friday links

twice my life has been changed by the sugar coated pork buns at tim ho wan in hong kong and this week two red bowls posted a recipe for them and i nearly dropped my phone.

idk why i haven't gotten into this earlier but kurt weill's seven deadly sins is my new jam and faulheit is my fave movement and yes i've been singing along all week. 

i would like this coconut chia seed pudding for breakfast right now please.

lucius bonus track!

i am in love with panda head's kitchen sink series (and not just because she posted photos of my new little sink this week)!

the crepe cake has always been a thing i'm afraid to try, but i think i could handle cute little mini ones.

it's a recipe for kesté pizza and i suddenly don't feel so hopeless about the pizza in my new life. (thank you, alexandra's kitchen, for showing me the way.)

i want an easter basket. i want this grown-up easter basket.

this gnocchi recipe makes me mad at myself for ignoring my inner gnocchi obsessor for so long in the name of eggboy's gluten free-ness. 

have you seen the saveur best food blog awards finalist list yet?! i am not so good at voting things/asking people to vote for things, but at the very least you should bookmark the crap out of these finalist blogs because they're great.

happy weekend!

-yeh!

photos are from an upcoming project... i'll post links to the recipes soon!!

braised brisket with quinoa risotto

hey check out all this meat, you guys! i had to be kind of a bitch to get it. correction: i didn't have to be, i just sort of was when i realized how difficult it'd be to find. after searching at way too many groceries around here and asking all too many meat counter men, i found a very very large one at the town butcher that was frozen solid. it was entirely too big, so i had the man go back into the walk-in freezer and dig out another while i cringed at the thought of how long it had been in that freezer. despite jake dickson's voice in my mind advising me never to buy vacuum packed meat and to leave the deckle on and to make sure it is grain fed, i bought it. i had no choice. a tear came as memories of briskettown flashed before my eyes.

but i bought it and then i went to target and browsed the dollar section because what else are you supposed to do while your brisket defrosts? and in the dollar section i, for the first time since moving to this tiny town, ran into someone i knew. one of eggboy's friends. i stood there unshowered with brisket on my mind and grump in my system, trying to figure out where i had met her and when it came to me, i still had brisket on my mind, and she asked how i was and i said, i'm waiting for my brisket to defrost. 

i don't know if i was more embarrassed from telling a near stranger about my brisket defrosting or having not showered in a week, but i didn't even think to ask her how the small human growing in her belly was.

such a bitch i am. 

anyway, i got it home, i hurled it onto my counter, i tweeted about it, i said you better defrost by tomorrow goddammit, i frowned. i thought about raising a cow for this very reason. 

in the end it worked out. i made some good smells and a yummy quinoa accompaniment. there were leftover sandwiches for a very long time. one day, i will make a good bubbe. 

the recipe for this brisket, and its delightful quinoa risotto that uses the brisket's cooking liquids, may be found in my latest edition of molly on the range. passover's a comin! i can't hardly wait!

-yeh!

baby cannabis greens with cacao nibs and long poached platypus eggs

sometimes i feel like a total twat for being so far removed from the countries of my ancestors. traveling to hungary has never seriously been on my radar, perhaps it's because we don't have much family there anymore (although i'd love to go to budapest one day), and in fifth grade my dad offered to take me to china when he had to go for work, but i said no because i would have had to drop out of the annual ice skating show. i was shrek, so you get it.

anyway, i've been feeling this overwhelming need to connect to my family's homelands, so i recently tracked down one of my third cousins who lives in beijing. his name is cao cao. when we were little, we'd climb on the jungle gym and eat pork buns whenever he'd visit with his family. we could barely communicate since he didn't speak english, but we got along great because there are only two possible interpretations for the motion that means do you want to swing on the swing set?, and only one possible interpretation if you're four and/or related.

cao cao is big into slam poetry now and does a lot of traveling to compete.

