Something’s Happened

There must be a term for it—for the sense of total euphoria that is also accompanied by sheer and utter disbelief and shock. I blink and it is still there. I sleep a full eight hours (bravo me!), and when I wake up it is still lingering around, clinging to the bed sheets, draping itself wildly around the curtains, puncturing even, the early morning light. I can’t shake it.

It’s what most young, burgeoning bloggers must feel when they discover that their tiny, secret, under-the-cover-of-a-great-big-internet-rock blog has just been posted to the Bon Appétit website. Bon Appétit, people! The single most amazing food magazine in the nation. I am still shaking my head in disbelief. I am also, and this one may be even harder to comprehend on an emotional level (so oblique the feeling can be, so occasionally far off): HAPPY. It takes a lot to get me there sometimes, but here we are.

You can find the momentous occasion itself here. We (that is, you, dear readers, and me) are image eight in the slideshow. We are beaming, can’t you tell?

It’s been almost impossible ever since to try to come up with what to make next. Oh my god, the soundtrack in my head plays, what will I ever make again? I’ve wrestled through a few ideas. I’ve called my mom about them—rattling off a list of spiraling, food-related thoughts (she is very supportive). I sit down with stacks of books and magazines and pour over them late into the night. In my dreams I bake galettes that are rubbery and stiff, or I make compotes that are gelatinous and murky. I’ve been in a bind. One that, I can only imagine, has been brought on by the celebratory joy and revelatory anguish of being noticed.

But it’s more than that, too. It’s that—no matter how many cookbooks I look through, or magazines I flip through, or food blogs I read—ultimately, the appetite always wins: one’s choice of what to make or eat can’t come from a carefully designed program of which meals will be popular, or what everyone else will feel like consuming in any particular moment, or how this specific dish will photograph, or how this entry will look next to that one. The choice of what to eat is dictated by some other thing—longing and nostalgia, weather and mood, memory and dreams colliding with seasonality, what’s available at the grocery store, which shops you will pass on your way home, who you may have spoken to on that particular day.

The appetite is elusive and intangible—what drives it is some mysterious combination of unseen factors, constantly changing and circling around that ultimate goal: to feed one’s hunger.

We do this in many ways, I think. Food is one of the least detrimental and perhaps also the one with the most potential for unfettered, uncomplicated joy. 

So I went through that list of prospective galettes and tarts and pies and cookies and shortbreads and brioche rolls and jams and chocolates, and then, when it was 76 degrees in San Francisco (a heat wave!), I made watermelon instead. Watermelon that was dusted with chiles and salt. Watermelon that you could slurp up in enthusiasm; whose juices would drip down your chin; whose spicy bite and sweet, cold crispness would glide, in ever-so-refreshing a manner, down your throat. Watermelon that would make the inside of your cheeks cold, and the tips of your fingers pink and soaked, and the picnic blanket a stained mess, and all of those other good summery things that make us feel, if only momentarily, like we are young again.

I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind.

In the end, this is not a recipe: it’s a sort of incitement for pleasure. It’s something that will take you no time at all. It’s something that you’ll be able to do just by briefly looking at these photographs, by just barely skimming these words. But let’s eat it and be happy.

We have a lot to celebrate.

Watermelon with chili salt (adapted from Bon Appétit)

Watermelon slices

4 teaspoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons chili powder

2-3 limes

Slice a chilled watermelon. In a small bowl or salt dish, mix together the salt and chili powder, adjusting to taste. Arrange the slices on a platter, sprinkle with the chili salt, and then generous squeeze a lime directly over top. Consume immediately, when cold and spicy and dripping with lime.

David Tanis, in Heart of the Artichoke, suggests dipping a lime in a chili powder mixture and squeezing this over a platter of jicama, avocado, and orange. I tried the chili/lime technique both ways—by sprinkling the chili salt and then squeezing the lime juice over top, and also by dipping a halved lime in the mixture and then squeezing out the juice. I think I prefer the first method—but this, really, is a matter of taste. Just employ the ritual that will optimize your satisfaction—all the better if you are basking in the sun while you do it.

Rhubarb + Custard = Springtime Dessert Pleasure

Dear Friends,

Thank you for the outpouring of support that I received from you all this week—turns out, much to my surprise, that I have readers. Readers. A stray few that turned into a stray few more, that turned into an outpouring of emails and support and page views when I went “public” this week (me and facebook—albeit on very different scales).

