Comfort Food

It's been a good week for food! It's true that Jessika made yet another cake and yet again didn't save me a piece, but other treats from nicer friends helped me get past that. First and foremost: last night. A certain cook admitted to me that he had not yet been to my blog, and in fact did not realize that I had been writing about staff meals for three months- despite that fact that I threaten him with this information daily. So last night he stepped it up big time. He was clearly planning WAY in advance as he brought in his own bread and had a menu prepared. Grilled cheese sandies with creamy tomato soup. Obviously, we all used that promise as fuel for the whole night.

'Did that customer just damn you to hell and spit in your face???'
'Yes. But can you wait for tomato soup and grilled cheese? I can't!'

It really helped. The sandwiches were very very large, and Jon took the time to cut the crusts off for me. (Blog hungry.) Meanwhile, I think this might have created a little healthy competition in the kitchen as the chef (also blog hungry) contributed a massive crowd pleaser- cocoa BBQ ribs and polenta! SHIT! We ate until we cried, and then ate some more.


Tonight I am going to a harvest dinner. We are eating cabbage and sausages(I think), and drinking Alsatian Riesling and Belgian beer. I was assigned the task of making dessert. I have been thinking (obsessing) about it for three weeks and have changed my mind a lot of times. We will be drinking calvados with dessert, so I thought a nice apple pie would do the trick, but then decided that was too easy. Baked apples? Apple upside down cake? Pumpkin upside down cake? Spice cake? Gingerbread?
But then I remembered my landlord and lady have an ice cream maker. This of course led me into an even more intense period of confusion and distress. Finally I had to go to New Seasons and just walk around for awhile while talking to my mom about possible ideas. She provided me with the idea of Indian Pudding*, and I provided me with the idea of apple ice cream.
Indian pudding is a molasses cornmeal pudding that takes 3 hours to make and not one recipe for it looks alike. It (a blend of two different recipes) is currently very slowly baking. I found the ice cream recipe in the New York Times, but then I changed it a little bit. Their NYT version calls for baked apples, but I decided to caramelize them with butter, brown sugar and sea salt. The ice cream itself is made with a little sour cream and cinnamon. I tasted it, and it is crazy good! Hopefully the two dishes will work together. I have a sneaking suspicion that they WILL! Also hopefully my hostess does not read this before I get to her house and spoil the surprise!

Earlier this week: I bought Ron Sexsmith a shot of whiskey. How do you like me now?


*This name seems to be a little dated and inappropriate doesn't it! I don't think Native American Pudding sounds very good though so I will be referring to it as Blackstrap Pudding.