Yes, Here’s a Recipe
I haven’t added much content here in quite a while. You would think, that with all of the extra time I have stuck at home, that this would not be the case. I guess I’ve been distracted by all of my own small elements of crazy. I’ve also been super confused about what kind of content I want to create and where and what kind of things I should be making and why. How to streamline it… Ugh. It’s all just led to a lot of nothing. Which is more useless than making SOMETHING and figuring it out later. So here’s that.
I’ve been making this recipe frequently during the stay in place. It’s been a brownie recipe that I’ve tweaked a bit over time. And it’s one of my favorites. Partly because it’s super easy to put together, and partly because it’s just the kind of rich textural goodness that’s comforting and addictive.
It starts with a very simple Cocoa Brownie Recipe that my friend Christina and I found years ago. We’d been cooking dinner with friends all evening, (probably watching a Firefly marathon) and realized we wanted dessert! That wouldn’t take all night like the disaster of a cheesecake from the week before. Whoops. A handful of years ago, I remembered how quick and satisfying this recipe was and set out to make it mine. Here’s where I am at with it today:
Dark Chocolate Cardamom Brownies
283g Unsalted Butter
495g Sugar
180g Cocoa Powder
6g Salt
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
4ea Cold Large Eggs
120g All Purpose Flour
1 ⅓ cup inclusions (Dark Chocolate Chips/chunks and or Almonds)
1/2 tsp Cardamom
AN Maldon Salt
AN Cocoa Nibs
AN Aleppo Pepper (optional)
Pre grease a 9”x13”/ 33 x 23 x 5 cm baking pan and set oven to 350 F/ 175 C.
In a large heatproof bowl, begin to melt butter over a double boiler. Add cocoa powder, sugar, and cardamom and continue to stir until melted and fully incorporated. Mixture will be at least warm or hot to the touch. Remove from heat. If hot, wait a few minutes. Then emulsify in cold eggs one by one. Add vanilla extract. Fold in flour and inclusions.
Pour mixture into baking pan, lightly even out top. Sprinkle Maldon Salt, Cocoa Nibs, and Aleppo if desired, evenly over the top of the brownie. Bake for 25 minutes initially and check. Top should lose some of it’s glossy color, crack and rise slightly.
Notes: Cardamom is a strong flavor. In this brownie, it can be used as a very subtle lift or it can be increased so that the cardamom is more central. It’s great both ways. The ½ tsp is based on using freshly ground cardamom seeds for a distinct flavor. If using pre-ground cardamom, I would suggest a full teaspoon. Can also sub aleppo pepper in place of the cardamom for a different take. In this case, add 1 tsp Aleppo to melting butter and also finish the brownies with an additional sprinkling of the pepper.
This is a pretty dense, fudgy brownie. Softness and moisture will also depend on how long it is baked. I tend to bake it a touch on the underdone side for something really gooey and decadent.
A taste of what’s Baking:
Harmony
All things have entropy
Measured in mass and fullness
As we are made up of the universe
And its wild decisions
i ask
Who makes the rules
The composition
What writes the law
The harmony
As we fools
Trying to read its music
Hands reaching for the chords
Hoping to understand not just the notes
But the symphony and all of its
Variations
Gravity
I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a dream that could remotely set free the hurt that keeps me trapped in a place that I cannot name. It is myself. It is my cage. I have put myself here. I have allowed you to put me here. I have made a choice. I have allowed you to choose for me. When many times I did not know that a question was in front of me. Confronted with reality- I am afraid. That I must abandon you and your love. I am afraid that I must push past the gilded bars of safety. That I must make choices that are reckless and untamed. I could, I suppose, stay here. But where would that leave me in the end? With no one to blame for who I have become and what I have done but me. And gravity- of course.
Winemaking is a Business, too.
So you want to make your own wine? Everybody’s doing it. Look, that hip instagrammer over there has their own wine, why can’t I?
Well, you can. More and more young ambitious wine enthusiasts are breaking in their own pair of Blundstones, sourcing a ton or two of grapes and creating their own brand. Voila! But is it that simple?
