Diplomatico

The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

1 1/4 cups strong espresso (find espresso, strong coffee doesn’t really cut it)
5 Tbsp rum (I used brandy- it’s just what I had)
5 tsp sugar
5 Tbsp water
16 ounces pound cake, cut into 1/4″ slices
4 large eggs, separated
1 tsp sugar
6 oz. semisweet chocolate coarsely chopped (or in convenient chocolate chip form)
Whipped cream and fresh fruit (optional)

In a small bowl, combine the espresso, rum, sugar, and water. Moisten a sheet of cheesecloth large enough to line a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan with plenty of overhang. Line the pan with the cheesecloth. Dip the pound cake, slice by slice, in the rum and espresso soak, then use the slices to line the bottom and sides of the pan. (Dip the cake slices very quickly or they will become too soggy to handle, let any excess liquid drain from the slices before lining the pan.) Leave no gaps, patching where necessary with pieces of soaked pound cake.

In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they turn pale yellow, about 4 minutes. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler over gently simmering water or in the microwave (2-3 minutes total, stirring every 30 seconds). Gradually pour the melted chocolate over the beaten egg yolks, mixing quickly with a rubber spatula until smoothly combined. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites until the form stiff peaks. Stir a rounded tablespoon of the beaten whites into the chocolate mixture to loosen it, then gently fold in the remaining whites. Spoon the chocolate filling into the cake-lined pan. Cover the filling with more slices of soaked pound cake (you may have some cake left over). Fold the moistened cheesecloth over the top of the cake. Refrigerate the diplomatico for at least one day, and up to a week.

When you take the cake out of the fridge, unfold the cheesecloth and pull it away from the top of the cake. Invert the loaf pan onto a platter and shake it firmly to free the cake and peel off the cheesecloth. Slice and serve. You could garnish the slices with whipped cream and fresh fruit, but it also tastes just fine on its own.

My week in food has been pretty unexciting. I bought some hot dogs yesterday and combined them with my extra tube of crescent rolls. I was chowing down on pigs in a blanket for dinner. That was some trashy/wonderful noshing.

This weekend, I’m going to be making lasagna, which I see I have not written about yet. But since what I do is bascially follow the directions on the back of the Ronzoni no-cook noodles box, it’s not terribly exciting. I will be making my own sauce instead of using a jar, though. I actually don’t think I’ve ever done that before for a lasagna.

Oh, and some kind of dessert (we’re having a dinner for my mom’s birthday on Sunday). I was going to make tiramisu again, but for some reason, I cannot find ladyfingers in the grocery stores. It’s quite annoying.

I need to do laundry tonight. I’m going through socks a lot faster now that I wear two pairs during the day and one at night. My feet get cold.

Woohoo, par-teeeee tomorrow night. It’s time once again for Bud and Eddie’s Holiday Hoo-hah, which is one of my favorite events of the year. Great food, strong drinks, and interesting people. Yay!

Well, the results are in, and… we didn’t win the Katamari fanart contest. I’m a bit sad. I still think we’re the most bad-ass Katamari fans out there (closely follwed by the person who made this ridiculously cool cake [even though I think the Prince should have been made out of marzipan, not modeling clay]).

If you’d like to see who did win, go over to the We Love Katamari website (warning: flash) and looks at the Fans section. The six on the first page are the winners.

Wahhh! My sauce broke!

My mom was trying to make her sweet potato-chipotle-maple-cream gratin thing less soupy. She thought the solution might be to make a bechamel sauce instead of just pouring the cream over the sliced sweet potatoes. I tried this out this weekend. I made the sauce (omg so tasty!), assembled the dish, and slid it into a 350 oven for an hour. When I took it out… well, it was very pretty, except for the fact that there was a centimeter of oil sitting on top of the whole thing. I spooned the oilslick off the top and cut into it. More oil beneath. ARGH! It was still quite yummy, I thought. But still, DAMN!

I must have done something wrong with the sauce. People (not me, clearly) use bechamel in lasagna all the time and it doesn’t break in the oven!

I’m so sad.

Alert! The world’s best egg/omelette/crepe/crab cakes/potato pancakes pan is on sale at Amazon today! Even cheaper than it usually is- $17.99! I adore this pan, so does R☆, so do J and Barbara May, so do Barbara May’s parents, so do Barbara May’s mom’s coworkers. Come, join our cult of this pan.

I wouldn’t have thought a rant about stapling could inspire such debate. It’s interesting. I was taking notice of how I staple yesterday- I’m a diagonal stapler.

Indian Pudding

Magic Chef Cooking

2 cups milk
3 Tbsp cornmeal
2 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp molasses
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp table salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten

Heat the oven to 400. Butter or use nonstick cooking spray on a 9×9 square baking dish.

