September 2010
51 posts
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Pancake Cupcakes
I call these cupcakes Pancake Cupcakes because they taste like pancakes, especially with the maple syrup cake and buttery frosting. Maybe it’s a bit too indulgent for breakfast but you could rationalize that it is breakfast appropriate because it tastes like breakfast.
Yes, I am making up reasons to have cupcakes for breakfast.
For a dozen cupcakes:
1 1/4 c. whole wheat flour
...
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Plums and Cola
The answer from last week’s Guessing Game was soda. To be more specific, Coke (cola):
So what does the soda have to do with plums as it says in the title?
You can put them in your Coke! Not just any plums though: dried preserved Chinese plums. Dried preserved plums are basically Chinese plums pickled in sugar, salt and various herbs. They look like this:
Kind of like rocks!...
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Fluff Fudge
A few weeks ago, I had about a half pound of marshmallow fluff sitting in my cupboards. Fluff isn’t heavy if you’ve ever had the stuff so you can only imagine that it was a lot of fluff. What the hell am I supposed to do with it? As an attempt to use up all of the fluff (it was about to go bad), there was a recipe on the back of the huge fluff container for “No Fail Fudge”...
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Ask Chef: Your Questions Answered!
Ask Chef your culinary questions! I’ll be collecting questions and posting his responses when I can. E-mail me the questions (anniew at fritesandfries.com) or ask here!
cuurvychik asked: Hi Chef! Do u have any good fall recipes for homemade baked goods? I want to surprise my family with something simple but special this month.
Pumpkin bars and pumpkin bread are pretty easy and perfect for fall...
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Things I Did This Weekend: Went to a Yankees Game
I went to a Yankees (vs. Red Sox) game this weekend with Chef!
Chef’s mom and fellow Minnesotans should not be worried: Our hearts still belong to the Minnesota Twins (as proven by my Twins debit card). However for this game, Yankees > Red Sox (because we couldn’t root for the Twins AND we live in New York).
Not only did I go to a baseball game this weekend, I also...
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Snacks at François Payard Bakery
François Payard’s new bakery is so close to work that it’s dangerous. I’ve stopped by almost every day since it opened. Some of my favorites…
The classic and simple strawberry tart with pistachios:
The chocolate silken soy gâteau roulé that was almost too pretty to eat:
You can’t even taste the soy, of course. If anything, the soy was a bonus because it made...
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Guess What This Is?
I’ll tell you the answer on Tuesday!
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Science Saturday: Smelly Things
A BBC science show has made a time lapse video of rotting food. It may be gross but it’s really interesting!
Click to watch if you’re not already grossed out by the thought of it.
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Le Divorce
A recent study in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology examines the divorce rate for police officers. How is this related to chefs? It just so happens that they analyzed other careers as well. They found that:
“The results of this analysis indicate that the divorce rate for law enforcement personnel is lower than that of the general population, even after controlling for...
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Have You Ever...
…had a paper doughnut?
A paper orange?
What about a paper cupcake?
All of these fantastic paper creations were made by Paper Donut. They have a lot of other interesting paper art like this paper burger.
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Fair Wages
According to the Wall Street Journal today, the New York labor department will be issuing new wage order in the next couple weeks. Following the recommendations made by a former labor commissioner, the minimum will be increased to $5/hour (with mandatory tip pooling; the current minimum $4.65 with voluntary tip pooling). Gawker suggests some additional [awesome] restaurant worker laws:
“If...
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Eggs in Purgatory
Eggs in Purgatory is a dish where a freshly cracked egg sits on top of a really hot tomato based sauce.
I’m not exactly sure why it’s called “Eggs in Purgatory” but I’m guessing it has to do with the egg being in between the hot surface of the sauce and the cooler surface of the environment.
Some variations for this dish requires you to bake them in the oven...
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Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls
A couple days ago, I asked everyone what I should make this weekend. There was a huge range of suggestions! Someone suggested cinnamon rolls, someone else requested a breakfast item, and another person wanted something with chocolate in it. It was natural to combine all three ideas into one recipe:
Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls.
For 12 servings (adapted from Paula Deen):
Dough:
1/4 oz. active...
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The Restaurant Life
Restaurant life is pretty tough. New York is notorious for having a high failure rate for restaurants since many are independently own and there are thousands of restaurants just in Manhattan alone. What is dinner service like at a young restaurant?
Last night, I documented the activities of a East Village restaurant on their first day of Fall dinner service.
When the kitchen staff has worked...
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Foodtography
You can find my [small] picture of the heirloom tomato salad from 5 & Diamond in Travel + Leisure magazine this month!
Fortunately, they decided to put it on the website too and it’s bigger!
Woot! So *brag brag brag*.
Sadly, if this salad captures your attention and interest, I DOUBT that they are serving it there because:
Heirlooms are out of season
There is a new chef now
And...
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Basic Apple Pie
I like fall because I get to wear my kick ass brown riding boots, curl up in big sweaters, eat pumpkin desserts, indulge in creamy soups and drink hot cider. The thing I love most about fall though, is apple season. Today’s recipe is the answer to last week’s Guessing Game: Apple pie!
I love the smell of cinnamon and apples in my tiny kitchen. Sometimes you can see the little puffs...
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Faux Dinners
The Kitchn wrote an interesting post today: “What Have You Passed Off as Dinner?” Wanna know what crap I’ve pretended was dinner because I was too busy or too lazy?
