Three Egg Whites

Crêpes!

2012-01-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

Crêpe with onions, mushrooms, ham, and cheese

On Tuesday we celebrated my brother's birthday again (his actual birthday has not yet happened) with a crêpe party! In my family, "crêpe party" means that we pull out the gridle that has six holes for small crêpes so that each person can customize his or her crêpes and the meal goes on.

For our crêpe batter we use half wheat (not whole wheat) flour and half buckwheat flour. Traditionally, savory crêpes (called galettes) are made with 100% buckwheat flour, but the lack of gluten makes the batter hard to work with, and my family's hybrid crêpe batter lets us use the same batter for savory and sweet crêpes!

To make crêpe batter for 4 people (+ leftovers for breakfast the next morning):

Ingredients:

100g all-purpose flour
100g buckwheat flour
3 eggs
2 tsp salt
about 360g milk
water

Method:

Mix the flours with the salt in a large bowl. (For some reason my family has a designated crêpe bowl)
Add the eggs and mix with a spoon
Add the milk slowly, stirring between each addition to avoid making lumps (if you do get lumps, give the dough a whirr with an electric mixer)
Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
Add water to the dough until it is liquid enough to run off the spoon quickly (if the dough is too thick to spread when you start cooking crêpes, you can always add more water)

To cook crêpes:

Heat your pan with some oil.
Add a small ladle of batter to the pan and either use the bottom of the ladle to spread out the batter or rotate the pan so that the batter is very thin but not broken.
Cook one side until the bottom is browned, then flip.
Add desired topping if toppings need to melt.
Cook until bottom is also browned.
Adjust the temperature for the next crêpes if they are cooking too fast or too slowly.
Serve.

Remember: the first crêpe you make in the pan is always a failed crêpe. Don't sweat it.

For our savory crêpe toppings we had caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, ham, cheese, and eggs. For dessert toppings we had nutella, honey, sugar, butter, bananas, and canned pears.

The classic "crêpe complète" is ham, cheese, and a fried egg. I add onions and mushrooms because onions and mushrooms make everything even more delicious.

And of course, as crêpes (galettes) are from Bretagne, they must be eaten with apple cider. My dad found some legit unfiltered and unpasteurized cider at Piazza's that supposedly went very well with the crêpes. (As I am under 21 I obviously did not have any ;)

And the great thing about making crêpes for dinner is that you get to eat the leftovers with nutella the next morning!

Manresa (Los Gatos, CA)

2011-12-26T11:21:00.000-08:00

To celebrate my brother's 21st birthday (only a month in advance), my family went to dinner at Manresa. Usually we steer away from tasting menus, but my father's colleague strongly recommended it to us. Thus, we embarked on a gastronomical adventure through the Santa Cruz mountains.
The tasting menu consisted of 7 savory courses and 2 desserts, with little extras at the beginning and the end. We did not know ahead of time what each course would be.

The first amuse-bouche was olive madeleines and cubes of red bell pepper paste. The pepper paste was sweet but slightly spicy.

The second little appetizer looked like little donuts, but we were told to eat them in one bite. Each ball was filled with liquid foie gras and chestnut which gushed into the mouth when eaten.

The last of the pre-courses was the Arpège egg, a dish borrowed from the Parisian restaurant L'Arpège. The egg was opened at the top and filled with a light mousse. At the bottom rested the partially cooked yolk with sherry vinegar and spices.

For the first actual course, we were served a cold dish of razor clams, geoduck clams and sprouted lentils covered with jellied chicken broth. The grassy flavor of the sprouted lentils made an interesting contrast with the sweet clams and the savory broth.

Next came the raw scallops with onions, seaweed, avocado, and broccoli tempera. I liked the delicate flavor of this dish. The combination of the sweet scallops and creamy avocado was very good.

The next course was introduced as "A walk through the vegetable garden," and it lived up to its name. On our plates was a salad of colorful and flavorful leaves, flowers, and roots tied together with a savory foam. Hidden beneath the leaves I found various sauces, some citrusy, others vinegary. What was interesting about this dish was that each mouthful tasted different from the last one because the leaves and flowers had their own distinctive flavors.

The "Midwinter Tidepool" was our favorite dish. In our bowls was a warm broth that burst with flavor. It was briny like seawater but was also savory and sweet. In the broth I found clams, sea urchin, enoki mushrooms, seaweed, and even a thin slice of foie gras. It was delicious.

Compared to the previous dish, the partially cooked trout was disappointing. The trout seemed to have been shredded and reconstituted and was served with fresh fennel, caramelized fennel, and honey.

After this dip in quality the flavor came back up. The next dish was goat confit (prepared in the same way as duck confit) with compressed persimmon. The salty-sweet worked very well, and the portion was perfect.

Next came the last savory dish: venison cooked "sous vide" (in a vacuum) with quince purée and a chanterelle mushroom. The venison was tender but appropriately strong tasting. The quince purée was surprisingly starchy rather than sweet.

The first dessert was citrus tapioca with yuzu sherbert and toffee pieces topped with a light citrusy cream. It was light and tasty.

The second dessert was strange but good. We were served mushroom ice cream with maple syrup and chips with cinnamon and a churro. The mushroom ice cream with the maple syrup reminded me of bacon with maple syrup.

As a link back to the beginning of the meal, the servers brought us chocolate madeleine with strawberry paste.

And finally, because it was my brother's birthday (kinda), we got an extra dessert to share: a lemon cake!

Manresa was all in all, a wonderful experience.

Tobe's Candy-Cane Cookies

2011-12-26T09:38:00.000-08:00

In my last post I mentioned my suitemate Tobe's delicious candy cane cookies, and she has kindly agreed to let me post her recipe on this blog. As I wrote earlier, my roommate Sophia and I made 2 batches of these cookies because we could not resist the warm combination of the soft almond cookies and the crunchy-sweet peppermint topping.

Tobe's Candy-Cane Cookies

Ingredients:
Dough:

1 C soft shortening
1 C powdered sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 C flour
1 tsp salt

Topping:

1/2 candycanes, crushed
1/2 cup granulated sugar

Procedure:

Pre-heat oven to 375F.
Mix the first 5 ingredients together by hand. (I used a whisk)
Add the flour and salt. (I used a spoon at first and then switched to using my fingers)
Divide the dough into as many parts as you want colors and knead in food coloring until the desired color is achieved.
To make candy cane shape: Roll 1 tsp of each color in to a strip about 4" long. Place strips together side by side and twist together. Curve tops down for candy cane effect.
To make thumbprint shape (for people who fail at making candy canes like me): take 2 tsp of dough, roll it into a sphere, and press down in the middle with your thumb. (This shape is good for holding a lot of topping)
Place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 375F for 9 minutes.
Combine the crushed candy-canes and the sugar in a bowl.
Remove cookies from baking sheet while warm, place on paper towels and sprinkle with topping.

Holiday Baking!

2011-12-16T10:05:00.000-08:00

Finals are over! And it turns that finals week was the week where I had the most free time. What did I do with this frightening abundance of free time? I baked cookies! I think I baked 8 times in 8 days. Not only cookies though.
Saturday afternoon, my friend Nicole wanted to make shortbread cookies for her professors, so I volunteered to help out. We used this joy of baking recipe and shaped some of the cookies as stars and hearts and other cookies shaped as hippos and elephants. The fizzix professors have a slight obsession with rhinos, so we figured hippos would be close enough. Unfortunately the hippos ran away before I could photograph them.

I tried filling shortbread cookie dough with nuts and brown sugar! Pecans, almonds, and cashews all worked well.

That same day, my dorm was having a potluck, so my roommate, Sophia, and I made Sophia's favorite apple crumble recipe. The apples were simply sprinkled with sugar and lemon juice. The topping was a combination of butter, oatmeal, brown sugar, and flour. Usually she uses pecans, but almonds were cheaper.

We brought the crumble to the potluck, but it turned out that only 2 people had brought savory foods, so we had a lot of desserts: crumble, apple pie, sesame balls, cookies...

The next day I helped Sophia make the biscotti she makes every year for Christmas. These are delicious almond-anis-raisin biscotti (I liked them even though I usually don't really like anis or raisins.)

The last batch of cookies we made was Tobe's (our suitemate) Candy Cane cookies. Sophia and I agree that these are the best cookies we have ever had. The dough is flavored with almond extract and the cookies are sprinkled with crushed candy canes and sugar. Tobe's instructions said to color some of the dough red and twirl the different colors together to make candy canes, but neither of s was able to do it. Instead, we made trees and mushrooms and flowers, but we discovered that the simple thumbprint cookie was the best at holding large quantities of the candy cane sugar.

Some Crust Cupcakes at the Library!

2011-12-04T23:16:00.001-08:00

Raspberry-Lemon Cupcake

In Claremont there is a bakery called "Some Crust." It makes killer egg sliders with rosemary bread, a fried egg, and your choice of cheese, vegetable, and sauce. I had one with provolone, bell pepper, and pesto, and it was simply delicious. I also bought a loaf of bread from the bakery ("Rosemary French,") that had good flavor but a disappointingly (and ironically) tough crust.

But, as the title of this post implies, Some Crust also makes cupcakes. Beautiful cupcakes. And these cupcakes are even more beautiful because, as I discovered on Saturday, they are sold in the library, where I can use my "flex" dollars instead of actual cash.

Chocolate cupcake

These cupcakes delicious because instead of reserving the frosting for the top, Some Crust also swirls frosting into the cake base!

Thanksgiving Dinner

2011-11-29T11:21:00.001-08:00

I am back at school from a very nice Thanksgiving break. Food at home is so much better than food in college. For thanksgiving dinner my family had a turkey (prepared by my dad)

but it looks tastier cooked.

We rubbed the turkey with herb butter and stuffed it with chestnut stuffing that my mom and I made.

We based the stuffing off of this recipe from Epicurious, but we also sautéed the turkey's liver and heart and added it to the stuffing along with some chicken broth. And, like every year, we decided to cook the turkey with stuffing in it because in my family's opinion, it makes the stuffing taste so much better.

To compliment this, I made Brussels sprouts with bacon and my brother made cranberry sauce.

To prepare, the Brussels spourts, I first steamed the halved sprouts in a pressure cooker for 7 minutes and fried some cubes of thick bacon. Then I added the sprouts to the bacon and let them caramelize for a bit.

My brother's cranberry sauce was actually Cook's Illustrated's Cranberry Chutney with Appple and Crystallized Ginger. It had all of those ingredients as well as cider vinegar and brown sugar.

Since we don't have much family in the US, we celebrate thanksgiving with another French family. Our guests brought more delicious foods including corn bread, green beans sautéed in garlic, delicious apple tart.

And so we had a belly-happifying Thanksgiving meal!

Poached Pears with Vanilla and Ginger

2011-10-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I just finished my chemistry final, and I wasn't doing any productive (unless playing with mini magnets counts as productive) so I figured I should blog. I was on fall break this weekend so I went home and my dad and I made some poached pears for a dessert at our friends' house. Neither of us had ever made poached pears before but I decided that we should not poach the pears in red wine because in my opinion that would make them untasty. If I am making a dessert, I want to like my dessert. So we settled on a vanilla-ginger syrup with real vanilla beans and fresh ginger.

When we went to the grocery store we discovered that the price of vanilla beansis inversely correlated to the quantity you buy: A bottle with 1 vanilla bean cost $10, 2 vanilla beans cost $8, and 3 beans cost $7. I can only imagine how cheap 20 vanilla beans would be.

Anyways, my dad cut the pears into quarters while I heated 1.25L of water with 250g sugar, 2 tblsp chopped ginger, and half a vanilla bean.

To extract maximum flavor from the vanilla bean I sliced it lengthwise and used a knife to scrape out all the black seeds where the flavor is stored. I put the seeds into the water and I stuck the pods in for good measure.

The seeds are on the tip of the knife

So, I am sure that you are all wondering: What makes vanilla taste like vanilla? Well, the vanilla pod is the fruit of a genus of orchid (a genus being a group of species) that must be either hand pollinated or pollinated by one specific species of Mexican bee. The main flavor compound in vanilla is the vanillin molecule:

Vanillin

and artificial vanilla flavor is basically just vanillin dissolved in water and alcohol. McCormick's "Premium Imitation Vanilla" contains: "WATER, ALCOHOL (26%), NATURAL FLAVORINGS (INCLUDING EXTRACTIVES OF COCOA
AND EXTRACTIVES OF TEA), VANILLIN AND OTHER
ARTIFICIAL FLAVORINGS, CORN SYRUP, AND CARAMEL COLOR." (http://www.mccormick.com/).
So what makes natural vanilla different? Well, vanilla beans also contain lots of other compounds that add more dimension to the vanilla flavor. Natural vanilla extract is made by macerating vanilla beans in ethanol (alcohol) to extract the flavors.

Anyways, back to poached pears. After heating the water with the sugar, ginger, and vanilla, we added the pears to the liquid and let them simmer for 20 minutes, until the were soft. Then we took the pears out:

and boiled down the remaining liquid to form a syrup:

which we then poured back onto the pears (first removing the vanilla pods):

The pears went very well with a Basque butter cake our hosts served up for dessert because the cake soaked up the pear syrup on our plates.

Backpacking food

2011-09-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

I am now officially in College (with a capital C). Classes started a couple weeks ago and I am already quite whelmed by homework (but not yet overwhelmed). But before classes started and before orientation started, I went on a Pre-Orientation Hike offered by my school that consisted of a 40mile / 5 day backpacking trip in Yosemite.

Of course, what else would I do on a five day trip but take pictures of all the food! But this ain't no five star restaurant, ok? Be prepared; all this food must be able to be cooked with just a titatium pot, water, and a burner. But after hiking 6-9 miles with a pack, it sure tasted like a 5 star meal.

For breakfast we would generally boil water in our pot and pour it in a bag of instant oatmeal, but on the last day we had granola with dried milk powder and water so we could start hiking earlier.

Doesn't that look delicious?

For lunch we would alternate between cheese, sausage, and crackers or nutella, jelly, tortillas, and flatbread.

That kraft yellow cheddar and this white rustic cheddar were the best tasting cheeses I had ever had. I can't even imagine how delicious actually good cheese would have been.

As for the nutella and tortillas, well, nutella makes everything delicious!

(and yes, I am using my knee as a plate. I was too lazy to get my bowl out for lunch)

Dinner was where we had the more interesting meals because we could actually cook stuff. Unfortunately, titanium does not conduct heat well, so attempts at cooking generally turned out somehow both burnt and undercooked. The night after the first full day we used the leftover orange cheese from lunch to make burnt and undercooked cheesy rice. Yum!

We also had Chicken and Orzo made with weird packaged chicken

But the best meal was the one that required the least cooking: Couscous! Our last dinner was a box of coucous with a curry spice packet, and it was actually legitly delicious. Especially with Sundried tomatoes and pine nuts in it.

Strawberry Shortcake (and longcake)

2011-08-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I met up with my friend E to make some strawberry shortcakes. This was, however, not just a whim. This meet up had been "in the planning" ever since we sat next to each other during the sophomore year STAR test and passed each other drawings of long and tall strawberry shortcakes:

tall strawberry shortcake (strawberry tallcake)

tall shortcake with radioactive shortcake, radioactive mushroom, and one-legged turkey

long strawberry shortcake (or strawberry longcake)

eating shortcake

giant strawberry+apartment building

I'm not really sure what was going through our minds at that point, but apparently the STAR tests made us hungry. But anyways, that was when we decided to make strawberry shortcake together. We met up about a year ago with a recipe from Cook's Illustrated to do it, but we accidentally put way too much baking soda into the shortcakes and they tasted horribly metallic. So we met again yesterday (3 days before I leave for college) to wrap up the emptiness of the failed strawberry shortcake. E found a biscuit recipe on Joy of Baking and I got some strawberries and cream and we got down to it.

