Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding

 I make bread pudding quite frequently. I make a pretty mean bread pudding with bourbon and a whole truck full of sugar.  That bread pudding has many fans amongst my family. 

I recently made my first ever chocolate bread pudding using Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding.  This recipe for bread pudding isn’t loaded with booze like my old stand-by, which is a good thing since one of our dinner guests the night I made it was 5 6 months pregnant.

 I modifed Dorie’s recipe slightly by using a combination of bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate. I used a beautiful challah bread from a local bakery and tossed in some golden raisins and semi-sweet chocolate chips. We served it slighly warmer than room temperature.  I topped it all off with some homemade whipped cream and served it with a bowl of fresh berries. The bread pudding was moist and lightly chocolatey. We enjoyed it, but my husband asked me to make the boozey one next time.

You can find the recipe for this bread pudding on Lauren’s blog: Upper East Side Chronicles.

Sweet Lemons

Sweet Lemons

828 Washington Street
Weymouth, MA 02189

(781) 340-5551
website: http://sweetlemonsthai.com/

 When I first moved to the South Shore a few years ago, I found it to be somewhat of a culinary wasteland. The restaurant options pretty much came down to pizza joints and take-out Chinese. We move from the Back Bay in Boston to Braintree. I experienced a bit of culture shock. At our new place we didn’t have the option to walk out our front door and stroll a few blocks to get French, Malaysian, Indian, Korean or other fare.

Luckily for us, shortly after we move to the area, a new Thai restaurant called Sweet Lemons opened up in a Weymouth strip mall. I was immediately impressed with the quality of the food and the friendly service. That was several years ago and Sweet Lemons is still on my list of South Shore favorites.

I recently visited Sweet Lemons with a couple of people who had never been before. For starters we ordered the Chicken Thai  Rolls ($5.95) and chicken wonton soup ($3.95). I’d never tried their wonton soup before as I usually opt for the spicier soups. The wonton soup had a light garlic flavor with greens and wontons floating in the broth.  The spring rolls are akin to what you find at other Thai restaurants…(I have a hard time comparing one spring roll to another…they’re just a guilty pleasure)

 For our main course, two of us ordered the Pad Woonsen ($11.95) and one ordered the Pad Thai ($8.95).  The pad woonsen was comprised of cellophane noodles stir-fried with shrimp, chicken, pineapple and veggies. It had a nice blend of sweet and savoury.

Sweet Lemons also usually has a menu with specials that aren’t listed on their website menu. Some of our other favorites from the menu that I didn’t order on this visit are: Pad Thai Zzzz (a spicy pad thai), seafood madness (spicy stir-fried shrimp, scallops, squid and fish), and chicken puffs (a mildly spicy chicken appetizer).

Sweet Lemons has a second location on route 18 in South Weymouth.

My Rating: 4 out of 5 mangoes

In the Country of Last Things

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
rating: 4 of 5 stars

Originally published back in the mid-1980’s, Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things is a dystopian/post-apocalyptic novel along the same lines of The Road and Blindness (both of which I loved).  Like those two books, In The Country of Last Things drops the reader into the middle of a “situation” in  that isn’t explicitly explained. We don’t know how things get to be how they are…we join the ride once society as we know it has disappeared.

Anna Blume is in an unnamed city trying to find out what happened to her brother William who was a journalist that was sent to the city to send back dispatches as to what was going on. He was never heard from again. The city is in ruins, its building and its government have collapsed. Anna makes references to how life outside the city is different and better, but we can’t get a clear picture of how different that life is from the one we know. In the city, things are definitey bad. There are suicide cults and everyone is scrounging for food and a place to live.

It is even worse for the ones who fight their hunger. Thinking about food too much can only lead to trouble.  These are the ones who are obsessed, who refuse to give in to the facts. They prowl the streets at all hours, scavenging for morsels, taking enourmous risks for even the smallest crumb.  No matter how much they are able to find, it will never be enough.  they eat without ever filling themselves, tearing into their food with animal haste, their bony fingers picking, their quivering jaws never shut.   Most of it dribbles down their chins, and what they manage to swallow, they usually throw up again in a few minutes.  It is a slow death, as if food were a fire, a madness, burning them up from within. They think they are eating to stay alive, but in the end they are the ones who are eaten.

 In The Country of Last Thingswas a short and engrossing novel.  The tale was character driven as we follow Anna’s descent into hell.  She tries to survive and make a life for herself in this horrid city. Her tale is dark and lonely.    I’ve read a handful of books by Auster and enjoyed them all but this one now ranks amongst my favorites.  Like many of his other works this novel leaves lots of unanswered questions.  It is still haunting me several weeks after finishing it.

I highly recommend this novel to anyone who enjoyed Blindness or The Road.

