use real butter

Recipe: eggplant fries

Someday I will sit down to post when I don’t have a million other things going on. I don’t know when that will be. I do know that this will be the last post in 2010 I write the night before I have to catch a flight. Let me tell you, I am quite happy about that. I’ve been home for three days frantically trying to get things done before I head off into the yonder including a thorough round of spring cleaning which is merely 6 months late (or early if you want to be generous). Colorado still hasn’t decided if it is summer or autumn. And now with the time change, the dog is petitioning for dinner at 5pm.

looking east as the clouds pass overhead

So I’ll dispense with any further chit chat and get to brass tacks. When I was in Seattle this past September, my good friends took me to Poppy for dinner. There I had the most delightful eggplant fries and made a mental note to try it at home.

eggplant, herbs, seasonings, and flour

put the seasonings in with the flour

It’s a relatively basic concept to chop up the vegetable in question and deep fry it. Everything tastes good this way, right? Knowing my deep frying prowess, the potential for screwing it up was high. I checked the interwebs for reference and found a lovely recipe at The Hungry Mouse which guided me through not having to think about what goes in the seasoned flour.

mixing the seasoned flour

peel the eggplants

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: alice’s chocolate chip cookies

Coming home feels good. There are many aspects of southern California that I miss and love: friends, food, cultural diversity (OMG, something other than WHITE!), and it’s familiar. But I can do without the heat, the smog, the traffic… the stress. For us, living in Colorado has fewer stressors – it’s simpler and we like it that way. That is why visiting California is so great. I caught up with more friends during the week over lunches and dinners and election results. Todd and Diane were so incredibly sweet to take an entire day off to meet with me and take me around Little Saigon.

a knock-off hello kitty seal on my milk tea boba

banh mi to kick off the food fest

These guys are like family to me – so generous, loving, open, honest, sincere. They are also ridiculously funny, protective of my interests, silly, and just plain fun to be around. Family. To walk through Little Saigon with the two of them is quite the experience. Todd speaks in Vietnamese with the little ladies in the stores asking about various produce and they LOVE him (who doesn’t?) while Diane explains what the popular snacks are or the difference between a Viet baguette and a French baguette. I noticed that she beams with pride and love when she shares this with me. It’s such a part of who she is and I really love that. I love those two.

diane smiles at a jar of her favorite pickled mango (i am addicted to it)

pâté chaud (puff pastry filled with chicken and vegetables)

But I was on a mission to find passion fruits. Most of the passion fruits on Todd and Diane’s vines were still green (and I don’t want to be picking their bounty clean anyway) and some were supposedly arriving in the markets and getting bought up quite early. We decided to try our luck and just see what was around. Lo and behold, there were passion fruits. BAGS of them! Let me just point out that the bougie bougie grocery stores like Whole Foods and Bristol Farms carry passion fruits. They carry about 12 small ones in some neglected corner of the produce department and they want $3.69 FOR EACH ONE. Diane asks the little lady in Vietnamese how much a bag is. The lady replies and Diane turns to me and softly says, “$10 a bag” and turns right back to the lady to haggle. There were 20 passion fruits in each bag. Diane is haggling, speaking softly in her beautiful native language and I whisper loudly to her, “Tell her I’ll pay $20 a bag! I’ll buy them all!” Without turning around, Diane waves her hand at me – the sign language for “SHUT UP!” She laughs and says, “If you buy three bags, she’ll sell them to you for $9 a bag.” I bought four bags. I hoard shop. It’s a Chinese thing.

score – big time

Next they brought me to their studio in LA for a tour and then to relax and start prep for dinner. We took a stroll around the ‘hood, visited with one of my oldest college friends back at the studio for a short while, and then guests began arriving.

this is willie

diane made passion fruit juice from some of our loot!

totally addictive sweet onion dip and the last candy-sweet tomatoes from their garden

We had a lovely evening with Allison, Son, Melissa, and Rene. [Brooke had to cancel at the last minute because of work and we were so sad to miss her.] The food was exceptional. I think that is a given with food bloggers – we know how to throw a dinner party! We began with that sweet onion dip (aka crack) and the tomatoes, then a lovely green salad with fresh picked fuji apples and homegrown pomegranate seeds. I believe Todd mixed some homemade apple cider sidecars for folks (a drink would have had me under the table). He also made his sinfully magical potatoes au gratin to accompany a one-pot chicken dish they learned from Three Many Cooks’ latest book. Allison brought her light-as-a-feather vanilla cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting for dessert. The conversation was a roller coaster of laughs, revelations, “tweetable” moments, stories, and musings.

