Old rhythms, new friends

Octavian and I recently returned from Berlin. He was there for an intensive ten-day philosophy seminar. I tagged along for the trip, unable to pass up the chance to spend some time in a beautiful, old city. We both, I think, had a marvellous time. The seminar, from what I gather, was one of those rare philosophical meetings in which the back-and-forth of argument, collaboration, and dissent was explosive, eye-opening, transformative of everyone's thinking in the room. (I'm pretty sure that this will bear out in no small part of the philosophical literature over the next ten years--I'm a little envious, anyway.) And my days in Berlin, though very different, were in their own right eye-opening, punctuated with moments of wonder. I wandered about the city, much of the time on foot, fumbling, trying, tasting wherever I could. But more on that soon, I promise.

For the moment, I'd like to talk about being back. It's been hard for both of us to get back into our usual rhythms--to be awake and attentive when we should, to sleep much longer past 5 am, to cook for ourselves, to sit down to the writing we both need to do. More than once this past week, we've found ourselves falling asleep in front of the TV at 6 or 7 in the evening and without much appetite for cooking or eating. Much of this, of course, is just jet lag, but readjusting has really been a process after this particular trip.

Maybe it's just that we're getting old. But it struck me the other day that, maybe, the hardest part about returning hasn't been a matter of time zones but people. In Berlin, we were surrounded by people, wonderful people. Since most of the seminar's participants weren't from the city, most of us found ourselves put up at the same hotel. So we'd sit with one another at breakfast every morning and chat sleepily over bowls of bircher muesli and plates piled high with vollkornbrot, eggs, and cured meats. And after the seminar wrapped up for the day, we'd find one another again and venture out into the city in search of a spot, preferably on a patio, to while away the evening over good, cheap food and cold beers. I loved this. Philosophy, you see, can be a lonely sort of pursuit. Sure, there are classes and reading groups and all sorts of spontaneous, informal discussion, but much of the work, the tangible stuff, I find anyway, is solitary. You have to sit down by yourself, for hours, days, on end, and decide what to make of all those conversations. You have to commit to something on paper and do it convincingly and clearly. And for that, you're mostly on your own. So I was happy to break from all that for a while and just hang out, soak up wisdom and swap stories and share laughs with philosophers who have become friends (most of us met for the first time last summer, in Chapel Hill, NC). And that, I realised, is part of why it's been so hard getting the hang of old rhythms again. It's been like the days just after two riotously fun, utterly memorable weeks of summer camp, only for grown folks who do philosophy.

But luckily, one of the other seminar participants lives just down the street from us, and we'd already invited him and his partner over for dinner later in the week. So on Wednesday, we did our best to get back into the usual rhythms of chopping and stirring and slicing and baking. The dessert I put together that afternoon is one that comes from Pan Chancho, that venerable bakery from my old college town. Friends, let me introduce you to the apple frangipane tart. It remains to this day the dessert of theirs that I adore most of all. Its thin slices of tart apple, slicked with a bit of apricot jam after baking, are perfect  atop the velvety layer of frangipane, sweet and unmistakably redolent of almonds. And the short crust--I'm not sure that I've had better. When working your way through a slice, the best few bites are definitely the last, where apples and frangipane meet golden, crumbly crust just sturdy enough to hold it all together.

I can't quite say why I decided on this tart for this dinner. But the thought and care it would take to make it--to blanch and grind almonds, to ready the crust, to slice the apples and arrange them just so--appealed to me then. It would be a labour, I knew, but for these friends a welcome one.

Apple Frangipane Tart

Adapted, ever so slightly, from the Pan Chancho Cookbook

FOR THE TART DOUGH

113 g / 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

50 g / 1/4 cup sugar

1 egg, separated, the white lightly beaten

2 tablespoons heavy cream

180 g / 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

1/8 teaspoon salt

FOR THE FILLING

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

110 g / 1 cup finely ground almonds

100 g / 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

100 g / 1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 Granny Smith apples (or another tart apple of your choice)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

FOR THE GLAZE

1/2 cup apricot jam

2 tablespoons water

To make the tart shell, cream the butter and sugar together in a small bowl until light and fluffy. In a small glass, combine the egg yolk and cream, then add to the butter mixture in thirds, incorporating well after each addition. Add the flour and salt, mixing just until incorporated. At this point, the dough should be pale yellow and rather soft, like cookie dough. Cover and chill in the fridge for at least an hour (or overnight).