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Croque Monsieur

 Ah, Croque Monsieur. I cannot make you the way most recipes call for you to be made since the mister doesn’t eat pork. So, I opted to make a version with smoked turkey instead of ham. I also added some sauteed Vidalia onions…and voila…the perfect, quick and easy and filling dinner.  And to make ourselves feel even more French we ate this sandwich with a fork and knife…because the French would never, ever eat with their hands.

Ham-Free Croque Monsieur

(adapted from Ina Garten’s Recipe)

Ingredients

 

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups hot milk
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• Pinch nutmeg
• 12 ounces Gruyere, grated (5 cups)
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan
• 16 slices white sandwich bread, crusts removed
• Dijon mustard
• 1/4 of a Vidalia onion,thinly sliced
• 8 ounces sliced smoked turkey breast

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan and add the flour all at once, stirring with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes. Slowly pour the hot milk into the butter–flour mixture and cook, whisking constantly, until the sauce is thickened. Off the heat add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, 1/2 cup grated Gruyere, and the Parmesan and set aside.
3. To toast the bread, place the slices on 2 baking sheets and bake for 5 minutes. Turn each slice and bake for another 2 minutes, until toasted.
4. Saute Vidallia onion in butter or oil until it just starts to brown.
5. Lightly brush half the toasted breads with mustard, add a slice or 2 of turkey to each, and sprinkle with half the remaining Gruyere. Top with another piece of toasted bread. Slather the tops with the cheese sauce, sprinkle with the remaining Gruyere, and bake the sandwiches for 5 minutes. Turn on the broiler and broil for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the topping is bubbly and lightly browned.
6. Serve hot.

This recipe was selected by Kathy of All Food Considered.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would more accurately give Robinson Crusoe somewhere between 3.5 and 4 out of 5 stars.  It is one of those classics that I am glad that I finally read, but that I wasn’t wowed by.  Robinson Crusoe was originally published in 1719 and is considered by some to be the first English novel. The novel shows it’s age in the language and mind-set of the narrator, Robinson Crusoe.  The book is set in a time when British colonialism was at its peak and the British didn’t think to highly of people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Christians.  The novel appears to be an adventure story on the surface but there is a religious undercurrent throughout. Crusoe time and again mentions Providence, destiny, and God’s role in his adventure.  I found it interesting more for getting a glimpse into the mind of a typical 18th century Englishman than for the story itself.

While I enjoyed reading Robinson Crusoe, it definitely wouldn’t be amongst my top ten books to bring with me to a desert island.

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The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien


rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bizarre, wacky, mind-trip of a novel. I am still thinking about The Third Policemanseveral weeks later and am only now making an attempt to put my thoughts into words.  For those of you are are extremely irritated by the usage of footnotes in works of fiction (a la Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao), Third Policeman contains clever footnotes on the numerous theories and philosophies of de Selby…so you may not want to pick up this novel.

The Third Policeman is set in Ireland and is narrated by an unnamed man who grew up as an orphan and while at school becomes fascinated with the works of de Selby. He ends up committing a murder while robbing a man. After this event, the plot of the book takes a turn for the weird. The book is riddled with characters with bizarre theories about time, life and bicycles.

I really enjoyed this book but I do tend to enjoy books with a touch of the surreal and a smidge of meta. I can see how this book could be one that some people I know would throw against the wall…but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love reading books that surprise you page after page. The book was clever and original.

 The Third Policemanwas featured in the LOST episode “Orientation”.  Desmond was reading it when the Losties first broke into his HomeSweetHatch.

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Mister Pip

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love reading novels where books play an important part in the story. Mister Pip is one such book. As you may guess from the title, the book in question in this tale is Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. I had to read Great Expectations for a high school literature class and adored it (thank you Mrs. Johnson!).  In fact, I often compare people to Miss Havisham. (so watch out if you wear a ratty old wedding dress because you may be my next victim!).

Mister Pip is narrated by 13-year old Mathilda, who lives on a tropical island that is caught up in a war. The teacher and most of the male villagers have left. The sole remaining white man, Mr. Watts, takes it upon himself to provide the village’s children with an eduction and so begins reading to them from a copy of Great Expectations.  Mathilda quickly becomes utterly fascinated with the novel.

I had never been read to in English before. Nor had the others. We didn’t have books in our homes, and before the blockade our only books had come from Moresby, and those were written in pidgin. When Mr. Watts read to us we fell quiet. It was a new sound in the world. He read slowly so we heard the shape of each word.

Mister Pip is about the power of literature and stories and how they can help us escape the issues we face in our everyday life and how they can influence the way we interact with the world. The very fact that Mr. Watts reads Great Expectations to the villagers ends up having a profound impact on their lives.

