It's It! Sweetly Sandwiched San Francicso Style

Alannah and I recently set out on a mission: To represent San Francisco in Paris. The reason is two-fold.

First, as San Franciscan transplants with an inferiority complex, we're sick and tired of anything remotely American here being described as "New Yorkais." Local writers have recently described a chef from Chicago, a coffeehouse owner from Washington and freakin' burritos as New Yorkais. Dubya. Tee. Eff.

Secondly, we don't really know of many people reppin' the Bay. There's Andy at our local favorite sushi joint Rice and Fish who's doing it right, and there's... uh... wasn't Alice Waters supposed to open a restaurant next to the Louvre some time back? Then you've got your French folk like Loic Le Meur (Seesmic, Sarkozy spokes-ass) and Benjamin Tremoulet (H.A.N.D.) who spent - judging by their products - about four hours in California and decided to build their businesses around their (in)experience and trust funds.

So we've got some projects in the hopper, hoping to bring real streetfighter SF culture to the old-school dining mecca. We talk a lot of shit, but we also put our money where our mouths are. And right now we're finding a lot more shit than places we want to put our mouths.

In the meantime, if we wanna make a wave, we've gotta work on desserts! And we're starting by perfecting a premium, locally-sourced-as-possible version of It's-It ice cream sandwiches, also known as "A San Francisco Experience since 1928." Basically, it's one scoop of ice cream, two oatmeal cookies, and dark chocolate.

Alannah's quite good with dessert. Especially baking. She's gone sans oven for the last torturous month (which is about how long it takes a landlord to replace a faulty appliance 'round here...) and she's finally back in action. The "cowboy cookies" she's been making since childhood will serve as the bread in this dessert sammy.

I, on the other hand, blow fucking donkey dicks when it comes to baked goods and confectionery.

It's-It style ice cream sandwiches, take two: Not an epic fail,
but not great. You don't even want to see Round 1.

This wasn't the case nearly two decades ago. As a young punk, I used to sling out cakes and ice creams to Bay Area yuppies like it was going out of style. I'd spend a good chunk of my summer days inside a walk-in freezer, sculpting melty sugary materials that'd otherwise disintegrate in the ambient temperature. It was a good time, and I loved my customers, from local Ladies Who Lunch to firefighters to Apple and HP execs who'd sneak in between meetings for a sweet treat. One of the more distinguished among them had a particular favorite that I was proud to make: The clown cone.

That's right, I was ice cream slinger and faux-pastry chef at a fucking Baskin-Robbins. Despite being the confectionery equivalent of the guy manning the fryolator – see, any asshat blogger can puff up his irrelevant culinary past – I could write the preamble to the Constitution on the face of a half-sheet cake in buttercream, make waffle cones that could stand up to four gigantic scoops of ice cream plus hot fudge, and most relevant to our mission here, I could turn out a perfect ice cream sandwich in 20 seconds flat.

That was then. This is now. I no longer have the ability to properly hold an offset spatula let alone put a tip on a piping bag. Which is exactly what our first attempt at homemade It's-It called for. We tried the recipe and technique we Googled on Gastroanthropology. And it was a big bag of fail.

This is not to knock Gastroanthropology's technique. In fact, it's not only well-researched and professional, but if we had a proper setup it would probably work. But in a sweatbox of an apartment with merely an icebox for a freezer, it just wasn't meant to be. Ice cream soft enough to be piped out of a pastry bag would actually continue to melt faster than it could re-freeze in our piddly little freezer. And it did. We disappointingly opened up the freezer to find cowboy cookies frozen into a flat puddle of ice cream. At least the oatmeal discs were perfectly round, using the biscuit cutter technique from the above recipe.

Round 2 was much better (see photo above), but it still wasn't quite right. Instead of softening ice cream and piping it out of a bag, we smoothed a bunch of it out into a tray and froze it overnight into a sheet; much as I did back in the day to create full-sheet ice cream cakes. I then punched out discs of ice cream using the same biscuit ring so they'd be the same diameter as the cookies. So far, so good. we then dipped them in melted dark chocolate and put them back in the freezer to set. Only they wouldn't fully set. Cutting or biting into the sandwiches would result in the ice cream smooshing and the chocolate breaking off in chunks.

We put the results up on Facebook, awaiting possible troubleshooting from our foodie friends. Most of them being San Franciscans, they also know what an It's-It is supposed to be like. Our own analysis blamed not only our technique but our ingredients. In trying to make a high-quality, wholesome version of – let's face it – junk food, we just couldn't get certain things right. Using unprocessed organic oats, the cookies were too tough. Single-origin organic Peruvian chocolate? Not as easy to use for coating as the confectioners' stuff cut down with soy lecithin.

