Comfort Foods and Indulgences

The first time I ate a Chocolate Lava Cake was at Roy’s on Maui in 1990.  Roy was somewhat of a celebrity chef in Hawaii. Back then there were only a few celebrity chefs; Wolfgang Puck, Jonathan Waxman, Michael McCarty, and Alice Waters to name a few.

The food at Roy’s was good, but it was the dessert, the chcolate molten lava cake,  that I kept going back for. I wrote to the restaurant and asked for the recipe.  They obliged!  

Over the years I have tweeked the recipe a little here and a little there. But it just wasn’t right.  It wasn’t perfectly right until I found this recipe in the New York Times.

Valentine’s Day is around the corner. Along with an extra special dinner that night for my 4 favorite valentines, I plan on  adding this dessert to the menu.

I keep seeing all these different versions of burgers in the summer issues of magazines. I want to try them all! This particular recipe stood out because I love the idea of the ingredients together…hoisin and Sriracha. I love them both but had never incorporated them into the same meal.

The original recipe had things a little differently, and I changed them for a couple of different reasons.  First of all, I believe the cucumbers were added to this burger to give it a textural change while eating, soft burger-crunchy cucumber. However, when I thought about it, I knew that placing a hot burger on top of cucumbers would equal a mushy-cucumber result. The recipe also called for grilled scallions in 4″ slices as a topping.  

What I did instead was make a relish with the Sriracha mayo, cucumber and grilled scallions.  I knew this would give a more crunchy result, and I still added more thinly sliced cucumbers to the ensemble, just for fun and looks.  One of the key flavor ingredients was using sesame oil to brush onto the scallions while grilling. This flavor really carried over nicely to the mayo-relish combo, so don’t leave this out.

These are more like a cake than a muffin. Light, not at all dense and the perfect balance of sweet and savory (I added a touch of balsamic). These would be a delicious addition to any brunch menu or they could really just stand on their own.

I like making muffins for breakfast. The ingredients can be measured out the night before, they take 5 minutes to mix up and only about 25 minutes to bake. Muffins are best eaten the day they are made.

I usually send the uneaten muffins to their teachers and the school’s office staff. If I didn’t, I would eat them, all of them, and that just wouldn’t be such a good thing!

It must be something in the air, I’m not sure what it is.  Cupcakes.  Cupcakes instead of cake.  First Heather Mangrum (confession– about to be my step-daughter-in law, engaged to my stepson Alex) who wrote in about her and Alex’s adorable (and sensible and charming) decision last week to serve cupcakes at their wedding instead of cake.  And the test they ran to choose them, buying cupcakes from bakeries all over New York City, adding a kind of individual flourish to an already elegant and stylized yet slightly modest event.  The best kind.