Tuna Toast

Another post about food from the past........

since I'm not really cooking that much this week. I did go out for drinks at the new Bowery Bar and then for appetizers at the neighboring Magnolia last night, but of course failed to take any food photos (blame it on the pino noir!). Even though our onion rings, calamari and crab & artichoke quesedilla were all tasty, I was more focused on the conversation and didn't really retain the details necessary to blog about the meal. I've been eating hard boiled eggs for breakfast and leftovers for lunch & dinner which are hardly blog-worthy. So- you're once again stuck reading about my pre-Tuna Toast foodie adventures. I promise to get back in the kitchen next week!

I used to bake a lot more - I went through a pastry obsessed period where I made tarts, cakes, cupcakes, bread...pretty much anything in the carb family. I felt so creative and alive decorating the desserts or kneading bread. Note to self- get baking again! I would spend most nights pouring over Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible, daydreaming about the beautiful and deeelish things I would make.

Alas, that phase has faded out a bit lately but I know I just need to crack open one of those books and inspiration will hit.

Until then, here are some blasts from the past:

French chocolate butter cake
It looks plain, but it was sooo rich and chocolately while retaining it's cakeness. It wasn't a heavy gooey brownie-like thing. The perfect example of simple decadence.

Lime and mango tart with a macadamia crust
Very tropical dessert. If you look closely, you can see a thin layer of pink on top of the tart. That is the 1 Tablespoon of fruit that I extracted from 2 GUAVAs (did I say passion fruit before? Ugh!) that I randomly purchased at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market on a whim. In my tropical-fruit-ignorance, I had NO idea that there was so little "fruit" in a guava. Now I know the true meaning of the phrase "it's like trying to get blood out of a turnip." I get it.

Ciabatta
My very first attempt at ciabatta looked great and was pretty good, although it lacked the trademark gaping holes inside.

Lemon cheesecake with a rhubarb glaze
I've made this several times and it is one of my favorites. I added the strawberries for decoration- and notice the cute champagne bottle candle?

Baking, Desserts, Sweets