And worst of all, we had doubts about using our favorite local ice cream. I first wrote about Mary Quarta's gelato for VINGT Paris and just nabbed today's ROTD for it on Yelp (my first in over two years!) and we've been going to taste her wares at least twice a week since she opened up shop in the Haut Marais. It was the first "complex ingredient" we've decided against making ourselves (I'm even making our cheeses for an upcoming shindig) because it's so good and non-industrial, there's no point.

But gelato is a far cry in texture and structure than standard American ice cream, and it looked as though Mary's sweetness was just too soft and yielding for the type of brutality we'd put it through. We couldn't think of a non-industrial alternative, so we started thinking about how we'll make our own ice cream, solely to fulfill our desire for It's-It.

Then tonight, Round 3 happened.

Yup. Pretty much nailed it.
And we didn't have to throw Mary under the bus, either.

The difference for Round 3? A much longer freeze after sandwich assembly and chocolate coating, which itself was different. Instead of dunking and rolling the sandwiches in melted chocolate, I brushed it on thinly with a rubber spatula. Working with a nearly rock-hard sandwich to start with and making sure it went fully back to rock hard before serving made all the difference in the world. The thinner coating of chocolate didn't break off in chunks when cut or bitten, the ice cream stayed solid through most of the eating.  Alannah's excelllent cowboy cookie remained a constant. It's a bit tougher than a standard oatmeal cookie, but the taste is perfect.

Now that we've got the formula down, we're going to make a few more tweaks: The cookies will have to be slightly crisper (and possibly thinner) for easy biting. We'll have to spend even more on a high-quality nappe (coating) dark chocolate that's thinner but lecithin-free – we will NOT compromise on quality. And now having figured out how to work with Mary's super-soft gelato, we'll stick with it, but surprisingly we're going to have to find flavors even more subtle than her already subdued crème à l'ancienne. Compared to typical American "vanilla" filler ice cream, Mary's is actually too flavorful and overpowers the cookies and chocolate by just a touch.

So here's the rundown of the technique we've got down so far:

• Spread Mary's gelato into a tray and freeze overnight
• In the meantime, make a batch of Alannah's cowboy cookies (possibly increase butter, decrease brown sugar? She's the expert and will figure it out...) flatten using biscuit cutter as a guide, and chill/freeze 'em
• Remove frozen gelato from tray and quickly punch out discs using biscuit cutter.
• Very quickly assemble sandwiches, put into fridge for at least two hours
• Double boil dark coating chocolate
• Brush chocolate on to very frozen sandwiches (also considering dunking via wire basket if we work with a huge quantity)
• Freeze yet again - probably overnight - in tray, sitting on parchment paper
• Eat

It's pretty long and involved, but after blissing out on the fruits of Round 3 tonight, it'll be worth it. And the more we do it, the better we'll get at it. The material cost and the learning curve will be high, but this is going to happen. Cuz that's what it's all about, reppin' the 415: Taking the seemingly casual and humble but obsessing over quality and source, and never compromising.

Dirty Dozen

Look at that tight, little star-shaped hole, glazed with sticky icky goodness.

Amateur  money shot

We're talking about doughnuts, of course. When we first started this site full of horrible double-entendres in early 2009, we did it to show off a bit of homespun food porn, starting with our attempt to make doughnuts.

In nearly a year and a half, we've come full circle. We've gotten better at finding ingredients. We've gotten better at working on techniques. And we still haven't been able to bust a decent frickin' 'nut in Paris. Sure, dozens of American (or American-style) "coffee shops" sell doughnuts, but good luck getting anything other than a hockey puck that's been sitting in a refrigerated case for days on end.

We gave up ages ago. We didn't even really eat doughnuts back in the States anyway. Then, the other night on a lark (or rather because of discounted tickets), we figured we'd go see Iron Man 2 at the shitty chain theatre nearby. Those fantasies you have of Paris being intellectual and artsy? We tossed 'em ages ago.

Anyway, there's this scene in IM2 where Robert Downey Jr. is sitting in the hole of the famous Randy's Donuts in LA, eating a doughnut. At that moment, I turned to Alannah and said, "I want a doughnut." She turned to me and said, "Me too!"

This isn't slang for a dirty act in public, but what married people actually say to each other.

The trouble is, for all the craptacular chains we've got surrounding us, not one of them makes doughnuts. The UK has imported Krispy Kreme. Spain has been invaded by Dunkin. We, on the other hand, got nothin'. So we went to bed, as we're wont to do.

At some point the next day, I looked in the fridge and saw a mixing bowl of some kind of dough.  "You didn't..." I started to say to Alannah. "Yes I did," she replied.  She'd used the dough part of some sour cream doughnut recipe on Epicurious and modified it to use yogurt instead, and much less orange zest. And it was beautiful.  She rolled out the dough and cut it into shapes.

