Figs and Tarragon

Fig walnut bread

2008-08-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Today, I saw a basket of figs at the farmer's market, so I made pizza and a fig walnut bread with the figs.

I love love love figs. (But I suppose you knew that from the title of this blog.) Their season is so fleeting, it makes me want to covet them even more when they are around.

I found the fig bread recipe in the Mercury News. I saw it last year when fig season was headed out, so filed the recipe for "later" and just came across it yesterday when I was looking for another recipe. Ah, serendipity. . .

This is the recipe. As is my usual habit, I didn't follow the recipe to a T.
*There is absolutely no reason you need 1.5 cups of sugar. I used 1/2 cup of snob brown sugar, and it is plenty.
*I cut the oil in half and used yogurt as the rest of the filler. It seemed to work fine.
*I freshly grated nutmeg and some of the cinnamon.
*I also added freshly ground ginger--but evidently, not enough, since I can barely taste it.
*Not sure if I was supposed to do this, but I folded in the sherry with the batter. It gives the figs a nice brandied flavor.

It's quite good. A bit crumbly (so no pics, alas), but yummy.

My week of salads

2008-03-11T22:48:00.000-07:00

1. Raw kale Caesar salad (recipe and post forthcoming):
2. Salad made with fresh butter lettuce from TL's garden:
I really wanted to make this salad with pear, but I didn't have any handy, so I made it with apples instead, which were a respectable substitute. I made it a few days later with pear and the combination was bliss. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture (or I did, but forgot to put the memory card in the camera, and uploading these photos entails more work than I care for right now), but the perfect butter lettuce salad consists of:
-butter lettuce (preferably from TL's garden, but if you are not TL or someone who lives upstairs from TL, then regular butter lettuce will do. Baby butter lettuce tastes better.) washed and roughly torn
-shaved bits of Parmesan cheese
-a ripe pear (a quarter or however much you want, thinly sliced into wedges)
-freshly and coarsely ground black pepper that you grind yourself
-a drizzle of very good olive oil

The sharpness of the Parmesan and the bite of the ground pepper complement the butteriness of the pear and lettuce really well.

You can add more things if you want, but you really don't need anything else.

My cashew addiction

2008-03-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

I'm in trouble. It's not as if cashews aren't already addicting enough. I try not to keep them around the house, because I can eat gobfuls in one sitting if I'm not carefully monitoring my cashew intake. There are plenty of other nuts and seeds with far more nutritive value that I can consume. (Though cashews do provide you with lots of copper.) So I keep my cashews far out of reach in my cupboard. Still, it's hard to resist the occasional cashew or two. Or three. Or twenty.

And this is with plain old boring raw cashews.

So take a plain old boring cashew and add just two flavor elements:
1. roasting it to bring out its nuttiness
2. sauteing it with a little bit of melted butter and curry leaves

Now you have cashew-turned-crack. It's really that addicting, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whether you think this is a good thing. I made a cup of this a few weeks ago, and I ate all of it in one weekend. I mean, these are things you're only supposed to eat maybe dozens at a time or so. (I give myself a little bit more leeway with serving sizes since I mostly don't eat meat, so this is one way to up my protein intake.) And oh dear. . .the recipe says it makes enough for six.

The curry leaves give it a wonderful indescribable smoky aroma. Of course, roasting anything brings out its flavor. (Though I don't like buying already-roasted cashews, b/c for some reason, the store-roasted ones sometimes taste rancid. I'm strange like that.)

I found the recipe in the SF Chronicle. I hope this link still works. It's really a heavenly combo. If I were a beer-drinking type, I think it would go splendidly with beer.

Paella!

2008-03-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

I made paella with the pan that Celadon gave me. She also gave me a book with a zillion recipes, so I had trouble deciding from all the yummy-sounding recipes, but I finally decided on a shrimp paella. I had a little trouble keeping the pan from browning, but I think it's because it's my first time using it. It is supposed to get better with use and repeated seasoning.

Since there were about 4 shrimp paella recipes, I borrowed a little bit from all 4 recipes. I also added sun-dried tomatoes, since I was out of broth and sun-dried tomatoes make everything taste better. Mmmm.

Well, when all was said and done, I had about 6 servings of paella. I still need to work on my paella-making technique, b/c while it was pretty good for a first try, the shrimp came out kindof dry, despite my adding it at the last minute possible, and some of the rice came out al dente, which is fine if it were pasta, but I don't think rice is one of these things that is supposed to be al dente. I also think it would've been much improved by using a really good fish broth, which I didn't have.