Place the dough on a floured sheet of parchment paper and roll it out into a 12-inch round, lifting the dough from the parchment occasionally to prevent sticking. Transfer to a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Trim the over hang to half an inch and fold inwards to double the thickness of the sides. Seal any cracks with remaining dough. (Alternatively, gently press the dough into an even layer across the bottom and up the sides of the tart pan.) Pierce dough all over with a fork. Return, covered, to the fridge for 20 minutes. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter the shiny side of a large square of aluminium foil and fit the foil tightly to the crust, buttered side down. Fill the tart shell with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until crust is light golden in colour. Remove pie weights and foil and allow to cool for a few minutes. Then, brush the bottom and sides with a little beaten egg white. Allow to cool completely before filling.

To prepare the tart for baking, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. For the frangipane, cream together the butter and sugar in a medium bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add the flour and almonds to the mixture and incorporate. Spoon the filling into the tart shell in an even layer and smooth the top.

Peel and core the apples, then cut in half through the vertical axis. Cut slices, about 1/8 of an inch thick, from the halves. Reserve a few small, pretty slices to use at the centre of the tart--those are the ones that will be fully visible. Layer the remaining slices on top of the frangipane, working from the outside in. Finish with the reserved slices. Sprinkle with the cinnamon (it will look like an awful lot but not to worry). Bake the tart for 32-35 minutes or until the filling is firm but still moist--the tart will still wobble slightly in the centre. Allow to cool.

To make the glaze, heat the jam and water in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring until incorporated. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve, then return to the pan and bring it to a boil. While the glaze is still hot, brush over the cooled tart.

Serves 8.

But I am in the habit of daydreaming

In Lucky Peach no. 3, Karen Leibowitz reflects with fondness on the food at Dominique Crenn's Atelier Crenn and says that there dishes are offered up like tactile poems that register both emotionally and intellectually. That resonated with me--though I haven't been to Atelier Crenn, a lot of the food that I've been reading about lately, that I've eaten on occasion, has had a kindred sort of thoughtfulness to it. It hasn't just been about the magic of certain flavours and textures. It's been about capturing a moment, drawing deep from the well of common memory through flavour and texture and evoking just the right feeling. I'm thinking here of things like Grant Achatz' Beef, Elements of Root Beer or even Christina Tosi's from-scratch Funfetti Birthday Cake--food that is more than whatever you're met with on the plate.

Though the thinking that happens in my kitchen typically runs closer to the pragmatic than to the sublime, I am in the habit of daydreaming about food. Lately, I've had summer on the mind. I'm not sure quite why, but I've been wanting to put together something that just tastes of summer. Maybe it's just that it's the most exuberant of seasons, the one with the longest, brightest days, the one that is all blooms and fruit and song, even long after the sun goes down, the one whose intensities are only matched by their fleetingness (think, summer storms)--who wouldn't want to taste that on a spoon? So if Dominique Crenn composes tactile poems that recall the flavours of her upbringing, I guess I've been daydreaming of a paean to summer, one that you might eat from a chilled glass by the spoonful.

A few days ago, I stopped daydreaming and set to work in the kitchen. I cooked down a few handfuls of blackberries to a sweet, jammy mess. I cut pearly corn kernels from their cobs. I steeped these in a milky bath. I whisked in some cream, some gelatin, poured it all into glasses, and held my breath.

This paean of mine, this paean turned panna cotta--it's still mostly just a daydream. There are a few lines to it for now--spoonfuls that recall unmistakably the melting sweetness of a good ear of corn, fingers and mouths stained purple from an afternoon of berry-picking, and, maybe, just faintly, poolside barbecues and full bellies. But it isn't there yet. It doesn't say quite nearly enough. Still, sweet corn and blackberries make for a good panna cotta in their own right, so I'm content for now to eat panna cotta and daydream a little more.