Heat the milk in the top of a double boiler. Add the cornmeal and cook over simmering water for 15 minutes. Off heat, add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Pour into the prepared dish. Bake in a water bath. Start checking to see if it has set at 30 minutes, although it will probably take closer to 50 to be done.

JATBAR

I’m surprised I haven’t run across this site before. Jason and Terry’s Bay Area Review (aka JATBAR) is a site with a bunch of reviews for Bay Area restaurants. And, OMG, they don’t just focus on San Francisco and Berkeley/Oakland! There are a bunch of places reviewed that are in my neck of the woods (ie. Burlingame to Cupertino). That makes me happy.

The original comments to this post:

mm
Thanks for alerting us to this site. I think I’ll be looking into Thai restaurants with a score of 8 or more.
Tue Nov 29 07:04:17 2005

Lydia
Homepage: kuponut.blogspot.com
Hmm. 8 or more doesn’t seem to mean that much on this site. I can’t say I like the way the reviews are written either. They give the mediocre House of Chicken and Waffles 8 even with “stack of two soggie [sic] waffles” and “small pieces chicken/expensive at fourteen bucks.” Also Fenton’s gets 9.17 specifically for the ice cream desserts, and while I love the concept of eating far too much ice cream in 20 minutes or less (http://kuponut.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_kuponut_archive.html and scroll down halfway), Zack and I weren’t all that impressed with the actual ice cream.
Also, it really doesn’t seem fair to rate a whole bakery when you’ve tried just two items, one of which you spit out after one bite:
http://www.jatbar.com/detail.asp?num=483
Sheng Kee is my Chinese bakery chain of choice, by the way.
Sarah’s mom, if you happen to be in Berkeley, there are at least 3 great Thai restaurants (not reviewed on jatbar). Racha Cafe on Telegraph has my favorite chicken pad see ew. Cha-Am on Shattuck in the gourmet ghetto has fantastic mango sticky rice and good curries. Hua-Hin near campus has a delicious yellow curry, this amazing crab/prawn/scallop platter when crab is in season (NOW, yay!), and apparently, very good steak.
Tue Nov 29 10:12:37 2005

Sarah the Hussy
Yeah, the rating seem to be skewed towards the top- why isn’t anyplace rated under a 7? It annoys me when places say they review restaurants in the Bay Area and then everything’s in SF or Berkeley (with maybe one place in San Jose). I am not driving an hour to get food. So a place that has a lot of reviews on the peninsula makes me happy.
Tue Nov 29 10:42:50 2005

Nick
Homepage: http://www.redslime.com
Email: nick@redslime.com
Any resturant called “House of Chicken and Waffles” has to be good. It’s a marriage of foods lesser people would be afraid to try, but I can think of no better combination.
Tue Nov 29 10:46:36 2005

saucy jon
Homepage: http://www.hook-slide.com
the best part about House of Chicken and Waffles is that it is (vaguely, or at least formerly) associated with Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in Los Angeles.
Tue Nov 29 11:16:23 2005

Lydia
Homepage: kuponut.blogspot.com
Look, I want good chicken and waffles as much as the next girl, but don’t promise me good chicken and waffles and give me mediocre food at high prices!
Tue Nov 29 11:43:00 2005

Lydia
Homepage: kuponut.blogspot.com
The fried chicken livers were my biggest disappointment there, by the way. Liver + fried SHOULD = good. Bah.
Tue Nov 29 11:44:34 2005

kris
im a user registered for jatbar and get to talk to jason and terry quite a bit. I can answer your questions.
lydia – if you didnt like the review for house of chicken and waffles, its “haiku” format, jason supposedly got bored writing 500+ reviews so he wanted to try something new. neither terry or jason claim to be professional reviewers, they are just normal people.
as for scores lower than 7’s, majority of the restaurants are recommended by users of the site. these are places that are favorites, hence the higher scores.
i may sound like im protecting jatbar and i am, they provide a free service with pictures. I cannot think of any other review site that does this.
if anything, shoot them an email about your complaints, they love to hear this kind of stuff.
cheers
Tue Nov 29 23:51:15 2005

Lydia
Homepage: kuponut.blogspot.com
Kris,
I didn’t actually have any questions about Jatbar. By “way the reviews are written,” I didn’t mean haiku format for that specific review, but rather the language and style of writing overall. Yes, it’s great that they provide a free service, but I’ve actually been to the eateries mentioned above, and I don’t agree with the scoring. That’s just my opinion, which I was sharing with friends on this blog. If I have any actual complaints about Jatbar, I’ll make sure to direct them to the webmasters, who I’m sure are very nice people, even if we have differing opinions on food. 😉
Wed Nov 30 11:25:08 2005

Sarah the Hussy
Well, we could always put our money where our mouths are and become members ourselves.
(so lazy, though.)
Wed Nov 30 12:13:50 2005

