Rainbow Club!

In belated honor of Kimber's birthday on the 27th, I'm posting this delightful and delectable club sandwich recipe from last summer. It's fresh and bright and color-laden -- everything you could want from a savory summer slice. Charity was the mastermind behind the recipe, but I took all the pictures, so I'm calling dibs. As you might have guessed, intense saturation outweighed intense flavor as the primary objective of this dish. The good news is, with Charity in charge, the sandwich tasted as good as it looked. Details below.

Ingredients (as far as I remember them)

something white like clouds (we used goat cheese)

something red (roasted beets)

something orange (Charity's sweet potato hummus + sliced sweet potatoes)

something yellow (pickled beets)

something green (Charity's green sauce + a pile of basil)

something blue, indigo and/or purple (we used thinly sliced onions, lightly pickled. I imagine a blue potato salad could work wonderfully here as well)

a loaf of good light bread, sliced lengthwise

So the order goes: slice of bread → (white) → slice → (red) → slice → (orange) → slice → etc, all the way down the rainbow. The fun thing about club sandwiches is how much you can play with them (that would make them fun, wouldn't it?). Come up with you own color or flavor or bread schemes and then layer away. The regular slices of bread work like support beams to hold the whole thing together, even as you stuff it with more goodness than any one sandwich ever deserved to hold. And that's all the more reason to be extra generous with fillings and spreads, ensuring deliciousness and avoiding dryness in your final product.

Once you're done stacking, give the whole thing a good smoosh and cut it into more manageable pieces to reveal the kaleidoscope colors inside and share with friends. Or eat the whole thing alone in the dark. I've found both approaches very fulfilling at various periods in my own life.

If you're so inspired, I'd love to hear about your favorite, brightly hued spreads and vegs for the next time I *cough* Charity *cough* undertake to make this bite. Maybe to celebrate DC's Pride Parade on the 11th? Eh? Chary? You in?

Leave a comment with your own ideas for colorful sandwich fixins' so we can all build beautiful, precarious, delicious bread towers together 🌈 🌈 🌈

Radish Toasts

crusty bread + good butter + sliced radishes + salt

Banoffee Ice Cream Sandwich

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Is it hot there? It's hot here. Hotter for the fact that we have yet to haul out our air conditioning units that weigh as much as a 12-year old. Maybe we're too lazy, maybe we're taking the Pope's encyclical to heart and doing our part to forestall the swift march of climate change, and its relentless ravaging of our sister, Mother Earth?  But really, we are very lazy. 

Luckily, there are lots of ways to cool down that require little in the way of heavy-lifting OR advanced planning! An added bonus? The chance to unnecessarily carb-load smack-dab in the middle of swimsuit season! Have I got your attention yet? Good. 

This recipe is a combination of some of my very favorite things (ice cream, bread, butter, sweetened condensed milk), and also there are bananas in it. It's an ice cream sandwich, but not the fluff-filled cardboard ice cream sandwiches of our youth*, NAY! These are exponentially more delicious, more fancy, AND more sandwichy. They're ice cream sandwiches you show off to your friends, bring home to mom, and then? You marry the crap out of 'em. Why? Because they're unique, and perfect, and make you look good and smart (though, also fat). 

Before I get to the nuts and bolts of the treat that will sweeten your sweaty state, a couple of notes. First, some lesser souls might be a bit apprehensive about putting ice cream on bread. Don't be that fool.  And secondly, be very, VERY careful when making your dulce de leche. If you're not, the cans of sweetened condensed milk will explode, and your chest hair might never grow back...**

  Banoffee Ice Cream Sandwiches

1 can sweetened condensed milk or pre-made dulce de leche

2 brioche rolls

1 banana, sliced

1 pint vanilla ice cream

butter

coarse salt

Make your dulce de leche. I use this method , but there are other ways if you're feeling ambitious or scared. Slice your buns in half and butter like no one's looking. Toast the buns on a hot skillet until golden, top with generous amounts of dulce de leche, bananas and ice cream. Sprinkle with salt. Add the lid. Enjoy!

*which, if I'm being perfectly honest, I sometimes really enjoy in all their yuckiness. 

**just ask Shiloh.

***this post was done in collaboration with our friends at Il Forno Bakery in the Bronx. Their breads are impeccable, and if you're near them, do yourself a favor an make a few friends by picking up one (or five) of their superior loaves. 

Syrups and Soda and Spaaaash!

Channeling Lars here. There were some flowers from my cousin's wedding on our kitchen table. They were too pretty to let them die a normal death so I took some of the drier (or more dead) flowers and put them together on this sign with acrylic paint, straws, butchers paper and sharpee. 

Custom sodas and syrups. They should be a thing. So why oh why are 98% of the syrups we see nothing more than extract from a bottle mixed with corn syrup? Some things will never make sense to me.

