some nights, you're just on...

I had one of the best Monday's in a long time yesterday. Although that could be because we're leaving town tomorrow and so yesterday was technically like a Thursday...

First of all, it was a beautiful, 80-degree day here in the City yesterday, which is like a nice hot breath of fresh air. I'm tired of freezing my ass off in July. I know, I complain when it doesn't rain enough, and then I complain when it's not hot enough. I'm a big, fat whiny baby. I think my problem is that I want it to be Portland here, and it's just not. But anyways, the warm day set me off on the right foot.

I've been wanting to make a Pugliese loaf of bread for a long time, but it takes a starter that you have to let sit for 8-10 hours, and I always forget to do that until it's way too late. This morning, I remembered and mixed it all up before I left the house. Wow - I never remember stuff like that. So when I got home after work, it was nicely fermented and ready to make the bread dough. I opened every window in the apartment and let the warm, summery air and the perfect breeze stream through. Oh it was glorious. I washed a huge load of dishes (that have been sitting there glowering at me for about a week) which felt liberating, as I could actually see the countertops again. What I wouldn't give for the luxury of a dishwasher these days. All of you all who have a dishwasher, go give it a big hug right now.

Then I mixed up the Pugliese and kneaded for 8-10 lovely minutes of meditation on the beautiful dappled sunlight coming through the trees right outside the kitchen window. If you are under the impression that kneading bread dough is chore, give it a try - it's really quite a nice experience. It's so cool to feel the dough submit to the kneading and become smooth, and pliable, like a soft clay, under your fingers. I love it. After putting the pugliese in my bread bowl to rise, I loaded up the weeks and weeks of laundry that was stacked up and headed to the laundrymat. Laundry is one of my least favorite things to do, but sometimes you just have to face the music.

Once the laundry was rolling, I hopped on the 30 Stockton down to the Marina market to pick up some eggs for my Butterscotch Pots de Creme (a custard/pudding type dessert) that I had decided to make for dessert. I also snuck a cheap Chardonnay into my basket...I hit the same 30 (after it had turned around) to take me home, popped the laundry into the dryers and got home just as the Pugliese was perfectly risen.

I formed the Pugliese into two loaves and set it aside to rise again, whipped up the Pots de Creme and put them in the oven to cook, then took a quick break to watch the last half of an episode of The Wire (my new favorite show). By the time that was over, I had caught my breath sufficiently and headed down to get the clean laundry.

Everything was clicking along like clockwork until I checked on the pots de creme and they weren't quite cooked enough. So, that threw things off schedule a little bit. I was supposed to come home with the laundry, take out the pots de creme and throw the bread in, so this is where things went a little bit awry. So, I made myself a salad in the meantime, and mixed up a vinaigrette. Then it was time for the pots de creme to come out of the oven.

At this point, it was getting close to 9:30 and I had plans to make homemade noodles for dinner still, and the bread to cook. A normal person probably would have scrapped the homemade noodles and done something else, but I was really feeling in the groove last night, so I decided to go ahead with it anyways. So I got the pasta machine all set up, and whirred up the pasta dough in the food processor. That was the easy part. I realize, in hindsight, that my dough needed quite a bit more flour. But when I first started feeding it through the pasta roller, I hadn't yet realized this, and it stuck. It stuck big time. So I added a little bit more flour and kept forcing it through and it worked, for the rolling part. Then I went to try and cut it on the spaghetti cutter, and this is when I realized a cardinal rule for making your own pasta - the dough must be very dry. Or it sticks in the cutters, comes out in a giant clump, and is basically useless. So, being an extremely brilliant person, my next bright idea was to feed another pasta sheet through the cutters to push out the dough from the first pasta sheet. Unfortunately, this second sheet of dough was no dryer than the first sheet and so, surprise surprise, it stuck in the cutters as well. So now, instead of one ruined sheet of pasta, I had two ruined sheets, and we were closing in on 10:00.