Thank you.

For my part, I’ll try not to be daunted by the fact that this is no longer a secret pursuit, and I will trek on, starting right now with custard and rhubarb and a tillandsia in the background (don’t eat the tillandsia).

I thought I would continue on my last-gasp-of-spring theme and dig up a rhubarb recipe. I wasn’t sure what at first—crumble or coffee cake? compote or pie? And then it struck me—could one make a rhubarb clafoutis? Something warm and custardy and oozing of fruit, scented of lemon, and crinkly and curled in all sorts of delicious ways on top? Yes. Apparently, one can. I googled the phrase “rhubarb clafoutis” and came up with a fair few options. They were all roughly the same, give or take a few small additions or subtractions here or there; some with cinnamon, a few with citrus, all with that roasted rhubarb base and a decadent layer of yellow custard on top.

I’ve always wanted to make a clafoutis. Somehow daunted by what seemed too lovely to be very manageable, I’ve learned now that, in fact, it is one of the more simple desserts that one could possibly make. I’ve also learned that without using the traditional black cherries as your fruit, the dish is properly called a flaugnarde—the roots of which derive from words meaning “soft” or “downy.”

The dish is indeed soft, as custards often are, but especially so when eaten warm out of the oven. In this state, it is also fragrant and pillowy and oozing—all things that should be strived for when it comes to dessert consumption.

Thick slices of rhubarb are roasted in cinnamon and sugar in a tart or custard dish, and then, once softened and brought down to room temperature, a mixture of eggs, milk, flour, vanilla, sugar, and lemon zest is poured directly over top of this once sputtering, bright pink fruit. Into the oven it goes once more and within the hour you will be eating a warm, springtime custard. Perfect for evenings with a slight chill in the air; perfect for a midday picnic; perfect for breakfast the next day, even when it has chilled and firmed and has become, suddenly, sliceable—perfect, really, for anytime at all. 

Roasted Rhubarb Clafoutis (more accurately referred to as Roasted Rhubarb Flaugnarde), adapted from theKitchn

2 cups rhubarb, sliced to a thickness of 1/2 inch

1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 eggs

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup flour

A pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice the rhubarb and place it directly into your custard or tart dish; toss it with the cinnamon and 2 tablespoons of the sugar. Let this macerate for approximately 10 minutes, or until the juices of the rhubarb have begun to yield.

Roast the rhubarb for 20 minutes or until it is bubbling and soft when pierced with a fork.

Remove from the oven and let it cool until it is just warm and no longer hot and steaming.

While the rhubarb is cooling, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, and sugar; whisk in the milk, and then the flour, lemon zest, and a pinch of salt. Whisk the batter until the flour lumps have dissolved, but be a bit gently with it so that the batter doesn't become tough.

Pour this mixture over the rhubarb and bake for 35-40 minutes. The clafoutis should be set but still somewhat soft in the center. It will have risen in shocking and uneven ways—don't worry, it will settle down as it cools.

Let the clafoutis rest for 5-10 minutes, and serve.

Afterword

I can’t really write about rhubarb, or consume it, or smell it, or see it in a store even, without thinking about the rhubarb plants that line a creek in the woods of upstate New York behind the house where my mother grew up. Prehistoric looking specimens, they are thick and tall with large, arching, and poisonous, leaves. We never see those plants anymore, but apparently they have been growing prolifically for at least eighty years or more. My mother dug some up at one point and planted them in her own garden, where they now grow, referred to as “grandpa’s rhubarb.” These plants accompany, further off, in a separate field, “grandpa’s apple tree” and “grandpa’s lilacs.” From the stories of this grandpa, whom I never knew, I learned to identify edible honeysuckle, elderberries, and black caps; we learned to suck the tips of the honeysuckle in the woods until they released their bright pearls of liquid; we learned how to find the wild spring violets and orchids and the red cardinal flowers that sprung up, inexplicably, in the streams. We learned about a raccoon named Brudel that he called and fed by hand, as a sort of dog-like pet. We learned about elderberry wine, and beaver dams, and the virtues of the frothy top of a mug of beer, among many other bits of lore and wisdom. Food is ancient and its reach is immeasurable. It is also fleeting and transitory. We consume it and it is gone. But the stories persist and the memories, embedded as they are in the aromas of a childhood kitchen, remain. 

