The Zest

Does anyone have a recipe for Vietnamese street crêpes? It’s just one of many recipes I need to track down in my culinarily festive state, fresh as I am off the feed wagon that is the West of Western Culinary Festival.

The other — seemingly unrelated — bit of information I’m in need of involves how to handle it when the Most Odious Woman in the kingdom wedges her Botox-ed, self-important-ness between you and your husband five minutes into the truly important chocolate class (I mean, who has their priorities so twisted that they’re tardy to the chocolate class?).

But more bitterness from me on the M.O.W. later. Let’s focus first on culinary festivity, which is altogether better for you, heart, soul and all.

Brian and I attended the festival with willing stomachs and open minds, to scout out new ideas and tastes. The annual event purports to be a showcase for food trends, concepts, equipment and methods, savory and sweet. But who’s fooling who? Really it’s a posh line-up of mostly newish Phoenix-area restaurants and other food purveyors foisting prettily plated sample after sample on us poor attendees. It was an ordeal of a day, let me tell you, slurping down seafood panang while standing in line for corn and jalapeno focaccia and all the marinated olives a girl could ever hope for — then chasing it all with a hot and chili-spiced cider “shot.”

At the end of the day, my head was full of all the things I need to try to make, including those Vietnamese street crêpes: strips of tofu and shiitake mushrooms, stirred on a hot griddle and then covered in a quick-cooking blanket of thin, egg-heavy batter. There was also a veritable cloud of polenta, the fluffiest I’ve ever tasted, but with a disarming melty richness. On the sweeter side was a vanilla-bean layer cake with mascarpone frosting that was so dense it will from this day forward change the entire hateful paradigm I’ve constructed around cake in general, and a soy-caramel fondue with pound cake and pineapple skewers.

Hello, satisfaction. Please make yourself at home.

But I made sure to feed the brain as well as the belly (the better to feed the belly later on, based on information stored in the brain). I learned to “bloom” my stir fry oil with ginger or other spices for a more authentic Asian dish and to use a potato peeler to thinly slice carrots for said stir fry. I discovered — and received a free bagful of — tepary beans, indigenous to Arizona, as well as Bambu All Occasion Veneerware. These little guys biodegrade in four to six months and seem an eco-friendly alternative to paper plates.

Especially memorable was the chocolate tasting, where not only did I learn that there are more than 1,500 flavor compounds present in chocolate — more than wine, more than coffee — but that M.O.W. eschews anything but 85 percent dark. (And I thought I was a shoo-in for Club Choco Snob, well-versed as I am in terroir and cocoa solid content blah blah but nevertheless offering thrice-weekly tributes to M&M Darks.)

Once M.O.W. and her husband hustled in and she aggressively inserted herself between me and Brian at our table, we were party to their back-and-forth, high-volume grunts and haughty commentary regarding the lecturing chocolatier. Other than a couple of swift under-table kicks to Brian’s leg and some subtly rolled eyes (all to signal, “Can you believe this woman?”), I didn’t know what to do. Surely there was some pointed (but not mean) comment I could have made to quiet her, but I wasn’t coming up with a darn thing.

At the end of the lecture — and despite her moments-ago criticism – M.O.W. spared no toes lunging for one of the few absinthe truffle samples. We took the opportunity to flee her perfume, which had unfortunately tainted our chocolate tasting. We didn’t stick around to see if the Green Fairy would whisk her away to the hollow of a wormwood tree (not that I’d really wish that on the good folk of Jura) and stepped out again to mingle amongst the white tents, ready anew to taste something else plated on white Styrofoam.

I have these little people in my house that need to be fed on a regular basis. Meaning a few times daily (sometimes more: my five-year-old is on a somewhat worrisome pretzel bender. Although she’s contemplating making the leap to Honey Nut O’s, the Trader Joe’s version of Honey Nut Cheerios. Shall we compare the nutritional merits of each snack? Their levels of processed foodness?). The two big people who live here also require sustenance via some nutrient-delivering source or another, and I’m not talking Carnation Instant Breakfast.

The beautiful thing about all this feeding is that, more often than not, the fashioning of foodstuffs feeds not only our stomachs, but that part of me that needs to just freaking take a timeout once in a while.

