The Dinner Files

I had a dream. As much as I love sweet crêpes, I’ve always been a bit more of a fan of galettes – crêpes’ hearty, buckwheat flour, savory older cousins. Once when making galettes and crêpes, I made myself a dessert “crêpe” using the buckwheat galette batter. The French people present were horrified, to say the least, but I was thrilled. I didn’t know if my dessert got in my dinner or my dinner got in my dessert. The nutty buckwheat and dark chocolate were my own chocolate and peanut butter: together at last.

These cookies are way easier to make (less than 30 minutes from pulling things from the cupboard to a warm cookie in your mouth if you pay attention) and will, I hope, find a wider audience.

Chocolate buckwheat cookies

These cookies are soft, chocolate-y, and have a decidedly but undefinable nutty taste and slightly sandy texture that makes complete sense if you know there is a generous amount of buckwheat flour in them. Don’t over-bake these; the texture goes from divine to ho-hum if you do.

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate

1 cup buckwheat flour

3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Chop chocolate and melt it. (I like to put mine in a small bowl, fill a slightly larger bowl with boiling water, and set the small bowl in the boiling water and just let it sit. It melts and it can’t scorch and I can start on other things.) Let it cool a bit before using.

Combine the buckwheat and whole wheat pastry flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Cream butter and brown sugar until fairly light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Make sure the chocolate is cool enough to touch comfortably (go ahead, stick your finger in there!) – you don’t want it to melt the butter or start cooking the egg when you add it to the batter. Beat into the butter-sugar-egg mixture.

Add the dry ingredients and beat to stir just to combine.

Dollop generous tablespoonfuls of the batter on one cookie sheet if you want less clean-up but more cooking time (two batches) or on two cookie sheets if you’d rather rinse an extra pan than deal with a second batch. Bake 5 minutes. Turn/rotate pan(s) and bake another 5 minutes. Let cool slightly on the sheet(s) before transferring to a cooling rack.

You should get 2 dozen cookies.

I know I promised quick meals beyond pasta. I am presenting this pasta dish for your consideration despite my earlier and very recent promise for two reasons: first and foremost, it is flippin’ delicious. Who would think of adding brussels sprouts to spaghetti carbonara? Me! That’s who! And I’m pretty pleased with myself. (Brief side note: Many Americans seem to think that spaghetti carbonara should have a big mess of cream in it. For those people, I guess it does. But the Italian version of the dish has not a drop of cream – just egg that cooks and turns into a vaguely creamy sauce as the heat from the pasta cooks it on contact. If not-fully-cooked egg freaks you out, move right along – this recipe would not be for you).

The second reason I present it to you is quite simple: I am slammed. Work and life and civic duty have colluded to render me a shell of my usual self. And it’s going to last a while and I’m only at the beginning. About all I can do is cook pasta.

Brussels sprouts pasta

You can use less brussels sprouts, if you like. I tend to overdo it because I love them so much. This recipe is all about the method, so be sure to read the whole thing before you start. I can prep all this stuff while the water comes to a boil and the pasta cooks, but I’m speedy – you might want to do some brussels sprouts trimming ahead of time. You can always start the water and let it boil until you’re ready to the add the pasta – a watched pot may never boil but a pot of boiling water is not the boss of you! Oh my, I’m really losing my mind.

12 oz. orecchiette or penne pasta (or other bite-sized shape)

1 1/2 pounds brussels sprouts, trimmed and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

1 slice pancetta, about 1/3-inch thick or 3 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes or more to taste, if you like

1/2 cup white wine

2 eggs

1/2 cup grated pecorino cheese (or other hard grating cheese, such as parmesan), plus more to taste

1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

Bring a big pot of water to a boil. Salt it until it tastes as salty as ocean water. Cook the pasta until tender to the bite. BUT FIRST…

While the water comes to a boil, heat the olive oil or butter over medium heat in a large frying pan. Cook the pancetta until brown and crispy. Add the garlic and red chile flakes. Cook about a minute before adding the white wine. Boil and let it reduce to about half of what it was. Add the brussels sprouts, cover, and cook, stirring now and again, until the sprout slices are yummily tender, about 5 minutes.