Sarah the Hussy
I went back to the site and listed the restaurants by rating. The lowest reviewed is a 5. You might want to keep that in mind while reading the reviews.
I mean, if you say, “I have serious cleanliness and sanitary issues with Korean Palace,” you should rate it lower than a 5.
Fri Dec 2 10:59:04 2005

kris
Sarah, they have a weird rating scale. They only rate restaurants from 5 – 10 with 5 being the absolute worst. Here’s the definition of a 5
“You would never come back, you would never recommend this place ever. You might even experienced food poisoning or some form of sickness. It could also mean this place is filthy, unsanitary, or have bugs in their food.”
Fri Dec 2 19:38:40 2005

Sarah the Hussy
Ohhh, I see. Guess I must have missed it in the FAQ. (Still kind of a weird rating system, but now I know.) Thanks for the enlightenment! It’ll help my reading of the reviews. (:
Fri Dec 2 20:47:40 2005

Zack
Email: fornaca@hotmail.com
That feel good rating system is ridiculous. It is unprofessional. It is why people make fun of Starbucks’ “tall” size, and I can’t respect jatbar knowing that 5 is the lowest score they give. Why wouldn’t they just run the scale from 0 to 5 instead of 5 to 10? Their system isn’t “weird;” it’s “deceptive.” I guess these guys learned by reading game reviews on IGN, huh?
I can appreciate the “regular guy” angle, but they seem like they have relatively untrained palates. If you don’t like green bean paste, you don’t belong in an Asian bakery. You certainly shouldn’t try to review it … because you will say something exactly as meaningless as Jason and Terry both did: “it’s an acquired taste.” Well, was it good for a green bean pastry? If they can’t say, then the review is totally, utterly useless. Why not just write, “My name is Jason and this is my reiew about green bean pastries. The end?”
Sat Dec 3 01:28:45 2005

Jason
Hello everyone, its Jason from “j”atbar. Kris told me about discussion on the site and hope I could answer a few questions.
Rating system – when we 1st started reviewing restaurants, we started with the 1-10 scale. We noticed that 99.9% of the places were in the 5 – 10 range so Terry and I threw the 1- 4 range out. We would have done the 1-5 range but everyone and their mother does that so we stuck with 5 – 10. Or we can use Terrys story, we were too lazy to change all the scores in the database to a regular rating system.
Zack, Im feeling no love from you? Our rating system is unprofessional? Quite possible since we arent professionals, we are FAR from it 🙂 Untrained palates, maybe? Does that mean I cant enjoy food and write about it, nope.
“If you don’t like green bean paste, you don’t belong in an Asian bakery. You certainly shouldn’t try to review it”
Here’s your chance to help your restaurant out. Its obvious you didnt like what I wrote so can do them a favor a write a review for them. Give us the insight on what to look for so we enjoy our visit next time. Try to write it in the experience of having green bean pastry for the 1st time. There are a lot of readers who havent had it before so you’ll want to be descriptive.
What does green bean taste like?
How will I know its fresh?
How does this green bean differ from other asian bakerys?
You will have to rate it. Here’s a quick description on our “unprofessional” ratings.
5 – the worst
6 – no return visit
7 – return visit
8 – great, once a month visit
9 – excellent, you are dying to drive people here
10 – the best, it doesnt get any better for you
The only thing I can ask is, the review can only be written if you have NO relationship ties to the bakery/restaurant.
Happy Eating,
Jason
Sat Dec 3 17:21:13 2005

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I’m sure you’re all SO EXCITED to hear what we ate.

Turkey thighs with sausage stuffing
Garlic mashed potatoes
Creamed onions
Mashed rutabagas
Chipotle-maple-cream sweet potato thing
Apple-rutabaga soup
Death by Broccoli
Green bean casserole (J made this from scratch)
Crescent rolls (I made these… from a can)
Cranberry sauce
Indian pudding and vanilla ice cream

Mind you, this was for only four people. We kind of like to overdo it. My family gets together, and it’s sort of like this:

“Have you tried this? I’m so the best cook in the family.”
“Wow, that’s pretty bad-ass. But clearly, you’re wrong, I’m the better cook- eat this!”
“Well, that’s pretty awesome. I’m still better. Try THIS!”
“Holy crap, that’s good. No, meeeeeee! EATEATEAT.”

And then we all end up eating ridiculously well. Because seriously, we’re all pretty good.

I ate cheese for dinner last night. That was pretty awesome. I got some lovely goudas from Sigona’s. It makes me make inappropriate sounds, it’s so good.

Pumpkin Cookies

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

2 sticks unsalted butter (1 cup)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp table salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cardamom

Heat oven to 375. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the pumpkin, egg, and vanilla, and mix well. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices. Add the contents of the bowl to the wet ingredients and mix until smooth. Drop by tablespoons onto a greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.