Puff Pastry

It has been over a year. One year and some change. The big question: what happened to 2017? Among other things, lots of vacations (Tokyo! Miami! Italy!), fighting to close the gender wage gap at my old job, calling bankrupt and spending the entire summer finding a new job (sidebar: if you ever want to reach out and talk about being a woman in the tech industry, send me a message—let's break those goddamn glass ceilings!), binge watching tv shows (The Great British Bake Off might have inspired this post), but most of all, just taking some much needed time off.

This first post back is a big one. We're making full puff pastry today, complete lamination and all. You'll find that a quick online search for "puff pastry recipe" yields mostly rough puff recipes, which forgoes the full lamination process in favor of essentially making a pie dough as the base. I however am a fan of full puff to get the most delicate layers possible, but also because it is really not as difficult or time consuming as some of its naysayers would have you believe. Yes, you do have to chill your dough after every two turns to prevent the butter from melting, but you have to do the same with rough puff. That said, I won't try to convince you this is easy, it is definitely more of a day-ahead recipe since homemade puff pastry is best used after an overnight chill, but once it's ready, the possibilities are endless.

Fresh Beet Pasta + Beet Pesto

Well, 2017 is shaping up to be quite a year so far. I had originally intended for this post to be in support of Planned Parenthood because the color of this pasta screams girl power! But in light of the events of this past weekend, I'm going to cast a wider net. To be frank, the efforts our new president and congress have been making to defund Planned Parenthood, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, to ban people from entering this country based on national origin regardless of immigration status—those efforts cut my heart to the core.

As a woman who believes in her own bodily autonomy, who believes that affordable healthcare is a right and not a privilege, it baffles me that these people who think abortion is a horrible sin are the same ones who want to take away our access to affordable birth control. As an immigrant and former green card holder who only recently (a short 9 months ago) finally gained citizenship after 23 years of living in this country, I cannot fundamentally believe that barring permanent residents who were on vacation from returning home or turning away refugees who are the very victims of terrorism and war is supposed to be good for our "national security".

We cannot sit idly by while they strip away our rights one by one, so if these are issues close to your heart, please join me in donating to Planned Parenthood or the ACLU today. To offer you a little more incentive (in case you can't donate as much as you would like or you just need a little nudge) if you send me a receipt of your donation to summer(at)oandoeats.com I will match your donations dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $500 per organization. Now is the time to fight for what we believe in, so whether you donate, protest, or call your representatives, just know that I'm with you. We are in this together.

I realize that posting a recipe seems kind of hollow at a time like this, but our bodies still need nourishment to fight, and alas this is a food blog first and foremost. I hope you enjoy this bold pink, girl power, immigrant power pasta.

Garlic Scape Garganelli

Many of you probably already know the story of where the O&O portion of this blog name comes from. They are my two kitties, and they are the queens who preside over this kingdom in which I humbly live. The kitchen is a part of their (cough totalitarian cough) domain, and they will eat anything and everything that isn't stored somewhere you need functional thumbs to open. One of them will bite through plastic to get at brioche buns (did I mention they have high class taste?), and the other...the other will eat my homemade garlic scape garganelli as they are drying on the counter. I will scream, she will run away, and I will mope over the state of the gnawed-on pasta which I spent so many hours making.

Which leads me to a question for you guys. How much time do you have this week? At least four uninterrupted hours? Gooood, that means you can make this pasta. I'm not joking. I know that sounds a little absurd, but when you're savoring each delicious, garlicky bite, it's so much more satisfying knowing you painstakingly rolled every individual garganelli by hand. And to make things even more interesting, there are garlic scapes in the dough itself, adding another layer of complexity and uniqueness to the flavor, which is something you won't find in the pasta aisle of your local store.

Homemade Croissants

I think this is as far as I go. What else is left to do, left to master, after making homemade croissants? Have I peaked? Is it all downhill from here?

I jest of course, but these croissants. These croissants! So flaky, so buttery, so good. Three-years-ago me (you know, the one who was making hockey puck biscuits because she couldn't read directions) would have never thought that current me would ever successfully make croissants. I won't sugarcoat it though, they are a labor of love. They take an entire day to make, and that's if you start early in the morning. I find it more manageable to split the process over two days. The technique is fairly straightforward, you just need lots of time, a rolling pin, a ruler, and a heck of a lot of elbow grease.