This was the first book by Lloyd Jones that I have read. I found it engaging and charming.  It wasn’t as much of a light-hearted read  as I had initially thought it would be based on the synopsis I read, but I enjoyed the take on how a work of literature could so strongly influence the main character Mathilda’s life.  I recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed The Book Thief or The Shadow of the Wind, both of which are also novels about how books had an effect on a young person’s life during times of war and unrest.

Mister Pip was awarded the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

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The Gastronomical Me

The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love to read food writing: both non-fiction and fiction. I am almost ashamed to admit that I have not read anything by M.F.K. Fisher before now. Many regard her as one of the best food writers.

Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me is a collection of autobiographical essays that cover time from 1912 through 1941.  In 1929 Fisher got married and sailed with her husband to France were she tasted her first real French food and  started down the road to being a true foodie. Fisher talks about her first experience eating hand-cut potato chips in Europe:

There were big soft leather chairs, and on the dark table was a bowl of the first potato chips I ever saw in Europe, not the uniformly thin uniformly golden ones that come out of the waxed bags here at home, but light and dark, thick and paper-thin, fried in real butter and then salted casually with the gros sal served in the country with the pot-au-feu.

They were so good that I ate then with the kind of slow sensuous concentration that pregnant women are supposed to feel for chocolate-cake-at-three-in-the-morning.  I suppose I should be ashamed to admit that I drak two or three glasses of red port in the same strange private orgy of enjoyment. It seems impossible, but the fact remains that it was one of the keenest gastronomic moments of my life.

Through Fisher’s essays we travel back and forth by sea from the US to Europe and South America.   While all of the essays in this book aren’t food-centric, the points in which she does write about food in this collection were stellar.  I love it when food writing makes me salivate.  Fisher’s prose is amazing, witty and pessimistic. She went through some difficult events in her life and you can feel her pain coming through the pages.  I recommend this essay collection to anyone interested in travel and food writing.

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Chinese Chicken Salad

Ina Garten’s Chinese Chicken Salad made a quick and easy week night meal. To make it even quicker than the original recipe, I sauteed boneless skinless chicken breasts instead of roasting the bone-in chicken.  The salad was bright and colorful with an appealing combination of textures.  I found there to be a little too much dressing and next time will cut back the recipe to only make 2/3 of the amount.

Chinese Chicken Salad (from Barefoot Contessa Parties!)

INGREDIENTS

•  4 split chicken breasts (bone-in, skin-on)
• Good olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 pound asparagus, ends removed, and cut in thirds diagonally
• 1 red bell pepper, cored and seeded
• 2 scallions (white and green parts), sliced diagonally
• 1 tablespoon white sesame seeds, toasted

For the dressing:

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup good apple cider vinegar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dark sesame oil
• 1/2 tablespoon honey
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon peeled, grated fresh ginger
• 1/2 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
• 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Place the chicken breasts on a sheet pan and rub with the skin with olive oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until the chicken is just cooked. Set aside until cool enough to handle. Remove the meat from the bones, discard the skin, and shred the chicken in large bite-sized pieces.
3. Blanch the asparagus in a pot of boiling salted water for 3 to 5 minutes until crisp-tender. Plunge into ice water to stop the cooking. Drain. Cut the peppers in strips about the size of the asparagus pieces. Combine the cut chicken, asparagus, and peppers in a large bowl.
4. Whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing and pour over the chicken and vegetables. Add the scallions and sesame seeds and season to taste. Serve cold or at room temperature.

The Chinese Chicken Salad recipe was selected by McKenzie of Kenzie’s Kitchen for the first Barefoot Bloggers recipe in April.

Reads: Fieldwork

Fieldwork: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I feel as if my job is taking over my life. After reading Fieldwork,a debut novel by Mischa Berlinski, I just have to say that thankfully my job isn’t taking over my life as much as it could. 

 In Fieldwork the fictional protagonist, who just so happens to have the same exact name as the author, is an American free-lance journalist who lives with his girlfriend in Thailand.  He finds out about Martiya van de Leun, an American anthropologist who has recently committed suicide in a Thai prison. She had been serving a 50 year sentence for murdering a member of a local missionary family. Berlinski becomes fascinated with her story and begins to research how she ended up where she did.  She had spent many years living in a Dyalo village in northern Thailand to study their culture. Martiya’s fieldwork becomes her life. She becomes so wrapped up in her work in the Dyalo village that she forgets how to live her previous life.

Fieldwork read like a mix of a mystery novel and literary fiction. At its heart the book is about storytelling…the story our lives tell. Berlinski works to uncover as many facts about Martiya’s life as possible in order to construct her story.  the narrative jumps back and forth through time to give the details of the different characters lives. The resultant novel is powerful, gripping, and tragic. As we learn more about Martiya we begin to wish her life would turn out better even though we know that it ends with her killing herself in prison.

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