As the brussels cook, beat the eggs in a large bowl until no glops or gobs remain – they should be as thin as water. Add the cheese and pepper. Stir or whisk to combine.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it and IMMEDIATELY dump it into the egg mixture and start tossing. Keep tossing. Seriously, just keep tossing it. Then add the hot brussels sprout mixture and toss that like there is no tomorrow. The egg and cheese should have cooked and melted, respectively, to form a luscious sauce with the bit of oil and pancetta fat and reduced wine left in the brussels sprouts somewhere.

Top with more cheese and pepper and see how easy it is to eat a giant bowl or two of this after a long hard day.

Two friends and an acquaintance (well, I know him and he might recognize me but maybe not) have come out with books this spring. It was with great relief that I opened them up and found them to my liking. There is always that moment before reading a friend’s book or going to their gallery show or hearing their band when I hold my breath and hope the deepest hope that I’ll like what I read/see/hear.

Food books first. Gordon Edgar’s Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge recounts his travails running the cheese counter at Rainbow Grocery here in San Francisco. I’ve been shopping at Rainbow, a worker-owned vegetarian co-op in my neighborhood, for years. Since it’s a co-op, the workers tend to stay around. The nice guy who always helped me deal with bagging and getting stuff to my car when my son was a tiny baby in a sling is still there, working the service counter, directing cars, and, I’m sure, helping other overwhelmed new moms. The cheese counter Gordon (a.k.a. Gordonzola) oversees is the reason that I desperately wish against all hope that someday Rainbow will stop its vegetarian ways and start selling meat. I wish this primarily for my own convenience, but also because, if the cheese counter is any indication, the meat counter would be amazing. I’ve watched the cheese section at Rainbow grow and develop over the years into the shining beacon of deliciousness and overcrowded convenience behind the produce area. There is a lot of cheese in not much space back there, but the grab-and-go pre-cut pieces and stellar variety combine to trump, in my opinion, the fanciest cheese spots around. Sometimes I want to sit and taste cheese and talk about the cheese before I buy, but not usually. Usually I’m doing the grocery shopping and need some Italian fontina, a hunk of Parmesan, a soft blue, and maybe something else but I’ll figure that out myself, thank you very much. Reading Gordon’s account of learning about cheese, developing the cheese section at Rainbow, and how this all fits into his essential punk philosophy and radical politics reminded me about everything I love about that store. It reminded me that the insane parking and long lines are worth it.

As much as Cheesemonger hits on how I shop for the food I cook, Marcia Gagliardi’s The Tablehopper’s Guide to Dining and Drinking in San Francisco hits on how I eat when I go out. Finally someone has organized a restaurant guide in a way that I eat and choose restaurants. I’ve turned to Marcia several times for restaurant suggestions and she has been spot-on every time. Spot to impress clients from out of town but quiet enough so their older ears can hear well? Chez Spencer. Where to go for a 5 o’clock dinner with my father-in-law with my son in tow because my husband has a meeting at 6 and it’s a school night? The bar at Two serves plenty of real food that early. I could go on but I don’t need to because her book answers all these questions and plenty I never thought of. The girl knows nothing if not the dining scene in SF. If you live in or ever come to SF, this book is a must-own (unless you’re staying at my house, I have a copy you can borrow).

Finally and completely unrelated to food, Elissa Auther’s String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art is, after many years of anticipation, in my hands in full book form. I’m interested in the whole concept of craft (my two favorite things to do besides actually craft in the form of quilting or knitting are writing and cooking which have the craft about them) and the difference between art and craft, so this book has my name all over it. I’m about a quarter in. Here’s the thing, I know Elissa well. I love how this book sounds just like her. She speaks with this level of precision – it’s a joy to hear and a pleasure to read. It is rare that the academic prose has life to it (and here I should admit a real weakness/fondness for academic studies – it reminds me of all the quiet alone reading time I had in graduate school which even then seemed like such a gift), but this book strolls along through the use of fiber in contemporary art with grace and verve.

I also recently re-read My So-Called Freelance Life to remind me not to take assignments unless I’m either really interested in them or they pay really well (of course a combination of the two is always nice…). Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs kept seeming like it was going to be tragic but wasn’t too depressing and is beautifully written and should be read by anyone who has ever even flown over Madison, Wisconsin. The Ghost Map about the cholera epidemic in London is written like a mystery and has filled out my knowledge of cholera epidemics nicely (Paris 1832 – go ahead, ask me anything!). Even though I’d read all the stories when they were published in magazines, I still savored the time I spent snuggled up with Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness: Stories.

