Stay for Tea

Category: food and cooking

January 13, 2010

Lemons and lace

Hi, hello. Whoever is reading this: I’m sorry! Do you remember me? I apologize for a lapse in posts. It’s been a busy couple of months.

NYE was mellow. A fancy pajama party in an apartment overlooking the city. There was much champagne, curry, tropical fruit, conversation, old timey music, and a doll house that we decorated with tiny toy pigs, miniature furniture and various little accessories. I wore all white – a 1940s nightgown.

What do I want from 2010?

Clarity. Focus. Stability. Comfort. Ample time to recharge my batteries and then tackle projects. To be less anxious, and more free-flowing. To follow my own rules and expectations instead of measuring up against others’ seeming happiness. Really, these are things I want any year, any day. I just hope 2010 doesn’t end up being the year where I have to really push up stream with all my strength to get what I want.

On the first Sunday of the year, I scored some really neat stuff at a flea market. Ended up getting four delphite teacups & saucers, a red velvet swing coat, a 1920s tablecloth in very good condition, a faux seed pearl bracelet, an Art Nouveau-looking green pendant, a rhinestone necklace, a white skirt for summer picnics, a pretty striped scarf and green velvet ribbon & tiny mushroom millinery stamens to decorate a hat.

Here are a few of the items:

To help send off a couple of friends who were in town visiting from Europe, we went out for a lovely dinner & some cocktails. As a parting gift, my friend gave me a bag of straight-from-the-farm lemons & fresh rosemary. (Her folks have a lovely stretch of farmland, which they tend to lovingly and grow amazing produce).

After digging around for a bunch of recipes, I assumed, over-ambitiously, that I’d be able to use a dozen lemons to make a dozen different things. Ultimately, I ended up just making two. I started on the process of making a bottle of my own limoncello, following the excellent suggestions outlined here.

P1030829 P1030843
Rosemary for the cookies & lemon zest for both recipes


The beginning of a batch of limoncello

I also baked lemon-rosemary shortbread cookies, using a fantastic recipe from Vegetarian Times.


Freshly baked lemon-rosemary butter cookies, one with a dollop of lemon curd and one with red currant preserves

In following the recipe I linked above, bear a few things in mind:
* If you don’t use jumbo sized eggs for the egg yolks, you may find you don’t have enough liquid to keep the dough from being too crumbly. I ended up adding a little bit of rice milk when I’d pulled the dough out of the fridge after it cooled for two hours. It was still too crumbly to shape into cookies, but adding little bits of rice milk until it gained consistency that I needed did the trick. (I used rice milk because I don’t keep regular milk at home, as I’m lactose intolerant. Milk, or water, would probably do the trick just as well).
* If you follow the recipe exactly, the cookies don’t come out too sweet. I personally like that, but if you like them extra sweet, bear that in mind
* Next time, I plan on using a bit more lemon zest and a bit less rosemary

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July 8, 2009

Notes from a weekend


Cold soba with dipping sauce, tofu, kabocha squash, barley tea. Mmmmmmm.


This is Birdie. I got to hang out with him a bit, too. He belongs to N. and has different color eyes, and his real name is really Major Tom.

I also made a peach basil crumble, rather at the last minute, when N. and I decided to bake at her house. It was incredibly easy and I used this recipe from Martha Stewart. It was a success. The only thing was that the dish was just a little too big. Next time, I’ll make it in a smaller, deeper dish so that I can layer more peaches in it.

We watched Fellini’s And The Ship Sails On at home, and also saw Moon. I liked both movies, for different reasons. Moon, however, was probably one of the best movies I’ve seen in the theater for a long time. In fact, it was shatteringly beautiful and clever.

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April 7, 2009

Motherland comforts

Today I quickly whipped up one of my favorite Russian breakfast foods, syrniki. My friend El. and I call them “pancheesies.” They are a very common staple of Russian homecooking, kind of like hash browns and pancakes are the familiar staple of any American’s breakfast.

The recipe is as easy as pie (actually, easier than pie).

1 1/4 cup of farmers’ cheese (this is a cheese that is similar to goat cheese in consistency, but actually tastes like cottage cheese. It’s the closest equivalent here in the States to Russian cottage cheese called “tvorog,” and is fairly easy to find in most larger grocery stores)
1 large egg
2-3 tbs of sugar
1/2 cup flour

Mix all the ingredients well in a mixing bowl, until the consistency starts to look like slightly lumpy mashed potatoes

Using a spoon dipped in cool water to prevent sticking, scoop up a generous spoonful of the mix, and form into a ball, then flatten into a small pancake. Coat both sides of the pancake in a little bit of flour, and fry in hot vegetable oil in a deep skillet, turning over so that both sides are lightly golden brown.

Syrniki taste great with a dollop of sour cream, with a serving of your favorite jam or preserves, or just on their own, depending on how rich or sweet you want your breakfast to be. I also like them as an afternoon tea snack. I had mine with Yorkshire Gold tea from Taylor’s of Harrogate, and a spoon of June Taylor‘s fig & port preserves I picked up at the Farmers’ Market a while ago, and have been savoring since.

(Yes, that mug is great).

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