christina tosi's crack pie

This Easter, I was charged with making a dessert. After pondering a number of options (strawberry tart? chocolate bundt cake?) I remembered Crack Pie.

I have never been to Momofuku Milk Bar but I read about Crack Pie some months ago in Bon Appetit. Based on the name alone, I knew I wanted to make it. Still, I had to wait for the right moment- a dessert this rich is better made for a crowd. 

I made Crack Pie over three days. On Friday evening, I made the oatmeal cookie that is crumbled up to make the crust. On Saturday morning, I assembled the crust and filling and baked the pie. I chilled the pie overnight and then on Sunday dusted it with powdered sugar and served it up with some bourbon-spiked whipped cream.

It was good. I couldn't eat more than a few mouthfuls- this stuff is rich- but everyone else scraped their plates (a friend even polished off my half-eaten piece). But while I'm glad I tried it, I'm not sure I'll make it again. I found the sweetness  a little cloying and think I would have found a bowl of good  vanilla ice cream far more addictive. To each her own.

easter hike

After an Easter egg hunt and a brunch of french toast, chicken sausage and fruit salad, Daniel, Joanna, Morgan and myself headed out for an early-afternoon hike.

We forded a creek, crashed through blackberry brambles, poison oak and tangles of underbrush and finally arrived on some beautifully hilly property with some fairly spectacular views.

Morgan and Joanna inspected the flora.

There were century plants that looked like something out of Dr. Seuss. And lots of beautiful flowers.

We found a good perch and shared a bottle of wine. 

It was something of an adventure and even though we all had to bathe ourselves in Tecnu when we got back to the house, we'd worked up hearty appetites for the Easter feast at Daniel's parents' house. 

silver oak

Over the weekend, Daniel and I drove up to Napa with our friends Morgan and Joanna to spend Easter with Daniel's parents. We arrived mid-afternoon on Saturday and headed over to Silver Oak for a wine tasting.

It wasn't a random choice- Daniel's mother recently started an awesome new job there and we were eager to stop in and say hello. 

We took a little tour of the place (it's gorgeous!) and tried some pretty delicious wines. My dad has bottles of Silver Oak from the mid-80's that sometimes make appearances on special occasions, so it was a real treat to visit the winery.

 It was the perfect start to the weekend.

happy easter

Happy Easter from Napa!

yotam ottolenghi's celeriac and lentils with hazelnut and mint

This is celeriac.

An amazingly gnarled little beastie that happens to have a deliciously smooth, nutty flavor. I bought the above specimen last week with no clear idea of what I was going to do with it. On Sunday morning, I was flipping through Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty (apparently I've become the sort of person who reads cookbooks for fun) and spotted his recipe for celeriac and lentils. I already had all the ingredients and just like that, I had a plan for lunch.

We ate this along with a small salad for lunch and then went hiking out by China Camp. It was at once wholesome and flavorful (the mellowness of the celeriac! the crunch from the hazelnuts! the brightness of the mint!) and I will certainly be making it again, and soon. 

slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's celeriac and lentils with hazelnut and mint

1/3 cup whole hazelnuts

1 cup lentils du Puy

3 cups water

2 bay leaves

4 sprigs of thyme

1 celeriac peeled and cut into 1/4 inch slices

4 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp hazelnut oil

3 tbsp sherry vinegar

salt and black pepper

4 tbsp fresh mint, chopped

Preheat oven to 275. Scatter the hazelnuts on a baking sheet and toast for 15 minutes. Let them cool and chop roughly (or leave whole, as I did). 

Combine the lentils, water, bay leaves and thyme in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil then cover and simmer for 18-20 minutes, or until al dente. Drain.

In another sauce pan, cook the celeriac in lots of boiling salted water for 10 minutes, or until just tender. Drain.

In a large bowl, mix the hot lentils with the olive oil, 2 tbsp of hazelnut oil, vinegar, salt and black pepper. Add celeriac and stir well. Stir in half of the mint and half of the hazelnuts. Pile onto a bowl and drizzle the remaining hazelnut oil on top. Garnish with remaining mint and hazelnuts.

le croissant du jour

I can resist everything except temptation

                                                                                                                                            -Oscar Wilde

kimberley hasselbrink's pea shoot salad with fava beans

This past Christmas, Daniel gave me a calendar he'd seen me admire at one of the shops in the Ferry building. It's a produce calendar with lovely watercolor drawings of various fruits and vegetables for each month of the year. It also includes a list of what's in season. For April, the list includes asparagus, green garlic, strawberries, English peas, and fava beans.

Yesterday while I was at our local farmer's market, I snapped up some pea shoots ($1 for an enormous bunch!) and today while I was doing some supplemental grocery shopping at Draeger's, I saw that fava beans had come in. I scooped some up and started fantasizing about how I might proceed to cook and eat them.

Enter Kimberley Hasselbrink's blog The Year in Food and a recipe for a pea shoot and fava bean salad that looked like spring incarnate. 

I suppose blanching and peeling the fava beans could be considered a bit of a chore, but I didn't mind. I made a pea and mushroom risotto at the same time and peeled the beans in between stirring the risotto. The resulting dinner was light and tasted like pure April. 

Pea shoot salad with fava beans, slightly adapted from The Year in Food

1/4 lb pea shoots (the leaves, flowers and tender, curly ends)

1lb fava beans

1/4 daikon radish

1 avocado

3 tbsp olive oil

scant tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup slivered almonds

Bring small pot of water to a boil and blanch the fava beans for 2 minutes, then drain and place in an ice bath. When cool, peel the skin off of the individual beans and discard. Set the peeled beans to the side.

Whisk the balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper together.

Toss the pea shoots with the almonds, radish and dressing. Plate and top with avocado slices and the fava beans. Serve.