Jeremy’s birthday was today, and it was really great to be able to spend it with him, since he was away in New York for the past two. We started out the day with Jeremy jogging for 50 minutes while I got some ricotta praline pancakes on the griddle for him. Then our good friends Tara and Loren came over, and we went out to lunch at Roadhouse Grill, where they sang to Jeremy and made him wear a coffee filter on his head and a toilet paper cover as a collar in order to receive a bowl of ice cream. After that excitement, we had a quiet afternoon catching up with Tara and Loren, which was really nice.
When our guests left, I got started on Jeremy’s birthday cake: German chocolate, naturally! I got the cake in the oven and discovered that there was less coconut than expected in the cupboard, so I made a quick dash over to Safeway for that, and ended up lugging home a bunch of inordinately heavy stuff: short ribs, sunchokes, potatoes, rice, and so on. Thank goodness we had enough flour and sugar. Good exercise, though, I suppose. Jeremy got in some painting while I was gone… hopefully he’ll post updated photos of what he’s working on before too long.
Anyway, while the frosting finished up (this recipe involved making dulce de leche in the oven, a lengthy process), Jeremy helped me with dinner, which was masaman curry. Jeremy loves curry, but I don’t care for it, so I would probably not have considered making it if it weren’t for Curry Simple. Their Thai tea syrup was recommended on one of the food blogs I read, and when I saw their packets of masaman curry sauce, I knew Jeremy would appreciate it for a special occasion like his birthday. Everything arrived really quickly after I ordered it, and dinner was as easy as sauteeing chicken and then vegetables while I boiled some new potatoes, and mixing everything together with the sauce packet. We served it over jasmine rice with Thai iced tea to drink, and the surprising bit was that I actually thought it was pretty good, not too spicy. I ate a small plateful, Jeremy had two huge helpings, and we still had plenty of leftovers, so I think it was an all-around success. Good thing too, because I ordered some pad thai sauce at the same time. I should also note that the Thai iced tea was delicious, and tasted just like what I’ve ordered in restaurants. So I imagine we’ll continue ordering from Curry Simple from time to time.
Once Jeremy had time to digest his dinner, we tried out the cake, and it came out really well also. It was actually the inside-out German chocolate cake from Epicurious, but I don’t have any way of storing layer cakes, so I converted it to a sheet cake and left off the ganache layer because it seemed plenty sweet and rich as it was. I’ll post the recipe and my adjustments tomorrow…