To Begin and to End

What you do in between is really up to you. I offer you today only the beginning and the ending of something. But a delicious beginning and ending it shall be, I promise. I’ve recovered from all recent whirlwinds, found myself on stable ground again, bought a guitar (a relief—living without one was like a cruel form of torture or sensory deprivation), and I am beginning to cook again. (Did anyone else feel like the recent astrological activity made everything and everyone crazy?) I’m also beginning to realize that spring is quickly slipping through my fingers and that it is time, high time, to seize hold of its finest before the deluge of summer squashes and corn and tomatoes begin vying for attention. It’s already starting—last night at the Headlands Center for the Arts I ate my first cherry of the season, and my first plum, all swirled and rosy in a bit of cardamom-scented honey-yogurt. But we’ll save that for another time.

What I have for you today concerns asparagus. And it concerns a way of eating asparagus that was previously unknown to me. Most likely you are all fluent in this method. Probably you’ve been doing this since you could walk. But to me, it’s been a revelation. That method is raw, that is: DO NOT COOK THE ASPARAGUS. It seems wrong at first—you think back to all of the asperges au vinaigre you have consumed, or the grilled spears with parmesan that you buy pre-made at your local specialty food shop, or the steamed kind that you slide a poached egg over, and you feel in some sort of a deep, intrinsic way, that this just simply can not be. But of course it is. David Tanis said so—and when, I ask you, is he ever wrong?

The recipe is not even a recipe: I didn’t measure a single thing while I prepared it. But that’s honestly my favorite way to cook. Baking, of course, is another story all together, and as we learned here and here, I tend to be soothed, in those moments, by the careful and precise need for measurements and weights, ounces and teaspoons, leveling off and carefully folding, and all of those other little details that come together to make the baked thing what it is—in all of its delicate complexity, coming down, essentially, to the touch and the hand of the baker. Cooking is similarly defined by touch—by individual nuance—but in a way that tends to be more forgiving I think. And you can often adjust as you go.  

The difficult thing about this recipe is a practical, skill-based one. It has to do with the shaving of the asparagus. Tanis recommends using a sharp knife or vegetable peeler, or a mandoline. My guess, after sweating through the process and mildly cursing the dull blade of my vegetable peeler, is that the mandoline would be your best bet. But I don’t like to be dissuaded by a lack of fancy tools and neither should you. The vegetable peeler works, it’s just harder than you think it will be, and it took me a little practice to get the method down. I worked toward my body rather than away from it, which seemed to be easier, and I also tried to apply a firm and even pressure. The great thing here is that if you mess up, it really doesn’t matter, you just need to have achieved, in the end, some relatively thin strips of the vegetable, to be tossed in that magical combination of lemon and olive oil and salt.

What you will have as you progress through this “recipe” is a layering of thinly shaved asparagus; a few leaves of arugula—just enough to catch and fill all of the spaces between the thin, long spears; a generous squeeze of a lemon; and a drizzle of slippery olive oil—all bedecked with salt and pepper and thin shavings of parmigiano reggiano. This salad is an ideal springtime beginning for a meal of any size or scope. It could even, truth be told, make a meal all on its own. The asparagus, when raw, is crisp and fresh and tastes like the purest essence of asparagus that you’ve never tried. It also stands up sturdily to the acid of the lemon, making this salad something that could be prepared (with the exception of the arugula leaves) a day or so in advance.

It is truly my new favorite thing; and above all, my new favorite way to do asparagus.

Now, I take you to the end of the meal. Fast forward through time a bit—you’ve started with that delicious salad, you’ve received rave reviews all throughout: raw asparagus—they will cry—what a revelation! You’ve served some bit of fish with dill and capers, or a pistachio-crusted bird of some variety, or some nice, tender, well-marbleized piece of beef. Your guests are happy and full and sighing and letting the warm, springtime sun graze their bare shoulders. The glasses are being emptied. The beginnings of an evening light are starting to descend. You—calm and collected, effortless and relaxed—take out a bowl of gleaming, juicy strawberries, and set it next to a dish of just-whipped cream; cream that has been, in all manner of ethereal beauty, infused with chamomile blossoms.

