- A Q, a U, and Barbara Kafka’s Chocolate Pudding
There is a bar my boyfriend and I like to go to called Commonwealth, in Park Slope. It’s become somewhat of a ritual to sit at the bar, play Scrabble and order tacos. He’s never beaten me. Last night, to be fair, it looked like he was going to–but I cut the game short because I was just too tired to play any longer. Any suspicions of fakery he might have had were put to rest (I hope) when I fell asleep approximately eight seconds (at his count) after getting home, still in jeans and blazer.
I don’t know if it says more about our urban nature or our alcohol dependency that our idea of a picnic is for me to pack a dinner to eat at our Scrabble bar. I crammed ricotta-pea puree and strozzapreti (which means “priest choker” in Italian, and might make an affectionate nickname for Christopher Hitchens) into take-out containers, heaped shards of crisped prosciutto into a Ziploc bag, and made rough, trifle-like verrines in rocks glasses out of steamed chocolate pudding, strawberries and more of that ricotta (minus the peas).
[A verrine is a French portmanteau of “verre” (glass) and “terrine” (which I hope needs no explanation). They’re very fashionable these days, or at least the word is–the form is not exactly an innovation. It’s not to be confused with the Christian demon of impatience.]
I’m not writing this post just to gloat about my Scrabble skillz–which are, as they say in my neighbourhood, mad–but to share with you a most miraculous recipe: Barbara Kafka’s microwave chocolate pudding. This recipe will change your life.
- Hysterical Ageusia
I have no idea how to even begin to pronounce “ageusia”, but I can tell you that it’s the medical name for losing your sense of taste.
For six terrifying days, when I was seventeen years old, I stopped tasting. Anything.
No, I didn’t have a cold. Trying to explain ageusia is very frustrating. Almost as frustrating as trying to explain sleep paralysis, that nocturnal horror at the heart of our succubus/incubus myths and alien abduction testimonies. A sensitive sort, at one time or another I’ve lost my taste and, in the night, my mind.
- Some Unusual Breakfast Foods
Yes, I like Spam. I like it, as Hong Kong people do, in soup, with macaroni and frozen mixed vegetables. For breakfast. Preferably with Horlicks (an unfortunately-named malted milk drink, originally from Britain, but now consumed only in former colonies and parts of the Commonwealth), and puffy toast spread with salted butter and sweetened condensed milk. You can take your eggs benedict and your watery bloody maries and [expurgated].
Hong Kong has some interesting breakfast habits, ranging from 4-inch cubes of crustless Wonder Bread to intricate latte art straight out of manga.
- Green Tea Vol-Au-Vents with Caramelized Pear
I brought a couple of bags of matcha green tea powder back from Hong Kong, and I’d been trying to think of something to do with them. Not as easy as you’d think. I don’t have an ice cream maker, green tea creme brulee has been done, and buttercream scares me (both to eat and to make). As for baked goods: I can’t explain what it is in my nature that makes me perfectly happy to sit, as I did today, shelling fava beans, trimming and blanching baby artichokes, and skinning tomatoes for confit, while the thought of sifting a single cup of flour will have me bolting from the kitchen. Tea cakes or financiers, then, were out.
I like my matcha-flavoured things bracingly green, with a long, bitter finish. So I settled on a very matcha cheesecake filling, in a puff pastry crust, topped with cubes of caramel-poached pear. (It was inspired by a scruffy-looking but transcendent turnover–goat cheese and pear–that I bought this week at Park Slope’s Colson Patisserie.) You’ll find that the lightly spicy pear works very well with the cool, bittersweet cream. And you may find that you want another.
This porny-looking dessert is among the easiest you’ll ever see: you won’t have to measure a thing. Easy is relative, of course: If you want easy easy, there is always fruit salad. But if you can wield a knife, open a pack of frozen puff pastry and taste your way through a bowl of green tea cheesecake filling, then you can make this non-recipe. (Don’t get all sanctimonious on me, Martha Stewart. My “counter space” is the top of a stainless steel wheely cart from IKEA. Since I assembled it myself, I know for a fact that during the bashing-butter-into-dough stage of puff pastry fabrication, I would destroy both the dough and the cart.)
