eggbeater

Spicy Gingerbread, Brown Butter-Bacon Vinaigrette, Smuttynose Stout-Honey Reduction & Whipped Lebne

Spicy Gingerbread, Warm Brown Butter-Butterscotch-Bacon Vinaigrette, Smuttynose Stout-Honey Reduction & Whipped Lebne

I hear from the waiters this dessert might be scaring the restaurant's customers. Really? Seriously? Come on now. Please. This dessert, this flavor combination is a nerdy kindergartner compared with, let's say, American Mustard ice cream. It's gingerbread for cod's sake! Gingerbread. Made spicy with organic ground ginger. (All dried spices & herbs in the USA are irradiated unless stated otherwise.) Irradiation removes much of that spice/herb's flavor, so I go to a local health food store and buy all my gingerbread spices from their bulk section.

Warm vinaigrette made with brown butter & bacon fat. Unless you're on a lowfat diet (in which case would you be ordering dessert at all?), this fat combination in a vinaigrette isn't so far off a beaten path.

Gingerbread is warm. Warm flavors, warm colors, warm spices.

When creating plated desserts, or combining different foods in general, you begin seeing patterns. Pairings, whether classical or radical, come from a point of view, of taste, that certain ingredients 'go together.' Why? Why do figs & goat cheese or fresh cheese get paired together so often? Because they're in season at the same time. Cinnamon & apples, while I consider this to be the most boring cliche in the baking world, really makes sense. Apple pie feels naked, like one of those dreams where you get to school and you're naked, without even a dash of cinnamon. In certain cultures, countries, regions, flavor pairings are law. To combine 2 foods from completely different seasons would be considered the kind of sacrilege that would get a person ostracized for life.

In my creative process I think of a flavor. A season. It's cold outside. I want to be warm. I want to eat roasted meat, roasted vegetables, roasted roasty roastedness. I want deep. I want warm. I want wool & cashmere, slow sex & hot baths, caramel & chestnuts, deep sleep & toast & espresso, the scent of porridge on the stove for an hour. Warm spices are the ones you find in pumpkin pie. laid out, they could be a painters palette for a British fox hunt. Ochre, blood & brick reds, burnt sienna, dark chocolate, wet wood, a pretzel's sheen, ink, bergundy, cassis, charcoal, gold, persimmon orange, sepia.

In comes stout. Smuttynose Imperial Stout to be exact. One sexy motherfucker, if you ask me. Stout is mystery. Deep. Like falling into someone's eyes. Like stealing a kiss. Stout is a thousand secrets, none of them false. Stout is slow. Patient. Stout is black like licorice, like leather. And when you reduce it with honey? It's stoutness never departs. It gets fucking deeper, yo. And so intense you put in on a tiny tea spoon (no squeeze bottles on my station) and take your hat off to it, when drawing your inky line on the plate. Deference. Stout is bitter, is sweet, is a library of adjectives, none of them on spot.

And now all the components on the plate are warm, spicy, fatty, salty. You need a break. You need something completely different.

With all flavors, temperatures, hues, reprieve is needed. Fat needs acid. Sugar-- salt. Sharp & crunchy gets old unless a bit of soft, plush, is added to the mix. Paintings in primary colors hurt the eyes, but once a bit of mixing takes place, everything calms. 'Makes sense.'

And so, after all the warmth of gingerbread, and the fatty warmth of bacon and brown butter; while there's acid in the vinaigrette, one needs a bit of lightness, a component with neither sugar nor salt. And so, even though lebne is a full fat yogurt, and very sour, when whipped, it takes on another persona. It's light, it's bright. It's air. A breath.

Lastly, there's a 'tie-in.' A brunoise of candied ginger hiding in the shadow's fold of larger components, flavors, textures. You pick them up absentmindedly in your fork, in your spoon. They go along for the ride, with the vinaigrette, with the whipped lebne. A nice surprise. Dense, sweet, spicy. Just a little thing. A touch, a caress, a little lace under the skirt.

Hot Chocolate in London

When it gets cold out, or suddenly chilly, or Autumn's leaves begin to whisper in, or scarves begin living around my neck, I think of Hot Cocoa & Hot Chocolate {no, they are not the same.}. I want to drink hot chocolate liquid for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I do, in secret or in public, as often as I can.