This time we did not mix up our leaveners and the biscuits were flaky and buttery.

We sliced up the strawberries and let them macerate in their own juice with a teaspoon of sugar, and we added some sugar and vanilla to the hand-whipped cream. (The electric mixer was European and we couldn't find a transformer.)

When the biscuits were cooked, we simply sliced them in half and layered strawberries and whipped cream. The shortcakes were delicious and everyone had seconds (and/or thirds).

To keep with tradition, we made one long biscuit to make a strawberry longcake.

Note: From what I understand shortcakes are called shortcakes because they contain fat (unlike bread) and so do not develop as much gluten which makes them crumbly (they have "short" fibers).

Au Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs – A restaurant in Blois

2011-07-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

When driving up from the middle of France back to Paris, we stopped for the night in the cute city of Blois. Blois is on the side of the Loire river and it has a well renovated castle in its center. After visiting the castle we had dinner at the "Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs" (the meeting place of the fishermen) a restaurant we found through the Guide Michelin. For those of you who did not know, the guide Michelin was made by the Michelin tire company to encourage driving in French families.

Well, the Rendez-vous Pêcheurs certainly deserves its ranking of "a very good table." The meal started out with a pre-appetizer of carrot mousse over mushroom flan. It was served hot in a little white coffee cup and it was delicious. Maybe I will try to re-create it one day.

For my appetizer, I ordered the Lobster broth. It was flavorful, but not too strong, and it came with large chunks of tasty lobster in it. It also had pieces of chicken in it, which I found to be a bit out of place. But overall it was quite good.

My parents both had the special appetizer: zucchini flowers stuffed with crayfish. This dish was very flavorful and delicious.

For my main entrée, I had the pigeonneau. Yes, yes, I know, the restaurant is named after fishermen, but pigeonneau is too good to pass up. The pigeonneau was cooked at 55 degrees celsius for 2 hours in a vaccum, and it came with a pice of seared foie gras and a little molded mound of soft browned cabbage. The fowl was perfectly cooked, brown on the outside but pink on the inside, and the foie gras was of course delicious.

My mother got the bass with sweetbreads and my father got the St. Pierre (a type of fish) with parsley sauce.

Then came the pre-dessert: passion fruit purée with meringue. It was bit too sour for my tastes.

And then dessert! My brother and I both got the raspberry millefeuille (millefeuille means "a thousand leaves" in french because of the many layers). It was good but very sweet.

My mother got Fraise melba (strawberries with vanilla ice cream and sorbet with slivered almonds,

My father got a strange dessert based on potatoes. The bottom layer is an olive cake, and the top layer is a potato cake that had a texture similar to cheesecake. On the side are sweet fried potato slices and blackberry sorbet. It was strange but strangely good.

Le Marché de Suresnes

2011-07-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, my parents and I decided to go out to a boulangerie for breakfast and visit Suresnes's farmer's market.

The delicious croissants from the local boulangerie.

From the bakery we walked to the nearby market. We did not have any plans to buy anything, but we wanted to look around. The market had two sections, a giant indoor food market, and some clothes vendors outside. Being me, I only really paid attention to the indoor section.

Of course, there were several cheese vendors and many different types of cheese made locally or imported from other parts of France, Spain, Portugal, etc... The bottom cheese picture was of a vendor specialized in goat cheeses.

Calamari

Eel

A great thing about France is that you can easily buy whole fish. The market had several fishmongers and seafood stands, and all of them had splendid collections of fresh looking whole and not whole fish, including sardines! (Freshly grilled sardines are way above canned sardines on the tastiness scale)

In addition to the usual beef, pork, and chicken, french markets have meats that are not very common in the US. The top picture is of a skinned rabbit, and the bottom one is a sign for a horse meat butcher.

Ravioli

Freshly made pasta.

Spices

And, yes, the market does also have fruits and vegetables (a plurality of the stands had fruit and/or vegetables)

There were also a couple bakeries with tasty looking cakes and breads.

We had not planned on buying anything, but everything looked so good that we ended up getting some chorizo, wine, and a lebanese crêpe-like appetizer to bring to my grandfather's house.

Chocolate cake: A scientific method

2011-07-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

I am in France right now! But before I blog about that, I will tell you about my attempts to make a near perfect chocolate cake.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to bake a cake for another friend's surprise birthday/goodbye party. A commission of sorts! How honoring and surprising! I was told that the recipient like chocolate cake, and the theme of the party was Pink Lemonade (pink and yellow), so I was a bit stumped on how to combine them. I personally am not a fan of lemon and chocolate (I am actually not a fan of any lemon desserts), so I figured I could just add pink and yellow food coloring in a couple places. Unfortunately, chocolate cake is not very easy to color... I considered red velvet, but the one time I tried to make red velvet cupcakes, they did not turn out well at all. And by at all, I mean at all. As I only had 1.5 weeks to prepare, I wanted to stay on the safe side.

But how to add color to a chocolate cake? White chocolate frosting.

I began with the base of the cake. I wanted the base to be good, not just sweet and fluffy, so I gathered a couple recipes. I decided to try two of them: a relatively simple recipe from Scharffen-Berger (that I had made before here) and a more complicated recipe from Cook's Illustrated (which was surprisingly available on their website while I was making the cake, but is now only available to subscribers here). I made half of each recipe to get one layer of each.

For the frosting I turned to one of my favorite cookbooks: I Want Chocolate! by Trish Deseine. I made half of her recipe for Easy Chocolate Ganache, substituting white chocolate for dark. If I remember correctly, it used about 3/4 cup for 8oz of chocolate. This turned out to be a bit to liquid for my purposes, so I had to almost freeze my ganache for it to be thick enough. I often find frosting to be too rich, so I wanted to test two different ganaches, a heavier one (just cream and chocolate) and a lighter one (cream, chocolate and whipped cream). So I made both and colored the heavier one yellow and the lighter one pink.

Then I assembled my test cake. On the bottom I put my layer of simple cake,

then I spread some heavier frosting,

put the complicated cake,

and spread the lighter frosting. I did not have enough lighter frosting to cover the entire cake, so it ended up looking pretty ugly. That's why I had a test cake!

Then I had my parents test the cake. I did not tell them which layer corresponded to which cake (because that would have biased the data. I should have made two half cakes, one with the layers in the opposite order, for less bias, but I was worried that would not be stable).

Results: First, the top layer is lighter colored. However, it was also found to be more strongly chocolatey, as well as more tender and lighter than the bottom layer. The bottom layer was not found to have any redeeming qualities in comparison with the top layer. Fortunately for me, the choice was easy. Unfortunately, the chosen cake was the more complicated recipe.

As for the frosting, I decided that I liked having the two types, but that I should switch their positions.

Making the final cake:

I had originally planed to have a second practice cake, but I was out of time, so I went directly to the final cake. I made the full Cook's Illustrated recipe for the base and made ganache with 12oz of white chocolate and 3/4 cup of cream. I put the lighter frosting in between the cake layers and tried to spread the thicker frosting on top. However, the thicker ganache was now too thick to spread easily, and cake crumbs got mixed into the frosting, ruining the smooth finish:

To solve this, I made another batch of ganache using 8oz of white chocolate and spread it on top of the previous layer of frosting. For decoration, I had made letters and shapes with colored melted white chocolate:

The cake was a success, my friends really liked it!

A note: for all of this, I used white chocolate bars. I strongly recommend NOT using so called "White Chips" as these contain absolutely no cocoa butter and have a very different texture when melted.

Things I want to learn, Books I want to read.

2011-06-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

This post is not really food related, but I felt like writing it. I am going off to college next, and I am going to have to somehow pick a major and choose classes from all the different amazing classes I can take. I am pretty sure I want to be a science major, but there are a lot of other things I want to learn, and so I decided to make a list.

And so, in no particular order, the things I want to learn:

Photography. I want to actually understand what all the different settings do and I want to be able to take really cool looking pictures (of food!! (and other stuff))
Chinese. It would be so useful!! Because then I could go to my friends' houses and creep on their conversations with their parents!! (And also other reasons of course, like that a large portion of the world speaks it.)
Cello. It is so beautiful.
Arabic. It is just that boss. Also, this country lacks a lot of cultural awareness of the entire part of the world that speaks Arabic.
CS. Because then I would be able to do cool stuff.
How to make croissants (because they are freakin' delicious)
How to twirl my pencil (I know it is passé, but I still want to know (I actually once wrote a terrible short story where the main character was a really good at twirling his pencil. The story also involved aliens called "iglepuffs" and a π/pie contest.)
Robotics. It's just awesome. (at least my robotics friends say so, and I believe them)
Knowing how to draw decently would be useful
One day I also should learn my funtional groups. You know, that aldehyde ketone esther stuff. Then I could look at a molecule and say a very a fancy name for it and look smart! Yay!
There are definitely more things that belong on this list, but I cannot remember them now.

Also, there are so many books I need to read. I am currently almost finished with my first real French literature book (Le Chercheur d'Or by Le Clézio), and then I have a long list of other books I need to read. Unfortunately, I often forget what books I need to read, so here is what I remember at the moment:

The series A song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin (AKA Game of Thrones)
Ender's Game
The Flavor Thesaurus (it's more of a looking stuff up book, but I kinda want to read through it)
Harry Potter 7 (I have only read it once! Completely Unacceptable!)
The Importance of Being Earnest (My english class ran out of time to read it, so we only watched the movie, and I was absent for half of it)
A Streetcar Named Desire (the title sounds cool and my friend likes it)
Oh, es él! A silly book in spanish concerning Julio Iglesias and a crossdresser.
I should probably eventually finish the first book of Asimov's Foundation series (I have a tendency to start books and not finish them)

Raspberry Cupcakes with Chocolate-Orange Ganache

2011-06-04T22:01:00.001-07:00

As the school year is ending (I had my last day of High School last Friday!) we had a good-bye party for a teacher who is leaving the country, so I decided to bring cupcakes! I have just recently been introduced to Sprinkles cupcakes, and there are really quite good (especially when they are free!!), so I was inspired to continue the cupcake trend.

I went to Joy the Baker's blog and found a tasty looking recipe for raspberry almond cupcakes with chocolate ganache, and I decided to make it. I gathered all my ingredients and started measuring and mixing, but when I opened my bottle of almond extract, it was empty! All of the extract must have had evaporated over the many years we have had that bottle. So, I replaced the almond extract with 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract and 1 tsp of orange flower water. Unfortunately, the orange flower water did not come out much at all in the final cupcakes, so next time I will put more in. In an attempt to bring out the orange flavor, I added some orange zest to the chocolate ganache, and it was delicious!

I made mini cupcakes instead of full sized ones, using a mini muffin pan and filling a regular pan 1/3 of the way. I also boosted the raspberries, going from the original 1/3c to 1/2c or more. The cupcakes were not soggy at all.

Raspberry Cupcakes with Chocolate-Orange Ganache (basically copied from raspberry almond cupcakes with chocolate ganache with a few variations)

Batter (makes 12 cupcakes)

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp orange flower water
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries, roughly chopped

Put a rack in the middle of the oen and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin cups with paper liners.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt inside a bowl.
Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Beat in egg and almond extract.
Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture and milk alternately in 3 batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and beating just until incorporated.
Fold in the raspberries.
Divide the batter among lined muffin cups. Bake until pale golden and a wooden pick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Turn cupcakes out onto a rack to cool completely.
Spread frosting on cupcakes once cooled.

Chocolate-Orange Ganache

3/4 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup heavy cream or 2 tbsp milk
1 tsp orange zest

Microwave the chocolate with the cream on low until the chocolate is partially melted.
Stir until all of the chocolate is melted.
If frosting is too loose to spread, let it sit at room temperature for 10 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, frosting will continue to thicken as it stands.

Cardamom Sour-Cream Waffles

2011-05-16T20:41:00.001-07:00

Last week, for mother's day, I decided to make my mother a special breakfast. She likes waffles, so I searched up some new waffle recipes. In the past I have made light and crispy waffles and yeasted waffles, but this year I wanted something new. The epicurious newsletter presented me with an interesting idea: Cardamom Waffles. My family really likes cardamom, the spice used in carrot cake and Indian rice pudding, so I decided to give these waffles a try.

I followed Epicurious' recipe (which was published in the magazine Gourmet) almost to the letter; I, however, ground my own cardamom instead of using pre-ground, and my father made a delicious fruit salad (mango, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries) to serve with it instead of the lingonberry preserves specified the recipe.

Here is the recipe, pretty much copied word for word from the original!

Cardamom Sour-Cream Waffles

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
Rounded 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom (You can also use 3-4 cardamom pods and grind the inner seeds yourself with a mortar/pestle or spice grinder)
1 cup whole milk
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon mild honey
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Method:

Preheat a waffle iron until hot.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cardamom in a large bowl.
Whisk together remaining ingredients in another bowl, then whisk into flour mixture until just combined.
Lightly brush waffle iron with oil and cook waffles according to manufacturer's instructions.

Yay for simple directions!

These waffles were delicious fresh and were still good the next day when reheated in the toaster!

A little bit of maple syrup or honey brings out the spice of the cardamom.

Asparagus Quiche

2011-04-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

The weather last week was quite Spring-like, so I decided to make some Asparagus Quiche! (Although the weather as I am writing this is decidedly not spring-like.)
Quiche, as I am sure you all know, is a French dish that is at the intersection of Frittata and custard tart. It has a pastry shell and is filled with a savory egg based custard. The traditional Quiche Lorraine has bacon and gruyère, but I made this quiche vegetarian with asparagus, onions, and gruyère.

First I browned the onions in olive oil with some red thai curry paste.

And then I added the garlic and cooked it for about 30 seconds.

And then I added the asparagus (first I cooked the stalks, and then I added the tops, because the tender tops cook more quickly)

To cook the asparagus I added some water to the pan and let the asparagus simmer until it was soft, adding water as necessary. I wanted it to be soft rather than al dente to meld better with the texture of the custard.

Then I made the custard with 5 eggs and a cup of milk. I then added about a cup of freshly grated gruyère as well as some salt and pepper (and a little bit of chili pepper).

I poured the custard into my blind baked pastry dough, and added the asparagus to it.

I then baked the quiche for about 20-30 minutes.

The quiche was quite tasty, although it could have used either a bit more salt or some more cheese. I served with a bright salad to contrast with the butteryness of the crust.

Carrot Ribbon Salad

2011-04-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of carrots, and I am a big fan of salad, but I could never figure out how to combine them in a satisfying way. Cutting the carrots into round slices just made them too thick and woody in comparison with the lettuce, and shredded carrots tend to clump up unattractively. But, when I was peeling carrots, I realized that the peels were the perfect thickness for a salad. So I just kept peeling, even after the skin was long gone, to make carrot ribbons.

I used 2 carrots to get about 1-1.5cups of loosely packed ribbons (I would use a third carrot if I made this again). To continue my salad, I decided to add a small handful of cranberries and toasted pecans to add a bit of interest, and I topped it with a box of spring greens.

For the dressing, I made a mustard vinaigrette with a large spoonful of mustard, a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, a larger spoonful of red wine vinegar (too much balsamic makes a salad cloyingly sweet instead of light and refreshing), an equal amount of olive oil, and a crank of freshly ground pepper.

I brought this salad to a Track pasta feed (where we feast on carbs the night before a race) and it was a nice change from all of the pasta and cookies. At the pasta feed, my friend and I actually ended up making a lemon-olive oil dressing with the hosts home-grown lemons for some of the plain pasta people had brought, and it was delicious: lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, mustard, and "italian seasoning" tossed with pasta.

Bacon Avocado Sandwich

2011-03-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

Last week, my friend brought an avocado sandwich to school. It looked really good. I wanted one too. So, on Thursday morning, instead of making my usual ham and cheese or pb and j, I decided to make an avocado sandwich. And what better with avocado than bacon?