Ice cream sundaes
Beer
Baguettes and cheese (I’d like to think of this as a fancy fake dinner)
French fries
Potato chip sandwiches
Ice cream sandwiches: it’s technically a sandwich
Onion rings
...
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Things I Did This Weekend: Comme le Français
Steph and I visited Pink Pony on the Lower East Side this weekend.
It’s such a good place to chat and read.
Stephanie came back from France:
…and she brought me presents!
Prints of my cartoon doppelgänger.
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Guess What This Is?
I’ll tell you on Tuesday ;)
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Things Chef Tells Me
Food Network recently surveyed a bunch of “chefs” about the things that chefs don’t tell you. There are twenty three things, according to this survey, even though the title says 25. Take this information with a grain of salt (because it’s an unreliable survey):
“Chefs are pickier than you think.”
“Still, chefs hate picky eaters.”
“When...
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[Social] Omnivores and a Confession
From Treehugger:
“When George Monbiot fessed up to being ‘wrong about veganism’, it ignited some hot debate. We humans get pretty passionate about the relative ethics of a veggie versus meat diet—so much so that it can influence our choice of life partner. But what happens when one party pretends to be vegetarian or vegan at home, but occasionally sneaks a...
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Relationships: Pity Parties
One of the things I absolutely hate about dating Chef is the mix of reactions I get when I tell people what he does for a living: some people are in awe of your restaurant life while others feels really sorry for you.
While my ego and happiness increases by a million percent because of the former (I get to try so many things and meet so many people!), the latter is really a tiny stab every...
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Pudding Au Pain
When I went to Eataly last weekend, I accidentally grabbed a loaf of plain bread with walnuts when I meant to grab one with raisins. One thing you should know about me is that I really do not like walnuts. In fact, I really really hate it. I hate wasting food though so instead of throwing the bread away, I made a bread pudding out of it.
I can’t really explain why I hate walnuts —...
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Just A Note
I don’t have cable so it’s of no surprise that I have not seen my appearance on the Cooking Channel. I found out it already aired last night! The show is called “Drink Up!” where cocktails are paired with food and each episode is centered around one restaurant (in my case, Sweetiepie for episode “Dessert Cocktails”) or one type of liqueur/beverage. Now I need...
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Pudding Au Chocolat
I’m still sick and my stomach can’t handle a whole lot of sweets. Except pudding. Chocolate pudding.
I was sick a lot as a kid and my parents always bought me jello and pudding — two things that I devoured pretty quickly and willingly. They were really the only things that I would eat because I never felt terrible or nauseous after consumption. I’ve always associated...
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Things I Did This Weekend: Fashion Night Out
Fashion Night Out (FNO) is a yearly collaborative event organized by Vogue, the CFDA, and New York City to celebrate and support the fashion industry. Participating stores and boutiques are open late; there are tons of street events, free food and free booze too. At this year’s FNO, I saw Chef Morimoto prepare sashimi at Bloomingdales…
….then I cabbed to the other side...
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Science Saturday: Periodic Tables
I really like this periodic table of desserts by Naomi Weissman:
I would probably hang it up in my kitchen if we had the space for it, although Chef would probably prefer something like this.
Maybe we could compromise and buy her vegetable table print?
These are way more periodic table like than the periodic table of cupcakes — the prints are perfect for food nerds (I must add that...
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Happy Friday
(I think.)
This week has been a whirlwind and a week of changes: my best friend is in France, my [not related] little sister is leaving the country for a few months, engagements, marriages/anniversaries, and anticipating/waiting for something exciting to happen in my career.
Although it was a sad and exciting week, it was a bad week too: I’m still sick and I had to spend an hour at the...
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Want: Pastry Board
If anyone wants to send me Get Well presents (since I’m still deathly ill pretty damn sick), I want this pastry board from Terrain very badly.
(via)
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S'Mores Cupcakes
The answer to Tuesday’s [easy] guessing game: graham crackers! The graham crackers are an important ingredient for the s’mores cupcakes I made:
The day I bought the fluff, I drank for almost five hours straight due to a girls’ happy hour. At the end of the night, I’ve somehow acquired a giant container of fluff and a bruise on my knee:
[The story would be more...
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Link Casserole
It’s been awhile since I’ve made a post like this but everyone in awhile, I find some really interesting links on the internet worth sharing.
The New York Times has a great interactive guide to the combat meals troops eat from around the world. The U.S. has a pretty decent looking spread with Skittles and ribs
For my Jewish friends, a delicious looking plum cake for Rosh Hashana
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Guess What This Is?
The inventor of this product thought it could suppress “carnal urges.”
I’ll tell you the answer on Thursday!
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Things I Did This Weekend: Egg-stravaganza
This weekend, my friend Harold and I decided to have an eggs benedict tasting by making four different versions of it.
A traditional eggs benedict is composed of a meat on top of a bread, a poached egg on top of the meat, and a buttery hollandaise sauce to top it off — the Hollandaise is one of the most important and hardest component to make for eggs benedict; I think it is difficult...
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Saturday, 8:00pm. East Village, New York City. A good-bye dinner at Veloce Pizzeria.
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Science Saturday: Refrigerating Food with Sound...
“Refrigerators are the source of much joy in the world, and the fridge is made possible by continually-cycled, selectively-pressurized gas. But someday, sound waves may replace this system in your fridge...Current compressors are mechanical. It may not always be that way. Thermoacoustic compressors may be on the way. Instead of mechanics, these will use loud sound waves at resonant...
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