cheese pastries. Usually late fall has meant baked apples and and pumpkin pie to me, but now it means a backyard full of fallen rotting guavas. So I decided to make a guava and cheese pie, even though I had never eaten or dissected a fresh guava before. Naturally I decided to wing it, without a recipe, and for the cheese I chose feta. Why? Why did I do that? It was so gross. Totally inedible to the point of the taste actually haunting me. I threw the whole thing in the trash without any remorse, I just wanted it out of my life. It took a really long time to make, too! I think I remember at some point making a feta and fruit tart and it coming out really well (it's hard to go wrong with fruit/cheese combinations), but guavas are different. Especially fresh wild ones growing in downtown L.A....I probably shouldn't have been eating them at all honestly. A kind friend skeptically asked me, "What were you going for anyway? A Greek guava pie?" and then, deadpan, "Was this your biggest failure?"- which I asked him to clarify. We whittled it down to indeed my biggest failure recently as a baker.

 

October 2010:
Flesh Feast at Jamie Mohr's Be Your Own Placebo gallery project space. We, along with Lauren Pakradooni, conceived of a decadent feast of of flesh-like dishes. Inspired by Huysman's "Against Nature"...it needs its own page! Click below.

 

Septermber 2010:
Bananas Foster sundae. It was a record 115 degrees today in Los Angeles, and the bananas engulfed in alcohol-fueled blue flames were a fitting effegy for me. They were first sauteed in butter and brown sugar, and then after being taken off of the heat, I added rum and set them on fire. Then I made mini banana split sundaes for my roommate Michael and I (who I had interrupted in his room to help me photograph the flaming bananas), drizzling the warm sugary/buttery rum sauce over the sundae in place of a more traditional chocolate sauce. A nice treat at sunset after a real scorcher.

August 2010:
Kombucha. What is it exactly? I have no idea. I don't know if anyone knows, but there are many claims to its health benefits. It's an acquired taste for sure, and comes from a "mother" that looks like the layer of fat found under mammal skin (but with gross fiberous brown things hanging off of it). It needs to live in a warm, dark environment and be fed room-temperature sweet black tea every week so that it can produce a baby. I don't understand how any horror movie fan can exist without a creepy kombucha mom living in some dark kitchen cabinet, the juices of which you consume to increase your overall health and strength. Many people will also attest to its vaguely addictive powers, maybe due to the fact that it is slightly fermented (ie alcoholic)..? Because of its steady self-replicating and my hesitancy to throw away anything called a "baby", I had a virtual kombucha army going at my old house in Providence during the warm months. When it was too cold for it, I found myself taking straight shots of unfiltered apple cider vinegar to try to mimic the PH effects in my body. I can't explain it, but I think that is the addictive component...the warmth and shock of pickling your insides a little bit every day. It sounds crazy I know, but this stuff goes for like $4 a bottle at Whole Foods...the Whole Foods in California actually have it on tap. When I first moved here I called the G.T.'s factory to see if they would give me a tour, but the lady on the phone was super dismissive. The claim on their website that they brew their giant batches of kombucha in rooms that are painted purple, and provide a constant new age music soundtrack to the fermenting moms. How big are these moms exactly? They are like goldfish and grow as big their environments...once I made a mom that was as big as the top circumference of a large punch bowl...you are supposed to brew them in glass only, so I envision a purple factory filled with glass swimming pools of slimy kombucha moms listening to Enya. Why wouldn't they give tours?! I would have paid up to $15 dollars to tour the factory, maybe even $20. Anyway. I luckily had lots of friends in Providence who were already kombucha converts and were happy to consume the gallons of the stuff that I was producing every week. I even silkscreened labels and made everyone I knew dig the glass bottles out from under their car seats so that I could sustain my mini bottling plant for free. I was even elaborately flavoring and sweetening them! You know the botanical line of kombucha that GT's put out last year? I was totally doing that first. So now in California, even though it seems like the population at large is a fan of it, my particular friends barely humor me with sips of my fancy batches of kombucha microbrew. I try to entice them by revealing the mother in all her slimy reproductive glory, but it never has the intended effect. However, I don't know how to break my bottling habbit, so here are some pictures of the first flavored batch of California kombucha.
PS Usually one obtains a reproducing mother from a friend, like a chain letter, but I didn't know anyone here who had one. So...I ordered one off of ebay. I had been out of town for a couple of days and came home to find this dripping padded bubble mailer with a leaky-ziplock-bag-encased kombucha mom inside, stinking of vinegar. It had come from a black Muslim collective in San Francisco that had personalized return address stickers featuring cartoon representations of each of the members. I think a California kombucha brewer convention would be amazing.

 

July 2010:
I haven't ventured into baking bread very much, mostly because I always have been living in houses where there was nowhere warm enough to let it rise 6 months out of the year, so...I baked some bread the other day. Rosemary garlic white bread. The bland photos maybe reflect my bland feelings about it. Maybe better breads to come.