This Is Not a Food Post

They can’t all be, I’m realizing. Nor can every day bring something inspiring or uplifting, or even, for that matter, remotely interesting. It’s been a confusing week.

I’ve not been sleeping. I’ve been eating in little dribs and drabs: hobbling together some cheese on toast here, a bit of soup there, some little piece of fruit in between. Nothing really, whatsoever, to photograph; nothing to report on; no inspiration at all in terms of what to make. I had a brief glimmer midweek of shaved asparagus tossed with lemon juice and parmesan (from this guy, my hero). Then I had a thought about strawberries with chamomile cream, which I felt would probably be even better if one (meaning me) could make a cookie that was thin and crisp and scented of cardamom to go along with it.

But then something would interfere (namely the exhibition of 100 artists that was being produced at work), some bit of life would intervene, and I would find myself, somewhat inexplicably, eating a Vietnamese pork sandwich that cost $3.50 and hastily slurping an Orangina. Not a bad lunch exactly, but not a blog-worthy one either.

I’ve learned a few things this week, in the midst of the chaos and tumult and what felt like, on my part, one misstep after the next: (1) don’t make decisions on no sleep and an empty stomach; (2) first impressions and first instincts are usually correct (and sometimes trying—so ardently trying—to see the best in people can be a curse); (3) friends are more valuable than lovers; and (4) there’s always something better, something more, um, appropriate?, well suited?, comfortable?, waiting on the horizon. This last one is uncharacteristically optimistic, I know, but I’m learning to believe in it. It’s what I tell my dearest friends when they are going through tough times.

I know this post is oblique, but that is how my life has been in these past couple of weeks. It’s time to get back to some semblance of normalcy and some vague idea of self, however tattered, however complicated and flawed, however fraught. I tell my students that it is important to never lose sight of beauty and of poetry, and I want to remind myself of the same. These are not easy things, and they are not often simple. But nothing simple ever really endures. And it’s in the complexity of life that we often find meaning.

I solidified a friendship this week with one of the strongest women I have possibly ever met. She is on her way to the middle of nowhere New Mexico, where she runs an amazing off-the-grid artist’s residency. We laughed and talked and commiserated. We made a little more of a home for one another in each of our hearts. She reminded me that one can be alone and also full of life at the same time. I imagine her in the next few weeks looking out over the mesa with a sense of strength and radiance and courage and calm. We’re learning the hard way her and I, but that’s sometimes the best that anyone can do.

For now, here’s to that. Next week we’ll eat strawberries.

In Many Ways

In many ways, it was doomed from the start. Sure, it had a beautifully taken photograph; yes, the parchment around the edges was perfectly crisped and browned; and indeed, those lemon slices looked caramelized and tart and toothsome. It could have gone a different way. Perhaps if I hadn’t been in the process of moving box-loads of historical relics out of my apartment, I might have been paying closer attention to things—I may have been able to intervene earlier on. But it had to happen, one of these days: that I would bake something that wouldn’t live up to its cookbook portrait, that needed serious modification, that was, perhaps, well intentioned, but not quite able to fulfill.

Today, my friends, apparently, is that day.

I knew from the start that I probably shouldn’t be baking another loaf cake. I had this one success a couple of weeks ago, and I should have left it at that for a bit. I was planning to offer you the following by way of excuses for this next loaf cake: (1) this one is made with butter not olive oil, and so we could compare and contrast; (2) I am defenseless before Nigel Slater and his beautiful photographs, and his brief jots of writing, and the way in which he chronicles, so simply, in so unadorned a way, the pleasures of cooking and eating; and (3) I’ve been reading way too much lately about the Great War.

I know that this last bit may come as a shock to any sane, mildly intelligent person out there. What on earth does loaf cake have to do with the Great War? Well, the answer, of course, is nothing really, nothing whatsoever. But I’ve been reading this book, primarily because I can’t seem to focus my mind on the sort of reading that I usually do, and in this book (which is really quite wonderful, actually) there is this section about the kinds of things that British troops at the front received as care packages while they were away at war. They received letters, and photographs, and news from home, of course, but they also received food—all manner of perishable and nonperishable things, including tarts, cakes, eggs, butter, fruit, and even fresh flowers “for the table” (specifically, violets and primroses). The idea of this passage is to point out the incredibly ironic, terribly sad, entirely ghastly proximity of these soldiers to their homes in England. They were at the front on the Sommes or in Amiens or in Ypres, but they were often just several hours away from home, a place that could be reached by boat along the Channel, and that was, in many cases, close enough to receive cakes and tarts from. This section of the book contains numerous humorous anecdotes about the sorts of food items that the troops received, including one letter from a captain in which he instructs his wife to package all future fruit tarts that she ships to him in cardboard rather than tin. (“I… received your parcel quite safe… I am sorry to say though that the tart had gone bad. I was so mad as I just felt like a bit of tart then too. I think the tin box done it. I don’t think a tin box is as good as a cardboard box or wood box for something in the tart line.”)

