I don’t know how it happened, but March is almost gone and I really don’t know where it went. Okay, I was a little sick, then I had a hard drive problem (don’t ask) and some other things going on, but really, that’s no excuse for me to have let you all down like this, because you know that in spite of it all, the cravings are there, the dreaming about it, the obsessing and, of course, the eating, which I do every day. I’m giving myself a jump start and I promise to be better about sharing the food with you.

Really now, time does fly, because last year’s Easter seems like it was yesterday, and then there’s also the matter of my birthday, which had the good sense to fall on Easter this year, so we celebrated them both together with the agnus dei on the grill and my own favorite lemon cake with lemon ice cream.

Our guests seemed to appreciate the food, but the one recipe that was requested was the simplest of them all, shrimp wrapped in bacon. If you don’t already make something like this, I suggest you add it to your summer grilling repertoire, as long as you don’t mind consuming pork and seafood, this will make you very happy. It’s also easy and requires only three ingredients. Unfortunately, I only got the one very fuzzy picture, but here’s the recipe and then I’ll follow that with the rest of the Easter pictures. I’ll share the cake recipe later in the week, if I can find the time.

shrimp wrapped in bacon

• 1 lb. jumbo shrimp, uncooked, peeled
• 1 package Oscar Meyer bacon (or the brand of your choice)
• 1 bottle Stubbs original barbecue sauce (or the brand of your choice)

Cut the bacon in half so that you have strips of about 3 inches long. Wrap each piece of shrimp with bacon and thread the shrimp onto metal or bamboo skewers and place on a plate. Douse the whole mess with lost of barbecue sauce. Grill over medium high heat for about 3 minutes on each side. Remove from skewers and serve with toothpicks.

For the rest of our Easter menu, we had some simple hors d’oeuvres and Marqués Cáceres rosé.

Then lamb on the grill. Two legs!

With cannelini beans in a tomato sauce with goat’s milk feta and parsley. Lots of feta and parsley.

And potatoes roasted with oregano and lemon.

And grilled mini peppers. We also had tzatziki with mint, but it didn’t get its own photo, you can see it on the plate in the lead photo. We had all of this with Guigal côtes du Rhône

We finished the meal with a lemon cake with lemon curd filling and lemon ice cream. And lots of crémant de Bourgogne.

Just before Christmas, some very close family friends invited me to help make their annual pile of pierogi. Joanne and her daughters Jane, Anne and Sara are the neighbors I had while growing up that were like an extra mother and sisters for me. They are of Polish ancestry and have a yearly tradition of making these for the holidays. I haven’t written about it until now because I was having a really hard time coming up with something to say that didn’t sound all sappy and nostalgic. So instead of a long intro, I’m going to give you more pictures than usual and the recipe at the end. If you want to make these, I suggest you invite a group of friends over the help you put them together; it is a little time consuming, but if you do it while sipping on some wine and reminiscing about the past, it won’t be tedious at all.

This is the set up. You can see on the right next to the bowl of filling the white plastic pierogi shaper, they use this, but also use just their fingers to crimp the edges.

This is Jane, Anne and their Aunt Suzy rolling out dough and filling the pierogi

This is Joanne cooking the pierogi and making the brown butter to drizzle on them.

Before boiling.

This is Anne eating and acting goofy.

After we put them in the pans and poured the browned butter over them, we covered them with aluminum foil. We got some to take home with us and Joanne put the rest in the refrigerator; they make them a day ahead of time and reheat them when they need them.

pierogi

Joanne makes two traditional fillings for pierogi: potato with cheese and sauerkraut with mushrooms. When they are boiled and drained, she pours a small amount of browned butter on them. That’s right, brown butter. Some people like their pierogi with applesauce or sour cream, but the brown butter really obviates the need for any other accompaniment.

for dough

(ingredients listed below are for one batch of dough; Joanne makes about 10 batches to use up all of the filling in the recipes listed below)

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, not sifted
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup cold water

Place flour and salt in a bowl large enough to contain all ingredients, whisk to combine. Add egg and cold water and mix until dough forms a shaggy mass. Gather dough together and form into a ball. Let dough sit for at least 10 minutes or refrigerate for 1-24 hours. To make enough dough for all of the filling in the recipes below, repeat this process 10 times to make 10 balls of dough.

