I get a glimpse

Restaurant-wise, we are entering what I call Crackdown Mode. That sounds sort of scary, I realize, as though it might involve body armor and high-tech weaponry, but what it actually means is even scarier. It means that this restaurant, this Delancey thing, is now a full-time job. Not just for Brandon, but for me, too.


It feels good. It feels good to be caught up in its momentum, pulled along by something so tangible and so big. But it also feels like diving into a murky pool, enormous and very deep, and I can’t see a damned thing. I know I have to jump in, and I want to jump in, but let me tell you, it is dark down there. I hope that doesn’t sound too depressing, because I don’t mean it that way. What I mean is that it’s consuming. It’s complete immersion. We move by feeling our way. And sometimes, every now and then, I get a glimpse of what it will look like in the end, when it’s finished and open and full of noise and food and fire in the oven, and it makes me so proud and so excited that I don’t know whether to grin, or sob, or both. And the afterglow of that lights the way through the muck for a while, until I get a glimpse again.


This morning, we went to our friend Olaiya’s house and sat around her table for four hours, making lists and dividing up tasks. It was first official Delancey Planning Meeting. I don’t know how we made it this far without one. Olaiya is my role model in the departments of neatness and personal organization, and she has tons of experience in the restaurant industry, and she is also, most notably, a saint. She’s going to be our right hand woman for the next couple of months, as we get Delancey up and running. Every day, we get a lot done, but somehow, there’s still more to do. I’m convinced that our to-do lists secretly meet up and breed each night, while we sleep. To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s some of what we did today, in addition to our meeting:

Chose colors for the façade and front door
Decided on the hallway light fixture
Chose the dining room floor color
Finalized the wall color for one bathroom
Bought more paint
Sold some equipment that we don’t need
Made a mockup of a light fixture, using a cider jug and an Edison 1910 bulb
Finalized the list of sodas that we will carry
Planned the opening
Decided how much staff to open with
Had an electrician rewire and put in light switches

I know I said a few weeks ago that we were aiming to open in mid-May, but we’ve now moved on to look toward June, with our fingers firmly crossed. If I were my mother, this is the part when I would smile and shrug and say cheerfully, Tune in for the next episode! I love it when she says that.


I thought you might like to see some photos of the latest developments. To wit, the bar stools up there on the left. Most of the restaurant equipment and decor is secondhand or made by us, but the bar stools are new, a splurge from Design Within Reach. To the right of them are a few of the chairs for the dining room. They’re mid-century Danish, found on Craigslist and elsewhere. Of the rest of the dining chairs (stacked just out of view), about half came from Sunset Bowl, our neighborhood’s historic bowling alley, which closed last April after more than fifty years of business. They’re mid-century teak Thonet chairs, and after Brandon bought them at auction, our friends Shauna and Dan let us store them in their garage for an entire year. You can see them, scrubbed clean and draped with plastic sheeting to ward off dust, in the second photo above. And the table bases, a few of which you can see on the right immediately above, came from a local restaurant that lost its lease and closed a few months ago. I like to think we’re resurrecting them.


Also, the dishwasher has now been installed. And the dishwashing sink, the prep sink, two floor sinks, the mop sink, and the hand sink. Restaurants require a ridiculous number of sinks. Brandon wanted me to do an entire post on the sinks and title it “Sink or Swim.” You can see how excited I was about that idea.


I am, however, very excited to announce that we have completed seven of what will be eleven concrete tabletops. Each one requires an entire bag of cement, a little over four quarts of water, and a lot of sweat. That’s Brandon up there, patting the wet concrete into its melamine mold. And below, he is unscrewing the sides of the mold to release the tabletop that we poured the night before. I just noticed that he is wearing the same shirt in both shots, which means that he probably never took it off. Fresh clothes are sometimes less important than the to-do list.


Once each slab of concrete is dry, it gets painted with several coats of sealant. Then it is nestled into a natural steel frame, and any gaps around the edges are filled with silicone or resin. Then the whole thing gets glued to a piece of plywood, which is then screwed to the table base. Like so:


We got the idea for the table design from Rose Bakery, in Paris. (If you have its cookbook Breakfast, Lunch, Tea, you can see the tables in a few of the photos, particularly on pages 57 and 90.) Here’s what the edge of the table looks like from above.