Take the other night, for example. I’d been shuttling my girls around all the late afternoon, shopping for a baby gift, as well as for the requisite accompanying big sister gift, and we ended up arriving home much later than my usual dinner prep time. Our stomachs were nagging and blood sugar was lagging and the evening still held an agenda (sound familiar, anyone?).

But I had a dinner plan, and darn it if I was going to stray from it. Even if we near imploded because said dinner required a fair amount of prep and every pot in the drawer.

On our way home, I’d been lip-bitingly close to falling into the takeout trap, tempted as I was to just ever-so-casually stop by our favorite Asian food joint and “grab” dinner, as those people who frequent takeout say. So easy, it would have been. They have curbside service and the best, perfectly spiced, not overly cheesy crab wontons, you see. But full of the knowledge that the ingredients to my dinner plan were on standby in my fridge, I just couldn’t call someone else to make me food.

I shooed my hungry girls away to shower — the better to keep them occupied, to shave precious minutes off the bedtime routine — and got to my chopping and peeling and boiling, to my using near every pan in the house (five total for this recipe – this is craziness). I was making Lentil and Sweet Potato Burritos, a variation on a Sweet Potato Enchilada recipe I made once, and inspired by a Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew recipe I have stashed in my “Make This Soon” file.

It was one of those meals you make when it’s slim pickings in your pantry and you kind of need to get to the store. But instead, in a fit of resourcefulness, you find that if you only combine a little of this (sweet potatoes) with a little of that (lentils), and toss in a bit of something else (onions, cilantro, spices), you have a meal that couldn’t have come together better had you actually planned and shopped for it.

This is my favorite way to prepare a meal right now. It makes me feel… oh, I don’t know, a little inventive, like I’ve got a bit of domestic cleverness up my sleeve, after all. And the making of it was actually a really relaxing thing, despite the way I rushed into the kitchen and started banging around, rifling for potato peelers and cutting boards and cumin, warm and comforting.

Sometimes it’s a relief not to have to undertake the mental exercise of following a recipe, of reading directions dictated by some detached recorder of a particular method. I’ve sautéed an onion so many times that I’m as comfortable with that as I am layering on mascara. And that, friends, does not make sautéing an onion a daily bore, but a ritual akin to slipping on your favorite fluffy socks.

You hear that exhaling sound? That’s me — all four stove burners turned on to one heat setting or another, my onion chopped and looking all glisten-y, my lentils simmering their lives away – remembering to breathe.

Does anyone want a starter? For Amish Friendship Bread? Anyone?

A little more than a week ago I became an unwitting party to this baking chain, having been the recipient of one of the (many upon many, I’m sure) currently circulating Ziploc bags full of fermenting something-or-other. The bag was placed in my possession by a writing buddy and frequent visitor to this very blog, so I couldn’t in good conscience turn it down. She knows what I get up to in my kitchen, and so to utter a “thanks, but no thanks,” would have gone against my very reason for being.

And so I took the bag – sucker that I am – because after all, I’m two solid months into my (all together now) bread-baking year. Accompanying the bag was a set of nicely detailed instructions in a kindly font outlining for me the daily practice of “mushing” the bag and advising me to “resist the natural urge to refrigerate.” I did my dutiful, daily mushing, adding the Day 6 cupfuls of flour and milk and so forth until today – Day 10, a.k.a. Baking Day.

But with my oven still out of commission, and in the true spirit of this bread – this starter passed around under the guise of friendship – I called a friend. Tiff allowed me and my kids to burst in on her afternoon and use her operating oven. Not only that, she actually allowed me to foist a Ziploc bag of starter on her.

I am, however, laden down with three more (count ‘em) starters, because as we know, they multiply.

Apparently, it’s like a monkey on your back (so would it more appropriately bear the name Monkey Bread?) because I’m hard pressed to dispense with these other starters. No one’s knocking down my door for their due portion of my cupfuls of flour and milk and sugar, because they know what it means. They know that taking a bag is making a commitment, and what happens if they fall short on their part of the bargain? What if they forget to mush, or forget what day they’re on? That’s a lot of pressure. Isn’t that an awful lot to ask of a friend?