How about you? What have you been reading?

One good friend just started a full time job after freelancing for years. Another friend has twins who are old enough now to eat real food so they’ve been trying to have family dinners most nights. Still another friend’s husband had a change at work and is no longer home in time to make dinner, which has always been his gig. In short, three friends in quick succession have asked for fast dinner ideas.

I’m going to try and keep them in mind in the coming weeks. Faster, quicker, easier. The fact of the matter is that I often cook that way and, due to some work-life circumstances this spring I’ll be cooking like that more anyway. At our house getting dinner on the table in a hurry often manifests in the form of pasta. Pasta with a lot of vegetables in it. I’m working on expanding that mindset (it’s difficult, though, since such pasta dishes are always a hit with all three of us).

This mushroom soba noodle soup is sort of a departure, right? Sure, it’s pasta and vegetables, but they’re in a soup! Hey, I’m trying here.

It may not be revolutionary, but it is delicious. Fresh, light, and perfect for this time of year when heavy winter foods don’t sound so great anymore but when you still need something to warm you up come dinner time.

Mushroom soba noodle soup

This noodle-y soup-y creation was inspired by a recipe for a mushroom hot pot in Japanese Hot Pots by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. It’s a great resource – especially if, like me, you like to make (and eat) big bowls of delicious.

4 cups broth (I used a mix of chicken and pork broth; one or the other or dashi would have been good, too)

1 cup sake

1/2 cup mirin

1/3 cup soy sauce

3 cups shredded Napa cabbage

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms

1/2 pound oyster moshrooms

1/2 pound wild arugula (regular arugula or spinach would also work just fine, although with less bite)

1 pound tofu (firm, soft, silken – whatever you like) cut into three or four big pieces

1/2 pound soba noodles

some type of chile powder for garnish (we used ground ancho chile because it was in the cupboard)

Heat the broth in a medium pot. Add sake, mirin, and soy sauce. Bring to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning – adding more mirin for sweetness or more soy for salt, if you like.

Add cabbage, cover, and cook until cabbage is wilted, about 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and trim mushrooms and cut into bite-size pieces if they are large.

Add mushrooms to the pot, cover, and cook until mushrooms and cabbage are tender, about 8 minutes. Add arugula, cover, and cook until the arugula leaves are wilted, about 3 minutes. Put large pieces of tofu on top of everything else, cover, and simmer until tofu is heated through, about 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook soba noodles in the boiling salted water until tender to the bite. Drain and divide between three or four large bowls.

Top noodles with the vegetables, one piece of tofu each, and broth. Garnish with chile powder, if you like. A few thinly sliced green onions would be tasty, too.

A neighbor asked for popover tips recently. I shared what I know and promptly made a batch of my own. The three of us ate the twelve of them in a snap.

They are good with roasts, good with stews, and a delight for breakfast. I suppose you could put jam or something on them, but it seems like a bit of gilding the lily to me.

Popovers

Here is what I know about making popovers pop. You want a very hot oven, a preheated muffin tin or popover pan, and room temperature ingredients. I’ve done the whole “fill only every other muffin cup” nonsense and never noticed it made a lick of difference.

3 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons butter, melted

Heat the oven to 450. While the oven heats, put the eggs and milk in a blender or bowl and let sit to come to room temperature. Once the oven is hot, put an empty 12-cup muffin tin or popover pan (or 2 6-cup pans) in the oven and let it heat while you make the batter.

Whirl the eggs and milk or whisk them vigorously until completely combined. Add flour and salt and whirl or whisk until smooth. Add 2 tablespoons of the butter and whirl or whisk to combine.

Take pan(s) out of the oven and brush the cups with the remaining melted butter. Fill cups evenly with the batter. Twelve muffins tins will each be about half full.

Put filled pan(s) in the oven and reduce heat to 425. Bake 25 minutes without so much as thinking about opening the oven door. Reduce heat to 350 and bake until completely golden and mostly brown, about another 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve popovers hot, or at least warm. Time does them no favors.

We ate dinner last week in an industrial space that had been re-done into a residence and studio that was so stunning that Ernest jumped up and down as he shouted “Mama, this is so cool!”