Doughnuts and stars. Much more organized this time around.

The last time we made doughnuts, we got better results on the holes, and it took a lot of experimenting with oil temperatures and frying times. This time I bowed down to Thomas Keller's French Laundry Cookbook and used the temp and times for his "Coffee and Doughnuts": 30 seconds on one side, 1 minute on the other, and back to 30 seconds on the first at 160ºC/325ºF.

While TK's formula is for raised (yeast) doughnuts, it worked perfectly for Alannah's adaptation of the Epicurious cake (old-fashioned) doughnuts. In fact, the crumb is damn near perfection.

Exhibit A: Cross section of cake doughnut
with perfect crumb.

We made a few experimental doughnuts, as well as a bunch of holes and coated them with cinnamon-sugar for a round of overindulgent taste-testing.

A-holes and O-holes:
An Alannah and Omid production.

Having successfully completed our test round, it was time to go whole hog and make a dozen proper doughnuts. After all, American food deserves American quantities.

Nice (cooling) rack!

As much as I love all things naked, I don't care much for an undressed doughnut. I told Alannah I'd make her a nice, gooey glaze, and after she was done rolling her eyes, I actually got to the business of making some out of powdered sugar and liquid. (You need about an 8:1 ratio.)  Powdered sugar and milk with a touch of vanilla for standard glaze. Powdered sugar and maple syrup and a touch of butter for maple glaze. And powdered sugar and melted milk chocolate for chocolate glaze.

Keep your glazes warm in a bowl, dip your 'nuts in, then rack 'em for at least five minutes 'til it's all firm.  Then it's ready to shove in your mouth.

A threesome of each:
Glazed, cinnamon-sugar, maple and chocolate.

We've had several doughnuts since making the batch, and I'm already kind of sick of 'em. They're damn good, but like I said, we never really ate doughnuts that much in the US to begin with. It's just that once in a while you get a craving for something you can't have, so you just have to go out and grab it for yourself. After all, the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it, right?

That's what we've been doing much of the time since that first post. And we've since discovered that almost anything can be made better at home. When you do it yourself, it's more fun, more involved, and more personal. The same applies to cooking.

In fact, despite the fact that we probably won't make them again for another year and a half (and when we do, it'll be raised doughnuts!), we found that doughnuts give us the perfect synergy in the kitchen.

As the anal type (as in, she's the baker, sheesh!) Alannah's great with measurements and feeling out the proofing of a dough. As the sloppy bastard who eschews recipes, I'm better suited for the other part: Operating a deep fryer.

A Sweet, Dark and Spicy Bastard

Despite our despisal of the despicable Tex-Mex places in Paris, we actually do love the bastard cuisine. It's actually one of the oldest American cuisines, the product of years of cultural exchange (or some might say subjugation or domination). We just don't like it when jerkwads try to pass it off as authentic Mexican.

Bastard food has its place, of course.

In fact, this last weekend I got out of bed a bit before Alannah and whipped together some migas, a Tex-Mex bastardization of chilaquiles: Fried stale tortillas scrambled with eggs, topped with chili or salsa, and served with a side of refried beans. (This isn't to be confused with the trendy Spanish version of migas, which is actually not the original, but a derivative of the Texan dish. Whoodathunkit?)

At any rate, this isn't about migas. This is about Alannah's insatiable craving after having snacked on my weekend treat. We had things to do and places to go, but she wanted churros. The trouble is, it was Saturday. And the only good churros we've found in Paris are sold at the Bastille marché on Sundays. (Any and all tips on how to get them on other days are welcome...) There are churro stands here and there, most notably near the crappy crèpe stands around the Grands Boulevards and other places foreigners go drinking, but good churros? Not a chance. The land of churros y chocolate may be just to the southwest, but this is a country resistant to imports.

Yes, churros are of Spanish origin. I always thought they were Mexican, because the guys selling them at amusement parks in California were Mexican. Or Filipino. But that's no way to determine food etymology, is it?

So anyway, Alannah decided to just do it: Make churros.

These churros may look fancy, but they're actually
a complete accident. Like your little brother.

The batter's like a donut batter: Flour, eggs, milk, butter and sugar, only everything's integrated warm on the stove top... She made it and then passed it to me along with a huge pastry bag. So while she went to get all hot & steamy upstairs (in the shower), it was my duty to splash around with hot oil. Ain't marriage grand?