In London, part of the EU and in very close proximity to countries boasting the best chocolate making in the world, finding hot cocoa or hot chocolate worth a swallow, is harder than one might think.

But I have recently found 3 locations doing their best to convince me otherwise.

Pictured here on the right is Story Deli's little glass mug of deeply hot chocolate joy. Neither Novel, nor deli, Story Deli is a modern organic pizza restaurant deep within the folds of crazy manic super duper trendy Brick Lane madness.

When my ex pastry chef companion ordered it off the menu, we practically cried with happiness, after trial sips, at the fact that it was indeed real dairy & chocolate they had decided to put in that glass! Hot cocoa in London mostly consists of water, or skim milk if you're lucky, artificially flavored cocoa-ish substance and way too much sugar. {Can someone please tell me why a country producing some of the best dairy in the world has embraced skim milk for all of their cafes & restaurants?}

The second restaurant to completely take me off guard with it's organic milk and slow moving, practically ganache, river of chocolate wallop was Leon. With plenty of locations around London, I might have expected chain-like beverages & insipid concoctions, but no. I went to a knitting 'event' put on by Stitch & Bitch London last week, and when someone ordered the hot chocolate and the perfume attacked me from across the table, I knew. I knew I had inadvertently discovered another.

Pictured on the left is a hot cocoa worth runner up mention, for grace, poise and effort. Flat White's hot cocoa plate could be the best looking hot cocoa in London, but it was short on taste I am sad to admit.

So for third place I have to say The Modern Pantry is doing its very best to create a London hot chocolate worthy of mention. If you make it there, be sure to have a small one, at least, and tell me what you think. Being such a fan of theirs, I've secretly shared some of my opinionated thoughts with them.

Always on the lookout for fantastic hot cocoas & hot chocolates in London, please do share your favourite spots-- any list of liquid chocolate locations is a friend of mine!

The Espresso Room. London WC1

sometimes the littlest places
make the biggest impressions.
maybe because they ain't trying to sell you a bridge
or get on the cover of a magazine
or become the next hottest thing.
although I'm sure they wouldn't mind
having enough business
to stay in business.

 

if you
should find yourself
close to Holborn Tube, or wandering aimlessly down Lamb's Conduit Street
and you are in need of
one of the best damn espressos
you can get your hungry thirsty cold little paws around.
don't despair. liquid help is close by.

in the form of

The Espresso Room.
the tiniest 'coffee shop_cafe_espresso bar_' in London.

 

you might remember
how I came to 'meet'  Square Mile Coffee Roasters?

well,
suffice to say
that began a secret, not so sordid
love affair~

/one that The Espresso Room seems to have caught a whiff of too.

~an addiction
that began
years ago
in a land far far far far
away. heh.

the espresso room 31 - 35 great ormond street wc1n 3hz london m-f 7 am 'til 5 pm

p.s. i can't take any responsibility for finding this gem of a place. it was all bea vo. x

Guinness Chocolate Cake. {the easiest cake. ever.}

My first chocolate cake, like my first kiss, was an unknown, but left me giddy and wanting more. 
My first chocolate cake, like my first kiss, was easier than I thought.
My first chocolate cake, like my first kiss, mixed hot weather and dark chocolate, and needed no major machinery.

And, like kisses, after The First chocolate cake, things got a little more complicated later.

They say baking is easier when you don't know a lot about baking. Innocent. Naive. Openhearted.

Guinness Chocolate Cake reminds me of My First Chocolate Cake. A few tools are all that's needed. And the recipe likes being toyed with. A little more of this and a dash of that works, or get tipsy and substitute one thing for another.

It's all good.

I spent a week testing a number of recipes I found on the www. I used spectacular ingredients and basic ones. I rearranged percentages and threw away the directions. I halved the sugar and tried various flours. I baked in bundt and tiny buttons. I used a convection/fan oven and big deck pizza ovens. I baked in metal and silicone. I baked them tall. I baked them shallow.

And this is what I found out:
The cake batter is really moist. And sticky. All the ingredients are there for a reason, even the ones that seem out of whack proportionally. I got the best results in silicone, filling the cups less than halfway. The batter is really energetic and loves making an absolute mess of your oven.* Sifting the flour is a must. Being able to whisk vigorously is also high on the list. Cake needs a lot of time to be by itself in the oven, without disturbances or else it will have a little terrible temper tantrum. See *

Do let me know what you find out about your version, if you and your cake come to any revelations.

