I didn’t realize how much I loved eggplants until I made Imam Bayildi for my news magazine. The above are from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market.They are so versatile and easy to cook with, not to mention delectable. Cooking was a departure for me, as you can usually find me with more familiar ingredients like sugar, butter and eggs, although I am trying to cut down on the latter two, in an effort to see if I can transform my regular baking to vegan baking.  In addition to the Imam Bayildi, I also couldn’t resist making my annual orange cardamom muffins, but this time instead of using eggs, I used apple sauce and also substituted some whole wheat flour for white and added flaxseed. The results were spectacular, you wouldn’t even know that eggs weren’t in the recipe. In fact, the apple sauce (organic, from Trader Joe’s) made the muffins extra fluffy, just the way I like them.

It was nice to have time to do what I wanted to do this weekend, not what I had to do, not what I’m trying to do and not what I had to do for others. It was nice just thinking about myself and my inner Max, especially since I was in my long johns. Once you get in those things, it’s hard to get out, let me tell you.

I felt like the cluster of thoughts floating in my head had ironed out, even if it was just for one day. Cooking and baking help me think and take my mind off everything. I think it’s the methodical nature of it all. If you follow the recipe, you (hopefully) get the same result, the exact opposite from the reality that life has to offer. That’s comforting and scary all at the same time. I still haven’t reconciled the ease I feel in my baking life with my real life. That’s nearly impossible when you’re doing everything you can to aid progress to your journalism/writing career.

Tomorrow, however, is another day.

This past Sunday, I had the chance of attending, photographing and  writing about a fruit picked put on by Food Forward, an all volunteer grass roots organization that gleans fruit off of the trees of Los Angeles residents and donates 100 percent of the proceeds to food pantries. Although it required waking up pretty early, it was a thrilling experience for me, especially since I pitched the idea myself, and because I am such an advocate for sustainable food. I’ve included some photos here, but you can read the article through this link.

Today was meant to be a relaxing, check-things-off-my-to-do-list type of day, but just like everything else in life, things don’t always go as you planned. Instead, I had a really shitty day, the kind of day that’s born out of the depths of hell, the kind that can alter your life and you just don’t know it yet.

In an effort to stay sane and not have an uncontrollable crying session, I’ve decided writing in here is the next best thing. Writing always saves me. Always. And because I had this draft sitting around for a while, I thought I’d get a move on it.

A few months ago I was enamored by the fabulous food porn I had found on TasteSpotting and FoodGawker. I must have clicked through dozens and dozens of pages before I looked up to breathe again. In the midst of amazing pasta dishes, fruit pies and concoctions that made me want to jump through my computer screen and start munching away, I found an interesting recipe I had never heard of before: Katharine Hepburn Brownies.

Apparently, gossip columnist Liz Smith got the recipe from Ms. Hepburn to publish in her column some 25 odd years ago, and thank God she did because it is a damn good recipe and probably the most moist and chewy brownies I’ve made - not that I’ve made many - this is probably about my third attempt that spans the whole of my baking, so I’m no brownie expert, but it doesn’t take one to see why this recipe is reveled around the foodosphere.

Even though I don’t have brownies at the moment or any plans to make them soon, just posting about their goodness is making me feel better already. This is one of the instances where I feel I need to turn to a private, hand-written space to discuss all that has upset me and essentially sort of damaged what was meant to be a fabulous 3-day weekend. Maybe I’ll have the guts to write it here one day, as soon as I organize my thoughts.

The recipe can be found on the blog that I drew inspiration from, Surviving Oz.  The recipe there is probably better than the others you will find. But just for fun, here are Ms. Hepburns original instructions:

Preheat the oven to 325 F.
Butter an 8-inch square baking pan.
In a heavy saucepan, melt the chocolate with the butter over low heat, stirring until completely melted.
Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar.
Add the eggs and vanilla and “beat it all like mad”.
Stir in the flour, salt and walnuts and mix well.
Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes.
“Take it out; let it cool; cut into squares and go crazy.”

I never imagined I would ever make a 3D cake. It just didn’t cross my mind, until it was requested for a co-worker’s birthday celebration. My task? Bake a cake in the shape of a bowling ball.  At first, I panicked. How in the world was I ever going to make this, with the limited time I had? After researching for quite a while, I discovered that Wilton made a sports ball pan set which ultimately made my life so much easier. Securing the mold was the easy part, now I had to think about the flavor and the part that made me want to cringe: the design.  I scoured the web looking for a good chocolate cake recipe (with the added request of no nuts) and somehow through my food voyeurism, came across a unique recipe for a Root Beer Float Cake from Honey & Jam. I was ecstatic. I gathered all my ingredients, went home and began the task, which couldn’t have been completed without help from my sister.

