Eats 2.16

brought to you by Big Sugar

Yeesh I promised the return of dessert a month ago! And now the second biggest sugar holiday of the year has come and gone; better hop to it.

Of course, it is President’s Day and I don’t think I can say anything about the state of the American Presidency that you haven’t already heard. But do any of you who went to elementary school in America in the 1970s recall the classroom-bulletin board conflation of Valentine’s Day with President’s Day? Silhouettes of Washington and Lincoln¹ glued on to construction-paper hearts and then maybe on a red or pink paper doily? The current guy would probably love that kind of tribute although of course he’d insist they be gold. I hope he never ever gets one.

Ugh. Remember actual presidents? Let’s just focus on the treats.

For a friend’s birthday (and heck who am I kidding also for us) I made these.

Hel-LO sweet and (not actually very) spice dulce de leche brownies, you are indeed a valentine in a pan.

Flour Bakery’s homemade Oreos do not, in fact, resemble supermarket Oreos because they are a) twice as big and b) forty-eight times as tasty. They’re also a bit of a fuss to work with so don’t wear white and prepare for chocolate everywhere.

Creature of habit that I am, both David Lebovitz’ salted tahini chocolate chip cookies and Eric Kim’s gochujang caramel cookies made their annual appearance for this year’s Tour de Vermont ladies’ ski week. Variety may be the spice of life but also don’t mess with success, amiright? Just don’t pack the latter when they are warm and then put another bag of cookies on top of them or you will have a stack of gochujang caramel pancakes instead.

How could you not be seduced by a recipe that promises lemon-macadamia-white-chocolate cookies? Because if you thought about you would remember that somehow cookies relying on lemon zest in the dough are somehow always vaguely disappointing. They are weirdly . . . too sweet? too one-note? Lemon bars - sign me up. Lemon cake - of course! But the cookies? Maybe not tart enough. I’ll happily take on any challenge to change my mind so send your best fighter into the ring and I’ll report back.

Speaking of tart, this cranberry-grapefruit sorbet promised to be just the ticket to satisfy that tooth. But the sorbet is now wintering in Vermont because I took it up there and then we forgot about it and I left it there so I hope our gracious hosts the Christenfeld family enjoy it the next time they visit their wonderful house!

Why did I make cranberry sorbet in the middle of the coldest winter we’ve had in years? Because I found a cache of cranberries in the freezer and knew that if I did not make a concerted effort to use them, they would still be there next Thanksgiving but I would not remember that and would buy yet more and on it would go in a bottomless bag of little red marbles. So I also made this cranberry tart, because I ALSO found a round of pâte sucrée of indeterminable age and that was needed for the base.

My freezer is a frickin’ archeological dig.

Wrapping up the sweets was this brown butter cornmeal cake with a similarly veeeeeery sweet profile. It also came to Vermont and was delicious but kind of a lot in the sense that there are about 25 steps but it doesn’t look like there should be 25 steps when it is all done.

I used blueberries instead of cherries (because, yes, I found some in the freezer) but didn’t intend that precise arrangement. But also peep that sourdough.

If you do make the cake, or even if you don’t, you might read the accompanying article about Yewande Komolafe, who adapted the recipe from a bakery in Brooklyn and who cooks on, despite the devastating impact of sickle cell disease. In the article, she writes about learning to cook again, having lost limbs and digits, and the curative effect of food. “I find myself marveling at how little it takes to feel alive,” she writes. This should be on a heart-doily on a bulletin board.

Some of you may have seen the ski trip prep on my instagram (I’m hip on the socials, just like the kids) and while it is starting to approach a Vineyard-prep level of work, I do think I kind of nailed it this year. In addition to the cookie and cake, the jalapeño pulled pork was an absolute winner, especially with Patty’s Swedish coleslaw², and a sourdough loaf and jar of tomato apple chutney took sandwiches to another level.³

You know who didn’t eat well while I was in Vermont? Newton, that’s who. Because he ate not one but two dog beds and then re-shared them with his lovely sitter Andrew and us for days.

He’s a bit of a meathead but he’s our meathead.

It wasn’t all sugar and spice and dog beds around here.

I think I promised a report on that pork in milk. omg just omg. I really do not have words to describe the lusciousness of a Highland Butcher pork shoulder that spent much of that very snowy Sunday cooking slowly in milk and garlic and herbs. And as promised, ugly as sin. Don’t forget the mashed spuds to soak it all up.

Made those oreos because Izzy was home so also made her fave sesame salmon bowls except I always forget the sesame seeds. She also gets roast chicken for lazy people not because we are lazy but because it is delicious.

This year’s Super Bowl was a hunt in which we had no dog but it is always a good excuse for some excellent eats courtesy of Eric Kim. SPAM and perilla kimbap were “better than I thought they’d be” per Bill (read: actually delicious) and there were also lip-smackingly tart lemon-pepper wings. I even went a bit bonkers and pickled some moo radish, purchasing the smallest possible moo radish at Reliable Market which made the checkout lady giggle “so small!” because apparently no one ever buys the smallest possible moo radish.

Regular readers will know that I often⁴ translate unease into project cooking so of late there have also been enchiladas, and beef chow fun with homemade chow fun noodles because you can’t find those babies fresh in these parts, and marry-me chicken which is pretty good but I’m married so should I even bother? Also a NATBR⁵ sourdough that used up some bits and bobs in the fridge involving roasted garlic butter and salami and onions and manchego.

The noodles are easy if you can MacGyver the equipment.

That is a set of flour-egg-bread pans, that you’d use to make a schnitzel or somesuch requiring FEB breading. But they are perfect for this purpose, Newton approves.

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for hanging on - this has been more of a ramble than usual. Fortunately we have the Olympics, with its high drama of underdogs and underachievers, sparkles and twizzles, romance and speed and virtuosity and moms and medals, to distract us from the world. I love it all LFG USA!

1. Because did anyone in fourth grade know about any other presidents, in a historical sense? I like to think that today fourth-graders would know about Barack Obama.

2. What makes it Swedish? I don’t know, maybe the fresh horseradish. I didn’t know the Swedes were into coleslaw but it was dee-LISH.

3. Which is my role, actually, as I am known as Level-Up Lisa in this group, due to my innate hedonism delivering the above-mentioned treats as well as some fine cocktail syrups. We are led by Contingency Patty (because she plans for every, yes, contingency), while Adventure Susie (because she’s up for all adventures and does things like lead rafting tours in the Grand Canyon) and Moderately Daring Elaine (who is entirely daring but also Irish and so modest) make up the rest of the group. Bill’s presence is suffered for a day or two but he does not get a nickname.

4. Often, but not always. Like hot artichoke dip? Not a project. But so freaking satisfying and a li’l treat for those of you who made it all the way to the footnotes.

5. Never Again To Be Repeated