As you're making plans for summer entertaining, let me throw an idea out there. The last few years, Yoni and I have thrown a Soda Spash. It was supposed to be a splash, until I forgot the L in the sign and just decided to go with it. Here's how it works: make a vat of simple syrup and a vat of caramel. Then mix that with malt powder, peanut butter, and pretty much every ingredient listed above. Get ice cream, sparkling water and TADAH! Baller party with a fresh take on ice cream sodas. You don't have to go as crazy as I do on the syrups. Maybe start with one or two, then you can improvise from there. The options are as varied as your imagination, but this should give you a good start!

FIRST ...

Simple Syrup

1 Part Sugar (I like to make one brown sugar batch and one white sugar batch)

+

1 Part Water

Boil sugar and water together until sugar dissolves and consistency is slightly syrupy. Usually 5-10 minutes. This keeps for a long time. No need to put it in the fridge either.

THEN ...

Salted Chocolate Syrup

1 Cup simple syrup  +  1 Cup dark chocolate chips   +   1 tsp salt (optional)

Warm simple syrup. Add dark chocolate slowly, stirring until melted into the syrup. Add salt. Cool, but allow to come to room temperature before serving. Store in the fridge.

Strawberry Malt Syrup

Simple syrup  +  Frozen strawberries  +  Malt powder

I'd try about 1/2 the amount of simple syrup as strawberries. Pulverize strawberries in blender with a few hefty tablespoons of malt powder. Add simple syrup and stir. Allow strawberries to melt and macerate in the simple syrup. Refrigerate in airtight container.

blueberry maple cream, sour cherry and strawberry malt.

A FEW TIPS:

Try sodas with about 1/2 inch of syrup in a 6 oz cup. You can always make it sweeter.  

Buy a large carton of whole milk, half and half or whipping cream and add a shot to make cream sodas. You can do this with any non-fruit syrup. 

Sometimes we make the sodas on their own and sometimes we do ice cream sodas. I make my life easier by only getting one flavor of Ice Cream -- a good Vanilla. People can still go wild with the flavors but you have fewer variables involved. 

Dip.

Ahh... fondue. Like cake, the dish and I have a harried past that has somehow led to expertise. At 10, I was alone in our family kitchen, cleaning up after a true fondue party. Somehow I got it in my head that the remaining melted cheese was unfit for future consumption, and trashed close to $100 in leftovers before Momo discovered my failed attempt to assist. 

Then, in college, a family member hooked me up with a writing gig for a new food magazine. The topic? Fondue. I had not yet recovered from my decade-old folly, but at a dollar a word, this poor student was eager to be paid for my skills. I went and 'invested' in a substantial library of cheese for the project, and got my hot, new, OLDER boyfriend (queue Premal Trivedi) to hook me up in the alcohol department. I researched the history of fondue in pop-culture (a scheme dreamed up by the Swiss cheese lobby*), and toiled over a series of pots of molten dairy, perfecting my technique. In the end, I was late on my deadline, the magazine tanked, and I was never paid. This left me regretting a number of decisions, listed as thus:

1. Working with relatives 
2. Spending too much money on cheese  
3. Reacquainting myself with fondue

Nearly another decade on, it seems I'll never learn. I continue to practice the activities above on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. 

Here's the thing about rustic, old dishes. They're really easy. With fondue, there's a basic equation, and thus far, it's served me well. For every pound of cheese, you'll need a cup of booze, a tablespoon of flour, and a large clove of garlic. Grate the cheese and toss it with the flour. Then, rub down the interior of your pot with a halved garlic clove, and warm your alcohol. Add the cheese a handfull at a time, and stir until melted. 

BUT HERE COMES THE MAGIC:

Anyone can follow a recipe, but it takes a sound mind to keep your cool when $h*t hits the fan. This is where I truly shine. If your fondue it grainy, thick, or stringy here are the ugly tools that will enable a beautiful fete: an emersion blender and a slurry of cornstarch and lemon juice. If something's not right, mix up a two-to-one concoction of lemon juice and cornstarch. The acid in the lemon will dissolve the stringy proteins in the cheese and the cornstarch will thicken and smooth for good measure. Still not right? Bring out that magic wand and go to work. It does the trick every time. 

Now that I've shared my methods, here are the combinations we used to get you started. 

Traditional--Gruyère+White wine+Nutmeg+Black pepper

American--Aged cheddar+IPA+Maple syrup (1T)

U So Fancy--Havarti+Champagne+Honey (1T) +Thyme

For dipping we had roasted veggies, cornichons (my fav), and more glorious bread than you can shake a stick at courtesy of the folks at Il Forno.

*Don't believe me? Well, NPR's Planet Money team recently did a whole (fantastic) episode on the topic.