This particular concrete slab was one of the early ones, and it has more bubbles than the recently completed specimens. Brandon has gotten to be quite a pro at working with concrete. I had no idea he was so handy.


And here’s the oven façade, or what will soon be the oven façade, once it’s covered over with tile board and then Heath seconds. The tiles will be a sort of brownish gray. And to the right there, just behind the façade, will be the salad station. Beyond that will be prep tables, and a fridge, and storage space. Soon.


And sometimes Brandon fires up the oven, even though we’re too distracted to make much from it. We fire it up anyway, and we make some pizzas, and we stare at the flames for a while, and I take some pictures, and then we go to sleep. And then we do it all again.

Its name is farro

As I type this, it is cloudy again, and cold. The weather today leaves much to be desired. Such as some sunlight, for starters, and warmth, and caramelized onions. Right now, I really, really desire caramelized onions.


I know that this picture doesn’t seem to have much to do with onions, nor does it even seem appetizing, I imagine, but bear with me for a second. What you see there is my new ideal lunch: warm farro with French lentils, caramelized onions, and feta. It’s ugly as sin, and it’s also completely delicious. It’s a little like a lentil salad and a lot like mujadara, and if I could somehow ensure - maybe through magic, or fervent prayer - that there would always be a bowl of it in the fridge, I would gladly eat it every single day.

I don’t know about you, but I find this time of year to be uniquely annoying. It’s not winter, but it’s also not quite spring. There are artichokes and asparagus, but aside from that, it’s hard to know what to eat. So I go to the pantry, and I open it and sigh, and then I bring out the grains and legumes, the humble arsenal of the in-between season. Usually, I make the aforementioned mujadara, a soulful rice dish with green lentils and lots of caramelized onions. It is very, very difficult to beat. More recently, I also tried this recipe for koshary, a close cousin of mujadara that includes some seared macaroni, and it was pretty wonderful, too. (In particular, you should try Francis’s method for cooking rice. It’s perfect.) But then I found something to beat them both, and its name is farro.

Farro, the Italian name for emmer wheat, has been cropping up all over the place lately, so you’ve probably heard of it. If you haven’t, it’s a wheat grain - a kernel, really - and it looks a little bit like barley. Whole grains are making a big comeback right now - quinoa, bulgur, whathaveyou - but to tell you the truth, farro is the only one that I actually get excited about. It’s chewy and slightly sweet and has a big, nutty flavor, and it can be used in salads, soups, riffs on risotto, and about a million other things. Which is where mujadara comes in. The other day, when I went to make mujadara, I was feeling a little frisky, and instead of pulling out the usual bag of rice, I decided to try using farro. It is a sad day, I realize, when a person comes to associate the words ‘feeling frisky’ with eating boiled wheat kernels, but I am not ashamed to admit it. It was fantastic.

Especially with some feta, crumbled or strewn in hunks, on top. And hot sauce, for dining companions named Brandon.


Though it may appear otherwise, this bowl is not wearing a halo over there on the left side - that’s just an odd play of light on Brandon’s jeans - but it might as well have been. This stuff is worthy of halos and more. The lentils are earthy and rich, and the farro is plump and toasty, and then there are the sweet, sticky onions, and those three alone would be fine, but with some tangy feta on top, it deserves a lot of superlatives. It’s similar to mujadara, for sure, but it tastes entirely different from the usual rice-based specimen. It has a nuttier, more complex, more satisfying chew, and basically, I would like some right this minute, at 9:32 am, only an hour after breakfast. That pretty well sums up how I feel about it.


P.S. San Francisco! I’m coming to you again! This Saturday, April 18, at 3:00 pm, I will be at Omnivore Books on Food for a reading and signing. If you’ve never been to Omnivore, or if you have, please stop by. It’s an amazing little store, and I’m honored to do an event there.



Warm Farro with French Lentils, Caramelized Onions, and Feta

What follows is closer to a set of guidelines than it is to a real recipe, so do with it what you will. The most important part is the onions: be sure to take your time with them, and stir them frequently. Make this on a Sunday, or on a weeknight when you have some extra time to cook.

