I went to bed thinking about food. I woke up thinking about food. I’ll be cooking food basically all day today. I’m making dinner for a little dinner party at one of the neighbor’s homes this evening.
The menu:
Fresh Corn Soup with Charred Poblanos and Feta
Pasta Torte (like somewhere between quiche and pasta carbonara)
Carmelized Scallops with Chile Cream
Coconut Lime Cake
I’ve been working on the prep list all morning. It’s fairly daunting. We’re going to try a little live blogging experiment, so I will update you as the day progresses. Right now, it’s time to take a shower and then go bake a cake.
My Vrry Long Prep List
[update: 2:42PM]
My cakes are done!
So now that I’ve got some time before I need to start cooking main courses, here’s the quick rundown of how to make it.
You need:
2 limes
1 cup sweetened shredded cocnut
1 1/4 cup self-rising flour
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1 1/2 sticks of butter
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
Zest the limes and set zest aside. Juice the limes into a medium bowl and add the coconut. Let that sit for about an hour to soak up all the flavor.
Heat the oven to 325. Sift the flour into a big bowl and then mix in all the other ingredients (including the coconut and the lime zest). Divide it evenly between to cake pans and bake for 35ish minutes.
Now they should look something like the above picture. Let them cool for a minute and then turn them on a cooling rack to cool completely. Meanwhile, make ICING!
You need:
2 limes
2 1/2 cup powdered sugar
Take a really sharp paring knife, or a potato peeler, and peel off long skinny curlicues of zest. Set those aside for a minute and prepare to be kind of bored and annoyed. Using the paring knife, take off all of the white stuff left on the limes and segment them. Once that’s done, squeeze any remaining juice out of the lime carcasses into a bowl with the segments and sift the sugar over the top. Stir it gently (so you don’t ruin your perfect little segments) and let it sit for 5-10 minutes until the segments turn into gooey lime candy-like stuff.
Ice the top of one cake. Put the other cake on it, and ice just the top of that one too. Now put your beautiful curly zest on top and sitck it in the fridge.
mmmmmmmmmm
I also used the time while the cakes were baking to make the garnish for my soup course. I charred, peeled, seeded, diced and fried a couple of big chiles and then fried up some fresh mini tortilla chips in the reserved oil.
[update 4:29PM]
I just put the pasta course in the oven.
pre-baking
I don’t have time for details, but it’s basically a crust made of mashed potatoes filled with angel hair pasta and bacon(!) covered with a really rich eggy custard and topped with basil leaves. It’s got to bake for 45 minutes, and then I’ll post some pictures of the final product. Meantime, I’ve got to prep everything for the scallops.
[update 8:18PM]
It got so hectic once people started showing up that I didn’t have time to take pictures or write anything before I had to put food on the table. The pasta dish that I was rooting so hard for came out pretty whatever, but the soup was so damned good it made up for it.