for potato cheese filling

• 2 1/2 – 3 lbs. Yukon gold potatoes
• 3/4 cup half and half, more if necessary
• 4 T butter (1/2 stick)
• 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 small onion, diced

Peel potatoes, cut into quarters, place into pot and cover with water. Heat on high until just boiling then turn heat to a bare simmer. Cook potatoes 20 minutes or until fork tender. Drain and return potatoes to pot. Add half and half and mash potatoes using a potato masher (alternatively: use a ricer and then add half and half). Melt butter in a sauté pan and cook onions are just soft. Stir into potatoes, mix in cheddar cheese. Let cool before using. May be made and refrigerated up to two days in advance.

for sauerkraut and mushroom filling

• 1 32 oz. jar vlasic sauerkraut, drained
• 1 4-6 oz. package dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted with 1 cup boiling water, diced (do not discard liquid)
• 1 T butter
• salt and pepper to taste

Melt 1 T butter in pan an sauté mushrooms for 2-3 minutes, add mushroom liquid and reduce until almost completely dry. Add sauerkraut and salt and pepper as needed. Let cool before using. May be made and refrigerated up to two days in advance.

for assembly and serving

• 1 stick butter (or more to taste)

Roll dough out to about 1/8″ thickness. Use a 3″ cookie cutter or other round implement (such as a pint glass) to cut rounds of dough. Place one tablespoon of filling in center and moisten edges of dough with water. Fold dough over and pinch edges to seal or use a pierogi crimper. Cook pierogi in boiling water until they float to the top (not all of them will always float, so check for doneness after about 8 minutes). Remove pierogi with slotted spoon and drain on paper towel. Heat butter in a small pan over medium heat until solids separate and fall to the bottom of the pan and butter begins to brown. Arrange pierogi in 2 large roasting pans and drizzle with browned butter. You may serve them immediately or cover them with aluminum foil and refrigerate until needed; reheat in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

I do not want to make a clichéd bunch of resolutions for this new year; of course I want to look better, take care of my health, be more focused on my work and be a better friend, sister, wife, daughter, etc., oh, and I want to eat better food.

What I want is to taste some things and make some things, go new places and develop some habits that will expand my repertoire and make my food more fabulous this year. So here are the top 12 things I’d like to try, not ranked in any particular order:

• make sausage; I’m especially wanting to make merguez
• make more southeast Asian food: especially Indian, Thai, Vietnamese
• make sushi more often
• only eat at really good restaurants; that means trading frequency for quality
• focus more on whole grains and vegetables and less on meat; we’ll eat better and save money
• go to at least one really fabulous restaurant this year; Chicago is close by, so maybe we’ll make it to Alinéa?
• make friends with the butcher down the street
• visit some of the ethnic food hot spots in the Detroit area: Mexican town, Greek town; Hamtramck for Polish food; Dearborn for Lebanese food
• go mushroom hunting; my little brother has promised to take me to his morel spots!
• make veal stock; I’ve been reading the Elements of Cooking, have you?
• sign up for a CSA; we just missed the deadlines last year when we moved here and couldn’t get on anyone’s list, so this coming year will be our first; I’m getting geeked about it already
• visit my sister in Portland, Oregon; obviously I want to see my sister, but I also want to try out the food and wine there

Anything else you think I should try this year?

Have you ever gone in search of something and found something else entirely, something you had no idea you were looking for but that exactly fit your hidden craving? This hasn’t happened to me very often, but this time I’m really excited about it. I was looking for a cookie recipe. Not just any cookie recipe, but a spiced cookie recipe from Belgium that is made for St. Nicholas day, December 6th. This is traditionally the day that kicks off the holiday season and I decided that rather than make dozens and dozens of cookies for Christmas later in the month, I wanted to make some cookies now, some more next week and another batch or two the week after that so we can spread out the fun (and the calories).

I started looking for a good recipe for these Belgian cookies, called speculoos, and I did a search for St. Nicholas cookie recipes and instead came up with a Dutch pastry called banket or Dutch letters. Everywhere I saw it mentioned there were statements about this being the best cookie ever, about how this is always the first treat to disappear, about it being the thing that inspires people to trek all the way to places like the Jaarsma Bakery in Pella, Iowa, because Dutch bakeries aren’t that easy to find. With so many accolades, I started wondering what the fuss was about and had a look at the recipe.

