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Why, yes, dear friends, there were.  Unfortunately, LuthorCorp has been a particularly vigorous and crunchy place this week.  Tomorrow should be a better day, and I'll be back to my usual peppy and vigorous self, I promise.

(Before we start, a confidential to Deek:  Dearheart, the World Cup song is brilliant.  Had I been clever enough to transfer my address book from my old computer to my new one, I would have sent you an email telling you so.  I tried leaving you a comment on your site, but for some reason the Blogger verification graphics are not loading.  But I did not want to let one more second pass without telling you:  it's genius, and so are you. 

It was to be a day of baking, more baking, compote preparation and the sharing of waffle and chocolate chip cookie recipes.  It became a day eaten up by the bizarre, intermittent failure of our cable modem (it seems to be behaving now, but for about an hour we were subjected to string of "incompatible IP address" error messages that left us feeling about as patient and even-tempered as you can imagine), as well as by a cake that I should have been able to make under general anesthesia, suddenly collapsing into a wet underbaked pudding.  It was a classic example of overriding my own instincts:  when I pulled it out of the oven, I could hear the cake crackling, and I knew that a cake should never come out of the oven until the crackling almost stops, but the top felt firm and was a nice golden brown, and after all, hadn't I left it in the oven on the long side of the specified baking time?  It's still a delicious cake, full of protein thanks to eggs, buttermilk and soy powder and full of vitamins and fiber thanks to rhubarb, and yet it still leaves me despondent, not because it's a failed cake, but because it would have been so easy for me to avoid this failure, if only I had trusted those instincts of mine.

The good news is that even as I am powerless to fix the remote, even as I am careless with a basic butter cake, even as I am all thumbs with lacework and even as I am feeling generally scattershot and graceless, I can still bake a decent loaf of bread.  This little beauty is the sweet saffron bread with currants from Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf, one of the most beautiful books on bread I have ever had the pleasure to read.  Rolling the fermented dough into the baguette shape that would eventually become the "S" coil, feeling the dough stretch out underneath a taut yet pliant surface, feeling the surface of the countertop with my fingertips and the heels of my hands, and painting the risen loaf with the egg yolk/water wash that is the source of that gorgeous deep brown crust:  it all reminded me -- and yes, I do need reminding -- that once upon a time, this was my life, and I was better at it than I ever knew.

Although I try, really try, not to offer up too many craven commercial endorsements in this space, I have occasionally sung the praises of the fine, fine superfine British beauty company known as Lush.  Although it is an 11-year-old company and I would occasionally come across a mention of it in the beauty mags, I had never been to Lush until last year, when Lloyd and I were in Scotland.  On our last day in Edinburgh, I had planned to buy tea and little candies for my office buddies.  On our way to the tea salon on Princes Street, we walked by a Lush storefront, its door open.  "Oh, honey, do you mind if I pop in here for a second?," I asked, and it was the beginning of the end for me, especially when the lovely shopgirl announced that there were two Lush shops in Manhattan alone.  I am a mad fool for the Upper West Side Lush shop, the closest thing I have ever had to my own personal Cheers, where everybody shouts "Norm!" as I walk through the door.  (Actually, no, they don't, because Norm is not my name, but you know what I mean, dear friends.)  Since I have started shopping at Lush, my face is prettier, my hair is shinier, and I smell like a million bucks, as does my apartment; there is something really lovely about entering a cool apartment on a hot day, or a warm apartment on a freezing day, and inhaling the fragrance of oranges, or mint and apple, or jasmine and vertivert, or toffee.

One of my favorite things to buy at Lush, and the subject of today's anecdote, is a massage bar, a solid fragrant form that looks like soap, but melts at body temperature into a potent, fragrant oil.  You rub it between your hands until they get good and shiny; you rub the offending muscle, or offending muscles, or better yet, you get a loved one to do it for you; or you decide you'd like to use a little massage oil in place of your regular cologne and rub it on your wrists; life is good.  I keep bars of them in my desk to use as hand lotion, as a dry skin lotion for my elbows, or as a balm for my stiff neck and shoulders when I've been working on the computer for five hours without stopping.  At present, I have two bars in my desk, a floral, vaguely spicy one called Therapy (the original, flagship Lush massage bar), and a beautiful one called Absolution, filled with vanilla and tonka bean.  Absolution has been discontinued and I am heartbroken about it.  When I heard it was being discontinued, I bought about a dozen bars, one or two at a time, and stashed them in my freezer.  One day I went to the shop and discovered that the remaining dozen or so bars were gone; when I asked what happened, the store manager said that they had been accidentally left too close to a heat source, and they had all melted.  I was heartbroken all over again.  I keep hoping to hear that Lush has reconsidered, and will bring it back someday.  They have been known to do this.