We eat this as a main dish, but it would be a nice side for almost any roasted or grilled meat. It is also delicious - and prettier - with some cooked kale or chard stirred in. Just boil the greens in nicely salted water for about 5 to 7 minutes, until tender but not mushy; then drain them, squeeze all the water out, coarsely chop, and add to the farro mixture.

And about farro: most of what is sold in the U.S. - I’ve found it at Whole Foods and fancy grocery stores, or you can get it from ChefShop - is grown in Italy, but there are also some domestic producers, like Bluebird Grain Farms in Winthrop, Washington. It is usually sold semi-pearled (semiperlato), meaning the some of the bran has been removed. If you buy whole farro, though, it will likely need to soak overnight before cooking - rather than a brief soak for semi-pearled - and will need to cook for 30 to 45 minutes more.

2 medium or large yellow onions
Olive oil
Kosher salt
¾ cup farro
½ cup French lentils, carefully picked through for pebbles and debris
Feta cheese
Hot sauce, such as sambal oelek (optional)
Lemon (optional)

First, the onions: slice them thinly. When I caramelize onions, I slice mine about ¼-inch thick, and I slice them lengthwise, from top to bottom - going “with the grain,” so to speak - so that they hold their shape. (If this makes no sense, check out the first two minutes of this video, from Fine Cooking. It’s a great demonstration.)

Pour a few glugs of olive oil into a large (12-inch) skillet. You want to be generous here, nearly coating the bottom of the skillet. Warm the oil over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, dump in the onions. They should sizzle. Stir them to coat, and then add a couple of pinches of salt. (Some people say that this causes the onions to fall apart more quickly, but I do it anyway. I like that it causes them to release some water, so that they stay moister, and it seems to make them caramelize more evenly, too.) Reduce the heat to low or medium-low, and continue to cook slowly, stirring occasionally. First, they will soften a bit; then they will go a little golden; and then they will begin to caramelize. It takes a long time to do this properly, so be patient – and stir regularly, especially as they take on color. My last batch of caramelized onions took about an hour and a half. When they’re done, they will have shrunk down in volume by quite a lot, and they should be a deep amber color and almost translucent.

Meanwhile, once you’ve got the onions started, put the farro in a medium bowl, add cold water to cover, and set it aside to soak for 30 minutes. Then drain it, turn it out into a medium saucepan, and add 3 cups of cold water and ¼ teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then reduce the heat and simmer until tender but still a little chewy, about 30 minutes. It’s up to you, really, how “done” you want your farro. At 20 or 25 minutes, mine is usually too tough, but a few minutes later, it’s perfect: no longer a major jaw workout, but still al dente, for lack of a different term. When the farro is ready, drain it, and set aside.

While the farro is cooking, put the lentils into another medium saucepan. Add 3 cups of cold water and ¼ teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then reduce the heat and simmer until tender but not falling apart, about 20 to 25 minutes. Drain, and rinse briefly under cool water.

By this point, ideally, your onions will be nicely caramelized. Now combine it all – onions, farro, and lentils – in a bowl and stir gently. Taste, and adjust seasoning, if necessary. Serve with feta crumbled on top and, if you like, hot sauce and/or a squeeze of lemon.

Note: Leftovers keep nicely in the fridge. Rewarm slightly before eating.

Yield: 3-4 servings

The truth is

I have to tell you something sort of unpleasant today, but somehow, I don’t think you’re going to be surprised: I have not been doing much cooking lately.

I was hoping to be able to avoid the topic, but I can’t. There is a lot going on over here, and you can see it as clearly as I can, so there’s no point in trying to fool anyone. The truth is, for the past week, we’ve been living on a pot of pinto beans spiked with Tapatio, four steamed artichokes, a few pans of scrambled eggs, a quart of ice cream, one bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and one bag of Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch Doritos. I am not too proud to admit it. I am also not too proud to blame Delancey. In fact, I totally blame Delancey, with all my heart. Yesterday, I managed to roast some parsnips for lunch, and I felt so pleased with myself, so absolutely elated,
as though I’d suddenly discovered that my oven door opened directly into Narnia. It was really something.

Not as great a something, though, as the roasted asparagus with walnut crema that I made for dinner a few hours later. The oven and I were on a roll.