So, I did what any smart person would do, I deduced that I wasn't saavy enough to use the spaghetti cutters, and switched to the bigger, easier fettucine cutter. Which worked. By 10:15, I finally had all the fettucine cut, and realized that I had forgotten to put a pot of water on to boil it in. So, the pot went on, the bread came out of the oven to cool, and I actually had some time to clean up the giant cloud of flour that had enveloped the entire kitchen, and covered the kitchen table. By 10:30, when Neil walked in the door, the pasta was finally finished and tossed with olive oil, parmesan cheese and parsley, the Pugliese was ready, the wine was poured and the pots de creme were waiting patiently in the fridge. It's just very European to eat dinner at 10:30 at night, right?

So, in the end it felt like a very productive day. Dishes done = check, laundry done = check, bread baked = check, noodles made = check, pots de creme baked = check, down time/tv time = check. Altogether I felt very successful, even if Neil did tell me when he got home that he doesn't really care for butterscotch. I thought they were absolutely delicious and so therefore will share the recipe with you all. It's kind of like butterscotch pudding, but tastes nothing like those terrible little tubs of pudding I used to eat as a kid. It's creamy and melts in your mouth. Got it from my favorite cooking blog, Orangette...

Here is the link, if you want to read the original blog:
http://orangette.blogspot.com/2008/01/pots-of-gold.html

And, for the record, I didn't use the fancy sugars that she talks about. I used plain brown sugar, and raw cane sugar. I also forgot to put the aluminum foil over the tops before baking, and they still turned out fine. And, finally, I don't have a light-colored saucepan, so I just tilted the pan and put a white plastic spoon into the liquid to test the color against that.

Butterscotch Pots de Crème
Adapted from M.J. Adams and Gourmet, October 2003

This custard gets its deep, warm flavor from the presence of two special sugars: muscovado and demerara. It may sound fiddly to call for fancy sugars for a simple little custard like this, but trust me: they really seal the deal. They’re the axis on which the whole thin spins. And if you live in a moderate- to good-sized town, they should be fairly easy to find. Here in Seattle, I’ve bought them at gourmet stores like Whole Foods, but this weekend I even saw them at Ballard Market, my neighborhood grocery. I like the brand India Tree.One more thing: for the water-and-demerara step, be sure to use a light-colored saucepan. If your pan is made of something dark, like this, it will be darn near impossible to see the color of the mixture as it caramelizes.

1 ½ cups heavy cream
6 Tbsp. dark muscovado sugar
¼ tsp. salt
6 Tbsp. water
2 Tbsp. demerara sugar
4 large egg yolks
½ tsp. vanilla extract

Set an oven rack in the middle position, and preheat the oven to 300°F.

In a small heavy saucepan, combine cream, muscovado sugar, and salt. Place over medium heat and bring just to a simmer, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, combine water and demerara sugar in a medium (2-quart) heavy saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and bubbly, about 5 minutes. (To gauge the color of the mixture, it may help to tilt the pan a little, so that the liquid pools on one side.) Remove from the heat and carefully add the cream mixture, whisking until combined.

In a large bowl, whisk together egg yolks and vanilla. Add hot cream mixture in a thin stream, whisking constantly. Set a fine-mesh sieve over a 1-quart glass measuring cup, and pour the custard through the sieve. Skim off any foam with a spoon.

Divide the custard among four (4-ounce) ramekins or other oven-safe vessels. (I used teacups, just because they’re pretty. Stoneware and porcelain are safe in the oven at this temperature.) Select a baking dish, one large enough to hold the ramekins without any of them touching. (I used a 9” x 13.”) Fold a dish towel to line the bottom of the baking dish; this will protect the delicate custards from touching the hot bottom of the pan. Arrange the ramekins in the pan. Seal the top of each ramekin with a piece of aluminum foil to prevent a skin from forming as they bake.