Even my mother-in-law turned down a starter, and she fits precisely the Amish Friendship Bread demographic. I mean, she plays bridge and owns an RV, for crying out loud.

I’ve decided this experience is really a bit of a sociological study of the workings of friendship: (1) A good friend thinks you worthy enough of this responsibility by bestowing upon you a bag of the fermenting yeast, flour, milk & sugar. (2) Then more good friends willingly take on the responsibility, the starter progeny, out of a friendly obligation, and because they would hate to hurt your feelings. (3) Family members who really don’t want to get involved are just that – family, not friends. They don’t give a hoot if they hurt your feelings by declining a starter.

I suppose the concept is a nice one, harking back to days when women had the time and wherewithal to bake a loaf for a neighbor, for a friend who had just given birth. And the idea of putting a little of yourself into something and passing it along is certainly worthwhile.

And by calling on Tiff to use her oven, I one-upped that ask-a-neighbor-for-a-cuppa-flour tradition. It was good to have a friendly face around when the bread didn’t rise exactly, when it fell apart upon being sliced, and when we decided it was more coffee cake-ish than quick bread-like. But as neither of us had had it before, it didn’t matter. It couldn’t have been more suitable to share a slice in the sunshine with a friend (oh, yeah, I was done with the mushing stuff yesterday – no more mushy-mush! Promise).

Do you ever come across something – a passage when reading, a pair of pretty pumps, a snowfall, even – that seems to have been placed in this world expressly for you and you only? I got that feeling on my first breeze through the February issue of Gourmet magazine (the one with that taleggio and escarole sandwich calling from the cover).

You see, my oven is on the fritz, bringing a temporary halt to my year of bread baking – or so it would seem. Then, happy, hungry me, flipping through Gourmet, I discovered a bread recipe that suited my bereft-of-an-oven state.

The recipe was for Algerian flatbread: a whole-wheat dough requiring one kneading cycle and a mere hour of downtime, ultimately baked atop a griddle (no oven necessary!). Notwithstanding, this is tactile stuff: You divide the well-rested dough, then roll it into disks before brushing it with olive oil spiked with a rousing mix of cumin, paprika and turmeric. (A note: I’m not sure whether it’s a proper substitute or not, but with my spice rack void of turmeric, I used coriander instead, knowing its affinity for the other two spices called for in the recipe.)

A couple things came to mind as I followed the subsequent instructions to roll the disks up into tight cylinders, then coil them, spiral-like, into a cinnamon-bun shape. (Yes, it’s a lot of fuss for a little bread, but the repetition allowed me to get all cozy with my thoughts.)

Thought number one: Bread is remarkable for its simplicity, for the fact that such an assortment of incarnations – of shapes and textures – can come from what are essentially the same ingredients. Flour, salt, liquid. Sometimes sweetener. Now and then yeast.

Finally, I rolled the dough again into disks, disks now etched with the spices, before baking them one by one, pancake style.

Thought number two: In every country, in every culture and time, there has been bread of a sort. There have been and are specific crumbs and just-so crusts that conjure certain places, the methods for each bread passed down, their purposes ranging from holy to ordinary.

Here, in my little kitchen – my kitchen with the temperamental-if-modern-day oven, no less – I can stir and knead my way into the wider, well-seasoned world. Today, it was North Africa by way of flatbread.

It doesn’t replace the actual being there, but still, it’s a whiff, it’s a taste. And a tasty taste, at that.

*We ate these fabulous flatbreads for two days straight, slathering the leftovers in hummus or swirling them in soup. Go here for the recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/241505

**Checkout more on flatbreads at the Is My Blog Burning Bread Baking Event hosted by Chili und Ciabatta!

Tops on The New York Times “most e-mailed” list this week is an article I knew I could relate to even before I could move my mouse over to click on it. “I Love You, but You Love Meat” talks about several couples trying to negotiate relationships despite varying differences in eating beliefs and preferences. There’s the omnivore and the vegan, the carb craver and the gluten-free, the kosher and the vegetarian.

Compromise and tolerance are key in maintaining such a relationship, those relationship experts quoted in the article say (and aren’t pigheadedness and disrespect detrimental even if all parties rapturously rip into a T-bone?).