Thursday afternoon found myself and the other sales-y cubicle dwellers on a conference call to discuss our upcoming Spiffy New Software Rollout; by the end of the call we were dazed and groggy, in need of strong, fortifying libation, but we had none about in the office.  I sat down at my desk, listened to my neck crackle as I moved my head from side to side, and rubbed my sore trapezius.  Mmmm, massage bars, I thought, and pulled out both the Therapy bar, wrapped in a silk scarf, and the Absolution bar, kept ignominiously in the now-battered plastic bag in which it had been sold to me.  I sniffed each one, thought a moment, and then, unwittingly, uttered out loud the single greatest straight line I have ever said in my life:

"I can't tell what I really need right now.  Do I need Therapy?  Or do I need Absolution?"

Dear friends, I really, really need to remind myself that my friends, neighbors and loved ones are not subject to the internal dialogues I carry on with myself in my head, and what sounds perfectly reasonable in that context sounds quite different to anyone who can't read my mind.  Either that, or I need to remind myself that they're not laughing at me, they're laughing with me.

Writer's block, schmiter's block.  It will take more than a tired brain to keep *me* from keeping the promises I make to my dear friends...

Cheese and shallot pie

makes 1 12"x 15" pie, 8 generous or 12 moderate slices

This is a variant form of the recipe I found in Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf, the one that made me all swoony.  It varies from the original in that I had not started the pie (except for roasting the shallots) until after I had had my three-hour lace misadventure on Sunday, and thus did not have the strength to speak English, much less read a recipe for a dough I had not yet tried.  Chef Lepard's recipe calls for 550g of Italian flatbread dough; I made this using our house focaccia recipe, which makes a bit more than 750g, but again, I did not have it in me to rescale the recipe.  I'm sure that the bread with which we ended up doesn't hold a candle to the original, carefully-built recipe, but it was still very nice, especially when we dipped a few runaway shallot slices into HP Sauce.

12 medium shallots

1 recipe Focaccia al'olio (use 2 1/2 teaspoons of active dry yeast or 2 teaspoons instant yeast in the sponge, let the sponge ferment for only 30 minutes, and let final dough ferment for about an hour)

50g (scant 1/2 stick) unsalted butter

250g soft goat cheese (goat ricotta is perfect for this, if you can find it)

about 1/2 dozen sage leaves, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

The day before you wish to make the bread, roast the shallots in a 425-degree (Gas Mark 7) oven for 40 minutes.  Place into a small bowl, being careful not to burn your hands, cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, carefully peel the skin from the chilled shallots; slice off the tops and roots, and cut the shallots into quarters (larger ones can be cut into eighths).  Mix the focaccia dough and set to ferment.  Melt the butter, decant into a medium bowl, add the cheese and mix until well-blended.  Add the sage, salt, pepper and the shallots.  Taste it, adding salt, pepper and/or more sage if it pleases you.

Set a rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 425F (Gas Mark 7).  Line a sheet pan (I use a 12"x 18" pan) with kitchen parchment.  Turn the focaccia onto a floured work surface and divide in half.  Roll or gently stretch the dough into a rough 12"x 15" rectangle; drape it over your hands or your rolling pin, and place on the sheet pan.  This is a very stretchable dough; if the center appears to stretch too thinly, press some dough from the thicker outer edges toward the center.  Spread the cheese and shallot mixture over the dough, leaving a 1" border, roll out the other half of the dough, and place it over the cheese and shallots.  Pinch the edges all around to seal.  Press the top surface of the dough down in a 4"x 2" grid with the back of a chef's knife (it helps to oil the knife first).  Cover with oiled plastic wrap and let rise for about 40 minutes.  The dough will be nice and puffy.

Uncover the sheet pan and bake the bread for 40 minutes, rotating after 20 minutes.  Decant to a cooling rack.  Eat hot, warm, or at room temperature.

Pasta with roasted asparagus, creme fraiche and lemon zest

serves 3-4 as a main dish or 6-8 as a side dish

I think it was Regina Schrambling who said that pasta doesn't take nearly as well to improvisation as it seems it would.  For the most part I agree with her, especially when I consider the repertoire of misbegotten pasta dishes I have made in my day, all fabulous in the conception, all ranging from the merely unfortunate to the truly horrific.  For every rule, though, there is an exception, and this is mine.  We are in the fresh flush of asparagus season here in New York, which means that this will be a staple dish around here until the end of June, when the asparagus goes away until next spring.  This pasta is easy to make -- basically, the name of the dish says it all -- dreamy to eat, and, best of all, shows off every single ingredient to their best advantages.  I love it when that happens.

1/2 pound dried short pasta (I really love fusilli bacati in this; the artisan stuff in the attached link is long, but DeCecco sells it in short lengths)

1 pound asparagus, woody ends snapped off, remaining lengths cut into 3" pieces

2 tablespoons olive oil (I use a cheap extra-virgin olive oil from Crete)

salt and pepper

approximately 1/4 cup creme fraiche (adjust up or down depending on whether you like this richer or lighter)

finely-grated zest of one small lemon

Preheat oven to 500 degrees (Gas Mark 9). Bring at least 3 quarts of water to a boil and cook the pasta until al dente.  While the pasta is cooking, pour the olive oil into a roasting pan, add the asparagus, shake to coat with oil and salt and pepper generously.  Roast the asparagus for five minutes; take them out of the oven, shake them again and test them for doneness with a paring knife; if they are still resistant, return to the oven for about 2-3 more minutes.  Remove them from the oven when done.  When pasta is cooked, drain and add to the roasting pan with the asparagus.  Add the creme fraiche and lemon zest and stir it all through, until the creme fraiche is melted and everything is finely and evenly coated.  Try not to pick out the asparagus and snack on it while you dish it up. 