I won’t go on and on about this, but suffice it to say that it got me thinking: what could one make that would be sturdy enough to ship a long way, if one were pressed to the task? I might, I thought to myself, occasionally have something that I would like to send by the post; something that would hopefully arrive in one piece and that would still be delicious—perhaps even more delicious than when it was first baked?—once it got there. I settled on the idea of a loaf cake. And, specifically, this loaf cake, by Nigel Slater, with its lemon and brown sugar promises, its drizzle of lemon syrup, its luscious appearance, glossy finish, and parchment-wrapped exterior. This thing looked like it was built to travel. Perhaps it would be the kind of baked good that one could ship on, say, Mother’s Day, or for a friend’s birthday.

But alas, no. Not really at all.

Of course, I did just try it when it was first out of the oven; I haven’t given it time to settle yet; and I haven’t given myself time to warm up to it—but it’s not usually a good sign when one is not overcome with excitement with the thing that one has just baked. The just-out-of-the-oven moment should be filled with blissful enthusiasm, pride, satisfaction, and fulfillment—not sighs, frowns, and a scrunched, quizzical brow.

But I’m giving you the wrong idea here. It’s not a bad cake exactly, it’s just not amazing, and I find it to be too sweet. I’m also not singing home the praises of the lemon and brown sugar combination, though I really thought I would be. And it’s a little too sticky, and not in a way that I find appealing. To Nigel’s credit (and I do feel that he deserves a lot of credit; I may have been entirely to blame for the outcome of this cake), I did make one significant modification—I cut the amount of butter nearly by half. But I just couldn’t see, when it came down to it, how on earth I was going to be able to put 4 sticks of butter into a loaf cake—4 sticks of butter!! I consulted some other pound cake recipes and found that 2 sticks seemed to be a more generally accepted number, so that’s what I used.

Granted, I probably should have adjusted some other proportions once I made this change (for instance, the quantity of sugar), and I didn’t. I take full responsibility.

Next time, if there was going to be a next time, I would increase the amount of ground almonds, use a mixture of brown and granulated sugars, and perhaps I would even use oil instead of butter.

My favorite part of this cake is the lovely garnish of sliced lemons that adorns the top of it in a sort of haphazard meander. It’s a beautiful, rustic touch. And those lemon slices have been simmered in brown sugar and water, giving them a slightly caramelized quality and a beautiful, glimmering sheen. I like what this cake strives for. I like what the garnish beckons for it.

Maybe one day I’ll revisit it. For now, make this instead.

It’s New York, But It’s Much More than That

I’m almost afraid to write this, lest it diminish the sense of joy that I feel when I look back on the whole thing in memory. I want to write about it, of course, but I also want to keep it all inside, tucked away in that corner of the mind where only the best memories go (I’m learning that this part is larger than that sad, haunting part, ruled over by Mnemosyne like a lion in a lair).

It’s the trip to New York that I’m talking about. It’s like a long sigh; and a rush of adrenaline; and a good, hearty laugh; and a shy smile; and a sip of the most delicious wine, all rolled into one.

When New York does this to you, you can’t help but ignore all of the rest of it: sweaty bodies pressing into you on the subway, the pollution, smoke everywhere, the occasional screaming lunatic… who cares, I say. It’s New York—it wrapped its arms around me, and made it incredibly hard to leave.

Before I get to the sad part though, the part where I leave and ache all over as I sit, waiting, at the airport, I should tell you a bit about what it was like to be there. The summary version is that: I saw friends (friends! the best friends that a girl could have (I’m talking to you D., S., T., and R.)); I spent some quality time with my lovely, youthful mom; I went out on the town to openings and bars; I turned 30; I ate and ate and ate (whole grilled branzino, asparagus with capers and breadcrumbs, marinated artichokes…); I strolled in the West Village, sipped wine with an old friend as we sat in the warm afternoon sun, cobblestone sidewalk in view; I walked the highline (known to me originally through the photographs of this man, my former professor); and I let go of some things, some things that had been hard to shake back in San Francisco.

