Laura Esquivel and Updates

From the author of Like Water for Chocolate comes this....well, random compendium of short pieces about food. Some articles, some short stories, at least one speech. Some poetical language regarding food, and a few recipes. None were so intriguing, however, that I dropped the book and picked up my ladle. Some odd illustrations.

Updates: More About Martha Last weekend, I made Martha's Devil's Food Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting (from the Martha Stewart Cookbook). This combination is my favorite, and one I ask for every birthday (not that I always get it, but that's another story.) Personally, I think Devil's Food Cake should be dark and rich in color and flavor. This one, however, was not. Pallid color, equaled only by the bland taste--enough to make me wish I'd broken down and gotten the box-mix instead. I also think the frosting should be sweet and creamy. This one was certainly sweet, and eerily white. Like a marshmallow. My husband had a taste, and wondered why we hadn't just bought some marshmallow fluff to ice the cake. So did I. The good news is that it is very easy to make your own marshmallows.

On a more positive note, her fruit jam recipe saved me from utterly losing my mind recently during an attempt (quite possibly misguided, but enough about that) to make strawberry jam. The recipe I was using , printed several years ago from Emeril Lagasse's website was rather unhelpful. Bam! Indeed. Thanks to Ms. Stewart's more accurate way with writing a recipe, I now have two pretty quarts of strawberry jam in my fridge, just waiting for me to make...

The biscuits from the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook). By far the easiest biscuit recipe I've come across lately, and the most delicious.

Also involving biscuits: Cook's Illustrated's Cherry Cobbler Recipe. I adore cobblers of virtually any stripe--rustic, fuss-free, highlighting summer fruits. This recipe dresses the cherries up past all recognition in a red-wine reduction more appropriate to a fancy torte than a farmhouse cobbler. A shame, since the sweetened biscuits were so good.

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