Sweet Corn Panna Cotta

Bits and pieces rather liberally adapted from Epicurious, the Seattle Times, and the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook

PANNA COTTA

2 ears of sweet corn

175 ml / 3/4 cup whole milk

310 ml + 155 ml  / 1 1/3 cup + 2/3 cup heavy cream

5-6 tablespoons light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 1/4 gelatin sheets or 1 1/4 teaspoons powdered gelatin

BLACKBERRY SAUCE

1 cup blackberries + more for garnishing

100 g / 1/2 cup granulated sugar

Shuck the corn and remove the kernels with a knife. Break one of the cobs into four pieces and reserve.

Combine the milk and 5 tablespoons of sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Add the corn kernels and simmer until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir as needed. Strain the milk into a medium saucepan. Reserve the corn kernels for another use.

Add 310 ml of cream, the salt, and the corn cob pieces to the milk. Return to a simmer, then cover, remove from heat, and let steep for 30 minutes. Remove the cob pieces and discard. Strain the mixture again and return it to a small saucepan.

Bloom the gelatin. If using sheets, soak them in a small bowl of cool water for about 2 minutes. If the gelatin still has hard bits in it, it needs more time. If it's so soft that it's falling apart, it's overbloomed. Discard and start again. Gently squeeze the bloomed gelatin to remove any excess water. If using powdered gelatin, sprinkle it evenly onto the surface of 2 tablespoons of cold water in a small bowl. Allow the granules to soften entirely in the cold for water for 3 to 5 minutes.

Bring the cream mixture to a simmer. Remove from heat and whisk in the gelatin to dissolve. Whisk in the remaining cream, being careful not to incorporate too much air. Taste the mixture and add sugar as needed--you want the corn's sweetness, and not its more vegetal notes, to come through. Divide the mixture among four 6-oz glasses. Transfer to the refrigerator to set for at least 3 hours or overnight.

Meanwhile, make the blackberry sauce. Bring the blackberries and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan and cook until reduced by about half, crushing the berries with the back of a wooden spoon occasionally. Press the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer to separate it from the seeds. Chill in the refrigerator.

To serve, drizzle each panna cotta with blackberry sauce and garnish with whole blackberries.

Serves 4.

Still thriving, still humming

Friends, I'm sorry about the long silence. My grandmother--the one whose fruit pies I grew up on--passed away two weeks ago. So for the past little while, I've been in Toronto with family, mostly trying just to be there, especially for my father. It's been hard on all of us but especially on him. 

I spoke at the funeral service. It wasn't the eulogy, just a few words. I thought that it was important that one of the grandchildren say something. My grandmother had been there for all of us when we were young. We'd all run amuck in her garden, worn the sweaters she knit, sat at the kitchen table listening to her stories, pie crumb still stuck to our little faces. I thought that it was important to honour all that and to say something about just how much she'd still mattered to us, though we'd all grown up and gone away. 

Writing it was difficult. I wanted to be honest. Being away at school, I hadn't seen my grandmother much in recent years, and when I had, I wasn't always sure of what to say. I'd felt the distance of generations, of different opportunities given and won, of diverging paths lived out, between us. I'd thought that we were more different than similar. But walking through her vegetable garden, still thriving, still humming, it struck me that the differences were not so great, that her earnestness, her kindness, her willingness to get her hands dirty, to do it all herself--these were all qualities of hers that had made an impression on me, qualities that I had aspired towards all along. I only wish that I could have told her this, that there had been more time to talk about making pies and growing tomatoes and all of those other things we'd both come to love. So that's what I told the crowd that day.

My parents had me scan some photos from old family albums that had been at my grandmother's house.  It's an amazing collection--black-and-white photos from the 1940s and on of my grandparents and my father and his siblings like I've never seen them before. The one above is my favourite. I'm not sure where it was taken or who the photographer was, but my grandmother looks so happy, so beautiful there. My guess is that it was probably 1949 or 1950 at the time. She wouldn't have been much older than me. I couldn't resist sharing this one photo with you.