I mashed a few slices of avocado with Cholula hot sauce and lime (to slow oxidation as well as to add flavor)

I had fried the bacon the night before, and then I just cut it up and placed it on the avocado! The combination of creamy and crunchy/salty was very tasty. As we approach the summer months, this sandwich could be improved with some ripe tomato slices and lettuce into a BLTA!

And I appologize for the not very good photos. 7 am is kind of early to be thinking about exposure.

Tomato Sauce and Carrot Cardamom Cake

2011-03-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight, my parents went out, so my brother (who is home for spring break) and I decided to make some ravioli and carrot cake!

Above is the tomato sauce I made to go with the ravioli. It has onions, garlic (which I sliced rather than crushed), red thai curry paste, some of my mom's mystery spices, canned tomatoes, jarred tomato sauce, and peas.

This is Spiced Carrot Cake, but really should be called Cardamom Carrot cake, because cardamom is its only spice. It was, however, delicious.

And I successfully temporarily fixed my camera! Unfortunately, as I had to duct tape the piece that holds the batteries in, I'm not sure how I will change the batteries... But until then I can still take pictures!

New Plan! And Cailles en Sarcophages!

2011-03-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

So, it has been a very long time since I have last blogged, and as I don't have enough time these days to write full recipes (second semester seniorness is a lie), I have decided to take a picture of some interesting food I see/eat and write about it every day or every other day! Sounds fun? Yes! Unfortunately my camera is having some issues at the moment, but I don't think it is anything some duct tape and new batteries can't fix! (hopefully) Until I get around to fixing it, I will be hitchhiking off of other people's cameras.

First Interesting Food: Cailles en Sarcophages from Le Festin de Babette

My dad had been talking for a long time about making this dish: quails stuffed with truffles and foie gras and then wrapped in puff pastry. And on Wednesday he finally did make it!

It should be noted that instead of truffles, we used regular mushrooms and truffle oil. Also, the puff pastry crust was baked empty and sliced open, and the baked and stuffed quails were set inside a few minutes before serving.

During dinner we discussed what tweaks could make this better, and concluded on an extra pan seared slice of foie gras on the side.

This was all in all a delicious dish, so thank you Dad and Brother!

photo cred: my dad

The Thanksgiving Chronicles, Part 2: The rest

2010-12-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

I'm finally getting around to part 2! I have been busy growing cobaltous chloride hexahydrate crystals and such, but today is Friday. Fridays are good.

This is the pumpkin pie after being assembled and before entering the oven. Admire the smooth custard: it was achieved through much effort filtering (and eating the filtrand, aka anything delicious that did not pass through the sieve).

The onions and celery for the stuffing with parsley and other herbs.

The beautiful roasted turkey. We did in fact cook the stuffing inside the turkey because turkey juice is what makes stuffing taste so amazing.

Mashed sweet potatoes! No, there is not a volcano inside the potatoes, I just happened to take the picture while my dad was mashing them.

The marshmallow crust on top of the sweet potatoes.

The carved turkey meat.

My favorite: the chestnut stuffing! We made it with chestnuts, celery, onions, staled herb slab bread, 2 apples, turkey liver, and some of the turkey stock I had made the day before.

My plate. Noteworthy items are Virginie's garlic-sautéed green beans and cornbread, as well as my brother's orange-cranberry sauce.

Unfortunately, I did not get pictures of the desserts, but we had pumpkin pie, apple tart, and some pumpkin flan my dad made by adding milk to some pumpkin pie filling that didn't fit in the crust. All were delicious!

The Thanksgiving Chronicles: Part 1 Turkey Tail stock and Pumpkin pie filling

2010-11-24T17:39:00.001-08:00

It's Thanksgiving (tomorrow)! The wonderful American celebration of eating one's weight in food!
Anyways, in my family, the cooking started today to maximize stove-top space efficiency.

Turkey Stock:
This is my first time making stock! Hopefully it will turn out well.
Originally, we were going to use turkey necks, but the store only had tails. Raw turkey tails look quite unappetizing, but flavor is flavor. I put the tails on a baking sheet with 4 peeled carrots, 3 not-peeled onions, and 3 stalks of celery.

I roasted all of it for 45 minutes at 450F.

And then flipped over the tails and vegetables to roast them 20 more minutes.

I put everything in a large stockpot half filled with water, making sure to scrape as much flavor as possible off of the baking sheet. I added another celery branch for my mom (she loves celery) as well as some fresh thyme and parsley and about a tablespoon of ground pepper. I only added a little salt because a lot water will evaporate, and so it is safer to add salt once the desired concentration of flavor is achieved.

At 6pm, the stock has been simmering for 5.5 hours. As I am at high altitude, the stock should cook longer because water boils at a lower temperature.

I also made the pumpkin pie filling and crust. The filling is according to Cook's Illustrated recipe, and the crust is my usual pâte brisée.

Pumpkin pie filling:
Cream, milk, eggs, and vanilla

Interestingly, this recipe uses a combination of canned pumpkin and canned "yams" (see my post on sweet potatoes vs. yams). It also cooks both vegetables on the stove with sugar and maple syrup to remove water and caramelize the naturally and unnaturally present sugars.

Then the pumpkin and cream mixtures are combined to form a delicious custard.

I will cook the pie crust tomorrow to save the bottom from sogginess.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve to all of you!

Extra Pastry Dough

2010-10-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

Do you ever make a tart and have extra dough left? What do you do with it?
I made an upside-down apple/pear tart, and then I went a little crazy with the extra dough :)

Pastry Dough Craziness:
Materials:

Left-over flaky pie crust (or other pie crust)
Edible stuff.

Procedure:

Make a ball of leftover raw pie crust.
Roll it out.
Mooch around the kitchen to find edible stuff (fridge, freezer, and pantry are good bets)
Put edible stuff in the middle.
Let your creativity guide your hand! Add random spices, salt, sugar, food coloring, etc... The sky is your limit! Unless, of course, you can fly a rocket, in which case your limit is bit farther than that.
Bake until cooked (time depends on size).
Eat.

Data:
A ball of leftover pastry dough sat in front of me. I looked through some cupboards and found a 3x4 MINI muffin pan and MINI muffin cups. MINI tartlettes it would be. I got some frozen blueberries and raspberries out of the freezer and made three tartlettes of each. I found some baby carrots in my fridge (there are always baby carrots in my fridge) and sliced them, microwaved them, and made three more tartlettes. Three slots left. Hazelnuts are tasty, so hazelnuts I would use (with a pat of butter of course). I decided to sprinkle a little curry and ginger on the carrot tarts at the last minutes, and then I put the pan in the oven.

I looked back at the counter.
A small ball of pastry dough sat in font of me. Well, I still have some baby carrots left, but no more mini muffin pans. Then, I remembered that bakc when I was little my cousins and I used to wrap pastry dough around mini sausages. Baby carrots and mini sausages aren't that different, right? I microwaved five baby carrots to soften them, sprinkled them with salt and curry powder, and wraped them in the last of my pastry dough.

Results/Discussion:
Everything was quite tasty. My family was at first sceptic of the "carrots in a blanket," but, even though the spices were not really perceptible, the sweetness of the carrot was well-complemented by the buttery crispness of the crust to form a yummy little appetizer.

For dinner we had Costco's famous duck confit (quite good, actually), roasted tomatoes from my aunt's backyard, garlic-sautéed chanterelles, and packaged fries. Yum!

The tart and tartlettes were served for dessert (though the carrot tartlettes were not very popular, they would be better as part of a savory meal)

Conclusion: Extra pastry dough is an excellent source of yumminess.

San Mateo Farmer's Market

2010-08-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went to the San Mateo farmer's market to show my French cousins what United-Statsian markets are like. Ironically, I had never been to the San Mateo market. In fact, my family and I almost never go to any farmer's markets (even though there are a bunch in my area) because by the time we think about grocery shopping, the markets are closed :(
But now that I have my license (YAY I FINALLY GOT MY LICENSE!!!), if I wanted to, I could go to a farmer's market on my own. Of course, I am only saying this because I FINALLY GOT MY LICENSE!!!

Anyways, I was supposed to talk (write) about visiting the San Mateo market. As expected, the sky was rather gray. About half the stalls were for produce and half were for processed goods, such as bread, candy, jam, etc...

Red and Golden Beets

Green and purple beans and peppers

Swiss Chard

Blueberries

Rotisserie Chicken :)

Rainbow peppers

Daikon and Bok choy

"Italian Bitter melon" according to the label, but I think it may actually be Indian Bitter melon

There was a lot more of course :) We ended up buying some pluots, some chicken, some tomatoes, some fudge, and some beets. I also tried a delicious sample of a middle-eastern stuffed bread thing with sauce.

I roasted the beets and tossed them with a very garlicky vinaigrette to make a salad. We found that the red beets and white/pink beets were similar in taste, but that the yellow beets were different and much less sweet.

Carotenoids, Sweet Potatoes, Davis.

2010-08-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. Well, you know how the end of school is... First we have all the end of year activities, then we have to study for finals, and then summer vacation is so busy that it seems to not even really be a vacation.
This summer I participated in a summer program to do research at Davis. It was a wonderful experience; I made great friends and I got to see what life in a lab really is. I was assigned to a lab working with carotenoids (think: beta-carotene) and vitamin A in food. My parents thought this was perfect for me :)
I expected to just be a lab helper for other researchers, but my lab professor actually gave me a project of my own to work on. My project was to develop a method to determine the effect of the pH of digestive juices on the bioaccessibility of beta-carotene in sweet potatoes using in vitro digestion. Sounds cool, eh?
In normal-speak this means: try to find a way, using a simulated digestion, to see whether making saliva or gastric juice more acid or basic would affect the amount of beta-carotene (a vitamin A precursor) that comes out of the sweet potato during the digestion. I hope that makes more sense.

Anyways, this project was cool. I got to take sweet potatoes and boil them and mash them (and stick 'em in a stew?) Then I pretty much much spent my days doing in vitro digestion, which is digestion in a glass vial that simulates human conditions. My data at the end was rather terrible, but I did find one thing: beta-carotene degrades REALLY fast when it is in a water based solution.

And when I say sweet potatoes, I mean both orange- and white-fleshed sweet potatoes. Orange fleshed sweet potatoes are generally referred to as "yams" in the US, but they are not yams. Yams are a completely different type of plant.

Above is a yam. Below is an orange sweet potato. They are different.

And here are some pictures of my lab:

The electronic balance

Micropipettes

Some of my samples

Digestive solutions

Soupe de Légumes au Pistou (Vegetable and Pesto Soup)

2010-05-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

Hi ya'll!

I know it is a bit strange to be making soup just as the sun is finally deciding to go into summer mode (kind of), but this is actually a very spring-y soup (not in the rebounding sense.) The ingredient list seems long and random, but, believe it or not, it is actually from a real, published recipe. Yes, bok choy and arugula in a Provence-style soup may sound strange, but it is delicious.

This recipe uses a bouquet garni, which is a bundle of herds tied together. The point of tying them together is to make it easy to remove the herbs before serving, but it fell apart in my pot from the stirring.
So, I think you should decide for yourself whether you want to tie up the herbs or not. One solution would be to wrap the thyme branches and bay leaf in some cheese cloth (because they are unpleasant to eat) and just leave the parsley in the soup.

a bouquet garni

Soupe de Légumes au Pistou (from Envie de... Cuisine Végétarienne)

Ingredients (serves 3-4 as a main course)
Soup:

1 Litre water
bouquet garni: fresh parsley, thyme, and 1 bay leaf
3 carrots, chopped
3 leeks, chopped
2-3 branches of celery, chopped
a small handful of baby potatoes, halved
1/2 can of large white beans
1/2 cup of peas or lima beans
3 heads of bok choy, rib separated from leaves
150g arugula (1 box) <- this seems like a lot, but it actually shrinks dramatically when cooked
2 tsp coarse salt
pepper

Pesto:

2 large handfuls of basil
1 jalapeño pepper (no ribs or seeds), chopped
2 cloves of garlic
4 tbsp of olive oil
3-4 tbsp of freshly grated parmesan (I strongly recommend you buy a hunck of parmeggiano and grate it yourself, then you can use the parmesan rind to flavor the broth)

Method of Preparation:

Make the pesto: Blend the first 4 ingredients together, stir in the parmesan.
For the soup: In a large pot, combine the water, herbs, carrots, leeks, celeri, potatoes, and the white part of the bok choy. (And a parmesan rind, if you want to)
Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and let simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the beans, peas, and let simmer another 10 minutes.
Add the bok choy leaves and the arugula, as well as the salt and pepper.
Let simmer another 3-5 minutes
Add 3/4 of the pesto to the soup and mix it in.
Serve with a spoonful of pesto in each bowl.

You can easily make garlic croutons by toasting some bread and rubbing garlic onto it.

Pumpkin (Bourbon) Cheesecake

2010-04-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! It's been a while since my last post... Well, I've been busy ok? I had summer program applications, AP class applications, tests, homework, and the list just goes on and on. But today is Friday, and Friday is no homework day :) So I will blog.

A few weeks ago, my brother came home from college for his spring break with a couple of friends, and I realized it would be the perfect occasion for the ultimate indulgence: cheesecake. To add a bit of fun, my mom and I decided on Pumpkin Cheesecake because canned pumpkin is always in season.
To make it, I used the delicious "Pumpkin-Bourbon Cheesecake with Graham-Pecan Crust recipe" from Cook's Illustrated. To make the cheesecake a little less "bourraga" (as my family says,) I removed a stick (8oz) of cream cheese from the filling. To compensate for the loss tanginess, I replaced the heavy cream with sour cream. I am glad I did because even this reduced filling barely fit in my 9in springform pan.

And yes, I did dry the pumpkin with paper towels as specified in the recipe. I have never tried this cheesecake without drying the pumpkin, and I don't want to risk spending all the effort of making cheesecake only to get a soggy filling.

I completely omitted the bourbon, but you are welcome to include it.

Here is the Recipe:

Cook's Illustrated's "Pumpkin-Bourbon Cheesecake with Graham-Pecan Crust"

"Depending on the oven and the temperature of the ingredients, the cheesecake may bake about 15 minutes faster or slower than the instructions indicate; it is therefore best to check the cake 1 1/4 hours into baking. Although the cheesecake can be made up to three days in advance, the crust will begin to lose its crispness after only one day. To make slicing the cheesecake easy and neat, use a knife with a narrow blade, such as a carving knife; between cuts, dip the blade into a pitcher of hot water and wipe it clean with paper towels."

Ingredients
Crust :

3 ounces graham crackers (5 whole crackers), broken into large pieces
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 ounces pecans ,chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
4 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted

Filling

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 can pumpkin (15 ounces)
1 1/2 pounds cream cheese , cut into 1-inch chunks and left to soften at room temperature, about 30 minutes [I used 1 lb]
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 large eggs , left at room temperature, about 30 minutes
1 cup heavy cream [I used 1 cup sour cream]
1/4 cup bourbon [I did not include bourbon]

Instructions
1. FOR THE CRUST: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Spray bottom and sides of 9-inch springform pan evenly with nonstick cooking spray. Pulse crackers, nuts, sugar, and spices in food processor until evenly and finely ground, about fifteen 2-second pulses. Transfer crumbs to medium bowl, drizzle melted butter over, and mix with rubber spatula until evenly moistened. Turn crumbs into prepared springform pan and, using hand, spread crumbs into even layer. Using flat-bottomed ramekin or drinking glass, press crumbs evenly into pan bottom, then use a soup spoon to press and smooth crumbs into edges of pan. Bake until fragrant and browned about the edges, about 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack while making filling.