The only problem is that we don't have a huge star tip for the pastry bag. I tried using our biggest tip, squeezing gooey strips of churro batter into the hot oil, only to get what looked like donut-fries. Which I'm sure would do brisk business in middle America, but my gal wanted churros, dammit. Crisp on the outside, chewy-tender on the inside, and hot hot hot! These pathetic little pencil-dicked strips would not satisfy.

So my Middle Eastern blood kicked in and for the next batch, I squeezed the sac and flipped my wrist in a twirling motion, as though making zoolbia (in Persian, otherwise known as jalebi in Indian/Pakistani cooking). I filled the hot oil with little disks of tightly swirled dough, the end result a golden-brown rose of churro goodness.

By the time Alannah was dressed and back downstairs, I was finishing up a chocolate sauce to drizzle over the hot churros I'd already tossed in cinnamon sugar: Cream, a lot of cacao powder, sugar, cinammon, cayenne pepper, and a few drops of melting chocolate to thicken it.

So I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Chur-rose. Churros shaped like little roses. Hot, sweet, a little bit spicy, and – best of all – a perfectly acceptable bastardization of Latin food that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

One Kilo of Sweet Relief

Quatre quarts. It's French for "four quarters."  Alannah decided this past weekend that she'd bake a quatre-quarts cake, and when I finished sorting through a year's worth of papers to prepare for doing our taxes last night, we decided to celebrate by doing it. Making the cake, that is.

Tonight, after finishing the US portion of our taxes, we ate it.

No, I don't know why we have to file for and pay taxes in the US when we no longer live there, and likely will not get any American benefit unless I bake roofie-cupcakes for a 13 year-old and have to hide from extradition, Polanski-style.

Quatre-quarts cake with strawberry, mango and crème fraîche.

You may be looking at that picture and saying, "That looks like poundcake!" And you'd be mostly right. Except it's a kilo, dammit. Whereas a poundcake takes a pound of each ingredient, a quatre-quarts involves a quarter kilo (250g) each of flour, sugar and butter, and 3 eggs. (Large French eggs weigh in at around 80g, for a total of 240g, but since we buy ours more or less out of the chicken's butt, there's a ~15g margin of error. Not a big deal.)

But is it poundcake with the same ratio but a different base amount?  Not quite.

'Cuz it's metric.

That and for a quart-quarts, you're going to separate your eggs first. The yolks get mixed in with the butter and the flour to form a pretty heavy paste.

The whites must be whipped 'til fluffy, forming stiff peaks. The eggs are then whisked (or rather, beaten, as it's not a delicate receiver) into the rest of the batter. This seems bass-ackward and pointless when doing it.

It'd probably be much easier with a stand mixer, but you don't wanna know how much a KitchenAid Pro costs around here... Maybe if we get a good tax refund?

Then, as with a poundcake, you pour it into a loaf pan, but – one more difference – you pop it into a hotter (200ºc/400ºF) oven for less time (40-45 minutes). The outside will (alarmingly) brown and turn crispy, while the cake inside will be much lighter and airier than that of a poundcake.

In fact, the poundcake and quatre-quarts serve as a perfect analogy for American vs. French. One is generally pale and heavy, while the other is much lighter but often sports an (alarmingly) accelerated tan.

We chose to have our overly-bronzed blonde with fresh strawberries and mango, with even fresher crème fraîche from our local cheesemonger/milkmaid.

Fluffing egg whites by hand and then incorporating them into a thick dough wasn't easy, but take our word, it's much more fun – and worthwhile – than trying to figure out your Foreign Income Alternative Minimum Tax For Stimulus Credit... or whatever the hell it is we just did.

Ooey Gooey Hot and Sticky

Chalk this up as a happy accident. (As opposed to the previous night's episode, which was far from happy.)

Click to see the deliciousness up close & personal

We wanted dessert badly late the other night, so I decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies. Not any chocolate chip cookies, but Thomas Keller style, as found in Ad Hoc at Home.

I'm generally not big on cookbooks, particularly for cuisines I'm already very familiar with, but Mr. Keller is an exception in this household. Some friends of ours back in California are serious T-kizzle fans (apparently they have achieved the kind of intimacy where one can throw hip-hop nicknames at the man, or so legend holds it), and we're not strangers to Ad Hoc, its awesome crew, and their seemingly infallible repertoire of food.

So much so, that I shelled out 50 bones and nearly exceeded my airline-mandated luggage capacity to bring this giant tome back with me from New York the day after it came out.

Also, Alannah has gone on the record to say she'd ditch me to eat at Ad Hoc. (I've referred to this story in our first attempt to cook TK-styley.) So again, it's a no-brainer that I want to recreate that magic in our own kitchen ever so often. Hell, sometimes we even outshine it.

But sometimes that "no-brainer" part kicks in... almost literally. Like when I try to make chocolate chip cookies and only put in half the flour called for by the recipe.

