Start the mixer on low speed and pour ⅓ of the egg mixture into the flour mixture. As the flour and egg begin to incorporate in the middle with a ring of flour along the edge, add ⅓ more egg mixture and gradually increase the speed of the mixer to medium, incorporating more of the flour into the egg. Once it becomes incorporated again, add the remainder of the egg mixture and allow the mixer to fully incorporate the remainder of the flour into a dough, scraping the sides of the bowl and the hook as needed. Once the dough comes together (it will be soft), bring the speed of the mixer back to a low speed and begin to add the melted butter, little by little until it is fully incorporated. Knead on medium speed for another 2 minutes to develop structure.
Place a piping tip ½ inch in diameter into a piping bag and fill it with the dough. Place a set of 12 silicone 2½-inch savarin molds on sheet trays and pipe in the dough, dividing it roughly among the molds. There should be enough dough to come just above the indentation in the savarin mold but not cover it. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm place (like your oven turned off with just the light on) until the dough doubles in size, about 1 hour.
If you are proofing the babas in the oven, remove them and preheat the oven to 325°F.
Place the babas in the oven and bake for 10 minutes; then rotate the pan and bake for an additional 10 minutes. They will be light golden brown on the undersides. Remove the pan from the oven and carefully remove each baba from the mold. Place them on a rack on top of a sheet tray and return to the oven for 10 more minutes to evenly brown the crust. Turn the oven off without opening it and allow the babas to dry for 1–2 hours or overnight. Cool them to room temperature and store in a dry place until you are ready to soak them.
FOR THE SOAKING SYRUP
1,000 g water
450 g granulated sugar
150 g passion fruit purée (I prefer Boiron)
150 g good quality dark rum
2 vanilla bean husks
3 strips of lemon peel
3 strips of grapefruit peel
Place all the ingredients in a large pot and bring the mixture just to a boil or until all the sugar crystals have dissolved. Pour the syrup into a large casserole dish and allow it to cool to room temperature. Once the babas are at room temperature, place them in the syrup in 1 layer. Allow them to soak on 1 side for a day, and then flip them to soak on the other side for another day. Keep refrigerated during this process.
A NOTE ON THE SYRUP: In order to fully saturate the babas, the recipe calls for a large quantity of syrup, so there will be some left over. You can strain the crumbs from the syrup afterward and use it in cocktails or drink it with sparkling water if you like. If you have leftover passion fruit purée, it can also be used in cocktails. I also like to make a curd with it: try using it to replace the lemon juice in your favorite lemon curd recipe.
FOR THE CRÈME CHANTILLY
500 g whipping cream
40 g confectioner’s sugar, sifted
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
Whisk together the cream, sugar, and vanilla bean seeds until the cream creates stiff peaks. Place in a piping bag fitted with a large star tip.
TO ASSEMBLE
A bottle of great aged rum
Place 1 heavily soaked baba in a shallow bowl with the well facing up. Drizzle with a few tablespoons of the remaining syrup. Pipe a rosette of crème Chantilly into the center of the well and serve alongside a bottle of great aged rum so that your guests can drizzle to taste.
A NOTE ON THE MEASUREMENTS: Since this recipe is a professional one adapted from my pastry school, the measurements have been indicated in weight. It is typically the way professional chefs prefer to work, especially pastry chefs, as it produces a much more accurate result.
A NOTE ON THE TECHNICALITIES OF THE RECIPE: This recipe is the same one I learned to make in pastry school except that I’ve adjusted the flour to compensate for North American characteristics. If you are in France, use a T55 flour. I’ve specified using savarin molds, which you can buy online or at E. Dehillerin in Paris, the same store where Julia Child once bought her kitchen equipment and a magical place to visit.
MAKES 12 BABAS.
THE DRESS
{2011}
BEAUTY BEGINS the MOMENT YOU DECIDE to be YOURSELF.