2. FOR THE FILLING: Bring about 4 quarts water to simmer in stockpot. Whisk sugar, spices, and salt in small bowl; set aside. To dry pumpkin (see illustrations below): Line baking sheet with triple layer of paper towels. Spread pumpkin on paper towels in roughly even layer. Cover pumpkin with second triple layer of paper towels and press firmly until paper towels are saturated. Peel back top layer of towels and discard. Grasp bottom towels and fold pumpkin in half; peel back towels. Repeat and flip pumpkin onto baking sheet; discard towel.

3. In standing mixer [You could easily use and hand-held electric beater] fitted with flat beater, beat cream cheese at medium speed to break up and soften slightly, about 1 minute. Scrape beater and bottom and sides of bowl well with rubber spatula. Add about one third of sugar mixture and beat at medium-low speed until combined, about 1 minute; scrape bowl and add remaining sugar in two additions, scraping bowl after each addition. Add pumpkin and vanilla and beat at medium speed until combined, about 45 seconds; scrape bowl. Add 3 eggs and beat at medium-low until incorporated, about 1 minute; scrape bowl. Add remaining 2 eggs and beat at medium-low until incorporated, about 45 seconds; scrape bowl. Add heavy cream and bourbon and beat at low speed until combined, about 45 seconds. Using rubber spatula, scrape bottom and sides of bowl and give final stir by hand.

4. Set springform pan with cooled crust on 18-inch-square doubled layer heavy-duty foil and wrap bottom and sides with foil; set wrapped springform pan in roasting pan. Pour filling into springform pan [The filling was almost too much to fit, but it turned out well] and smooth surface; set roasting pan in oven and pour enough boiling water to come about halfway up side of springform pan. Bake until center of cake is slightly wobbly when pan is shaken, and center of cake registers 145 to 150 degrees on instant-read thermometer, about 1 1/2 hours (see note). Set roasting pan on wire rack and use paring knife to loosen cake from sides of pan. Cool until water is just warm, about 45 minutes. Remove springform pan from water bath, discard foil, and set on wire rack; continue to cool until barely warm, about 3 hours. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, at least 4 hours or up to 3 days.

5. TO SERVE: Slide thin metal spatula between crust and pan bottom to loosen, then slide cake onto serving platter. Let cheesecake stand at room temperature about 30 minutes [Personally, I like cold cheesecake], then cut into wedges and serve.

Lemon-Garlic Roasted Broccoli

2010-02-26T17:41:00.001-08:00

Ok, just putting it out there, broccoli is definitely my favorite vegetable, and I bet I can make you love it too. Calm down, I'm not talking about the limp boiled broccoli served at some restaurants to take up space. I'm talking about tender, garlicky broccoli; browned at the edges and simply irresistible.

I think I could live on this. No really, when I make roasted broccoli at home, I make 2-2.5 lbs for 3 people, and there are no leftovers.

And the recipe is easy, too!

(Adapted from the back of the frozen broccoli package) Lemon-Garlic Roasted Broccoli

Ingredients

2 lbs fresh or frozen broccoli (cut into equal 1-2 in pieces if not using pre-cut frozen yummies)
2 tbsp olive oil
~1 tsp red pepper flakes
4 large garlic cloves, pressed through garlic press or minced
1-2 tsp lemon zest
salt and pepper

Method

Pre-heat oven to 400F, position 2 racks in middle-ish of oven
Combine all ingredients except broccoli and let sit 2 minutes. (can be done ahead of time)

Divide oil mixture between 2 cookie sheets. Make sure to get all the garlic onto the pans.
Divide broccoli between 2 cookie sheets and "toss" them with oil mixture.
Roast/bake for 20-25 minutes, switching the pans' positions halfway through, until the broccoli is browned at the edges and tender.
Enjoy your healthy comfort food with grilled meat, baked fish, or cheesy pasta!

Note: I'm sure you can use this to roast many other veggies, such as cauliflower or green beans.

Cabbage and Leek Pancake

2010-02-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

I have been very interested in cabbage lately. I don't know why, but the vegetable intrigues me. It has such a bad reputation, but until now I had only had it in sauerkraut and coleslaw, which I both find pleasing. Especially sauerkraut. Ever since I actually dared try it, I can't get enough.

Anyways, when I saw this recipe for okonomiyaki in the archives of 101 cookbooks, I knew I had to try it.

My leek was not at all gritty!

It is basically a pancake/omelet with very little batter and a lot of cabbage and leeks. The greens sort of caramelize in the pan, bringing out their natural sweetness. However, I did encounter a few problems.

First of all, the recipe says to mix the veggies with the flour, and then add in the eggs. I found that this left some spots of dry flour at the bottom of the bowl and on some of the cabbage. I also felt that the "pizza" tasted too much of flour and not enough of caramelized leeks and cabbage. Another problem was that the cake did not at all hold together, but that may be due to cutting the cabbage into too-wide ribbons.

A quarter cabbage gave me just over 2 cups, but my ribbons are wide

Next time I make this (because I will be making it again) I will probably decrease the flour, slice the cabbage thinner, and maybe add a third egg.

To complete the meal I also made some garlic sautéed mushrooms and a mustardy salad, and thus discovered the delicious combination of mushrooms and salad.

After dinner, I had a craving for madeleines, so I whipped up small batch. Unfortunately, I only had an old, soft, half of a lemon, and so was unable to put in any zest :(

They were tasty anyways.

Squash and a Pepper

2010-01-24T09:35:00.000-08:00

Guess what? My pepper turned red! Red! RED!

After six years, my thai dragon pepper plant has finally produced a ripe pepper.

See, four years abo it started making a fruit, but then the baby pepper was eaten by a bird. What kind of bird eats Thai dragon peppers? Did it breath fire? (Scoville: 75,000-100,000.)

Anyway, this year my plant got flowers again, so I brought it inside to protect them. And it has produced 4 peppers. After several weeks, one of them has finally turned red!

And I have no idea what to do with it...

Do I dry it? Use it fresh? How could I let its homegrown flavor stand out? Is it even ripe yet?

The packet said 70-80 days maturity, so probably not. It probably needs another month :(

On another note, on Vegetarian Thursday I made Nut-Stuffed Acorn Squash. (The recipe called for delicata squash, but I couldn't find any.) It was perfect as a hearty, vegetarian, winter dish. The stuffing, made with almonds, walnuts, pistachios, pine nuts, onions, and sage was rich and flavorful, but I should have diced the onions smaller to let them blend with the nuts better.

This recipe is open to infinite various, and I'm sure it would also be delicious with some diced celery added to the onions at the beginning, or some more spices

Nut-Stuffed Squash

(http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1842377)

Total Time: 1 hour(s)
Yield: Serves 4 (One half squash was largely enough for one person, and I only used 1/4 of each nut)

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter (used olive oil, and less of it)
2 medium yellow onions, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup chopped pistachios
1/3 cup chopped almonds
1/3 cup chopped pine nuts
[a pinch of chili flakes]
1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
About 1/2 cup freshly shredded parmesan cheese (Fresh parmesan is essential)
2 delicata squash (or acorn) (about 2 lbs. total), halved lengthwise and seeded

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Melt butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add onions, garlic, and salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are soft, about 3 minutes. Stir in sage and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in nuts. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, combine yogurt, eggs, and 1/2 cup parmesan. Stir in nut mixture. Divide stuffing among squash halves, sprinkle with more parmesan, and bake until tender when pierced with a fork and tops are browning, about 45 minutes.

Pass around any left-over parmesan at the table.

Upside-down Apple-Pear tart

2009-11-28T18:04:00.000-08:00

I have often admired the soft, moist fruit, and the crispy upper crust in American apple pies, but I like the appearance and lightness of a french apple tart. How could I combine the two? By jumping off the Tarte Tatin.

Tart tatin is an upside-down apple tart where you first make a caramel (with a stick of butter and a cup of sugar) and spread it at the bottom of the pie plate. I wanted something lighter, less sweet, and less time-consuming. Enter: Upside-down apple-pear tart.

Upside-down Apple-Pear Tart

Make a flaky pie crust dough and let it rest in the refrigerator for an 45-60 minutes.
Cut 6-7 apples and pears into thick slices (~8th)
Pre-heat the oven to 375F
Butter 1 large or 2 small pie plates. (The crust was enough for me to make 1 9in and 1 5in)
Place the fruit neatly on the bottom.
Roll out the pie crust and lay it over the fruit, tucking the edges around the fruit
Using a fork, make some holes in the crust to let steam out.
Bake at 375F until the crust is golden brown (it took me an hour, but I was at a high altitude)
When the tart is done, use a knife to loosen the crust from the pie plate.
Just before serving: Put your serving plate upside-down on top of the tart and flip the everything so that the serving dish is right side-up underneath the now upside-down pie plate. (Does that make sense?)
Slowly lift the pie plate, gently shaking it to free the fruit.
Manually take any fruit pieces that remain stuck to the pie plate and put them on top of the tart.
Serve hot or room-temp, with optional ice cream or whipped cream.

I made a mini cranberry tart with the leftover crust

Hazelnut Chocolate Cake

2009-11-06T17:28:00.000-08:00

Ok, well, I didn't make it. My mom did! For my birthday! Isn't that nice?

This is pretty much one of my favorite cakes out there. It's like nutella, but better, and in a cake. More hazelnutty too.

I love this cake because it is quite light and airy for a nut cake, and the flavor combination is delicious. Make sure you use good hazelnuts though, rancidity is just not very tasty...

This is a french recipe from Elle magazine, so it is in grams. Just get yourself a balance and be happy I translated the instruction for you.

Hazelnut Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

200g shelled hazelnuts
3 eggs
150g sugar
20g flour
60g melted butter
50g chocolate chips

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C (350F.)
Butter a 9in diameter round cake pan.
Using a food processor, grind the hazelnuts to a coarse sand-like texture.
Separate the whites from the yolks and beat them into stiff peaks.
In a medium-large bowl combine the sugar with the egg yolks and beat until pale and mousse like. (about 3 minutes with an electric mixer)
Slowly, still mixing, add in the flour.
Add the melted butter, mix it in, then add the hazelnuts.
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.
Fold in the chocolate chips.
Pour the batter in the buttered pan and bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until golden.
Let it rest 10 minutes out of the oven before un-molding
Enjoy! You can decorate with a thin dusting of confectioner's sugar if you like.

Pizzadventures!

2009-09-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

I'm back! After almost three months of silence, I am writing today.

Lately, in the past month or so, I have been making quite a bit of pizza. Here are photos:

This is the book that gave me the recipes for the doughs. I got it at Williams-Sonoma

This is a Pizza Margherita: Tomatoes, Fresh Mozzarella, and Basil-> The colors of the Italian flag! Unfortunately, I put too many tomatoes, and the crust was soggy.

This pizza has asparagus, mushrooms, red onions, Manchego Cheese, and tomato sauce. I cooked the mushrooms and asparagus a bit before putting them on the pizza.

This pizza is a variation on the Margherita with red and green heirloom tomatoes, basil, pre-packaged mozzarella, and roasted garlic. This one was not soggy.

Me attempting to stretch out my dough the cool way.

A specialty from Southern France: Pissaladière. Lots of Caramelized onions with Anchovies and Olives. The anchovies are really a must if you ever make this.

This pizza was topped with Broccolini (Microwaved a few minutes before topping,) Marinated red peppers (in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and oregano,) Cherry tomatoes, a couple of Brined pearl onions my dad bought, Tomato sauce, and Cheese.

So, those were my Pizz-Adventures. You can use pretty much any bread dough recipe for the crust, and the topping possibilities are pretty much endless.

(If you have 10 possible toppings for a pizza, how many distinctly different pizzas could you make if you must take equal amounts from each topping you choose? Now that would be 10C1+10C2+10C3...)

Unleash your inner pizzaiolo.

The Simplest Apple Compote

2009-06-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

Compote is a french word that is usually translated as "applesauce," but more generally can mean "cooked fruit." Many upscale restaurants in America like to use his word to sound fancier, but there is nothing especially complicated about compote.
I decided to name this post compote rather than sauce because I feel that applesauce tends to be associated with smoothness and liquidity. What I am writing about here has distinct pieces of apple and dried fruit and is more a dessert than a snack.

My mother and I decided to make this when we found 5 2-month old apples in the kitchen. We were a bit scared of eating then, and my mother realized we could cook them. We added a handful of extremely dry raisins and a of couple rock-hard dried plums.

I enjoyed this apple stew stirred into yogurt and spread on top of an English muffin, but I am sure it is delicious with ice-cream, waffles, cake, etc...

Ingredients:

4-5 apples
1/4 cup dried fruit
1/4 cup water

Peel and core the apples.
Chop them into small cubes (1/2 inch thick.)
Add apple, dried fruit, and water to a small-medium saucepan.
Cook over low heat with lid until apples are tender, stirring eevery 5-10 minutes.
Serve hot or cold.

Asparagus, Green Onion, Cucumber, and Herb Salad

2009-04-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

With this past heat wave in California I decided it was time to break out the salads again. Of course, by the time I actually get around to writing this up, I'm back to wearing sweatshirts to school.
When I found this recipe on Epicurious, a pretty reliable site for recipes, I knew I needed to try it. I love asparagus, cucumber, and green onions. I followed the advice of many reviewers and decreased the oil by a factor of three. The recipe originally asked for 3/4 cup! I used a 1/4 cup instead. Strongly flavored vegetables don't need as much flavoring, and pools of oil are quite unappetizing.
I wanted my salad to be fresh, so I increased the herds for a couple meager tablespoons of many different herbs (which leaves a lot of waste) to a whopping 1 1/2 cups of just 3 kinds. I served the whole cold rather than at room temperature.
The original recipe also included complicated steps to cook the green onions in the asparagus water. I just left the green onions raw.

Recipe: A slight variation on Epicurious' Asparagus, Green Onion, Cucumber, and Herb Salad (Serves 10)

Ingredients

Dressing:

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about a half lemon)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt (1/2 tsp regular)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Salad:

3 pounds medium asparagus, trimmed
4 cups thinly sliced green onions
2 large hothouse cucumbers
1/2 cup parsley
1/2 cup mint
1/2 cup chives/chervil/more parsley or mint/whatever you like

Preparation

For dressing:
Whisk first 5 ingredients in small bowl. Gradually whisk in oil.

DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature and rewhisk beforeusing.

For salad:
Fill large bowl with lightly salted ice water; stir until salt dissolves. Cook asparagus in large pot of boiling salted water until crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. (or steam 3 minutes) Transfer asparagus to bowl of salted ice water to cool. DO AHEAD: Asparagus can be made 1 day ahead. Wrap separately in several layers of paper towels, then enclose in resealable plastic bags and refrigerate.

Combine green onions, cucumbers, and herbs in mixing bowl. Add dressing; toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper.

Arrange asparagus on platter. Spoon cucumber mixture over and serve.

**I have not tried it yet, but it might be beneficial to just mix the asparagus in the dressing with the cucumbers and onions instead of spooning the dressed cucumbers on top of them**

Poll Results! What is your favorite type of cookie??

2009-04-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

Chocolate Chip	7 (53%)
Oatmeal	2 (15%)
Shortbread/butter	0 (0%)
Peanut Butter	2 (15%)
Chocolate (not just chips)	1 (7%)
Ginger Snaps	1 (7%)
Other	0 (0%)

Votes so far: 13

Yes, I am finally writing about this poll (I think I started it in December.) I must confess, I can't remember what I voted for, but I know that I like chocolate cookies, oatmeal cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. Peanut butter, not so much.
I also tend to really like creative cookies, like these maple-pecan-oatmeal cookies, or my own cranberry-pistachio biscotti.

To me, cookies are just a blank canvas to be painted with whatever flavor is desired. Unfortunately, I never really manage to pull them off the way I would like. I've tried several times to make chewy cookies, using melted butter or other techniques, but they still always end up soft and cakey. (just as tasty though!)