If you want to know why I write recipes with the ingredient first, check out my post on Recipe Writing.

If you need this recipe in OUNCES, make converting your friend. We multiply 1 gram x 28.32 to get ounces. And Celcius x 1.8 +32 = Farenheit

GUINNESS CHOCOLATE CAKE

GUINNESS STOUT   1/2 can {about 250ml}
UNSALTED BUTTER   250 g
SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE CHIPS   100 g

SUGAR   300 g
LIGHT BROWN SUGAR   100 g

SOUR CREAM   120 g
LARGE EGGS   2

ALL PURPOSE FLOUR   225 g
BAKING SODA   1 Tablespoon
SALT    pinch

• preheat oven to 185C
• generously butter and flour an 8 inch cake pan with a piece of parchment on the bottom, or line about 20 cupcake containers
• put wide mouthed pot of water on to boil
• in a wide stainless steel or glass bowl, measure in sliced butter
• on top of butter, measure in chocolate
• set bowl of ingredients over boiling water and lower heat on pot so that water is simmering only
• measure both sugars and salt in another bowl
• sift flour and baking soda and make 'well' in center. the bowl holding these ingredients should be wide and big and at the bottom of the well you should see the bowl
• as chocolate and butter melt, whisk to combine. add Guinness to melty mixture, whisk. when bowl of liquid is hot to the touch, add both sugars at once and whisk
• measure sour cream and eggs in a bowl and whisk to combine fully
• take chocolatey sweet stouty bowl of meltiness liquid and pour sour cream-egg mixture in, whisking as you pour
• take a deep breath
• in the next step you are first pouring then whisking, but not at the same time
• pour a little more than half of liquids into well of drys. WHISK FROM THE MIDDLE -- OUT, in concentric circles RAPIDLY. this is your moment of truth. you don't want lumps and the batter does
• when your batter looks like batter, and you still have a bit of flour clinging to the sides of your master big bowl, pour, INTO THE MIDDLE the rest of your liquid mass. whisk again from the middle - out, making sure to get every last bit of drys in there.
• take a drink
• pour your batter into prepared vessel(s) but make sure batter is not filling said container more than halfway!
• set this prepared pan on a baking sheet lined with a silpat or parchment paper (your dishwasher will thank you later) and place in middle of preheated oven
• set first timer for 20 - 25 minutes and do not disturb cake until then
• your cake might take 10 - 25 minutes longer to bake fully. when the first timer goes off, open oven door slowly and slightly move baking vessel
• cake pan can be rotated ( = turned around so cake bakes evenly) when batter is beginning to set and cake is past the halfway mark
• test cake with skewer or very sharp knife inseted into center. when said object comes out of cake with crumbly bits or when you touch center of cake with your asbestos fingertips and cake bounces slightly back, cake is done
• cool on rack until vessel is warm. run knife around edge and turn out cake to cool the rest of the way

GUINNESS CHOCOLATE CAKE FROSTING
The Head, if you will~

SOUR CREAM   50 g
CREAM CHEESE   150 g  room temperature
ICING SUGAR   120 g
DOUBLE CREAM   125 g

• on a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, mix cream cheese and icing sugar until smooth
• add rest of ingredients and mix until uniform
• taste for seasoning and add more of whaterver else you think it needs

When cake is cool, frost generously with frosting

Cake will keep for 4 days refrigerated & wrapped well. Frosting will keep for one week refrigerated in non-reactive container.

A few more Shuna hints:
I got the best results baking Guinness Chocolate Cake in silicone baking molds. About 20 minutes after taking cakes out of the oven, I placed silicone molds and all into freezer and turned cakes out after at least 2 hours. I kept cakes refrigerated until I frosted them and then asked the bakery not to keep them longer than one day.

This cake is amazing. Not least of all because beer takes on chocolate. Not many flavours can meet chocolate, shake hands, and both come out looking good. It's a really moist cake and eats well. I love how the top gets crunchy and ripply. If you turn Guinness Chocolat Cake upside down and frost the flat side, you get to have the crunchy top stay a fantasic texture.