My husband and I are one of those seemingly incompatible pairings: He’s a meat eater; I’m not. I think I would be labeled, if I had to file myself away, a pescetarian: a vegetarian who eats fish. But I’m an egg-any-way-you-can-cook-it consumer, and I’m equally enthusiastic about chèvre and cheddar and Greek yogurt. So does that qualify me as an ovolactopescetarian, then? Or would it be a pesceovolactarian?

Whatever. There’s scant ethical basis for my strong displeasure regarding meat and poultry. My opposition has mostly to do with taste and texture. And smell (please don’t take me anywhere near a brisket). All of which is precisely why my husband counts himself among the omnivores.

You’d think this could be problematic, but it’s not been impassable. What would be worse is the marital food situation of a friend of mine, who is the bored-palated spouse of a perpetually picky husband. So picky, in fact, he only eats three things: pasta, salmon patties and chicken.

As for Brian and I, we’ve managed to navigate things this way: Once I got past my fettucine-from-a-box ways and realized there was more to a no-meat diet than noodles, he was able to move beyond his attachment to burgers and potatoes. I started cooking salmon and lentils and quinoa; he started eating it all. And declaring himself satisfied.

I’m rolling my eyes at our supposed cute couple-ness, same as you, but it’s true: our success at the dinner table has been a matter of open-mindedness on both our parts (see? compromise and tolerance work every time), a general willingness to experience foods we’re not sure we like or not, within certain parameters.

Yet every couple of years or so, he puts together a mean meatloaf — an activity to which I offer my full approval, as long as I don’t have to be in the vicinity.

I just threw together a batch of guacamole. That’s right. Uh huh. “Threw together,” that’s what I said.

I love being in this new phase of my life where I can declare that I made something edible with a casualness that I once reserved for stating, say, that I bought a new pair of flats. Such phrasing indicates that I – one-time despiser of food preparation – improvised, that I didn’t refer to a recipe. That I possess some modicum of resourcefulness. Savvy, even? Ok, maybe we won’t go that far.

Even so, inside my little brain existed notions of what comprises guacamole, and I recognized the presence of the fundamental ingredients inside my refrigerator: the onion and the avocados, the lime and the cilantro. When Emmy asked if I could please make her some guacamole for an after-school snack today, I was able to scoop and dice and squeeze and salt and smash it all together into a recognizable and favorable entity.

There are two reasons this is exciting. One is the aforementioned, that I’m – ta da! – capable. The other is that my found happiness in guacamole, and in the making of it, seals my destiny as an avocado lover. This, too, is a change of taste.

I used to be an avowed, determined avocado hater. I know, hate is a strong, strong word, but I hated the mottled, greenish black exterior, and the very thought of its slimy fattiness on my tongue. My order of a veggie sandwich at any establishment that sells such a thing was always followed hastily by, “no avocado.” “Extra pico, but hold the guac” were my constant instructions when ordering a salad at my favorite Mexican café . Sure, I’d tolerate avocado in maki, outperformed as it was by abutting tastes and textures, grassy seaweed, sweet rice, salty or creamy fish.

You see, I’m not a rich-food person, not a butter person. I’m an unnecessary–fat eschewing person, and so, I assumed that I hated avocado. Without ever even taking a bite.

How unfair of me to judge a food without giving it a fair taste, and now, cheated by my own prejudice, I’m trying not to beat myself up over all those lost years.

I am now approaching my one-year anniversary of proud membership in the avocado lovers club. I’m not sure what came over me that fateful evening last year, other than the general increase in adventurousness that’s taken place over the past several years. So maybe it was that, or maybe it had to do with my celebratory mood because it was, after all, my husband’s birthday, an occasion we were marking with the rolling of our own sushi.

There it was, carefully and slimly sliced, waiting alongside the other accoutrements, the lump crab and fresh, glossy rectangles of sashimi-grade ahi. It could easily have been the cucumber that beckoned me, the neat stacks of thin, crunchy matchsticks. But instead, I reached out, took an oddly shaped and smooth trimming of avocado between my fingers and popped it into my mouth.

I can’t explain the goodness of it, the veritable swooning that took place immediately thereafter. I was gaga. Over avocado. That, my friends, was that.

Now please excuse me while I lick the guacamole bowl.

