Balthazar, when Paris is too far

A few pastries to start your weekend off right. It's a good thing I'm no longer living within walking distance to this bakery...

Meringue with raspberries

Inside a cannele

EXT: Cannele and chocolate croissant
'

Donut (tres francais), madeleine, croissant, apple tart

Court St + Sahadi's

Having read about Monteleone's Bakery in a book, I decided to check them out recently. They have a nice selection of cookies, but the counter service was eternally slow, so I left and headed down the block, where it turns out there are a number of old Italian bakeries, some with windows selling Italian ices, like this naturally colored pistachio ice...

Further down, Court St runs into Atlantic Ave, home to several stores selling Middle Eastern food and wares. One such is Sahadi's, a venerable old store. There are always crowds inside checking out their enormous bulk section (dried fruits, nuts, olives...) For the Atlantic Antic festival, Sahadi's set up a sidewalk cafe...



I wasn't sure what to expect from their deli counter, but everything I got was delicious and inexpensive. Creamy hummus, a nice eggplant salad, vegetarian grape leaves, and a feta, cucumber and tomato salad. The focaccia bread, also good, was from a bakery on Court Street.

Ice Cream Three Ways

Some glamour-shots of ice creams past, before the weather gets too cold....

Peach soft-serve from Milk Bar

Mine: Ginger gelato and lemon sorbetto
Lizzie's: Frozen yogurt (world's best) and unidentified chocolate flavor
From Grom

Black sesame from Chinatown Ice Cream Factory

Cookbook Experiment: The Moosewood Cookbook

This week's foray into cookbooking is The Moosewood Cookbook (1978), which is hand-illustrated and written by the author. An unimaginable feat today, though apparently she's still working in the same method.

It's a classic early vegetarian cookbook, but a lot of the recipes are either reliant on cheese or suspiciously "ethnic" in a way that seems less than authentic by today's standards. As usual, I found refuge in the desserts.

Ukrainian Poppyseed Cake

Chocolate Atole

Despite Texan roots, there are plenty of things I don't know about the great cuisines to the south of here - in Mexico and Central America. Atole, a thick, hot drink that incorporates corn meal or corn starch, is a dish I had heard about but never tried - until recently.

This recipe, from the late Matt Martinez, Jr. 's cookbook, uses Mexican chocolate (which already has cinnamon in it), as well as an additional cinnamon stick...

...and masa harina, mixed with milk and water, and boiled for a while.

Add whipped cream and cinnamon, and voilà! A thick, delicious hot chocolate.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all that leftover masa harina!

Mommie Mack's Fruit Salad

I recently had the opportunity to make my grandmother's fruit salad for a potluck. Mommie Mack's fruit salad, which shows up often at family holiday gatherings, can be varied depending on taste and what looks good in the market.

When I was younger, I thought it was all canned - thus I imagined 1950s cuisine. But when I helped MM make it for the first time I realized that it consisted of more fresh fruit than canned. This helps explain its deliciousness.

Canned pineapple, neatly placed in its container

(The salad also contains canned tangerines)

All the fruit together: kiwis, red grapes, bananas, apples, canned tangerines, and canned pineapple

And yes, whipped cream and marshmallows

All assembled

Making the salad put me in the mind of family gatherings past, and maybe it was because I was listening to Beethoven's late sonatas, but I got nostalgic and a bit sad. Food can do that can't it? Jonathan Safran Foer has a great article in the NYT Magazine this week exploring some of the same feelings.

Mooncakes

When I was a freshman in college, one of my friends introduced us all to mooncakes, which her mom had sent from a special bakery in Georgia. I remember finding them beautiful and delicious, and have been halfway tracking them down ever since. It took me a long time to figure out that they're only available during a special time of year, but this year I went up to the giant Asian supermarket to get a box of them.

Of course I don't have the attachment to tradition or the holiday per se, but the mooncakes are a unique dessert; maybe they'll catch on with a wider audience eventually.

This one is filled with red bean paste, but the box of 6 I got had two each of red bean, date, and lotus. They're all pretty sweet, and best with tea.

Faves: Vegan Desserts

Some years ago, vegan baked goods started making inroads into the Austin scene. Wheatsville had carried them packaged for a long time, as had other health food stores, but suddenly Wheats had its own bakery case. Then there was Dhaba Joy, and vegan cupcakes (admittedly outsourced) at the cupcake sellers like Hey Cupcake.

I like vegan baked goods because they're usually not quite as sweet as regular ones, and their flavors can be more subtle because they're made with more spices, different flours, or other unusual ingredients. It's a less-guilty guilty pleasure.

Wheatsville's vegan Mexican Chocolate Cake

The wider acceptance of vegan sweets may never catch on, but Wheatsville is still going strong. They have about seven or eight cakes, cookies, and muffins that they rotate. This cake was crumbly, kind of like a coffee cake but less rich. It had a complex spicy flavor that I couldn't quite sort out, and made a nice mid-morning snack.

