Season's Greetings

Tea-drops on Rosy Teacups or My Favorite Thing

During the course of our move, we spent a few days in NY to say hi and bye to some dear friends. This gave me the opportunity to visit another dear friend, one of my favorite places on earth - Tea and Sympathy in the West Village.

I have been going to this restaurant for more than a decade and have watched the word-of-mouth popularity of the food, atmosphere, and community they establish turn it from a quiet place to a wait-outside-for-an-hour-at-the-weekends kind of place (I no longer go at the weekends) as well as a cultural touchstone.

Nicky's restaurant is one of those places that makes people see what it so wonderful about English food. English food is so frequently the butt of so many jokes, but her pies and sandwiches and cakes and scones are gorgeous, make no mistake, and validate the hearty flavors of standard English fare.

I've had everything from the full tea with finger sandwiches of salmon, cucumber and cream cheese, ham and butter, to sausage rolls and Cornish pasties with sides of delicious salad, bacon sandwiches (sometimes with the lovely American addition of a slice of avocado), Welsh rarebit, Shepherd's pie, baked beans on toast, scones with clotted cream, treacle or date puddings with custard...not one thing I've ever eaten there has left me disappointed (or anything but profoundly full - come with an appetite).

Maybe I should just say that I've had everything.

Rupert Everett named it one of his favorite places in New York on an MTV show, the owner, Nicky Perry, is a minor celebrity in her own right, and speaking of minor celebrities, I was there when Minnie Driver had a bit of a coughing fit over a baked bean from her beans on toast. "Oh great," said Nicky in her straightforward way, "Minnie Driver's choking to death in my restaurant."

When the place is empty (as above, an increasingly rare occurrence), they will refill your pot of tea until the cows come home.

Everybody I have ever brought here has loved it, and has proceeded to bring his or her own group of friends or parents, and from my own tree of word-of-mouth recommendations, I can see how it has grown.

It is a marvelous place. I urge you to go to 108 Greenwich Avenue and check it out your next chance! It's particularly cozy at this time of year when the windows steam up.

Tuber or not Tuber - well, that isn't really the question

This is a horrible picture. An astonishingly hideous representation of my hand (small and delicate usually, not enormous and Hagrid-like as they seem to be here) but at least it's a picture, which is more than I could manage last time.

I misplaced my camera during the move(s)(There were several stages) so this is, but of course, an eensy cell phone pic with unflattering lighting and proportions.

What I need is your help identifying the above.

Since moving to SF, we have done our civic duty and signed up for a CSA. They were available in MA; however, without a car, we were not able to arrange for one. Here, they deliver to both my and my husband's workplace, so we are never without our fresh bag of fruit and veg. Which is a marvelous thing.

And at times, as you can see above, also a modestly stupefying prospect. I have before me this enormous stripy tuber without the foggiest notion of what it could be. I will probably slice it up and roast it with olive oil and garlic and salt and pepper (because that never fails) but knowing that I could make creme brulee, or haggis, or something more exciting with it would be a bonus.

What are you making for Thanksgiving?

Wait, first of all, WOW, my blog is one year old. A whole year has gone by (and a little more). I don't know what I've learned...I haven't really had time to think about it, as it has snuck up on my completely (what with da move, new job, new city, etc)...except that I am so happy that my friends read it. I didn't realize it would be such a nice little extra way for us to keep in touch. So cheers to you.

Second, my relationship with J is almost TEN years old. Cheers to J:)

And third...what are you making for Thanksgiving? For the first time in my entire adulthood, I am NOT TRAVELING for Thanksgiving. The emphasis is sheer and utter wunderbarness. This means that I can make a meaningful contribution to the meal (instead of my mere but usually jet-lagged presence).

What to make??

As usual, Mark Bitmann has eight million fantastic ideas.

I may be leaning to a traditional side that's more like dessert than anything, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, but with a pillow of marshmallow and caramelized sweet potatoes, it may be one of my favorite dishes on the planet. It's really magnificent. Nigella has a recipe in her Feast cookbook.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Broccolini...