(Coming up next:  Gingerbread waffles, because MyDigitalis asked so sweetly, plus not one, but two chocolate chip cookie recipes for Kristi...)

Dear friends, I meant what I said about not shamelessly poaching from the archives anymore, but the writing is not going well tonight, even by my own gritchy, slow-brained standards.  In the end I decided that I had a choice:  I  could post a subpar piece of navelgazing cobbled to a few recipes and a sheepish comment that today is my brother's birthday, and even though I will be late with both his birthday card and his birthday present, I have been thinking about him all day long.   (Have I mentioned that my brother is a superb fellow, and I think the world of him?)  Or I could revisit a little valentine, originally posted on April 15, 2004, to one of my favorite novels, which I am rereading right now, and which is leaving me quietly and happily teary-eyed.

Regular text will resume shortly -- after all, dear friends, I have promised a cheese pie recipe.

I call it a Fisher King moment. Not long ago in this very space, I mused at how it could be possible for me, a die-hard Terry Gilliam fan, one who has seen Brazil about 15 times, one who has lost count of how many times she has seen Jabberwocky, who still brags about the time she and Lloyd went to see 12 Monkeys at the Ziegfeld, not knowing that what turned out to be the Blizzard of 1996 was raging on the other side of the exit door, to have waited 13 years to see The Fisher King. I didn't do it on purpose; it wasn't as though I were trying to avoid the movie. Everyone I knew who had seen it not only loved it, but they all made the same comment: "Every time I see that scene in Grand Central, I think of you." And yet, somehow, I missed its theatrical run, I kept missing it on HBO, I never rented it once we got our VCR. Then Lloyd picked it up on DVD, I watched it, I adored it, and I thought, where was I during all this time? How did I let this get away from me?

I had another Fisher King moment on Tuesday. A few weeks ago, on an egg-research-book-buying trip to Kitchen Arts and Letters, I picked up Bobby Freeman's wonderful book about Welsh cookery, First Catch Your Peacock (Y Lolfa Press, 1996). This book is worth a post all its own, as it is such delightful, charming reading and the research and recipes are solid, but tonight I just have to share the following passage, which she said was the only written record of a dish for which she'd only been able to find verbal confirmation. It is a quote from Richard Llewellyn's 1939 novel, How Green Was My Valley:

Out to the back to mix the potch, then. All the vegetables were boiled slowly in their jackets, never allowed to bubble in boiling, for then the goodness is from them, and they are full of water, and a squash, tasteless to the mouth, without good smell, an offence to the eye, and an insult to the belly. Firm in the hand, skin them clean, and put them in a dish and mash with a heavy fork, with melted butter and the bruisings of mint, potatoes, swedes, carrots, parsnips, turnips and their tops, then chop small purple onions very fine, with a little head of parsley, and pick the leaves of small watercress from the stems, and mix together. The potch will be a creamy colour with something of pink, having a smell to tempt you to eat there and then, but wait until it has been in the hot oven for five minutes with a cover, so that the vegetables can mix in warm comfort together and become friendly, and the mint can go about his work, and for the cress to show his cunning, and for the goodness all about to soften the raw, ungentle nature of the onion.

Dear friends, it makes my heart trill to read this, and my fingers tingle as I type it. Not only is it one of the most glorious pieces of food writing I have ever read, but it is practically a textbook on vegetable cookery in one paragraph. I can see that creamy pink; can smell the mint, onion and watercress; I marvel at the elegance of both the cooking technique and the description of it, at the love, honor and respect contained in here for the plain-yet-grand traditions of Welsh home cookery. I consider the vegetables becoming friendly together, snug in their warm comfort in the oven, and I am in love. All this in a book that has been sitting quietly on a shelf somewhere all my life. This is a novel written seven years before my mother was born. It was made into a film in 1941, directed by John Ford and widely considered to be one of his best films. How did I miss this? How did I get to be 36 years old without having read this book?

I went to Coliseum on Wednesday morning. There it was, sitting on the shelf as though it were waiting for me. I picked it up, opened it to Chapter One.

I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the little blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the Valley.

This cloth is much too good to pack things in and I would keep it in my pocket only there is nothing else in the house that will serve, and the lace straw basket is over at Mr. Tom Harries', over the mountain. If I went to to Tossall the Shop for a cardboard box I would have to tell him why I wanted it, then everybody would know I was going. That is not what I want, so it is the old blue cloth, and I have promised it a good wash and iron when I have settled down, wherever that is going to be.

Where was I during all this time? How did I let it get away from me? I don't know, but I do know this: I have it now, and I will never let it go.