There has been an increase in new wines and brands popping up as more and more people decide to try their hand. Technology and the increase in availability of custom crush facilities has made starting out more accessible for the small winemaker. The allure of striking out on your own and the romantic notion of the world of wine is a potent combination.
What is not so obvious is that making wine is a business. And while the process of making it and creating a brand might fuel one’s creative needs, the other 85% of it all is sales. Not quite so glamorous, right?
The idea of the starving artist is like a pile of misery, wrapped up in this pretty packaging that creatives are supposed to want. While the reality of living it just sucks. Regardless of how minimally you may choose to live, there needs to be a way to support your life and your work. And the stress of not having that means can sometimes be motivating, but is often damaging to the long term creative process. So the reality is: If you are going to make art, whatever form it takes, you are going to need to figure out how to sell it. Rare are the people who can afford to have a passion project that may or may not have a return.
A small business is generally a long term investment. You start out with initial capitol and credit, often going in to a planned amount of debt with an estimate on a rate of return. Often, a lot the money that goes into the business is your own sweat equity. Which means that you may put in a lot of hours, and a lot of your own money in addition to whatever you calculated as the business’s capitol, and not take a paycheck for a long time. When you do take that paycheck, it may not be comparable to what your income might have been if you were working the same position for someone else. Many businesses take at least 5-10 years before they can see black on the books. Some longer. Some never quite reach past the red, or are always flirting with it. Many fail. It’s an investment into a risk, not unlike a stock or a gamble.
In wine, this is true and may even get more complicated. While in a retail business, the stock you buy and where it comes from and what you can charge for it may stay steady from year to year- in wine, you cannot control the weather. Even if you are buying grapes rather than growing them yourself, the cost of goods from year to year may vary based on major events in the growing season or during harvest.
The demand of the consumer is one you have to anticipate 18 months or even several years ahead. But you only have one shot every year to make wine. So if the consumer demand has shifted one summer from the year before and suddenly less people want to buy the kind of wine that you chose to make, you can’t make a quick turn around on making a product that will satisfy the consumer. You have a wine that you have to figure out how to sell despite consumer demand.
If the opposite happens and suddenly what you have is popular, you can’t suddenly come up with more wine. What you have is what you have. It’s one shot.
One solution to this is to make the kind of product that you are going to care about. Make something that you are passionate enough about that selling it is a little easier. Care a little less about what’s popular. But there is a balance here. You still have to sell it somehow.
It’s a long game. Especially financially. There are expenses that go out of the business for the process of making wine. What the grapes cost, use of custom crush facilities, barrels, labels, labor, lab testing, glassware, tanks, etc. Then, don’t forget the cost of travel for sales trips and events. Once the product begins to sell, there is still a lag time for when the income will hit the bank. All of those upfront costs have to be taken care of somehow. And it isn’t from the money that is about to come in. It’s from the previous year, or more loans, or investments, etc. Not to mention that a business owner still needs to take care of their own personal bills. Theoretically, you still have to pay rent and buy groceries, and all of the other things you would be doing if some other guy was giving you a regular pay check. So in March, when you’re on the road, footing the bill for flights and hotel rooms on a sales route, and you haven’t yet seen any return on the wine you made last fall- and definitely paid for already, you have to have planned ahead from last year for the income you are going to need now. It’s not a paycheck to paycheck kind of business.
Racking wines over at Scholium Project. Fairfield, California
All of this isn’t to say that if you want to make your own wine that you shouldn’t give it a go. That’s not it. Making wine can be a lot of fun and can create a lot of joy. And the community that makes wine can be truly fantastic people to be around. Just don’t forget that it’s a business. A business where the fun stuff maybe takes up 30% of your time and then all of the mechanics that you need to do to make that fun happen take up the other 70%. So you have to really want it.
A lot of the small wineries that have been popping up in the last couple of years probably wont last that long. And not because they aren’t successful. There are likely going to be some wine makers who learn that they want to spend more time in the vineyard or in the cellar at someone else’s winery. Where they can make a more comfortable living, rather than continuing to grind it out on their own.
