I’ve been meaning to post this for months! Since a few of you requested it, I may as well start with the backlog here. This was a really fun dish to throw together. The saffron turmeric cake was an adaptation of a chocolate cake recipe, where Dave started by replacing the cocoa powder with turmeric and went on from there. It is intensely flavorful and moist and one of the most perfect cakes we’ve ever developed.

You can see from the photo how vividly red the inside of the cake is. It turns out that turmeric, a bright yellow root most commonly sold as a powder here in the U.S., turns red when it reacts with alkaline substances. In fact, the red dot traditionally worn by many Indian women in the center of the forehead is made by mixing powdered turmeric with lime (not the fruit!).

I can’t remember why we decided to pair it with the thyme brittle and the meyer lemon sorbet (I’m sure it made sense at the time, and it worked really well), but I definitely recall that we added thyme because we had read that meyer lemon contains one of the same flavor compounds as thyme.

Our few sets of our muffin pans are still stained red from making rounds of these cakes, but it was entirely worth it.

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for: the winners of my CIA book giveaway! I used a random number generator to pick winners from the comments. The winners are Sandy, Kathryn, Vicki, Alison, Esme, and Red! Winners, please email me your addresses and I’ll have a book sent out to each of you pronto. Thanks to everyone for playing along!

Archives
2008: Chocolate-Whiskey Pudding Cake
2007: Rum-Drenched Cocoa-Nana Bread
2006: Saffron Dill Cappelletti Stuffed With Leeks

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Ah, so it turns out that I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging. Sorry about that. Dave and I just moved to a much nicer apartment, and we are finally wedding planning in earnest, so things have been pretty overwhelming around here.

As part of my return to food blogging, I have presents for you! (It’s sort of like how hobbits give presents to everyone else on their birthdays.) I have three copies each of two new books from the Culinary Institute of America to give away: Baking & Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft 2nd Edition and Remarkable Service: A Guide to Winning and Keeping Customers for Servers, Managers, and Restaurant Owners 2nd Edition.

More on the book giveaway later, or feel free to skip to the bottom of this post for instructions on how to win one of these books.

Wedding planning, did I say? It’s coming up fast, and we are caught up in the panic of it all. We finally sent out save-the-date cards, at least! Not all family friends are thrilled by them, but they tell the true story - we are utterly silly geeks in love.

I’ve also been making a lot of art, mostly handspun yarn.

I’m in love with texture, as usual. It’s much like my cooking, really.

And vivid colors.

Now when I wear out old suits (which happens frequently, what with all the lawyering), I can just cut the fabric into strips and spin it into more yarn.

I even crocheted a yarmulke for my cat brother.

Not everything is fiber art and law, though. I also finally started building blinds for our new apartment out of card catalog cards from one of Columbia University’s old defunct card catalogs.

Okay, let’s get back to what you really care about - the CIA book giveaway!

The Rules: To win one of the books, leave a comment on this post telling me which Jack: an occasional restaurant dish you’d most like to see me post the recipe for (or, y’know, just say hi!). In about two weeks, I’ll pick 6 comments randomly, and have the publisher send a copy of one of the books to each of the 6 winners. (Unfortunately, the publisher can only ship to people located in the USA or Canada.)

Again, the books are Baking & Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft 2nd Edition and Remarkable Service: A Guide to Winning and Keeping Customers for Servers, Managers, and Restaurant Owners 2nd Edition. The publisher’s blurbs are as follows:

Baking & Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft 2nd Edition: The first edition of Baking & Pastry has taken its place alongside The Professional Chef as a must-have guide for all culinary students and professionals, and has been praised by top chefs as “the ultimate baking and pastry reference” from “the best culinary school in the world.” This edition will improve upon the first with new recipes, photos, instructional illustrations, and information on the ingredients and techniques needed to create spectacular breads and desserts.

Considered to be the most comprehensive reference on the market, Baking & Pastry contains foundational chapters covering ingredient and equipment identification, baking science and food safety, and baking formulas and percentages, as well as information on career opportunities for baking and pastry professionals. The book includes a total of 625 recipes ranging from basic to advanced in difficulty, and features appendices with useful conversion and equivalency charts, reading and resource information, and a glossary of terms. Accompanied by 389 four-color photographs and 72 illustrations, this completely revised and expanded text contains new sections on everything from baking entrepreneurship and principles of design to breakfast pastries and vegan baking.

Remarkable Service: A Guide to Winning and Keeping Customers for Servers, Managers, and Restaurant Owners 2nd Edition: The first edition of Remarkable Service and its follow-up, At Your Service, have been trusted resources in the food service industry since 2001. This new edition will be fully updated with new content and photography throughout, making it the must-have guide to service and hospitality.

Remarkable Service addresses the needs of a wide range of dining establishments, from casual and outdoor dining to upscale restaurants and catering operations. Chapters cover everything from training and hiring staff, preparation for service, and front-door hospitality to money handling, styles of modern table service, and the relationship between the front and back of the house. This new edition includes the most up-to-date information currently available on serving customers in the contemporary restaurant world.

Everyone loves romanesco, the green fractal cauliflower that has been appearing more and more in stores and greenmarkets in the area over the past few years. It’s gorgeous, in a geeky sort of way, and very tasty, especially when you let it get a good pan sear during the cooking process.

Don’t let the green fool you into thinking this counts as a nutritious vegetable, though. It’s mostly starch, and the sweet sauce in this recipe doesn’t exactly help on the health front. It is, however, addictively delicious.

Eating fractals is fun!

In other news, I went down to North Carolina this past weekend. There, I bought a drop spindle and taught myself to handspin yarn. Here’s my first yarn, in progress and on the spindle. It’s a merino/silk blend, done with navajo 3-ply, with curly locks twisted in for the fun of it.

I also got my very first shooting lesson, with a friend’s air rifle in his backyard. I’m not particularly fond of guns, in theory, but I am fond of learning new skills. And as another friend put it, I’m now entirely prepared for the collapse of civilization. I can shoot, I can spin, I can cure meat, and I can litigate.

I’m fairly pleased with myself - I hit the black on my very first target.

On the plane, I was doodling, and I created this rough little map of the directions from my apartment to my favorite dim sum place. I need to get a better scan of it, but here it is for now. Ping’s Seafood makes the best har chow (long shrimp noodles) ever.

The directions are of limited value, though, because Dave and I are actually apartment-hunting right now. We’re supposed to hear back today about the first place we applied for, so please keep your fingers crossed for us.

Anyways, onto the delicious fractal recipe!

Archives
2008: Broiled Yellowtail with Grapefruit Salsa
2007: Malaysian Beef Curry with Thick Onion Sauce (Daging Nasi Kandar)

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