Pie Wisdom

I come from a family of serious pie-makers. Long before I was around, both of my grandparents on my father's side of the family were busy making pies for the restaurant they ran together. And though the restaurant has long since closed, the pie-making has gone on strong. Seeing my grandmother, as a kid, whatever the occasion, meant that a slice of pie, heavy with the season's fruit, was not far off. And my mother, having learned from my grandmother, has carried on that tradition. There is always one of her apple pies, still warm from the oven, waiting for me the night I get home from school for a visit. Digging into a slice of pie at the kitchen table while catching up with my mother--that's just a part of what coming home is for me.

I wish I could say that some of my family's abundant pie-wisdom had made its way to me. But growing up, I just wasn't all that interested in learning--making pies looked difficult, anyway, and I didn't feel ready yet. So I left home for school without having tried my hand at making pie, and that was fine for the time being.

But some occasions just call for pie, like when you and your friends have picked far more berries than you could possibly eat or when the stands at the farmers' market are groaning with fall apples. On occasions like these, I was certainly tempted, and eventually I did give in. But I was far from home at the time, and I didn't think that over-the-phone pie advice would work out particularly well, so I was more or less on my own. I can't quite remember that very first pie--whether it was strawberry-rhubarb or just rhubarb with orange zest--but I do know that it was a messy affair. I had trouble pulling together the pastry, and crimping together the top and bottom crusts had me stumped. But what was really disappointing was slicing into the baked pie, promising and golden, and seeing just how runny the filling still was. The bottom crust was a wet, pasty mess, and the fruit and its juices seeped out everywhere. I'm pretty sure that we ate our pie slices--if you could call them that--out of bowls that day.

Since that first attempt, I've mostly left the pie-making to others. I've probably only made four or five more in the intervening years and not with much luck. Each one was, to one degree or another, soggy-bottomed. So I'm not quite sure why I was so determined to try again this past weekend with my parents visiting. I wasn't looking for family pie-wisdom--I shooed everyone out of the kitchen when I set to work. It probably had something to do with the sour cherries that started appearing at the farmers' market a couple of weekends ago. In her column, Melissa Clark once called sour cherries "the queen of all pie fruit," and though I'd never had sour cherry pie, the thought stuck with me. So, despite the heat and my terrible luck with making pies, I set about the business of pitting cherries and rolling out pastry dough.

I fretted all the way through, right up to cutting the first slice. But it held together. I gave it to my father, who has always appreciated a good slice of pie. After a bite or two, he turned to my mother and said, "Looks like you've got yourself some competition." Being my mother's daughter, I'm not sure that I should make that comparison. But I will say that it was a marvellously good pie, almost everything I could have wanted, with its crust buttery, crisp, and flaky beneath a lavish heap of tart cherries and their juices. (Though the best bites, I think, are the ones with a little bit of sugar-flecked top crust too.)

I have Melissa Clark and her pie-wisdom to thank for that. Her sour cherry pie is twice-baked. Taking a page from open-faced pie tradition--think pumpkin, lemon meringue, or chocolate cream--she has you par-bake the bottom crust before adding the fruit and covering it. Though it does mean that you have to bear with the oven being on for a little longer, it is well worth it. And the sour cherry, that queen of all pie fruit--I'll second that, Ms. Clark--she deserves it.

Twice-baked Sour Cherry Pie
Adapted from Melissa Clark's A Good Appetite column in the NY Times

Note: About the tapioca. I had a bit of trouble grinding my instant tapioca into a fine powder, and as a result, some stubborn tapioca clinging to the cherries at the very top of the pie never quite dissolved during baking. I fixed this by nudging those cherries over into the filling right after pulling the pie out of the oven. By the time it was cool enough to cut into, the tapioca had dissolved into the hot filling. About the top crust. I don't think I cut out quite as many circles as I should have for the top crust--I didn't have the patience to chill the scraps and re-roll the dough. But when it came to eating, I wish I had. Sugar-flecked, flaky top crust is good stuff. I advise adding more than pictured above.

