Arsicault Bakery (a food review post)

On a day in the recent past, I woke up with a craving for a croissant. On the one hand, this was puzzling, because it's not a thing a frequently want or, even, think about. On the other hand, I knew exactly why I had that craving. The night prior, my wife and I had watched the first episode of Killing Eve, during which there is this whole thing over a croissant. So I woke up the next morning wanting a croissant.

As it happened, I also had to go out that morning to take my daughter to school and put gas in my wife's car, so I decided to stop and get croissants on my way home... wherein lies the problem. There are no good croissants in the area. Many many years ago, when we wanted croissants, we'd go to this place called Cafe des Croissants. At the time, we thought they were pretty great. I mean, they must have thought so, too, since they named their place after the things! They were this quaint little place that was always crowded and had all kinds of croissants, and it was always a treat to go there.

BUT! At some point within the last decade, they decided to expand. Or they got new owners who decided to expand. I'm not sure if the new owner thing happened or not, but the pattern suggests it, since they went from one location to about six within the span of a year and, of course, when they did that, the quality of their croissants went down. Way down. They're more like fluffy bread, now, than anything else. Do you have a Safeway in your area? If so, go pick up some croissants from them, and you're getting something comparable (though only about half the size of the ones from the croissant place).

Anyway, I stopped at Cafe des Croissants on my way home and picked up some croissants, and they were fine. Which is a problem when you want a croissant. You don't want a piece of bread, which is fine; you want a croissant. And, when I say they were fine, I mean they were fine with me. My wife's reaction was somewhat less than mine, which I will sum up by saying that she didn't finish hers and gave half of it to our son (who will kind of eat anything that is bread or pizza or cookies).

BUT! All of that made her want an actual, good croissant.

Because we were going down to San Francisco this past Sunday (to see an exhibit at the Legion of Honor (from which there are no pictures, because it was a no-picture-taking kind of exhibit (of all kinds of jewels and jewelry and jeweled daggers!))), anyway, my wife did some San Francisco croissant research to see if we could find some good croissants down in the city. What she found was Arsicault Bakery.

Our plan was to go by the bakery on the way to the museum, because you want croissants in the morning, right? Okay, well, I don't have any time bias against croissants, but we figured earlier was better, especially since they close at 3:00, because, apparently, other people have a time bias against croissants. It's like you can eat croissants in the morning on the way to drinking in the evening. Or something like that. But I digress...

Our plan was to get the croissants on the way to the museum, which seemed like a fine plan. Fine enough, at any rate, because we figured that even if we couldn't find parking (and you can never find street parking in San Francisco), one of us could hop out of the car and get the baked goods while the other one drove around until a pick up was needed. But that was a bad plan.

It was a bad plan because we got there and there was a line down the sidewalk to the bakery. There would be no driving around while someone hopped out and got croissants. So we looked for parking... but, as it turned out, there was a farmers' market going on a couple of blocks away, so there was absolutely no parking. Anywhere. And, maybe, the market was contributing to the line at the bakery? Or maybe not. Maybe they're always like that.

We changed our plan.
We changed it to a post-museum trip.
Which was fine except for the possibility that there wouldn't have anything left. So I wasn't surprised at 2:40 when I walked in -- alone, because there was still no parking so my wife was out driving around the block -- to find out they only had a few ham and cheese croissants left and a couple of bags of shortbread cookies. I bought a bag of the cookies and most of the croissants and dashed back out to get picked up on the drive-by.

The decision (because I was hungry) was that we would eat one of the croissants. You know, try it out. My wife only wanted some of the croissant part, so I pulled out one of the croissants in its little white bag and finally looked at what I purchased...
No, I didn't look at what I was buying when I bought it, because I was in a hurry and I already knew I was buying them. I just took the bag and paid.
...It was the most croissanting looking croissant I have ever seen. And I knew this idea of breaking off a piece of the outer layer for her was going to be a bad idea. But I reached into the bag, keeping the croissant in the bag as much as poosible, and broke off a piece of the crust... Which sent croissant flakes flying into the air as it cracked apart.

It was, by far, the best croissant I have ever tasted, and it wasn't even fresh and warm. It was amazing. And, yes, by the time we had finished it, me feeding my wife bites of the outer crust as I ate the ham-and-cheesy goodness and innards, I was completely covered in croissant flakes. There are still croissant flakes turning up in my car despite a rather thorough brushing of the seat when we got home.

As it turns out, Arsicault has won some awards for how great they are. It's understandable.
Oh, and the shortbread cookies -- and neither of us particularly care for shortbread cookies -- were also amazing. They are the only shortbread cookie I've ever had that I would put in the "good" category.

