I'm in Canada!

After many months of stressing about whether I was going to be allowed to work in Canada, I successfully got my work permit and started my internship at the beginning of this week. Yay! I'm doing computer science research in Montreal, which is pretty darn awesome. My coworkers are a fun bunch: to celebrate someone's Doctorate, one student got him a machete, and we hiked up the mountain to play real life fruit ninja! Turns out coconuts are really hard to slice, but melons work surprisingly well.

Montreal is an interesting city. In the US, I generally know what language to use when talking to people: if they are my parent's French friends, I use French, otherwise I use English. In Montreal, most people speak both, but would be more comfortable using one language over the other. It's a confusing guessing game.

Nonetheless, I have definitely been enjoying life here. I love walking around my neighborhood and checking out the little grocery stores and cafes. I seem to be living at the intersection of a Greek neighborhood and a Hasidic neighborhood, so there are a lot of Greek restaurants and kosher grocery stores. Even the generic grocery store has interesting greek cheeses that I had never tried before (including Mizithra, which my Greek friend keeps talking about). This morning I also saw freshly grilled Souvlaki being sold outside one of the Greek restaurants! I'll have to try that next week (or perhaps tomorrow if it is still there).

I've been lazy about bringing my camera places, but I promise I'll be better next week. In the meantime, here are some things I've found with my phone camera:

There is a fruit store near my lab that has some nice looking and rather inexpensive fruit. It's "La Sucrerie" and it sells fruit, pastries, and maple syrup. It also does not seem to exist on the internet (...?) Unfortunately, it is really far from my apartment, so I won't be going shopping there very often.

There is a used bookstore about 5m from my apartment building! It does not seem to have much Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but as I only brought 2 books with me, I'll probably end up getting some books from there :)

As a final treat, here is a video of the post-doc I'm working with slicing through a cantaloupe :)

Grapefruit

Sometimes you just need a bowl of sweet, pink, grapefruit to get you through Ecology homework.

Strawberry Cardamom Sour Cream Upside-Down Cake

Well, it certainly has been a while since I last posted here. Turns out having a job and taking a class at the same time is a lot of work. I've been taking a b&w film photography class this summer. At first I was a bit confused as to why film photo is a pre-req for digital photo, but the class is actually very interesting. Contrary to everyones expectations, I did not take pictures of food, because food in black and white is just not particularly exciting. So I have been exploring the bay area / my house in search of situations to take pictures of.

(Creepy?) Handbags in Half Moon Bay

Dragonfly

California + Bikes

Public Transit

Donner Lake

That last picture somehow became brown when I took a picture of it, probably because the white balance on my digital camera was off. I think it fits the landscape well though.

But anyways, back to food.

Mmmm strawberries

Strawberries are good, right? And sour cream is pretty good with strawberries. And cardamom is just plain delicious. (While making this cake I discovered that chewing a cardamom seed is very refreshing.)

Mmmm cardamom

Joy from Joythebaker is a genius and combined these three flavors into a cake. The super thick batter is spread on top of sliced strawberries that are sitting in some butter and brown sugar. I decreased the amount of sugar from Joy's recipe because my strawberries were sweet enough for my taste. (And of course I doubled the number of strawberries!)

Also, if you look at her post, she somehow manages to keep her strawberries bright red, while mine went to a dull purple. I'm guessing that adding some lemon juice to the strawberries before baking might help prevent discoloration. 

Ugly but delicious. I'm sure your cake will be beautiful and delicious!

Anyways, recipe time!

But first some sliced strawberries

Ingredients:

     For the strawberries:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 cups sliced strawberries
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (opt, may preserve color) 

     For the cake:

• 6 tbsp butter, soft
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 2/3 cup sour cream

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix strawberries with lemon juice (if using.)
3. Put the 2 tbsp of butter in a 9" round cake pan and place in the oven until melted.
4. Rotate pan to coat all sides with butter, sprinkle the 2 tbsp brown sugar into the bottom of the pan.
5. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder + soda, salt.
6. In a large bowl cream together the butter and 1/2 cup brown sugar.
7. When butter is fluffy, add egg and vanilla, and beat until well combined.
8. Beat in dry ingredients and sour cream, batter will be very thick. 
9. Spread strawberries on bottom of pan.
10. Spoon batter over strawberries and spread evenly.



Spread it out more evenly than this

11. Bake for about 35 minutes.
12. When cake is cooked, run a knife along the edge of the cake and then invert over a plate. If the cake sticks to the pan, leave the pan upside-down over the plate and go read a book or check your email. After ~5 minutes, the cake will have unstuck from the pan (Yay gravity!)
13. Serve with a spoonful of sour cream

I brought this cake to a friend's house and it was gone in 5 minutes. Granted, there were three tall and skinny runner guys participating, so it wasn't particularly surprising. 

Poached Pears with Vanilla and Ginger

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.

Strawberry Shortcake (and longcake)

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).

Extra Pastry Dough

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:

1. Make a ball of leftover raw pie crust.
2. Roll it out.
3. Mooch around the kitchen to find edible stuff (fridge, freezer, and pantry are good bets)
4. Put edible stuff in the middle.
5. 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.
6. Bake until cooked (time depends on size).
7. 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.

Upside-down Apple-Pear tart

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

The Simplest Apple Compote

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
  

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

Poll Results! Yellow or Whites Peaches?

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!

Peach Crumble

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:

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

3. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees (325 if convection)
   
4. 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.
5. Stir in the remaining almonds.

6. Transfer mixture to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and spread into a flat, even layer. Bake for 20 minutes.
7. 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.
8. Transfer the peaches to a 9" pie plat or an 8x8" nonreactive dish (glass is best.)
9. When topping is baked use a knife or spoon to break it into 1" pieces.
10. Pick up the parchment paper and pour the topping on top of the peaches. Even out the layer.
11. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until the fruit is bubbling around the edges.
12. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.
    

Watermelon Juice

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.

Nectarine (Peach) Cobbler

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:

1. 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.
2. Transfer them to a bowl and toss them with the sugar. Let them rest for 30 minutes.
3. While the nectarines are macerating, pre-heat the oven to 425F.
4. 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.
   
5. Combine the lemon juice with the cornstarch and mix it with the nectarines.
6. Put them back into the pan and bake for 10 minutes.
7. While the nectarines are cooking, make the biscuits: Combine the flour, sugar, leaveners, salt.
8. 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)
9. Now add the yogurt and mix it until it forms a ball (blob).
10. 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.
11. 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.