The First Pancake

(This weekend is Gay Pride Weekend in New York, and, in celebration of equal rights for gay couples in New York, I've decided to change the usual food picture on top to something more appropriate.)
It’s been more than a year since I wrote something for the blog, and I’ve missed so many things: the blog’s anniversary, the requisite New Year’s and birthday posts, and celebrating the successes of many people I’ve met through this tiny corner of the blogaverse. But the last 365 days have given way to more important, life-altering milestones; so many firsts, which just like the excited parent with a camcorder I’ve wanted to write about, but hadn’t, because I was too embarrassed or because it was too personal (shocking, I know, that I wouldn’t share it anyway).

I fell in love for the first time last year. With it was my first date (at the overripe, blackened banana age of 28), my first kiss (the details of which are too mind-blowing to be expressed with my puny words, but you know someday I’ll try), and while no labels were being thrown around, the first guy I would call my boyfriend, or at the very least would have wanted to, had my first relationship not ended. It was devastating, and friends from all over the world physically and in writing rushed to comfort me, their friend in arrested development, well-meaning but utterly confusing. “Chalk it up to experience,” “You weren’t in love- it was just your first,” “There’ll be better ones, you just don’t know it yet.”

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Dulce de Leche Eclairs

Éclair Confiture de Lait

A few days ago I was at the cooking section of Kinokuniya bookstore. I was one of the non-Japanese minorities there, and if you've shopped there before you'd know that finding non-Japanese, non-Asian, non-white shoppers are even rarer. But there was one that day roaming, and I wondered what he was looking for. He finally settled in the cooking section and asked another shopper (Japanese female) for assistance. He was holding up the Japanese version of the lovely book Everyday Harumi and was asking her if it was a good choice to get to learn Japanese cooking, etc., even though the text was completely in Japanese (I wanted to butt in and say that it has an English version published by Conran Octopus).

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French Vanilla Flan

Flan à la Vanille

Though my trip to Las Vegas was a few years ago, a lot of what I saw there became emblazoned in my memory (and noooo, it wasn't strippers or anything like that). For some reason when I went to Paris back in 2004 (way before I learned to really love food, much less cook), I didn't go to any Patisseries. Seeing one after another in Las Vegas whet my appetite for even more Patisserie, but again I skipped something that I really wanted to try - the flans.

On the top shelf, you'll see the Flan Peche, with that irresistible deep brown burnished film on top of the custard.
I didn't really obsess about them because they weren't a standard in most of my cookbooks, which were in English, and I didn't want to make other pastry that resembled it, because I wanted to know what the real deal was like first. Right now I realize I must sound crazy. Who goes ga-ga over custard?! It's the golden film on top, I tell you...

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