So, here’s the story: that photo up there is of me and Dave with our goddaughter on our wedding day.

(I might have a bit more time for taking food photos and writing now that the wedding planning is over!)

(Also, before I forget to give this most important credit: the photos in this post are all from proofs by Annaliese Moyer unless otherwise indicated.)

Dave and I got married on August 29th, and promptly left for our honeymoon in Southeast Asia. Even catching up on things since getting back has been an adventure. We petted tigers, got sick, ate many tasty street foods, hiked around, visited five countries, and had an incredible trip. Now that I’m back, I’m working on some interesting cases for clients whom I am proud to represent, and really just luxuriating in having the extra energy to pour into all of my work and projects.

I’d like to take a moment to tell you a bit more about the wedding.

Our goddaughter was our bubble girl, you see.

We’d originally planned to hold the ceremony on the beach between the bridges, but when the rain started coming down harder, we gave up and sought shelter [under the chuppah] under the arch of the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY (photo by our friend Laura, I believe).

Pausing for the noisy trains to pass was one of the many highlights of this decision. I think I laughed more during our ceremony than I ever have at anyone else’s wedding, which is a huge win in my book!

We asked our dear friend Cat Valente to officiate for us, along with the judge for whom I used to work as a court attorney, with help from a linguistics professor / cantor friend to sing the sheva brachot. Cat explained what the various symbols of the ceremony meant to us, and the judge discussed our commitment to marriage equality at our request and administered our vows.

Dave held my bouquet while I said my vows to him.

Scott Lefton made us the most amazing wedding rings (photo below taken by him).

Our rings each come with a custom-designed puzzle, that enables the ring to be worn as a bracelet or a pendant. Each puzzle has a labyrinth hidden within, which must be solved by rotating the outer body of the puzzle and moving the two arms which hold the ring in place. As Scott put it during our wedding ceremony, “this echoes how Danielle and Dave will work together to navigate the mazes of their joined lives, sometimes moving together and sometimes separately, but always with a common goal in mind.” When the puzzle is solved, the arms move inwards and the ring can be removed and worn traditionally instead.

Scott printed the solution to the puzzle on flash paper and lit it on fire during the ceremony, of course. Wouldn’t want to make things too easy on us.

He handed a second copy of the solution in a sealed envelope to my brother, who put it in a safe deposit box somewhere out on Long Island. When we got home from the honeymoon, we found the key and coordinates to the solution in a frame on the wall in our apartment.

We were rained out, but we didn’t let that stop us.

We had a reception filled with games, honey, and stories.

Our wedding favors were small jars filled with Zambian honey, with labels I made from the invitation art drawn by Lee Moyer.

My favorite is still the wall we set up with luggage tags. People wrote true and false stories about us on luggage tags and tacked them to the wall, then voted on stories others had written with little red and green stickers.

We brought our favorite cleaver from home to cut the wedding cake.

(This at least is bloggishly appropriate. I’ve used that cleaver to chop pumpkins for kaddo bourani and bones stewed garlicky black bean spare ribs. It is well loved and well utilized.)

Brooklyn’s Borough President, Marty Markowitz, issued a Proclamation for us. Dave’s mother baked the most delicious cookies for all of our guests. My brother found the Baby Soda Jazz Band for us just a few days before the event.

I can’t possibly recount all the details here. I’ll skip ahead to more appropriate posts soon, with photos of all the amazing foods we discovered on our honeymoon. But this is what’s been taking up so much of my time, and you deserve a glimpse of it.

Our wedding was ultimately a huge collaborative effort, and afterwards, a lot of people came up to us to say that they’d never had this much fun being part of a wedding before. We really stepped back and let people run wild with their creativity for us, loving what they had to give instead of telling them precisely what to do to build a very specific image for us. I absolutely treasure the brilliant, amazing people we have in our lives, whose wildest dreams created such a wonderment for us.

And now that all’s done and we’re home again, my blushing bride handsome husband partner (nothing else sounds quite right, still) and I are catching up on our lives (and our cooking) at last!

