Still in limbo

Where does time go these days?

I have to let you know that I am STILL in limbo, but will finally be finishing up the moving process to Ann Arbor late this week. It's hard to believe, but the chips are finally falling into place and I will be starting school in the all too near future.

In terms of this blog, I think it's actually a good thing. I have no idea what the light will be like there, or when I'll find my camera cord so that I can unload some actual food photos on you all. But at least things will be settled and I'll definitely have opportunities for procrastination-driven blog posts.

I've been cooking a decent amount these past few weeks, and have even made friends (I hope) with a phenomenal lettuce farmer at the Chicago City Market, which is never a bad thing. Most of what I've been cooking revolves around salads and blanched green beans tossed with halved cherry tomatoes in a sherry vinaigrette (Thanks SmittenKitchen!). This stuff tastes so good without anything being done to it!

A friend came to visit a few weekends ago and we had a fabulous time sailing, capsizing and spending the rest of the day cooking in the kitchen. Biscuits, granola and garlic scape pesto were the results. I have the best friends, don't I?

The garlic scape pesto was AMAZING, but since they're out of season at the moment, I can't make another batch and properly measure this time. Unfortunately, that will have to wait until next summer.

In the meantime, I can direct you over to SmittenKitchen's lovely write-up about that addicting green bean and tomato salad I mentioned above and hope that will hold you over until I can finally finish moving and begin unpacking.

At the tail end

My last night in Paris was spent with my old host family at their gorgeous home in the bottom of the 15th. And by home, I meant house, a beautiful one wrapped around a stone-lined courtyard with one tall leafy tree, perfect for outdoor picnics and dinner parties. Since I stayed with the family during the fall semester, I didn't get to experience many of those, but my host mom had the outdoor table and flowering potted plants set out when I arrived at 8h for dinner.

After a lovely meal, where she gently corrected my table setting technique and encouraged me to have seconds and thirds, we all sat around outside chatting, while the boys (3 of them) slowly disappeared one by one--there were girls waiting for them somewhere outside the dark green front gate.

After the last had disappeared, I realized I'd better head out too, if I was going to catch the last bus back to the apartment where I was staying. I felt out of sorts on the bus ride home, a cocktail of contemplation and reflection. So I did the only thing that I could think of.

I went straight back to the apartment, turned on my computer and went pretend shopping on Amazon...except I actually ordered a couple of things. Two cookbooks to be exact: Farmhouse Cookbook and French Farmhouse Cookbook, both by my former chef Susan Herrmann Loomis. I know, I know, I am SO predictable.

I figured that I needed a way to help make the transition back to the States, and besides, these are really good cookbooks. Okay, I'll stop justifying my purchases now. Instead, let me pass along a recipe from one of them. It's a luscious, moist, lightly spiced cake flecked with tart squares of rhubarb. We're at the tail end of the season now, so hurry up and get to the farmer's market so you won't have to wait a whole year to enjoy it!

Rhubarb Cake
Adapted from Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herrmann Loomis

2 cups diced fresh rhubarb
1 1/2 cups sugar
8 Tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups plus 2 Tbs. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup plain yogurt
3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter a 7 x 12-inch glass baking dish (or other non-reactive baking dish, as the rhubarb can react with some metals).

Combine the diced rhubarb and 1/4 cup of the sugar in a small bowl, stir and set aside.

Mix the butter with the remaining 1 1/4 cups sugar in a large bowl until pale yellow and almost fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.

Sift the flour, baking soda and spices together into a medium-sized bowl or piece of parchment paper.

Combine the yogurt and buttermilk in a small bowl.

Add the dry ingredients in thirds to the butter mixture, alternating with buttermilk/yogurt mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Stir in the rhubarb and sugar mixture. The batter will be fairly thick at this point.

Spoon the batter into the prepared baking dish and bake until the cake is golden and puffy and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 40-50 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Yields about 16 small pieces.

Note: Because of the yogurt in this cake, the top will get progressively softer the longer you keep it. Not a bad thing, believe me, but something to keep in mind.

Baking improv

I love following recipes.

