Jane and Michael Stern are my road food heros. Understandably, considering they wrote the book Road Food, as well as many others, including Two for the Road, a book full of hilarious tales from their times on the road that Michael and I read out loud to each other in the fall of 2008 on our own California road trip.
So, when I heard the couple was coming to town for a talk at Benaroya, I convinced Michael we should go; hilarious as they are in writing, I was sure it could only be better in person.
I was right. We spent almost an hour and a half laughing along with crazy anecdotes and learning about how their food and writing experience evolved. The only problem was, not quite an hour and a half was not quite enough. We could tell Jane and Michael had more to say, and there was little time time to answer questions from the audience before they were whisked off the stage. Boo.
Afterwards, Michael (my own Michael) and I were in the mood for food, but I admit our choice was hardly a Road Food kind of destination. The dessert menu at Poppy on Capitol Hill was calling; I'd been longing to try a dessert thali there for a long time, and this was the perfect excuse. On a Tuesday night just after nine, it was easy to find a parking spot and a spot to sit in the bar. The happy hour offerings led us to each pick a fancy schmancy cocktail, but I was really here for the food. The food held up its end of the bargain; it was really there for me, too.
The concept of the dessert thali is a great one: for $15, choose one dessert off the menu and one ice cream. You'll receive your choices on a small platter accompanied by five other mini desserts, perfectly paired for two to share. Mmmm...
The highlight was our main dessert, the "herbed apple deep dish with bay leaf ice cream". Amazing. Underneath a cracklingly crsip pastry crust studded with turbinado sugar crystals were squares of perfectly cooked apple, soft cubes with just enough bite and nary a mushy piece to be found. We twirled the small sccop of bay leaf ice cream over the crust, letting it melt against the hot pastry, making each bite a combination of hot and cool, the faint herby quality of the cold ice cream providing balancing out the sweet, hot apples. Heavenly.
Not that the rest was anything to complain of. Passion fruit gelees were flavorful, semi-sweet and semi-sour, the taste of the fruit shining through. Nutter butter squares combined a creamy peanut butter frosting with a crunchy, nutty bar. Best of all the small bites, though, were the salted chocolate caramel truffles. Nothing more than a thin slice of chocolate dusted with cocoa, these packed big flavor. The chocolate melted elegantly on the tounge, a perfect balance of dark chocolate, deep caramel, and a hint of salt.
It may not be as exciting as getting rear-ended by a truck with a couple dozen jars of homemade barbeque sauce in the back of your Suburban (yes, this happened to ther Sterns, not us), but our night out was still an experience.
Showing posts with label dessert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dessert. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Monday, March 9, 2009
Kitchen Confidential
No, I didn't burn the beans again (and as a matter of fact, I successfully cooked cannellini beans for a soup last week, so dried beans and I are currently on friendly terms). But I am wondering - can puddings, once thickened, actually revert back to liquid? And is it possible to overbeat the sugar and eggs for a genoise cake? Today's attempts at dessert making seem to indicate that the answer to these questions is "yes" and "yes". Let's examine this further...
Our friends Doug and Leena, along with their two little kiddlywinks, were coming over for dinner, and I was inspired by a menu in this month's issue of Gourmet to whip up a little Sunday chicken dinner with bourbon banana pudding with glazed pecans for dessert. And really, doesn't that sound fabulous? Who wouldn't want bourbon banana pudding for dessert? The kiddlywinks loved it. You can find the recipe online at www.gourmet.com.
But back to the making of the dessert: I whisked together a mixture of brown sugar, cornstarch, and milk on the stove, bringing it to a boil and creating a lovely, glossy, thick pudding which I incorporated gently with some egg yolks and bourbon. Into the fridge it went to set. A few hours later I pulled out the bowl in high anticipation of scooping out delectable, pillowy spoonfuls of rich pudding soft enough to almost melt on the spoon but still solid enough form lazy ripples over a mound of sponge cake, bananas, and praline. If you need a moment to pause and savor that image, go ahead. I understand completely.