So, do any of you have a favorite cookie recipe you'd like to share?
And don't forget to vote on the new poll!

Naan (Indian Flatbread)

2009-04-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've told you this already, but I eat a vegetarian dinner once a week (I also eat vegetarian lunches almost every day). So, during spring break, I decided to make an Indian meal with vegetable curry and homemade naan.
Naan is a type of Indian flatbread that is traditionally baked in a tandoor, a beehive-shaped oven that can reach scorchingly high temperatures. Since I, like most people, do not own a tandoor, I decided to look for a recipe adapted to the typical American kitchen. I found one in the newest Spring Entertaining, by Cook's Illustrated magazine.

The recipe was not to complicated, and made naan thattasted just like the ones I get from Indian restaurants. Rather than baking them in the oven like most American adaptations, it called for cooking the naan in a cast-iron skillets on the stove to simulate the one-sided high-heat of tandoor. The disadvantage of this was that I had to cook each loaf one at a time, but according to the magazine, using the oven resulted in dry and tough bread. It also instructed to brush the finished naan with melted butter or ghee, but I decided not to.

Naan (from Cook's Illustrated, makes 8 6"-7" naan)

Ingredients:

13 1/2 oz (2 1/2 cup) bread flour
1 1/2 oz whole wheat flour
1 package instant/rapid-rise yeast
2 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup water (I used more)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 tbps olive oil + extra for bowl
3 tbsp sesame seeds (opt)
4 tbsp butter, melted (I didn't)

Instruction:

Combine flours, yeast, sugar, and salt in bowl of stand mixer and mix with paddle attachment until blended.
Add water, yogurt, and oil and mix on low speed until shaggy dough forms, about 30 sec, adding more water in 1 tbsp increments if necessary.
Replace paddle with dough hook and knead on medium speed until smooth and glossy, about 8 minutes, adding more flour if necessary (one tbsp at a time), to allow dough to clear sides of bowl but stick to very bottom.
Transfer dough to clean work surface and knead by hand 1 minute.
Shape dough into ball, transfer to lightly oiled large bowl, cover w/ plastic wrap, and place in draft-free spot. Let rise 45 minutes to 1 hour (Until dough has doubled in size)
Transfer dough to unfloured work surface, cut into 8 equal portions, and roll each into a ball using a cupped palm and the friction of the work surface.
Let balls rest 5-10 minutes.
Using a floured rolling pin, roll each ball into 6-inch circles (add sesame seeds on top if using.)

Cooking:

Heat a heavy skillet (I used an iron tortilla pan) over med-high heat until hot, about 5 minutes (no oil).
Working with 1 piece of dough at time, left dough and gently stretch about 1 inch larger, and lay in skillet.
Cook until dough starts forming bubbles under the surface (about 30 sec), then flip (tongs are good) and cook until bottom is speckled brown/black (2 minutes)
Flip again until other side is also brown (1-2 minutes)
Transfer bread to wire rack and brush lightly with melted butter. (if you want to)
Serve immediately, store uneaten portions in a plastic bag or aluminum foil at room temperature.

My vegetable curry with cauliflower, sweet potatoes, peas, chickpeas, and tomatoes

Apple-Pear Crisp

2009-02-17T14:08:00.001-08:00

Ha! I have finally have time, during this wonderful Presidents day Weekend, to blog!!!
Today I am making Apple-Pear crisp, from a recipe adapted by me from 101 Cookbooks.
I have scaled it down to fit exactly four people, and baked in individualized ramekins.

The topping is a bit different than usual, it has chew and is similar to granola. Some may prefer a bit less topping, and can reduce the recipe accordingly.

Filling:

4 small apples
1 medium pear
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Half a lemon (The juice)

Topping:

1/2 cup rolled oats (I used quick cooking, haven't tried it with anything else)
1/4 cup whole wheat flour.
1/4 cup slivered almonds
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp plain yogurt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon
Small pinch salt (1/4 tsp-ish)

Fruit:

Peel and core the apples and pears. Slice into wedges about a centimeter thick.
Add the lemon juice and nutmeg.
Divide evenly into 4 or 5 ramekins, or serve it "family style" in a 8x8 dish. (this can be done in advance.)

Topping:

Pre-heat oven to 350F. When the oven is hot, cook apples without topping for ten minutes.
Prepare the flour, sugar, salt in a small mixing bowl.
Melt the butter in a medium-small saucepan and cook until it starts to brown slightly.
Add the cinnamon and stir.
Add the oats and almonds and sauté on medium heat for 5-6 minutes, until the until has darkened slightly and a REALLY delicious smell of cinnamon, butter, and oats wafts out strongly.
Pour the oats/almonds into the flour bowl and combine well. Add the yogurt and vanilla and stir into the mixture.
When the apples have cooked ten minutes, remove them from the oven and spread the topping equally over each ramekin. Try to make it look "crumbled."
Bake for 30-45 minutes, until the apples are soft and bubbling and the topping is crisp.
Serve warm with a scoop of ice cream or whipped cream.

More Pictures.

My winter break

2009-01-06T20:52:00.000-08:00

My vacation was quite busy. See, I wanted to make a gingerbread house house because my aunt had given me a book titled The Gingerbread Architect for my birthday. So I did! On the first day I mixed together the dough from scratch. The second I invited friends over to cut out the dough and bake it. The third day a friend came again to help me build the house. This was the hardest part because the parts kept breaking. They would crack whenever I touched one of them!!! On the fourth more friends came to decorate and attach the roof we weren't able to attach beforehand because of out fear of making the entire building collapse!

After making this gingerbread house, which I finished on the 23rd, I made a Chocolate roulade filled with whipped cream for Christmas eve. It was very successful, even thoses who sually do not enjoy dessert took second helpings! I plan on making it again someday, and when I do I will post the recipe.
While we ate this ethereal roulade, we opened presents, and can you guess what my parents gave me? A Kitchen stand mixer with a 6 quart bowl! It's huge and powerful, something I could testify to after making Panettone in it the next day.

This baby barely fits under the cupboard on the counter.

Pistachio-Cranberry Biscotti

2008-12-15T21:05:00.000-08:00

Holiday season is here! Small cakes and cookies are great gifts for distant family, and biscotti are perfect because they are light and sturdy: they can easily be sent by mail. The word biscotti comes from "bis" or twice, and "cotti," cooked. Biscotti means twice cooked.

These biscotti are Christmas colored because they have green pistachio and red cranberries! I recommend toasting the pistachios before using them to concentrate their flavor. Also, don't use salted nuts. The recipe only makes 12 biscotti, but as they rather time consuming (1.5-2 hours), I like to double the recipe because they keep for a long time in an airtight container (don't refrigerate).

This recipe is from Joy of Baking, as usual, my comments appear in [brackets.]

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup pistachios [toasted for 8-10 minutes in a 325 oven if possible]
1/2 cup cranberries

Procedure:

[Toast nuts acording to directions above.]
With a mixer, mix eggs, sugar, and vanilla until thick, pale, and frothy for about 5 minutes in a large bowl.
In a small-medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Add to the egg mixture and beat until combined.
Fold in the chopped pistachios and cranberries.
Transfer the dough to your parchment lined baking sheet and form into a log, [about 2-3 inches tall]. You may have to dampen your hands to form the log as the dough is quite sticky.
Bake for 25 minutes [I needed 40], or until [a knife poked in comes out clean, better to overbake than underbake. If necessary, cover with foil to prevent burning]
Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes.
Slice into 3/4 inch (2 cm) slices, on the diagonal. Place the biscotti, cut side down, on the baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes, turn slices over, and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool. Store in an airtight container.

This recipe can be used as an all-pupose biscotti recipe. Use 1.2 cup nuts, 1/2 cup dried fruit or chocolate. If using almonds, replace vanilla with 1/2 tsp of almond extract. You can also dip the biscotti in chocolate for added yummyness!

Poll Results! Do you actually stuff the Turkey?

2008-12-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

Yes, I cook the stuffing in the turkey	3 (27%)
No, I heat it separately so the turkey cooks faster	5 (45%)
I don't eat turkey for Thanksgiving	1 (9%)
I don't eat stuffing for thanksgiving	1 (9%)
I don't celebrate Thanksgiving at all	1 (9%)

Votes so far: 11

Soo, Thanksgiving theme returned! As you can tell, most people do NOT stuff the turkey. Well, this year I celebrated Turkey Day with my family and family friends, and we did in fact stuff the turkey with as much stuffing as possible and heated the remaining stuffing separately. The surprising part (to me) was that the stuffing cooked inside the turkey wasn't as good as the one cooked separately because it was all mushy, while last year the stuffing from the turkey was much tastier. I think this is because we made this year's stuffing from soft bread, and it soaked up all the turkey juice and became mushy. Last year the stuffing was based on dry cornbread that benefited from a turkey juice bath.
Because I am not the one who makes the stuffing or cooks the turkey, I can't really give a verdict on which option is better, but I do know is that turkey and stuffing and all the other Thanksgiving foods are delicious.

Honey-Citrus Gingerbread

2008-11-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I should be posting about Thanksgiving and turkey and all that, but everyone else is doing it. How about a change from the pumpkin and potatoes?
This quick bread is based off a french Pains d'Épices, also known as gingerbread, but with more citrus zest and honey flavor. The batter is thick and takes a while to put together and cook, but I think it's worth the effort. Eat it for breakfast with a glass of milk, or slice it thin and dress it with not-too-sweet whipped cream for an elegant dessert. I recommend making it a day early because it gets denser and easier to slice with time. Store it wrapped in foil at room temperature.

If you don't have a scale, get one. Without a scale you can't make most European recipes, and most breads are by weight as well. Get one precise to at least .25 oz or 5 grams for flexibility.

Ingredients:

Main ingredients:

130g all-purpose flour (4.6 oz)
70g Rye flour (2.5 oz) (The rye can be replaced with regular flour, but I think it improve the loaf. And it's traditional!)
40g brown sugar (1.4 oz)
100g butter, melted (about 7 tbsp)
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/4 to 1/2 cup raisins

Flavorings (This is where you can be creative, use your imagination and cupboard to find your favorite combination):

250g honey (8.8 oz)
1 tsp orange zest
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
anise seed, cloves (to your taste, can be ommitted)

Putting it together:

Preheat oven to 350F
Combine Flavorings in a saucepan and heat until the honey starts to bubble. Lower heat and cook for aout 5 minutes.
Combine both flours, sugar, and baking powder in a medium bowl.
Add the honey mixture and melted butter to the flour and blend completely.
Let cool 5 minutes and add the egg and milk.
Stir in raisins.
Pour into a greased 9x5 loaf pan, bake 55-60 miutes. If the top starts to darken too much, cover with a piece of foil.
The loaf is done when an inserted kife comes out clean.

Poll Results (Finally): Favorite frozen dessert

2008-11-18T18:24:00.000-08:00

Ice Cream (any kind)	8 (53%)
Sorbet (no dairy, made with fruit)	4 (26%)
Frozen Yogurt	3 (20%)

Votes so far: 15

Unsurprisingly, ice cream won! Yeah, ice cream is just so good... Sorbet is tasty too, but it is often too sweet for my taste buds.
Most Frozen yogurts try to pass themselves offf as ice cream with a healthy twist, but they often just end up tasting bland. However, there is a shop called Red Mango in downtown PA (and other places, see link) that sells real frozen yogurt. It actually tastes like yogurt! It's sweet and tangy with the unmistakable flavor of yogurt. Red Mango frozen yogurt comes with toppings like fruit or granola or chocolate. When I went, I got raspberry and (of course) mango.

Wild Yeast Pain de Mie

2008-10-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

Pain de mie is the french name for sandwich or Pullman bread. In other words, it is soft, tender bread baked in a loaf pan. I made this one with some of my wild yeast starter, adding a little instant commercial yeast to guarantee a faster rise. I am not sure is the wild yeast made a difference. The bread was not sour, and I blame this on my local bacteria.
The recipe uses 2 builds, meaning that I first combined the starter with some flour and left it overnight to build flavor, and then added it to the main dough.

Ingredients:

The night before:

4 oz milk (11o g)
12 oz starter (340 g)
4 oz whole wheat flour (110 g) [You can use bread flour here, but I prefer the rustic appearance gained by using some whole wheat]

Mix everything together and leave out for about 2 hours (until it doubles in volume. Then, refrigerate it overnight.

The next day:

Take the re-ferment out of the refrigerator 1 hour before making the dough.

Add:

3.5-4 oz Bread Flour (110 g) [The amount you will need depends on the moistness of the starter]
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp instant /Fast acting yeast
2 tbsp oil or melted butter
1 tbsp honey [use the same spoon as the oil to create a slick surface. It will be easier to scrape the honey out of the spoon]
1/2-1 cup water [the dough should be soft and slightly sticky, but easy to knead]

Mix well and let rest 10 minutes. Knead for 10 minutes by hand, or in a mixer for 5 minutes. Form into a ball and spray the dough with oil and let proof (rise) for about 2 hours. The dough should almost double.
Degas the dough and form into a loaf either by rolling the dough into a cylinder or another method of your choice.
Place loaf into an oiled loaf pan (small) and ferment (let rise) for another 2.5 hours.
Make a slit at the top of the loaf to prevent cracks and bake for 30-45 minutes at 350F. The loaf is done when its center reaches 195F.
Cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing because the center is still cooking.

This bread is delicious fresh and goes especially well with cheese.

Buckwheat Pancakes: With Wild Yeast!

2008-10-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

Last week I decided to test out my sourdough starter to see it it was sour yet. I wanted to make something easy ans tasty, so I flipped through my secondhand copy of Beard on Bread by James Beard and found a recipe for Yeasted Buckwheat Cakes. My family loves buckwheat (it's what is used for real crèpes,) and the method looked simple.
The recipe called for mixing commercial yeast with flour, salt, and water the night before and adding butter, molasses, and baking soda the next morning. All I did was replace the yeast and part of the flour and water with the barm I made about a months ago.

Ingredients (Feeds 4-6):

The Night Before:

1 cup liquid sourdough starter*
1/2 cup All-purpose flour
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 1/2 cup water
1 tsp salt

Mix all the ingredients together in a medium-large bowl. Cover with a cloth or plastic wrap and leave out in a warmish place overnight.

The Morning of:

1 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp molasses
1/4 tsp baking soda

The flour mixture should have bubbled. Stir it well and add the remaining ingredients. Heat up a griddle to medium-low heat. Cook like you would a pancake, but longer. Check for doneness by Opening one a peeking inside. The interior should be soft but not gooey.
Eat warm with honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, butter, or a combination!

*You can replace the sourdough with 1 package instant yeast, 1/2c flour and a 1/2c water. If your starter is dryer or more solid, diminish the amount used and add more water to make a liquid batter.

Poll Results: Pancakes or Waffles

2008-10-03T13:13:00.001-07:00

My dear readers,
I am sorry that I didn't give the results for this a month ago. I was just too busy. But, things should be going back to normal now. I am going to try to give you at least one post per week
-Coline

Anyways, here are the awaited results (because you couldn't at all see them on the blog before):

Pancakes	6 (33%)
Waffles	11 (61%)
neither	1 (5%)

Votes so far: 18

This is definitely a record turnout: 18!! So waffles are clearly favored by you all, and by me as well. Either way, they both are delicious with real maple syrup (none of that "breakfast syrup" stuff for me), and you are the person who doesn't like waffles or pancakes, you can still enjoy the wonders of maple syrup. It goes wonderfully with plain yogurt (my dad's idea) and oatmeal.

Please vote on my next poll to express your opinions about frozen desserts with just one click of the mouse!

Yummy chocolate cake!

2008-09-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I threw my friend a surprise birthday party, and we made a chocolate cake! The cake was delicious, and it was also my first layer cake with frosting and all that. The recipe was pretty easy, but with a strange ingredient...