I found the recipe in A16: Food + Wine, by Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren, executive chef and wine director, respectively, of the restaurant A16. I’ve wanted to go to A16 for a long time now, but somehow, whenever I’m in San Francisco, I wind up so distracted by every option on every street corner that I completely forget what I went there for. I think sensory overstimulation is a requirement for any proper visit to the Bay Area, so I don’t fight it too hard, though it means, sadly, that I have never been to A16. Luckily, the book makes a happy stopgap. It’s visually stunning - clean but warm, with lots of luminous photographs on sturdy matte paper - and the recipes walk a fine, perfect line between simple and complex, rustic food and restaurant food. It’s the kind of cookbook I feel inclined to keep on the nightstand, so that I can read it in bed. Just this past weekend, it won Book of the Year in the 2009 IACP Cookbook Awards, so if you need a really firm, serious endorsement, there you go. It also contains the most inspired asparagus recipe I’ve run across in ages, which is why I’m rattling on and on like this.


It was 70 degrees in Seattle yesterday, unreal for April 6, and I decided to mark the occasion by driving with the windows down and buying some asparagus. The A16 book was lying on the coffee table in the living room, and at some point in the afternoon, I picked it up to put it somewhere else, and when I did, it fell open to page 102, the recipe for Roasted Asparagus with Walnut Crema and Pecorino Tartufo. I took it as a sign. From Narnia.

The recipe title sounds fancy, and the finished dish tastes fancy, too, but in essence, it’s very straightforward. First, you make the walnut crema. You bring some water to a boil, toss in some walnuts, and cook them until they’re tender to the tooth. While this is going on, you sweat some red onion in a skillet. Then you dump both items into the food processor with some of the walnut-blanching water, blend it all up, and then pour in olive oil while you blend it some more. The resulting mixture, now worthy of the handsome word crema, looks a little like hummus, but it tastes somehow more like a distant cousin of pesto: fragrant, rich, and deeply savory. You spoon it onto a platter, top it with roasted asparagus, shave some ribbons of pecorino over the whole thing, and splash it with olive oil. The pecorino melts against the hot asparagus, and it’s salty and tangy, and the walnut crema sort of slithers beneath it all, subtle but beguiling. We scraped our plates, and then we had it again for lunch today.


Roasted Asparagus with Walnut Crema and Pecorino
Adapted from A16: Food + Wine

The original version of this recipe calls for Pecorino Tartufo, a sheep’s milk cheese with black truffle, but barring that, any aged pecorino works nicely. I used Pecorino Romano. The original recipe also calls for finishing the dish with some toasted walnuts, but I skipped that part. The walnut crema carried plenty of nut flavor for me, and I thought that anything more was overkill. Maybe I’m weird. Either way, I finished mine with a squeeze of lemon, and it was a nice counterbalance to the richness of the crema.

This recipe is intended to serve six, and even if you don’t need to feed that many, I would go ahead and make the full amount of crema. It will keep in the fridge for a few days, and you can roast the asparagus as needed. (One bunch is perfect for two people.) Also, Brandon has a hunch that leftover crema would make a terrific sauce for pasta, tossed with fresh garlic, lemon, and a little Italian parsley.

For walnut crema:
Kosher salt
1 ½ cups raw walnuts
½ cup plus 1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, diced (about 1 cup)

For asparagus:
3 bunches fat asparagus (about 30 spears, total)
Extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
1 block Pecorino Romano or Pecorino Tartufo
Lemon wedges, optional

To make the walnut crema, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the walnuts, and blanch for 8 to 10 minutes, or until tender in the middle. (I pulled mine out after 8 minutes, thinking that they seemed tender enough, but I should have left them for the full 10 minutes. My finished crema was slightly grainy, probably meaning that my walnuts weren’t soft enough.) Drain the walnuts, reserving ¼ cup of the cooking water. Set aside separately.

In a small skillet, warm 1 Tbsp. olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and a generous pinch of salt, and sweat for about 7 minutes, or until golden brown and softened. Remove from the heat.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the walnuts, the reserved cooking water, and the onion, and process until creamy. Taste for seasoning: it will probably need a decent amount of salt. With the motor running, slowly add ½ cup olive oil, processing until blended. The crema should have the consistency of a creamy hummus. If it seems too thick, add a little water. Taste again for seasoning, and then transfer to a bowl or other container. Cover, and hold at room temperature. (Crema can be stored, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for a few days. Bring to room temperature before serving.)