Coco Chanel
WE ARRIVED IN PARIS ON A DARK NIGHT AT THE END OF winter, hungry and displaced. We climbed the sagging steps to the little apartment we had rented on the second floor in the 11th arrondissement. I had spent the last few weeks learning French, so I mustered the courage to go order a pizza from the Italian restaurant below. Four patrons leaned against the walls and counters, waiting for their dinner, while a portly Italian man pushed pies into a wood-burning oven and gruffly took orders through a little window.
“Un pizza avec jambon, s’il vous plait,” I said, slow and childlike.
“Surplaceouàemporter?” The reply so quick that it sounded like a single, impossibly long word.
I paused, unsure of what to say next. I hadn’t learned this one. I had studied for a month, focusing on verb conjugations and words for kitchen utensils, a crash course before leaving for Paris. But nothing had prepared me for the speed and cadence of the language in its native home.
A young man, precisely dressed in a wool coat and scarf, turned to me as my panicked eyes met his and politely translated. “He’s asking if you’d like it for here or to go.”
As I ate the pizza in our apartment that evening, I was overtired from my travels, but my stomach churned with worry and questions. “Will I like it in Paris? Will I be mortified every single day? Will G hate it here? Will he hate me for bringing him here? How will I order food again? What were the words for ‘for here’ and ‘to go’?”
The following morning, my questions were pushed aside by my excitement to explore. I put on a baggy black sweater, loose yoga pants, rubber boots, and a thick parka, a comfortable winter uniform I was accustomed to wearing during Vancouver’s rainy season. It was definitely not an ensemble chosen for its stylishness, or even one that I particularly liked. It was a default outfit. Living with a tightly controlled budget, I made purchases carefully and with practicality, but mostly my clothes were chosen to avoid the discomfort I felt with my own body. I had come to despise it—my arms, thighs, and stomach felt like unwanted houseguests. When a waistband pinched me or I felt the fabric of my clothes moving on my skin, they were disgusting reminders that I indeed had a body and that I wanted it to be so different: smaller, harder, more beautiful.
I emerged from my new apartment and was immediately confused by the equally confused stares directed at me. Suddenly I found myself a guest in a city, obliviously walking the streets of Paris in what the French would consider a housecoat. On the metro, I observed women of all ages thoughtfully presented, each article of clothing considered. I watched a graceful woman in her sixties stand with elegance and ease, wearing a fur coat as casually as if the fur were her own. My eyes followed seams downward toward the ground and I saw a sea of shiny leather, clean and respectable, not a sneaker or rubber boot in sight. I felt ashamed and realized that, here in Paris, there was no room for my self-loathing.
Over the course of the four months we were in Paris, I curiously watched as women strolled down cobblestone streets, walking with an entitlement to the sway of their hips. It was not only the young women, slim and tall, but women of all ages and shapes. Each seemed to strut with a rooted knowledge of her own beauty. I wondered about women who were fatter and stouter than me, envying their beauty and investigating its source. I spent many afternoons admiring the old works of art in the Louvre and adorning the Paris streets, noting how the bodies in these beautiful sculptures and paintings were not at all what I had been telling myself I should look like. They were not tiny, with flat stomachs and frail-looking limbs; they were voluptuous, sensual, and strong. Their bodies hosted elegant movements, and their stomachs, breasts, and legs looked a little like my own. My watery ideas of beauty were
slowly being rendered tasteless by new, richer, and deeper ones.
So I tried it. I imitated their walking with my own unrefined movements, slowly discovering that the sway of my own hips came naturally when my shoulders were not hunched and shy. I began to inhabit my own body, claiming ownership of the space it took in the world.
With spring came my birthday, and the damp sheen of a wet Paris winter was replaced with bright blue skies. The trees began to fill in with bits of young green, making sense of their boxy shapes. As I walked through the Place des Vosges on a Sunday, as I did every week, I noticed that locals who had been hibernating indoors emerged with the verdant colors and textures. I was seeing a new side of Paris, one that was vibrant and lively.