i mentioned to him that i like food, so the other day he sent me a ton of goodies that he got on a recent trip to australia, and they were all centered on the theme of platypus. i couldn't believe that he remembered my favorite beanie baby was patti the platypus! i've never thought about eating the little guys, but cao cao sent along platypus jerky, pickled platypus bills, even cured tail which is so unbelievably fatty and delicious. just like bacon. oh, and he also sent some of their eggs! i've always been so fascinated by the fact that platypuses are the only mammals to lay eggs.

their eggs are roughly the same size as chicken eggs, maybe slightly larger, and they are speckled on both the shell and the yolk. they're naturally very salty and have a slight aftertaste of flounder. they take more than a day to cook (!!!), but they're really really yummy in an old fish sort of way.

their fishy qualities go really well with one of my new favorite, locally sourced ingredients: cannabis. it's apparently super easy and common to forage cannabis in this area during the spring, and its young leaves are like candy, so eggboy and i have been eating that stuff up like there is no end in site. you guys! it's the greatest.

i added some cacao nibs to this salad as a nod to cao cao (你好，曹操!), garnished it with some citrus to add color, and then ate it straight no dressing because that is how i roll these days, especially when cannabis is involved. 

baby cannabis greens with cacao nibs and long poached platypus eggs

serves 2

ingredients

2 platypus eggs

salt + pepper

8 ounces cannabis greens

1 small purple onion, thinly sliced

1 orange, sliced

2 tb cacao nibs

clues

bring a large pot of water to a boil. boil the eggs for 38 hours, adding more water as needed. peel the eggs and slice them in half. sprinkle with salt and pepper.

combine them with the greens, onion, orange slices, and cacao nibs. 

toss.

serve with a heavy dose of common sense because if you've made it this far, you are very very gullible.

happy april fools' day, lovelies!

-yeh!

p.s. i've been named a finalist in the baking and dessert category of saveur's best food blog awards! go check out the other finalists, they are the bee's knees!

battenberg cake

i feel like tris from divergent when i tell you: this isn't real. 

this isn't a real battenberg cake. it's part of your fear landscape where all the pink cakes lose their color, because let's review our cakes of the world: battenberg cakes should be pink and yellow. 

i don't know, there was a stray sheet cake in my freezer.

and this weekend called for some playing around of marzipan and jam, call it grownup play-doh. call it a celebration of all the things that are happening this week:

-a blizzard

-i am going to florida for my cousin's bat mitzvah

-heath ledger would have been 35

-eggboy's uncle is turning another year

-i might get a haircut

it's going to be a good week you guys, i just know it.

this cake is literally the easiest thing to make and it's really easy to carry around, so if you need to take a birthday cake to a friend at work or want to bail someone out of jail with a cake in hand, this is one very good option.

battenberg cake

makes 1 loaf cake

ingredients

1 batch of your favorite vanilla cake batter, mixed with a splash of almond extract

food coloring

16 ounces of marzipan

powdered sugar, for dusting

about 1/2 cup raspberry (or other berry) jam

decorations: berries, jimmies, glaze, etc.

clues

again, traditional battenberg cakes are two different colors. you can either do what i did and bake a 9-inch x 13-inch sheet cake without coloring it, or you can divide the batter into two, stir in a little food coloring, and then divide the pan lengthwise by placing a fold of parchment down the center so you can bake the two separate cakes in the same pan (like this).

once the cakes are baked and cooled, wrap them tightly in plastic wrap and freeze for at least an hour or overnight.

trim the cakes so that you have four long skinny cakes that are as perfectly square as you can get them. get out your ruler for this! mine turned out to be 1 1/2-inch squares.

on a surface dusted with powdered sugar, knead some food coloring into your marzipan. transfer it to a large sheet of parchment and then roll it out so that it's big enough to cover the cake, leaving the ends open.

brush the lengths of the cakes with jam so you can "glue" them together. brush the marzipan with jam, and then carefully roll the cake up with the marzipan. smooth out all surfaces of the marzipan so that it sticks well to the cake, and then place it with the marzipan seam side down.

decorate as you wish!

-yeh!