Preheat the oven to 500°F. Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil.

Snap the tough ends from the asparagus spears. Rinse them, and then dry them well. Spread them in a single layer on the prepared baking sheets. Drizzle them lightly with olive oil, and roll them around, smearing the oil with your hands, to coat evenly. Season with kosher salt. Bake for about 8 minutes, shaking the pan once or twice, until blistered, slightly charred, and tender.

To serve, spoon the crema evenly across the bottom of a platter. Arrange the asparagus spears on top. Working quickly, while the asparagus is still hot, shave Pecorino generously over the platter. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil, and serve immediately, with a squeeze of lemon, if you like.

Yield: 6 (first-course) servings

The dead who dream

We are long overdue, I think, for a Restaurant Day. So much so, actually, that I’m not sure where to start. But I guess the front door is as good a place as any.


I know I haven’t mentioned it around here much lately, but The Thing That Will One Day Be Delancey marches on, slowly but surely. With emphasis, I guess I should say, on the slowly part. We are doing this on a very slim budget, which means that most of the work is done with our four hands - mainly Brandon’s, actually, to be perfectly fair - and with borrowed labor, borrowed pickup trucks, and borrowed tools from friends and family. I can’t imagine doing it any other way, especially not in this grisly economy, but we are no match for a contractor and a construction crew, and when bedtime comes, we sleep like the dead. The dead who dream of wood-fired pizza.

But somehow we like it, and we still like each other, and that feels reassuring. Our plans were approved and stamped by the city last Friday, and the liquor license came in the mail today, and though we hit a snag on the plumbing this morning that required self-medication in the form of some coconut macaroons, we are aiming to open in mid-May. With emphasis on the aiming to part. So don’t quote me on that quite yet.


A lot happened over there - at “the space,” as we call it - while I was out of town, so I feel as though I have about three posts’ worth of news for you, but today I want to tell you about two items in particular: the floor, and the oven.


When we started, half of the floor was carpeted, and half of it was painted the shade of blue you see above. What we wanted was a natural concrete floor: no paint, no nonsense, just a coat of sealant. So Brandon ripped out the carpet, and then he rented something called a Shot Blaster.

Privately, I hoped that the Shot Blaster was some sort of high-tech bartending tool, or maybe a weapon for firing one-ounce portions of vodka at my enemies. I pictured it as something akin to the marshmallow bazooka I once read about in a SkyMall catalog, battery powered and promising to launch “edible, full-sized marshmallows up to 40’, forever changing the rules of engagement for marshmallow gun confrontations.” But I was wrong. A Shot Blaster is a cross between a vacuum cleaner, an industrial sander, and a tennis ball machine. You push it (slowly and laboriously; it’s tricky) over a surface, the same way you would a sander, and as you do so, it shoots out and circulates thousands of tiny steel balls, which pummel whatever is beneath them, removing paint, carpet glue, anything that crosses their path. The Shot Blaster removed the blue paint, but unfortunately, it also left a weird, conspicuous pattern in its wake - like the trail a vacuum cleaner leaves as it moves over carpet, only more aggressive - and worse, it revealed some nasty cracks in the floor, cracks that had been filled with cement until we Shot Blasted the living crap out of them.



Needless to say, it was a disappointment, not to mention a huge waste of money. For a minute there, we looked at each other, and we were Tom Hanks and Shelley Long in The Money Pit. After weighing our options, we decided to reseal the cracks and paint the floor. We also decided never to speak of the Shot Blaster again. We’ve chosen a paint color, a warm shade of gray, and maybe the next time we have a Restaurant Day, I will show it to you.

On the upside, the wood-burning oven has arrived, and that, THAT, is what this whole place is about. Of course, it arrived in pieces, weighs nearly 4000 pounds, and took 24 hours to assemble, but it’s a beauty. It was worth it.


It’s an Italian-style oven, made by a California-based company called Mugnaini. Brandon tried a number of different styles and brands and concepts, both gas-fired and wood-burning, and this one was the winner. We could have bought it fully assembled and ready to use, but that would have required removing a large window to install it, and possibly a wall. Instead, we bought the oven in parts. And to make sure that we didn’t completely botch its assembly, we flew someone up from the company to help us. (Somehow, that was actually cheaper than it would have been to remove and replace a window. Don’t ask.) His name was Michael, and he was so fantastic, so charming and knowledgeable and immediately at ease, that we were tempted to adopt him as some sort of long-lost uncle. That’s him, the blur in the picture above, preparing to piece together and lay the oven floor, which is what you see below.


