Have you seen Chef’s Table on Netflix? Oh man! It’s so good and so interesting if you’re into learning about some of the most high profile restaurants in the world. It profiles the chef behind the restaurant and highlights some of their inspirations and their ideas about food and eating. I very much recommend it. It is immensely interesting.

Something else that I think is so good is a lifestyle/cookbook that I received for Christmas. It’s blogger Sasha Wilkins’ (libertylondongirl.com) release: Friends Food Family. It has some really simple, delicious recipes with ingredients that are easy to find.

When I get a new cookbook, I first flip through the pages to find the best looking food pictures. I leave little pieces of ripped up papers to remind myself which recipes first caught my eye so that I can go back to read and re-read the recipes I found the most intriguing. This book has a piece of paper to bookmark nearly every page.

One of the simplest dessert recipes from the book was for a delicious apple cake called, “Eve’s Pudding”.

Only a few ingredients: 3 or 4 Granny Smith apples (peeled, cored, and chopped into small 1 inch pieces), 1/2 cup of softened unsalted butter, 1/2 sugar, 1 cup flour, 2 eggs, and a splash of vanilla extract.

Grease a medium sized ovenproof pan, add the apples to cover the bottom. Cream together the butter and sugar, add an egg, half the flour, add another egg, the rest of the flour and the splash of vanilla. I mixed those ingredients in my new food processor and it was really quite quick to do. Take the batter and cover the apples. Sprinkle some sugar over the batter and apples and bake at 350F for 30ish minutes.

This cake is even better warm with a splash of whipping cream or with ice cream. Tasty! Very much recommend.

This week: I’m working on a sourdough bread starter which takes a few days to get going. I’ll include the whole process (and hopefully the finished product, if the recipe works out!!).