I made one change: I replaced the milk with soy milk for my other friend who is allergic to milk. The soy milk left no aftertaste. We were going to halve the recipe, but I accidentally added the full volume of water, so then we just completed he recipe to make the entire cake.
This brings me to the strange ingredient: 1 cup of boiling water. I was surprised when I first saw, but then I noticed that quite a few other recipes for chocolate cake also use boiling water. I am going to try to find out why.

I found this recipe in Sharffen-Berger's Essence of Chocolate "That Chocolate Cake" (the first recipe), and it is also online, but I pasted it in here to facilitate your life

Here is the recipe, copied straight from Sharffen Berger (with my comments in [brackets])

Ingredients:

Cake

Unsalted butter and flour for pans
2 cups granulated sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup Scharffen Berger unsweetened natural cocoa powder [really, any brand works, just make sure it's unsweetened]
1 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup canola oil
1 cup whole milk
1 cup boiling water

Frosting

1-1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup heavy cream
5 ounces Scharffen Berger 99% Cacao Unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped [Once again, any brand. I used 100% from Ghirardelli]
8 tablespoons (4 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method

For the Cake:

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter the bottom of two 9-inch round cake pans. Line the bottom with parchment paper, then butter and flour the parchment and the sides of the pans.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, mixing on low speed. Min in the eggs, oil, and milk.

Increase the speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and mix in the water. The batter will be soupy.

Divide the batter evenly between the cake pans. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. [I baked them 25 minutes in a convection oven]

Remove from the oven and cool on a cooling rack for 5 minutes, then turn the layers out onto the rack and cool completely.

When the cakes have cooled, check the frosting. It should have the consistency of mayonnaise. If it is still too thin, allow it to cool longer. [See, I didn't read the last instruction and didn't wait long enough]

For the Frosting:

In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and cream and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and simmer for 6 minutes. Add the chocolate and butter and stir until melted. Pour into a bowl and stir in the vanilla. [If the frosting starts curdling like mine, just beat it continuously for a few minutes. When it cools it will be normal again.]

To Frost the Cake:

[it will be a lot easier to frost the cake if you let the frosting cool one hour before hand]

Place one cake layer on a serving plate. Spread the frosting with a hot palette knife or icing spatula to give the frosting a beautiful shine. Run the knife under hot tap water and dry with a towel. Spread about ¾ cup of the frosting over the top of the first layer. Top with the second layer. Spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides of the cake, heating the knife again as necessary.

Serves 8 to 10

Note: The cake was soft and fluffy when fresh, and after three days in the refrigerator it was denser and more intense. You choose.
Also, if the cake is fresh, I recommend slicing it with a serrated bread knife, it will tear the cakeless.

Picture time!

Frosting!

Playing with fire!

A slice!

My Wild Yeast Adventures! Part Two: What do I do now?

2008-08-24T14:17:00.000-07:00

So, you have caught your yeast, what do you do with it? Well, the book I use tells me to make a new culture, this time a more permanent one. The author calls it a Barm, and I will too for simplicity's sake.

To make barm you take 1 cup from your seed culture (give away or discard the rest) and mix it with 3 1/2 cups high gluten/bread flour and 2 cups water.
Transfer the barm to a large clear container at least twice its volume.
Let it sit out on the counter until it bubbles and rises some, then put it in the refrigerator.
If you do not use it in the following three days (or if you use more than half) you will need to refresh it.

Refreshing is basically feeding the yeast. To refresh the barm first weigh it, the add equal amounts (by mass, not volume) of flour and water to double the weight of the barm. As long as you stay within the doubling and quadrupling zone, the refreshment with be effective. Let it sit out until it bubbles, then refrigerate it. Refreshing will give you another three days.

If don't plan on using the barm to make bread soon you can leave it in the refrigerator for up the 2 months and refresh it 1 or 2 days before using. You can also freeze it for up to 6 months and leave it to defrost overnight in the refrigerator three days before using it. Then refresh it

Sorry this post took so long. I completely forgot to publish it!

Update:
Leaving the barm in the refrigerator will not make it become sour. To do that, you must leave it out on the counter (or somewhere else will a relatively constant temperature) and refresh it every 3-4 days.

My Wild Yeast Adventures! Part One: Breeding a Seed Culture

2008-08-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

Since I have been making bread a lot lately, I decided a few weeks ago to take it a step further and make sourdough bread. So, on Tuesday of last week (August 12), I followed the instructions in The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart as best as I could to start what he calls a seed culture. Unfortunately I was unable to find the rye flour he called for at the supermarket. Instead, I made a weird combination of flours hoping things would even themselves out.

So, day 1: 1/2 c bread flour, 1/4 c whole wheat flour, 1/4 c buckwheat flour, and 1/2 c water.
I combined them all in a bowl, covered it with plastic wrap, and left it on the counter for about 24 hours.
The next day, I went to see my bowl of goop and noticed something spectacular. There were little bubbles in the culture! I had caught some yeast! This time I followed the exact instructions in my wonderful bread book, meaning that I uncovered it and added flour and water. I then stirred it all up and put it into a tall, vertical plastic container to be able to track the growth of my culture easily.

Day 2: Add 1 cup bread or high-gluten flour (which has more gluten and is much better for this than all-purpose flour) and 1/2 water. The dough was more viscous after the addition.
So, I put the refreshed culture into the plastic container at 2 pm. Three hours later it had more than doubled in size, so I decided to mark the height with a piece of tape. However, before marking it I made the mistake of tapping the side of the container, causing the culture to partially collapse. I marked at the lower level. The next morning I got up to see if it had revived itself, but instead of regaining height it had fallen down to the original level. I was confused and disappointed...
The first picture below is right before the collapse, the second is the next morning. The chronological order of the markings is 2pm, then 5pm, and finally 8am.

I was dispirited by this result, but I decided to continue. When I opened the container the smell of overripe papaya filled my nose. How strange... I threw away half the culture as was instructed in the book, and added some more flour and water.
Day 3: Remove half of the culture (throw away or give to a friend) and add 1 cup of high gluten or bread flour, and 1/2 cup of water. Once again, I poured the mixture into the plastic container, marked the level, and hoped.

24 hours later, on day four, I went to check on my cultivation. There was no rise, and it seemed to have separated into 2 layers, with dark on the top and light on the bottom. This was too much, I couldn't handle it anymore. I gave up. I made plans to throw away, but I never got around too because I was busy. The container just stayed on my counter looking horrible and got worse as the days went by.

Then Wednesday, about a week later, I noticed the culture looked normal again! There were big bubbles all over the surface, and it had risen a bit. I decided to continue my cultivation.

Day 9: I measured the volume of culture I had, 1 1/8 cup. Then I added the usual 1 cup of high-gluten/bread flour and 1/2 cup of water and mixed. I left it to ferment in the bowl for 24 hours while I gave the plastic container a good wash.

The next day it had risen some, so I removed about half (not an easy feat) and added flour and water. Because I was tired of dealing with liquid culture, I decided to add half the water asked for.
Day 10: Remove half and add 1 cup high gluten/bread flour, add 1/4 water. Stir well and let rest 24 hours.

Today (day 11) I saw a nice rise in the culture, about doubled. This means that I get to go to the next level and make what my book calls Barm, which is just a more diluted way of storing and cultivating the wild yeast and its flavorful bacteria. I will address Barm in the next post.

So, since my way of catching yeast was kind of random and full of guesswork, I will also give you the method from the book The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. This book is currently my favorite book about bread. I have read at least three times in a few months.

Day 1: Combine 1 cup rye flour and 1 cup water. Let rest at room temperature about 24 hours.

Day 2: Dough will not have risen much. Add 1 cup high-gluten/bread flour and 1/2 cup water to rye mixture. Let rest at room temperature about 24 hours.

Day 3: Dough should have risen some, about 50%. Regardless, discard half of dough. Add 1 cup high-gluten/bread flour and 1/2 cup water to dough. Let rest at room temperature about 24 hours.

Day 4: Wait until dough has at least doubled in volume, more is better. Make barm as will be described in next post.

Have fun! Catch Yeast!

Poll Results! Yellow or Whites Peaches?

2008-08-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yellow peaches!	5 (55%)
White peaches!	4 (44%)
None!	0 (0%)

Votes so far: 9

Wow, I'm disappointed. Only 9 people voted!

Well, white peaches wins by 1 vote! That's like winning by 6 average states plus a small state!

Personally I prefer yellow peaches because they are juicier, but I'll eat any ripe peach anytime.

At least everyone likes peaches!

Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-07-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

These cookies are not chewy, but not crispy either. Nor are they powdery. These are soft cookies. Soft, as in cake-like, light, but not squishy. They would dissolve in your mouth, not melt.

These are some pretty tasty cookies.

I think the reason for the soft texture is that all the ingredients are beaten in. This adds quite a lot of air into the batter, making the final result light. I have been told that to make chewy cookies, the best way is to use melted butter. I don't if if this is true, but seems to make sense. Using melted butter would eliminate the creaming step, therefore incorporating less air into the batter. In turn, the cookie will not rise as much, resulting in a denser, chewier, texture. If you want to try this I the best way would be too mix the melted butter (cooled until you can put your finger in it easily) with the eggs, and combine the sugar with the flour mixture. Then you slowly incorporate the dry ingredients with the egg-butter. Stir or use an electric mixer until you get a smooth dough. If you try this, please tell me about it, I would love to you your results!

I found the cookies to have a slight "baking soda" taste that I did not really like. No one else could taste it, but I think that next time I make the cookies, I will use baking powder.

If you do not know how to cream, please visit my explanation about it.

Now for the recipe: it is Baking Bite's "Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies" with my comments in [brackets]

Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda [next time I will use 2 tsp baking powder]

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup butter, room temperature

1 1/4 cups brown sugar [I used slightly more than 1 cup]

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 1/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda [powder] and salt. [I sifted everything together, but note that since the recipe does not specify sifted flour in the ingredients list, you should measure the flour unsifted first]

In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light, about 2 minutes.

Beat in vanilla extract and egg until smooth. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add in all the flour mixture, stopping when the dough has just come together and no streaks of flour remain.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Place slightly rounded tablespoons of dough on baking sheet. [here, basically use a tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop out dough and a knife to remove most of the excess]
Bake for 9-11 [it was more around 15] minutes, until just golden around the edges.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. [let the cookies cool 5 minutes on the baking sheet, and then let them cool completely on a rack to prevent the bottom from getting soggy]

Makes 3 dozen.

Peach Crumble

2008-07-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

First of all, this is not peach cobbler (recipe). From what I understand from wikipedia, crumbles and crisps have a topping that crumbles and does not have leavening. On the other hand, cobbler is fruit topped with something that is leavened, either cake-like or biscuits.
Anyways, back to the crumble. I found this recipe in Cook's Illustrated (July/August 2006) and I decided to make it for the Fourth of July. The vanilla in the topping was a delicious counterpart to the acidic peaches, but during the hour and a half between the moment when I took it out of the oven and the moment I served it, the topping had dissolved a little into the peaches.

Ingredients:

Peach Filling

3 1/2 lbs ripe but firm peaches
0-1/3 cup sugar (depending on how sweet the peaches are)
1 1/4 tsp cornstarch
3-5 tsp lemon juice (depending on how acidic the peaches are)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeng

Topping

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt (exclude if using salted butter)
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 tbsp butter: soft and cut into small pieces
1/2 c sliced almonds

Procedure:

Slice the peaches into 4-6 slices (about 3/4 inch width at the fattest part)
Toss the peaches with the the sugar (if using) and lemon juice, and let sit while you are making the topping.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees (325 if convection)
Combine flour, sugars, 1/4 cup of almonds, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl and rub the butter into the flour (this is called cutting the butter into flour)either using your fingertips, a food processor, or a pastry cutter until the mixture forms clumps.
Stir in the remaining almonds.

Transfer mixture to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and spread into a flat, even layer. Bake for 20 minutes.
While the topping is baking, drain some of the peach juice into a small bowl with the cornstarch and spices. Mix the liquid back into the peaches and toss them like a salad.
Transfer the peaches to a 9" pie plat or an 8x8" nonreactive dish (glass is best.)
When topping is baked use a knife or spoon to break it into 1" pieces.
Pick up the parchment paper and pour the topping on top of the peaches. Even out the layer.
Bake for 25-35 minutes, until the fruit is bubbling around the edges.
Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Poll Results! Which type of chocolate do you prefer?

2008-07-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

Dark	6 (50%)
Milk	5 (41%)
White	1 (8%)
No me gusta chocolate!	0 (0%)

Votes so far: 12

Poor little white chocolate, only 1 vote! Here's my theory why: the thing we all love about chocolate is the flavor and feeling we get from it. White chocolate has no cocoa powder, therefore does not taste like chocolate. Personally I like white "chocolate", but dark chocolate just has so many more deep flavors. To you milk chocolate fans, I suppose that you enjoy the sweet creaminess of the light brown squares. I find milk chocolate too sweet, but then again, I find many, many things too sweet, so dark chocolate is the sweet for me.

If dark chocolate is considered a candy, it is my favorite.

Everyone likes chocolate! Yay!

Flaky Pie crust

2008-06-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

This pie crust is simple to make, but tastes much much better than store bought. Also, it is very versatile, it can be used for pies, quiches... I recommend you use room temperature butter, either microwaving it at very low power for 30 second bursts, or, if your microwave is dead (me), you can take it out an hour beforehand. This recipe uses one stick of butter and is enough for a 12" quiche or French-style pie (no upper crust). The formula is simple: X weight of butter + 2X weight of flour + salt + least amount of water possible for it to easily form a ball = pie dough!

Ingredients (for one 12 inch crust with sides):

1 stick butter (113g) (room temperature)
226 grams flour (about 8 oz)
about 1/4 cup water
salt (1/2 teaspoon if salted butter, 1 - 1 1/2 tsp if unsalted)

Instructions:

Cut butter in small cubes (dice sized).
Put flour and salt in a large bowl and mix together.
Add butter, and, using a pinching motion, flatten the butter into the flour (this will create flakiness).

If you have a pastry cutter, use that at the beginning. Once the butter is incorporated, use the pinching motion.
After you have pinched the butter into the flour, add 1/4 cup of water.

Moisten all the flour and form a ball. If the ball does not form easily, you can add more water, a tablespoon at a time.
Remember, the more you handle the dough, the more gluten will form, causing chewiness instead of crispness.
Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least an hour (you can do this a day in advance and refrigerate the dough until you use it)
Flour a hard, cold surface (the counter) and roll out the dough to 13-14". If you have one of those silicone baking sheets, or something similar, use it.
Slide a thin, solid under the dough. I use a plate or the bottom of removable bottom pan.
Oil the pan you will cook the pie in.
Pick up the dough with the plate underneath and flip it onto the pan.
Even out the edge, cut off the excess on the sides and use it to reinforce thin parts.

Now either fill it, or pre-bake it (blind baking). Blind baking is useful for things like custard pies that need to be cooked at a very low temperature, or pies that are not cooked at all. First cut a peice of parchment paper the size of the pie and place it inside. Add weights or beans/rice inside and bake for 20 minutes at 425. Here is more information.

Broccoli Quiche

Savory Chocolate: Cocoa Rubbed Chicken Skewers with Mole-Chocolate Sauce

2008-06-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

So, this month I am participating for the first time in Dispensing Hapiness's BLOGPARTY!
This month is themed as Chocolate, so I just had to join. Blogparties are a virtual party, and to participate, you have to make an appetizer and a drink. For the appetizer I made chicken kabobs rubber with cocoa and salt and chocolate-mole sauce to accompany it. I would have made a chocolate soda (chocolate syrup with sparkling water), but I never got around to it! Oh well, I made it in spirit.

This time my method for giving you the recipe is a bit different from usual. Instead of writing out the recipe here and having a couple of pictures on Flikr, I have a picture of every step and the instruction written in the title/description of the picture. Tell me how it works!