Food blogging opens a lot of doors. I’ve made wonderful friends, received gifts and marketing materials, started an occasional restaurant, and really had a lot of fun.

About a week and a half ago, though, something new happened. BlissPR asked me to be the celebrity guest judge for their company’s holiday bakeoff party. I don’t think I’m much of a celebrity (not until someone writes a Wikipedia entry about me, anyways!), but it sounded like fun, so I accepted.

Everyone was friendly, excited, and proud of the food they’d made. We met at one employee’s apartment, where her young children helped us out in judging the entries. Up above you can see my cake expert for the night. Her brother acted as my cookie expert.

I was very charmed by the way they put their recipes together. Being a PR firm, they had each contestant write up a bit of a press release to go with their recipe. The stories were fun to read, just as I love reading the stories food bloggers write about each recipe we post. It offers a window into the emotional background of the food that I love.

My favorite cookbooks tend to be the ones with enough background and flavor text that I can read them like novels, too. Everything tastes better when contextualized well.

I was pretty impressed by the woman who actually printed out photos of all the BlissPR employees in sugar and food coloring to decorate her cake. Watching the kids argue over who would get to eat their mother’s head was very charming.

We actually ran an interesting experiment on the children. One of the women there and I were discussing whether there were any innate personality differences between little boys and little girls. Personally, I lean towards saying no, and I’ll spare you the full argument here since this is a post about food. She said yes. She felt that little girls were calmer and more likely negotiate and be tricky than little boys.

We ran the experiment by asking the little girl and the little boy at the party what they would do if someone told them they couldn’t eat cake in the den, but they really wanted to anyway. (It’s just a game!, we assured them. Eating cake was totally okay!) The little girl told us that she would punch the person who told her not to eat the cake. The little boy told us that he would sneak into the room to eat the cake without anyone knowing.

I rest my cake case.

All though food was wonderful, but I personally liked the chocolatey drinks the best. So, as a gift from the bakeoff to you, here are the recipes for the two drinks that I enjoyed most that evening. They’re simple, but so tasty that the Winter Wonderland Delight was the only entry I was actually able to finish off rather than tasting and setting aside to leave room for more that night.

Winter Wonderland Delight

Aven of BlissPR writes:

“The history of how I came to be in possession of the fabulous Winter Wonderland Delight recipe can be traced as far back as the history of hot cocoa, which begins with the Aztecs, who used to roast beans to make a chocolate drink; however, their version is much than the hot chocolate we know today. The Aztecs actually drank it cold, flavored with wine and chili peppers, and not at all sweet.

“In the early 1500s, Chocolate was discovered and brought to Spain by the explorer Cortez. After its introduction in Spain, the drink began to be served hot, sweetened and without the chili peppers – but the Spanish were very protective of their wonderful new hot and chocolaty beverage, and it was over a hundred years before news of it began to spread across the rest of Europe.

“When it hit London, chocolate houses became popular and very trendy. In fact, it was the English who started adding milk to their chocolate and it was enjoyed as an after-dinner beverage. And it was in one of these London chocolate houses where this recipe began with my great, great, great grandfather. While most chocolate houses were trendy at the time, this “Chocolateria” was especially popular due to the “secret” ingredient in the Winter Wonderland Delight, which was only offered around the holidays.

“The ingredient, of course, was Coffee Liqueur, which my great, great, great grandmother brought with her from Italy, where it was initially made by monks from an ancient secret recipe.

“Since that time, the recipe has been passed down for generations where it will – on Monday, November 10, 2008 – face its ultimate test…the BlissPR bakeoff.

Winter Wonderland Delight (this is for a single serving)

1 oz Coffee Liqueur
1 tsp Sugar
1 tbsp Whipping Cream
5 oz Hot Cocoa”

The Secret Life of Chocolate

Cortney of BlissPR writes:

“Milton Zelman, publisher of Chocolate News said “Giving chocolate to others is an intimate form of communication, a sharing of secrets.” Good Living is an act of intelligence, by which we choose things which have an agreeable taste rather than those which do not. – Brillat-Savarin Thus I share with you all something pleasing to the palate, indicative of the festive season, lovely to look at and delectably enjoyable in every way all at the same time.