It’s essentially an unsweetened piecrust dough rolled out extra thin, filled with a mixture of almond paste, sugar and eggs, rolled up and brushed with cream, milk or egg whites and sprinkled with sugar. Once rolled together, you can either leave them as straight sticks and bake them that way, or the rolls can be shaped into letters. Because these are for St. Nicholas day, they are often formed into the letter s (Sinterclaas in Dutch).

They are often also shaped into the first letter of people’s names or used to spell out Christmas greetings.

You could use them to spell anything at all really.

After reading about how the dough turns all flaky and puff pastry like, I was skeptical, it really looked like regular old pie crust to me, but wow, just flour, butter and water come together in an almost magical way here and the not-too-sweet pastry showcases the rich almond filling really well.

There are several names for these pastries. Dutch letters is used when you shape them into, duh, letter shapes. They are also called almond letters, almond banket or banket letters. Banket is a Dutch term for pastry, it actually means banquet and refers to the fact that pastries would have been set out after a meal on a table and the name transferred metonymically from the thing it would have sat on to the thing itself. Banquet is a word from French meaning small bench. It’s like the word pâté, which originally referred to the dough that meat or other ingredients were wrapped in but eventually came to refer to the filling. My favorite example of metonymy, replacing a term with one that is in close proximity, is when people say about a guy that he likes to "chase skirts," when everyone knows that it’s not really the skirt that he’s after. In any case, call these what you like, once you try them, you’ll also call them delicious.

banket or Dutch letters

for dough

• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 t salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
• approximately 1/2 cup cold water

Place flour and salt into bowl of food processor and pulse once or twice to mix, add butter and pulse until mixture resembles course crumbs (if you don’t have a food processor, use a pastry cutter). Add water a little at a time just until dough comes together. Turn dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, flatten it out into a rough rectangle and fold it onto itself in thirds (like a business letter). Chill at least two hours before using.

filling

• 8 oz. almond paste
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 t almond extract
• 1/4 t vanilla extract

Place ingredients into bowl of food processor and pulse to combine (if you have no food processor, you can mix them together in a bowl using a wooden spoon). Place filling into the center of a piece of plastic wrap and chill at least one hour before using.

assembly and baking

• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Cut filling into sixteen pieces and roll it between your hands to make ropes (if it sticks, use some powdered sugar on the filling and on your hands). Cut dough into sixteen pieces and roll to a rectangle about 5-6 inches long and about 1-1/2 inches wide with a thickness of about 1/8 inch. Place filling in the center of the dough, fold the short ends of dough over the filling and roll up jelly roll style. Shape the dough into letters and place on lined baking sheets at least one inch apart. Brush with cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 20-25 minutes until cookies are golden brown.

It’s taken me longer than I expected to be able to update you on the party we had for my best friend’s 40th birthday last weekend. That’s her up there in the silly glasses. We’ve been friends since we were 11 years old; that makes 29 years together. I can honestly say that Nancy is my best friend because she never let me go, in spite of my wanderlust, my frequent poor choice in men (except for the latest one, of course) and my often tactless frankness. She is one to hang onto her friends, even the ones who take more than they give - not that that would be me, but you know what I mean, those other people.

Nancy is a lapsed vegan, she now eats fish, seafood, dairy and eggs; she’ll also have a taste of your roast duck, sausage or beef stew if you offer it to her and she even called me once to say that she had succumbed to an overwhelming lust for a hamburger and felt the need to confess (I absolved her). Because of this and the fact that other of our friends have this or that dietary restriction and because some of Nancy’s family would be in attendance and I knew they wouldn’t all want the Asian inspired wasabi infused fish extravaganza (with sake martinis) that we were dreaming of, I settled on tapas. You see, the food in Spain is really not very spicy or exotic, has a lot of variety and once you take out the part where they have you add bits of ham to everything (because of the Inquisition, you must eat pork people or else), it can be offered in vegetarian or even vegan versions.