The ball pan set turned out great and the added work of assembling both halves with frosting made it that much better. My word of advice for using such a set would be to make sure that you grease both halves thoroughly either with vegetable shortening, or my favorite PAM with real flour.

Although I like to make everything when I bake from scratch, right down to the pie crust and custard, it was a work night and I was at the point where I was beginning to feel my eye balls in their sockets - never a good sign, so I settled with store bought vanilla buttercream frosting, but not before I added semi-sweet chocolate chips and root beer. That, I have to say, without being too cheeky, was the icing on the cake.

Next came the decoration. The pan set advised using a #3 Wilton tip, but I figured I’d just up the ante and use a #16 to cover more ground in a shorter amount of time. That turned out to be a slight mistake, as my bowling ball cake kinda sorta morphed into what one of my co-workers referred to as “an enemy from Super Mario Bros.”

My baking rarely requires the use of pastry bags and tips, and so, the entire process took a bit of getting used to. The actual finger holes for the bowling ball cake were the hardest part to fill in - the frosting turned out to be not very well suited to spherical shapes and kept running off. My solution? I quickly stuck in the fridge where it hardened up to the point where it was decipherable as a shape.

Despite the few mishaps I had, I knew it had turned out well when everyone loved it more than I had expected. A few requests for the recipe and a few second helpings solidified that I had gotten the job right. Needless to say, I think I’ll take quite the long breather before I attempt a bowling ball cake again. The root beer float cake recipe on the other hand, is one that can and should be used often - the root beer adds so much flavor to an ordinary chocolate cake that will have your guests wanting more.

The Eastern Bakery in San Francisco’s Chinatown is a must-see. As the United States’ oldest Chinese bakery (it opened in 1924), Eastern Bakery touts their specialty of moon cakes, a rich, dense lotus-seed paste filled pastry that hungry residents and intrigued tourists stand in line for.

Make no mistake, there is nothing “light” or “healthy” in this bakery - if it isn’t deep fried, its stuffed to the brim with filling or encapsulated in mounds of dough, as evidenced by the Chinese Donut otherwise known as “Jin deui,” a pastry made from glutinous rice flour and filled with lotus paste, black bean paste or red bean paste.

There are many varieties of mooncakes at Eastern Bakery - some are chocolate covered, while others contain egg yolks from salted duck eggs, to which I say, no thank you.

In addition to all the pastries they offer, Eastern Bakery proudly displays then-President Bill Clinton’s visit to their establishment, where he sampled some delicacies himself. The text reads:  “President Bill Clinton came to visit Eastern Bakery on July 23, 1996 from 5:00 to 5:30 p.m. He shook hands with everybody inside our bakery. All of us, our customers and employees were thrilled and it was just like a short, but big, exciting and memorable party!!!”

The service at Eastern Bakery is quicker than at any establishment I’ve ever seen, so if you’re standing in the line that wraps outside the building, fret not - it moves fast. The seating on the other hand is dismal, so plan to eat your snacks along the way.  Lastly, don’t plan on buying a lot, especially if you’re wanting to try the mooncakes, one is enough as I found out the hard way when I bought a mooncake wedge and could only take one bite before pretty much throwing it away. Despite this, Eastern Bakery makes for a great pit stop while you’re walking about the city by the bay.

Let me preface this by saying that this Boston Cream Pie was perhaps the most demanding yet gratifying thing I’ve ever baked. Demanding in the sense that it took two people meticulously reading directions (how anyone could make this without help is a mystery)  to finish it and gratifying because when I was finished, when I had put my blood, sweat and tears into it - ok maybe not blood and tears, but there might have been some sweat mixed in with the batter, when I put this magnificent piece of baked good on display, it looked like it had come out of the kitchen of Julia Child, or Nigella Lawson or Paula Deen, except with not nearly enough butter as she would have liked. In short, it was without a doubt amazing.

You see those two sponge cakes above? They have enough spring in them to send you to the moon and back. Getting them that way was the most difficult task in the entire process. It wasn’t just a matter of mixing dry and wet ingredients together, oh no, it was a whole other ball game. Egg yolk and whites were separated, both beaten with sugar, until the whites became more or less like meringue and the yolks turned into a yellow gooey paste. Then, the whites were folded in the yolk mixture ever so gently, while the cake flour and other dry ingredients followed. But that’s not all. Milk and butter, heated and kept warm were poured down the side of the batter and folded in as well. A few daunting tasks later, and I had the most fluffy, light and airy pieces of cake I had ever seen.