“The Secret Life of Chocolate:

vanilla vodka
godiva dark chocolate
godiva white chocolate
strawberry garnish”

So, I was just introduced to Yummr, which is a foodie community website with a social networking bent. The deal there is that you can share recipes and cooking videos, and by participation earn points towards winning prizes at their Bazaar, which was most recently updated to include a few copies of Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way.

Courtesy of Houghton-Mifflin Books, Yummr is offering to send a copy of A Pig in Provence by Georgeanne Brennan free to one of you folks who read my blog.

In order to win a copy of the book, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Around the end of next week, I’ll pick one name randomly, and Yummr will mail the winner a copy of A Pig in Provence. The only restriction is that you must be a resident of the US or Canada.

Good luck!

I usually don’t do memes, but Helen from Food Stories tagged me. The rules are:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Sure. First, though, let me identify the photo above – I made that glass bowl at our glassblowing studio a few weeks ago, and it is currently my favorite of my pieces.

Here are 7 random (except not really random) things about me:

1. When I was a little kid, and my Dad’s sailboat was tied to the buoy with the sail fastened down, I would lie on top of the boom with my legs wrapped around it, reading. In the wind the boom would slam back and forth, but I held on tight, and I never lost my page. This terrified my mother, who was convinced that I would fall off and hurt myself. Needless to say, I was fine.

2. One of the first things I can remember about my partner, Dave, is the response he gave when I was discussing the importance of dressing in a professional manner, shortly after we first met. He told me, “Well, I wouldn’t want you to end up in some sort of sartorial star chamber!”

3. I am the one who carried my youngest brother home from the hospital. He’s about 14 years younger than I am, and sometimes I feel I’m more like his wacky young aunt or second mother than his big sister, since we didn’t exactly grow up together the way I did with the older of my younger brothers.

4. I once went bungee-jumping, and sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still feel the wind in my face and the terror and delight of what it is to fly.

5. I didn’t go to law school because I necessarily wanted to be a lawyer. I went to law school because I thought it would be a fun way to spend three years of my life. I was right.

6. I have a lot of foods I don’t really like – most whole nuts, most mushrooms, oranges in most circumstances, very smelly cheeses, and more. But when I go out to a great restaurant and order a tasting menu, I only tell them my shortlist of things I hate and will never be brave with at all: peanuts, and anything that tastes like licorice (including fennel and anise).

7. A lot of you know this already, but I started my own law firm last year, and it has been a wild and amazing ride ever since. The most satisfying case I have worked on was when I helped defend a man charged with 2nd degree murder based only on DNA evidence, and we won an acquittal. The biggest profile case I have worked on was when I spent several months defending depositions of people who were arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention, as part of helping to represent some of the arrestees in their civil rights case against the City of New York. And that’s not to mention all the family/matrimonial cases, estate planning, discrimination, and other stuff I’ve been doing as part of my general practice since I hung up my shingle last spring. My point is, running a law practice still exhilarates me, it’s going pretty well, and I’m still working hard to continue building my practice. (It is unclear to me whether this paragraph would count as attorney advertising under the most recent NY rules, so I’ll just put in this disclaimer just in case.)

I’m tagging: Homesick Texan, Feisty Bento, La Tartine Gourmande, My Korean Kitchen, Bron Marshall, Beyond Salmon, and Hungry in Hogtown.

Around this time last year, we were making: Stir-Fried String Beans with Pork and Pork

I’m a bit late this year, but I finally put together a set of my favorite images from the past year, along with their corresponding recipes, to create the 2008 calendar.

Habeas Brûlée 2008 wall calendars are now available for purchase here.

Sorry for the delay! Channukah snuck in early this year, and things got away from me a bit there.

And remember, there’s still time left to donate to charity by bidding on my cooking class for two for Menu for Hope!

I am extremely honored that Brilynn, one of my favorite food bloggers, saw fit to nominate me for a Thinking Blogger Award.

