If you like Dirt Candy, or even if you’re just lukewarm about the whole “Dirt Candy” issue but somewhat interested, I strongly suggest you check in here around noon on Monday. Why? Because I’ll be announcing something that will blow your socks off. Okay, maybe not totally off, but they will at least make your socks sag to down around your ankles. Okay, maybe not both socks, but at least one sock. Okay, maybe not every single sock out there, but at least 70% of the socks. Okay, maybe more like 40%.
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So: Monday! A secret will be revealed! A secret guaranteed to make approximately 40% of at least one of your socks sag down to your ankles.
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Pretty exciting, right?
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Tonight, if you order any dessert at Dirt Candy then you’ll get a free order of Roopa’s amazing Thai Eggplant Chocolate Cake with Thai Basil ice cream! It’s part of our week-long Cake and Ice Cream Birthday Fiesta, to celebrate Dirt Candy turning two years old.
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This monkey is only one year old.
Ha, ha, monkey. We are older than you.
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Roopa Kalyanaraman Marcello is a longtime Dirt Candy customer – and a scientist! and a baker! – who cooked an amazing Family Meal for all of us when Jesus was having his Family Meal-free August. Now she’s created a cake for us based around Asian flavors and with a chocolate chili cream filling that is amazingly delicious, and I’ll be serving it all night long.
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Grrr…this bunny thinks it can tell us
what to do because it is older than us.
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Roopa chronicles her cooking adventures on her blog, raspberry eggplant, that has her explanations and thoughts on tonight’s dessert. The one thing you’ll learn from her blog? Roopa has more science than us.
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Everyone loves a carnival, and tonight if you order a dessert at Dirt Candy then you’ll get a free order of my ode to carnival food, the Dirt Candy Fennel Funnel Cake! It’s part of our week-long Cake and Ice Cream Birthday Fiesta, to celebrate Dirt Candy turning two years old.
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Welcome to our carnival…of souls!
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Learn all about our Fennel Funnel Cake! Because knowledge is power!
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If it’s the title of a hip hop album, then you know it’s true.
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The Fennel Funnel Cake is going to retire soon – summer is over and a light dessert like this needs to make way for heartier fare. But it will return, and when it does everyone will be celebrating. Because the whole world loves a carnival!
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There is one dessert that has been on the Dirt Candy menu since the beginning, one dessert that I have never changed, one dessert to rule them all…Popcorn Pudding. And tonight, as part of Dirt Candy’s week-long Cake and Ice Cream Birthday Fiesta, if you order any dessert, you’ll get a free order of Popcorn Pudding.
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I had to go to OfftheBroiler to get a good picture of the popcorn pudding.
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Popcorn Pudding has always been a constant at Dirt Candy, like gravity, and I’ve always just accepted that it’s here. But there is a story behind it.
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“Come, my people, and I shall tell you the tale
of popcorn pudding, that most noble of desserts.”
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When I started Dirt Candy two years ago, I hired Debbie Lee to be my pastry chef. Debbie and I had worked together at Pure Food and Wine and her desserts are incredible. She worked for a while for Pichet Ong and developed a bunch of desserts for the first menu at Dirt Candy: Sesame Cake, Ricotta Fritters, Chocolate Potato Cake with Sweet Potato Sorbet and, of course, Popcorn Pudding. Then…trouble. Debbie’s mom needed her to help with the family business and so mere months after opening, Debbie departed Dirt Candy.
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I was really sad to see her go, and after she left I hired another pastry chef to execute her desserts. That didn’t work so well. Not only was this second pastry chef not putting in the hours, but she wasn’t adding any new desserts. Finally, I had to bite the bullet and let her go and now Danielle and I do the desserts together. Pastry is hard! But it’s made me step up and really sharpen my sugar-slinging skills and at times it’s even been – dare I say it – fun. But the Popcorn Pudding has been eternal – it’s one of the most popular desserts and I love keeping it on as a tribute to Debbie, one of the people who helped make Dirt Candy what it is today.
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It’s almost time for the Red Pepper Velvet Cake to leave the menu and be replaced by a brand new dessert. But tonight, order any dessert and get a free order of Red Pepper Velvet Cake. It’s all part of Dirt Candy’s week-long Cake & Ice Cream Fiesta to celebrate our second birthday.
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“Did someone say fiesta?”
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Read all about the fabulous Red Pepper Velvet Cake!
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Speaking of second birthdays, did you know that because we opened on October 29th Dirt Candy is a Scorpio? Do you know who else is a Scorpio?
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Jonathan Winters!
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And that’s why every day, in every way, I make all Dirt Candy decisions by asking myself, “What would Johnathan Winters do?”
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Hope to see you one night this week – and thanks for helping us get to our second birthday!
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There are two thoughts you have when you celebrate your birthday after you pass the age of 30:
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1) I am now one year closer to being dead,
2) Mark Zuckerberg is worth $6 billion and he is 26 years old.
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Fortunately, when a restaurant has a birthday there is only one thought:
1) We’ve defied the odds!
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Dirt Candy gets a cupcake!
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That’s the Dirt Candy way! I never thought we’d make it to the one year mark, but now I’m celebrating Dirt Candy’s two-year anniversary and to say I’m surprised is an understatement. I was looking at a the numbers for a recent Tuesday and realized that a year ago, on that same Tuesday, we did 10 customers. This year? 52 customers. I couldn’t be happier or prouder of the way Dirt Candy has grown and although, at a mere two years old, Dirt Candy hasn’t begun conceptualizing time, it has developed exceptional Sensorimotor skills.
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Dirt Candy couldn’t have reached this stage without all of you who’ve supported us, and so as a way of saying “thank you” Dirt Candy is holding a week-long cake & ice cream fest next week (October 26 – 30). Tables are already filling up, but there is some space left. So make a reservation and come on down! You can read the details over here.
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And thank you. Two years is amazing to me, and you guys are what made it happen.
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Dirt Candy…
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But…
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Catching up on a lot of family meals because I’ve been as neglectful towards this blog as a drunk babysitter is towards her charges the week before prom.
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Tuesday: vegetarian chicharron (you know, fried pork skins, but from vegetables, not pigs), dried mangoes, plantain chips and Jesus’s current favorite family meal fad: mushroom heart, broccoli, smoked tofu and chickpea stir fry. Also there are noodles.
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This past weekend I had a chance to go out to eat, and my husband dragged me to a place he was dying to try because he had heard the macaroni and cheese was really good there. I knew he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for, but I went anyways and once again watched as his heart broke when he encountered a bunch of pasta with some cheese in it, bound together by a floury bechamel sauce. What he’s craving isn’t macaroni and cheese, it’s macaroni pie, and he begged me to put this up on the blog so that people could understand what “real” macaroni and cheese means. (A version of this post appears in part in the September issue of Esquire.)
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Dirt Candy doesn’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects I thought I’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines I could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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When most people hear about Lambrusco they have the same reaction: a sparkling red wine?
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Gag me with a spoon!
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But Lambrusco is one of my favorite varietals and after you try the Vigneto Enrico Cialdini I’m serving now, from the Cleto Chiarli estates, I promise it’ll be one of your favorites, too. Think about it this way: Lambrusco has a terrible reputation to overcome, and every glass you order and enjoy is one step closer to redemption for this unfairly maligned grape.
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Redeem me!
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Over the weekend I attended the New York Food and Wine Fest, which is sponsored by the Food Network. I had a table at the event on Saturday serving food to people. I also had a nervous breakdown. Yes, I have hit bottom and it ain’t pretty.
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This isn’t going to end well.
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