What I Love Today:

#1: I want to be cool enough to have made this video first: I’m obsessed!

#2: I seriously laughed out loud at these salient questions concerning Disney’s Beauty and the Beast

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/questions-disney-forgot-to-answer-about-beauty-and-the-be

(Seriously, read them.)

#3: While giving me a routine cleaning, my dental hygienist told me “I’m not stalking you, but I drove by your school recently.” She also offered to be on call if I need anything when I get my tonsils out in two weeks. My healthcare professionals are the bomb.

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#4: This morning, I learned that Lemmings NEVER actually were in the habit of jumping of cliffs to commit mass suicide – a lie which was, in fact, initiated and perpetuated by none other than Walt Disney! Don’t believe me? Google it.

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#5: Today I overheard a student telling another student about me, and they said: “She’s pretty cooky, but she’s not insane!”

Spring has Sprung

Firth of All:

I know I am not alone in my perpetual crushing on Colin Firth, despite our huge age differential. The man successfully interprets such gorgeous sensitive men on screen, it’s hard not to believe he’s a little bit like that off-screen. Don’t agree with me?

Let’s look at the evidence:

#1: The Importance of Being Earnest?

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#2: What a Girl Wants?

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#3:Pride and Prejudice?

How can you see that last movie and not fall for Mr. Darcy a little?

#4: Bridget Jones Diary?

The whole “just the way you are” thing? Gets me every time.

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#5: Or perhaps you’ll at least have seen Love Actually?

Anybody who would learn portuguese to woo the love of his life gets an A+ in the romance department as far as I’m concerned.

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I think I’ve pretty much been in love with him ever since I saw The Secret Garden. And that was based solely off of a very short clip!

Colin Firth is one dreamy man.

I like this BEAUCOUP!

Voila a student drawing:

GET IT????

Adult Learning…

I have learned several things recently.

Paul McCartney had a dog named Martha, that he loved mucho!

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Jack the Ripper only had like, 5 confirmed victims. That’s not very many to have made such a name for himself. Just sayin’.

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Jimmy Stewart apparently got his start in showbiz by playing accordion!

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Hitler once got a letter from Gandhi giving advice.

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Homemade brownies are insanely good if you undercook them juuuust slightly and then eat the next day!

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Motivation is rarely useful to an individual if it all come from external sources.

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Who says you ever stop learning?

She’s a BRIK house!

A increasingly long time ago, when I was in college, in an effort to get creative for a class project, I decided to tackle the making of some tunisian tastiness, and document the process through photos. . . but first I had to know,

What on earth should I make?

After my college self (see right) buckled down and did a little bit of research, there seemed to be many different options, all of which could be difficult to pull off successfully in my lovely-yet-decidedly-lacking-in-the-culinary-department apartment.

The Apartment Building

Digging a little deeper, I discovered the existence of something called “Brik”. What is it? Well, it’s basically egg, onion, tuna, parsely, and some other spices, all wrapped up in pastry and fried into warm goodness. Like: slightly-less-than-healthy little protein pockets. It sounded tasty, and (more importantly) reasonably uncomplicated. So, with an apartment full of stressed out seniors, a deadline looming mere hours away, and an online recipe to guide me, I set about making some delicious brik of my own in our tiny windowless kitchen.

You will need:

1 can of tuna (6oz)
¼ cup chopped Scallions or Cilantro
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil plus additional for brushing
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 egg white
1 tablespoon water
About 3 cups vegetable oil (for frying brik)
6 (8-inch-square) spring-roll wrappers
6 whole eggs (I hard boiled them!)

The first step is to drain the tuna and then mash it together with the scallions, olive oil, salt, pepper, and parsely. This is going to be your filling for the Brik.

Next, in a side cup, mix together the egg white and the water. After this, it is important to begin heating the vegetable oil in a heavy skillet (a thermometer should read 350 degrees Fahrenheit!). While it’s all heating up, lay out the lovely egg-roll wraps, and prepare to form some BRIK! You want to put a little olive oil on the inside, then put a small bit of the tuna mixture in the very center. This is the point when you also add in your half-hard-boiled-egg, before folding. You can do this with raw egg, too, but it kind of freaked me out, so hard-boiled it was!

Use the egg-white&water mixture to help seal up the edges (paint it in a square around the outer edge before starting to fold the beauties). Then fry these in the oil about 2 at a time, approximately 1 minute per side, until they’re golden and beautiful.

You can keep these brik in the oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit until it’s time to serve them, because these are best served warm!

Bust these out at your next tunisian brunch for some solidly (and deliciously) simple protein to kick off the day!

Ode to Beaker!

Maudlin with Madeleines

Once upon a time, when I lived in France, I fell in love.

