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Mar 5

Just Once More

I’d been burned before. Last summer I found an old recipe for Brazilian coconut candies called brasileiras. I put all the ingredients together as directed – egg yolks, freshly shredded coconut, sugar – but they wanted nothing to do with each other. I Googled “brasilerias” to find my mistake but the results were (not surprisingly) unhelpful. A few weeks later, I attempted beijinhos de coco or “coconut kisses”. Similar to the brasileiras, they’re a combination of condensed milk, butter, and grated coconut that are rolled into balls and decorated with a single clove. This version called for a final dip in chocolate and almonds. I should have known when I wasn’t able to form the coconut into balls, mounds or anything like it that I’d made a mistake somewhere. I kept going anyway, making an expensive chocolate almond mess. I pretended they were edible, but after a day or two, I stopped kidding myself and threw the rest away. I hadn’t looked a coconut in the eyes since. Read more

Mar 3

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Ritual and Repetition

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a talk at my Brooklyn’s Book Court between Thomas Keller and Peter Kaminsky. Though technically about Keller’s latest cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home, it wasn’t strictly about food and cooking. From process and baseball analogies, he got to ritual and repetition and I realized what I’d been missing. Trying to post regularly, I’d become sharkish, cooking in constant motion. I’ve gotten used to being just a few clicks away from French-Italian-Regional-Seasonal-Indian-Mexican-Caribbean. It’s tempting to jump from one to the other, trying everything once then moving on. Having set out to write about traditional food in a new medium, I forget that the best part can be going back, trying again, and making it a little better. I had ritual, but my repetition was lacking. Read more