225 g / 1 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, more for rolling out dough
3/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
210 g / 15 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces
200 g / 1 cup sugar
2 to 3 tablespoons instant tapioca
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
900 g sour cherries (about 6 cups), rinsed and pitted
1 tablespoon kirsch or brandy
3 tablespoons heavy cream
Demerara sugar, for sprinkling

To make dough: in bowl of a food processor pulse together flour and salt just to combine. Add butter and pulse until chickpea-size pieces form. Add 3 to 6 tablespoons ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse until mixture just comes together. Alternatively, cut the butter into the flour and salt by hand with a pastry blender, leaving the butter pieces the size of small peas. Add 3 to 6 tablespoons of ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture just comes together. Separate dough into 2 disks, one using 2/3 dough, the other using the remaining. Wrap disks in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour (and up to 3 days) before rolling out and baking.

Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Place larger dough disk on a lightly floured surface and roll into a 12-inch circle, about 3/8-inch thick. Transfer to a 9-inch pie plate. Line dough with foil and weigh it down with pie weights. Bake until crust is light golden brown, about 30 minutes.

While pie crust is baking, prepare filling. In bowl of a food processor, combine sugar, tapioca and cinnamon (use more tapioca if you prefer a thicker, more solid filling, and less if you like a looser, juicier filling). Run the motor until tapioca is finely ground. Place cherries in a bowl and add sugar and tapioca mixture. Drizzle in kirsch or brandy and toss gently to combine. 

When pie crust is ready, transfer it to a wire rack to cool slightly and reduce heat to 375 degrees. Remove foil and weights. Scrape cherry filling into pie crust. 

Place smaller disk of dough on a lightly floured surface and roll it 3/8-inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter (or several round cookie cutters of different sizes) to cut out circles of dough. Arrange circles on top of cherry filling in a pattern of your choice. 

Brush top crust with cream and sprinkle generously with Demerara sugar. Bake until crust is dark golden brown and filling begins to bubble, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Transfer pie to a wire rack to cool for at least 2 hours, allowing filling to set before serving.

Serves 8.

It took me by surprise

Since having moved to Chicago--that was almost two years ago now--I've somehow gotten out of the habit of making weekly trips to a farmers' market. Last summer, I found myself at the Logan's Square market only once, and that was by accident--I was in the neighbourhood for brunch with a friend from out of town, and it happened to be in full swing right around the corner. I've been really busy since last spring, but have I really been that busy? Probably not. Tomorrow, I will make it to the market in my neighbourhood bright and early. Cross my heart.

A few weeks ago, I was really desperate for a trip to the market. It was stiflingly hot in the apartment, and I was tired of the rich, heavy, stewy things that had been my winter staples. I wanted something fresh, something that tasted like the season. But I was still scrambling to meet a deadline and couldn't tear myself away from my work for too long. So, for dinner that night, I settled on something that looked practical, something that I could shop for just down the street.

Yotam Ottolenghi calls this dish a chickpea sauté with greek yogurt. On paper, honestly, it looked pretty unremarkable to me, a warm salad of Swiss chard, carrots, chickpeas, lemon, and herbs. I wasn't expecting anything spectacular. So it took me by surprise. It was everything that I'd been wanting. It was refreshing and bright, evocative of early summer. The chard stems and carrots still had some of their crunch and initial sweetness, as though just pulled from someone's garden. The yogurt, mint, and cilantro, I'm sure, helped with that, cooling and fresh on the palate. I could almost forget that I hadn't been anywhere near a farmers' market that day. And even though I will get myself to the market tomorrow, I might just look for more chard and carrots there with this dish in mind.

Update 2013-05-22: Having made this recently again, I have to say that I actually prefer using regular full-fat yogurt to Greek here. Greek is just a little too dry. Regular yogurt gives the chickpeas and vegetables a welcome bit of sauce.

Chickpea Sauté with Yogurt
Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty

1 large bunch Swiss chard (about 8 cups)
5 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to finish
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 1/2 to 2 cups freshly cooked chickpeas (canned are fine too)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon mint, chopped
1 tablespoon cilantro, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup Greek or other full-fat yogurt
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Separate the chard stalks from the leaves. Blanch the stalks in plenty of boiling salted water for 3 minutes. Add the leaves and continue cooking for 2 minutes, then drain everything. Refresh under cold running water and squeeze dry, then chop roughly.
Heat up 4 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large, heavy saucepan. Add the carrots and caraway seeds and sauté for 5 minutes on medium heat. Add the chard and chickpeas and continue cooking for 6 minutes. Now add the garlic, herbs, and lemon juice and some salt and pepper. Remove from heat and cool down a little. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
To serve, mix together the yogurt, olive oil, and some salt and pepper. Pile the vegetables on serving dishes and spoon the yogurt on top. Sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and drizzle over more olive oil.
Serves 4.

