These are just easy and good.

1/2 c butter (1 stick)
1 c water
1 c flour
5 eggs
1 c grated gruyere
1/2 c grated parmesan
2 t dijon mustard
fresh black pepper

Preheat oven to 425.
Heat butter and water in a medium saucepan over medium heat until butter is melted and mixture comes to a simmer.
Turn heat to low, add flour and stir until mixture starts to pull away from the sides of the pan (about a minute).
Remove pan from heat and add the eggs, one at a time, stirring well after each (dough will separate at first, but keep stirring and it will form a smooth paste).
Stir in remaining ingredients.
Drop mixture in heaping tablespoonfuls onto 2 greased or parchment-lined baking sheets. (At this point you can freeze them until you’re ready to bake).
Bake until puffed and brown, about 30 minutes. Cut slits in sides of puffs, return to oven and lower the heat to 350. Bake 10 minutes more.

I will post recipes as I’ve got time, but here for now is a list of what I served; I should have taken a picture, since it all looked so pretty spread out on the table, but here instead is a picture of the cleared-off table the next morning…

brownies
apricot crumble bars
pistachio-cranberry cookies
spiced nuts
cheese gougeres
white bean-pesto spread
hummus
cheese, crackers, baguette
satsumas

A bad day can always be redeemed with biscuits, although who’s going to make themselves biscuits at the end of a rough day? Until I learn the biscuit recipe that involves melted butter and no rolling pin (Libby?), not me.

But today was a good day, and that included time to roast artichokes and then, when I saw the beautiful ripe strawberries in our produce box, make biscuits for a strawberry short cake.

2 c flour
1 t salt
1 T sugar
2 1/2 t baking powder
4 T cold butter, cut into small cubes
1/4 c cold shortening, cut into small cubes (didn’t notice this until transcribing the recipe just now, left it out, and the biscuits came out just fine…)
1/2 c cold milk, half and half, or cream
1 egg

Using a food processor, mix the dry ingredients. Add the butter (and shortening, if you remember), and pulse a couple of times until the mixture has the texture of coarse grain. In a small bowl, beat the egg into the milk (the fattier the milk you use, the richer the biscuit), then add to the mixture in the food processor and pulse again until the dough just starts to come together.

Turn the dough out on to a floured dough and knead just a couple times, to bring the dough together. Now shape it into a roughly 6″ x 6″ square, approximately 1/4″ thick, and roll across the top once or twice with a rolling pin to smooth it out. Wrap in plastic, and freeze for an hour.

Toward the end of the hour, start preheating the oven to 400. Take the dough out of the freezer, unwrap it, and slice with a very sharp knife (so that the biscuits will rise well) into 9 2″ squares. Put the squares on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Serve hot, warm, or room temperature.

I keep experimenting with recipes that use whole lemons (peel, pith and all) and having made this twice now (once for my parents, once for my sister and her family, so both times for excellent baking critics!) I think this Meyer Lemon Cake is a winner. You boil the lemons (regular ones or the milder Meyer variety) for thirty minutes or so and then seed and puree them so that you don’t have any big chunks of peel, just lots of intense lemon flavor in a moist cake which uses ground almonds in place of most of the flour.

Try it and let me know what you think!

OK, technically only my parents were on vacation, but what with Ben’s birthday and all, it began to feel like we were all on break. Which is really not so bad (except that I need to be writing my next column right now…)

So this is what we did:

Read many different books, including The Gypsy Madonna; Special Topics in Calamity Physics; What is the What; Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq; slave narratives; and Cold Mountain (all of us, though mostly my parents);

Read one book, The Bunnies Are Not in Their Beds, over and over (Eli, with his patient granddad);

Read one other book, The Daylight Limited, over and over (Ben, with Tony and me);

Bake (me! Cooks Illustrated’s Best Chocolate Layer Cake, which is more complicated and less delicious than Chocolate Carrot Cake and therefore won’t be made around here again; the fabulous and easy Apricot Crumbles; my new favorite lemon dessert, Meyer Lemon Cake; and brownies);

Add words to our vocabulary (Eli: “cake” and “dessert”);

Add lines to our epic poem, even at the playground (Dad, who is working on a paraquel to Beyond Beowulf);

Learn to play catch (Eli, with his granddad);

Build with his new lego sets (Ben);

Look at old family photos;

Take more family photos;

Make plans for the next visit.

It’s always a good day when you get to visit two bookstores and eat a nice dinner out.

My parents have visited San Francisco often enough that they don’t need to travel the tourist circuit at all. Instead, there are a couple bookstores that always require a stop, and since we are celebrating a big birthday soon, we even had a legitimate excuse to spend money.

In the evening, the boys’ beloved caregiver came over and the adults went out for a fine meal at the lovely Woodward’s Garden. This restaurant has been on my radar since I first moved to San Francisco, and I’d never eaten there before! It was worth the wait. Nothing fancy, nothing stacked or foamed (and thank goodness, really), but all of it — from the seared scallops with celery and jerusalem artichoke puree, to the truffled mushroom risotto, to the chocolate ganache-bosc pear tart–was creative and delicious.

Today, we’re off to the farmer’s market to find today’s dinner, and then, tonight, the birthday feast cooking begins in earnest!

The grandparents (my parents) arrived today and everybody is very happy.

Ben made a sign (spelling all the words himself!) that said “Welcome to California! I love you! Love Ben!” and has a picture of a train with a heart on it. After dinner, he lured his granddad up to his bedroom to talk trains and build Lincoln Log structures.

Eli clutched his picture of the six of us (from my parents’ last visit here) and ran back and forth from his Grandma to his Granddad, pointing out everyone in the photograph to them very carefully. He’s added two new words to his vocabulary: Gu-guh and Guh-gah. Context is all with Eli, because those same words also refer to granola, Grover, and Gordo’s Taqueria. We’ll try not to get confused.

