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.

Backpacking food

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)

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

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.