Tout le beurre

A few days into January, before I got consumed by a theater and when I still had access to things like "nights" and "weekends," I got a text from my friend Claire. It was a link to a recipe along with the message, "we should make this?!"

"Totally," I replied. "This weekend?"

"Yesssss" was her answer.

So on a moderately chilly and almost-snowy Saturday, I threw two cookie sheets, my French rolling pin, and two bars of dark chocolate into my bag and hiked the six blocks over to Claire's apartment. A fresh bag of flour, a half-drunk bottle of wine, and a laptop blaring a questionably sourced episode of The Great British Bake-Off littered her kitchen table.

"You ready for this?" she asked.

"Did you actually read the recipe?" I replied. "You know, we need to let these chill for like 18 hours or something."

"Yeah I just saw that. But I already bought all this butter, so we might as well just do it. Let's start!"

And with that, Claire and I set off on a two-day, 27-step, deliciously French and highly caloric pastry-baking extravaganza that would ultimately net us around 36 perfectly puffed croissants and pain au chocolates (I don't have the exact yield because we were too busy squealing in delight and stuffing our faces to count how many we actually made).

Neither of us had ever taken on such a complicated recipe before. I'd tackled a few multiple-course meals complete with homemade baked goods and I know that Claire can navigate a cake recipe like it's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but these were authentic French pastries. From scratch.  However, we are two fairly intelligent women who like working our way systematically through complicated processes (it's no accident that in "real life" she is an opera singer and I am a stage manager), so we were able to find comfort and reassurance in following the recipe. And luckily, we work well together. I would call out instructions while she kneaded the dough for a while, and then I would take over dough duty while her arms took a rest.

Stopping only for church (her) and rehearsal (me), we floured, we rolled, we folded, we chilled, we rolled again, we proofed, we rolled some more, we folded some more, and we proofed some more - and by Sunday evening we had ourselves four pans of what looked like pretty good chocolates and croissants-to-be. Then came the moment of truth: it was time to bake the pastries. Following another seemingly bizarre series of steps that included misting the oven with a last-minute-purchased spray bottle of water, we put the dough into the oven and watched our little rolls puff into golden crescents. I don't want to toot our own horns of plenty, but they were wonderful - flakey, buttery, and so warm they practically melted in our mouths. We tore one apart and the inside revealed such perfect little nooks and striated layers that I immediately understood why we had to proof and fold so many times. It was a little slice of Paris in my mouth - a city I hold near and dear to my heart, and one that Claire and I had visited together just last fall.

Would I make them again? Probably not. They were truly and incredibly time-consuming, and she and I have other difficult baked goods to try our hands at next. But was it worth all the work? Without a doubt, yes. I experienced so much unexpected delight in making and eating and sharing the croissants that I nearly forgot just how many steps (and how much butter) it took to make them. While baking can be a solitary experience, sharing the process with a friend made it all the more fun - and now I am that much more excited to see what we bake up next.

Want to try your hand at croissants? We used this recipe for the dough and this for the pains au chocolates. Let me know how they turn out!

status update

I've been a little light on the posts these past two months, but that's because I entered the deep dark hole of off-Broadway theater and am only just beginning to claw my way out. That's a really overdramatic statement but I'm only kind of apologizing because I've been in tech for a million hours and it's also crazy cold out, which you'd think would make it easier to be hauled up in a theater all day long, but somehow makes the situation worse, not better. Granted, I go through this every February, and every February I tell myself that I cannot endure one more minute of a northern winter and that I'm moving to San Diego tomorrow, but then March and then April and then sweet and lovely May rolls around and I proclaim that I could never leave my beloved large northern city life and only the weak seek the south. It's a Sisyphean task, but somebody's gotta do it, right? In the meantime, here are some bits and bobbles of the internet that struck my fancy, and may be just the thing to tide you over until this horrid cold spell passes.

*How to eat your way through 50 states without leaving the 5 boroughs
*Mark your calendars for these 16 fee-free days at all US National Parks
*This is just awful
*But this is not 
*My love for bath bombs knows no ends
*Nor does my love for subscription services - is this my next box??
*One reason to thank the French
*And another reason to love the French
*Finally, this is just too funny (and too close to home?)

book report #7

*Bangkok 8 (John Burdett) - I was all set to love what I thought would be an action-packed mystery thriller, but was honestly a bit disappointed when it turned out to be a fairly exhaustive look into Thailand's rampant prostitution and drug trade pampered with transcendental Buddhism, meditation, and some surprising sexism. It took me a long time to get into this book - but once I realized what it was (a very real look into the darker side of Thailand) and what it wasn't (a noir detective novel) I grew to appreciate it. It did not, however, have me booking my next flight to Bangkok.

*The Clasp (Sloane Crosley) - I'm a huge fan of Crosley's essays and short narratives, and I was really excited when this novel showed up as "available" on my library queue. And while I think it was missing a bit of the sardonic and witty observational humor that so beautifully peppers her essays, it was nevertheless an entertaining and interesting story about three friends who reconnect over unusual circumstances. It bordered on wacky caper at times, and I honestly think she should have taken that energy even further. I appreciate that Crosley wanted to stick to a more serious coming-of-age narrative in which al the characters made significant emotional shifts by the end of the story, but sometimes a book about a treasure map should just be a book about a treasure map.

*Big Magic (Elizabeth Gilbert) - a quick and easy read that's best suited to those who need a creative boost. Gilbert imparts a lot of wisdom and instruction to those looking for inspiration and guidance in honing their craft, and even though most of what she says isn't going to change one's life, it's still interesting to read another take on the creative process, especially from someone with such a wide and varied career as Gilbert's.

*Swamplandia (Karen Russell) - a fantastical and haunting hero's journey through the murky swamps of Florida. I was surprisingly enchanted by this book - I don't normally love stories about tortured childhoods and terrible fathers, but there was something so beautifully innocent and painful about the Bigtree family's descent into hell and their struggle for redemption that I spent more than a few nights staying up too late just to read another chapter.

*Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) - I clearly needed some creative inspiration towards the end of last year, as I read this, Big Magic, and Ann Patchett's This is the Story of a Happy Marriage nearly back-to-back. All three should be required reading for anyone who aspires to write even one good sentence, but Lamott's book leads the class. I found myself referring to passages in conversations with other creative minds before I even finished the book, and have applied many of Lamott's suggestions to both my writing and overall daily life since reading it.

*My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante) - a vintage Italian soap opera spread across four books (this is the first of the series) that is sweeping, heartbreaking, addictive, and uncomfortably relatable. Set amidst the dingy and rough neighborhoods of post-war Naples, the characters in this world are cruel and closed, but that's exactly what makes the reader want to dig even further into this terrible yet all-too real world of Ferrante's. I was "assigned" this book via my book club, but was really excited to read it, as it's been on my list for quite some time AND it counts as one of my ten foreign/translated works that I'm attempting to read this year. The downside? Each of the four novels are hundreds of pages long and I'm now in a committed relationship to read them all. If you need me, I'll be over here reading quietly for the next three months.