Once I had crossed the sponge cake hurdle, I was ready to call it a night. My feet were aching, my hair was frazzled and frankly, I was afraid of making custard, the delicious filling that accompanies a Boston cream pie. But I decided to keep on keeping on. It’s a good thing I did, because I could have missed potentially the most amazing moment in all the years I’ve been baking: having  a simple combination of egg yolks and heavy whipping cream turn from liquid to semi-solid right in front of your eyes.

Assembling was easy. The custard went on smoothly, but the next hurdle I had to cross was making the chocolate ganache. This particular recipe had an interesting way of melting chocolate, one which I loved. The trick was to heat up the heavy whipping cream first and then pour  on the chocolate in a separate container. Boiling cream melting chocolate - what a genius idea. It made the glaze very smooth. After the ganache had cooled down, I realized the cake looked a bit empty, so I looked around the kitchen for a bit until I discovered some sliced almonds. What a life saver they were, because they instantly transformed this Boston Cream Pie from ordinary to extraordinary.

Despite the hard work, I had an amazing time and there are quite a few details I’m missing from this post, but making this dessert, in between a full-time job and freelance work just about knocked me out of my socks.

Recipe from JoyofBaking

I had hoped to write about green almonds in the likes of Gourmet or another favorite food magazine of mine, but the window of opportunity to acquire and eat green almonds is so miniscule that I didn’t think of it in time to pitch it. Nevertheless, green almonds are a popular Middle Eastern snack and have been a part of my family’s culinary palette for as long as I remember.

Green almonds are basically young, underdeveloped almonds. They can be eaten whole and the almond inside is still quite fleshy. They’re only available for about 3 to 4 weeks beginning in about mid-April, so I suppose they’re an odd type of delicacy. They’re a bit sour, but refreshing nonetheless, like something so appropriate for a hot summer night- and can really only be found in Middle Eastern or unconventional markets.

Green almonds are one in a list of fruits that are so entwined with culture and ethnicity, like the loquat which is known as “Nor Ashkhar” (New World)  in Armenian or dates and figs, which are guaranteed staples at my house yearround.

For one reason or another, food seems much more special this way - it doesn’t just become nourishment for your body, it takes on a slightly deeper meaning, defining your roots and background more than you ever intended it to.

Even though I’m thousands of miles from my origins, and that of these particular fruits and delicacies, it’s nice to live in a city like Los Angeles which provides me with the resources to not only experience far off aspects of my own background, but the backgrounds of dozens of other cultures as well.

If you can ever get your hands on green almonds, they are definitely worth a try - though the small window of time to get them in is definitely challenging, so this might be something to mark on a calendar. Odd I know, but you wont regret it.

Last week I decided to get lunch from Whole Foods on my break, meaning I went walking. In Los Angeles. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? I know. After I picked up a few things, I took a different route walking back to the office in Santa Monica, because well, it was really nice outside and I wanted to go exploring a bit. I’m so glad I did because it was as if God was reading my thoughts earlier in the week about how much I wanted to find a great spice shop in the L.A. area. Lo and behold, there was Penzey’s Spices on 4th Street, beckoning me to come in. Oh I did, how could I not?

Let me tell you, it felt like spice heaven. Endless shelves and racks of every single seasoning, every spice - be it sweet or savory, everything you’re always out of when you’re ready to cook or bake. Cinnamon, vanilla extract, at least half a dozen types of curries, salad dressing seasonings, anise seed, fennel, shallot salt, even zatar, a Middle Eastern blend of sumac, thyme leaves, white sesame seeds and salt. Imagining the possibilities that Penzey’s had to offer was making me dizzy, so I quickly grabbed some nutmeg, something I never have on hand, and poppy seed, because I had been wanting to make a lemon poppy seed bread for a few weeks.

I’m not sure who thought up the lemon and poppy seed combination (I’ve searched with no substantial results) but I am publicly thanking them now, because it is divine, especially when the lemons you use come from your own backyard, like the ones above.

The lemon tree that sits in between the orang and pomegranate trees at my house has special significance: it came from my grandmother’s garden, and it remains as the only tangible thing I have to remember her by. For a while after she passed away, I never thought I’d see it give fruit again, but a few weeks ago in an amazing moment, my mom came in, with a lap full of lemons in her shirt.

I used a super easy recipe from one of my favorite baking sites, Joy of Baking.  Baking does so much for me. It lets me be creative, helps me de-stress and allows me to reflect on things while I’m measuring, mixing and pouring.

I’ve realized that I bake not only because I love food, but because it’s sort of my therapy. It keeps me sane, and it reactivates me to deal with the world again. I guess you could say it’s an escape.

