Chicken Liver Mousse and a Saveur Nomination

Last week, after wiping the snot from my face following a twenty minute session of both sobbing uncontrollably and laughing like a maniac, I finally managed to read through the entire email telling me that my little blog here is a finalist for the Saveur 2015 Blog Awards in the best new voice category. This space here, which is not even a year old, is up for an award? Is this really happening? Eeeeeek!

One year ago, let's see...I had just left my job in Chicago and was in the middle of a harried apartment search in New York, getting rejected one too many times. My hair was on fire, I thought we'd be homeless, and creating a food blog was the furthest thing from my mind. If you would have asked last-year-me what this-year-me would be doing, I would have said something along the lines of "have a soulless cushy job in consulting (what I had been doing), and eating at the Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare (cause I'm so fancy)." Instead, I started a food blog and took a six month hiatus from office life; it turned out to be something I now pour my heart and soul into everyday. I did land another corporate gig, but left that after four months because nope, just nope, and now I'm broke as a college kid because I decided to go back to school and transition into an entirely different career path (I'm going to be a web developer!). Sometimes it all seems so overwhelming, but I'm doing what I love everyday, I'm happy, it's worth it. And before we move on to the rest of this post, I need to thank you. All of you. You guys and your overwhelming support mean the world to me, and I'm so honored to be a part of this amazing food community.

Lemon Bars and Finding Inspiration

The light is changing, the days are longer, I just left my job. I am unburdened, and somehow, by some cruel plot twist, I am uninspired like I have never been before. I don't know what to cook. Not for this space here, not for dinner, not for breakfast, I don't even know what I want to eat most days. I fumble around behind the lens like it is my first time picking up a camera, though it has been nearly a year since my food photography journey began. As I sit here typing, the backspace key is my best friend. I can't seem to coherently jot down my thoughts; the words I desperately want to find escape me. Like all things, this will pass, but goddamn, it sucks right now.

Self pity aside, let's talk about these lemon bars, which by some miracle, made it out of the fray. They are a last nod to the departing winter before saying an enthusiastic "goodbye!" to winter citrus/squash/roots and "hello!" to all the greens spring has to offer. They are tart, bright, and not weighed down by too much sugar. Just the way lemon bars should be.

Chocolate Hazelnut Long Johns: The Great Donut Experiment of 2015 & why I will not be eating donuts for the next 365 days

This. This was one of those recipes. You know, the kind that takes weeks and weeks of testing, where there's always something just a little off. Where the thought of giving up seems so enticing, but you've put so much effort into it already that defeat is not an option.

Let's dive right in, shall we? First was the filling. How do you make a chocolate hazelnut filling? In my first two tries, the custard was cooked with finely ground hazelnuts then strained over and over and over again. It was impossible to strain out the super fine hazelnut meal through a mesh sieve, and the custard was far too thick to strain through a cheesecloth. Third time around, I thought up a brilliant idea of using hazelnut milk instead of whole milk. Unfortunately, nut milk does not have the same properties and chemical composition of real milk. The custard never set with the same amount of egg yolks and cornstarch. The fourth time I added an extra egg yolk and doubled the cornstarch, and while thicker, it still never set. I gathered it had something to do with either the absence of milk proteins or milk fat, but there is a surprising lack of information about the chemistry behind cooking on the internet (if you have a scientific explanation, please message me I'd love to know). Hesitant to add even more thickening agents to the mixture, I then made another version of hazelnut milk, using real milk instead of water, simmering it with ground hazelnuts, and letting the mixture steep before straining. So I guess you could call it a hazelnut milk milk. Ta-da! Success.

Ahem, then there was the whole after-30-minutes-the-donuts-were-greasy problem. Fortunately the internet did have a solution for that: frying in vegetable shortening instead of oil. The short explanation is because vegetable shortening is solid at room temperature, the grease doesn't seep out after frying as it does with liquid oil. One more kink to work through, the dough wasn't quite as soft as I would have liked. The solution: more sugar, more egg, and we finally have a donut I'm proud to share. Cue the sigh of relief, here.

Warm Brussels Sprout Salad with Marcona Almonds

An ode to the elegance of simplicity. To not laboring over a stove for hours on end. To enjoying the day and basking in the sunlight.

This past Saturday, the last day before March, was a beautiful day. The sun was shining like it rarely does during this time of year. A preview of things to come. It brought back memories of all the activities we used to do when the weather was nicer. Biking to the beach. Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to get soup dumplings and not feeling bad about binge eating because we just walked 2 hour for lunch. Spending entire afternoons at the farmers market. Berry picking in the fields of Long Island.

Life has been busy to the point of insanity lately. There's been such a deluge of things to get done that I have neglected the most important of them: enjoying my surroundings with the people I love. So let's forget about all of that for one moment. Forget about work, forget about made up expectations, and enjoy the very life that we seem to so often forget to actually live. To celebrate the simple pleasures in life, a simple brussels sprout salad for those days when we all have better things to do than stay in the kitchen.