It was a whisper-soft morning in Aix-en-Provence, and the world of southern France was stirring like a spoon through honey – slowly; sweetly. Still new enough to delight in every minute facet of this uniquely french culture in which I found myself, I was awake and bent on luxuriating in exploration. Slowly weaving my way through the quiet bustle of the Saturday morning market, I drifted from booth to booth, internally marveling at the magic inherent in both le marché and the morning. It was in this state of naïve marvel, that I unwittingly came face to face with a serious epicurean love, or, what some people might refer to as a culinary crush. That’s right, this was my first experience with madeleines in France.

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So began my life-long romance with the madeleine. A few euro later, and I was hooked. Nothing has ever compared to the delectable madeleines that I tasted in Aix-en-Provence at the market. . . but I continue to seek out a delicious madeleine in the United States; my own personal Search for Delicious.

Today, I chose two madeleine recipes to attempt and, in one case, dramatically adapt. First, I went to Martha. Okay, so she might have a reputation for ridiculously elaborate everything (not to mention the whole brief stint in Jail) . . . but the woman shares a mean recipe. Said recipe, which you can find online here, is just so imminently doable compared to many. I followed all of the steps.

First, you butter the pan, zest the lemon peel, and juice the lemon itself. . . Then, you mix the melty butter with eggs, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest, and lemon juice until it’s silky.At this point, you put all the highly-sifted dry ingredients into the liquid-mix and “fold”. I dislike “folding” mixtures together. It’s tedious, and I don’t know how I feel about the results (aka, it seems a little bumpy in the end). . . BUT, fold I did, and then let it sit the requisite 30 minutes before spooning it into the pan, and waiting the short 6-7 minutes until this first batch was done.The Result? A fairly lovely madeleine, if you ask me. After they had cooled a bit, I gave them the madeleine treatment and explored the potential success story. . .

My Findings?

Martha’s Madeleines are respectable. They stay moist and retain a tangy lemon flavor that can sometimes be lost on the madeleine. I would probably make these again, although I’m not sure it would be worth the number of eggs. 3 full eggs and 2 egg yolks in only about 24 madeleines? It seems a little excessive. And, sadly, they’re still not as good as the ones from Aix. HOWEVER, they did keep a little better than the others, remaining tasty into the following day, rather than getting dry. People who do not typically like strong lemon flavors still enjoyed this madeleine immensely, and the heavier/more-bread-like texture has a certain density (*cough* EGGS *cough*) that appeals to some more than others.

SO, it was with hopeful trepidation that I took on an adaptation of my own, blending a lot of different ideas I read online with my preferred ingredients and a little prayer (it was very loosely based on Christophe Felder’s recipe in his book Patisserie). Without further ado, I give you my second attempt… the quasi-original:

Madeleines de Cakey.

Ingredients needed:

1 Stick plus 1 TBSP butter (melted)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp vanilla-bean paste
1/4 cup + 2 TBSP sugar
2 TBSP honey
1 cup + 1 TBSP cake flower
1 tsp baking powder
1&1/2 – 2 TBSP fresh lemon juice
1-2 TBSP lemon zest

First you melt the butter and set it aside so it’s not scalding hott. Then, while you’re on the subject of butter, grease up that madeleine pan generously. After you set that buttery cake mold aside, break the eggs into a bowl and add the vanilla extract.

Next, whisk the sugar into the eggs until it dissolves.

Neeeext, whisk in the honey – it makes for a really lovely texture! When the honey-nilla-eggy mixture is smooth and shiny, pause to sift together the flour and baking powder, then mix it into the egg mixture.

At this point, your butter should still be liquid, but somewhat cooler than before, so this is its’ big moment . . . stir it into the rest of the mixture, followed by the lemon juice.

Now, once you are all set with the buttery goodness, it is important to remember your flavoring, so this is where I added the lemon juice and zested some lemon right into the batter.

Last, but not least, I added some vanilla bean concentrate/paste, which is possibly my favorite ingredient of all time.

Now that the mixture smells amazing and is flecked with beautiful bits of vanilla, it should look sort of like this: At this point, take saran wrap and cover the dough, right up next to the surface of the batter, and let it sit for 2 hours at room temperature. When two hours are up, bake them at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for about 6 minutes (in a buttered pan). Careful! These are easy to overbake! But I promise, the vigilance will be worth it . . . check out this beauty!

My Findings?

This is absolutely my preferred madeleine between the two recipes I attempted. Although it’s still just not quite as good as the ones from Aix, the consistency was much closer, and the spongey-ness was much better. These dried out a little faster, so I would recommend serving them the same day they are made. The flavor was, while a little less abrupt with the vanilla to gentle it, still a very nice, quite-lemony delicious! In the 15(ish) blind taste tests, only one person preferred Martha’s to mine, so I believe we have a winner, folks! (At least until an even better one comes along . . . )

Now, if somebody out there has the perfect recipe, please don’t hold out on me! I’m still on that quest . . . but these will assuage the nostalgic homesickness for france and tide me over for now!