Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Last week I borrowed the book Julie and Julia from Cait and have been feeling totally inspired by the author's experiment with cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I am not interested in that style of cooking in particular, but reading about the crazy courage of this woman to try to make hundreds of ridiculously complicated recipes in a crappy New York apartment has lit a fire under me to be more adventurous in the kitchen. After all, what is the worst that can happen? Burnt zucchini? Fallen cake? So what? We have a compost now, so any inedible dishes are just a blessing for the garden :)

Today, after reading for a couple of hours about stuck crepes and boiled lobsters, I set the book down, marched into the kitchen and picked up Alice Waters looking for possibilities. The book fell open to souffles and I immediately remembered the 18 eggs in the refrigerator. Perfect. So, for the first time in my life, I decided to get over my fear of French dishes and just try it. I was certain that I had over-whipped the whites and that the bechamel was too thick, but lo and behold thirty-five minutes later:



I didn't have a souffle pan, but luckily Alice is a very understanding chef and specified that any 1-2 quart baking dish would be fine. And it was. Eggs, goat cheese, thyme leaves, butter, flour and cream. It was fluffy, creamy, and deliciously crunchy on the edges. Of course the lesson of the night was "Don't be afraid of dishes with fancy French names and bad reputations" -- because it's just food and just a recipe like any other. Maybe it was blind luck, but most of the time it is true that if you follow a recipe carefully enough and you have a bit of experience, most things turn out just fine. To accompany the souffle, we had a lovely green salad with Maya's famous radish roses :)


This past week as been all about baking as we were preparing for our wedding reception in Snowflake. I made four cakes -- three that I've made many times before (guaranteed winners) and the last that was a new recipe from the Hell's Backbone Restaurant cookbook: a lemon chiffon cake. It actually turned out alright, though I came away with a few lessons learned. 1. A bundt pan is not the same as a tube pan. 2. Nothing is as good as powdered sugar for frosting. 3. If a recipe says not to oil the cake pan, ignore it. They're obviously masochists.

Sean made fabulous oatmeal cookies with coconut, dark chocolate and walnuts, AND luscious brownies


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This doesn't have anything to do with cooking, but I loved this picture, and this morning. Sean and I babysat Noah twice last week and both times he was a total angel and fell asleep in my arms before Emery got home. We are really going to miss him and Emery and Chris this summer!

Before falling asleep, he was having a great time with the maracas and tambourine and held onto this one for most of his nap.