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.

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.

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.