Curried Butternut Squash with Red Chard

It's almost the end of the semester! Final projects and final exams are everywhere sucking up time like giant time vacuums! I don't even know what a time vacuum is, but maybe it removes all the trash in your time, like browsing the internet, watching TV shows and the like? With final project time vacuums, none that useless stuff is left! Success! Or something like that.

Anyways, you know what the time vacuums have not sucked away? Time spent making food. I made some pretty darn delicious food yesterday. At some point in the past month, I saw mini butternut squashes at Safeway (they call it Vons here, but really it's Safeway), so I jumped on the opportunity to buy squash that I wouldn't have to spend multiple weeks eating. This week, I finally got around to cooking it. I first roasted the squash Sunday night:

Roasted squash! I couldn't help but try a spoonful

On Tuesday night, I actually got around to preparing the squash for consumption. Since my friend had some extra coconut milk, I decided to prepare it curry-style with ginger, cumin, turmeric, curry powder, cardamom, and a good spoonful of Thai red curry paste. I heated some oil in a pan and fried the spices to "release the aromas" (as they always say on America's Test Kitchen).

I sliced up the squash, and added it to the spices. I let it cook for a while.

And then added about a quarter cup of coconut milk and mushed up some of the squash pieces. 

At SafeVons, I also found a beautiful bunch of red chard, so I decided to try it out by simply sautéing it in a bit of oil.

Yay balanced meals! The squash was super delicious, with the ginger, curry, and cardamom being the strongest flavors. The chard was chard-like, which I liked.  Also, I can make rice now....

Apple Salad

I'm back from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing! It was awesome. Check out this lab's research on prosthetic retinae.

The food at the conference was definitely not the emphasis though; dinner on Wednesday consisted of a dry and vegetable-less turkey sandwich with a cookie. My dinner tonight is much tastier. I got a giant acorn squash from Trader Joe's yesterday, and I was totally going to cook it tonight. Then Laziness struck. So instead I made a quesadilla and salad.

But the salad. It is a special salad. I started with an apple. I don't usually put apples in salads, but my friend had me try apples with dressing a couple weeks ago, and I had to agree that it works well. I chopped up an apple into my usual mustard-olive oil-vinegar dressing. Then I added some romaine and some kale. To add color, I chopped up some of my ever-present baby carrots. When I tried my creation, it was good, but was missing some creaminess and tang: crumbled goat cheese brought the salad to a new level.

Tomato-Jicama-Avocado Salad

It is what it sounds like! I'm back at school and I'm making my own dinners this semester, so I'm learning to cook from what I have. This evening, I looked in my fridge and saw cabbage, plums, and baby carrots. Eh. Then I saw the tomatoes I had gotten at the farmer's market last weekend, and the jicama from 2 weeks ago. Maybe I could make a salad. After all, I had been wanting to try the avocado I got last weekend.

I made a quick vinaigrette with mustard, cider vinegar, and olive oil. I chopped up three small tomatoes, and about a sixth of a jicama. I cubed half the avocado, and added some cubed cheese for good measure. With some salt and pepper, a slice of toasted bread, this was a very passable dinner. The cheese (part skim mozzarella) and the avocado did not pair very well though. A crumblier cheese like
queso fresco or feta would probably have worked better.

New York

Duuude it's been forever. I'm in New York now. Like, New York, New York. Manhattan. In the middle. For three months. This is pretty exciting.

Living in New York City is very different from the California suburbs I'm always lived in. Cars are honking all over the place. There are regular wafts of rotting food and sewers. It rains in summer. It's hot even if the sun is gone.

What surprised me the most was the cost of food. The cheap restaurants have $7 sandwiches and $12 entrées. Most restaurants have entrées at $15-20. The food in grocery stores is also more expensive, especially the produce, all of which is imported from California.

However, I am not doomed! By the wonders of Yelp, I found a very cheap produce market: http://www.yelp.com/biz/stiles-farmers-market-new-york. Three dollars for four tomatoes and 2 bell peppers? Sounds good to me!

I was curious as to what I would end up cooking when I need to cook for myself regularly. As the kitchen obviously did not come stocked with spices, it is difficult to make anything fancy because I only have the basics in my pantry: The flavorings I have so far are salt, pepper, cinnamon, and hot sauce.