Bred.

The perfect, crusty loaf of bread. In a restaurant, in bakeries, in the kitchen or in the bedroom,* it can be an elusive creature.  

I remember my first: It was a Michelin starred restaurant. A waiter approached, placing a basket in front of us. The cloth was warm. Always a good sign, I thought to myself, disrobing the loaf until notes of toasted nuts and malt beckoned my nose closer. The bread's construction was enough to make Paul Hollywood genuflect in approval. The bubbly lattice of white met my butter knife with a pillowy resistance. This was not your average loaf. Twisting off a piece, the crust let off a pleasing snap. Cradling the morsel between two fingers, I lifted it towards my lips. Alternately soft, chewy, tart, nutty and crunchy in all of the right places and ways. I ate five pieces. I wished I'd skipped on the rest of the meal completely. The other food was fine, but this was transcendent. All I could think about was how I could bribe our server to send me home with a few extra loaves. 

"Do you make your own bread?" I asked

"We get it from a bakery," she said

"Can I buy some from you?" I continued

"We don't have enough, but you can buy it from them. It's Il Forno Bakery," she replied. 

Leaving the restaurant, I scanned my phone. Next time we went up to New Haven, Yoni and I stopped in the Bronx to pick up a few loaves. It's become a pilgrimage of sorts and my dress size has never been the same.** 

Last fall while I was living in New York, I visited Il Forno to pick up some bread. The bakery is a family affair, and while I was chatting with Jenny Eduardo about baking and business, we hatched an idea to do a series of delicious collaborations. So look forward to a high-carb diet of recipes, videos, pictures, and who knows what else in the coming months. Heaven knows we are!

Have you had a transcendent bread experience? We want to hear all about it! 

*An unnamed seven-year-old TD sister (who may or may not have been me) was once found with an entire loaf of bread hidden under her pillow. What can I say? I love bread.

**The sourdough starter makes their breads probiotic, which aids digestion. That doesn't *quite* compensate for finishing an entire loaf alone, but it's nice to know nonetheless. 

Have you ever wanted something really, really badly that was totally silly? I did and this is what happened...

I wanted to enter the county fair and win a blue ribbon ... bad.

A few months ago, I started concocting recipes and outsourcing them to my sisters. I enlisted help from my mom, uber domestic goddess Ginger and a few others so we could locally source ingredients. Mercina and Glorianna were going to be in town and I was working overtime to lure Kimber to Colorado for the fair. It was gonna be awesome and if it was the last thing I did this summer, we were gonna win.

And then life happened.

My cousin got married just when we were all supposed to head out West. One of my best friends decided to get married a few days after the wedding (the nerve of them both, right!?). I had two performances the week before. Mercina and Glorianna decided to stay in Washington. Kimber needed to go to California. Yoni's business partners needed him in New York. Mom was out of town and the dogs needed some serious loving. It was just me an Liberty. The day before we needed to register for the fair, we had no jars, no produce and no real chance.

There was an epic rains storm. While I braved the elements to collect every ripe (and some not so ripe) thing in Mom's garden, there was no way I had time to visit Ginger's house to get the remainder of the ingredients. But when Liberty opened the door to her house somehow, I knew everything was going to be alright. Vast stores of copper pots and pans pans emerged. Soon, the hum of blenders and cadence of knives on cutting boards echoed through her kitchen. Settling on two time-honored family recipes, we decided to focus on a salsa verde and a Hungarian sauce studded with tomatoes, peppers and onions. We roasted and chopped, boiling jars and doing things that are WAY out of our cooking league. The scent of paprika, caramelized onions, hot peppers and garlic filled the air. Finally, at about 2am, we called it quits, hoping our jars would vacuum seal.

The next morning, Libby and I raced to the fair grounds. We sat in the car for a few minutes, trying to decide if it was worth taking in our entries. The tomatillos were not ripe and made the salsa a little bitter. The jars took longer than expected to sterilize and the Hungarian lesco had become too salty.

Finally, with no time to spare, Liberty marched in our entries. The person at the desk (amusingly named Harmony. She should have been one of our sisters, right?) explained that we would receive an email as soon as the winners were announced.

Then we waited ... and waited ... and waited ...

Silence.

Then, the tirades began. The judges must be related to the entrants. Their palates weren't refined enough. They figured out our canning method didn't meet protocol. The tomatillos destroyed everything. We reduced the Hungarian Lecso for too long. Really, the whole thing was just super annoying and we were never going to do it again.

After church, I was going home. With noon day sun streaming through my car window I had almost forgotten the entire county fair debacle, when I opened my email.

Liberty and I rushed to the fair and ... well ... we liked the county fair after all ...

Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by an outcome?? We'd love to hear about it!!