And I made dinner! Which I do often enough, but my parents give me an excuse to try breaking out of the “pasta with …” rut. Tonight it was risotto with balsamic glazed mushrooms, a green salad, and braised pears with caramel sauce. Mmmm.

How could I not make this cake? It has 3 of my Top 5 Favorite Food Words in its name! (The other two, for the record, are glazed and chocolate.) And I’m sorry I didn’t think to take a picture before we’d eaten half, but here it is anyway, in all its crackling-sugar-crusted glory. Yum.

I thought to make this after last week’s olive oil cake, the recipe I could have (but didn’t) find in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone; I was reminded that she’s got some nice looking cake recipes in that cookbook. Which I’ve never tried! So now I’m going to try them all (there are only five, so it’s a much easier project than baking one’s way through Nigella’s chocolate cake hall of fame, a chocolate-y journey in which I am stalled, because of the chocolate fruit cake, half way through…)

Anyway, this is a very nice cake. It’s really not terribly sweet, and because of the yeast and eggs, it turns out tasting rather breakfasty, which is to my mind an excellent quality in a cake. I think maybe next time I’ll stir it together in the evening, let it do the first rise in the fridge over night, and then bake it in the morning. It is the kind of cake you want to serve with something, though. I made an orange compote, which was good but would have been better if I hadn’t been so lazy about cutting away all the pith. Warmed-up raspberry or blueberry jam would make a fine sauce for this, and a dollop of whipped cream wouldn’t hurt, either.

The Cake
2 1/4 t yeast (1 envelope)
1/4 c sugar
2 c flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 c warm milk
2 eggs room temperature
4 T butter, at room temperature

other nice additions to stir in with the eggs: 1 tsp lemon or orange zest and 1/2 t vanilla; or 1/2 t crushed anise; or 1/2 c ground almonds and/or a drop of almond extract

The Topping
2 T butter, softened
1/4 c light brown sugar

Stir the yeast and 1 t of the sugar into 1/4 c warm water and let stand until foamy (about 10 minutes). Whisk together the flour, remaining sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the yeast, milk, and eggs and beat until smooth. Add the butter and beat vigorously until the batter is silky. Scrape down the sides, cover, and let rise till doubled, about 45 minutes.

Lightly butter a 9″ tart or cake pan. Stir down the dough. Now Deborah Madison tells you to turn the dough out onto a floured counter, shape it into a disk, and place it in the pan. My dough was, well, it was batter — way too runny to handle like that. So I just poured it into the pan and it was fine. Either way, once the dough/batter is in the pan, dot or spread the top with the softened butter, sprinkle the whole with the brown sugar, and then let rise for 30 minutes. During the last 15 minutes, preheat oven to 400.

Bake the cake in the center of the oven for 20-25 minutes; the surface should be covered with cracks. Let cool briefly, then unmold and serve, still a bit warm, with fruit and ice or whipped cream.

Tony and I found this recipe in the Sunday Times magazine a few years ago; the first time we made it, we realized halfway through that neither of us really knew how to fry eggs! A quick consult with Irma rectified that situation, and now this is a standard part of the dinner repertoire. It’s particularly quick if you happen to have roasted red peppers and capers in your pantry.

2 red bell peppers
1 tbsp capers, rinsed
1 or 2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine
1/4 c finely chopped parsley
3 tbsp bread crumbs
1 lb spaghetti
5 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs
grated parmesan

Roast the peppers, peel and slice into thin strips.

In a small baking dish, combine peppers, capers, garlic and parsley. Season with salt &pepper.; Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top. Set aside until you’re ready to finish the dish (ie, this can sit all day…)

Bring pasta water to boil and preheat oven to 350.

Drizzle pepper mixture with 2tbsp olive oil and bake 10 minutes, while pasta cooks.

While pasta’s boiling and pepper mixture is heating, fry 2 eggs, sunny side up, until whites are set but yolks are still runny.

Drain pasta and pour it into large serving bowl. Toss in baked peppers & eggs, using a couple forks to break up the egg.

Banana bread is just one of those things… I’m always making it (there’s just not much else to do with an overripe banana), but I’m always looking for a new recipe. On our first, blind, date (a hike on Mt Tamalpais), I impressed Tony with an orange-flavored banana bread. Then for a while I was making it with mini chocolate chips. Recently, I spotted a recipe in The Baker’s Dozen cookbook and had to give it a try. It’s good, although I knew that with all that butter and sugar, it wouldn’t make it into the repertoire without some changes. So I give you the original (very decadent and delicious), and my revised version (just as delicious, slightly less decadent). The recipe makes 2 loaves, but is easily halved.

Kona Inn Banana Bread

4-6 ripe bananas (about 2 cups, mashed)
2 1/2 c flour (I used 1 c white, 1 c whole wheat, and 1/2 c wheat germ)
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2 c sugar (I used 1 1/2 c brown sugar
1 c shortening (I used butter, and will try reducing that next)
4 eggs
1 c chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease 2 8″ x 4″ loaf pans.

Mash the bananas in a medium bowl until pretty smooth.

Whisk the flour(s), baking soda, and salt into another bowl.

Using the flat whisk in a stand mixer, mix the sugar and butter well to make a stiff paste (you can also do this by hand, of course). Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the mashed banana. Stir in the walnuts, if using (don’t worry if the batter looks curdled). Now add the flour mixture and stir until just blended (don’t overmix or worry about a few lumps). Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pans.

Bake until a skewer comes out clean, about 45 minutes to an hour. Cool on racks in the baking pans for 10 minutes, then remove from the pans and cool completely.