A tasty, delicious escape. I didn’t taste my lemon poppy seed bread (blasphemy) because I’m watching what I eat, but I have it on good authority from my sister that it was like a slice of heaven.

My mother cuts fruit like she’s had practice from before she came out of the womb: smooth and seamlessly, she glides around the apple or orange in her hand and sears away the skin without much effort, letting the sharpness of the knife guide her as she twists and turns  the fruit around in her hands. For her, a fruit peeler is child’s play.

I don’t know how she manages to do it and still, I don’t know why I’m so enamored by it. In fact, it seems so magical to me, that I’m convinced that I can’t call myself a real adult until I can learn to cut and peel fruit with her skill level. I have made it the defining mark of the grown up world.

If you think about it, cutting fruit nicely is quite a daunting task. I will never forget the countless times I’ve made an apple look like one of Delia Deetz’s sculptures in “Beetle Juice.” Or how I’ve basically pilfered a watermelon into mush. Sure, it’s edible either way, but it takes such grace and concentration to actually cut fruit into presentable pieces of food.

And this is my twisted, backward reasoning into believing that because I haven’t matched my mother’s fruit cutting skills, I can’t consider myself an adult. To be fair, it was probably acquired over time and perfected during her child-bearing years, but still.

It’s not even entirely about her way with oranges and plums, it’s more or less her way around the kitchen. Before she got married, she had no real training in culinary skills because she spent most of her days holding down two jobs and going to school at the same time and to think that without any prior knowledge, that she cooks the way she does (and believe me, Armenian and Persian food are not easy tasks) is just baffling to me. Her rice is always the perfect consistency, her dolma (stuffed grape leaves) is just heaven in my mouth and her desserts are to die for -even her simple vanilla cakes. When I eat her vanilla cake, I can taste her-her warmth, her passion and love, all baked between the insides of a delectable bundt pan.

So, I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that I better raise the level of my abilities with food presentation before I can graduate into adulthood. But moreso, I see that you get back is what you put in, especially if what you’re putting in is love.

I am a big lover of yogurt. Plain, vanilla, low-fat, non-fat, savory or sweet, you put it in front of me and I’ll eat it.  The majority of my yogurt obsession probably stems from my Armenian background and countless hours watching my grandmother go through with the tedious process of making her own yogurt. I hope I can muster up the patience to try my hand at homemade yogurt one day as well.

When I made the decision to become a pescetarian over a year ago, I knew it was going to be hard for me to give up dairy products if I ever wanted to take the next step towards trying out veganism, but lately, I have been trying to limit my dairy intake. I drink soy milk whenever I can and have cut out butter consumption by eating Tofutti, which by the way, tastes amazing, even to my non-veg/pesc friends and family.

Even though I’ve made these subtle changes, I have always been wary of trying soy yogurts, mostly because I haven’t had very good experiences with them. They’ve always either had very strange flavors that left a WTF taste in my mouth, or they’ve tasted like a mad scientist conjured it up in a lab.

I had given up on trying soy yogurts, until one day this week when a hunger pain struck me in the gut sharply enough to make me get up and wander on over to the kitchen at work in search of something to eat. I noticed a package of yogurt in the fridge and became intrigued. It was only after I had snagged a cup and a spoon did I realize it was made from soy, and on top of that, it wasn’t yogurt, but pudding. “Oh dear,” I thought to myself, “this is going straight to the waste basket after one spoonful.”

But I was wrong. Oh was I ever.

The pudding I had had came from a company called ZenSoy which produces soy beverages and pudding that can be found in stores across 41 states. ZenSoy began in 1999 by the founders of the Elmhurst Dairy Brand, one of the largest milk producers in Metro New York. Their organic soy puddings were introduced in 2000 and can be found in Wild Oats stores across California.

It was delicious to say the least. The consistency, which is always a big factor in my decision making process where pudding and yogurts are concerned, was perfect - not too watery and easily scooped up with a spoon. The flavor was surprisingly delicious. I think something to note when trying out soy-based or vegan/vegetarian products is that expectations tend to be skewed. You should never think you’re going to get something that “tastes exactly like the real thing,” because, well, if you’re so concerned about the real thing, then you can just have it instead of whining about alternative products. With that said, ZenSoy pudding don’t taste exactly like milk-based pudding or yogurts, and they’re really not meant to. The important thing is that they taste good enough to be liked by this foodie.

I guess I should have known that I would’ve have liked it from the get go, since I have never once met a pudding I didn’t like.

My search however, doesn’t stop here. I’m still on the lookout for good soy yogurts and I suspect there are many I have not tried. Here’s to hoping they’ll be as decadent as ZenSoy’s puddings.