When I first got here, I made a lot of eggs. Specifically, fried eggs on toast with goat cheese and marinara sauce. Then I switched to cabbage and leek pancakes (like this, but I've actually figured a much better way of doing it). I've also made pasta with tomato/bell pepper sauce, and well as tomato/bell pepper salad.

What about New York? Well, I took some pictures!

We're supposed to eat turkey or something

We celebrated this year's Thanksgiving with our wonderful friends the M family. Yesterday's dinner menu included:

• Roast Turkey (Traditions must be observed)
• Catherine M's Chestnut Stuffing 
• Green beens with lemon
• My dad's Pommes Anna
• My brother's Ginger Cranberry Sauce
• Cornbread
• Hazelnut and Fuyu Persimmon Salad
• Pumpkin Pie
• Sara M's Maple Pots de Crème

I read Bon Appetit Magazine, and in their Thanksgiving issue this year they found issue with using stuffing as stuffing because it prevents the bird from cooking or some other nonsense. They even decided to call their stuffing recipes "dressing" to discourage putting them inside turkeys. This name change doesn't even make any sense because, at least in my experience, dressing is a flavorful sauce. I do not believe that bread mixed with various vegetables/meats fall in that category.
In any case, if your stuffing is hot when you put it in the turkey, it isn't going to prevent the turkey from cooking, and the turkey juices will make the stuffing that much better.

Enough ranting. For the potatoes, my dad found a recipe in that same Bon Appetit magazine for "Mini Herbed Pommes Anna" , which are basically cakes of potato slices layered with butter and herbs. This recipe turned out delicious, and it can be easily made into advance, so I recommend it to anyone who needs a showstopper side.

My brother is the family cranberry expert, and he found a recipe for ginger-lemon cranberry sauce. The sauce came out strong and savory, not as sweet as more classic recipes. The ginger complemented the the rich gravy quite well. 

I made the Hazelnut/Persimmon salad and the pumpkin pie. For the salad, I first toasted some hazelnuts in the oven at 400F for 10-15 minutes (stirring them often). According to Catherine M's instructions, we peeled the hazelnuts by rubbing them in a dish towel.

We then sliced up some fuyu persimmons (the ones with rounded bottoms: they're not astringent) into a cider vinegar-olive oil-mustard-black pepper vinaigrette and added some mixed greens and arugula. The sweetness of the persimmon was nicely complemented by the tartness of the vinegar and the bitterness of the arugula.

For the pumpkin pie, I used Cook's Illustrated recipe, which can be found here http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/11/cooks-illustrated-pumpkin-pie-recipe.html . I really like this recipe because it combines canned pumpkin with fresh sweet potato to give a complex flavor. Compared to the pumpkin pie from the dining hall I had eaten last week, this pie tasted full and complete.

A study on Ginger and Saffron

My family recently went to the "molecular" restaurant Beaumé, and one dish there that particularly interested me was the turbot with turmeric cream, chanterelles, and pickled kohlrabi. Beaumé cooked the turbot "sous-vide" and placed it in the bright yellow sauce. The pickled kohlrabi added a nice bright touch to the soft dish.

Beaumé's turbot

Inspired by this dish and by the saffron my family received as a gift, I decided to make a variation on this recipe. I was curious about the combination of ginger and saffron, so I put together a menu using both spices.

The Menu:

• Cod poached in ginger, kefir lime leaves, and lemongrass
• Colorful vegetables in dashi and ginger broth
• Saffron rice pilaf
• Saffron and Ginger bechamel

The cod and vegetables turned out well. For the vegetables, I found a bundle of heirloom carrots (purple, red, and yellow) to which I added leeks and celery. I boiled some water with dashi granules, ginger, lemon grass, and kefir limes leaves to make a flavored broth for both the vegetables and fish, and I added more ginger to the vegetables as they cooked. 

The carrots

The vegetables

The rice did not go as smoothly. I bloomed the saffron in boiling water to try to get the flavor and color out of it, but the rice did not end up becoming yellow. My mother says that I should have have ground up the saffron with a mortar before blooming it. Well, now I know! And even though the rice was not yellow, it still tasted of saffron.
To make the pilaf, I sautéed some leeks in a tbsp of butter, then added the riced and sautéed it for a couple minutes as well. I made a broth of saffron juice (saffron + boiling water + kefir lime leaf + time) and a cube of vegetable bouillon. Per traditional pilaf method, I added enough broth to cover the rice, brought it to a simmer, and then stirred/added more broth as needed until the rice cooked through.

