Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week we slowly crawl out of a COVID hole and work on our patisserie. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Lil’ guava twists (aka I was craving pastelitos but I didn’t follow the recipe)
Inspiration from NYT Cooking; puff pastry from Erin Jeanne McDowell.
Learning how to make rough puff pastry is the kind of thing that can make you feel better about yourself and how your week is going, even if you are simultaneously recovering from COVID-19 and surviving the earliest sunset of the year (4:28PM). When you make rough puff pastry, you feel like a powerful sorceress, and you almost forget that you have somehow lost the ability to sleep or eat like a normal human. For all my life I have feared the Puff Pastry, because it looked so finicky, with its layers and lamination. But it turns out that if you can make scallion pancakes, you can make puff pastry! It’s a very similar process, which you can learn more about from my favorite pie instructor on Food 52. If you make a batch (or double batch) of rough puff, then you can make all sorts of treats on the fly. My favorite way to use it is to cut it into tiny rectangles, and wrap around pieces of guava paste. It’s like a shortcut version of these Genevieve Ko cookies, which in turn are a riff off of pastelitos. Just watch this video for visual guidance, but use puff pastry (I used half the batch above) instead of cookie dough, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sparkling sugar, and bake at 400F for 10-12 minutes (you might want to try 350F instead, mine did come close to burning). If you close your eyes, you can pretend you’re eating a pastry from Porto’s while walking down a palm-tree lined sidewalk in Los Angeles.
Puff-pastry apple galette with frangipane at home
Adapted from Alexandra’s Kitchen; Puff pastry from Erin Jeanne McDowell.
I have been obsessed with the concept of frangipane since I went to England for the first and only time when I was maybe 7 or 8 to visit my great-aunt. All I remember from that trip was that I learned about the existence of bakewell pudding (or was it tart? I am confused by the difference between the two) and also that I drank afternoon tea while sitting under a table. Anyways, frangipane became a sort of mythical concept to me, until 20-odd years later I learned that it’s incredibly easy to put together. Inspired by my friend Hannah, who sent me a recipe for a similar pear galette, I combined the other half of the rough puff pastry dough with an easy frangipane and a single sliced apple, ending up with a very impressive holiday dessert that is worthy of a Christmas dinner. For the galette, I roughly followed these instructions from Alexandra’s Kitchen, except I substituted the rough puff for the pastry. Apparently this was a mindblowing dessert, because the only notes I have written down in my cooking folder is “OMG the shatter!”.
Corn and cheese arepas at Trader Joe’s
I’ve seen these in some Trader Joe’s but not all.
Trader Joe’s sells frozen corn and mozzarella arepas! They’re nowhere as good as eating Caracas at the shore, but since the shop in the East Village closed because of COVID, it’s as good as I can get for now. The arepas are a bit on the sweeter and denser side, but they’re still arepas so they’re generally wonderful. Be wary that I baked mine in the oven according to package instructions, and all the mozz cheese straight up slid out of the arepa, so it might be better to fry in a pan and keep an eye on it. To make it a complete snack, I sandwiched the warm arepa with slices of avocado squeezed with lime juice inside and topped it off with plenty of hot sauce.
Pear juice from Alain Milliat at Maman
429 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10024
For the holidays, our workplace gave us all a small amount of money to buy whatever lunch we pleased, which means that of course I blew it all on an odd assortment of things I’ve always wanted to try, but made for a rather unsatisfying lunch. (I should have just ordered Thai food.) I did, however, really enjoy this bottle of Fancy Pear Juice I got to meet the delivery minimum at Maman. (Unfortunately I didn't really like my takeout order at Maman, or the pastry I tried, but I am going to reserve judgement until I eat there in person.) I have no idea why it’s so fancy, I am sure it tells me why on the bottle, which looks like a bottle of fancy vinegar, but I didn’t read it. When I am feeling fancy I do not have time for trivial matters like reading labels. I just mixed it with seltzer and really enjoyed the nectary taste. You can probably order it online, too.
Lemon crinkle cookies from Em’s Kitchen on YouTube
Every year I make a batch of crinkle cookies using cake mix, and every year, to both my amusement and dismay, everyone asks me for the recipe (despite filling the cookie box with tons of other labor-intensive, from-scratch treats). Anyways, this year I am not playing myself again so there will (probably) only be homemade treats, so if you decide to like one of them, they will all be homemade! To my surprise this YouTube recipe for lemon crinkle cookies turned out really, really good despite being incredibly easy to make. They taste really lemony and for lack of a better word, complex in flavor. It’s like a slice of lemon layer cake, but in a cookie, with a really nice crinkly-chewy texture and sugary-shell. Bonus points for the chef listing ingredients in both cups and grams.
In good health,
Soph
P.S. The holidays are coming up and why not buy your friend a subscription of Five Things I Ate as a gift? Or, you can buy me a gift by subscribing yourself. All proceeds will be used to support my medical bills and my adorable cat’s dental surgery, so you know it’s going to a good cause.