Happy Birthday to Me!

So, as promised, I cooked a lot of food for my birthday. Some people think it's weird that I like to spend my birthday cooking food for other people, but it's my birthday and I'll do what I want.

So I cooked all this food...


And people ate it and fell asleep.


So now, we will go through these recipes and you could make it at home! Let's start with bruschetta.


Bruschetta with sauteed kale:

2 bunches kale
Butter
salt
pepper
Parmesan cheese
Bread of your choice (I used sourdough)
olive oil

1. Toast up some bread! I used my broiler because my oven is broken and I don't have a toaster. Drizzle the bread with some olive oil and set aside.

2. Wash your kale. Discard the stems and chop the leaves. Saute the leaves over high heat until they wilt. Add some butter (as much as you want - the more you add, the better it will taste, but the less healthy it will be. I'm going to shield you from the amount I used). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Put a little bit of kale on each piece of bread. Sprinkle some cheese on top.

In an ideal world, I'd put these in the oven and let the cheese melt a little. But my oven is broken. They still tasted good though. Right? Of course right.

From The Amateur Gourmet (not me)

This seemed like the perfect addition to my blog - a mini musical about cooking.



I'm cooking a lot this weekend, so prepare yourself for some new food!

I'm still here.....

Hey all you people out there! I'm still here. I am now working one job (not two!) and I have time to blog again! I'm sure the three readers I have left will be thrilled (I have more than three readers, right? Maybe? Bueller?).

Anyways, I'm back and I've got yet another recipe for duck legs. I love duck legs. Read about it here. Or here. Or here. This one comes from the New York Times (click for the recipe) and it involves rhubarb (this should tell you how long it's been since I've cooked anything - is rhubarb even still in season?).

Basically, you brown some duck legs and save the fat that comes off (in a glass jar! Zack yelled at me for saving hot duck fat in plastic Tupperware last time - apparently that can give you cancer. Whoops).

You blitz some onion, garlic, ginger, garam masala, vinegar, cayenne, turmeric, black pepper, salt and 1/4 cup water in the blender or food processor (check the link for exact amounts), then saute over medium heat with some of the leftover duck fat. Add some coconut milk and water, bring to a simmer and add your duck legs, a little bit of brown sugar and some chopped rhubarb (it's not just for pies)!


Bring it to a boil, turn the heat to low and simmer (covered) for an hour.


If you have any fresh cilantro or chives, add those on top - I so did not have those. People who sleep five hours a night don't have time to buy fresh herbs. Such is life.

But I'm back! I'm ready to blog and ready to sleep.

I don't have time to bake (or sleep)

I quite literally had one day off in the entire month of June...and it's already past. So I have no time to cook (or clean or watch tv) or most importantly, to blog. All my time is spent teaching, stage managing and riding the subway between 112th street and Union Square. So I don't really have anything to show on my blog. Plus, I can't even plug my show anymore because there is no point - we've sold out the entire run.

Luckily, I have friends who bake and send me pictures! See this nice pie that my friend Ellen baked?


She has a nicer pie plate than I do - I've got to work on that. She made my Strawberry Rhubarb pie recipe! I feel special. It looks really delicious.


I wish I had time to make more pie! Thanks, Ellen for giving me something to blog about. Hope the pie was good.

Finally, I think summer is on its way

Today is the first day of my CSA! That's Community Supported Agriculture for those of you who don't know. You can read about it here. Basically, I get a box full of farm fresh vegetables and fruit from a local farm every week for six months out of the year! It's awesome.

I just had to bake something right off. I made a Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble. But that's not actually what I'm blogging about - I'm blogging about this pie that a made a few weeks ago (back when I didn't work 50 hours a week). But the crumble is very similar to this pie.

First of all, I had some pie dough lying around in the fridge. That's just the kind of girl I am. So that made this a lot easier. You could just buy pie dough if you wanted. Or you could make your own, like I did!


This is basically what I did. I chopped up some rhubarb -


- which is a vegetable, not a fruit. Did you know that? It's a very yummy vegetable. It goes well with pork too. But you probably don't want to put pork in your pie. So I mixed together some strawberries (all sliced and diced), one and a half Tbs flour, some lemon zest, lemon juice, a pinch of salt, 2 Tbs melted butter, some ground ginger (to taste) and 1/2 cup sugar along with the rhubarb.


Then I cut thin strips out of more pie dough and made a nice criss cross pattern. I had too much filling, so I made a few tiny pies too.