Falling into place

Everything has to be up in the air for anything to fall into place. I read that a little while ago in an Ed Roberson poem, when everything really did feel up in the air for me. I was struggling to write and distracted by questions. What am I doing here, anyway? Where am I going from here? How am I going to get any of this done? It all had to do with these being the very last few weeks of my second year here. You see, when you're a graduate student, you can't just go on taking classes, writing suggestive twenty-page papers at the end of each, and then moving on. Eventually, you have to find something to commit to, something that you can't get out of your head, something that keeps you up at night. A dissertation certainly isn't the best or last thing a graduate student hopes to write, but like people say, it's work that defines you for some time to come. So, for a while, I was doing a lot of writing, a lot of handwringing, a lot of searching, and didn't have time for much else.

And our meals definitely suffered for it. The both of us were too busy, too tired, to cook with much thought, much excitement. We ate lots of hurried, uninspired dinners together after which we went straight back to work. Cooking and cleaning up were toilsome tasks. Our hearts and minds were elsewhere.

But just recently, things began to feel as though they were finally falling into place. Passages that I had been struggling with for a while suddenly made sense. I was able to write steadily and with satisfaction. And I made some progress with deciding on what I want to do next. I stumbled on a philosopher's work not much appreciated, not widely read, that struck me in a way that little philosophy tends to these days. I was thrilled. And I had a meeting with one of my advisors that was so reassuring. I was so relieved. I almost wanted to hug him, but that would have been weird.

Around the same time, Octavian and I invited a couple of friends over, and we had one of those deeply satisfying, memorable meals that just sticks with you. The day before, we'd just come home with Ferran Adrià's The Family Meal, so we decided to take our chances and cook the whole meal out of it: saffron risotto, a sharp salad of ribboned carrots and mint, sausages fried with thyme and garlic, and coconut flan. We were a little disorganized, and we didn't get food on the table until pretty late, but all of us, I think, were happy and full at the end of the night.
If you've heard anything about Ferran Adrià before, you might not think that he'd put out a cookbook that was of any serious interest to most home cooks. He was the man behind the Spanish restaurant El Bulli for nearly twenty years and, while there, more or less revolutionized fine dining with new techniques and playful presentations. He's probably best known for his foams,  which involve familiar liquids combined with a stabilizing agent and shot through a siphon (like you'd use for whipped cream)--not really the stuff of home cooking.

But The Family Meal is definitely a book that home cooks should embrace. It is practical, well thought-out, accessible, and beautiful. A "family meal" in the restaurant world is the daily meal that all a restaurant's staff members sit down to and have together. And even at El Bulli, that meant simple and nourishing food. The book is organized into 31 three-course meals that were made for the staff at the restaurant. For each meal in the book, there's an ingredient list, a timeline that shows you when to start preparing what, and step-by-step directions for the dishes, each step accompanied by a photograph. There are even multiple scalings of each recipe--for serving 2, 6, 20, or 75 people. Everything is beautifully laid out and very well organized.  And the dishes themselves are pretty down to earth for the most part--lots of familiar, comforting things, like pork ribs with barbecue sauce and roast chicken, as well as restaurant classics, like Waldorf salad and pasta bolognese. (There are also a good number of more upscale and unusual dishes, including a caramel foam and a potato-chip omelet.) What makes them stand out, at least as we've found so far, are the sometimes unorthodox methods with which they're prepared. Take the risotto we made--Adrià has you add white wine to the pan before the rice goes in. In part, it's just for deglazing, but it also helped along the rice, getting it to that chalky stage at which you add the stock. It was just one little thing among others, but it made for an incredible risotto.

That said, the dish that I want to share with you today isn't Adrià's saffron risotto but his coconut flan. This dessert is one that I think every home cook should have in his or her arsenal. It's simple to prepare and can be made a few days in advance. It calls for a short list of inexpensive ingredients and can be scaled for as many people as will fit around your table. And it also happens to be marvellous.