I do, I admit it. That feeling of flipping through a cookbook's pages, searching for that one recipe to catch your eye, when everything falls into place and you have (nearly) all of the ingredients on hand. You find yourself fervently hoping that this recipe will be another one to keep marked, to file away into your "Must Make Again" folder, not one of those meh dishes that are always so disappointing.

One of those recipes, the good kind, I mean, landed in my lap via Miss Molly, and comes courtesy of the magnificent Edna Lewis. In fact, I've directed you to this recipe before, and if you haven't already made it, then I suggest you hop to it immediately!


While I am a devoted recipe follower (except with S&P measurements. Who measures that? Those are more guidelines anyway, right?), but I do love to make things up when it comes to cooking pasta or stir-frying or things like that. I'm willing and happy to throw different spices in, play around, because with cooking, you can taste and adjust and readjust and then readjust some more. Now, baking, on the other hand...well, you kind of have one shot and then that's it.

Which is why I ALWAYS follow the recipe when I bake. I do not adjust, I try not to substitute (unless we're talking nuts or dried fruit), I follow orders. There is nothing, and I mean nothing more disappointing than a mediocre baked good.

So you can imagine my surprise yesterday when I felt that irresistible pull towards the kitchen, saw my hands reach for flour, sugar and butter and started clicking through my favorite food blogs for some baking inspiration. I wanted something simple and homey and I immediately thought of the Busy Day Cake. However, I didn't have any whole milk on hand, and not even enough skim to make up the difference. I did have yogurt, and that started the wheels a-turning. I remembered a favorite yogurt cake and, with my fingers irresistibly reaching for the eggs and vanilla, decided that I needed to take my first step towards baking independence.

So I subbed in the yogurt for the milk, and since I was feeling outrageous, subbed in some demerera sugar for a quarter of the total amount of sugar called for. Ooooh, shocking, I know. Who knows what I'll do next.

Of course, I would love to be able to regale you with a magnificent success story of my delicious and highly improved cake. And, while the cake is actually quite good, an ideal afternoon tea accompaniment...I think I need a bit more work in the baking improv department. The coarse, cornmeal texture that I so loved in the original was nowhere to be found (could have something to do with me having to cream the butter and sugar by hand), though the flavors were still quite lovely.

Perhaps a cozy sitdown with Harold McGee's treatise is in order, accompanied, of course, by a piece of cake and a cup of tea.

The people at home

Well, I'll be.

Somehow, I find myself with just a week and a half left before I fly back to the States. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but I will say that this is the first time in my life that I've felt almost ready to go home. You see, I miss my family, friends and boyfriend rather desperately.


I've never been the type to get homesick. People always ask me that question, since I've been lucky enough to have multiple experiences in foreign countries for months at a time, but the truth is, I'm quite happy traveling and living other places. Granted, I've never been gone for more than 4 months at a time, so that feeling would probably change if my stays were longer, but as it stands, I'm happy as a clam when abroad.

Except for one little thing: the people at home.


I wish that there was a way that I could just transport everyone here, so that I could still go to my favorite marchés, but share them with everyone. I mean, who wants to leave a place where you have weekly markets filled with fraises des bois, live animals and gorgeous produce pulled out of the ground the day before?

And, of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg of good things here. I'm not even going to get started on the cheese shops or Hervé's wine selection (our wine guru based in Honfleur). There are no words.


I hope to spend a few days in Paris before my flight to pick up some last minutes gifts (aka chocolate) and a bit of wandering, as well as a final stop at Rose Bakery (sigh...). I'm planning to pick up some macarons from Pierre Hermé to get me through the flight--let's hope they don't get too crushed on their way through security.

I'll try to post again before I head out, but the way my schedule's been going, I make no promises. However, I can promise MANY more recipes come July.

Sorry for such sporadic updates these past few months. If you have hung in there, thank you!!!

See you on the flip side.

Come and gone

Another class has come and gone.

Come to think of it, so has another pair of flats. Unfortunately, these were my favorites, and I'm rather puzzled as to how I managed to wear a hole in them after two months. And there's a rather large hole starting in my other pair, which is really disconcerting. Are cobblestones really that hard on your shoes?!?