I baked it in my stupid broken oven at 300 degrees for about an hour (I really don't recommend this - stupid lousy oven) and then I got so annoyed that I put it in the broiler so that it would get brown on top.


It all turned out well though! I took it to a BBQ and everybody loved it. They all ignored the store bought pies that were there. Store bought pies cannot compete with my homemade goodness! I rule. And you can too! Make some pie. People like pie.

Frosting! Finally!

Oh my goodness, it sure took me a long time to get here. After stage managing all day, I really don't want to look at a computer or type anything else. But today, I'm finally alone in my apartment for a few minutes (ah, sweet bliss. I mean, I love Zack. But I'm around 20 people all day. I need some break time). So I figured I'd blog before I lost my nerve.

Frosting! Wedding frosting. For Bryn and Paul. Remember them?

Ok, so we've got cupcakes all ready to go. Now it's frosting time. First, you melt 12 oz of chocolate chips over a double boiler (or a metal bowl inside a pan of boiling water - or in the microwave. I won't tell). Set that aside.


Melt another 12 oz of chocolate chips in two cups of cream over low heat, stirring constantly. This will be your frosting.



You're supposed to cook it for 25-35 minutes, which made mine look a little weird. Cooking it for so long made it split funny. See?


That Martha, she sure is persnickety. She makes you do all kinds of annoying things.

Okay, combine one cup of the frosting you just made with the melted chocolate. Refrigerate until hardened.

Put the rest of the frosting over an ice water bath (that means you put the bowl of frosting into a bigger bowl with ice water in it. Just in case you didn't know). Frosting is still split weird.


I thought it was ruined, but I mixed it up like Martha said to and finally, it looked like frosting again.


I kind of thought it looked like frosting before it ever went in the ice bath. Why I couldn't I have just let it cool and spread it then?

Whatever. I frosted the cupcakes.


Then I used a spoon to make little chocolate curls from the hardened chocolate/frosting mixture. It didn't go as well as I had hoped. They looked kinda weird. I sifted a little bit of cocoa powder on them and called it a day.


But they tasted good! Emma liked them (Emma is Bryn's cousin).


I hope it was worth the wait! Enjoy.

She couldn't be whiter

Oh my goodness. I can only assume that you all are checking in on my blog, waiting for me to finish my cupcakes. And I will! I promise. It's just that I've been a little bit busy working on a new Off-Broadway musical. Want to check it out? It's really good.



Shafrika the White Girl
By Anika Larsen
Co-Conceived & Directed by April Nickell

With a name like Shafrika, it's gotta be a blonde girl from Cambridge,
Massachusetts, right? In Jaradoa Theater’s joyous new musical,
discover how Anika Larsen's unique and movingly quirky exploration of
race, identity and family uncovers the truth about growing up with Black,
White, Asian, Latino, and Native American brothers and sisters.
10 kids. 5 races. One family. Go.

June 12, 13, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27 @ 8:00pm
June 20 & 27 @ 2:00pm; June 21 @ 7:00pm; June 28 @ 3:00pm

The Dimson Theatre at the Vineyard Theatre
108 East 15th Street, between Union Square & Irving Place

Tickets $18, 212-868-4444 or www.smarttix.com

Choreographer Luis Salgado Musical Director Karl Mansfield
Assoc. Musical Director Brian Usifer Scenic Design Josh Zangen
Lighting Design Herrick Goldman Costume Design Andrea Varga
Sound Design Mike Farfalla Assoc. Sound Design David Stollings
Propsmaster Brandon Giles Production Manager John Martinez
Projections Ben Demarest Assoc. Lighting Design Susan Nicholson
Stage Manager Lena Moy Borgen Asst. Stage Mgr. Catherine Lynch
Asst. Choreographer Alison Solomon Asst. Director Katrina Stevens
Press Rep Jim Randolph Asst. Producer Daryl Ray Carliles
Associate Producer Robert E. Schneider
Original music composed by Tim Acito, Joshua Henry & Janice Lowe

Featuring Chloe Campbell, Anthony Comis, Joamer González,
Stephen Gelpi*, Chris Harbur, John Harrison, Ricardo Hinoa,
Amanda Hunt, Anika Larsen*, Stephanie Martinez, Zonya Love*,
Liz Piccoli*, Elizabeth Racanelli*, Eileen Rivera*,
Lawrence Stallings*, Shelley Thomas*, Gregory Treco*

This production has been made possible in part
by Jack Sharkey and R.Evolución Latina.

*actors appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association;
an Equity-Approved Showcase

For tickets (and they're going fast), click here.