My favourite moment in making it is preparing it for the table. When you tip the flan out of its ramekin, some of the dark caramel that had been at the bottom seeps out onto the plate, creating an impromptu sauce. It, like the flan's caramel crown, has a bitter edge to it and complements the coconut custard perfectly.
Like I said, things have begun to feel as though they're falling into place.

Coconut Flan
Adapted from Ferran Adrià's The Family Meal
Note: Cooking the caramel. Typically, for cooking caramel, you'd want to boil the sugar at a higher temperature, but because of just how little caramel is required for this recipe, you won't be able to control the heat of the sugar if you cook it at a higher temperature. It may be perfect when you take it off heat but burnt by the time it hits the ramekins. If you're new to cooking caramel, consider looking over these tips from David Lebovitz. Cooking times. Adrià actually instructs you to cook individual flans for 15-20 minutes, but I found that mine were still completely liquid at the 20-minute mark. I recommend checking on your flans every 5 or 10 minutes after 20 minutes have passed. In the meantime, I should really check the accuracy of my oven. Serving. In the book, Adrià bakes his flan in a long loaf pan and then serves the flan in slices. If you're cooking for a large enough crowd--I'd say, at least 15 people--you too could do away with individual ramekins and make your life easier. A round cake pan, if your crowd is a little smaller, would probably also do nicely.

CARAMEL:
18 g / 4 teaspoons water
65 g / 5 tablespoons sugar

FLAN:
2 eggs
145 g / 1 cup coconut milk plus more for serving
20 g / 3 tablespoons unsweetened coconut flakes
25 g / 2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Lay out four 3-inch ramekins. Put the water and sugar in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat to medium. In a few minutes, the sugar will boil and start to take on colour. Adjust the heat as necessary to prevent it from burning. The caramel is ready when it is a dark, coppery colour and starts to smoke. Working quickly, divide the caramel between the ramekins--it's easiest just to pour from the saucepan directly into each--and give each ramekin a swirl so that the caramel coats its bottom evenly. Set aside to cool.
Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk until frothy. Put the coconut milk, coconut flakes, and sugar into another bowl and whisk until the sugar dissolves. Add the eggs and whisk until incorporated. Ladle the mixture into the caramel-coated ramekins.
Cover the top of each ramekin with a square of tin foil and transfer all of them to a roasting pan. Pour enough cold water into the pan to come up halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 35-45 minutes (see note above), making sure the water does not boil. Once the flan is cooked (it will be just firm to the touch), let cool in the water. Remove from the water and chill in the fridge. It will keep there covered for up to 3 days.
When ready to serve, run a small, sharp knife around the edges of each flan to loosen it from the ramekin. Gently invert onto a plate for serving. Serve each with a spoon or two of the remaining coconut milk.
Serves 4.

Of course, there was cake

This past weekend, we celebrated Octavian's birthday. We put down our books. We strolled out in the sunshine. We sipped on dulce de leche milkshakes. We cleaned decades' worth of dust off the LPs that belonged to Octavian's late grandfather. We let the needle drop and sat back as Ella's voice filled the room. It was a wonderful moment. These records had sat untouched for years in Octavian's grandparents' home in Romania. Many of them were British pressings of 1960s pop and jazz smuggled into the country during the Ceaușescu regime. It felt good to be able to give them a new life in our home.

And, of course, there was cake. The folks at Momofuku Milk Bar call this one a chocolate-chip layer cake, but that, I think, hardly captures it. What makes this cake worthy of a chorus of oohs and aahs are the bright ribbons of passion-fruit curd running through it, bold, tart, and unmistakably tropical. The curd plays brilliantly with the other elements--coffee frosting, chocolate crumb, chocolate-chip cake--and lingers just a little in the mouth, exotic and floral. It is wonderfully good stuff.

Without a doubt, in fact, it's the best stuff I've made out of the Milk Bar cookbook. I am crazy about this curd. I wish I'd made more last week--enough to smear on toast, to swirl into yogurt, to sandwich between bittersweet-chocolate-wafer cookies, to eat by the spoonful. It is that good.

