Tag Archives: almonds

Mr. 66

July 3, 2013 By in Recipes Tags: , , , 10 Comments

Butter-Toasted Almond-Amaretto Ice Cream with Sautéed Cherries

Cherry Sundaes
I see him everyday. He’s a constant that I appreciate. He’s stoic, not showing much outward feeling of pleasure or pain. He brightens my mornings, my evenings, and my weekends. I don’t know the mystery man’s name. To me he is just Mr. 66.

I have long had a fascination with commuters—my nameless companions and the strangers. My feet usually do the work in the mornings, but sometimes I take the bus. The 66 bus. The bus so infamous that it has it’s own fake twitter account. There are familiar visages in sight every morning. The sitting old, sour-faced woman whose nose scrunches up every time a young person’s backpack accidentally graces her face on the sardine-can of a morning commute. The young mother with the rhinestone-studded, electic blue iPhone case and her super stylin’ little boy, a 2-year-old Lebron James fan. There’s the guy who looks strikingly like someone I went to high school with and who is always biting off a cream cheese–filled plain bagel from Kupel’s. I know their stops, and they probably know mine.

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Hello, Love

January 10, 2013 By in Recipes Tags: , , , , , 8 Comments

chocolate-almond pear tart with cinnamon whipped cream

Cinnamon Whipped Cream
It’s over. The experiment is over. Winter is here.

Remember this? You thought I was crazy. You were ready to revoke my dessert-lover’s license. I may be crazy but this year, like every year, I did not have a hard time avoiding chocolate from mid spring-December. (And I’m talking real chocolate; the use of white *cough*sweetened cocoa butter*cough* chocolate was totally acceptable.)

This certainly does not (as I tried and failed to explain in my farewell post) mean that I didn’t eat chocolate or chocolate-laced baked goods made by others. I was not following some sort of regime or cleanse. I eat chocolate everyday, and I definitely indulged in plenty of chocolate desserts and pastries while out and about.

But since I did not use my hands to manipulate it—chop a big block of it with all of my might or stir it ever so carefully as it melts into velvet in the bowl of a double boiler—I was still somewhat disconnected from it. Now I am craving something rich, dark, and maybe a bit gooey like I never have before. But the process was justified. I didn’t long to bake with chocolate. I was distracted for the reasons I outlined: The fruits and the flavors of late Spring, Summer, and Fall are too intriguing and too fleeting to put on the back burner. The yearly experiment is a way to broaden my baking horizons and stray from the obvious, from the universally loved.

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The Core

July 26, 2012 By in Recipes Tags: , , , , , 7 Comments

apricot-blueberry crumb tart


I love people. I take after my mother, a real “people person.” She is the chattiest, most exuberant person I know. For me it’s a little bit different. I guess I’m an introvert — a term that I think is more understood than ever before — who loves people all the same. I don’t think introversion is contrary to loquaciousness, to curiosity in others. Get me going, and I can chew your ear off (if there’s any flesh left after my mother is through). Because really, people are such curious creatures. Books filled with infinite pages. Oh, the stories they tell. Resources. There are so many people who are wiser, sharper, more learned than I will ever be. And people are just plain funny and awkward and infinitely interesting. Our little habits — the way we walk, we talk, we eat — are just so damn amusing. A boring person? I’ve yet to meet one. I know people with whom I’m incompatible. But I’m rarely bored when in someone else’s presence.

So, this medium has suited me well. At a time when I feel my personal relationships are suffering — from distance, lack of time, lack of effort, or what have you — writing about food has filled the gap a little. I’m sharing, I’m talking. Reading blogs from other people, some near, some far, each with his or her own friendly voice, has satisfied, to a degree, my craving for connection, even if I’ve never commented on that person’s blog or sat down to a meal with him or her.

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Eating in the Raw

March 14, 2012 By in Recipes Tags: , , , , 11 Comments

milk chocolate-almond cookies



I think cookies – especially simple drop cookies, back-of-the-package classics – are the comestible that triggers the most memories for me. I'm sure it's the same for most, baker or non-baker. It's the universal pastry. Every culture, every holiday, every family has a cookie. I fondly remember the tender ma’amoul we would purchase at the local Armenian bakeries when I was a kid just as much as I do putting out my own creations on a Santa-shaped plate every Christmas Eve. The cookie was the first thing I learned to make, the first thing I could call my own. I bonded with my mother over the Toll House recipe; she nearly always had to stir in the chips as my little arm cramped from fatigue. I gave holiday gifts of oatmeal-cranberry-white chocolate; they were puffy and cakey but, at the time, they were my signature. Not a special occasion went by without some sort of celebratory biscuit.

What always seemed odd to me, though, was the prevalence of “cookie dough” in food culture. The pleasure of cookie dough for me was its ability to transform from molded clay into chewy saucers, and I would marvel at the magic in front of the oven door with flashlight in hand. Sure, I would take a taste of the tacky leftovers at the bottom of the mixing bowl to understand them, to see if they tasted just so; but more than a morsel never passed my lips. If anything, I would fight off the anticipation of the seemingly long 8-10 minutes by munching through the leftover chocolate chips. It wasn’t the fear of raw egg that spoiled that childhood (or really, any-age) joy for me; I just didn’t get it.

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