For the rub, I followed the instructions in the Sharffen-Berger "The Essence of Chocolate" for the cocoa rub (2 parts cocoa for 1 part salt), but my family and I found it too salty. Also I made way more than I needed, so I scaled down the recipe and decreased the salt a bit for you. Otherwise, the chicken was very flavorful. It is necessary to start out with a very hot barbecue and then lower the temperature to have a crunchy exterior.

For the sauce (which I recommend you make 2 hours advance so that you don't have to bother with it while you are cooking the chicken) I just put together a few ingredients that I felt would go well with chocolate, inspired by mole. Again, I made more than I needed, but I have not scaled down the recipe here.
After cooking the sauce and tasting it regularly, my stomach starting feeling sick with the combination. I was unable to eat it with or without the chicken. On the other hand, my family loved it, especially my dad who declared that it complemented the skewers perfectly!

Anyways, here are the ingredients

Sauce:

5 oz good quality dark chocolate
1 anaheim pepper
1/2 jalapeño pepper
1 medium onion
1 (14-14.5 oz) can of diced/crushed tomatoes
olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp cocoa powder
Instructions/pics

Chicken skewers:

1/4 c cocoa powder (unsweetened, not Dutch-processed)
3 tbsp salt
1.1-1.2 lbs of boneless skinless thighs (you can use breasts if you really want)
Instructions/pics

And for the non-existent chocolate soda

Put 1-2 tbsp chocolate syrup in a tall glass and fill it with sparkling water
An ice cream scoop is optional

Have fun with savory chocolate!

Watermelon Juice

2008-06-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

More pics!

It's refreshing and it tastes like watermelon. What is it? Watermelon!!! umm, or watermelon juice...
Warning: it tastes even more like watermelon than a slice of watermelon.
So, here are the instructions:

Buy some watermelon, seedless is best. If it is already chopped up, lucky you! If it is not, cut it following the instruction here.
Place about 2 cups of cubed watermelon in a blender and blend until it is smooth.
I recommend straining the juice to remove pieces of seeds (Even seedless melons have those small yellow seeds!), and pulp.
Drink with ice cubes!

DO NOT ADD SUGAR UNTIL YOU HAVE TASTED THE JUICE!!! Watermelons are very sugary and you will not need to add sugar unless your teeth are very very sweet.

Poll Results! What is your favorite pizza?

2008-06-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Pizza Chicago's (Deep Dish)	5 (33%)
Amici's (Thin Crust)	6 (40%)
Round Table (in between)	2 (13%)
School Pizza! (Oily pizza, average crust)	0 (0%)
Other	1 (6%)
Ewww, pizzaaaa!!!!	1 (6%)

Votes so far: 15 !!!

Sooo, Amici's (or at least thin crust) won! Good job! When I voted, I chose Pizza Chicago's, but ever since I started making my own pizza it's a tie.
Someone actually does not like Pizza! But no one prefers school pizza above the rest (I wonder why?). Anyways, good job everyone, this is a record number of votes!

Another blog for you to read!

2008-05-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

Ever scratched your head at cookbooks when they say things like "Cream the butter with the sugar" or ever wondered why bread rise? I have created a new blog for you to read that will hopefully answer these questions. The new blog is Help me Happy! An Explanation of Cooking. I will probably not post there as often as here, but if you have any specific questions, just ask them as a comment on Help me Happy!
I hope it will be useful to you!

Light and Crispy Waffles

2008-05-29T15:16:00.001-07:00

More pics!

This recipe is from Catherine Martineau, who says she got it from Bon Appetit the magazine. It's a great recipe if you are looking for airy and crispy waffles; they are not floppy or soggy.
The recipe Originally called for Self-rising flour, but since I don't believe in Self-rising flour, I translated it into all-purpose. If you have self-rising flour just leave out the baking powder and salt.
I made the 15-17 waffles batter and it fed about 7 people.

Here is a handy chart:

# of Waffles (7" diameter)	8-12	15-17	17-20
Flour	2 cups	3 cups	4 cups
Baking powder	3 tsp	4 1/2 tsp	6 tsp
salt	1/2 tsp	3/4 tsp	1 tsp
eggs	4	6	8
milk	1 1/2 cups	2 1/4 cups	3 cups
vanilla extract	1 tsp	1 1/2 tsp	2 tsp
melted butter	1/6 cup	1/4 cup (2 tbsp)	1/3 cup
oil	1/6 cup	1/4	1/3 cup

Separate the eggs putting the yolks in a large bowl and the whites in a medium bowl.
Add the milk and the vanilla extract to the yolks.
In another medium bowl whisk the dry ingredients (the first three) together, then add them to the wet ingredients (the egg yolks, milk ...).
Add the melted butter and oil to the batter and whisk until smooth.
Beat the egg whites, and fold them into the batter. To fold into the batter use a whisk and, with a rotary motion, gently pile batter on top of the egg whites and pull the egg whites into the batter.
Keep doing this until the batter is smooth.
Heat the waffles irons and cook to desired doneness. (I like brown and crunchy)

I recommend you use real maple syrup on these waffles. The Aunt Jemima's stuff just doesn't taste good. Powdered sugar or jams also work fine. If you are a fan of maple syrup, heating it in the microwave before pouring it onto the waffle helps retain heat and makes the syrup less viscous.

Revision of the Baked Sandwich Recipe

2008-05-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

While making the Baked Sandwich for the second time, I decided to skip the second rise to see the outcome. Well, the result is that my sandwich was easier to handle and stretch out to form the sandwich, and it ended up being twice as high as the original version!
The second rise is unnecessary and actually bad for this recipe, so I have changed the main post accordingly.

The higher rise may be because the first time I made this sandwich, I let the dough rise in a oven that was too hot, but the dough rose so much this time with only one hour to rise that the second rise would be redundant.

In this sandwich I added cheese, and in the photo you can see it leaked a little.

The Recipe is here.

Nectarine (Peach) Cobbler

2008-05-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

More pics!

It's memorial day weekend, we go up to Tahoe for three days. I visualize myself hiking under the sun in shorts and a T-Shirts. No such luck: the heater is broken and is lightly snowing. The temperature outside is 1 degree Celcius.

Whatever happened to Global Warming???

Since when does it snow at Tahoe in late May???

So what do I do? Make Warm Nectarine Cobbler! Served after Catherine Martineau's (a fabulous cook) delicious Clam Chowder, this dessert really warmed our bellies.

Nectarine Cobbler (adapted from Cook's Illustrated "Fresh Peach Cobbler"

Cobblers are different from crumbles; crumbles are made by covering fruit with crumbs, while cobblers are fruit with biscuits baked on top. The biscuits in this recipe are very soft and tender. I used nectarines instead of peaches because I did not want to bother peeling the fruit. Also, since the area around Lake Tahoe is very dry, I added another 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt to the biscuit dough because they wouldn't come together.

So, here's the recipe:

Ingredients

Filling
2 1/2 lbs of ripe but not mushy nectarines (about 6-8 small ones)
1/4 cup (less) sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
1 tbsp lemon juice (I used orange juice)

Biscuits
1 cup flour
3 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
5 tbsp cold butter cut up into small cubes
1/3 cup plain whole milk yogurt (like Pavel's russian, more liquid than greek-style)

Instructions:

Since you are using nectarines, you don't have to peel them! Just wash them and slice them into a 9" circular pan, or and 8x8" (glass is best, really) until the pan is full. You might not need to use all the fruit.
Transfer them to a bowl and toss them with the sugar. Let them rest for 30 minutes.
While the nectarines are macerating, pre-heat the oven to 425F.
After half an hour, check if the fruit has spewed a lot of juice. If you think there is more than 1/4 cup, drain a little of it.
Combine the lemon juice with the cornstarch and mix it with the nectarines.
Put them back into the pan and bake for 10 minutes.
While the nectarines are cooking, make the biscuits: Combine the flour, sugar, leaveners, salt.
Add the butter and either pulse it with the flour in a food processor, cut it in with a nifty gadget like the one in the picture (a pastry cutter), or use your fingers. Whatever the method, it should look like breadcrumbs(ish) (Kinda like >this)
Now add the yogurt and mix it until it forms a ball (blob).
When the nectarines are out of the oven, divided the dough into six and scoop it over the fruit. Don't let the blobs touch each other.
Bake for 16-18 minutes (20 in altitude)

So, we got this cool gadget, very useful for cutting butter into flour. Cutting butter into flour is used in pie crusts, biscuits, this recipe, and more.
It's extremely easy to use, just slice the cold butter into small cubes and press the pastry cutter in and out of the flour and butter until the butter is well incorporated.
Here is a good article.

Whole Wheat Flatbread Stuffed with Tomatoes, Basil and Turkey

2008-05-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

More pics!

A.K.A bread dough baked around tomatoes and ham. I call it a baked sandwich, but "Stuffed Flatbread" sounds so much fancier!
This recipe is very flexible; just follow the instructions for the bread dough, but fill it with anything you would put in a hot sandwich. I think onions, cheese, and bell peppers would be good, or pizza style with tomato sauce and mozzarella. Use your imagination! I calculated that a half cup of whole wheat flour would be enough for one sandwich, so I decided to make dough with 1 cup and form two sandwiches. I cooked one immediately after the second rise, but I froze the other one after the rise to be cooked the next day. I left it on the counter during the night before the day I wanted to eat, and baked it in the morning. The dough pooled a bit, but it tasted the same as the first one.

Bread dough (for 2 sandwiches):

1 cup whole wheat
1/2 cup water
1/2-3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp yeast (about half a packet)
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup warm milk

Combine the yeast, milk, and sugar; mix well.
Combine flour and salt
Add milk mixture and water to the flour; mush everything together with your hands and knead until the dough is smooth and holds together well, about five minutes. (The dough will be sticky at the beginning)
Let the dough rise in a warm spot for an hour (I tried letting it rise in an oven I had heated to 200F and then turned off, but the dough developed a crust on top; I also tried this for the second rise, but the oven beneath was turned on and the bread had started cooking, the second time I made the recipe I turned the oven on to 150F and turned it off when the air inside felt mildly warm to my hand.)
Form a ball with the dough and divide it into two.
Flour a flat surface and stretch out the dough to form 6" squares.
Place your filling of choice on one half of the dough and fold the other half on top.*
Don't make it rise a second time! Just bake it!
Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes (depends how stuffed it is; just don't let it burn)

*After step four you can wrap the sandwich with parchment/wax paper and put it inside a plastic bag and freeze. Leave it to defrost on the counter during the night to bake it in the morning, but don't just place it in the oven because if you do, the frozen from the water will steam the bread instead of baking it.

Confit de Canard

2008-05-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

More pics here

Never heard of it? It's French! It was invented as a way to preserve duck meat. It is similar to canned peaches if you replace the peaches with duck thighs and the syrup with duck fat. Are disgusted already? Well, don't be, it's delicious! My parents bring cans back from France sometimes, and my mother cooks it wonderfully.
The duck is lifted out of the fat and either roasted in the oven or in a pan on the stove. My mother usually uses the oven, but tonight she used the stove. We found the problem with the stove is that the duck sticks to the bottom of the skillet. Traditionally, the duck is accompanied with potatoes pan fried in part of the duck fat! This adds a deep flavor to otherwise bland potatoes. To cook the potatoes, first boil them for 10 minutes, slice them up, and then pan fry them.
Complemented by a simple salad, this dish is perfect for cold weather or just an evening of indulgence. Read more on Wikipedia! Be a wikinerd!

Chocolate Raspberry Scones

2008-05-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

More pics on Flikr!

Sounds good eh? Well, they were ok. They tasted fine, a bit too sweet for breakfast though. If I ever make them again, I'll leave out the chocolate chips and add more raspberries. My main problem is that weren't scony. The crust was too hard and the inside that chewy. I don't know; I Wasn't crazy about them.
The recipe (from joyofbaking.com) used yogurt, which is not a traditional part of scone physiology, and this might have caused the unsconeness. Another possible cause of the crust may have been that I made the dough Friday night and left the formed scones in the oven programmed to turn on in the morning. This system usually works, but a problem is that the scones are in the oven while it is preheating. This should not have formed a crust though because it did the opposite of crust-making. A hard exterior is usually produced by a too high temperature, but I used a lower temperature than the recipe asked for because I have a convection oven. So I'm confused, but whatever.
If you do not mind crusty scones, here is the good but not amazing recipe at http://joyofbaking.com/RaspberryScones.html

Note: I used frozen raspberries from a fine brand "Wyman's" They always work when I use them in recipes, but as the website says, they did break and bleed into the dough.

Poll Results! Fudgy or Cakey Brownies?

2008-05-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

Fudgy!!	9 (75%)
Cakey!!	3 (25%)
Don't like brownies!!	0 (0%)

Votes so far: 12

Fudgy wins! Why am I not surprised that 100% like brownies?
Personally I prefer fudgy, just like those two-bite brownies you can buy at the store. Soo tasty. They melt in your mouth, ladden with the flavor of brown-- I mean chocolate. Mmmm now I want brownies :(
Well, May fete Parade this Saturday! It's at 10am in Downtown PA. Come watch (or listen to) the Band! (yes I know, as Connie would say, "Shameless Advertising."

Monkey Bread

2008-04-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

More pictures here!

Bread for Monkeys! (I wouldn't give mine away, too tasty) Monkey bread is, in short, blobs of of yeasted bread dough dipped into butter and then sugar and cinnamon. The balls are piled into a pan and baked to result in a soft, sweet, yeasty, and most of all, addictive dessert or breakfast. The strange name comes from the way it is eaten: by individually pulling off the blobs with your fingers, just like a monkey eating lice of its neighbor's head. Some recipes substitute store-bought biscuit dough instead of the homemade yeast bread for the sake of time, but my family and I love the addictive flavor of yeast. The dough is easy to make, so I think the extra flavor and texture is worth the time.

So, the recipe is adapted from Cook's Country, but really any soft bread recipe will do. For example, I had a leftover egg yolk in the refrigerator from the soufflé, so I added it at the same time as the yeast mixture. If you add a whole egg though, you might need to compensate with extra flour.
The recipe said to use one cup of brown sugar and one stick of butter for the coating, but that seemed a lot to me. I prepared only a half cup of cinnamon sugar, but I melted the entire stick of butter. After having dipped all the little blobs, I had used exactly all the sugar, but I had a lot of butter left over. If you prefer desserts on the sweeter side, use more sugar, but the entire stick of butter is not necessary. The ratio of sugar to cinnamon I used was strong enough to taste the cinnamon, but not so strong that my mother did not like it. My mother does not enjoy overpowering cinnamon flavor.
Concerning the frosting: At first my mom and I were dubious, but in the end my dad convinced me to make some. I made half the amount from the recipe, a half cup instead of a whole, and added a splash of cinnamon. It truly is a simple glaze; just whisk confectioners sugar with a bit of milk or water; and it begged me for some flavoring.

The recipe used a bundt pan, but I do not have one of those. Instead I used another kind of deep pan, but I'm not sure what it's called. The dough overflowed after the second rise, so I was forced to put part of it in a loaf pan.