(Which is, by the way, 2 1/3c flour, 3/4tsp baking soda, 1tsp kosher salt, 5oz 55% chocolate chopped into chips, 5oz 70% chocolate chopped into chips, 8oz butter, 1c packed molasses sugar, 3/4c granulated sugar, and 2 large eggs.)

The recipe actually isn't all that different from many standard chocolate chip cookie recipes, other than the specificity of the chocolate and molasses sugar. Much of what makes a Keller recipe a Keller recipe is stark simplicity mixed with meticulous technique.

So here I was, making this seriously simple but sublime cookie, and midway through the baking process on the first sheet, I noticed that, well, I was literally cooking a sheet. The cookie dough had spread out into a giant rectangle covering almost all of the baking sheet in the oven.

Perhaps I should have known something was wrong when my balls started melting as soon as I spooned them on to the parchment paper. (And here I thought it was all the butter doing that...)

At any rate, I fixed the second batch by adding more flour, and it was a decent enough save, yielding some soft, delicious, hideously rich cookies.

But what to do with the first "batch?" I wasn't about to let all that good chocolate go to waste. Nor that molasses sugar that was probably the handiwork of some poor South American quasi-slaves (no matter what the Fair Trade label on the bag says). And, of course, all that gorgeous A.O.C. butter.

Something had to be done. So I folded the sheet into four, stacked it all together neatly, wrapped it tightly in parchment paper, and put some weight on top of it. Who knows, maybe I was on the way to making the heretofore unseen Chocolate Chip Terrine!

Fast forward to tonight. We had a lovely couscous dinner at a casual Moroccan nearby, skipped dessert in favor of some hot mint tea, and, of course, regretted skipping dessert after seeing the trays of luscious Maghreb pastries go by later. So we got home and I proposed making something with the layered chocolate chip abortion.

I sliced the stack into squares, heated them up in the oven (and for a flash under the broiler), scooped on a couple of quenelles of speculoos ice cream, and topped it all with dark chocolate shavings.

Et voila! I have no freakin' clue what I just made, but it was good. So good that T-kizzle and D-cizzle and company should put it on the menu at you-know-where.

Ok, maybe not, but it was the tastiest accident we've had in a while.

Nice Pear / La poire pulpeuse

Pear Crisp (which can also be done with apples)

Last week we went a little crazy at the market and bought a few too many of the gorgeous giant Savoie pears on display. We were left with too many pears on the verge of spoiling, so Alannah turned to her childhood for inspiration, as she has so many times in the past. So when I say that this dessert is so easy that even an eight year-old can do it, I'm not lying.

La semaine dernière on a pété un plomb et a acheté trop des belles poires de Savoie au marché. Alors on avait des poires juste avant le point de pourrir et Alannah s'est tournée vers son enfance pour l'inspiration, comme d'habitude. Donc quand je dis que ce dessert est si facile qu'un enfant de 8 ans peut le faire, je ne mens pas.

In the same family as the crumble or the cobbler, the crisp is an easy, highly adaptable dessert that can be made with just about any filling, or even made savory. Traditionally made with apple, here it is with pears. Alannah and I both like pears better than apples anyway, but with a few tweaks beyond the traditional recipe, this dessert will blow your tastebuds to kingdom come no matter how you fill it.

De la même famille du crumble ou du cobbler, le crisp est un dessert facile est fortement adaptable qui peut être fait avec quasiment toute garniture, même salée. Traditionellement fait avec la pomme, ici nous en faisons avec la poire. Alannah et moi, nous aimons plus la poire, néanmoins avec quelques petites modifs à la recette traditionelle, cette dessert va vous envoler, n'import quelle garniture.

Start by lining a baking dish with sliced pears (or apples). How many? It depends on your dish, but enough to line it about 1 inch/3cm deep. Most recipes will call for you to peel the apples/pears and mix sugar with them. Don't. You don't need the extra sugar, and you do need the fiber!

Pour commencer, remplissez un plat à four avec des poires (ou pommes) émincées. Combien ? Ça dépend de la taille de votre plat - assez pour faire une couche de 3cm de fruit. La plupart des recettes disent que vous devez epluchez les poires et les macérer. Ne faites pas. Vous n'avez pas besoin de trop du sucre, et vous en avez de fibre végétale !

Preheat your oven to 325ºF/160ºC/Th.5.5. Then start making your topping. Mix 1.5 cups/300g of rolled oats, 1 packed cup/200g brown sugar, 1 cup/125g flour, 2 tsp cinammon, then pour in 1 cup/225g of melted butter. For a subtle but noticeable dose of "wow," add a healthy pinch of allspice. Real allspice. As in "Jamaican pepper." Don't use a blend of spices, or "pumpkin pie spice," or Alannah swears she'll punch your head in. To make sure you have the real stuff, just buy the stuff called Jamaican pepper and pulverize it yourself with a pestle and mortar.