I had to agree. The space was cool, the company delightful, and the food perfection. I was offered the serving bowl filled this endive, herb, kumquat salad and took way more than my fair share. I have since made it three times for myself for lunch. I’m making it now, while the kumquats are plentiful.

Kumquat endive salad

This is the ultimate end-of-winter-almost-spring salad. The bitter chicory of winter with the bright tart sweetness of citrus and the fresh green promise of spring herbs. You might not be able to have a real spring salad yet – there is no asparagus in here, no hidden fiddleheads – but it’s starting to seem like you will if you just hang in there.

4 Belgian endives

about 10 sprigs parsley

about 10 sprigs mint

10 kumquats

2 tablespoons lemon juice (Meyer lemon juice works nicely here, too)

1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil (nothing too strong!)

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut off ends of the endive and pull apart into leaves. Cut leaves into bite size pieces, if you like, and put all leaves into a salad or serving bowl.

Pull off the leaves from the parsley sprigs and put them with the endive leaves. Pinch off the mint leaves and tear them into smaller pieces and add them to the mix. Cut the kumquats into quarters and throw them in.

In a small bowl, mix lemon juice, oil, and salt. Stir or whisk together an drizzle over salad. Toss salad to coat everything evenly with the dressing.

I made this chocolate pudding with my best friend from high school in mind. She loves chocolate pudding. I’ve seen her eat it for breakfast and I’ve seen her eat in for dinner. Nice big bowls of it.

She does not, however, like to cook much. She bakes some mean cinnamon rolls and whips up a batch of pudding if the mood hits her. She doesn’t understand what all the fuss about pie crust is and will throw one together if she feels like eating pie. Yet I once saw her pull a can of black beans out of a cupboard and prepare to eat them cold out of the can because, as far as she could see, there was nothing in the house to make dinner out of. Cheese and eggs and tortillas and salsa were sitting, waiting, in the fridge. I made her some ad hoc huevos rancheros and she thought I was a genius.

For all her baking, fussy is not her game. I don’t think she is at all interested in tempering eggs or doing other things that, to my culinary mind, are part of making pudding. So I experimented with streamlined methods and minimal dirty-dish production. Now I just want all those hours I’ve spent whisking hot liquid into beaten eggs back. It ends up it wasn’t really necessarily in the first place.

Chocolate pudding

This is not pot de crème or extra rich or super-duper chocolate-y. This is creamy, yummy, old-fashioned chocolate pudding. The kind that is mainly milk and eggs. The kind you can tuck into a nice big bowl of. If you want a bigger chocolate hit, simply melt two to four ounces of chocolate and stir it in at the end with the vanilla.

3/4 cup sugar*

5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

4 tablespoons cornstarch

3 cups milk, divided

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, whisk together sugar, cocoa, and cornstarch. Whisk in about 3/4 cup of the milk. Work it until it is very smooth and all the cocoa and cornstarch are dissolved and you have a brown paste. Add the eggs and egg yolks and whisk until everything is completely combined again. Now whisk in the remaining milk.

Put the pot on the stove over low heat. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon and scarping the bottom and edges and corners of the pan to keep bits of the mixture from thickening unevenly, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of the spoon. This will take about 15 minutes. You want to cook the mixture slowly so the eggs don’t overcook and curdle into chunks. If nothing is happening, however, you may need to increase the heat – just little bits at a time – to get the mixture to thicken up properly. Take off the heat and stir in vanilla.

Transfer mixture to individual serving bowls or a single large bowl. Cover surface with plastic wrap or waxed paper and chill at least 3 hours and up to 3 days.

* I used “vanilla sugar” – sugar in which I store fresh vanilla beans. The sugar keep the vanilla beans supple and fresh; the vanilla lightly scents the sugar. Regular sugar works just fine, too.

I was craving some chiles rellenos. Then I read this lovely post at Rachel Eats about walnuts, and her walnut pesto looked so yummy that the neurons started firing. Then I remembered that there is a traditional chile rellenos dish that uses a walnut cream sauce. After a bit of research I realized I did not want to make that dish, at least not any vaguely authentic version of it. I don’t much care for peaches in my meat.

So I MacGyvered my own version. They were fabulous and I will never make them again, at least not until someone tells me a trick for skinning walnuts that actually works (um, that baking soda thing? sure, it loosened the skins, but it turned the nuts dark and the skins weren’t all that much easier to deal with). I ended up picking the skin out of all those grooves like a crazy person. My self-diagnosed OCD doesn’t need that kind of aggravation.