By the way, I'm getting more organized! I started a little notebook I'm going to write all my recipes into, and I just received the tripod I ordered! (the pictures here were taken before the tripod arrived though)

Anyways, Ingredients:

Dough

1 c. milk
1/3 c. water
1/4 c. sugar
2 tbsp melted butter
1 pkg rapid rise yeast
3 1/3 c. flour
2 tsp salt

Sugar Coating (I used 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon, but a larger amount with the same ratio works too)

1/2 c –more brown sugar
1 tsp –more cinnamon (find a ratio you like)
3/4 c melted butter

Glaze

1/2 c confectioners sugar
1 tbsp milk or water
a pinch of cinnamon (if you need numbers, how about a 1/4 tsp)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 200F. When the temperature is reached, turn off the oven. (later you will let the dough rise inside the warm oven)
In a 2 cup measuring cup mix together the first four dough ingredients together in and microwave all of it on medium until the liquid feels warm to the touch (not hot). This may take 1-2 minutes. The butter will float on top and look gross.
Add the yeast and stir.
Pour the liquid mixture on the salt and flour in a large bowl. This is when you can add any leftover egg or yolk you have.
Combine everything together and knead the dough for about ten minutes. The dough will be very sticky.
Cover the bowl with a cloth or plastic wrap and let the dough rise for an hour in the warm oven (the oven is turned off!)
Butter the Bundt pan.
Prepare the cinnamon-sugar mixture by combining the brown sugar and cinnamon. (Amazing!)
When the dough has finished rising cut it into 64 pieces in the manner described below*.
Melt the butter.
Dip each piece of dough into the butter and then into the sugar-cinnamon. Layer the blobs in the bundt pan.
When all the dough has been dipped and placed into the buttered pan, cover the pan and let the bread rise for another hour.
Uncover and bake for around 30 minutes at 350F.
Let the bread rest 5 minutes, then remove it from the pan.
Make the glaze by whisking together all the ingredients
Eat warm pulling apart the blobs with your fingers and dipping them in the glaze. :)

* To divide the dough evenly, first cut it into fourth, then each quarter in fourth, then each 16th into fourth again.

Just a question...

2008-04-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

I have been putting links to flikr for pictures I can't fit into the post, and I'm wondering if you guys are using it/understanding it. Are there any problems with this technique? Thank you for responding!

Cheese Soufflé

2008-04-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

more pictures on Flikr!

I made my first soufflé ever on Sunday! Last weekend in the airport my mom and I randomly bought some cooking magazines, and I came across an easy looking recipe for Cheese Soufflé in Bon Appètit. I had always herd that soufflés are really hard, that they always collapse, bla bla bla... but a daunting task is always the most attractive, and so I rose up to the challenge. I mean, how hard could a recipe be?
Since the article was from Bon Appètit, the recipe also appeared on Epicurious, at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/242119. I cranked up my oven to 400 degrees as instucted and started cooking! First, it asks to make a roux, or sauce made of flour cooked in butter, then adding milk. I had never made a roux before, and had understood I needed to add the flour/butter to the milk instead of the other way around. Luckily my mom was helping me out. I used 2% milk instead of whole (generally the milk fat percentage in cooking is not very important). The roux turned out really weird, it was all sticky shiny, but I guess that's what it's supposed the be. Then I added the egg yolks, paprika, salt, and nutmeg. Note: for the entire roux part, I found it easier to use a wooden spoon than a whisk. Next I folded in the beaten egg whites and freshly grated gruyère.
I buttered and 'parmesaned' four medium ramekins and divided the batter equally between them, and the batter reached a bit over the halfway point before cooking. I placed the ramekins into the oven and lowered the temperature to 375. After 20 minutes of cooking, the soufflés had risen over the ide of the dish, but they were quite dark on top. My dad and I rushed the soufflés to the table and everyone dug in. We were all hungry because the recpe had taken longer than expected. I started cooking at 6:30 and the soufflés finished cooking at 7:25. That's 35 minutes prep and 20 minutes cooking time.
The crust on top of the soufflé was a bit hard, but the inside was light and fluffy. It tasted cheesy and eggy, and it was a delight to eat. We savored this hot cheese fluff with salad and... cheese! (manchego, petit basque, gruyère, and blues, but I don't like blues.)
I agree that soufflés are harder and more time consuming than your average weeknight menu, but they are worth it for a special occasion or weekend. Also, prior cooking experience is highly recommended: I had never made a roux and would have failed it if my mom had not helped me.

Tamagoyaki Part 2!

2008-04-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

more pics on Flikr (the last 2 pictures are from the first time in January)

My dad recently came back from a business trip in Japan, and he brought back a rectangular omelet pan! Of course, this made me want to try making tamagoyaki (or rolled omelet) again. Last time it turned out fine, but my dad complained that it did not taste Japanese enough. This time I decided to follow exactly the recipe in the Japanese cookbook I have.
Now for the hard part: rolling the eggs. Because the rectangular pan was bigger than the circular pan I had used, I rolled the omelet in two times instead of three so that a good layer of egg would cover the entire pan. I started on a burner that was smaller than the pan, but the corners were not cooking, so I switched to another burner. I found that rolling in a rectangular pan is much harder than in a circular pan because the edges always stick! Plus, I burned myself on the burner I had stopped using. In the end, the tamagoyaki made in a rectangular pan did not look very different from the one I made in January. I don't recommend going out to buy a rectangular pan just to make this omelet, but since I have one I'll practice with it until I can use it properly.
The recipe I used this time made a more 'Japanese' omelet. Its from "Let's Cook Japanese Food" by Amy Kaneko.

4 eggs
3 1/2 dashi broth (See First Post )
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp soy sauce
pinch salt

Shiny Medal and Tapioca Express!

2008-04-06T09:54:00.000-07:00

I won a medal!!!!!!! At the Science Olympiad Regionals! Scioly (Science Olympiads) is a science competition with different events. I participated in Astronomy (bleh) and Food Science(Whee). My partner and I got third place in Food Science out of 14 teams! So, we got shiny bronze medals pictured above. Since the my school got third place in the entire competition, team A (not me) is going to the states competition! To celebrate, we decided to go the Tapex (Tapioca Express). The menu there was very weird... There were several types of drinks, including Snow Bubbles. I don't know what snow bubbles are, but the top of the list was Avocado Bubble :-? That sounds "interesting". These strange snow bubbles and the milk tea sounded filling, and since I was already full, I decided to get honeydew juice. I saw them put slices of honeydew in a blender, and I thought "Ooh, real fruit!" Then I saw them add bright green liquid and sugar the fruit... I ordered the juice with tapioca because I wanted to try tapioca once again.
The drink was good, tasty, but a tad too sweet. The tapioca was amusing. I had trouble chewing it, and I think it grew inside my stomach.

Poll Results: Favorite chocolate drink!

2008-04-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Plain hot chocolate	5 (45%)
Mexican style (with cinnamon)	1 (9%)
Peppermint hot chocolate	3 (27%)
Cold choco-banana drink (bananas blended w/ milk and chocolate)	2 (18%)

Votes so far: 11

Sooo, Plain hot chocolate won the game! I guess people like the taste of chocolate. I'm surprised, I thought no-one liked chocolate!
Well, I don't have much to say, but Vote on polls! It makes me happy!
I had mucha tarea this week, but today there's less, probably because I accidentallly did the math homework due tomorrow yesterday...
Ok, have a nice day!

Amish Friendship Bread Part 2: Buckwheat Bread

2008-03-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Ready to cook dough

So, I did what I said I would. I tried to use the the Amish starter instead of yeast. Well, it kind of worked...
Just to add more factor to this already complicated experiment, I decided to make a bread with one third whole wheat, one third buckwheat, and one third all-purpose flour. I used the Amish starter in place of the yeast-milk-flour mixture I made in the first bread (which I will now refer to as the egg bread). For the egg bread, Laurence made me wait 20 minutes for the mixture to rise, but I figured that since the Amish starter had been lying around in a plastic bag for 12 days, I didn't need to wait as long. I just dumped the contents of one bag into my bowl and let it bubble for 10 minutes. When I came back, there weren't many bubbles, but there were some, so I just went on with the bread.
I wanted this bread to be a sort of rustic bread, meaning no eggs or butter. I just mixed flour w/ starter and water. Then I left it to rise for an hour and a half in a bowl with some olive oil while I did my math and biology homework. When the timer called me back to the kitchen, I peeked underneath the towel used to cover the bowl, and I was surprised to see that the dough had barely risen! I raided the pantry searching for a solution, and surprise! A half-empty packet of instant yeast was lying inside! I immediately made a mixture like Laurence had shown me and let it rise for half an hour. Then I incorporated it to 2/3 of the dough, leaving 1/3 with only the original starter as a test. I kneaded the dough one more time and then shaped it into 3 loaves; one of them had the Amish starter as its only source of yeast. I let them rise for another 2 hours.
My dad was curious to know if a loaf of uncooked bread dough could be left in a oven overnight with the oven programmed to cook the bread in the morning. If this worked, we could have hot bread in the morning! So, I only cooked the loaf without extra yeast and one of the other loaves that night, and I left the other one on the side. I cooked them for 30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
The bread turned out good, but on the dense side. There was little noticeable difference between the two two loaves cooked at the same time. The one without the extra yeast was slightly denser, but both were good. The loaf that was left in the other oven overnight, however, turned out quite different. This one had much larger bubbles (see photos), but it was flat and harder than the other two. I think this is because it had more time to rise, but then flattened out when the yeast stopped eating. The loaf was probably drier because it stayed in the hot oven half an hour after it stopped cooking. The oven was programmed to finish cooking at 7:30, but my mom got out of bed at 8:00 (I slept in until 8:30).
A cause for this bread being denser than the egg bread might be the fact that buckwheat flour is gluten free. Gluten is a long protein that can stretch and curl up when kneaded. This creates a sort of web that traps air bubbles, meaning that less gluten will trap less air and have less structure. In fact, this is why bread flour has more gluten than cake flour. Since a third of my flour was gluten-free, I guess it's normal that my bread was denser.
All in all, the bread was good, but my dad still thinks it could have used more salt. The buckwheat flavor was pronounced and went well with cheese. My dad says it reminded him of savory crèpes (also made with buckwheat), and my mom compares it to heavy German bread.

Pictures here!

I guess I'll give you the recipe, but I think there are probably better buckwheat bread recipes out there. I made this bread without a recipe. I replaced the Amish starter by a package of yeast in the recipe below.

Ingredients

1 cup All-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 package rapid rise yeast
2 tbsp olive oil
salt (I used about 1 tbsp, but apparently that was not enough)
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup milk
lukewarm water (about 1 cup, but this stuff isn't exact)

Heat the milk with sugar until it is just slightly warm to the touch.
Pour in the yeast and stir. Let it rise for 20-30 minutes until it is bubbly.
Put the yeast and the flours together with the water and salt in a large bowl and combine everything with your hands to create a smooth dough, adding more water or flour as necessary. It is better to be a bit wetter than dry.
Knead as described below for 5-10 minutes (I'm not really sure, I didn't time myself)
Put the oil into the bowl and place the dough back inside. Let it rise covered by a kitchen towel for 1 hour and a half, or until it doubles in size.
Knead it again, shape it into one or two loaves, and place it on your baking pan. Let it rise covered for another 2 hours.
Heat the oven to 350 and bake for around 30 minutes.
Let cool and enjoy! (I'm not sure if this recipe will work, I put it together myself, and only made it once)

I tried to upload a video of me kneading, but it didn't work :( I guess I'll try to explain using words. You use the base of your palm and your wrist to flatten and stretch the dough way from you. Then you roll it back up into a log and squish it again. You keep doing this for 5-10 minutes. In general, Laurence told me to knead until I saw many little bubbles in the dough.
Of course, if you have a Standing Mixer with a dough hook, use that. I think that if using a mixer, then you have to knead for a shorter amount of time.

My first Bread!

2008-03-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to make real yeast bread, but not until recently did the want turn into a craving. Ever since I got that friendship bread starter thing, I have been aching to knead a soft sticky dough. This weekend, I finally got the opportunity I had been waiting for. Though it was completely unplanned, I think this bread-making went rather well.
When we came back from the cross-country skiing place at around three on Saturday, I realized they were a few packets of rapid rise yeast left over from the time I made monkey bread with a friend a long time ago. The packets said "Best if used by Oct 2007", and I decided to see if the eukaryotic fungi were still alive (I'm learning about classification in Biology.) To do this, I heated a cup of milk to a lukewarm temperature stirred half a packet of yeast into it. After 20 minutes, nothing had happened. I added the second half, and in 5 minutes the mixtures was bubbling. Success! Unfortunately, I didn't have a clue as to what to do next. Fortunately, a family friend who knew how to bake bread was with us in Tahoe. This family friend (Laurence) and her family were spending the weekend with us at our cabin. Laurence explained to me that I had to feed the yeast before starting the actual bread. We added 3 tablespoons of flour and a bit of sugar to the milk and yeast and left it to rise for half an hour.
After that amount of time, I combined 3 cups of flour with 1/4 cup sugar, 1 egg, and a pinch of salt using my fingers (sticky!) and then added the yeast mixture. Laurence told me to add water until the dough became knead-able. I then took the dough out of the bowl and kneaded it for a while using a "flatten and roll" motion. After that we put it back in the bowl and let it rise for an hour.
When it doubled in size, I kneaded it again, but this time I added 3 table spoons of butter and bi t of flour the maintain the correct dough consistency. Then I shaped the dough into a "twist" (see photo) and 2 small loaves. We let it rise 2 more hours, and when it doubled in size again, we brushed the dough with an egg yolk and cooked it for 30 minutes in a 375 oven.
The bread was delicious. It turned out as a kind of breakfast bread because it was slightly sweet and buttery. I think it tasted best toasted with a bit of jam, and my parents liked it with salted butter. The texture was close to Mexican pan, a light bread with many small bubbles.
I had put little pieces of sugar on the loaves, but I think I should have placed them underneath the egg yolk. They didn't melt or caramelize.

Since I have lots of pics, see them here.

Easter Muffins!

2008-03-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through one of the food blogs I read, and I found a recipe for muffins with a chocolate egg inside! My family doesn't really celebrate easter too much, but the recipe looked tasty and visually appealing. I found this recipe on Baking Bites, and it is the first recipe I have tried from this blog. The recipe called for Mini Cadbury Creme eggs, but as I was unavailable to find any of those, I used Mini Cadbury Caramel eggs.
As usual, I made a small adjustments to the recipe. I lessened the sugar from 3/4c to 1/2c, but I did not use whole wheat flour like I often do. These muffins just didn't seem to ask for the extra flavor. When I finished making the batter, I was surprised at how thick it was. The muffins I made last week had liquid batter, but this batter was like dough. Also, there didn't seem to be enough for 12 muffins. My dad encouraged me to add more milk than the recipe asked for, but I decided that I would follow the instructions and see what happened. So I divided the batter equally into the 12 muffin holes and pressed the eggs into each muffin-to-be. I had to use a spoon to fold the batter around the eggs to cover them, and I got my fingers all stickied. Since I am in Tahoe again (in the mountains), I cooked them in a 375 oven instead of 350 and for 18-20 minutes instead of 14-16.
We ate these for dessert Friday night. They were drier than average muffins, more like a dry biscuit. The soft caramel-filled-chocolate-eggs created a pleasant contrast with the crusty muffin. When I compare my muffins with the picture on Baking bites, they look... different. Mine rose much more and look drier. I don't know why, because all I changed was the amount of sugar. Well, they were good anyway, but if I make them again, I might add a bit more butter or milk.

Well, here is the recipe from Baking Bites, with my comments in parenthesis.

Cadbury Creme Egg Muffins
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder (This will make them rise more than in the picture on Baking Bites)
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar (I used a 1/2 cup)
2 large eggs
1/3 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
12 mini Cadbury creme eggs (make sure you use minis, but any filled type should do)

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
In a small mixing bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, melted butter and vanilla until smooth. Whisk in milk.
Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir until just combined and no streaks of flour remain. (there won't seem to be a lot of dough, but it works out) Evenly distribute muffin batter into prepared pan. Place 1 mini Cadbury creme egg in the center of each muffin. You can use a small knife to pull a bit of batter over the top of the muffin, if you like.
Bake for 14-16 minutes, until the top of the muffin springs back when lightly pressed and the edges are a light gold.
Cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Makes 12.

Thank you Baking Bites!