Yes, we are making plans to take a trip to the bakery when we can get there early enough to get fresh goods. I can't wait!

[The above pictured croissants are from Arsicault, but I can't take credit for it. I stole the picture from their facebook page, but I'm pretty sure they'd be okay with it. I hope. Either way, you can check them out on facebook.]

An Unacceptable Time

(With no apologies to Madeleine L'Engle. It was a crappy book.)

We are living in an unacceptable time. We are living in an unacceptable time full of people acting in unacceptable ways. I'm not talking about Trump, either, or at least not just Trump; he's just one rich asshole who thinks way too highly of himself. No, I'm talking about the people who put Trump where he is, all of whom in one way or another think way too highly of themselves, too (which is what white privilege (especially male white privilege) is all about), and are hoping that by validating Trump he will return the favor and validate them.
(Suckers!)

Of course, it's Republican powermongers who created Trump and put him where he is. You only have to look at North Carolina to see that. North Carolina has become the microcosm that a significant part of the United States is on its way to becoming, which is not a democracy according to the EIP (Electoral Integrity Project), an international organization that evaluates the electoral processes of countries (and states) around the world. North Carolina scored the lowest score of any place ever evaluated in the entire world (a 7/100) on its districting practices. [And, overall, North Carolina isn't even the lowest scoring State on their scale. This is scary stuff to be happening in America, the place where this kind of authoritarianism was never supposed to be able to happen.]

Here's kind of what all of this is like:

Imagine a classroom. In the classroom are 20 young children, let's say six years old. They are sitting in a circle. One boy, a white boy, has a pile of cookies in front of him, 80 of them. Some of you are thinking that that boy should share some of his cookies, but hold on! There are some more cookies.

There's another white boy sitting next to the cookie hoarder; he has 10 cookies. He's looking at the guy with 80 cookies and being resentful of the fact that he only has 10 cookies.

But here's the real problem. There are only 10 cookies left to be shared out among 18 more children. Then, two more kids get two cookies each. Four kids get one cookie each. Two kids get half a cookie a piece, and... 10 kids get to share the last cookie.

Now, in any sane classroom, the teacher would make the boy with 80 cookies share some of his cookies, but, when the teacher makes that suggestion, the boy begins throwing a tantrum. And not just any tantrum, a raging tantrum during which he exclaims over and over about how those are his cookies and how he deserves his cookies because he is better than everyone else in the room, the rest of the students, other than the boy sitting next to him with the 10 cookies, being non-white children. So the teacher turns to little Joey, the boy with 10 cookies, and asks him if he, at least, will share. Joey sits grudgingly, watching Donald throw his tantrum and being resentful that Donald is getting to keep his 80 cookies just because he's pitching a fit, but he allows that he will share one of his cookies, which gets divided up without any of the pieces ever making it around to the 10 children all sharing the one cookie.

So the teacher brings in another round of cookies to try to even things up, but Donald is a greedy, selfish, piggish little boy, and he immediately takes another 80 cookies while the teacher is trying to keep control of the rest of the room. Joey takes another 10 but, then, once they are seated, Donald steals two of Joey's cookies from him and eats them while Joey watches. This time, as the rest of the cookies are divided out in the same manner as the first time, Joey refuses to share. Why should he? Donald just stole two of his cookies and is in the midst of another violent tantrum about how he is better than everyone else and doesn't have to share and no one can make him.

And this is how it continues. Donald always getting the bulk of the cookies and, actually, growing angry that he isn't getting all of the cookies each time cookies are delivered. Each time, he also manages to steal a couple or few of Joey's cookies.

Joey grows increasingly resentful over how many cookies that Donald has and becomes resentful at the other children in the circle for getting cookies that he wants. He has found that he, no matter what he tries, cannot manage to get any of Donald's cookies from him but, sometimes, he is able to steal cookies from other children in the circle. It doesn't matter to him that he has more cookies than everyone else; he only cares that he doesn't have as many cookies as Donald. Everyone looks with longing at Donald's pile of cookies and wants desperately for someone to step in and make him share.

But no one does.

Joey, thinking that Donald must have some trick for getting the most cookies other than being a bully and just being first in line every time, has an idea: He decides that, maybe, if they put Donald in charge of the cookies, then he will share.

Does anyone else see the problem with this logic?

And, of course, in a classroom, any sane teacher would actually make Donald share. And Joey. No matter the tantrum. That is the acceptable solution: sharing.

But we are in an unacceptable time where we have elected Donald to be in charge of all of the cookies, and, if he wouldn't share before -- in fact, when he wouldn't share before and also went about trying to steal cookies that belonged to other people -- why would anyone think he would share now? No, now he has the power to block other people from getting cookies so that he can have even more for himself.

