I love getting new cookbooks, scurrying home from the store, fresh books in hand, cracking the spine for the very first time, and voraciously reading each recipe, the promise of trying a new dish that will perhaps become an old favorite. Sometimes though it can be a bit anti-climactic, the recipe just, ehh. But there are times when it can be revelatory, and I just had one of those times.
My purchase was rather simple, a copy of Camille le Foll’s compendium entitled, Modern French Classics. But it wasn’t until that evening, when I properly sat down with a cup of tea, and the book poised neatly on my lap, that my stomach began to rumble with anxious hunger. Each recipe looked better than the next, but the dessert section, with assortments of cakes, tartes, clafoutis, and delicate cookies, is what really had me.
For the inaugural recipe [...]

What do you do when you have most of the ingredients to make a pie, but are too lazy to actually make the crust? Well, I guess you have two options. 1) Take a power nap, and wake up in the pie-making spirit. 2) Forget about the nap, but definitely not the pies. Go to the market and purchase frozen puff pastry dough, and make life simple for everyone involved by making charming, little hand pies.
I bought the last of the nectarines, and some Italian prune plums at the market. Although they were soft to the touch and fragrant to smell, when I cut into them, the plums were puckery and tart, and the nectarines didn’t taste like much of anything at all. This fruit needed some help. And the best way that I know to make less-than-stellar fruit juicy, is to bake [...]