A good homemade fish broth requires me to deal with fish carcasses, and I'm not sure if I want to deal with a decapitated fish head. Thus, I used veggie broth+sun-dried tomatoes instead, which didn't quite do the trick.

I think that next time, I'm going to make this at someone's house so I can share the fruits of my labor!

A sophisticated butter cookie

2008-02-18T00:30:00.000-08:00

Orangette. How do I love thee? Let me count thy ways.

This blog has been the source of endless food inspirations. I mean, I don't even like butter cookies all that much, and yet, I have been fantasizing about these buckwheat butter cookies for months. Part of the appeal was the novelty factor. Another part of it was the intrigue factor: buckwheat with nibs? Hmm. I wonder how that will taste? But mostly, I was drawn to this recipe b/c I really like both buckwheat and nibs. I just never had them together, and what better excuse than in a little cookie?

It took me a while to find nibs, but I found some last week at Whole Foods and then had the perfect excuse to make these this weekend.

This is a very sophisticated and understated cookie. The buckwheat gives it that perfumey earthiness and really complements the bitterness of the nibs. The bitterness, the grainy texture and the buttery-ness all round each out quite nicely. I couldn't stop eating these.

At first glance, they kind of look like they can be mistook for stiff chocolate chip cookies.
But then you bite in expecting to taste chocolate and the flavors are much more intense, yet subtle. I love the burst of not-quite-chocolate flavor from the nibs. I am in cookie bliss. . ..

Barley risotto

2008-02-17T23:56:00.001-08:00

Ah, asparagus, the harbinger of spring.

In graduate school, my then-roommate and I once kept a picture of asparagus in our living room. Its green caps symbolized the advent of spring.

Well, there hasn't been an asparagus sighting at the farmer's market quite yet, but yesterday, I saw a bunch of asparagus for $1.99 per pound at the grocery store, and while I generally don't like buying imported versions of any veggies that are otherwise available in California (e.g. buying garlic from China at a grocery store, when I live 50 miles from the garlic capital of the world? Come on.), I couldn't resist the asparagus. At $1.99 per pound, organic and buying local be damned.

I had a Mark Bittman recipe for a turkey barley risotto that I had been meaning to try, but needed a good substitute for the turkey and the asparagus delivered.

I also had green garlic (another herald of spring), so I modified Bittman's recipe and concocted a green garlic asparagus risotto with sundried tomatoes. I was a bit skeptical of the barley as rice thing, but the result turned out quite well.
Plus, unlike regular risotto, there is none of this constant monitoring of rice and adding of broth. In this risotto version, you just pour in the liquid all at once and are done with it. It's quite low-maintenance that way, but with satisfying results. The barley imparts a nice "crunchy" texture. Not "cookie" crunchy, but an earthy texture that has a pleasant mouth-feel. I think I might even prefer it to regular risotto. Next time, I need to cook the asparagus a bit longer, but otherwise, I was impressed with the results.

More lentils

2008-02-10T23:30:00.000-08:00

I have been on a lentil kick lately. I made a lentil pilaf, then a lentil soup a few weeks ago, and now this past week, I tried spiced lentils. This SF Chronicle recipe (scroll down to the very bottom till you get to "lentil and vegetable stew (Dhansaak)") piqued my interest. This recipe calls for hand-grinding a zillion spices, then making an herb paste. I cut the recipe in half, but kept the proportions of the herb paste and spices, figuring that more flavor couldn't hurt.

Since I don't have a food processor or spice grinder, I pounded and ground each of the 9 herbs (except the cinnamon stick, which I grated) with a mortar and pestle. Had I realized that I would have to grind my own herbs, perhaps I may have never tried this recipe, but then I would've missed out.

I don't think I'd make this on a weeknight, but the grinding of the herbs was well worth the effort. The melange of freshly ground spices really added oomph to an otherwise comforting but frumpy lentil dish.
(And now, thanks to fabulous photo-taking tips from my downstairs neighbor, I can actually take close-up pictures that make any dish look quite appealing. )

I lived on this dish for almost an entire week.

Gluttony at A16

2008-02-05T16:03:00.000-08:00

I've been away for a while, but it doesn't mean I haven't been skipping out on food gluttony. I just have been remiss about updating this site.

Several weekends ago, Celadon, M and I went to the city and caught the Marie Antoinette exhibit at the Legion of Honor. The exhibit was interesting, less for the displays and more for the historical and biographical background that it presented of the queen. The weather was lovely, if a tad brisk. After taking a few pictures of the clouds as the sun set, we headed to A16. We had been wanting to try this place for its burrata cheese (and in my case, pizza) for a while.

