#midrashic: kitchenology

[midrashic]

i've been cooking in earnest for about a decade now—i get a pretty good number of compliments on my cooking—i consider it an active hobby—i've reached the stage where i know how to tweak recipes to my own tastes instinctively—today i set a potholder on fire, thoughtlessly dumped it in the trash, almost caused a major catastrophe or at the very least a trash fire and then, separately, burned myself multiple times on the oven sides 😭 kids, nobody ever knows what they're doing, we're all just trying to avoid literally burning our houses down

[midrashic]

ugh i love doing egg washes and milk washes when i'm baking it makes me feel like a fine artist, like put a pastry brush in my hand and i'm like yes i AM michelangelo on a ladder i AM one of the old masters hanging in the musee de beaux arts i AM caravaggio and my chiaroscuro DOES fuck

[midrashic]

general tso's chicken + an asparagus/leek thing with a badly mixed mustard sauce

i'm never cooking with anything hotter than a jalapeno again

[midrashic]

did they take away the ability to put your photos side-by-side in rows of three

first time making mooncakes myself (no mold, obviously) and actually given that i totally forgot i needed to make my own golden syrup i think they turned out pretty good! 🥮🌕🏮

[midrashic]

a café drink: homecoming

a cocktail recipe from the universe of “honour amongst thieves,” aka the fic where moneypenny makes friends with a ragtag bunch of killer misfits.

the story.

in her third year with seven, eve spends four months trying to figure out what made her british jamaican mother's black cake so unbelievably, deliciously thick. for months she brings variations on the same recipe to every dinner, every meeting. alec spends a lot of time watching her struggle with flour and various combinations of alcohol in a postcoital baking fit, calling out very unhelpful tips from where he’s lounging in her bed. she doesn’t succeed in replicating her mother’s recipe, although she does learn a lot about proper temperature control in baking. but that year, q invents her a black cake cocktail for her birthday. it, like her, is a work in progress; q keeps messing with the proportions in an attempt to mimic the smoothness of real black cake while keeping the same flavor profile. you can put a lot more hard liquor in a cake without choking than you can in a drink. but this is what he serves her on her birthday, and this is the recipe, written in eyeliner pencil on a stolen napkin, that she keeps beside her first gun and her mother’s battered old pocket siddur in the shoebox in her closet.

ingredients: easy mode.

1 part (8oz / 240ml per part will make about 8oz / 240ml syrup) raisins 1 part sugar 1 part water 1oz dark rum .5oz port wine .5oz cherry-flavored brandy ice orange peel for garnish

ingredients: hard mode.

1 part (2oz / 60ml per part will make about 1 cup / 8oz / 240ml syrup) raisins 1 part dates 1 part prunes 1 part candied / glaced / dried cherries 5 parts superfine sugar 4 parts water 1oz dark west indian rum (preferably cockspur) .5oz port wine .5oz cherry-flavored brandy ice orange peel for garnish

instructions.

in medium saucepan, toast fruit on low heat until fragrant (5-10 minutes). add water and sugar, bring to a boil, reduce and simmer for ten minutes. when cool, strain into a container; the syrup keeps for up to a month.

combine .75oz / 22ml of the simple syrup with the alcohol and ice. stir. strain the ice out if desired and serve with an orange twist.

[midrashic]

a café drink: the patriot

it is no longer july fourth here but it IS still july fourth somewhere in this godforsaken country, so this is fine 🎆👀🎆

the story.

when eve was an agent, one of her favorite things to do was sample local drinks. wild coffee in yemen, romani compot, rhubarb soda wherever there was an upscale supermarket. she never grew out of her childhood sweet tooth--something about the quick, sugary burst of energy during the afternoon or midnight or 72-hour stakeout slump. she’d live on smoothies if she could, has, in fact, spent a few days here and there surviving on liquids alone, and the cocktails. when she was an agent she wasn’t allowed to be picky. some agents like bond go the other way and train themselves to savor everything, to find strange food a sensual experience, if not always a pleasant one. eve just stopped tasting things altogether. she ate whatever she could, at bars she ordered easy, generic drinks like cosmos and gins & tonics and bond’s fucking martinis, and she never, ever let her distaste show.

now, though, she’s a young woman with a disposable income and a job that (mostly) doesn’t involve killing people, and she can be self-indulgent, she can be eccentric. she discovers a particular penchant for drinks that taste like some kind of dessert. she finds a cachaça thing that tastes exactly like an orange creamsicle. she makes bond cringe when she orders martinis that come with descriptors like “lemon drop” and “key lime pie.” at one point, she drinks something that tastes more like apple pie than actual blended apple pie. she’s going to try something called a “starfucker” the next time she’s at the weird little cocktail place that’s become her local. she can’t wait.

the real story.

weird, but true: one of my closest friends--a boxer, a cutie pie, a woman with a voice of command that could freeze serial killers in their tracks--reminds me of nothing so much as a 5′2″ captain america. so this is a cocktail recipe for steve rogers on his birthday. & it’s a gift for the definition of “spunk” that peeled itself off the dictionary page and started walking around boston. guess which is which?

ingredients: easy mode.

1oz / 30ml vanilla-flavored vodka 1oz / 30ml fireball whiskey 4oz / 120ml apple juice 2oz / 60ml ginger ale 1tbsp + .5tsp / 15g granulated sugar .25tsp / 1g cinnamon ice lemon wedge for garnish

ingredients: hard mode.

.5oz / 15ml apple-flavored vodka (preferably pearl apple pie, but smirnoff green apple & ivanabitch dutch apple also acceptable) 1oz / 30ml vanilla-flavored vodka 1oz / 30ml fireball whiskey 5oz / 150ml apple juice 3oz / 90ml ginger ale 1.75tbsp / 22g vanilla sugar .25tsp / 1g cinnamon a very small pinch each of ground cloves & ground nutmeg & allspice ice honey, cinnamon sugar, lemon wedge, apple slices, & cinnamon stick for garnish

instructions.

(rim a mason jar using honey and cinnamon sugar. jauntily arrange the lemon wedge and cinnamon stick in the empty jar.)

in a cocktail shaker, combine alcohol, juice, ginger ale, (spices,) and ice. shake vigorously for thirty seconds.

pour into glass (or mason jar over the garnishes). add remaining garnishes by sticking the lemon wedge on the rim (or, if you’re making the overachiever version of this cocktail, arranging thin apple slices and dusting with cinnamon sugar).

[midrashic]

cranberry nut bread. NO IT’S NOT BURNED IT’S SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THAT

[midrashic]

garlic & herb ciabatta!

[midrashic]

some of my latest culinary efforts: beef satay with peanut sauce (👌) and glazed pumpkin pound cake my mom won’t let me glaze

[midrashic]

quick n dirty chocolate buttercrunch

[midrashic]

welcome to cinnamon swirl loaf ii: the reswirling

[midrashic]

toffee almond sandies!! no, they don’t look anything like the picture, i chopped the almonds myself 

[midrashic]

oat-apple-walnut crisp!

[midrashic]

the resulting hard-fought midnight honey challah bread

[midrashic]

in the past month i have broken two (2) hand mixers

[midrashic]

the secret to good food is cornstarch