a light aslant

i feel spacey today. gray skies, ginger peach tea. on my morning walk i passed a full school bus, saw three different girls writing on the windows in their own fogged breath.



stayed up a little late last night baking the layers for a neapolitan cake that is for a combined birthday on sunday, for kirk (33 on the 21st) and my dad (56 on the 28th).

the scent of the dough was amazing -- it has a whole cup of pulverized almonds in it, plus a little almond extract, and the zests of an orange and a lemon. heavenly!



the cake layers are really giant cookies. they are triple-wrapped in plastic in the freezer until i assemble the cake on friday -- it will rest in the fridge all weekend until the party so that the currant jam caramel filling will absorb into the cookies and make them soft. yum. are you hungry yet?

i made quiche for the first time tonight, in a new tart pan (with removable bottom!) that i bought especially for this. (okay, maybe also for other nefarious dessert purposes.) it was so simple, could easily be made in a regular pie crust if you add a few extra eggs. click click click for the full recipe at flickr.

i made cheddar cheese today!


here i am stirring the curd and adding the salt. more pictures on flickr if you click the photo.

it is being pressed overnight under 20lbs of pressure, and tomorrow morning we flip it and press on the other side for another twelve hours. and then it cures for at least a month. it will take a loooong time, but when it's done we are going to have a belated housewarming party, with grilled cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, and apples to apples (another christmas present). yay!

two dishes i made and posted on flickr:

butternut squash soup with toasted pine nuts


tiramisu sette stelle i made this afternoon


follow the photo links to see the recipes!

today i canned a huge batch of tomato sauce. it was a lot of work and a lot of fun, and i documented it along the way. you can go see and read more about it on flickr.

last weekend i finally bought phaidon's new cookbook the silver spoon. it is a translation of il cucchiaio d'argento, allegedly the most famous cookbook in italy, though i can't say i ever once saw a kitchen with a cookbook in it while i was there. even so, it is a remarkable book:



last night we made a simple fettuccine alla vodka which was delicious, a rich and complex flavor, and even better than previous homemade versions i have had of vodka sauce (and now i do not think we will ever buy it in a jar again). for lunch yesterday, we made very decadent mozzarella in carozza sandwiches, thick slices of mozzarella on crustless bread, dipped in egg and fried in a bit of butter until golden brown. simply amazing. on the menu for the coming week: meatballs, chicken and pancetta roulades, broccoletti.

it is also a heavy, gorgeous beastie of a book, hardcover and 1,200+ pages, many photos included. recipes and indices are in both english and italian, and helpful comparisons of italian vs american butcher diagrams are included, as are descriptions of obscure vegetables and their (occasional) domestic equivalents. it is grouped by sections corresponding to traditional course order -- soups and pastas, meats and egg dishes, cheeses and dolci, etc.; each section also has basic information, such as techniques for shirring or coddling or soft-boiling in the egg section, and general time-per-pound guidelines for meats. it is a weighty captain's atlas to the classic italian cooking's weekend travelogue (bought several weeks ago), if you will.

i am very excited to have it in my kitchen. i don't know of any tv italian chefs hawking trustworthy books, and many general italian cookbooks i've seen have been heavily weighted to a particular region, or are either overly fussy or overly americanized. so now, i can stop looking, because i think i've found the perfect italian cookbook.

no-knead bread (my simplification of the ny times version)
ingredients: 3 cups flour, .25 tsp instant yeast, 1.25 tsp salt.

combine ingredients in a large bowl, and add 1 5/8 cups of water. stir until mixed. cover the bowl with plastic wrap and rest for 12-20 hours at warm room temperature.

turn out onto a floured surface, sprinkle the top with more flour, and fold it over itself once or twice. cover with plastic wrap again and rest 15 mins. then flour hands, shape it into a ball, and place it on a floured cotton towel. sprinkle top with flour, cover with another towel, and let rise for 2 hours or until it has doubled in size.

thirty minutes before the dough is done, preheat the oven to 450° and place the dutch/french oven in to heat up. when the dough is ready, pour it into the pan (no greasing needed). cover and bake 30 mins, remove lid and bake 15-30 mins more. cool and serve.

	here is the dough mixture after rising for almost 20 hours. the top is very bubbly, and the dough seems rather wet.
	the dough turned out on the floured cutting board--it is surprisingly springy. it has been folded over on itself twice in preparation for another two hours' rising.
	after two hours of rising...i probably could have let it go a little longer, but we were eager to get it in the oven.
	the completed loaf! 30 mins in a covered dutch /french oven at 450, then another 20 mins with the lid off. it has a beautiful crispy crust.
	it turned out to be a large, shallow loaf, because the dutch oven was so large. it would have been much taller in a smaller pot.
	perfect slices, beautiful spongy texture, and very, very tasty.

two things:

1. kirk bought a timer that will allow us to plug in the crockpot in the morning and have it start up hours later. this is exciting, as currently we are out of the house for 12+ hours each day. even on "low" that's quite the overdone pot roast.

2. battlestar galactica is the best show on television right now. also currently watching: lost, vanished, the nine. it's not even about regular tv versus sci fi -- i really think it's the best acting, best writing, best plot (bonus: best social commentary). it beats the pants off of everything else i've seen so far this season.

this weekend was lovely. did i mention that i cracked open an egg with a double yolk on saturday? i felt very lucky.

sunday we sat down to our fabulous easter(ish) feast. until the last moment we thought aboutlooking might be joining us, but it didn't work out. sometime soon, though! whenever we next go to western massachusetts, hopefully :)







the maple pecan muffins were very tasty, but for some reason i am bad at making fluffy muffins. why is that? they never really puff up above the muffin cup like they do in the pictures.

also, because for some reason it's only sold in big quart containers, we now have a ton of buttermilk leftover. i remember nevers was in the same spot a while back -- now we have to search out recipes involving buttermilk! so i guess we'll be making biscuits sometime later this week.

lots of marathoners on the T this morning, all with their numbered, race-issued red addidas bags, looking overly healthy and scrawny and excited. (also looking rather white.) i guess much of boston has the day off, but not harvard. walking to my building i pass the cambridge common and it is full of blooming trees and (finally!) visible leaves. a beautiful morning.