I’ll take any excuse to introduce you to some of the wonderful blogs out there for you to read. (I’m tempted to name my other blog, the Mental Disability Law Blog, but I will be good and stick with food blogs instead.) So, in no particular order, my nominees are:
 
 
1. Cook & Eat and Still Life With… – both of these blogs are run by the same brilliant woman, so I’m counting them together as a single nominee. I can never decide which impresses me more, her cooking or her food styling and photography. Rather than choosing, I suggest you read up on both. I learned most of what I know about food photography by reading her blog.

2. Tigers & Strawberries – Barbara is a professional, and it shows. Her blog is full of basic tutorials on stir-fry technique, becoming acquainted with each and every spice in your pantry, and more. Her blog is an incredible resource for anyone who wants to learn to cook Chinese, Indian, Thai, or Vietnamese food (and more!) from the bottom up, with great focus on understanding the basic building blocks of flavor and how to layer them together to great effect.

3. Rasa Malaysia – Bee is a wonderful photographer and an excellent chef. Her recipes come off as traditional without being dull, and every time I follow one of them, it survives the taste test and delights our dinner guests.

4. Hungry in Hogtown – Rob is a brave explorer of molecular gastronomy and the tastiness of really cute parts of cute animals. I look forward to his every post, because there is always something there to excite and intrigue me. He is probably the food blogger I would most like to cook with, someday.

5. Roots and Grubs – I mostly read this for Matthew’s tales of the adorable things his three-year-old daughter, Iris, does and says. How can you not love a parent and child who play a game called “I’m takin’ your bacon.”?
 
 
Winners, now you get nominate 5 blogs that make you think. Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging.

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to the original Thinking Blogger Award post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

When Aki and Alex of Ideas in Food announced that they were moving back to New York City and taking on catering jobs, I was thrilled. I’ve been wanting to visit their restaurant for ages, but it was so far away, and now I had my chance. Nicole made it happen, and actually organized a private dinner for a few locals catered by Aki and Alex

When reading food blogs, I always wonder if the cooking is actually as good as it looks. When all I have to go on is brilliant writing and luscious photos, the taste remains a mystery.

Aki and Alex’s cooking blew me away. It was even better than it looks on their food blog. Not only are they brilliant chefs, they were also kind and friendly people. At the last minute, they expanded our menu from 5 courses to 10, without raising the price. They answered all our questions, and were patient with our chattering during the meal. I hope to sneak in some cooking classes from them in the fall.

Aki and Alex posted the menu they created for us here. Nicole posted her write-up of the meal here. I have photos of some of the dishes they served, but not all.

The first photo above shows our first course, Sake Cured Steelhead Trout Roe (crispy yogurt, arugula blossoms, banana jam). The banana jam was made with yuzu and lime, and the arugula blossoms were just a touch spicy. I’ve never much liked caviar, but I try to take leaps of faith with tasting menus, and I was well rewarded this time. This was incredible. I love the way it looks like a tiny terrarium, and the flavors melded together so perfectly that I closed my eyes and just floated away with every mouthful.

I failed to take a good photo of the second course, Artichoke Soup (comte, whipped horseradish, lump crabmeat). It was my least favorite course of the evening, though to be fair, I’m rarely much for cold soups. The whipped horseradish foam was just lovely, though.

Above was the third dish of the evening, Squid Salad (lime, scallion, nasturtium flowers). It was served with grilled squid and passionfruit poprocks. The poprocks absolutely made this dish for me, though it was lovely even without them.

Another guest and I got very upset when Dave left a poprock uneaten on his plate, and we wouldn’t leave him alone until he found it and devoured it. They crackled fruitily. I want to make flavored poprocks now!

Next we were served Ivory King Salmon Tartare (pecorino crotonese, claytonia, minus 8 vinegar), as shown above. I’d never had minus 8 vinegar before, and this was reduced to an incredible syrup. Like Nicole, I would have been happy with just a thimble of the vinegar to drink, and we were given went above and beyond.

Our next dish, Griddled Florida Shrimp (blistered ramps, bee pollen, meyer lemon), was one of my favorites of the evening. The ramps were tiny and perfectly fresh. I’ve been so excited to find them at the farmer’s markets lately. The shrimp was everything shrimp should be. The meyer lemon puree was very tasty, though I do wish it had been a bit more intense.