After the almonds, olives, chorizo, manchego with membrillo, jamón Serrano, crudités with vegan roasted red pepper dip and pan con tomate (bread with tomato, garlic, olive oil and salt, do you need a recipe for that?), we had tapas passed on trays: gazpacho shooters, garbanzo cakes with a sauce of red pepper spiked with pimentón, puff pastry bites with picón (a Spanish blue cheese), pear slices and an apricot glaze and finally, one of my favorite things of all time, empanada with tuna, green olives, pimentón. For the main courses, we had roast pork, grilled tofu and vegetables and seafood paella (I had wanted to make Mark Bittman’s tomato paella, but because my husband lived in Barcelona for a while, he put the ixnay on that one and made it his way on the grill, no recipe (sorry, I’ll work on it). For dessert, we had an assortment of cookies, lime ice cream, coconut chocolate gelato with ras el hanout and toasted coconut and an orange buttermilk cake with orange flavored buttercream frosting (buttercream is one word right? Word doesn’t seem to think so and has it underlined in red).

I had a lot of fun working with Nancy’s family, especially mom Judy and her sisters Mary Beth and Lorie, and her friend Michaela on the party. Michaela does catering professionally and we barely had to do more than nod our heads a couple of times over ideas, the rest of it came together seamlessly. I did the food, she did the set-up, bar and service (and far too much of the clean up, I think, sorry!). The problem with all of this is that I don’t have a lot of recipes, my batteries conked out, but Nancy’s sister-in-law took some pictures that she put on Kodak Gallery, but that site wasn’t working too well this week and there aren’t many really good pictures of the food. I think the biggest hits for me were the vegan chocolate balsamic cookies and the gelato, which I made by churning Heidi’s coconut chocolate pudding in my ice cream maker. I also used my own ras el hanout mixture. Both of these recipes are available by clicking on them. I’m thinking that our friend Karin will want those two, she’s the vegan I was trying to make sure was well-fed in all of this, we haven’t seen each other in a long time and our friendship has had a long hiatus (mea culpa). I hope she saw my effort as the peace offering it was meant to be.

P.S. We’re finally moved into our new house, but for now the kitchen is without a stove. I’ll update you soon and get a jump start to posting more frequently again.

This blog is 6 months old. Is that a short amount of time or a very long one? Yes. We’ve been working hard at keeping a record of memorable food and also at making the site better. My eyes have been wide open in amazement at what other people are making around the world, and also at the fact that people other than us are as gaga over food as we are. This anniversary of sorts falls on the same day as Easter and I can honestly say that this meal is a tribute to many of the recipes and ideas I’ve gleaned from my virtual foodie friends.

Easter is the only holiday that we host at our house. I think it’s because we never have any time off then, so we aren’t able to travel to visit family. For today’s Easter celebration, we started with several hors d’oeuvres. The asparagus with goat cheese wrapped in prosciutto was inspired by a recipe at Cooking Chat, though I stuck to simply three ingredients, prosciutto, asparagus and goat cheese. We also had escargots with garlic parsley butter wrapped in phyllo dough, a retro recipe from my mother’s 70s repertoire, they were as good as I remembered them. The celery stuffed with smoked gouda mixed with sour cream, mayonnaise, paprika and sundried tomatoes is from a recipe at epicurious.com. I love using this site not just because all of the Bon App?tit and Gourmet magazine recipes are archived there, but because of the reviews that other readers leave there. I wouldn’t have made this recipe except for the fact that everyone was raving about it. And we made the fat-free potato chips that I wrote about and that Luisa posted in the nibbles section of her blog, Wednesday Chef, for about a month, so nice of her.

Our first course of chilean sea bass with leeks on a puddle of citrus sauce is a recipe that has haunted me. I first made something like this from a recipe out of a magazine. It was tremendous. I kept thinking about making it again. I saved the magazine. I also saved lots of other magazines along the way and eventually forgot which magazine had this recipe. At one point, I literally had hundreds of back issues of food magazines that I refused to throw away because I knew that one of them had this recipe in it. But I couldn’t find it. If only I had read about it on a blog, I could have saved it, or tagged it on http://del.icio.us/ and it would have been so much easier. After years and years of this pining for a lost recipe, I finally just tried making something that approximated the long lost gem. It turned out good, but not exactly right. Does anyone out there know where this came from? I’m counting on you people.

For Easter, we celebrate the arrival of spring and inaugurate the grilling season by building the first fire of the year and roasting a butterflied leg of lamb, well, usually two legs, as the center of the meal. To go along with the sacrificial lamb, we made ratatouille, a recipe I developed by looking at dozens of different versions, but I wasn’t absolutely thrilled with it. When I get it right, I’ll let you know. We also made braised fennel with meyer lemon (Luisa, I’ve already gushed over this recipe, but really, thank you) and Greek potatoes with lemon and oregano.