The Bechamel was tricky. I heated some milk with saffron and ginger to get flavor. In a saucepan I cooked 1 tbsp flour in 1 tbsp melted butter for a couple minutes and then added the milk a little bit at a time, stirring well after each addition, until the sauce was the desired thickness. Because I don't have much experience, my sauce ended up a bit curdled, so I strained it to remove the bits. Like for the rice, the sauce was not yellow because I had not ground the saffron before infusing the milk.

To replace the kohlrabi, I made some pickled ginger (this recipe, it was a bit too salty)

And here is the final plate.

Bento #1: Hoisin salmon, spinach, carrot kinpira, and sushi rice

Sooo I started my job this week, but my job does not have a physical location, so I work whereever I want to. Today I decided to work at the library, so I made myself a bento lunch. I had been wanting to try making bento for a while (I was especially inspired by justbento.com; I even bought her cookbook!)
In today's bento I put some leftover hoisin glazed salmon and vietnamese spinach that I had frozen last week. I also had about 3/4 cup of "sushi rice" (read more to learn why I put quotations there) and some carrot kinpira, blanched bean sprouts, and "pickled" cucumber from the Just Bento cookbook. I had prepared the carrots and bean sprouts last friday, and they were fine today, although not as delicious as they were fresh on Friday. Especially the carrots, those were really darn good. The salmon was a tad dry, but the spinach was good.

The rice, however, kinda failed. It was mushy and the flavor ratio was off. I think one issue is that I put too much water in the rice cooker because I was trying to cook only half a cup of rice but the rice cooker does not have half cup markings. I also was not sure how much vinegar mixture to put into the rice. Well, with practice I'll get the hang of it.

As a sidenote: this recipe looks delicious.

Spring Break 2: Bread-y stuff

So on Thursday I pulled out my beloved The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart and made some bread. I made a caprese-inspired loaf by putting fresh mozzarella, sundried tomatoes, and basil in Challah dough (I'm sure this is terribly sacrilegious) and pizza.

For the Caprese Bread I made the challah dough per the instructions of Peter Reinhart. To incorporate the filling into the dough, I stretched out the dough like pizza, placed the filling on top, and rolled it up like a log. 

And then I split it into 3 and braided it!

I also made pizza dough (also from Reinhart's book) that I rested in the refrigerator overnight. As toppings for the pizza, I roasted some brussels sprouts and broccolini in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, then I turned the oven down to 330 for another 10-20 minutes. For sauce, I blended some canned diced tomatoes and cooked them with onions, garlic, and oregano.

I made 3 pizzas, one with brussels sprouts, broccolini and caramelized onions (not pictured), one with broccolini, copa, and caramelized onions (first), and, at my dad's suggestion, one with chorizo, brussels sprouts, roasted garlic, and an egg in the center (second). The chorizo one was the family favorite!

 

 And on Pi day (3/14) I visited my friend and we made pie!!! (We did not have enough crust dough to make a complete top crust, so we put a circle on top instead! It is off center on purpose.)

Spring Break 1: Roasted Cauliflower with Indian Style BBQ sauce

Today is the last day of Spring Break. And apparently to me, spring break means time to make delicious foods! (And read A Dance with Dragons)

I started out the break relatively simple: Roasted Cauliflower with Indian style BBQ sauce (based off of this recipe.)

  

Cauliflower is really pretty.

  

Roasted cauliflower is really tasty.

I thought the recipe's ingredients for the bbq sauce had way too much ketchup, so I just made something up:
I heated together

• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1 tsp thai red curry paste
• 1 tsp tamarind paste
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp ground cumin

in some oil to bring out their flavors. Then I added

• 1/4 ketchup
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp bbq sauce.

 If I had ginger, I would have added it.

 

Roasted cauliflower with this sauce is even tastier.

According to Epicurious, someone called roasted cauliflower "veggie candy." I wholeheartedly agree, I could eat this stuff all day.

Manresa (Los Gatos, CA)

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.