who knew a small group could be so boisterous?

diane dishing up some amazingness

thankfully it cooled down enough to open the windows

By the end of my trip, I was feeling drunk on all of that quality time spent with people who are important to me. Several of these friends I’ve known longer than I’ve known Jeremy. It’s good to catch up in person even if you are in touch via email or other social media fairly regularly. In the morning, I watched the sun’s approach over the mountains in the East and began to pack my things, including the haul of 60+ passion fruits. It was time to go home. Home was calling to me.

sunrise through our filthy window

You know what I like to do at sea level? I like to run. I ran and hiked during our trip to southern California because I feel like I’m on jet fuel with all of that extra oxygen in the air. There are things that are more difficult to do at elevation, like run… or bake. Some of my food blog pals like recipe testing and do it for a living. I have to wonder if they would love recipe testing if they had to bake at high altitudes. Because I *hate* recipe testing high altitude baking recipes. So one night I’m looking online for a good chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found Alice‘s recipe and it sounded like the perfect cookie. I gave it a try.

beat the butter and sugars until super light and fluffy

add eggs and vanilla

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: arepas with guasacaca

It has been snowing horizontally in my ‘hood for the past couple of days. I rather like the vertical snow more – you know, the kind that falls gently and accumulates so you can ski it? But I’ll take any snow we can get at the moment because we haven’t had our usual Big Dump Snow Day yet and it’s nearly November. Meanwhile, we’ve been taking care of business at home – like choosing who won the Doughnuts cookbook giveaway! Jeremy gathered Kaweah’s ragtag crew of toys, assigning each one a number and randomly distributing them in a line (that is, they are not laid out in numerical order). Then we recorded the number of the first toy she touched. We did this three times.

kaweah picked the number 557

Our number is 557. We had 274 qualifying entrants (I basically accepted entrants up until Kaweah had a number) and 557 MOD 274 is 9. Congratulations Emily Vigue! You’ve won a free copy of Lara Ferroni’s Doughnuts! I’ll send you an email to get your shipping address right away!

In case you’re wondering just how random my selection process is, my resident astrophysicist came up with the method and we had it verified for pure idiotic randomness by my friend and resident economist (also statistician), Erin. Not to mention – it’s Kaweah – does ANYONE know what goes on in that little brain of hers?

well, right now you know what kaweah is thinking

Erin and Ali came up yesterday so Erin could teach us to make arepas. Erin has been wanting to share arepas with us forever and ever. She learned how to make them the proper way in Venezuela. While I don’t particularly enjoy spending time in tropical climates, I am more than willing to partake of the cuisine. I’ve been wanting to try and blog about arepas ever since Erin mentioned them, so it all worked out. And if you see henna tattoos on the hands of our models, yes – they were at the party too!

start with harina pan

Erin told me there are two brands of harina that she is aware of and harina PAN is the one you want to use. You probably won’t find it in your neighborhood grocery store unless you are lucky enough to have a good Latin American market nearby (if so, color me jealous). So burn that image above into your brain because it is soooo worth it to make these delectable little pockets of savory amazingness.

pour the harina pan into a large bowl

add warm water

and some oil (and salt)

mix it together with your hand and let it rest

While you let the harina sit (Erin says ten minutes minimum, but the longer the better), you can make the guasacaca, a Venezuelan avocado salsa. Sounds like huasakaka – no hard G, okay? The ingredients are relatively easy to come by.

onion, jalapeño, parsley, cilantro, garlic, and avocado

blender it

You’ll also need a little salt, some white vinegar or rice wine vinegar, and oil (which you add last – always last). This might have come together easier had we used the food processor or if we hadn’t packed the leafy herbs in first. If you go the blender route and your blender sucks as much as mine does, then please blender the onion, vinegar, and avocado first. That will produce enough liquid to get the rest of the ingredients blendered properly, otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time pushing ingredients down toward the blade over and over and over again (with the blender OFF, of course).

erin finally gets the guasacaca to blend up

brilliant green color

**Jump for more butter**