David Lebovitz's Blog, page 33

Banana Bread

I’ve been thinking about Banana Bread lately, mostly due to an assortment of bananas that are taking up valuable real estate in my freezer. Another issue that’s taken up (valuable) space in my brain has been trying to understand the difference between Banana Bread and Banana Cake. I’ve been trying to come up with an explanation but just can’t think of one. Could just be the shape? But we don’t call Carrot Cake baked in a loaf pan Carrot Bread…do we? But no matter. Everyone loves Banana Bread – or whatever you call it.

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Red Chile Braised Beef

We find ourselves eating in, rather than going out, more than not. For one thing, the food is often better, or just simpler. Maybe I’m getting grouchy, but after a recipe trip where I ate our every meal, all I wanted was a plate of grilled fish or roasted chicken, and some vegetables. Or just a simple salad with some bread and cheese.

Another is that I’m fairly picky about ingredients and my partner has learned to take my advice when selecting fruits and vegetables as I don’t like to bring anything home that isn’t the best of the market. Which means I often go around and around and around, until I’m absolutely satisfied that I’ve got the best of the bunch.

One thing I don’t cook very often, though, is beef. It’s not that I don’t like it, but when I eat at home, I bow to requests by my other-half to make things more vegetable-centric.

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Hawaii

It’s not every day, or every year (or every decade, unfortunately) that I get to spend some time with my family in Los Angeles. So I was excited by the chance to join them, not in L.A., but in Hawaii. Europeans don’t generally go to Hawaii because of the distance, I suspect, and because there are other tropical islands closer to home that don’t require two-to-three flights, and crossing nearly half a dozen time zones to get there and back. Yet I took one for the team, and moved my office to the beach for a week.

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News, and a Book/Ice Cream Event

I took a break for some quality family time, which, by happy coincidence, included a dose of beach time as well. Now I’m back and figuring out the best way to keep my tan (which I rarely get) so I can look as sporty as the Parisians, who seem to be perennially bronzed and beautiful. I’m hoping to put together a post about the trip, but I get irked when I’m sitting at home and people are posting pictures of beautiful beaches, so I’ll try to keep those to a minimum when I do ; )

(However, when I figure out how to solve that tech issue, I reserve the right to do so. And to add one at the top of this post, too*.)

In my absence, my blog decided not to let me upload photos anymore, and someone also was going around on social media, sending messages to and fro, as if they were me. So if you got one that was in broken English or with dubious grammatical mistakes, that might have been me. But if I asked you for personal information or a credit card number, it wasn’t.

In the meantime, here are some links to where the real me has been around the web, and where I’ll be…

– I had a lot to talk about with Ed Levine, the founder of Serious Eats. So much so, that we recorded two podcast episodes! In them, we delved into a lot of subjects and got personal, and real. Check out the Special Sauce podcasts. If you don’t listen to podcasts, the transcript is on their site.

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Bouillon Pigalle

I used to wonder why someone didn’t open a bistro in Paris serving classic French food, a bouillion, if you will, a word used to describe a place known for serving lots of food, in generous quantities, in a convivial, and almost communal setting. A place where you wouldn’t feel out of place if you struck up a conversation with your neighbors, which be inevitable since the tables would be so close together.

So I was surprised, and delighted, when it finally happened. Of course, I didn’t come up with the idea of a bouillon, but the idea of someone opening one (or revamping an old one) took a back seat while young chefs in Paris stretched their wings, incorporating foods and flavors from other cultures, bringing the focus back to regional ingredients, and using modernist methods to get their point across on the plate.

I don’t mind all that stuff (although I’d be okay if there was less foam, and smears of sauce…), but I’m never unhappy when I can start a meal with œufs mayonnaise, move on to a plate of steak-frites, and finish up with an ice cream-filled profiterole doused in warm chocolate sauce, washing it all down with a pot of house wine. Even better is doing it all for around twenty bucks.

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Devil’s Food Chocolate Ice Cream

There are a lot of ways to do the same thing, just as there are a variety of ways to get to the same place. Which is why it’s always fun for me to give a go at another recipe, maybe one that I’m (very) familiar with – like chocolate ice cream – but made in an unfamiliar way.

Since I got my hands on Bravetart by Stella Parks, a book dedicated not to just iconic American desserts, including cakes, cookies and candies, I was consumed by all the information on its pages. I read it like a book, absorbing the information, some of it new to me, and much of it debunking commonly held beliefs about cooking and baking.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

There’s a certain ease and simplicity to free-form tarts like this. Sometimes they’re called a crostata, sometimes a galette. You can call it whatever you want, but I call it a fast way to use great fruit when it’s in season, without a lot of fuss.

At the beginning of summer, when rhubarb is still lingering around, and strawberries are elbowing their way forward, it’s a good thing the two go so well together. And I’m happy to help them hook up.

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Italian Polenta Cookies

I recently found myself with too much fine polenta on my hands that I’d gathered for some recipe testing. Grocery stores in France carry polenta (usually instant), and corn flour can be found at natural foods stores, but there are not many things made with cornmeal in the canon of French cuisine. So when I want to make a recipe that calls for cornmeal, I buy semoule de maïs fine, available at my local magasin bio or épicerie orientale, a catch-all term for stores that sell foods for Middle Eastern cooking.

It also gives me a chance to go to the Middle Eastern food shop, where I always spent way too long prowling the aisles, and for some reason, I always come home with a lot more things than what I originally went in there for.

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Elderflower Sorbet

This past week, it’s been everything elderflower around here. The weekend prior we visited friends who live outside of Paris and spent a lot of time wandering around their garden, which always makes me reconsider whether I am actually a true city boy.

I love being walking distance to almost whatever one could want, which you can do in a city but then again, I wonder what life would be like to wake up to the sounds of birds singing outside my window, plucking my own radishes from the garden, grilling dinner (and lunch), and enjoying a glass of wine with friends in my backyard, putting my feet up and not worrying about all those people stressing out on the subway or métro. Or listening to a gazillion cell phone conversations while trying to enjoy a seat at a café, or a quiet moment in the park.

All those things melt away the further away you get from urban life. While I’m not ready to give up my proximity to great bakeries and cheese shops, and walks to the market, whenever I am outdoors and away from it all, I wonder, “What would my life be like if…”

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Strawberry Margaritas

The seasons seem to start a little earlier in France than elsewhere, or maybe that’s just me. I tend to want to jump the gun as soon as I see strawberries or cherries at the market every spring. But I know that if I wait a few weeks, they’ll be a lot more abundant, and a lot better. Not to mention less-expensive, too.

Once they go from “rarity” to available everywhere, I tend to go nuts, buying as much fruit as I can. I often joke that as a Californian, I am genetically-wired to eat fruit all the time. During that brief period when the last of the apples and pears depart, and there’s nothing but pineapples and apples from who-knows-where at the market, I fall into a fruitless funk until strawberries appear. Then I know that everything is going to be okay.

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