It was a good way to usher in a new decade. The best, in fact.

As I sat in the sun with my friend T., I remembered what it was like to be young and unencumbered, and to have truly good friends—the kind with whom you never feel far apart, regardless of the years that may have passed. Later, in another scenario, I was reminded of my days in college—my roommates, dear ones, laughing on the couch as we scoffed about love and men and recalled old times.

In Brooklyn, we bumped into more friends and acquaintances, we drank, we socialized, we joked around with strangers, we made plans for the future: I felt something akin to fear letting go its tiresome grip and leaving me.

I also took those train rides along the Hudson that I mentioned, and discovered that there was something wonderful to be had at both ends of each journey.

There were, of course, occasional fleeting moments of sadness and disorientation, especially at first—but these subsided, and now I can barely remember them. The thrilling, the youthful, the energized—slightly intoxicated—delicious taste of the whole thing is what remains.

I’ll have to go back soon, once this sense of euphoria diminishes.

For now, since this is supposed to be a food blog, I should really talk about what I ate while I was in New York. There were some highlights: Buvette lived up to its name, whisking my mom and I away to some other place—Paris, perhaps?—where we huddled around a tiny marble table in a quiet, bistro corner and tucked into one delicious small plate after the next: marinated artichokes with olives and lemon, chicken liver mousse  (a personal favorite), octopus salad with sliced celery and olives, warm potato salad with anchovy vinaigrette. 

Then came Prune, the other spot on my list, where I ate that whole grilled branzino that I mentioned (all by myself), and also: roasted marrow bones with parsley salad, another octopus salad, and crunchy endives and lettuces. For dessert we tried an olive oil cake (not as good as this one, I fear), lemon curd and meringue, and a chocolate-espresso semifreddo with hazelnuts.

In Chatham, New York, on my last night, I ate fish tacos with old friends at this lovely little spot, had happy birthday sung to me over a plate of magnificent desserts, and reconnected with people very dear to me who I hadn’t seen in years. You might remember them from this post, one of my very first.

Then, at the last, my mom made me an apricot brandy pound cake, which we consumed with strawberries and whipped cream.

There isn’t more that one can ask for out of a trip to New York, or perhaps anywhere else in the world at all.

Next week, I’ll be back to my usual baking and then writing about it—more food, less travelogue. In the meantime, my friend T. has promised to serenade me with this song, lest the farmer’s markets of San Francisco make me forget how much I loved being in New York this time around.

Here’s to being back, but having come far. 

Message from Afar

This is a bit strange. I’m not in my typical writing mode. The setting, where I now sit, is completely different:

Rather than my old wooden desk or my kitchen table, my cup of coffee, and my tattered flannel shirt, I find myself in a cramped seat, purple light emanating from the ceiling, the vague smell of diesel fumes slowly leaving the air. I’m in an airplane, hurdling through space at a speed of 500 miles per hour. I’m on my way to New York—the city where I grew up and where I spent more or less the first two decades of my life.

I’ve missed it, and I’m glad to be heading back for a bit.

I’m going to New York to celebrate my birthday. But more than that, I'm going to see and visit with old friends, to spend some time with my Mom, and to, as a certain television countess-to-be once expressed, “hear my heels clicking on the pavement.” Sure there’s pavement in San Francisco, but it sounds and feels different than a New York sidewalk. In New York I’ll relish (and simultaneously loathe) the sense of anonymity, the brief exchanges and glances shared with strangers, the folding inward that occurs when one is on a crowded street in a familiar city. I don’t have to pay attention to where I’m going when I’m in New York, because I always, no matter where in the city I am, have the impression of being home.

I never used to feel this way; it’s a phenomenon that has occurred only since I left it behind when I moved west five years ago.

While I’m in New York, I have a few things planned. Of course, with New York, what one longs for are the unexpected moments, but I’ll not try to predict what those might be. New York is a never-ending landscape of changing faces and situations. When I was little, I used to look up at the high-rises at night and think with amazement and awe how in each window there were lives, moments, and stories constantly unfolding. It’s overwhelming. But this is true of any city.