I hope you'll keep this baby up your sleeve. It's dead easy.

borough from monmouth

hot chocolate at flat white. soho, london

    ~ on the subject of hot cocoa & hot chocolate.

FLAT WHITE

17 berwick street

map

British Tea, I Heart You.

Square Mile Coffee Roasters, London.

My friends could very well be separated into two categories.

Those who knew me before I knew espresso and its dangerous side-affects, and those who knew me to steal and beg and plot and manoeuver for a sip of their hot smoky beverages, after I was introduced to its gateway powers.

Some of the latter people have heard me apologize many times. I
For I am a crazy person when I have had access to too much delicious caffeine.

It is all the fault of one wonderful person named azo. He's from Seattle. He was weaned on Vivace and after that it's all down hill. His first coffee in the morning must happen before all else, including conversations about anything other than the brewing of such cup.

A byproduct of falling in love with azo was becoming bewitched by exquisite espresso.

I have never been the same since.

But for full transparency I must admit to something at the onset:
I am not a daily user.
I remain a lightweight.
I am an odd sort: when I find ambrosia I take part. I can take it or leave it. Unless it's the pure, uncut stuff. Then I'm doomed. Like a ship's captain out at sea for too many years I fall prey to the sirens and lead my wooden vessel to the rocks like honey to a bear. It's bad. And no one can stop me. I must have it.

Must.
Have.
Liquid.
Trouble.

Someone please pinch me. Hard.

So... When I said that I was on my way to London a little over a month ago, a fellow named Anthony Silverbrow sent me a bunch of recommendations based on what, perhaps, he had seen me going on about at eggbeater and KQED.

And so I, like an innocent Dorothy skipping through a field of illegal poppies, took my wide-eyed self and made my way, stopping at every intersection looking at the A to Zed, to Square Mile Coffee Roasters at 273 Poyser Street, E2.

When I walked through an arched lane below railway tracks, and took a gander down what the street sign was listing as Poyser Street, I turned around and re-traced my steps. All I could see were auto-mechanics and a dead-end.

But because I live in a city full of back alley cult status espresso kiosks, I ventured on.

What I failed to take note of: Square Mile Coffee Roasters is not a retail establishment.

One walks through a blue corrugated steel doorway right into a roasting room. Loosely woven sacks of coffee beans are piled high on your right, massive machines that could very well explore the sea's floor with Jacques Cousteau sit still in their glory and a tiny counter are in front of you.

If you walk in there anything like me, this is how it goes:

me: walking comes to a confused standstill as I take it all in.

owner: "Um. Hello? Can I....... help you?"

me: "o."

owner: "What were you looking for? Are you.... lost?"

me: "Hmmmm. Is this... Square Mile?"

owner: "Yes, but we don't sell anything here... well not exactly..."

me: "o."

owner: "Who sent you?"

me: "Um.... An- Anthony...?"

owner: "Silverbrow?"

me: "........yes."

owner: "Do you know him?"

me: "Well.... not exactly."

owner: "O. I see. ?"

It was so much fun. You should try it some time. Especially when your accent stands out among the rest and everyone in other country thinks your people are stupid anyway.

But you know what?

After that incredibly awkward exchange I had a fantastic experience.
Because Square Mile Coffee Roasters is a small company with obsessive passionate attention to detail, a love of all things coffee bean, and friendly. I was invited to stay and sit and chat and someone handsome and cheeky made a complimentary cappucino for me. Owner James Hoffmann educated me about the history of coffee in London and we even spoke briefly about Jeremy Tooker and Slow Food Nation's amazing coffee station staffed with extraordinary baristas.

They even let me take out my intrusive camera and shoot away. Find the photos on my Flickr page.

Beginning to soar, I went on a pilgrimage to find retail establishments for espresso such as this.
Next time I'm in London you might find me wrapped around a small porcelain mug at Milk Bar or Flat White. Hoarding, secreting. Pretending I'm really just a black tea drinker...

And that Square Mile Coffee Roasters cappucino?

Fucking sawed-off shotgun-stylee rocket fuel.
Strong and silky delectable elixir of double edged greatness.

You can be sure I'll be back.

Thank you James & Anthony!

