morsels & sauces

Here we go... entry #1. In this   Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food. This first installment is a book inspired by a fairy tale.  The Snow Child  by Eowyn Ivey is a dark treasure of a book.  Set in a harsh 1920s Alaska  this book tells the story of  two forty-something Pennsylvanians (Mabel and Jack) who have chosen to homestead. They are not young pioneers ready to forge their ways in the rough and tumble world of Sarah Palin. Instead, they are world-weary adults who have come to a darkened Alaska Territory for some quiet.  In a novel that lusciously describes snow, cold, darkness, and silence, Ivey writes a love letter to Alaska, to magic, to possibility. But also to independence, (dare I say) feminism, community, and c...

I have a dear friend who is a phenomenal baker. She can make cakes like no other, but her preference is for pies. I have another friend who had a catering service on the side of a demanding teaching schedule; her brownies and cookies are to die for. I am no baker. Humidity and altitude and baking times and measuring ingredients precisely: all seem to baffle me when it comes time to bake something. However, I have Miette to help me. Miette  is a wonderful little cake, pastry, and confections shop begun in 2001 by Meg Ray as part of the Berkeley Farmer's market; nowadays, she boasts four shops, including one in the Ferry Building, another in Hayes Valley, a new boutique in Larkspur Landing, and my favorite--a small shop connected to the bakery in Oakland at Jack London Square. Her focus is on cakes, particularly the cakes she loved as a child, and she has streamlined her baking to focus on a foundation of tried and true recipes from which she can build. For example,...

This recipe for an amazing sweet corn panna cotta with a blueberry topping comes to you twice.  Let's talk about attempt number one. The real name of this recipe from  Food and Wine   and Tracy Obolsky is Sweet Corn Panna Cotta with Blueberry Compote; however, the recipe that followed in the magazine was not for a compote at all .  It seemed more like a fresh blueberry. So I went to David Lebovitz for a rescue, and I made his blueberry compote, complete with a splash of gin.  He swears by that little hint of pine with the blueberries.  I just swear by gin. The compote was sweet with an unexpected but completely mellow earthiness.  I could eat this compote by the spoonful, and when it turned out that I had plenty left over, I almost did.  I did show some restraint and smoothed some of it onto toast the next morning.  The compote was beautiful. However, there was one problem. The compote was much too sweet for a corn panna cotta ...