I decided to use some of my savings to buy a new outfit for a dinner I had planned with G to celebrate my thirty-second birthday. After days of looking, I walked into a boutique and hesitantly picked out a few pieces that caught my eye. One was navy, long-sleeved, and with a boat neck and a low-cut back. I tried it on. It reminded me of something a French ballerina would wear. The other was a cream-colored dress with a scalloped detail, and with each I quietly asked the salesperson what she thought when I stepped out of the change room, trying to decide between the two. She would reply each time with one eyebrow slightly arched, “Well, which do you like?”
I became frustrated with her ambiguity and blurted out, “You’re the expert; aren’t you supposed to tell me if they look good?”
“It’s on your body; aren’t you supposed to know how you feel in them?” she retorted.
I paused as her words fell into place, and then I finally understood. I understood what made all those women I admired so beautiful: it was that they felt they were. It was true. It didn’t matter what anyone thought; if I believed I was beautiful, then I simply was.
I looked at myself in the full-length mirror and saw a pretty girl, with an elegant face and slender legs peeking out from the hemline. My eyes were drawn upward to the dress hanging from my olive-skinned shoulders, smooth and broad, the fabric cinching at the narrow curve of my waist and the scalloped edges framing my breasts. What I saw was quite beautiful. And that day I began to see myself as beautiful too.
So I left the boutique with both dresses.
Questions to ask when deciding on a dress:
1. Does it make you smile?
2. Do you feel beautiful?
ITALY
{2011}
EVERYTHING YOU SEE, I OWE TO spaghetti.
Sophia Loren
I ASSUME THAT WHEN YOU MOVE TO A NEW COUNTRY with a new culture and new customs, at some point you arrive at that funny place where you are no longer considered a tourist, but not yet a local. It’s probably much like when the honeymoon phase with your young red-hot lover is over, but they have yet to mature and grow into a part of your real life. You see their dirty socks lying on the floor and the open bag of potato chips on the kitchen counter as you try to make a smoothie in the morning before heading out to an actual job. It’s that place where you realize you’re no longer getting the best of any world.
By the time pastry school ended and G and I had been in Paris for several months, that’s where I was in my relationship with the city. And though I truly believe Paris and I would have worked it out eventually, I was quite relieved to get a change of scenery.
We were going to explore Italy for a month. I’d heard so much about the food: that it still had the rustic romance that was missing from Parisian cuisine, the sun-ripened, just-picked-from-grandmother’s-garden, terroir-obsessed dishes that we all dream will change our lives and make us seem much more worldly.
I was drained from school, so we booked a two-week tour that covered much of Italy, but we planned to explore the remainder of the country on our own afterward, when I had recovered. I was careful not to book a tour marketed toward college kids, which I imagined would involve drunken nights and nineteen-year-olds wanting anonymous Italian experiences. Instead, I opted for a “high-end” one, with a heavy focus on culture and churches.
Our hotel in Rome was a garish interpretation of mid-century modern design, as if the design had unbuttoned its shirt and put on some thick gold chains to nestle in its chest hair. We checked in and waited in the lobby for the rest of our new tribe to arrive. One by one, the couples and singles we would be spending our next weeks with started to populate the bright gold, orange, and green mirrored lobby. No one was a day under sixty, and some were closer to eighty. In trying to avoid a party bus, I had gone to the opposite extreme and unwittingly booked us into a tour for retirees. I noticed they were as puzzled as we were by the entire situation, but it didn’t take long for me to get into the pace, although it was a touch slower and stiffer.
While there were some obvious restrictions on our travel, such as the difficulty of using canes on cobblestones and trying to get in and out of gondolas in Venice, there were many meaningful conversations about life that might not have been possible with kids on their way to being black-out drunk, and I felt helpful when answering questions about “cellular technology” and how to get our travelmates’ wireless working so they could send updates to their grandchildren.