Chauffez le four à 160ºC/Th.5,5. Puis commencez à faire la croûte. Mélangez 300g de flocons d'avoine, 200g de sucre foncé (C'est pas le sucre roux mais un sucre en poudre à melasse!), 125g de farine, 2cc de canelle, et puis versez 225g de beurre fondu. Pour ajouter une petite dose de "waouh" mettez une grosse pince de poivre de la Jamaïque. En anglais on l'appelle "allspice" mais c'est souvent un faux melange des autres épices. Alannah insiste que vous achetez le vrai poivre chez un bon épicier, et l'écraser avec un pilon et mortier.

Once your mixture is fairly combined - don't overdo it - spread it over your pears in the baking dish. It should be about half as thick as your fruit layer. Don't worry if it's not even: You know you want it rough!

Une fois que la pâte est assez mélangée - ne faites pas trop - tartinez-la au dessus des poires dans le plat. Il faut être la moitié de l'épaisseur de la couche de fruit. Ne vous inquiétez pas s'elle n'est pas lisse ou plate. Vous l'aimerez un peu brutale.

Most crumble recipes call for only 25 minutes of cooking at a higher temperature, but the secret to this crisp is the caramelization of all the brown sugar. Plan on baking it for 35-40 minutes, but check on it regularly anyway! The size of your baking dish and overall thickness will vary the cooking time. When the topping has turned a rich golden brown (and is solid to the touch when you tap it) and the sugar and juice are bubbling together, it's time to pull out. The longer (and slightly cooler) cooking time should ensure a more gooey caramel topping than the standard method.

La plupart des recettes ont besoin de 25 minutes de cuisson à une température plus élevée, mais le secret de cet crisp est la caramelisation du sucre foncé. Comptez 35-40 minutes de cuisson, mais le contrôlez régulièrement ! La taille de votre plat à four et l'épaisseur du crisp va faire varier le temps de cuisson. Quand la croûte est devenue bien dorée (et bien firme à la touche quand vous le tapez avec les doigts) et le sucre et le jus de fruit bouillonnent vers le haut tout ensemble, c'est l'heure de l'enlever du four. La cuisson plus lente doit assurer un caramel plus collant sous la croûte que la méthode normale.

Allow it to cool at least a little bit before serving. Nobody likes eating napalm, and it'll be much easier to cut into pretty squares. Although it'll be pretty hard not to just attack the baking dish with a spoon.

Laissez-le froidir un peu avant le servir. Personne n'aime manger le napalm, et il sera bien plus facile à découpez en petits carrés ... Cependant il sera difficile de ne pas attaquer directement le plat à four avec une cuillère !

Brown Town Throwdown: Part Deux

Note: This post is back to being only in English because any French person should know how to make crème anglaise or ganache already... Or buy it at Monoprix. :P

Baking several batches of brownies leads to a rather interesting question: What do you do when you've got several kilos of leftover brownies in the house? The first thing, of course, is to unload your chocolate goodness on everyone you know. Then give brownies to them. This week, colleagues, friends, bartenders, neighbors – pretty much anyone in Paris lucky enough to know us – were treated to all three kinds of brownies.

Despite claiming brownie supremacy for our own recipe, nobody seemed to care which one they got. Each sample got ingested quicker than a pile of Colombian "powdered sugar" cookies at a Lohan Mother-Daughter Fundraiser. Real brownies really are that rare in Paris.

However, we still had a good amount of brownie left over, in spite of our sharing spirit. So we took Alannah's classic recipe for bread pudding - and used brownies instead of bread.

Bread pudding is pretty easy. Cut up your bread (or other baked good) into chunks and place in a deep baking dish. Pour a fairly standard custard over it (beaten eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla - heated moderately so as not to curdle), and place in a medium oven for 45 minutes. Pull it out, let it cool at least a little bit, and voila! Bread Brownie pudding.

This isn't bad on its own, but around this household, we like to push things a bit farther. So it was time for another battle, albeit a little one: How can we best finish off these brownies with a money shot? Is brownie pudding better with the classic crème anglaise? Or Alannah's luxurious dark chocolate ganache?

The ganache-topped brownie was a killer, through and through. A chocolate-sugar rush that would kill that quack Dr. Atkins if his carb-free ass weren't already dead. Something already rich and bold was made richer, bolder, and – we kinda mean it – deadly. The portion pictured above is probably only about 60g. Any more would be like a Mandingo Party in your mouth.