Last weekend I took a quick and MUCH needed trip out to see Merrill in Rennes. The weekend consisted of cooking a gorgeous asparagus tart, drinking the best sparking rosé I've ever tasted and sitting with my feet propped up under a shady tree in the park, spitting cherry pits behind me as I read some P.G. Wodehouse.

In other words, it was perfect. Thank you so much, my dear.


My time here is rapidly coming to an end, much more rapidly than I could ever have imagined. I have my first catering gig, a 3-day class, lots of recipe editing, 2 days of classes in Paris and a pyjama party for F before I go.

I'm also hoping to fit in a visit to Bistro Paul Bert with Merrill, a morning rummaging through the Louviers citywide garage sale (foire à tout) and a few days wandering around Paris before I go.

How strange to have to start figuring out if/what I should ship home (books, I'm looking at you), what will stay to donate to The Red Cross and what will fit in my bags. And then, of course, there's all that planning I should be doing to prep for law school which I am happily but pointedly ignoring for as long as possible.


If you're looking for a great new recipe to try or a new book to read, and even if you're not, I would encourage you to drop whatever you're doing and head to the bookstore to buy this book immediately. The unbelievably lovely Molly sent me a copy last week and I devoured it within a day. I smiled, cried, wished helplessly that I had such talent and was generally besotted.

Oh, and in case you feel overwhelmed at the number of great recipes it includes, I can personally attest to the "Winning Hearts and Minds" Cake. I've made it any number of times and it's one of my absolute favorites.

Oh, and the pickled grapes are incredible, as well. I'm just saying.

Sunday morning song

I am a firm believer in lazy Sunday mornings.



I realize that this is probably because for the past few years, lazy Sundays have not existed for me. Especially during my time in San Francisco, I was working nearly every Sunday for at least a few hours, and oftentimes much longer than that.

During my last year of college, Sunday was the one day of the week when I didn't work or have multiple dance classes (only one class on Sundays, you see, and that was the rehearsal when I was the choreographer). My Sundays that year were comprised of quality time in my school's dark room in the mornings and early afternoons before dance rehearsal around dusk. Then I'd head home to have some dinner and study. They were lovely days, though a bit too filled and scheduled to be my ideal.

Every other Sunday here in Louviers, I am cleaning, doing mise en place and then helping Susan serve the students their Welcome Dinner while hanging out with F. Not the lazy Sunday of my dreams, but we've been really good about going for bike rides and swims these past few weeks as the weather has warmed up, so I'm not complaining.

Today, however, well, today is my kind of Sunday. I got up, tidied the kitchen a bit and hung some laundry out on the line before heading to the bakery for a brioche to dunk every so delicately in my morning milky tea. I then curled up on the couch and read for an hour in perfect silence.

Mornings like this one don't come nearly often enough.

But I love them when they do.

I don't have a recipe for you today, but I would steer you in the direction of the link Molly put up recently on rhubarb compote. Except that I would tell you to take some direction from this lovely lady and leave out the orange liquor and throw in a touch of pure vanilla extract. It's heavenly.

Now go enjoy your Sunday.

On school and simplicity

Cooking school provides opportunities where entire evenings are completely devoted to making three different cookie doughs, rolling them out into logs, wrapping them in parchment paper and slipping them neatly into plastic bags to be refrigerated, then later frozen. Those white logs sitting side by side in the refrigerator are more than enough to make a girl feel proud.

And of course, a half log snuck out of line, sliced up and baked, yielding midnight black sablés to be eaten in between batches with a glass of wine...well that's one of life's best and simplest pleasures.

I've been thinking a lot about how I eat recently (that probably comes as no great surprise), and I've discovered that simpler things really do satisfy me.

I had a phenomenal dinner last night that consisted of steamed asparagus, tossed with olive oil and thinly sliced, quickly blanched, spring onions. The whole mess was then showered with grated aged goat cheese and left alone for about 10 minutes for the cheese to melt slowly over the still-warm asparagus and onions. Then we took it outside with some cut up bread and ate to our heart's content, enjoying the mild weather, view of the church and the great company.

That's the kind of dinner I want to eat all the time.