My roommate comes home bearing gifts: A tiramisu from Eataly and “The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook”
The beginning of an epic journey.
a prologue
I’m kind of obsessed with cookbooks. In fact, I’m just obsessed with food and everything to do with it. Reading a recipe gets my brain’s neurons firing like pistons in a turbocharged engine. Like musicians sight-reading sheet music and imagining how the song will sound, I read recipes and imagine what its final form might taste like, and furthermore, what it can become with a few modifications and customizations.
I spent the majority of my time during the COVID-19 lockdowns at home conducting R&D (research and development). I easily poured hundreds of hours into prototyping, testing, and revising recipes. In fact, this was a time before I considered enrolling in pastry school—the only tools I had in my kit were my palate and six months’ experience working at a family-run Japanese bakery where I mainly helped with prep work as a “baker’s assistant.” The skills I mastered there (although useful and valuable) were low in complexity; responsibilities as a “baker’s assistant” included unmolding yaki purin, peeling mangoes and kiwi fruit, cutting and decorating cake slices, and cooking seven kilograms of pastry cream at the end of the day—plain or chocolate. My proudest takeaway from that experience is knowing how to efficiently crack and separate the whites and yolks of eggs, thanks to my workplace oniisan, Cobi, who wisely advised me to perform one action entirely before moving onto the next task. These skills are arguably menial, but I recount these moments to illustrate how green I was: I was a young and naive twenty year-old with very little experience but a lot of drive. As I repeated the same tasks weekend after weekend, my eyes diligently tracked my fellow coworkers to watch how they performed their duties. I studied from a distance, admiring their speed and accuracy, hoping to one day be as talented as them. Outside of the kitchen I kept a little field notebook containing sketches and comments of all the delicious things I ate, things I wanted to replicate, and notes from all my baking projects. This week, I began to daydream about food again, thus reigniting the creative fire inside my stomach and my heart.
tiramisu & the silver palate
My roommate (and her tender heart) surprised me with gifts one evening when I was feeling particularly blue. She came home with a single-serving tiramisu cup from Eataly and a book she picked up from a sidewalk library box, just for me. I’m not sure what about this book caught her eye—I haven’t had the chance to ask and find out yet.
Sitting on my bookshelf are a couple of cookbooks that I bought for myself and a few that have been gifted to me. Frankly speaking, I rarely ever use them. The combination of text and pretty photos is usually enough to satiate my food-oriented curiosities, but recently I’ve had a change of heart. Something elbow-nudged me to take the next step in being an owner of multiple cookbooks, which is to actually make something of the recipes in them. I’ve come to realize that committing to writing a blog is a big incentive for me to continually explore and investigate unfamiliar things; it’s all gas, no breaks from this point on. So, I’ve made it my mission to execute a few select recipes from my collection’s latest addition.
The book my roommate presents to me is The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook written by Julee Rosso, Sheila Lukins, and Sarah Chase, published in 1985. Rosso and Lukins, founders of the Silver Palate food shop, have made waves in the scene of American cooking throughout the ‘80s, impacting the trends and evolution of cuisine in both restaurants and people’s homes.
Published in 1982 by Manhattan-based duo Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso, [The Silver Palate Cookbook] recipes mix Spanish, Mediterranean, and Asian flavors in a time when everyone was obsessed with French cooking techniques. Lukins and Rosso introduced their readers to arugula, pancetta, and pesto way before it was cool. Now, it’s hard to find a New American restaurant (or food magazine) that doesn't use these ingredients.
from How the Silver Palate Cookbook Changed Our Cooking by Ashley Mason, 2017.
I find it kind of magical how my roommate (by fate or pure coincidence) picked up a book at random that was written by one of the most influential duos of America’s culinary landscape. The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook was the duo’s second publication, after their O.G. best-setter The Silver Palate Cookbook.