Chiles rellenos in walnut cream sauce

1 1/2 cups walnut halves

1 cup cream

1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

12 large mild green chiles

1 tablespoon vegetable oil or lard

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 pound ground beef

1/4 cup currants or chopped raisins

1/4 cup pitted black olives, minced

1/2 cup sliced almonds

Pomegranate seeds or chopped red onion for garnish

Put walnuts in a medium bowl and cover with boiling water and let sit a few minutes. Drain. Return walnuts to the bowl and cover with boiling water, again letting it sit for a few minutes. Drain walnuts and spread on a kitchen towel. Settle in with a long radio program or a good chat and pick off the skins from the walnuts.

Put the skinned walnuts in a medium bowl and cover them with the cream. Let soak for a few hours or overnight (chill). Whirl in a blender with milk and 1 teaspoon salt. Set aside.

Roast and peel chiles (if this process is new to you check out this guide). Once cool, make a slit along the side of each chile and pull out and discard the seeds. Set chiles aside.

In a frying pan over medium-high, heat oil or lard and add onion. Cook, stirring, until soft, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, another minute.

Add beef and cook, stirring and breaking up the meat as you go, until well browned and cooked through. Add currants and olives. Cover, reduce heat to a maintain a simmer and cook about 5 minutes. Drain off any excess fat and stir in almonds. Add salt to taste.

Heat oven to 350. Let stuffing sit until cool enough to handle. Stuff each chile with the beef mixture. Lay chiles in a baking pan, cover loosely with foil, and bake until hot through, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, put walnut cream in a small saucepan and warm over medium low heat.

Serve chiles napped with walnut cream sauce and garnish with pomegranate seeds (traditional and would be amazing, but we had none) or the sad-sack but very tasty purple of the chopped red onion.

You will likely have extra walnut cream sauce. It is delicious spread on toast or tossed with a small bowl of pasta for lunch.

Bright and bitter. Some days that describes me to a T. Purple and salty. Sometimes that works too, although in a more metaphorical way. They all get right to the heart of this salad, which hits the bright and bitter, purple and salty notes perfectly.

Radicchio green olive salad

This is my riff on a salad made at Toro Bravo in Portland. Their version relegates the green olives to the side, as a spread atop two slices of grilled bread. I put all the flavors in the bowl. With some good baguette and tasty cheese, you have yourself a simple and utterly delightful dinner.

1 head radicchio

18 green olives

1 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or lemon juice (good both ways!)

Salt to taste

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

Scads of freshly shredded Parmesan cheese

Trim radicchio and cut or tear into shreds or bite-size pieces. Put radicchio in a large salad bowl.

Mince olives and garlic into a paste and then mix with oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and add salt and pepper to taste. (You can also do this in a blender, if you like.)

Toss radicchio with the dressing. Then add a whole lot of Parmesan and toss it again. Serve topped with more Parmesan.

I love the Winter Olympics. The Summer Olympics are fun to watch and all, but the Winter Olympics grab my heart. I read the coverage, I watch clips, I follow the way fans follow things. I even disconnect our internet connection and plug the cable cord into an old 9-inch TV tottering on a stack of books on my desk to watch the coverage.*

This love is clearly the fall-out of a Minnesotan childhood. As active as we were when the snow melted and the humidity and the mosquitoes set in, so many Summer Olympic events bear little resemblance to the things I ever did or do. I love to swim and always have, but as a kid I swam in lakes, not pools. The winter sports seemed more like expert versions of what we all did all winter long – skating for both speed and grace, hockey, skiing whether with our heels fixed or not, sledding down hills aiming for speed and hoping against crashes.

Every November we’d head to the sporting good store for new-to-us skates. Every garage had an arsenal of sleds and hockey sticks. Our neighbors flooded their backyard to skate on. If that was full we grabbed our skates and a shovel and cleared the creek near the house or headed to the park where acres of baseball and soccer fields were drenched and cleared and turned into so many skating rinks. I took figure skating lessons after school every week and on Saturdays our parents put my brother and me on a school bus that took us to the various ski hills within two hours of Minneapolis.

