every bite tells a story, every dish is delish
Posted in Let's Bake, recipes on Oct 4th, 2008
I am standing at my in-laws’ dining room table, using a short serrated knife to hack through an apple-almond dessert, and my heavy bracelet keeps slipping down my wrist. I lean in to cut, bracelet whomp. Push it up, falls back down. Up, down, back, clonk. It keeps whacking the pastry [...]
Posted in Let's Cook, My So-Called Life, recipes on Sep 27th, 2008
I found myself on a local cooking show, wearing white and standing over a bowl, demonstrating how to make ganache.
“Ganache is really the mother chocolate,” I was saying to the host, “just this simple mixture, but you can use it hot or cold, as a glaze, a frosting, a filling. In France it’s everything [...]
Posted in Let's Bake, recipes on Sep 23rd, 2008
You’re having nice people to dinner and you need a nice dessert. You’d like something easy but brilliant, sweet but sophisticated, deceptively simple – you know, a plated version of our ideal selves. Here’s what you don’t want: a labor-intensive tower of dubious taste. You’ve already cooked three courses, and though [...]
Posted in Let's Cook, recipes on Sep 16th, 2008
We had friends to dinner the other night, a nice little party with flowers and wine and Josie upstairs. These days I like making it nice but not stiff, special without fuss - but just a few years back it was all fuss all the time - to a newly minted chef girl, married girl, [...]
Posted in Chicagoland, recipes on Aug 30th, 2008
In my ode to crunchy, comforting mandelbread the other day, I mentioned that it was the first cookie I’d ever baked, courtesy of cousin Dana’s card. Thanks to the magic of the interwebs, my cousin Robin quickly clocked in and asked “…but where’s Dana’s recipe?”
And here it is. The red marker, what’s cookin’, [...]