Apart from the conversations and drinks with friends that I hope to have, the late-night strolls along cobblestone streets in the West Village, the long train rides up and down the Hudson, I plan to, more specifically: eat at Prune, a place that I’ve read so much about (I’ve even purchased the chef’s recent book Blood, Bones & Butter in preparation for the event); to take in small bites at Buvette; to see the Biennial; and to go with my good friend L. to this show at the Natural History Museum. I’m getting more excited by the minute.

Before I left San Francisco, though, in the midst of the bustle of packing, the last-minute trips to the store, the tidying up and the sweeping, and the endless stacking of papers and books, I did something crazy: I baked a cake. I thought it would be a good thing to do before my trip, however rushed and frazzled I felt: to use up those few blood oranges in my fridge, to have an excuse to make a chocolate ganache, to pass some cake along to friends before my flight. And plus, I’ve smushed some of it into my suitcase, so I’ll be prepared for dessert when I land.

There’s yet another reason that I’ve baked this cake, and it’s a celebratory one. This post will be my tenth, and while that’s a very modest number at best, it’s still a milestone of sorts. In the beginning, there was near-paralysis, fear of failure, an incessant and relentless over-thinking of things, procrastination, and self-deprecation (all that good stuff)—but now, ten posts in, I feel things are beginning to take shape. I might, after all, be able to keep this blog thing going, even if it occasionally means getting up at 5 am to bake, or writing the occasional entry from the sky.

The cake, apart from all of this, this list of “reasons,” is delicious—buttermilk and blood orange juice in the batter (a kind of frenetic creamsicle combination), olive oil rather than butter to make it moist, zest and blood orange compote, and a chaotic drizzle of deep, dark chocolate ganache. It reminded me of a sort of paired-down, weeknight version of this decadent cake that I grew up eating.

I’d never made—and I may not have ever even eaten—an olive oil cake. It’s an unexpected and delicious thing—it imparts a sort of savory sensibility to the cake that protects it from all possibility of being overly sweet. It’s also tender—dare I say, more tender and moist than loaf cakes using butter?

Orange and olive oil seemed like a natural combination to me when I read the recipe, and it felt that way to consume as well: natural, moist, simple, and fresh. It’s also pleasingly tart with the addition of a blood orange compote that is riddled with feisty strips of zest. Just a drizzle of chocolate ganache adds complexity and warmth.

The cake also comes together fairly quickly and easily, making it the kind of thing that you could imagine effortlessly incorporating into your repertoire, unlike a certain chocolate cake that I made recently, which takes a bit more time and more careful attention to detail.

Both are good, of course, for different reasons.

The real time that you need for the cake is the time required to let it cool before you can drizzle on the ganache; and then, once the ganache is drizzled, you need still more time to let it set. But this kind of investment of time just increases the anticipation. It’s not arduous in the least. (And you can pack in between.)

Stuffed into a tupperware and bundled up in a paper bag, it can be easily delivered to a friend’s door—a friend who is then kind enough to take you to the airport. (I hope she enjoys it.)

For next week, my plan is to report back with the recounting of meals and various other travel musings from my time in that city of all cities, New York.

For now, from 35,000 feet above ground, happy baking.

Orange-Scented Olive Oil Cake with Blood Orange Compote and Ganache (adapted from Martha Stewart Living, February 2009)

For the cake and the compote:

Unsalted butter, softened (for greasing the pan)

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (plus more for the pan)

4 blood oranges, or a mixture of blood oranges and Cara Cara oranges

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup buttermilk

3 large eggs

2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

For the ganache:

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/3 cup bittersweet chocolate, chopped or in morsels

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter and flour a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.

Using a vegetable peeler, remove the rind from one of the blood oranges, carefully avoiding the white pith. Slice this rind into thin strips for a total amount of 1 tablespoon of zest strips; place in a bowl and set aside.

Into a medium mixing bowl, finely grate 1 tablespoon of zest from the blood oranges. Now, into your first bowl with the zest strips, segment the blood oranges. (You may also use a mixture of blood oranges and Cara Cara oranges here for a nice variation in color.) Squeeze the juice from the orange membranes into a measuring cup, for a total of 1/4 cup blood orange juice.