We followed the main course with a salad of Boston lettuce dressed with a walnut oil vinaigrette and some wonderful cheese. Make that some amazing cheese. My friends from France come from the region of Franche-Comt?, so I always try to put out some cheeses that will make them happy. We had a comt?, of course, and also an Edel de Cl?ron, a morbier, a Bleu de Gex as well as a perfectly ripe brie. With all of the above, we ate loaves of the wonderful no-knead bread. Christine at My Plate or Yours just discovered this and raved about it. Maybe it’s time for you to try it out?

Dessert came in stages. We started with verrines layered with lime ice cream, lemongrass ginger sorbet, grapefruit curd and blood orange cr?me fra?che topped with limoncello jello cutouts and leaves of lime thyme. These small glasses layered with a variety of sweet or savory preparations have been all the rage in France lately and will soon be the next big thing on this side of the pond. We followed this with plates of mignardises: biscotti with dried cherries and almonds (based on a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated), Mexican wedding cookies (like tiny round shortbread) and dark chocolate truffles. I’ve been working on my chocolate palate lately, thanks to David Lebovitz. For the truffles, we used a 70% cacoa bittersweet Scharffen Berger. We also had some lovely chocolates brought to us by Erik’s aunt and uncle.

We wrapped up the day with a balloon fight. Also inspired by an internet recipe. You see, I wanted to serve the mignardises in little chocolate cups, as I saw here and here, among other places. This little project didn’t turn out as expected and Erik blew the remaining balloons up and left them all over the living room for us to trip over all day long. This led our young friend Matilda to dividing us up into two teams, the pink team and the green team. The balloon battle will go down in history as the best way to burn some calories after an hours long Easter feast.

Easter was a good one food wise, but a little sad because my parents weren’t able to make it. I’m glad to be able to share a record of it here. I’m thinking that we’ll still be doing this for at least another six months.

Today is my birthday. I’m forty years old. So there’s this idea that I’m supposed to be reflecting on my life so far and on getting older and close to death and all that rubbish and I just don’t get it. I don’t feel much like I’m a different person than I was at 14. I certainly don’t feel like life is over or anything. I don’t feel like Keith Griffith, though I do like his poem, “Turning Forty.” I’m thinking this one is more like it. Or maybe denial isn’t just a river in Africa after all.

At the last decade milestone, when I turned thirty, I baked myself a white cake with raspberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting and I threw myself a party. He gave me rollerblades. I hadn’t asked for them. That was the last year with that guy. Erik and I usually have our birthday dinners at home, sometimes a big party, sometimes a smaller one. Erik says to me every year, “You weren’t so old when I married you.” When it came time to start planning this year, what is supposed to be a big one, we decided to go out. I’ve had a few restaurants on my list and I decided that Blue Hill at Stone Barns was the place for this day. I’ll give you an update on our dinner within a couple of days.

Are you wondering about the photo? That’s my birthday present. I am pleased.

For Saint Patrick’s Day Green or Irish

My husband teases me about being a Mick. He tells people that’s why I like potatoes so much. And whiskey (with an ‘e’ thank you very much). He also says that’s why I sometimes stretch the truth a little bit, which is absolutely not true. Not like some people in my family. I’m really only part Irish (I’ll leave it to you to guess which part), but my family always celebrates St. Patrick’s Day in a big way.

When I was growing up, my mom would dress me in green for St. Patrick’s Day. I’d also wear a white and green pin with a four leaf clover on it that said “Kiss me I’m Irish.” Was I really such a big dork? On March 17th, my mother would usually make corned beef and cabbage for dinner. She’d make a cake with green frosting until I got old enough to make cake. Then I’d make a cake with green frosting. It was the same as our regular cake recipe, but with green dye added to the butter cream. I found out recently that when my mother was growing up, the oldest daughter living at home with her family had to make two sheet cakes every day for their dinner. One yellow cake with vanilla butter cream frosting and one chocolate cake with a coconut brown sugar topping. My mom said she was happy when she got to be the oldest girl at home, because making cake was more fun than the other jobs like peeling 10 lbs of potatoes. My grandparents had 13 children (that lived!), there were also two cousins and some other random people so there were always about 20 people at their house for dinner, so they needed two big cakes and a whole sack of potatoes. You see how Irish I am? Luckily, my parents were not so prolific; there are only four of us. So, on Saint Patrick’s Day, our mother even dyed our milk green, no joke. One time she even dyed the mashed potatoes green, but that only happened once, we must not have taken too well to green mashed potatoes.