Admittedly, this curd does demand a little more of you than the typical curd. You'll need a blender and some gelatin. But it's worth it. The addition of gelatin gives this curd serious body. Most curds rely only on eggs for thickening, and while that's fine for toast, curd made that way won't hold up in a cake or sandwiched between cookies. This curd, by comparison, is versatile. Let your imagination run wild. Whatever you come up with, this curd will not be out of place.

And if you're wondering, Octavian and I really liked the cake as a whole. Passion fruit, coffee, and chocolate are amazing together (and make for a far more balanced cake than the chocolate-malt, if you ask me). But in our heart of hearts, we're still apple-pie layer cake people.

Passion-fruit Curd

Adapted from the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook

Note: About the passion fruit puree. There are a number of online vendors that sell very high-quality frozen fruit purees, but with overnight shipping and the quantity of puree recommended to ensure that it all stays cold, it can add up. I recommend that you check the freezer aisle of Latin markets in your area first. Chicagoans, I found more than enough El Sembrador passion fruit puree for this recipe for about $3 at Tony's Finer Foods in Logan Square. I was pleased with the quality.

100 g / 1/2 cup passion fruit puree

65 g / 1/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 gelatin sheet or 1/2 teaspoon powdered gelatin

170 g / 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, very cold

2 g / 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Put the passion fruit puree and sugar in a blender and blend until the sugar granules have dissolved. Make sure to scrape under the blender's blades--granules tend to deposit there. Add the eggs and blend on low until you have a bright-orange-yellow mixture. Transfer the contents of the blender to a medium saucepan. Clean the blender canister.

Bloom the gelatin. Soak the sheet in a small bowl of cold water. The gelatin is bloomed when it has become soft, after about 2 minutes. If the gelatin still has hard bits to it, it needs to bloom for longer. If it is so soft it is falling apart, it is overbloomed; discard the gelatin and start over. Gently squeeze the bloomed gelatin to remove any excess water before using.

Heat the passion fruit mixture over low heat, whisking regularly. As it heats up, it will begin to thicken; keep a close eye on it (this can take awhile--at least 15 minutes, in my experience). Once it boils, remove it from the stove and transfer it to the blender. Add the bloomed gelatin, butter, and salt and blend until the mixture is thick, shiny, and super-smooth.

Transfer the mixture to a heatproof container and put it in the fridge until the curd has cooled completely, at least 30 minutes. The curd can be refrigerated for up to 1 week. Do not freeze.

Makes about 1 cup.

Technical Notes for Milk Bar's Chocolate-chip Layer Cake

The directions for this cake were, for the most part, straightforward. Below are a few points of obsessive detail that you might find helpful when making the cake.

• Passion-fruit curd: when you're dissolving the sugar into the puree in the blender, give the underside of the blades a scrape with a spatula before proceeding on. Sugar tends to deposit there, and you want that sugar in your curd.
• Cake mixing: be warned--the chocolate-chip cake has far more liquid than the other Milk Bar cakes, so you really need to mind Tosi's mixing instructions with this one. I mixed my cake batter for the six minutes required, and still my cake almost baked out of its quarter-sheet. It was also less dense than it should have been and was more difficult to work with as a result. The lesson: mix, mix, mix!
• Chocolate chips: I'm not really sure why Tosi wants you to scatter the chips over the batter just before baking. Why not just fold them in by hand before spreading the batter over the quarter-sheet? Nearly all my chips stayed at the surface of the cake. I think the final cake would have had more visual appeal if you could see the chips in the profile of each of the cake rounds.
• Serving: This cake was by far the easiest to cut slices out of. With previous Milk Bar cakes, I've had the slices collapse on me while trying to transfer them to a plate. Keep this cake cold enough, and it will slice beautifully. That said, I recommend, if you can manage, waiting for the cake slices to come up to temperature a little before digging in, at least 10 minutes. Cold, hard mini chocolate chips just don't have that much appeal.
• Height: This layer cake was noticeably more stout than other Milk Bar layer cakes I've made. I chalk that up to the cake's components--they don't give the cake as much height as some others.

P.S. If you're looking to make the whole cake, you can find the recipe posted here.