ciao samin

lasassy, it was clare crespo i was talking about on friday.

i spotted a dude wearing a blogger sweatshirt in the mission. i can't decide if it was really lame or really cool.

even though i still haven't decided if i really love or really hate tartine, i think if i ever open up a little shop, i'd want it to have exactly the same atmosphere/design/vibe (but less snotty). i LOVE their pickles. i went there on friday for lunch with DR and little xiomara, and we had huge hot pastrami panini with lots of horseradish. the sandwiches were almost painful to eat, but in a wonderful way. my friend JA, who makes pastries there, was on eclair duty, so we had one of those, too.

this week, i experimented with homemade pizza. i started out with the recipe for regular pizza dough from baking illustrated, but, as always, i ended up adding so much salt, oil, and flour that my finished product didn't really resemble the initial recipe at all. at cp, we all had to know how to make pizza dough right, since we had do make two huge batches a day, so i relied a lot on the feel and look of the dough. i think it's mostly important to start out with enough oil and salt in the dough, to let the yeast come to life before you add most of the flour, and to let the dough proof enough. i think it's basically impossible for most home cooks to overknead or overproof dough like this. at any rate, the pizza was fantastic--i was craving deep-dish pizza, so i made it in a cast iron. it came out crispy and light, and thick and wonderful and saucy and cheesy. so good!

the cherry, plum, and apple trees are in blossom all around berkeley. each morning, i step from my apartment into a sea of pink and white flowers. i keep expecting another cold spell, but maybe spring is really here.

hopefully she won't get mad at me for saying this here, but i was really excited about the autographed copy of the garden state dvd that LS got from her boyfriend's sister's boyfriend, who plays poker each week with zach braff. HOW COOL IS THAT?