But instead what I found was pudding that had melted to the consistency of milk. Was this because I had used 1% instead of whole milk? What went wrong? It had looked so promising. I managed to salvage the pudding by adding some gelatin, but unfortunately by the time we were ready to eat it was still far from the pudding stage, although at least it had moved on to the creamy sauce stage, and no longer seemed like something that should be served in a glass with a straw.
As for the genoise, I read in Gourmet that it is absolutely essential that you beat your egg batter until the falling batter forms a wide ribbon that holds it's shape when you lift the beater over the bowl. After not quite ten minutes, my batter appeared to be getting close. According to the instructions, that meant to keep beating. So keep beating I did (gotta love those Kitchenaid mixers!).
And I kept beating. And beating. And - hey, if anything it looked less ribbony than 20 minutes ago! What was going on here? I gave up; I folded the egg mixture with the flour and baked my cake. It may have turned out a little flat, but it still tasted fine. But did this come about because I forgot to run the whole eggs under warm water before cracking them open, as the magazine had also suggested? Or did someone out there just not want me to make banana bourbon pudding today?
Well, regardless of the cosmic view of my pudding attempt, it turned out surprisingly well. Poured over cake, bananas, and candied pecans, the non-pudding still worked, and the genoise still soaked in the goodness of the bourbon glaze and the runny pudding sauce. And as I said before, the kids were quite taken with it (as, truth be told, was I). I guess you really can't go wrong with banana bourbon pudding with glazed pecans.
Our friends Doug and Leena, along with their two little kiddlywinks, were coming over for dinner, and I was inspired by a menu in this month's issue of Gourmet to whip up a little Sunday chicken dinner with bourbon banana pudding with glazed pecans for dessert. And really, doesn't that sound fabulous? Who wouldn't want bourbon banana pudding for dessert? The kiddlywinks loved it. You can find the recipe online at www.gourmet.com.
But back to the making of the dessert: I whisked together a mixture of brown sugar, cornstarch, and milk on the stove, bringing it to a boil and creating a lovely, glossy, thick pudding which I incorporated gently with some egg yolks and bourbon. Into the fridge it went to set. A few hours later I pulled out the bowl in high anticipation of scooping out delectable, pillowy spoonfuls of rich pudding soft enough to almost melt on the spoon but still solid enough form lazy ripples over a mound of sponge cake, bananas, and praline. If you need a moment to pause and savor that image, go ahead. I understand completely.
But instead what I found was pudding that had melted to the consistency of milk. Was this because I had used 1% instead of whole milk? What went wrong? It had looked so promising. I managed to salvage the pudding by adding some gelatin, but unfortunately by the time we were ready to eat it was still far from the pudding stage, although at least it had moved on to the creamy sauce stage, and no longer seemed like something that should be served in a glass with a straw.
As for the genoise, I read in Gourmet that it is absolutely essential that you beat your egg batter until the falling batter forms a wide ribbon that holds it's shape when you lift the beater over the bowl. After not quite ten minutes, my batter appeared to be getting close. According to the instructions, that meant to keep beating. So keep beating I did (gotta love those Kitchenaid mixers!).
And I kept beating. And beating. And - hey, if anything it looked less ribbony than 20 minutes ago! What was going on here? I gave up; I folded the egg mixture with the flour and baked my cake. It may have turned out a little flat, but it still tasted fine. But did this come about because I forgot to run the whole eggs under warm water before cracking them open, as the magazine had also suggested? Or did someone out there just not want me to make banana bourbon pudding today?
Well, regardless of the cosmic view of my pudding attempt, it turned out surprisingly well. Poured over cake, bananas, and candied pecans, the non-pudding still worked, and the genoise still soaked in the goodness of the bourbon glaze and the runny pudding sauce. And as I said before, the kids were quite taken with it (as, truth be told, was I). I guess you really can't go wrong with banana bourbon pudding with glazed pecans.
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