In my heart lies a desire and hope to find in this book a long-forgotten recipe that is so unbelievably perfect that holding a copy of it would feel sacred. Like a hypothetical neighbour’s recipe for potato salad (with a secret ingredient!) that everybody greedily drools over at backyard barbecues. Or like my ex’s mom’s chocolate cake recipe that she’ll only share if you marry into the family (this is not hypothetical and indeed a fact).
testing, testing: operation toaster oven
As mentioned in Apt. 301’s very first post, our apartment was never equipped with a stove range or oven.
I thought it would be cute and cheeky to run an experiment at home, which is: what desserts/pastries can be made in a tiny Toronto kitchen apartment without an oven? How far can I push the limits of an electric coil stovetop, toaster oven, microwave and air-fryer to make something sweet that doesn’t suck and that I would honestly want to have my friends (or maybe a cute crush) eat?
from For Starters….
Thus, the question still remains unanswered in our world of Apt. 301: What can (or can’t) be baked in a toaster oven? Can you make a soufflé in a toaster oven? A cake? Is a humble toaster oven hot enough to bake pâte à choux or a sourdough loaf?
Here is a list I made after flipping through The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook of a few dessert recipes that I think may be cook-able in our tiny apartment kitchen:
Coffee Blond Brownies (p. 141)
Rich Chocolate Soufflé (p. 244)
Spicy Layer Cake (p. 292)
Old Fashioned Oatmeal Cookies (p. 296)
In this instalment of Operation Toaster Oven we will be attempting The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook’s “Coffee Blond Brownies.” Brownies sound fool-proof enough… like, how badly can one f*ck up making brownies?
“coffee blond brownies”—adapted
Revising this recipe is no way indicative of the original recipe being flawed. In fact, it indicates how challenging it realistically is to successfully bake something fudgy (but not raw) in a toaster oven. The classic brownie is satisfyingly crisp on the edges, yet dense and rich in the centre—a duality of textures coexists in a perfect fudgy brownie.
The recipe above has been adapted to suit the toaster oven in our apartment, plus the limited selection of baking dishes we currently own. Cinnamon is added to complement the coffee flavour, yield is cut down to avoid an underbaked product and speed up the baking time, and the butter is browned to introduce a deeper, toastier butteriness.
Raw and underbaked, dry and overbaked—I managed to f*ck up brownies on both ends of the doneness spectrum. Follow the tips below to avoid having to go grocery shopping twice for more butter and pecans.
I recommend baking at a lower temperature when baking with a toaster oven. Mind you, the heating elements in a tiny oven are much closer to the food than in a standard sized oven. Overbaked, dry brownies are a risk when baking in a toaster oven. Additionally, using the wrong pan—my first attempt at this recipe resulted in a fully raw centre despite a fully cooked exterior—is another faux pas. Don’t use a glass cooking vessel to bake brownies. Don’t cook with anger in your heart. Do encourage your brownies and yourself to do your best! And finally, do share these with friends.
an epilogue
Rosso and Lukins’ “Coffee Blond Brownies” recipe was quite inspiring. Never, ever would I have thought of flavouring a blondie base with coffee—as a coffee-lover myself I found this to be genius. My friend (Julia, a sweetheart and talented knitter) came over to our apartment while I was making the first batch of these blondies and she practically begged to lick the mixing bowl clean. That is how delicious coffee flavoured blondie batter is.
It got me thinking: what other flavours would be fun to make in brownie/blondie form? During the next few weeks I will be R&D-ing several brownie/blondie concepts and at the end of it assemble a brownie box of all the experimental flavours for friends (and maybe you, reader?) to consume.
If you live in the downtown area of Toronto and are interested in picking up a brownie box, send me a message via Substack or e-mail and we’ll get it sorted!
as the second taster of these brownies i would like to publicly share that the batter and flavours of these brownies were deeeeelicious! you always create with such intention and you can taste it!! && i can’t wait to try the next experiment!😌
also, i’ll tell you why i chose that book specifically when i get home, it’s a sweet story. almost as sweet as you♥️ love you always! MWUAH💞