Once the floor was in place, the dome of the oven could be built above it. The dome was composed of thick, curving panels, a little like petals from an enormous tulip, that fit snugly together and were crowned with a final, circular panel. Each of them, each panel, weighed over 200 pounds.


The spaces between the panels were filled with refractory cement, and then the whole dome was wrapped with ceramic fiber, and then the thing was encased in metal walls, and then on top went a ton of refractory cement and perlite, for thermal mass and insulation. For the record, I do not pretend to know what thermal mass is.


In fact, I was given a special dispensation from most of this. For the better part of the process, which went on until 2 am, I was at home, asleep. But Brandon and Michael took a lot of pictures, and if you want to see the entire process, every single step, you can geek out right here.


When I arrived the next morning, it was done. Magic.


Of course, we then had to move it from where it was built, in the center of the room, into its proper location against a wall in the kitchen-to-be. That part did not involve magic, but rather me, Brandon, and our friend Ben, early in the morning and bleary-eyed, inching the thing around on a hydraulic handtruck, using some masking tape, a plastic protractor, and a 30° wedge cut out of cardboard to maneuver it into the right position before the ventilation people arrived to build the chimney.

Now that the oven is in place, we can pretty it up with some tile and start to construct the bar and the kitchen around it. That’s next. That, and making concrete tabletops. I can tell you about that another time, if you want. Until then, you know where to find me.


P.S. Actually, aside from Delancey, you can find me at Third Place Books this Friday night, April 3, at 6:30 pm.

The feeling of it

I’m not sure what to say today. Pretty much the only thing that comes to mind is whoa. And wow. And thank you.

Actually, it’s more like THANK YOU. With lots of !!!!! at the end. Just to be perfectly clear.



I don’t have much to show for the past ten days, I have to admit. I took a couple of cameras on the road with me, but somehow, I only brought them out when I was in transit, in the subway or on a train, or in an airplane, half asleep between Newark and Seattle, sitting next to a window whose surface was so intricately, so elaborately, so eerily scratched-up that it looked like the thumbprint of a giant. Oh well.


I guess I also managed to take a couple of meal-time shots, but really, only a couple. So, no, I don’t have much to show for my time on the road. Nothing except a few spent Sharpies, some dirty clothes, and a lot of disbelief and wonder that it ever happened at all.

Somehow, when I thought about doing a book tour, I imagined myself standing painfully, night after night, in front of a roomful of empty chairs, listening to the hum of the ceiling lights and cracking halfhearted jokes with the guy at the cash register to keep from curling into the fetal position and dying on the spot. But miraculously, that was not the case, not even once, and I have you to thank for that. Thank you. This blog has always felt to me like a conversation, a conversation that we’ve had for going on five years, but until now, I never got to see your faces, and you never got to see mine. In the past couple of weeks, that has started to change, and I like the feeling of it.


So thank you, and thank you again. Thank you to the bookstores who hosted me, to the friends and family who gave me beds and blankets and bought me cheeseburgers, to those of you who e-mailed and left comments here, and to those of you who came out to say hello, bearing brownies, biscotti, cookies, rugelach, olives, jam, dish towels, maple syrup, fancy salt, and handwritten recipes. You people! You people. I won’t ever get over you.



You know, there’s a little espresso machine repair shop up the hill from our apartment - yes, Seattle lives up to its stereotypes - and I’ve been thinking about it lately. The guy who runs the place is terrific. He’s very quiet and intentional, and very happy in a quiet, intentional way. He never rushes or seems harried, and half of the time, rather than charging you to fix your machine, he tells you how to fix it yourself, for free. He has a dry-erase board in the shop where he writes observations or snatches of wisdom, things seemingly simple - dead-simple, really, and even somewhat hokey - that you somehow wind up thinking about for days, turning over and over like a coin in your pocket. My friend Ben has taken to referring to the espresso repair guy as his Guru on the Hill, which nicely sums up how we feel about him.