And, by the way, I didn't make up these numbers. I've roughly based the cookie distribution on global wealth distribution. Donald represents the 1%, and Joey represents the rest of Western white society. The problem is that, as a society, we have just decided to, rather than work to make the 1% share their cookies, work to keep people of other colors out of the cookie line all together. It's unacceptable. Completely. If for no other reason than that Joey still has way more cookies than everyone else and can, actually, afford to share. He (we) just doesn't want to because why should he when no one is making Donald?

So, yeah, screw what is right and good, because it's all about greed and gluttony. It doesn't matter to Joey (us) that he (we) actually has more cookies than he needs or can eat; it only matters that he doesn't have as many as Donald and, until he does, fuck the world. Because, really, that's what a vote for Trump translates into: Fuck the world.

This is not a time to support Trump and his cronies and their desire to consolidate power (and cookies) to the wealthy white power structure. This the time to stand up to their unacceptable ways and make them share. Yes, like any spoiled brat of a child, they are going to throw a violent tantrum, but it's time for us to stand up and be the adults. The real adults who stand for equality for all children, not just the white ones.

This Is What Soul Tastes Like (a recipe post)

Research can take you to some interesting places at times, and it was research for... something (yeah, I don't have any idea, now, what I was actually researching at the time)... that led me to soul cakes. Soul cakes became the inspiration for a novelette which you can find in "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" and has also become the inspiration for making some of our own every year. [I use the term "every" rather loosely as this is only the second time we have done this.]

I gave a brief history of the food item in last year's post, but I'd like to add to that by saying that soul cakes were made by the wealthy to hand out to the poor in no small part just to show off how wealthy they were. Many (many) of the ingredients were luxury items, and some of them (like saffron) were extreme luxury items. Also, this is, at least in part if not in full, where the tradition of trick-or-treating comes from.

I think this year's attempt, for which we went as authentic as we could, finding a recipe from 1604!, turned out even better than last year's. Yes, indeed, I did save some souls!

Now, here's my wife to explain the recipe:

Last year we made what is basically a modern cookie--because most of the recipes that call themselves "soul cakes" on the internet are modern cookies, by which I mean they are leavened with chemical agents (baking powder and baking soda). There is nothing wrong with cookies, but they aren't medieval food, and this year I wanted to do a more authentically medieval soul cake. That meant making one that was leavened with yeast, which led to the basic recipe that we used this year, which is from 1604: click here. Quoting, the recipe they used goes like this: "Take flower & sugar & nutmeg & cloves & mace & sweet butter & sack & a little ale barme, beat your spice, & put in your butter & your sack, cold, then work it well all together, & make it in little cakes, & so bake them, if you will you may put in some saffron into them and fruit."

So first off, whoa, it's like people in the late middle ages / early modern era didn't even know how to spell and punctuate or something. And second, what the heck are some of these ingredients??

Using the Gode Cookery translation of the recipe, here's what I came up with:

1/2 cup ale

1 tsp active dry yeast

2 cups flour (I use white whole wheat)

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. each nutmeg, clove, and mace

1/2 tsp. saffron

1/2 cup dried currants

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup sweet sherry

When I looked at the recipe last year, some of the instructions made zero sense to me. But this year I was determined to figure it out, and it turns out that the ingredients in the recipe themselves lead to some pretty interesting history.

"Ale barme" is now just called "barm" and it is the foam that forms on top of fermented alcohol such as beer or wine: click here. The foam contains yeast, so, in medieval England it was routine practice to skim that off and use it to leaven breads. This barm bread was considered to be very good stuff: "The barm method appears to be an ancient method developed by Gaelic peoples in the mists of time, and was quite different to that used in Europe, which is to leaven bread with a sourdough or leaven (the French call it 'levain'). When the Romans first conquered Gaul, modern day France, they were astonished by the light sweet bread made by the Celtic inhabitants... In England noblemen's bread, manchet was always made with the barm method, whereas the commoners' bread maslin was a sourdough." link

And while I knew what the other ingredients were, I hadn't quite thought about what their meaning in the culture of the time was. Spices and sugar seem very common and easy to get and not all that expensive to us now, but that was not true in 1604 and earlier. Saffron was and still is quite expensive, and was usually an import to England (though there was some farming of it within England for a time). There was even a brief war over saffron. Saffron gave both bright color and interesting flavor to foods, AND, EVEN BETTER: Europeans thought it was a plague cure! So it was a culinary and medicinal luxury good.

