“Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.” – Bette Davis in All About Eve
In my small collection of cookbooks, there is one book I rarely read. It’s so tiny that it’s usually forgotten about. It falls behind the others. Since it’s had kind of a hiatus from regular sight (always to be found in a dark corner with an eqully tiny book of soups), the teeny cookbook gets greatly overlooked, if not completely ignored. It’s a cookbook about artichokes and it’s made by the state of California to promote eating them.
Personally, I have always looked at the artichoke and thought ‘Eff that. Too much work.’ In reality, I am embarassed to say that I didn’t know how to peel one, so I just shot the big, ugly green vegetable dirty looks, and talked smack about it unless it involved goat cheese, spinach and crisp little toasted baguette slices.
But things have changed.
For all intents and purposes, I don’t take many cooking classes. It’s more of a thing I like to teach myself. I’ve never taken Home Economics (I was born in 1980 and when I was an adolecent,walking five miles uphill both ways to school, it was “sexist” to have Home Ec.); And even as a pastry Chef, I am only self-taught and apprentice taught. Cooking can become actually very scary to me. I can make cannelle’s, but I’ll be damned if I can’t segment an orange.
In fact, Hell to me =’s Running the mile from Junior High for eternity, second only to the fear I feel in a professional kitchen where I have to prepare staff meals for actual chefs. In hell, I am sure Laurant Gras would be behind me screaming obscenities and comparing my abilities to those of chicken carcasses. The other thing is, if you are are a pastry Chef, people assume you can cook. I can’t. I can’t cook without a recipe. I like my ingredients measured and scaled — I can’t tell you the happiness it brings me to zero out a scale. (more…)
Honestly, an Eggplant birthday cake isn’t something I’d lean towards as my first choice for a birthday cake by name alone. But once you get over the fact that eggplant can make an amazing birthday cake—a really amazing birthday cake, then you feel privy to a secret society of food lovers—and eggplant cake lovers. And for many, attempting this cake can easily be considered an intro into hiding vegetables into great tasting food.