I thought about making corned beef from scratch this year, but then I would have had to invite people over to eat it with us. Everyone we know is just too busy right now for that. Besides, we have this running joke about giving up buying meat for lent. We started it right after Mardi Gras when we realized how many things we had in our freezer. We’ve already gone through a pork roast, 2 pork tenderloins, some chicken breast, a sirloin steak, a meatloaf, some meatballs, a package of calamari, 8 sweet Italian sausages. We’ve still got a whole chicken, 2 more pork tenderloins, enough boeuf bourguignon for 4 people, and at least 12 individually packaged servings of leftovers from various meals, those are for our lunches during the week. There are also frozen raspberries, strawberries and blueberries, some green beans, peas and chopped onion, a couple of quarts of fish stock, chicken stock and some soups of various colors. Oh, and we have our house for sale and all that stuff needs to get eaten because we’re not going to move it. And it’s about to be spring and we won’t want to roast a chicken or eat boeuf bourgignon once it gets warm outside. We also just had the mother of all snowstorms, so there’s no way we’re going to the grocery store. Out of all the possibilities, I settled on lamb shanks. Not Irish enough for you? I’ve added some Guinness to up the Irish quotient. And we’re having it with mashed potatoes. I’ll just sprinkle them with parsley for the green bit and leave the dye for the frosting on the cake.

Lamb shanks with Guinness

• 4 lamb shanks, about 2-2 1/2 lbs. total
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 can Guinness draught beer
• 4 carrots
• 1 large onion chopped, or 1 cup pearl onions, peeled
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 3 T flour
• 1 cup beef broth, chicken broth or water, warmed
• 24-26 oz. stewed tomatoes (make sure that the only ingredient listed on the can or box is tomatoes, we like Pom?)
• 1 bouquet garni - 3 stems parsley, several stems fresh thyme, 1 bay leaf, tied with string
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 3 T chopped parsley

Sprinkle lamb shanks with salt and pepper. Place oil in Dutch oven over high heat. Add lamb shanks. Let them get brown and unstuck from the pan before turning to brown them on another side. When they are brown all over, remove them to a bowl. Turn heat down to medium and add onions. Cook onions stirring frequently for about 4-6 minutes. If using pearl onions, let them get some brown spots in a couple of places. Add garlic and carrots and cook for another couple of minutes. Lower heat to medium low. Add flour and stir to coat everything. Cook for about 4 minutes until flour has turned slightly golden in color. Slowly add broth or water, stirring with a whisk to make sure no lumps form, warming the broth or water beforehand will also help with this. Add reserved lamb shanks and any juices that are in the bowl along with Guinness, tomatoes and bouquet garni. Add about 1 teaspoon salt and more pepper. Turn heat to high and bring liquid just to a boil. Turn heat to a very low simmer, place the lid on the pot and cook for about 3 hours, stirring occasionally, until lamb shanks are tender. If the liquid isn’t thick enough at this point, you can fish out the lamb shanks and boil it down a little and then add the lamb back to the pot to reheat a bit. You can serve this with mashed potatoes, polenta, pasta, rice or just with some good bread. Garnish individual servings with chopped parsley. I always try to make this a day ahead of time because it really is better the next day, and I can also remove any fat from the top of the sauce before reheating it.

Serves 4.

Some people believe that King James I, or possibly Henry VIII or even Charles II, depending on who is telling the story, was so taken with a loin of beef that he knighted it and the sirloin was born. This is just one more instance of folk etymology. The story probably comes from the fact that these kings were mocked for selling titles to their friends. It even shows up in Bugs Bunny more than once. The sirloin actually gets its name from an older French term, sur loynge, meaning above the loin, which is where the sirloin comes from, though this cut of beef in French is now called the aloyau.

Tonight we needed to get dinner on the table fast. And it had to be steak.