Slide the pan into the oven, and immediately pour hot tap water into the pan to reach halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake until the custards are set around the edges but still jiggle lightly in the centers when shaken, like firm gelatin, about 40 minutes. (You’ll have to move the foil to see this.) Using tongs, transfer the ramekins to a rack. Discard foil tops and cool to room temperature. The custards will continue to set as they cool. Refrigerate for a couple of hours, or until you’re ready to serve them.Serve plain or topped with a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream.

Note: These are best on the first day, but they’ll keep, covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated, for up to two days. The texture slowly declines and they develop a thin skin on top, but it certainly didn’t stop us from eating them.Yield: 4 servings

I know, I know...

I've been a bad blogger again. As you can tell, my enthusiasm for blogging kind of waxes and wanes throughout the year. But, we've been doing so much traveling lately, and have been busy around town and it's fiscal year-end at work right now, which means audit prep for me, which means more work and less time for blogging.

So a quick-recap of the last few weeks and then I'll get back to my audit prep, I promise. So we came home from Portland and then a couple of weeks later, jetted off again to Ottawa to visit my best friend Krista and her husband James. We had a really lovely time in Ottawa and I thoroughly enjoyed the 75-80 degree temps and didn't even mind the humidity. I got a taste of the summer I am missing right now by living in San Francisco.

We got home from Ottawa on the 29th, totally jet-lagged and slept-walked through the next fews days of work only to get another holiday on Friday for the 4th. A three day week is not too bad!! We had a wonderful fourth of July weekend, with a visit to the S.F. Botanical garden, which is absolutely fantastic and which we didn't have time to even get all the way through. Then we attended a barbeque and ate hot dogs and potato salad and watched the fireworks over the Bay from Alamo Square Park. The fog bank that had settled over the city kind of cut off the top of the fireworks, but it was still great.

Then on Sunday we took one of our Sunday drives and went NorthEast this time, a direction we have not yet headed in. We made it all the way out to Lake Tahoe, which was BEAUTIFUL! Unfortunately, by the time we got there there was only time to head north along the lake and then turn towards home. But the Sierra Nevadas are gorgeous and we took big, deep breaths of the pine-tree scented mountain air. We most definitely will be heading back in that direction again. So now we've taken trips North, South and Northeast from San Francisco. We still have East, which will be Yosemite, and Southeast, which I'm not sure what we'll hit there. I'll have to peruse the map. And there's no going west, that's for sure. Ocean Beach is as far west as you can go.

Then last week was the first full week that I have worked in the office since June 8th, which I really can't compain about. I settled back into the routine, which included a trip to the garden on Wed., where I harvested parsley, lettuce and PEAS!! My little bush pea plant is bursting with pods and they are the most delicious little morsels. I crunched into a pod right there in the garden and it was so juicy and so sweet. Delicious. My leeks and onions are coming right along. I've never been able to grow an onion before. I tried last year in Portland and failed miserably. But these look good. And I have carrots, beans, cucumber, zucchini, squash and more lettuce all sprouting right now too. I built my beans a little scaffold and hopefully they will shimmy right up and start making little baby beans! The garden is in full-swing.

We spent this weekend apartment-hunting and almost committed to one, but it was available too early, and the kitchen had tiny appliances, which I just couldn't accept in the end. A tiny refrigerator and a tiny stove just don't equal good kitchen. And it was a little bit more expensive every month than what we're paying right now. So, we're passing. Keep your fingers crossed that this decision was good and doesn't come back to bite us when we can't find another affordable place that will take our doggies.

And then we leave on Wednesday to jet up to Portland for my sister's wedding. I can't wait. For the bachelorette party, we will be getting manicures and pedicures and I've never had either one, so it will be a real treat to get pampered. The wedding is on Saturday and I think it will be just beautiful.

We come home from the wedding on the 19th and then the 30th we take off for our last trip of the summer - to NYC. The summer is in full swing and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The only thing I'm really missing is some good heat. Give me an 80 degree day and I will be a happy girl!