Remembering the Cold Drinks of Summer

I had a goal of collecting pictures from lots and lots of frozen/cold beverage purveyors over the course of the summer, but didn't get as many as I had hoped. Nevertheless, now that fall is around the corner, here are a few mementos of the most palatable form of nutrition when it's 105 every day...

Homemade Lassi

Just some ice cubes, sour yogurt, and honey (and I like to add rose water too). Delicious and frothy, and another use for the hand blender.

Shaved Ice from Hola Aloha

This little pop-up shaved ice stand features all-natural flavorings on their shaved ices. We got Mango with coconut milk and Ginger-Lime with coconut milk. Pretty good. Definitely less sweet than your average shaved ice.

Outside Hola Aloha

Horchata from El Chilito

Horchata, how I love thee. So creamy, yet not made of milk. Cinnamony and sweet, I can drink gallons of this stuff (though I try to restrain myself). El Chilito's version is pretty good.

Frozen Sangria at House Wine

Frozen sangria sounds great, but it didn't have as much flavor as I wanted it to. In general, it seems like it's rare to get a good syrup-to-shaved ice ratio for the more boutiquey shaved ices that are getting popular. But it did make a pretty picture.

Coconut Milk Bread Pudding

An excess of coconut milk and a desire for cinnamon rolls collided recently in the form of this bread pudding, made from a modified "New Orleans Style Bread Pudding" JOY recipe (1 cup of sugar instead of 2, coconut milk instead of regular milk, and no bourbon sauce!)

The coconut milk I'm referring to is not the kind that comes in a can--this is a new product from So Delicious that has appeared at the grocery store recently, and that is being marketed as yet another milk substitute (along with soy, almond, hemp, etc.).

My question: can it be used in baking, and if so, will it leave evidence of its pleasingly faint coconutty flavor?

The bread pudding turned out fine, but lacked the coconut flavor. However, warming it with a little coconut milk poured over the top did the trick.

Faves: Coconut Milk Ice Cream

Being vegan has never looked like so much fun. Not that I'm a vegan, but I do appreciate vegan desserts, especially those made with coconut milk. Coconut milk ice cream is just as good as the "real thing" if not better--it's quite rich and delicious and in my opinion doesn't have the slightly icky aftertaste that ice cream leaves you with. 

This is one of several brands of coconut milk ice cream that Wheatsville carries. 

Num.

Gratuitous third picture, just because it is so delicious.

Happy summer!

Dining Out: Mother's Day Brunch at The Steeping Room

Took my mom and cousin to the Steeping Room for brunch last week... They are a "tea" place but they have a nice menu as well. As far as I can tell, they are not a chain, which would explain the attention to detail found in both the design and execution of their menu.

Three tea drinks:

jasmine green tea w/ lemonade, fruit tea w/lemonade, peach iced tea

My breakfast strata: sundried tomatoes, goat cheese, spinach

Very good; may try to find a way to make this at home

The ladies' sandwiches: edamame spread,

and lapsang souchong chicken salad

Pear cake

Dining Out: Viva Chocolato

Viva Chocolato is tucked away in a corner of the Domain (next to what is soon to be Austin's first Zara). The restaurant, as you might guess from the name, clearly specializes in chocolate and desserty-type things but they also have a small menu of lunch and dinner items. I met my friend Allison there for dinner a couple of weeks back.

Allison's turkey panini - thumbs up

My sinfully rich brie panini, and potato chips.

Yes, this meal consisted of melted cheese, potato chips, and chocolate truffles.

The chocolates at VC fall into two categories, locally made and imported. We stuck with the local ones since they were having a special that night. Flavors, left to right: Guiness, Salted Caramel, Rose-Cardamom, and Champagne. The Salted Caramel was a hands down winner; the others were good, but not extraordinary.

VC also has a fairly large gelato selection, a wine list, a few cakes, and chocolate fondu fountains (!)

Dining Out: Yogurt Planet

Well folks, I made myself hungry by writing about yogurt last week, so I decided I had to visit the new neighborhood frozen yogurt establishment, Yogurt Planet. I didn't really know what to expect but I was really impressed and plan to go back soon.

(Apparently these places are old news even in Austin--but it was new to me!)

Original "tart" yogurt with kiwi, lychee, mochi, and coconut jelly

The self-serve yogurts

I was impressed for a number of reasons:

1. The yogurt was clearly high quality and they even had a sign up about how it was healthy and had live cultures etc.

2. The toppings were a mix of standards and unusual ones, both fruits and candies, largely with an Asian bent... And all of them looked amazing

3. It's all self-serve and mix/match so you can get whatever suits your fancy... Usually I'm not a fan of "do it yourself" restaurant themes (don't you go out to eat so that others make those decisions for you??) but in this case it works

4. Very clean, and clearly popular... At least with college age women and young families!

Next week I won't even mention yogurt, I promise. ;-)

Sesame Cookies

I had these for the first time in SF. They go really well with tea, which I'm increasingly thinking should be an daily ritual in the afternoon. Found a recipe online and they turned out pretty well. Buttery, with a slightly nutty taste, from the sesame seeds and a little almond extract.