Shifting gears to the one topped with white stuff... Crème anglaise is the French term for runny custard. Which makes this version of the desert rather meta, since the bread brownie pudding is what it is because it's cooked in custard.

If you don't already know how to make a crème anglaise (believe me, one of our friends joked that it's made up from ground up Englishmen, but sometimes I think it's not a joke) and you look it up, you'll see terms like "easy to ruin," "nerve-wracking," or "it's easier just to buy it at the store."

Bullshit.

Beat the ever-loving hell out of two fresh egg yolks with about a cup of sugar and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract (or scrape in the grains from one real pod). Bring a cup each of milk and cream to a simmer (not a boil) in a saucepan/pot, remove from heat. Temper your egg mixture with a few spoonfuls of the warm milk/cream. Then pour the mixture back into the pot (again, not on the heat) slowly while whisking. Once integrated, put the pot back over low heat, keep whisking, until everything's simmering again. Pour through a strainer into a bowl to cool. Then, once cool, pour through a strainer again.

On second thought, just go to the store. (Just kidding. Crème anglaise is like meditation. Do it calmly and it's simple and satisfying.)

Beyond the black/white contrast, one thing that makes this version of the brownie pudding great is temperature. Chill the crème anglaise, warm up the brownie pudding. Separately, of course. Then make a small pool of crème in a dish, put a serving of the pudding on top, and drizzle more crème on it.

And that's what makes this one a winner. The contrasting flavors. The differing temperatures. Light versus dark. Cool versus warm.

While Alannah and I both feel that going deep into the dark side of things is great, we're more partial to mixing it up with a little bit of simple vanilla action, to keep things more interesting.

Sticky Sweet: Strawberry Mochi

File under super super super super sticky, and only mildly sweet.

Despite having sworn off of making Japanese food for a while after going overboard for a week, our abundance of strawberries made me break that promise. Alannah and I both love the sticky, squishy, stuffed balls of sweet mochi known as daifuku – and above all else, we love ichigo daifuku – or strawberry mochi to the non-Japanese speaking world.

Making it isn't all that difficult. Just messy. Really sticky and messy. By the time we were done, there was white stuff flung all over the room.

It starts out simple enough: Combine even amounts of mochiko (fine rice flour) and sugar water. 100 grams of each should be about enough to make six. You can make more, but these should all be eaten the same day, or maybe the next. Keeping homemade mochi fresh - without either melting into a pile of goo or drying into a brick - is still a mystery. (Leave a comment if you have any pointers...)

Heat up the mixture over a medium burner and stir it until you have a soft dough.


At this point, this stuff will stick tenaciously to the pot, spoon, spatula, fingers, hair, clothes - anything it comes in contact with... Put the mochi dough aside and let it cool for around 15-20 minutes.

Food pr0n bordering on Scheiße...
In the meantime, hull your strawberries and wrap them with anko (red bean paste). If you're a kid – or simply immature like me – joke about how much anko sounds like unko, which is Japanese for poo.


If you look elsewhere on the web for instructions on making ichigo daifuku, you'll find that a lot of fellow amateurs simply wrap their strawberries in an even layer of anko, making it look like a vertical lump of poo. For a more professional looking end-result, after surrounding your strawberry with anko simply work the shape into a half-dome. It only takes an extra five seconds, and your daifuku won't look like... well... shit.

When your mochi dough has cooled, plop it out of the pot on to a very well rice-floured (or corn/potato starched) board. Cover your hands with flour/starch – and I mean cover – and grab chunks of the dough to quickly and gently work into golf-sized balls.

Warning: Anything that is not covered with flour/starch will stick to your balls and not let go.

In the well-starched palm of your off hand, gently flatten a ball of mochi dough, place a half-dome of strawberry/anko curved side down in the middle of the dough, and bring up the sides of the dough and pinch together. This is the bottom of your daifuku.

And that's it! Turn your ichigo daifuku over and place onto a plate - again, one dusted with flour/starch. And while you're at it, sift some more flour/starch over the completed daifuku to prevent sticky fingers.

Or in the immortal words of Samantha Fox, "Then again... that could be fun!"

Sticky Sweet: Gariguettin' Off

During our few days off from cooking last week, I still couldn't help but bring home a new toy to play with.

We went to see F. (drug dealers' names should never be disclosed) at our favorite Parisian crackhouse, E. Dehillerin. A mecca for foodie tourists, wannabe chefs and – believe it or not – real chefs, it's another one of those awesome local places that Alannah somehow gets preferential treatment.

I don't know how she does it, but if it gets us a new plaything, I don't care.


It's a passoir à grosseilles, which literally means "currant strainer," but going by F.'s disapproving look when I told him I wanted to liquefy some cooked vegetables through it, and his nod and smile when I said, "I mean, coulis!", purists (like F.) think it's only intended for processing fruit.