In the moments I felt particularly bored, I secretly loved to antagonize a misogynistic retired psychotherapist who attempted, on many occasions, to analyze me, but not as discreetly as he would have liked to believe. He would inevitably become frustrated when I would playfully analyze him back, and yelled through his teeth with a face that the word “huffy” was truly created for, “What!? You are trying to analyze the analyst?!” I’m not sure if it was too cruel of me, or if years from now I’ll be embarrassed by the childishness of it, but it did make me laugh and satisfied my sense of rebellion and cheeky fun.
I
ITALY WAS POWERFUL AND DIRECT, AND ITS FLAVORS, tastes, and sounds struck me to my core in the same way. As G and I traveled through the country, I collected these seemingly scattered moments, and when placed side by side, they formed a rich memory.
(ROME)
I tasted a squid ink pasta, coated gracefully in a deceptively simple red pepper sauce that tasted as if it had been simmering gently on a stove for days, but also offered the verdurous taste of a ripe pepper picked that morning.
(BOLOGNA)
There was everything and then gelato. I had tasted the best of them across the country, but in this city, we found a place called Cremeria Funivia. For me, the best flavor was the “Alice,” a smooth mascarpone gelato nestled in a cone with some melted chocolate that oozed out as you bit into the last of it.
(SICILY)
After seeing what felt like the hundredth church, our tour stopped in a little courtyard, and we all sat in the shade out of the hot sun to eat cannoli. The interior of the crisp shell was coated in dark chocolate, and when I bit into it, the cold, slightly sweetened ricotta filling gently yielded. It was the first and last time I have loved a cannoli.
(NAPLES)
In many life scenarios, there are no other reasons required other than pizza, and this is the best example I have. G and I took a three-hour train to Naples, had five hours in the city, and visited only three places: Pizzeria di Matteo, Il Pizzaiolo del Presidente, and Pizzeria da Michele, eating a Margherita at each. It was as you’d imagine: an airy and chewy crust with a delightful char encircling an intense tomato sauce dotted with creamy mozzarella di bufala. Yet it wasn’t the pizza (or the sheer amount of it that we ate that day) that lingered in my mind long after we left, though I do still remember its taste. Instead, I recall it being the first time I felt threatened in a city. I’m not sure if it was the plaza filled with garbage and dirty mattresses, the hard-looking men who refused to break eye contact, even when my eyes turned downward in submission, or maybe that I had a sudden awareness of my naïveté in contrast to the aggressively searching stares around me. I just knew I wanted to eat pizza and leave.
(MODENA)
A drop of 150-year-old balsamic vinegar, pitch-black and as glossy
as tar. The owner of the vineyard sensed my passion and offered me a taste that he himself rarely took. He explained to me that his great-grandfather, who picked its grapes and started aging it, also knew that he would never taste the fruits of his labor. I had never heard of such belief in and love for the process itself.
(BOLOGNA)
The Italian aunties were teaching me the importance of making a fluffy gnocchi, and this was a part of it. We roasted potatoes in a pan of salt, drawing out as much of the moisture as possible. Their hands guided me, picking up where I was slow and concealing my errors. In the end, feathery white pillows drifted onto a plate in front of me and I was told to eat. They melted like clouds on my tongue.
(SIENA)
I wanted to see it with my own eyes, sienna earth, the color that inspired so many. I saw a charming wine barrel sitting in front of a little store with charcuterie hanging from ceilings and colorful jars lining the walls, and it all invited me inside. Two of the friendliest and most fun-loving Italian men stood behind a counter, one with a large mustache and the other a little less gregarious-looking, welcoming us. I indulged in hours of passionate discussion about food, tasting everything cured and dried that made them sing, and I relished it all. In the end, they sent me away with a bottle of Chianti and I sipped from it, sitting on the ground in the hollow of the clam-shaped plaza at sunset.
The Measure of My Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris Page 11