I know, I know. Just the week before last it was all about cake and custard, and this week we’ve got cookies. I wonder if more dessert is really necessary at this point, but, honestly, is a cookie ever so much as superfluous? I think not.

But it’s good. All good. I promise this seeming overload of sweets is fairly unusual. There will be no need for anyone to invoke a baked-goods intervention anytime soon. I swear to you I am otherwise practicing healthy moderation.

For example, lunch today was a hot bowl of smooth tomato and roasted red pepper soup. So the cookies will round things out quite nicely. Let’s get on with ‘em, then, shall we?

I’ve dubbed these Nostalgia Cookies, even though I am firmly not one for clever recipe names that have almost nothing to do with the content of the food itself. To be honest, these cookies are more appropriately called Chocolate Chunk Sort-of-Shortbread Cookies, but that doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head, either. And as they hold a special place in my heart that takes me back to a time when…. Well, there we have it, folks: nostalgia.

We first had cookies like these in our favorite little lunch spot during our Montreal days, the original Java U. (That petit café on Sherbrooke can also take credit for hooking us on panini, before panini were the thing.) We’d gulp our lunch of panini and salade mixte and Belgian fries, anticipating the whole time the sweet finale that we’d always return to the counter for at the end.

And then, on road-tripping weekends (on our southbound missions to purchase Chex in Vermont – not available in Canada! – and Mylicon for our gastro-distressed newborn), we’d stop by Java U on the way to the interstate for driving provisions, the cookies included.

The way the cookies were put together was an enigma at first: They were like chocolate chip, but extra buttery; soft, but sandy; round, not like shaped shortbread. And the chocolate was not chipped, but chunked, and somehow managed to congregate in the middle, so that it was almost sandwiched, though not deliberately, between layers of dough.

Recently we went back to Java U, and while the panini are still around, the cookies, sadly, are not. Naturally, I decided I’d have to try and make them, because they’re just the thing to munch when I’m missing the snow and the city. And I miss them bad.

This is my third try, and I finally got it right. The first time I used the regularly shaped chocolate chips I had on hand, and while they were good, they didn’t provide that choco-layer we favor. Next try: I chopped a dark chocolate bar and dumped it in. That chocolate proved too melty, causing the cookies to spread and crumble apart, even when cooled.

This time I used baking chunks (made expressly for baking, but I’ll admit also good for nibbling) and pressed the dough into a cookie scoop before placing it on the Silpat. The resulting taste was so similar to the original cookie, we were nearly transported to our adopted hometown – snow banks, lack of parking and all.

Nostalgia Cookies

1 ½ cups flour (I snuck in ¾ c. white whole wheat plus ¾ c. all-purpose)

½ cup cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup powdered (confectioners or icing) sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup semi or bittersweet chocolate chunks

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour and cornstarch with the salt and espresso powder. Set aside.

Cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until smooth. Beat in the vanilla extract. Gently stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated. Gently fold in the chocolate chunks. Flatten the dough into a disk shape and sandwich between two layers of parchment paper. Chill for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F with the rack in the middle of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat.

Using your hands, flatten the dough between the parchment paper until it’s about ½ inch thick. Cut the dough into equally sized squares, about 2-by-2 inches, and form into semi-flattened hunks (or push into a cookie scoop). Place cookies on baking sheets and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes (don’t over bake!). Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring cookies to a cooling rack. Allow cookies to cool.

I’ve just discovered something to like about the Southwest in winter, and of course it has to do with food. But before I disclose my secret (which isn’t much of a secret really, except that for the moment I know something you don’t know), allow me to explain myself. Briefly.

To put it lightly, I’m at odds with this place in which I live. I’m a fan of pronounced seasons, and down in these parts the changes are far more subtle. I realize this may draw some good-natured harassment from some of you winter-weary warriors, but sunshine has grown beyond boring in my book, my book with its faded cover and cracking spine (too much sun and dry air, you see). I want the drama, the change, brought by storm and snow. Instead I’m left to watch my bougainvillea – its leaves ever green and fuschia – wave ever-so-slightly in the cool breeze. But – oh! – I think I spot a cloud (those a.m. forecasters did indicate a chance of rain)!

