May 31

May 31 Kitchen Dreams and Nightmares

“It broke ... apart” was all I could muster as I watched a tart, that I had spent almost two hours laboring over, split into several pieces. This was the culinary equivalent of the Michael Jordan crying meme. I made the Meyer lemon curd from scratch, parbaked the crust and it came out beautifully. As I tried to remove the tart from the pan, it split right down the middle.

The more I kept trying, the worse the tart looked. By this point, I had started to cry a little. I know it sounds dramatic and corny, but I had built up the image in my head of how it was supposed to look. I had my backdrop waiting so I could take pictures and was losing daylight, and still needed to finish the rest of the dinner.

Luckily, my tart tasted a million times better than it looked. I soon realized that I had doubled the recipe, but not the amount of eggs. The tart had no structural integrity and fell apart like a mound of wet sand. I still haven’t made anything else with lemons in about a month.

TORI KARAAGE - Japanese-style fried chicken

Instead of crying over spilled tarts, I wanted to share with you a recent lunch I had at Chaplin's in DC. Elena, my favorite DC photog who I frequently collaborate with, and I dined al fresco-enjoying ramen and Japanese-fried chicken. My husband found Chaplin's and we've been going every couple of months. I love adding pork belly to my ramen and it's not complete without a runny egg.