Somewhere between a chinois and a food mill, the passoir à grosseilles uses a shiny blade and rolls on a wooden bearing to push and squeeze food through a fine sieve. I couldn't wait to make my first coulis.

Unfortunately, this took days. Alannah rolled her eyes every time I went up to a complete stranger to sniff her berries. Touching the merchandise isn't always acceptable behavior by French standards, so it was a challenge going around and sniffing for ripe berries in early spring. We finally happened upon the ideal berry: The gariguette.

The gariguette is a uniquely French phenomenon, a rare springtime strawberry with intense scent and flavor that unfortunately a) has a very short season and b) costs more than most designer drugs. Legend has it that they only grow in the South of France and usually are sold to overpriced restaurants, Michelin-type chefs, and rip-off specialty markets. In reality, you can buy them at most decent Parisian marchés, but they're few and very expensive. Not being made of money, I just happened to spot a good deal at a heretofore undisclosed location (sorry local readers!) who apparently don't know what they're selling, because they cost less than the hideously bland, gigantic Spanish strawberries that are common at this time of year.

By the time we got home, I was gagging for it. A weird new toy, a basket of legendary strawberries... We simply had to make something – something incorporating fresh strawberries and a sauce, but that won't outshine the fruit.


And voila! Rice pudding with gariguette coulis and the self-same strawberries on top.

The rice pudding is plain old, humble vanilla rice pudding (sans egg). The strawberries on top? Delicious as expected. The real star here, sandwiched in the middle, is the coulis.

We'd read that gariguettes have intense flavor, but this is bordering on ridiculous. Sweet, sticky, and mindblowingly perfect.

The strawberries were cooked in a little bit of water and sugar, then pressed through the passoir, which secreted a clear, red viscous liquid. That was then further reduced in a saucepan until it was a bright red syrup - no coloring, no gelatin. If we were to feed it to you, you'd think it was from a bottle of concentrated strawberry syrup, and you wouldn't believe it was anything more than real strawberry and sugar. Even the dull-colored pulp left in the passoir - looking like strawberries that had been chewed up and snowballed out - tasted like the most intense strawberry jam. We just licked that off a spoon before assembling dessert.

In the afterglow of a perfect gariguette sauce, we're left wanting more, wondering what else we can make from these amazing little strawberries. We only have a handful of weeks left to find out!

Little Cream Filled Pies

I'm a big fan of Alannah's pie.

Mostly because of the crust. Part lard, part butter, all decadence. Flaky but not overly so, rich but not so much it overshadows the filling. Tonight, the filling was rhubarb and custard. This has been one of Alannah's traditional go-to pies for years.

Not so traditional is the form. If you look at the picture there, it's barely much bigger than a cup of espresso. That's because she baked it in a muffin tin, filling each hole with a pint-sized sheet of dough, filling the mini-pies with rhubarb and custard, then even doing the lattice-work to make them look like real pies.

She was a little worried about overcooking and undercooking the whole time it was in the oven, and although the custard solidified a bit more than we'd like (we're into dripping, creamy fillings that you have to lick off your fingers and lips), it still came out fantastic for a first-time experiment. A bit messy, a bit awkward, but in the end, totally worth it.


We're going to do it again, and we hope it catches on. Now that the overblown cupcake fad seems to be coming to its ebb, we hope to spark a revolution of cupcake-sized pies. Pies, by virtue of having filling, are better than cakes. Or as we like to say: Less fluff, more stuff.

Sticky Sweet: Chocolate Starfish

What do you have for a late night dessert after a homemade Mexican dinner?

Craving churros and hot chocolate - but with no churro stand to be found - we improvised.

Alannah makes a ridiculously thick, sweet, dark hot chocolate that borders on being nearly-solid chocolate sauce. You can eat it with your fingers if you don't mind the risk of getting burned. And the risky behavior is worth it.

We'd made doughnuts a couple of nights earlier, so we warmed up some of the star-shaped ones, rolled them in cinnamon and sugar, and laid them in the hot chocolate upon serving. ¡Muy Sabroso!

No Holes Barred

It's nearly impossible to find a good doughnut in Paris. Hell, it was hard finding good doughnuts in the States. (You Voodoo Donut fans can suck it...)

So we had to do a little DIY and fry up our own. Then shake them in cinnamon and sugar. Then have multiple mouthgasms.

Admittedly, this was no easy task.


We had to keep an eye on the oil/candy thermometer (absolutely crucial), and the optimal temperature was different for each batch of dough used. Eventually, we found that round doughnuts weren't as tasty as doughnut holes and puffy little stars.