And so now to my secret, the thing I’ve found to be glad about (remember Pollyanna?): We are enjoying a veritable profusion of citrus, which is very much in season, and such abundance only bodes well for cooking. We’ve got Meyer lemons on top of Eurekas (or are they Lisbons?), grapefruits on top of tangelos. Not to mention the regular oranges. They all look so smashing, so bold and cheery, congregated in a big, shallow bowl atop my table. And the overflow looks mighty fine for that matter in the produce bin. That’s right, citrus can look good in anything.

We’re getting all this fetching fruit from my husband’s business, which is on a sort of farm, even though he works in finance. Let me shift into explanatory mode again: Brian’s office is in a converted residence on horse property. (We’re in the middle of Phoenix – more of a modern city with very little left that’s actually horsey about it.) When they bought the place, they learned that a couple of geriatric horses were a non-negotiable part of the house purchase. So while inside it’s all number crunching, outside it’s all carrot munching on the part of the horses – and the donkeys and mules and alpacas, which Brian’s partners later added to the family. There are also chickens, who donate loads of free-range, organic brown eggs. And of course, there are citrus trees everywhere.

Even as the sun does not inspire me, these lemons Brian keeps bringing home sure do, which is how I discovered my Macerated Pears over French Toast. I’ve wanted to experiment with macerating fruit, which may sound rather destructive, but really it’s a gentle, hands-off means of softening and seasoning fruit. And this recipe is a perfect winter recipe, thanks to the warmth of the cinnamon and the savory chew of the French toast. Plus, it’s a respectable vehicle for all these lemons I’m not otherwise putting to use in my weekly batch of hummus or squeezing onto salmon or zesting onto salads or _______ (fill in the blank with your favorite go-to lemon application).

These pears definitely register the pucker factor, that zing that you get from lemon. But that’s lessened somewhat when you eat them on top of the French toast. Brian and the girls enjoyed adding a sweet drizzle of maple syrup, but I preferred the pears alone.

Macerated Pears over French Toast

For the pears:

2 medium-sized pears (I used Comice, but Anjou would be nice, too)

½ to 1 C freshly squeezed lemon juice

½ to 1 C freshly squeezed orange juice

2 cinnamon sticks

4 tablespoons brown sugar

Thinly slice pears, peeling if desired. In a small bowl, mix equal parts lemon and orange juice with the brown sugar until sugar is dissolved. Add cinnamon sticks and pear slices (you want the pears to be immersed in the juices, so add more juice if necessary). Cover, and let soften for 3 to 5 hours, depending on the pears’ ripeness. Stir and taste the pears at intervals, adjusting seasoning as needed (you may find you want to add more sugar). Pears are done when they are very soft, but not mushy.

For the French toast:

1 loaf challah, thickly sliced

6 eggs

1 C milk

1 tsp vanilla

¼ tsp salt, or to taste

For serving:

¼ C chopped walnuts

1 tbsp freshly grated lemon zest

Maple syrup, if desired

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray or butter. Whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla and salt. Dip challah slices into the egg mixture, coating generously, then place slices on the baking sheet. Bake for 9 minutes, then flip slices over and bake for an additional 8 to 10 minutes until slices are golden brown and slightly toasted. Repeat with any remaining challah slices. (You can make the French toast in batches on a griddle or in a frying pan if you like.)

Serve French toast topped with pears, chopped walnuts and lemon zest. Accompany with maple syrup.

I’ve just done away with four hours of my life, having spent them almost exclusively in my kitchen. Once upon a time I’d have considered that a grand waste of time, but these days I’ve decided that’s ok. Nice, even. Part of me thinks I’d be content doing this cooking/baking stuff all day long.

Still, it seems I have a knack for inserting myself into kitchen situations that are beyond my comfort level, where the learning curve appears (at least at first) neck-breakingly steep and time consuming. But isn’t that often what the kitchen experience is all about, anyway?

This time it was for the noblest of ventures, the daughter’s birthday cake. We’re not talking plain ol’ cake, though. No mere yellow or devil’s food here. We’re talking crêpe cake, layer upon buttery layer of crêpes, stacked and smeared with highfalutin custard. It’s cake as couture, delicate but rich, self-important but too pretty to turn away from.