A DC friend recently tweeted, after six days home in Snowpocalypse, for advice from Minnesotans on what to do now that all the bread was baked and the movies watched.

I told him that snow is celebrated in Minnesota. It’s what makes the cold fun. No snow and you have a gray, leafless, and ultimately useless landscape. Snow means you can ski and snowshoe and snowmobile. Snow lets you build the banks for pond hockey.

As much as I identify with the sports, though, I know an even more important element of this love of mine stems from the memory of those two weeks when – in those late days of winter when it still got dark by 4 and the cold had set in deep and all that snow had lost the novel luster it had in December – my parents and my brother and I would gather and cheer. It probably helps that I was 9 (going on 10) when the Miracle on Ice happened at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980. Of that twenty-man team, twelve, plus the coach, were from Minnesota.

So, as an ode to the games and as a way to keep busy on a school holiday that caught me by a bit of surprise and as a way of apologizing for steering every conversation towards the end of the Russian reign in figure skating or the number of Olympic-grade luge tracks in the Western Hemisphere or the percentage of Canadians who shoot left in hockey for the next two weeks, last night I made my dashing husband’s favorite dessert: oeufs a la neige.

Oeufs a la neige

These delights are lightly poached meringues floating in a vanilla custard sauce. A fun food fact: this dessert is called floating islands in English. The seemingly direct translation of that back into French would seem to be the dessert known as île flottante, which is, in fact, a different dessert altogether that may be made of meringue or cake but in any case is one big island surrounded by the sauce, not lovely little poached “snow eggs.” Since they are delicious served cold, you can make them up to a day ahead of serving.

4 eggs

tiny pinch salt

3/4 cup sugar, divided

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided

2 1/2 cups milk, plus up to 1 cup more

Separate the eggs and set the yolks aside for the moment.

Put egg whites into a copper bowl, if you have one, but any large bowl will do. Feel free to use a standing mixer with a whisk attachment, if you like, but I’ve timed myself and I can beat four egg whites by hand almost as quickly – and with much less hassle and much more control – as the machine. Beat eggs with a large balloon whisk, if you have one, but any whisk will work, or in the machine until foamy.

Add salt and keep beating as it turned fluffy.

Keep beating until firm peaks form – when you lift the whisk or beaters out of the egg whites the peak that forms should droop a bit, but then stay put.

Fold in 1/4 cup of the sugar, incorporating 1 tablespoon at a time. Then fold in 1/2 teaspoon of the vanilla.

Put 2 1/2 cups milk and 1/4 cup sugar in a wide pot or sauté pan. Heat the milk to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally to help the sugar melt. Use two large spoons to form football-shaped dumplings of the egg whites, scooping the mixture with one spoon and shaping it in that spoon with the other spoon.

Then using the free spoon to help ease the meringue into the simmering milk. Do as many meringues as fit without crowding or touching too much in the pan.

Cook, turning over once, until meringues are firm, about 2 minutes each side. You may be tempted to go check your email while the meringues are poaching. I cannot recommend you do that since, in my experience, it leads to this:

When the meringues are cooked, lift them out of the milk with a slotted spoon and drain them on a clean kitchen towel.

Repeat with remaining egg white mixture.

When all meringues are cooked. Strain the poaching milk through a fine mesh sieve. Add enough more milk to equal 2 cups, if necessary.

In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the remaining 1/4 cup sugar until lighter yellow and thick. Keep whisking as you pour the milk mixture, which will still be very warm, into the egg yolks. Constant whisking will keep the yolks from curdling. Transfer this mixture to a medium saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring pretty much constantly with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon and show the path where your finger runs to have a taste.

Stir in remaining teaspoon vanilla. Strain custard sauce, if you like.

You can now cover everything with plastic wrap and chill it up to a day before you serve, or prepare the dishes, cover them and chill them until you serve them, or assemble the desserts and eat them warm. You could even make one and eat it right away and then put the rest away for dinner time. Put about a sixth of the sauce in a bowl and float three meringues on top. Make five more.

* That’s right, we have no TV. We have no place we want to put it where the cable runs and we’ve just never fixed that because we seem to be able to watch most of what we want to on our computers or DVD. Don’t worry, we’re not actual crazy “no TV” people. As I’ve stated here before, the very fact of Project Runway gets me out of bed in the morning. I look forward to 30 Rock as much as anyone.