Anyway, this weekend, Ben called to tell me that he had gone to the shop last week, and when he walked in, the guru was writing on the dry-erase board, and what it said was, “I can’t wait to see what happens next.” I don’t know about you, but I think there is something sort of great about that. And I second it, in about eight million different ways.


I am going to keep this short, since I’m more tired than I would like to admit. But I’m going to cook this for dinner tomorrow, which I’m pretty excited about, and next week, you should be prepared for an onslaught, a deluge, a whathaveyou of all things Delancey, because a lot is happening over there.

So, onward we go.


P.S. The book events aren’t entirely over. Click here for more, and if you’re in or near Olympia, you can find me this Friday, March 27, at 6:30 pm at the Olympia Timberland Library. It’s free and open to the public, so come on out.

What a kick

[Update: New Yorkers, please see below for information about a second event - just added! - at Idlewild Books on March 19.]

Hi, all.

I can’t stay for long today, but I had to stop in for a minute. I just had to thank you for all of your hugely kind comments and e-mails about the book. I’m not so good at replying right now, but please know that I read every one, and that you have made my day many times over. This whole book thing feels completely crazy, really. It feels as though I’ve been given a bit part on some flashy, fancy TV show - maybe I’m a murder victim on the autopsy table on CSI: NY, let’s say - and even though I’m only on screen for 20 seconds, probably with bad makeup and a huge, gaping chest wound that makes everyone wince and cover their eyes, what a kick it is, an absolute kick, to be there at all.


I just wish that I could make it go by a little less quickly. I’ve got to figure out how to slow down my brain. On the other hand, I’ve also got to figure out how to speed up my dishwashing technique. Two days ago, on Saturday, I was still washing dishes from last Tuesday.

Oh well.


I’m getting on a plane tomorrow, and here’s a list of where I’m headed. If you’re anywhere nearby, please come say hello. I would love to meet you. I know I’ve said it before, but I wasn’t kidding: to me, that’s the best part of this whole thing.

This week:

Capitola, CA
March 10, 7:30 pm
Booksigning
Capitola Book Cafe
Free event, open to the public

San Francisco, CA
March 11, 6:00 pm
Booksigning
Book Passage (Ferry Plaza)
Free event, open to the public

Oklahoma City, OK
March 14, 2:00 pm
Booksigning
Full Circle Bookstore
Free event, open to the public

And next week:

The March 16 event at Ceiba in Washington, DC is now full. There were a huge number of RSVPs, far more than I expected, and there just isn’t enough physical space in the room to accommodate everyone. I’m so sorry about that.

But, on the upside, we have scheduled a second DC event:

Washington, DC
March 17, 12:30 pm
Booksigning
Borders
1801 K Street NW
Free event, open to the public

And for those of you in New York, please note that due to large numbers at last week’s events in Seattle and Portland (thank you!), Idlewild Books is now asking that you RSVP if you plan to attend:

New York, NY
March 18, 7:00 pm
Booksigning
Idlewild Books
Free event, open to the public, but please RSVP to: events@idlewildbooks.com

Update: Due to demand, we have added a second(!) event at Idlewild Books in New York:

New York, NY
March 19, 7:00 pm
Booksigning
Idlewild Books
Free event, open to the public, but please RSVP to: events@idlewildbooks.com



See you out there.

I mean it

I would like to sit down here today and write as though everything were normal, as though I were actually capable of forming complete sentences. But the truth is, I am an absolute maniac. Tomorrow is the official release date for my book, a day that I never really trusted would come, and I feel alternately so ecstatic and so freaked out that I can’t decide whether I need to run around the block a few dozen times or lie down for a nap. In the meantime, I will eat some sweet potato pound cake. As you can see, that’s been my fallback position for a few days now.


Many of you have written already(!) to say that you have the book in your hands, and that you’ve started to read and cook from it, and I want to thank you for that. Thank you. I wouldn’t have written the thing at all if it weren’t for you, and I mean it. I hope that, if you can, you will come out and let me shake your hand and thank you in person. I’ll be looking for you.