The first step in this recipe is to get your saffron ready for use by extracting it in some alcohol. This helps bring out the color and flavor. Soaking the saffron in a couple of teaspoons of brandy or any other strong alcohol, it starts out looking like this:

And very quickly becomes this:

Then I prepped the "ale barm" substitute by mixing 1/2 cup of good local ale with 1 tsp of active dry yeast.

I combined the flour and sugar in a bowl, made a well in the middle, and poured in the ale barm to let it sit and proof. Were I to do this again, I would probably use instant yeast because it doesn't require proofing, and I think that might lend a slightly lighter character to the finished cake. Though it probably wouldn't be quite as authentic that way, either.

Sugar was also a luxury imported good in England, and sugarcane was being grown in Spain and Siciliy (link). In the decades after 1604, of course, the demand for sugar would drive colonization of the new world and the enslavement of many people. "Its price per pound in 14th and 15th century England was about equally as high as imported spices from tropical Asia such as mace (nutmeg), ginger, cloves, and pepper, which had to be transported across the Indian Ocean in that era." Sugar was also thought to have medicinal properties (sorry medieval people, lol, you were wrong).

Meantime, Andrew creamed together the butter and spices in a small bowl.

Look into the spoon...THERE IS A MAN IN THE SPOON! Oh, it's just Andrew.

Then I added the sherry to the creamed butter and spices. This seemed unnecessary to me, but the recipe said to do it, so I did. I ended up with lumps of spicy butter floating in sherry. Not a very effective technique, and even if you were to beat in the sherry slowly you'd still end up with this result. Since everything is going to get mixed into the dough anyway, why not just add the components separately? Anyway, sherry was an import from Spain to England, and spices came from far-away places such as the Middle East and Asia (link). I used a sweet sherry in the recipe because that's what sherry was then--sweet and probably not as high in alcohol as modern sherry. (I had a reference for that but don't know what I did with it!)

After steeping in the alcohol for a while, the saffron starts to look like a little sun in its glass.

The beginning of mixing everything together! I covered the ale barm well over with the flour and sugar, then poured in the sherry and spices and saffron. Then began to stir...

After my dough was holding together, I turned it out onto a wooden peel to knead.

Then added in the currants...

And kept kneading until they were all incorporated.

Then it was time to roll the dough out into a disk, about half an inch thick...

That's a closeup of one of the saffron threads in the rolled dough. I just think saffron is really cool.

After rolling the dough out, I used a cookie cutter to make rounds, then Andrew and I marked the shape of the cross on them. After letting them sit to rise for about 15 minutes, I baked them at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes--but they might need a bit more or less in someone else's oven.

Texture-wise, these soul cakes are interestingly different from modern cookies or breads. They are flatter and chewier and a bit harder. These were sweet enough, and the flavors were good, but next time I make them I will put some salt in them, because I think they needed a bit of balance, and salt would heighten their flavors. Andrew liked them and the kids liked them, so that seemed like a pretty good success rate.

As Andrew explained above, these would have been luxury goods, indicated by several of the ingredients--sugar, spices, saffron, and sherry. And they would have been perceived to be healthful, since the ingredients had "medicinal" purposes. So, in effect, rich people handing out soul cakes around Allhallowtide would be like rich people today handing out little goodie bags of Whole Foods protein bars full of acai berries and artisanal honey or something, I think. (I wonder if kids today would even eat Halloween candy they thought was meant to be healthy??)

The Tree Skinner

Once the tree is home, it still has to be skinned and dressed and all of that, and that stuff is still my job.

The tree before skinning:

And after:

(You can't really see it, but the goofy limb is right there in front.)

Then, it has to be dressed:

(Yes, we have stacks of books lying around. Always.)
(And, yes, those are glowing peppers on the tree. That's how hot they are.)

Once it's dressed, it's time for the fun part, the decorating. That means a tree decorating party. The kids love the tree decorating party because it means cheese ball and sparkling cider and all sorts of fun foods (this year it meant chocolate-orange cookies). Mostly, it means cheese ball. And decorating. There's nothing better than decorating with cheese fingers, let me tell you! (They don't really do that, not anymore, but there used to be the occasional cheese print on the ornaments, especially the glass ones.)

We have a good selection of the typical glass ball ornaments, but we don't use many of them anymore in all actuality. Our collection of funky/quirky ornaments has grown too large, especially with the recent addition (last year) of Lego Star Wars "planets." I say "planets" because:

And "that's no moon," either. Here are some more of the planets, a bunch of hand-made ornaments, and a couple of dinosaurs:

Because what tree is complete without dinosaurs? Answer: none!

In the end, it's a beautiful mess of chaos, and, I suppose, that's rather what it's like living here.

Merry

Christmas!

Or, you know, whatever holiday it is you celebrate.