Humor me. I have a folder of posts in progress, and yes, they took place in my old kitchen. But I am not going to let good cooking go to waste! So here we begin the last few posts from my old kitchen as we set up shop in our new kitchen, which, I am pleased to report, has magical every expanding cupboards, so while it may appear as small as a submarine's kitchen, it has enormous capacity for our umpteen pots and pans and utensils.

Back to the task at hand, a meal from earlier this year:


This year, probably because of this blog, we've been aiming to buy vegetables we've not had before and find something to do with them. When J came home with this broccolini, I had no immediate plans for it. So I let it sit in the fridge.

And sit.

And sit.

And then I had run out of all other food, and it was time to broach the mystery that is Broccolini. It was still green and crisp looking. I had originally thought it was broccoli rabe with a sweeter name, but it is, in fact, a hybrid of broccoli and Chinese kale, and according to the label, slightly peppery.

"Peppery?" I thought. "Perhaps I can enhance the pepperiness with a little bit of horseradish. And put it on pasta."

Because pasta makes anything worth eating.

Fried onions, steamed brocollini, pasta water, horseradish, and cheese. Unique. Peppery. Mmm.

Canneles - Take 2

Well. I know you've been waiting for a long time. Obviously there are life updates. For example, I can't wait to show you what I, a "food blogger", have agreed to have as a kitchen. My husband has likened our new kitchen to a submarine galley. Which makes me think I may have a new angle on my blog...how to cook sumptuously in a galley, perhaps?

But for now, let us return to a subject I have broached twice before. That pretty little idiosyncratic Lyonnaise treat [insert rude joke here], the canele.

Where you last left me, I had gone ahead and fermented my egg batter in the vegetable drawer of my fridge for a good two days. The batter tasted delicious going into the oven, but due to some crazy laws of physics and chemistry and the exact angle of the moon to the earth at the time of my baking, those little suckers popped right out of their silicone molds.

Which brings me to take 2. With the batter I made for [12?] caneles, there was enough to go for a second round (total: 16). The batter continued to sit for two more days in the fridge. I read Pascal Rigo's recipe for caneles, and saw that he left the oven on scorchingly hot the entire baking process, and he sells dozens of these things a day.

So this time, in all of my brilliance, I turned the oven to 500 degrees, and left the dial right there (don't touch that dial, as they used to tell me when I watched Saturday morning cartoons).

And this is what came out:


Looks promising, eh? There's still puffiness, but without the vertical sides from last time which indicated that they were being pushed out.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?


They look well-browned...this could be good...

Eh voila!

!!!!

They are beautiful! Caramelized! Well-formed!

Time for the fail-proof treatment:


Cream and fresh berries.

To be honest, add cream and blackberries to anything, and it's going to look quite nice. But these were real winners.

They were the platonic ideal of a canele homemade in an amateur's kitchen. Seriously. That outside has a wonderful slight resistance that then caves into the fluffy sweet eggy interior. If you're going to impulse purchase a piece of kitchen equipment, $20 for a silicone mold that leads to such an interesting and tasty result is not a bad way to go.

Toujours Delish has moved!

Ciao, friends! My site isn't moving, but I, Toujours Delish, and my husband, J, have picked up sticks and moved from Cambridge, MA, to San Francisco, CA. We're still in transition, hence the radio silence from me on all things from my own kitchen as my kitchen has been thoroughly packed up with all pots, pans, dishes, plates, knives, and forks of ours currently en route, or sitting quietly, in Oakland somewhere.

On one of our final days of packing, we invited friends over for a potluck brunch. I rummaged through our fridge and freezer and found two pre-made pie shells in need of a filling. So we bought our last batch of eggs from the local Shaw's supermarket, and I put together two quiches for brunch - my take on the Lorraine and the Florentine.

The basics for both are:

four eggs, beaten

1-2 cups of milk or cream

1 cup of grated cheese

salt

nutmeg

For the Lorraine, I added 6 oz of bacon that I had cooked on the range.

For the Florentine, I stirred in 12 oz of defrosted frozen spinach.

For both, I forgot the onion. So remember half a diced onion for each and you're golden.

Bake in a 350 degree oven until the quiche tops are set and golden themselves, 45 minutes or more.

Remember to go light on the salt for the bacony quiche.

With hugs and kisses to our Boston friends. We miss you.