While it may look beautiful and glamorous to build a wine business, it is good to know that there a lot of moments along the way that aren’t so instagrammable. It can get dirty and gross, and tiring, and it can be hard to find the labor you need, or you can run into staff drama. It’s just like any other job in some ways. It can also be incredible and rewarding and just plain fun- if you love it. I don’t want to discourage anyone from giving their dream a try. I’ve certainly had the pleasure of imbibing many winemaker’s dreams. So tasty.
One of the things to consider then, is if having your own business in wine is going to be 100% of your focus, or if it is going to be something you might do as a passion project on the side. Are you going to work part time for another winemaker? Would that mean on missing out on other opportunities within that winery? Is making one ton of grapes at a time for a harvest going to be a fun thing for you and your friends? Are you going to expect to make a living from going out on your own? None of these is a right or wrong answer. You get to decide what’s right for you. And- you get to change your mind if it doesn’t work out.
So now, ask yourself, do you still want it? Would it be worth it to try and not have it work out the way you wanted? If the answer is still yes, I hope you make something that brings you joy, and that you can have fun throughout the whole process. And also, I will be happy to taste test it for you.
Bakers and Baguettes
“Bakers and their Baguettes. In Paris, small artisan bake shops rarely produce baguettes because people place a ceiling on how much they will pay for one baguette, meaning most are made in larger production bakeries. The conversation we should be having is how to adjust our value of this craft that takes mostly labor, time, and deep care. Bakers transform grain into a nutritional digestible food. The world as we know it would be much different without them.” – From Karen Man
“We need to rethink the way we value what we put in our bodies.”
Karen Man is an incredible person who happens to make beautiful bread, among other wonderful things. We have had many conversations about the value of food and the labor and unseen costs behind it. Bread is one of the commodities that we take for granted. I hope we can begin the kind of work that may change that perspective. Please support your local bakery. Karen is currently baking in Lima, Peru. But you can also find her here: bread.blog/
Photo Credit: Karen Man at San Francisco Baking Institute. March, 2019
Grounded
There’s been this blank -in my life
A time I needed to heal -and to survive
For a while I feared I couldn’t yet move past
The quiet pain that kept me locked inside
I told myself I would stay on solid ground
There was no one -to be found
Who could reach -me here
But with you – I Fall
From a building much too tall
I’m scared of what will happen when I land
If you’ll be there – if you’ll take my hand
If we’ll be as we were before this leap
If we’ll learn to grow together
If this love will even keep
Somehow I remember how to fly
Put my heart back together
Be brave, dare to be alive
I told myself I’d stay on solid ground
There was no one to be found- who could meet me here
Still- with you- I fall
From a building much too tall
And the sky is clear
A Combination of Good Things
Thinking back to last summer and what I learned in challenging myself to put together a tasting menu that reflected some of my own style and creativity.
This “Elote Eclair” was one of the highlights for me. A savory take on a pastry dish that was also an ode to the food I grew up with.
There are times when we challenge ourselves to do the kinds of tasks that maybe we wouldn’t normally do on a daily basis, just to know that if put to the test, we can succeed. Almost like a mental exercise or a way to practice certain skills so they don’t get lost. It’s also a chance to express ideas and concepts and see where they take you. I was very happy with the menu and food that I was able to put together. I had a real surety that I could continue to refine it to a place that I could really be proud of and consistently execute. Practice makes perfect, right?
Dinner Rush
Dear world
I’ve missedyou
I may have been distant lately
I may have needed a break
But your wild and your crazy
Is such a part of me now
All of the reaching for perfection
The race for brilliance
The ego, the narcissistic artistic drive
That makes everday
Too much
Over the top…
All of the need to please
The rus of keeping ahead of the weeds
The power of holding my own
And making someone smile
That makes even the worst case of
Living the dream
Worth every drop of fear and sweat and pain
This One is Mine 