And the bee pollen spice mix, oh, Dave and I went home and immediately made some ourselves. It’s simple, really – bee pollen, grains of paradise, salt, and sugar, ground together fairly coarsely. It is stunning. It is my new favorite pantry staple.

Next, we had Seared Scallop (razor clams, petite potatoes, crispy zucchini). The scallop was perfect. The potatoes were teensy tiny, the smallest, cutest potatoes I have ever eaten in all my life. The razor clams made me want to run to my favorite Chinatown fishmongers immediately. There were also slices of that lusciously sweet Chinese sausage.

The disk on top is crispy zucchini and basil, held together with isomalt. I enjoyed it, but I felt it was too big compared to the small quantity of other foods, and it was prone to sticking in my teeth. Sure was gorgeous, though.

I took awful photos of the next few courses, which I can’t bring myself to post here.

We had Pork Shoulder (corn chips, baked pumpkin seeds, cilantro). Aki and Alex cooked pumpkin seeds in a pressure cooker until they had the soft texture of baked beans, and seasoned them as such. The pork shoulder was like pulled pork. The corn chip didn’t do much for me, but I adored those pumpkin seeds.

Then they served us Duck Bacon (pumpernickel gnocchi, king trumpet mushrooms, pak choi hearts), with duck breast that had been cooked for 24 hours in bacon stock (bacon stock!). I usually have to peel the fat off of duck breast, but this time, I ate it with great joy. The pumpernickel gnocchi were reminiscent of foie gras, and the pak choi hearts were tiny and flavorful. (I gave my mushrooms to Dave.)

Our first dessert, shown above, was Caseificio dell’ Alta Langa (musk melon, blis elixir, red amaranth). Again, perfection, with the light, luscious cheese matched with sweet melon and earthy amaranth. The blis elixir was another lovely vinegar-based concoction that I wouldn’t mind drinking on its own.

I have no good photo of our last dessert, which was Sunflower Seed Pudding (red wine-rhubarb, golden raisins, ricotta). The sunflower seeds were pressure cooked into tenderness, so that this was texturally much like rice pudding. The rhubarb was cooked in red wine and served as cubes of some jelly-like substance. I just loved the raisins with the sunflower seeds, though I wish the rhubarb had had a bit more zing to it.

Dave sulked a bit about the lack of chocolate, but I appreciated the variety, since chocolate isn’t exactly lacking in our household. We all went home thrilled, and Dave and I have had trouble bringing ourselves to eat this week, because all food seems boring and worthless compared to the memory of this wonderful meal.

Thank you, Aki and Alex! I can’t wait to cook with you in the fall!

Hey there. I have something completely unrelated to food that I would like to share with you today.

My name is Danielle E. Sucher. I am an attorney admitted to practice in the state of New York, and just a few weeks ago I put out my shingle and opened my own solo law firm, The Law Office of Danielle E. Sucher.

I have also launched a new blog, the Mental Disability Law Blog, featuring banner art by our very own Ximena of Lobstersquad. Don’t worry, I intend to keep this food blog active, too.

I spent the past year and a half or so working as a Court Attorney at the Criminal Court in Brooklyn, New York. My last day there was on March 23, 2007, when I walked out of my judge’s chambers and left my job for the last time.

It was time to make the leap. I will never have less to lose than I do now, nor will I ever have more support. With only my partner and my cat and our small Park Slope apartment, our expenses right now are probably the lowest that they will ever be. I am in an ideal position to make my dream come true.

It is astounding to me how often people suggest that I try to make my living as an artist, a photographer, or a chef. I always reply with, “Well, I was actually thinking of being a lawyer for a while.”

I went to law school because I figured it would be a fun way to spend three years, and it was. I continue to enjoy practicing law because it is an interesting and satisfying way to (as my judge once put it), if not save the world, save at least a few of the people in it.

My father has been a solo practitioner since the day he graduated from law school. He has always been my model of what a lawyer should be – a generalist capable of efficiently learning how to solve a wide variety of problems. When someone walks in the door and says their house is on fire, it is a lawyer’s job is to figure out how to extinguish that fire, whatever it may be.