To those of you in the Seattle area: I will be at University Book Store tomorrow night - Tuesday, March 3 - at 7:00 pm. I’m baking some coconut macaroons with chocolate ganache for the occasion, and as an added bonus, I will probably be blushing uncontrollably through the entire evening. It’s a show you don’t want to miss. (4326 University Way NE)

To those in the Portland area: I will be at Powell’s this Friday, March 6, at 7:30 pm. I can’t guarantee any macaroons, but I will no doubt still be blushing. (1005 W. Burnside)

And an update on the Washington, DC event: a number of you e-mailed or left comments to express an interest in coming that night, but I now need a formal RSVP. If you plan to attend, please e-mail cheeseandchocolate (at) gmail (dot) com to say so. The event will be at Ceiba on March 16 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm, with a cash bar, complimentary hors d’oeuvres, and books for sale. The DC event is now full. Whew! I’m so sorry that we cannot accommodate more of you; we’ve just run out of space.

I think that’s all for now. I anticipate that I won’t be able to post much for the next couple of weeks, but I will stop by to remind you of where I’ll be, and when, and at what time, and whatnot.

And when I get back, I’ll have a new Delancey update for you. Last week, the wood-burning oven arrived - that’s the first step in building the kitchen - and it’s beautiful. It weighs 3,600 pounds. Its arrival heralded two days of sweat, heavy lifting, and cement-mixing for Brandon, and for me, a few rolls of film and an early morning in my pajamas, helping to move it into position in the soon-to-be kitchen with the help of a plastic protractor, masking tape, and a cart that vaguely resembled a handtruck on steroids. Needless to say, I have some photographs for you. Although none of them feature my pajamas, so don’t get your hopes up.


Until then, be well, bake yourself some sweet potato pound cake, and thank you, always, for being here.


Sweet Potato Pound Cake
Adapted from Southern Cakes, by Nancie McDermott

I was introduced to this cake by my friend Shari, who co-curates the inspiring site this joy+ride. (That’s me in the current issue, #12. Thank you, sweet Shari.) She not only gave me the cookbook that contains this recipe, but she also posted an enticing photo of it on Flickr the other day. She has never led me astray in anything, so I took the hint. I immediately flipped on the oven and pulled some butter out of the fridge, and I suggest that you do the same.

This cake is perfect for late winter: moist, fragrant, warmly spiced, with a flavor a little bit like – and I mean this in a very good way – a spice doughnut. Or maybe an applesauce doughnut. In short, I am going to be making it for a long, long time. You can roast, peel, and mash the sweet potatoes ahead of time, and from there, the cake comes together fairly quickly and easily. The recipe comes with an optional buttermilk glaze, which I used and liked very much, but you could go either way. The glaze is mainly for added flavor and moisture: in my experience, it isn’t one of those types that sits prettily atop the cake, but rather soaks in like a syrup. The overall effect was dangerous. I think I ate about five slices on Saturday. Consider that a warning.

For the cake:
3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
½ tsp. salt
½ cup milk (low-fat is okay)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes

For the buttermilk glaze (optional):
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup sugar
4 Tbsp. (½ stick) unsalted butter, cubed
1 ½ tsp. cornstarch or flour
¼ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube or Bundt pan. (If your pan is nonstick, you can get away with just some cooking spray; no need to flour.)

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt. Whisk well. In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the milk and vanilla.

In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and light brown sugar until light and fluffy, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the sweet potatoes, and mix until the batter is combined. (The batter may look terrible at this point: curdled, weird, terrible. Don’t worry.) With the mixer on low speed, add half of the flour mixture. Beat to just incorporate. Then add half of the milk mixture, and continue to beat on low until well blended. Add the remaining flour, followed by the remaining milk, and beat on low until the batter is thick and smooth.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 60 to 75 minutes, or until the cake springs back when pressed lightly and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Run a thin knife around the edge to loosen the cake, and then carefully invert it onto the rack.

Meanwhile, make the glaze, if using. In a medium saucepan, combine the buttermilk, sugar, butter, cornstarch, and baking soda. Place it over medium heat, and bring it just to a gentle boil. Immediately remove it from the heat, stir well, and set it aside to cool to room temperature. Add the vanilla, and stir well.

Set the wire rack - with the cake atop it - over a rimmed sheet pan. Spoon the glaze through a fine-mesh sieve over the warm cake. (I recommend using a sieve because my batch of glaze had some little gelatinous bits of clumped cornstarch in it.)

Cool completely before serving.