Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July, which means fireworks, outdoor grilling, red-white-and-blue decorations and, for some of us, road trips through the night to the family cabin.

That’s right: I’m saying that beginning sometime around midnight this evening, I will have reached the deep woods, away from everything, including Internet and cell phone usage (except when we get into town, at which point I’m sure to want a Twitter fix, so you can probably check in with me there if you’d like).

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and, I wanted to give you these.

Since we’re all about to leave (or have already left?) for holiday, I’ll neglect the usual long commentary in our visits here and just say this instead: Make these monkey breads. Do it for the memory of my elementary school cooking projects, where the teacher made one and I had to have Mom find the recipe. Do it for my old college roommate who, no matter how long it’s been since she last visited, always has to run to the store when she drops by, grabbing frozen bread dough and cinnamon.

Do it because when you take this ordinary monkey bread and make it in muffin cups rather than a bundt pan, it’s even more delicious, more addictive, so that you and your friends won’t be able to stop pulling away pieces from the little cups, holding ribbons of gooey bread between your fingers, sugar all over your hand. Just make these. See you soon.
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As far as vegetables go, asparagus is really something: tall, peaked in pretty tips, stalks cast in deep shades of green, with knobby dark-purple bumps along the sides shaped in tiny triangles. It has no fat or cholesterol, few calories, little sodium, as well as lots of potassium, folic acid, vitamins A & C and fiber. Plus, this time of year it’s just finishing up its two-month-long season, meaning it’s still pretty easy to find at your supermarket.

Of course, just because it’s available doesn’t mean it’s fresh—a lesson I learned all too well on Saturday when I pulled out the bunch I’d grabbed the night before and, gasping, extended my arm as far away as possible from my face, hoping to minimize the oh-my-gosh-what-is-it-that-smells-like-death odor assaulting me. A return trip to the store—complete with thorough examining of every remaining bunch of asparagus, conversations with the produce man and the manager, obtainment of two brand-new bunches hidden away in the back cooler— left me confident of three things: 1) Fresh asparagus should not, ever, ever, smell like dirty socks left in a hamper, 2) Nor should it, for any reason, have yellow slime building up between stalks and 3) There’s a reason I spend so much time at Dominick’s: those people are nice.

When you’re choosing asparagus at the store, don’t assume bunches are fresh just because they all look alike. Search for firm, bright green stalks with tightly closed tips, where the ends look freshly cut, not dried out. And, fun fact: the thickness of the stalks reveals how late in the season the vegetables have been harvested. Thicker stalks = beginning of season. Thinner stalks = later.

Now, if you love asparagus like I do, you’ll already know how good it is roasted in a white-hot oven, smothered in olive oil, when the skin blisters and absorbs all the oil’s fruity flavor. It’s also fantastic grilled over open flames or, boiled and chopped up into Saturday morning omelettes.

But can I make one more suggestion? If you have in your hands a fresh bunch of asparagus, you absolutely have to make this salad. Trust me on this. [...] Continue Reading…

I have a running theory on friendship, which maybe you’d like to hear? Essentially, it is this: If you find someone who won’t run away when you confess your love of cheesy country music or endlessly ridicule you when they see your high school yearbook, that’s someone worth hanging on to. Because, as we all know, it’s one thing to be liked when you’re on your game, and it’s quite another to be liked when you’re at your worst, wearing your glasses and that junior-high retainer at night or, geeking out to the complete lyrics of “The Broken Road” while the two of you ride in the car.

When you have been loved that way, without condition, like I have, it’s amazing how still unnatural it can feel to extend that love to others, how revelatory of your truest self. My friend Jackie’s better at it—you’d like her. When she comes over on a Saturday afternoon to expectations of going out for lunch and, instead, finds me, anxious, telling her I have two rising pizza doughs I don’t know what to do with and, Can we just stay here, only first we’ll have to go to the store and buy mozzarella? she doesn’t flinch. Then, when after coming home with groceries, we both recognize a near-deathly smell coming from the slimy asparagus that’s brown on the bottoms, which I’d had my heart set on making a salad with, she’s only happy to head right back to the same store, just before stopping by the train for a quick pick-up and returning to the kitchen to resume activities. Jackie’s the kind of friend that likes you even with your quirks; she’s flexible and forgiving.

And, if you’ll permit the analogy, this kind of friend is a lot like the right kind of recipe.

It’s one thing to have a recipe that’s fussy, giving good results when you do everything just perfectly, measuring exactly, following the proper order, keeping the room the right temperature—it’s like the friends who like hanging out with you on a Friday night when your hair’s curled and your lips glossed and your house immaculate—not bad to have, maybe necessary. But it’s another to find a recipe that’s flexible, that lets you change things around a little, that forgives mistakes and yields something good anyway. When you find that kind of recipe, like a companion, you hang on to it, no question.

Like this pizza crust.

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The year I finished school—for good, with no more plans for extra degrees anywhere near on the horizon—my brother and I celebrated with a trip to Boston over Labor Day weekend. It was the first of three such vacations, as we’d later go to California and then D.C. (and maybe Montreal this August!), and neither of us had ever been to New England, unless you count New York City or that high school trip I took to Baltimore by way of a week in Philadelphia.

So it’s hard to say if the newness of it all—traveling as an adult no longer a student, traveling on credit card rewards points that pay for your hotels and airfare, traveling on borrowed time from work because, after all, you’re employed full-time now—deserves most credit, but, whatever the reason, we loved Boston.

The public transportation was cleaner than I was used to. The streets were more historic—filled with brick buildings and interesting architecture and a long winding Freedom Trail that we walked one hot afternoon. We spent a day in Cambridge, visiting Harvard and watching new students wander around tree-lined streets. We bought souvenirs from a random artist peddling drawings of the Boston scenery.

And, also, there was the food.

I may not have had a food blog where I could post photos back then, but I still took them: of the bakery cases (and the bakery cases), of gelato at Faneuil Hall, of a box of Mike’s Pastries, tied up with string. One night, hungry and facing long waits at the restaurants in the North End, we ended up eating thin, chewy pizza from a small café-style place where we’d seen it on someone else’s table. If I tried to find that place now I couldn’t, but the pizza I will never forget.

On the day we were to fly home, we rode to the airport, checked our bags and found ourselves with several hours of wait time. That’s when we made one of the best decisions of the trip: we pulled out our weekend Charlie tickets and beelined for Flour Bakery + Café in Fort Point Channel, on Farnsworth Street. Adam got a brioche, I think; I ordered a macaroon. We ate them just before heading back to Logan International, where I wouldn’t want to eat another thing, lest I lose that sweet, sweet, satisfying taste in my mouth.

So when Monday, going through old food magazines on my day off work, I found Joanne Chang, pastry chef/owner of Flour, featured in Gourmet, I knew what I had to do. Tearing her banana bread recipe out of the glossy folds, I pulled three saved bananas out of the freezer and headed to the store for three more.
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