When I graduated from law school, I refused to interview with the big firms. I did not want to deal with the bureaucracy. I did not want to sit in a back room without client contact for my first four years. You see, I wanted to be a lawyer. I worked as a Court Attorney to see how the court system functions from the inside, and I left so that I could spend more time advocating on behalf of the people who need my help.

And now here I finally am on my own, Danielle E. Sucher, Attorney & Counselor at Law. It feels like precisely the right place for me to be.

It goes without saying, but if you need a lawyer in New York, call me! I would be delighted to help out fellow foodies.

Disclaimer: This post probably constitutes attorney advertising pursuant to the New York State rules, though all other content on this blog exists for the sole purpose of discussing food and cooking, and not for the purpose of retaining clients for legal matters.

I could tell you a tale of pork nests, and I have included a recipe below. This is a food blog, after all. But instead, there is something even more important I would like to tell you. (This is actually not the big news I was alluding to a few weeks ago. I will disclose that news soon, I promise.) This is too important for a post about pork nests, really, but that is how the timing seems to have worked out.

I woke up absurdly early this morning, and leaned over to wake Dave up. He puts up with my tendency to do this only because he falls back asleep so easily every time.

“Happy anniversary of one year living together,” I said.

“Would that be our aptiversary?” he asked. (We’ve been using January 23rd as our approxiversary. And the date we got Katya is our kittyversary. Why not have an aptiversary, too? For apartment, not aptness, of course.)

I agreed. Why not?

“Now that my crazy has been dealt with,” he continued, referring to our living together at least one year, “will you marry me?”

Of course. Of course!

We will not be setting a date anytime soon, mind. We do not intend to get married in any jurisdiction that doesn’t also allow for same-sex marriage, and I am not leaving the country to have a wedding that none of my friends would be able to attend. So, we expect to wait a while before we can actually set a date and have a wedding.

There was no engagement ring. Dave knows I hate wearing rings, because I find them very physically uncomfortable. Instead, he gave me a pendant his father once gave his mother. It’s a placeholder, he explained, until we can find the right signifier to use instead.

We are trying to figure out what sort of signifier to use instead of a ring. Pendants? Well, I have a lot of pendants and necklaces that I like to switch around and wear regularly. Matching earrings for both of us? Bracelets? I am not sure. Do you have any suggestions?

This is not an April Fool’s joke. This is for real.

Pork Nests with Apples and Onion Confit
For the onion confit
2 gigantic onions
2 tbsp butter
4 tbsp olive oil
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 C chicken (or chicken and pork) stock
For the rest of the nests
1 lb ground pork
2 small apples (we used empire)
Salt, truffle salt, and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Puff pastry

Cook the onion confit ingredients together gently, mostly covered, for 4-5 hours. When it’s done, scrape it all to one side and incline the pot when chilling, to make defatting easier. Remove the fat once all is well.

Preheat the oven to 400º.

Peel the apples and chop them into large-ish chunks. Stir the pork in with the onion confit, then add the apples.

Butter and flour a muffin tin, and line each compartment with a square of puff pastry. Blind-bake the puff pastry for about 25 minutes, or until done.

Stir fry the mixture in a pan until the pork is no longer pink, and drain off the extra fat.

Fill the pastry cups with filling, and serve promptly.

I’ve been posting recipes here for almost a year now – it will be a year come February 26, 2007, in fact. In all that time, I’ve never put together a good index of the recipes I’ve posted here. In honor of my upcoming bloggiversary, here it is at last – my recipe index. I’ll come back and edit it as I post more recipes in the future.

Thank you, all of you, for reading, commenting, recipe testing, and absolutely inspiring me over the past year. I have made friends and found a wonderful community through writing this blog, and I appreciate it so much. Here’s to many more years of sharing our kitchens and our lives.

Note: The contents of this post have been removed, because this post has been superseded by my Recipe Index page. Please refer to the actual Recipe Index to locate any recipe you may be looking for. Thank you.