 

May 2010:
Chiara and I hosted our first dinner party. I was psyched about what I made but forgot to take pictures! I make lots of things that don't end up on this blog, but I want to post a description of this project...I have been collecting these old-looking metal fish shaped food molds since getting to LA. I see them everywhere here (thrift stores, flea markets, etc)...what are they used for? Are they decorative? Fish shaped cakes? Jello molds with tiny fish suspended in them? I have two that are a little over a foot long and about 4-6 inches at their widest points, but I have also seen stacks of much smaller ones. They are different kinds of fish, too, and curved slightly in different directions. So for the party I made two savory pies in the fish molds, sealing them completely on the bottom before baking them and then flipping them onto a board before serving. I had never tried molding pie dough like that in the oven, and it worked out really well, they were beautiful! One was chicken, spinach, onions, garlic, cranberries, walnuts and feta (seasoned mostly with pesto, but lots of other herbs), and the other was mushroom, asparagus, goat cheddar, hard-boiled quail eggs and maybe something else that I forget and was seasoned really simply. I also made mocha cheesecake brownies...a layer of brownie batter and then a layer of cheesecake batter and then a drizzling of brownie batter to swirl into the top (more black and white theme). I actually followed the recipe almost exactly which I don't do a lot, but it's hard to improve on something so fucking delicious! I put them in the fridge wrapped up overnight after they cooled, and when I served them they were chilly and very slick and smooth in this way that brownies usually aren't, i was really into it.

 

April 2010:
Made a cake for a party at Matt and Jamie's. The top and bottom layers were dark chocolate with an angelfood cake layer in the middle, trying to make it as close to black and white as possible. The frosting in between layers was a white chocolate buttercream with strawberry jam and fresh strawberries on top. It took a lot longer to make this than i thought, so in classic fashion I didn't let it cool all the way before frosting the outside...so I had an elaborate idea with the white and dark chocolate frostings that turned into just a muddy looking volcanic swirl on the sides that I decided I was ok with. I had also dipped fresh strawberries in dark chocolate and then dipped them again partially in white chocolate, trying to create a layer effect to mimic the cake, but they came out way sloppy so I didn't use them except for one on the top. The weird thing about the photos for this cake is that the coolest looking part was definitely the inside, but since I was taking it to a party I didn't want to cut it beforehand...I was wondering, what is weirder: cutting out a slice to take a picture at home and then putting the slice back before taking it to the party, or whipping out my camera at the party to take a picture once they cut into it? I don't know them well enough yet to do either, so use your imagination!

 

March 2010:
I'm in the process of setting up my new kitchen with all of the baking gadgets that I've been without for the past 7 months, and working on some classic recipes. I haven't been photographing them because they are not that interesting...the baking equivalent of doing scales. But who knows how long I will be on this kick and I haven't updated this in a while, so here is a classic lemon merangue pie that I made today with lemons from the yard (where we now have a chicken, so maybe soon I can use eggs from the yard too).

 

February 2010:
Fairy intestines? Crystal confections? Cake for BBQ at Joel's, nice weekend morning painting baked goods with Haley in Topanga Canyon. Same idea as Capricorn birthday cake, but more of an improvised citrus bundt with a hard glaze (easier to paint on- let the glaze dry over night). The frosting had a gray-ish color that made it look like giant uncooked shrimp, over all looked completely inedible but was actually delicious. Was even asked for the recipe by a stranger! Interesting discovery about the black flaked sugar: in large quantities, it dyes people's mouths black.

 

January 17, 2010:
Capricorn birthday cake for Natalie, Haley, Luke and Sarah, made with Haley and Chloe. Freestyled the cake recipe using lemon zest and juice from the tree in the yard and sour cream left over from breakfast. Buttercream frosting with lavender from the yard. Based on the talismanic gem for Capricorn, we tried to design it after an Onyx stone but ended up with more of a smoked quartz. Cut, stacked and frosted layers, sprayed gradual and fading shades with black aerosol food coloring. Blew shimering edible metallic dust on the cake to make it more gem-like, added black sugar crystals that resembled flaking glass. Inserted small plastic babies randomly into cake for good luck.

 

December, 2009:
Cointreau cheesecake for steak, champagne and cheesecake themed dinner party. Researched evolution of cheesecake, traditional regional modifications, consulted Chris Mulligan about his experiments with different cheeses and crusts. Decided on an equal three part blend of neufchatel, local ricotta, and goat cheese. Ground almonds into a coarse flour for the base of the crust, candied orange peels in boiling sugar water with cointreau and almond extract. Recipe did not vary much from a traditional cheesecake recipe, but with cointreau added. Used the excess liquid from candying the orange peels as a glaze for the top of the cake, which I also decorated with the candied peels, crumbled goat cheese and orange twists.

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