The idea hit when I turned to a glorious, glossy, magazine photo of a professionally configured crêpe cake (for sale, the price tag in the neighborhood of $75+ shipping and handling). It’s one of those things you see, and immediately think (seized by sheer ambition or the momentary crazies), Oh, I could do that. I sold my impressionable daughter on the confection, and started Googling recipes.

It was then, after the commitment had already been made, that I realized the size of the project. That I would be required to turn out twenty or so presentable – not simply edible – crêpes. That I would be responsible for whipping up the pastry cream filling that those in-the-baking-know (this does not include me) refer to as a crème patissière.

Not only that, but I would have to contend with an ice bath. Is it just me, or do the words “ice bath” rouse fear in other, otherwise capable preparers of food? An ice bath asks for some serious multitasking. It entails more arms than I have. It means I’m to divert attention away from heavy-handed whisking at one corner of the counter, to cross the kitchen to the freezer, to cross the kitchen again to the sink. And because I’m making something with a French name, I have to do all this with something like finesse. Something like grace.

It’s almost too Martha-esque, so that I can only picture me in a modern-day Lucy Ricardo moment (which I promise would be sad, not a single bit funny). In my vision I’m struggling with my arms around a large and slippery stainless steel bowl full of this so-called ice bath, plunging into it another bowl full of my hot, jiggling custard, and spilling the lot all over my travertine floor, which of course would send me sailing smack into the dishwasher door.

So while my crêpe making past is sporadic, at least I’m familiar with the process. But this pastry cream stuff. Hmm. Not so much familiar with that.

Although, I had to remind myself (because talking ourselves through these things is what gets us through them, after all), I did make the Buche de Noel this past Christmas, chocolate genoise, ganache and all. And it turned out just fine. Quite lovely and tasty, even. So, daunting as it seemed, I knew I had it in me somewhere to accomplish this crêpe cake, too.

And I did. A third of it is still in the fridge, in fact, and available for tastings.

For those of you anxious to please your next cake-eating crowd (or if you just want to see a more glorious version of the dessert), I used a combination of Amanda Hesser’s recommended recipes (see below) and the crème patissière recipe from Joy of Baking (link also below). I doubled the crème patissière recipe and went with the chocolate variation (I added extra chocolate, because our chocolate taste runs high around here). While Joy of Baking does not mention the ice bath, I was too afraid not to cold-shock my custard, so I did that part à la Hesser’s instructions, anyway.

I layered the crêpes with a smidge of raspberry preserves and the custard, then finished the cake with a dusting of cocoa powder and some fresh raspberries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/magazine/15FOOD.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.joyofbaking.com/CremePatisserie.html

I know you’re out there, you people who read cookbooks as though they’re novels. Well, I’m here to report that I’m fast becoming one of you. It’s all thanks to Mark Bittman and his latest, “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.” If it weren’t so outsized, so hefty, I’d probably have taken it to bed with me last night.

I’m not new to Bittman; I’m a fan of his The New York Times “The Minimalist” column. But I recently got my hands on this book. What I like is that not only is he precise and pragmatic, he’s also full of inspired variations. And you can tell how much he loves being in the kitchen and pan-searing tomatoes or grilling watermelon. Or stuffing fresh pasta with mashed favas. Whatever he’s doing, you know he’s comfortable doing it, and that gives a cook hope.

My reading is a mix of “a-ha” moments (”You can think of [soup making] as a one-pot course on fundamental cooking techniques,” Bittman says) and head noddings (hooray to the repurposing of leftovers!). I’m meat-free (not on moral grounds, mind you, it’s more of a taste thing) and so I cook mostly vegetarian anyway, with a lot of fish thrown in. But even though I’ve been eating this way for years, there’s a whole extension of my world out there that includes novelties like bulgur and miso.

In fact, it’s Bittman’s enthusiasm for bulgur and miso that sent me traipsing around town just the other day in search of those two ingredients. I know bulgur from tabbouleh, but little did I know how much I’d love it warm, with Bittman’s recipe of dark sesame oil and green beans and soy sauce. Oh, the nutty rich goodness. I’m going to blow through that $3.49 bag I finally found at the third store (I swear, I thought these ingredients were just left of “regular.” I was astounded at how difficult they were to track down). It was worth it.