/gone swimming.

about a month ago, on the anniversary of a death in my life, i took a trip to see a river i'd never met. not that i knew of, at any rate. it was the Yuba River and it startled and awed me.

today, with my same friend, we are adventuring to see and swim in another river. no anniversary today, just a day between things, catching summer before it ends.

if you are visiting eggbeater for the first time from TuttiFoodie, welcome! please make yourself at home-- there's lots to see and taste, and any number of the links will take you to see others for whom i have great respect and admiration.

thanks for visiting!

Chihuly at the de Young Museum, San Francisco

Dale Chihuly is a glass artist, glass craftsman and visionary. His work is delightful, playful, grand, bright, fantastic, fluid, outrageous, spectacular, dynamic and inspired by the natural world as well as fantasy.

When I was at CCAC he came to work in our glass department for 3 full days-- 72 hours non-stop glass blowing. He drew and sketched and barked and thought and watched; and his crew spun, molded, blew, sweated, lifted and swung, and on the last day pieces were finished, and also destroyed.

Glass is a lot like sugar.

And going to museums feeds and inspires me in a way I will never be able to describe.

If you have the time, inclination, desire and curiosity, I strongly suggest going to this show. If for no other reason than to take in the de Young in all its amazing architecture.

Chihuly at the de Young

June 14 - September 28

~ Directions to the de Young & other information.

Blue Bottle @ Mint Plaza, SF: I have been kissed by g-d.

My bank account and I have a psychic connection. It knows when I have wandered into the realm of danger. Various colored flags appear on my radar. There is orange for big alert like Garnet Hill and one-of-a-kind old school Adidas, and there's baby blue for the more innocuous butter sale. Purple is saved for subtle spending. A purple flag might go up if Mangosteens or Candy Cots or Mas Masumoto's peaches show up at Monterey Market. {Which they have, by the way, so go soon. Amazing, and worth the credit card dent.}

Today a red flag flew so high and so frantically it threatened to put all bullfighting in Spain out of business.

I walked into the Mint Plaza Blue Bottle Coffee for the first time this early foggy San Francisco morning.

And I will never be the same.

It was better when I was ignorant. When the NY Times knew things three thousand miles away that I didn't.
It was better before I saw those Tate Modern-esque orange chairs myself.
It was denial. Labotomized, nodding-out bliss when I never saw and drank and tasted manna from a discreet grey & sleek space in the elbow of a street that is no longer.

My psychic colored flag alert service had lain dormant until today, when a wail so fierce, so loud, so preposterously high pitched and electrically charged it scared even the San Andreas faultline.

Do not go here if you think the coffee you're drinking now will do.
Do not go here if the pastries you eat now are made by a baker who has had their butter license taken away.
Do not walk into this coffee bean laboratory if you think Silicon Valley has patented the word Geek.

Do. Not. Go. Here.
If your g-d is a threatening force, jealous lover-type, list-maker or task master.

Do not go here if you are following the tweets of my psychic connection. {It will crash your server and shatter all your (glass) windows.}

Blue Bottle Coffee in the newly minted bright and clean green Mint Plaza, across Mission Street from the San Francisco Chronicle, at the corner of Jessie and Mint streets

will serve you,
if you can pay up,
exquisite
delicious beyond reason
mocha. we had today and boy what balance! perfect pitch! sanded to perfection! color! sound! leaps! aroma captured!
drip coffee
espresso

and some crazy insane double breasted tie me up and cart me away
brioche, so buttery i was transported to Paris,
with musky speckled hazelnut heroin hiding inside, so as not to alarm the authorities.

Am I speaking in tongues?
I have been touched. Dancing with rattlesnakes.

But I might never be able to go back.
    will it ever be the same?

Maybe not. But I'll need to, you know, just try it again, not too soon, wait a few, um, hours, days, Weeks, before trying it out again. I'll let you know when I do.

Yuba River, California

The Yuba River

has changed me forever.

I am in awe.

my heart has been stretched and pulled

water, in all its green clarity

massive granite boulders

dimpled and sanded

rough & smooth

hot & dangerous

dynamic

beautiful.

I could not have designed a better place to swim, think, travel inward, see, visit, take part in,

and now know about. I will be back. Mark my words with an x on my heart.