Sirloin steak on arugula with balsamic vinaigrette

Takes approximately 10 minutes start to finish

• 1 package baby arugula
• 2 T olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
• 1 lb sirloin (1 inch thick)
• 2 T good quality balsamic vinegar (the syrupy very dark kind)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1 plum tomato, seeded and diced

Place arugula on a large platter. Heat olive oil over high heat. Sprinkle steak with salt and pepper. Add meat to skillet and cook about 3 minutes on each side (you want this medium rare). Remove steak from skillet and allow to rest. Lower the heat to medium, add garlic and cook until fragrant, about one minute. Add balsamic vinegar to skillet and bring to a boil. Pour liquid over steak and garnish with chopped tomato. Add more salt and pepper if desired.

My friend Heather went to school in Baton Rouge for a PhD in History. While there, she was converted to the celebratory ways of Louisiana. She had a party last weekend for Mardi gras or Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent begins. She made red beans and rice, and gumbo with okra and shrimp, and served plenty of drinks. Erik brought beads that he had bought from a Mardi gras supply store (you don’t need a license). She asked me to make a king cake. I knew from our explanations of the French galette des rois that the cake in Louisiana is not the same thing, except that it is. The cake is not the same kind of cake, but the idea is the same. In France it’s made for epiphany and served at King’s cake parties during the month of January. The Louisiana version is served anytime between Epiphany and Mardi Gras. So, I looked up recipes and saw that most people buy this cake rather than make it themselves (just like the French). The cake comes with something cooked inside of it (though it’s usually a plastic baby Jesus and not a porcelain figurine like is often the case in France). It seems the people who bake these cakes are afraid of getting sued, so nowadays the plastic baby Jesus comes with the purchase of the cake, but a person has to shove it into the cake on his or her own before serving it. I can’t wait until the French get that politically correct with their galette des rois - can you imagine?

So the Louisiana king cake is basically a brioche dough, a sweetened egg bread, that is filled and rolled, frosted with a simple icing and decorated with the traditional colors of Louisiana Mardi gras: Purple for justice, green for faith and yellow or gold for power. I fiddled a little with the recipe and made another one for my students today. I know, it’s Ash Wednesday, so it was a little blasphemous, but the recipe is better for me having tried it out twice.

King cake for Mardi Gras

• 1/4 cup butter
• 16 oz. sour cream
• 1 t salt
• 2 envelopes active dry yeast (.25 ounce)
• 1 T sugar
• 1/2 cup warm water (100 to 110 degrees)
• 2 eggs
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup pecans, chopped
• 2 T flour
• White frosting and tinted frostings (see below)

Melt 1/4 cup butter, sour cream, 1/3 cup sugar and salt in a saucepan over low heat, stirring often, until butter melts. Cool mixture to 100 degrees to 110 degrees.

Dissolve yeast and 1 T sugar in 1/2 cup warm water in the bowl of a stand mixture or in a large mixing bowl; let stand 5 minutes. Add butter mixture, 2 eggs, and 2 cups flour; beat at medium speed with the dough hook of a stand mixer or with an electric mixer 2 or 3 minutes or until smooth. Gradually stir in enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. If using a stand mixer, continue mixing for about 8-10 minutes until dough is slightly shiny and has crawled up the hook. If not using a stand mixture, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place in a well-buttered bowl, turning to make sure some of the butter is on top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (70-85 degrees) for 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.

Mix together 1/2 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup pecans and 2 T flour. Set aside.

Punch dough down, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it in half. Roll one half into a 24- x 12-inch rectangle. Spread half of butter, sugar and nut mixture onto the dough. Roll it up, jellyroll fashion, starting at long side. Place the roll seam side down on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bring ends together to form a ring. Moisten and pinch edges together to seal. Repeat with remaining dough and butter, sugar and nut mixture.

Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 30 minutes.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden. Let cool. Frost with the white frosting and drizzle with purple, green and yellow frosting.

Frosting

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 3 T butter, melted
• 3 T milk
• 1/4 t vanilla extract
• 2 drops green food coloring
• 1 drop blue food coloring
• 1 drop red food coloring

Stir together powdered sugar and melted butter. Add about 1/4 cup milk; stir in vanilla. Separate out 2 T of frosting in each of 3 separate small bowls or containers and tint 1 green, 1 yellow, and combine red and blue food coloring to tint purple frosting, to the tinted frostings add a little more milk so that they can be drizzled onto the frosted cake.

Makes 2 cakes.