...by any other name...

I am a faulted human being, but if nothing else, I try to be a woman of my word. Albeit, I have my slip-ups too, but more often than not, if I commit to something, I'll make it happen. Whether I'm having dinner with a friend but dead tired, or being dragged to an event that I have even less desire to attend than when I first reluctantly said I would, if I said, "Yes", you can trust that I'll come through.

Last week, when Teanna of Spork and Foon tweeted an apology to all the Tuesdays With Dorie bakers for this week's choice of Mrs. Vogel's Scherben, I immediately decided I would definitely participate and responded so. There it was. Written in stone.

And then I found out it required deep-frying.

My heart sank. I have avoided deep-frying for as long as I have been cooking. Even if the recipe sounds like heaven realized, I will mentally drool about it and then file it away until...never. That Ad Hoc fried chicken recipe that I've dreamed of having ever since I heard about their Fried Chicken Mondays nearly two years ago -- that will never be made. Taiwanese breakfast crullers that are a crazy weakness of mine -- I'll have to keep driving to the San Gabriel Valley for them, because they're sure as hell not going to be fried up in my home! I've imagined oil sputtering all over the place, getting multiple burns, and then having to dispose that glut of oil!! Not excited.

But, like I said, it was written in stone, so I sucked up all my qualms and started making the dough. The preparation is terribly simple and uses only one bowl!! (That little detail almost made up for the deep-frying.) This morning, I heated up the canola oil as instructed and dropped in the strips of dough. Amazingly, this recipe is not only simple to assemble, but cooks so quickly as well! The strips emerged in every which shape, but that was to be expected and soon, the job was done.

The scherben were a hit in the office, but it wasn't received as such. To my Guatemalan right-hand man, they were corbatas -- a taste of his youth and the reason behind a wistful, adolescent grin. To my Armenian co-worker who spent several years of her childhood in Italy, they were chiacchiere. It brought back memories of her mother in the kitchen, warm pastry puffs at the ready week after week. Though traditionally, both confections incorporate different ingredients in their composition than these scherben, the scherben were close enough to their recollections that making them was worth even oil-disposal inconvenience.

Aside from the frying smell permeating through the kitchen and living room and uncertainty in how I would get rid of the used oil, the process was incredibly painless. I can't believe I have avoided frying for so long! I'm not in any hurry to fire up another pot of canola oil, but suddenly, those recipes that I've filed away for "never" have been re-filed for "sometime".

So many choices!!

I'm one of those people that given too many options, I can never make a decision. Particularly at a good brunch, bakery, or cocktail bar, mulling can take upwards of a very long while. It isn't such a good time for people I'm with, and I feel the pressure of their anticipation (which is usually self-imposed), so I end up making a sudden selection and prepare myself for the consequences.

Last week it was at Tavern where, naturally , I insisted to the waiter that the table was ready to order, but also asked him to come to me last. Frantically, my eyes scrolled down the menu once more. Brisket hash? Bananas Fosters pancakes? Chorizo and eggs? Monkey bread, or the selection of 3 pastries from the larder??? The night before, I was no doubt being pulled in a million directions at Copa d'Oro in Santa Monica. Do I go with my current favorite, the King de Bahia, in all its cachaca-elderflower-passionfruit-jalapeno glory, something aromatic like the Centro, or request something off the menu by their talented bar staff? Maybe this is a reflection of how I live life -- unable to make decisions about simply the little things, let alone the major matters, and it is an unfortunate condition indeed.

Luckily, this week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is endlessly adaptable. Julie of Someone's In The Kitchen selected Flaky Apple Turnovers, and of course I was tempted by all the late summer fruit at the Hollywood Farmers' Market and couldn't decide among classic apple, pear ginger, or peach ginger, so I ended up making all three kinds.

Though several members had trouble with their dough, I felt that the recipe really was quite manageable, and didn't give me any problems, save for the rather rapid softening of the dough because of the heat. I probably should have added more sugar to the fillings, and perhaps a little more fresh, minced ginger to the peach and pear varieties, but the final product was so delicious. I brought them to work, of course, and the scent of the little pockets reheating in the toaster oven drove my coworkers insane. Some people stood fast and refused any for the sake of their diets, but nearly everyone gave into at least half, with some reneging their request for half in favor of a whole after the first bite. The crust was really a vision of flakiness and such a sturdy yet tender vehicle for delicious summer fruit that I'm sure will become my new go-to turnover/pie crust/cornish pasty recipe.

It's difficult to pick a favorite, but maybe I'll say the pear as the spiciness of the ginger was most apparent. Or the peach with it's O'Henry sweetness. Or maybe just the apple because it reminds of the beautiful chaussons aux pommes in Paris?

Ah, I won't be changing anytime soon -- and with this recipe, I really won't have to.