This pie is ridiculous, to make and to eat. It's basically a bunch of butter, sugar, and eggs baked up into a delicious gooey sugary mess of a pie. My friend Katy and I made the pie for an Oscar Party last weekend. We're planning a trip to NYC in April and Momofuku Milk Bar (pork buns! cereal milk soft serve!) is most definitely on our list of must-eats. Apparently a whole pie at Milk Bar is $44 :O so, one less thing to try when we get there.
I love the idea of brown butter. I mean, what's better than plain ol' butter? Butter with extra delicious flavor! These cookies are all about the butter. They're rich and crunchy, and just as decadent as chocolate. The pecans are the perfect complement to the brown butter, adding a really nice extra texture. All that butter makes these cookies quite crispy. They're not soft at all in the middle. In most cases I prefer a cookie with a soft middle and browned edges but for these it just worked. I'm sure if you really want them a bit less crunchy they could be pulled from the oven a little early.
Don't let the "Pie" in the title scare you. This recipe is basically just a clafoutis, it's crustless, and it's so easy. Seriously, you just peel and slice some pears then blend up a super simple batter and bake until the pie is golden brown. I think it's simple enough for a weeknight dessert, but also elegant enough for a small dinner party.
Back in August I wrote about Topo Gigio and the amazing seafood pasta my sister ordered. That pasta had fantastic calamari and mussels and scallops but what made it really delicious was the sauce. It had the most perfect tomato flavor with minimal chunks and an underlying richness. I dreamed of that pasta for months. Then, in November, I found myself devouring months and months of posts from Orangette. When I came across Molly's blog on tomato sauce I thought, 'I can do that.' So I did. And with my first taste it was like 'that's it!' It's probably not exactly like the sauce from Topo Gigio, but it's close enough for me.
Oh man are these delicious. And so freakin' easy. And easy, as you might have noticed, is quite important to me. Back in my undergraduate days my bff/roommate, Katy, and I would buy bags of Archway coconut macaroons from Marsh and eat one after another while watching Law & Order repeats in the middle of the afternoon. Those were pretty good, but this recipe blows them out of the water. They get gorgeously golden brown and crispy around the edges but stay moist and soft on the inside. Even my dad liked them and he doesn't even eat coconut. If only I'd known macaroons were so simple, I would have been making them for years!
Gourmet is gone, which makes me sad even though I've only recently begun reading old copies. Checking out random issues from the library, along with issues of Bon Apetit. To be honest I find the writing and recipes in Gourmet so much more inviting and fun to read. As for Bon Apetit, I don't really care for the format and, especially, the food photography. But what can you do?
This is a super simple dish that comes together very quickly. I like to make it on nights when I work late and don't have much energy, but still want to make something yummy and homemade. I love how the heat of the pasta warms up the chickpeas so they get nice and creamy. If you want to be fussy you can remove the skin from the chickpeas. It just makes the dish a bit more elegant. I usually run a knife through a tablespoon of the capers then leave the rest whole. This would also be great with some artichokes or kalamata olives. If the capers aren't briny-salty enough for you!