For appetizers, we ordered the prosciutto sampler and burrata cheese.
Even I, who theoretically don't eat meat, got excited at the slabs of prosciutto. The Burrata cheese is the white stuff on the plate on the right. It is a very creamy, rich version of mozzarella cheese. There were three different kinds of prosciutto. I don't remember which kind I liked best, but it was the darkest one pictured above.

M and I ordered pizza--margherita for him;

mushroom for me. while Celadon ordered the chestnut pasta.
Everything was delish, though by the time I started on my main course, I unfortunatelyhad a bad stomach ache. My pizza had that wood oven-fired distinctive smoky charred taste that I really like. I did not like it quite as much as the pizzas they have at Pizzaiolo, but this was a pretty mean pizza. (In fact, it tasted even better the next day.)

Overall, we were very happy with this restaurant. The service was very attentive without being overbearing. The food was excellent, and the ambience was quite good.

I don't believe in silly scales, but if I were to rate it on a 1 to 10 scale, I'd give it an 8.

Lentil soup and upma: my comfort foods during wet weather

2008-01-23T21:51:00.000-08:00

Rain rain rain. Nonstop.
All day, all week, unrelenting.
I want it to END. Now.

During the torrential rains, I saw an intriguing recipe for a tomato-based lentil soup in the NYT that I decided to try. Nothing lifts your spirits during cold, damp weather like a nice bowl of hearty soup. I followed the recipe as written, except that I realized that I didn't have cumin, lemon or tomato paste, so used another spice and used tomato sauce instead of tomato paste. (Note to self: if you're trying an unusual version of a recipe, make sure you have all of the ingredients before starting recipe, instead of assuming that you have everything, simply because "they're staples". Duh.)

I seem to be eternally recipe-adherence-challenged. However, unlike bread, soup is much more forgiving.

The result was quite satisfying. Some of the lentils dissolved, making the soup heartier and more robust.
I liked the outcome, though as you can see from this picture, the soup--the hue, the consistency--looks nothing like the picture in the NYT.

The other comfort food I made along with the soup was upma--a savory cream of wheat with onions and peas and seasoned with various spices. I got the recipe from Patita a while back, and it has since become a regular part of my repertoire. It is soooooooooooooo easy to make and is yummy. It also gives me a good dose of iron to boot, which is a big plus, since I don't eat meat (unless it's prosciutto). I usually make a batch of upma and then eat it over the course of a week. It is good either cold or hot, which makes it a very versatile portable food item. It is the yellow thing in a bowl pictured above. Here is a closer look at it:
The brown flecks are udid dal. The dark green things are curry leaves, which I only recently have discovered (thanks to Patitia), but they have quickly risen to the status of "indispensable herb"; I keep some stored in my freezer for "emergency" uses. In addition to being useful in things like this and other Indian curries, it adds a lovely smoky flavor to toasted cashews.

So now that I have enough food to feed 10, I say let the rains come.
I'm now armed and ready for thee.

Bread-baking, part trois

2008-01-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

Winter is full-on here in Mountain View, and it has nothing to do with the storms that have been pounding us this past weekend. Here, the tell-tale sign that winter has arrived is that several of us at any given moment are baking bread-- or attempting to.

My bread-baking frequency is usually directly correlated to how much choir music I have to study; the 10-20 minutes of kneading time is a great time to study music. It makes me feel productive to both be able to bake bread and learn my music at the same time.

However, lately, I've been into trying no-knead bread. Version one was a 3-ingredient beer bread that was easy as pie. Version two was my attempt at combining Mark Bittman's no-knead bread recipe and another more recent version featured in the NYT. My brilliant idea to "average" the two recipes was my attempt to compensate for things like the lack of dutch oven and lack of measuring cup that measures to the one-eight of a cup (not to mention lack of apartment that stays 70 degrees for 18 hours straight). It turns out that when it comes to baking bread or things that involve exact measurements, averaging two recipes that call for totally different quantities of things doesn't really work.

Inspired by my downstairs neighbor's superior bread outcome, this time I set out to make the Cook's Illustrated version, "No-Knead Bread 2.0", vowing to follow directions. I tried the variation that called for Parmesan cheese, rosemary, and olives.

Due to my apartment's lack of proper insulation, I think it was too cold for the bread to properly rise. Here it is pre-baking:
And after it came out of the oven:
It came out a lot better than the last time. Not quite Tartine Bakery, but the crust actually came out resembling pictures in the Cook's Illustrated magazine this time.
I'm sure the addition of Parmesan cheese and rosemary and olives helped as well. As for the interior. . . taste-wise, I like it, but it is supposed to look more like this. Mine did not have nearly as many air holes: Still, this is an improvement from the last time. Then again, last time, I did not follow any directions, so perhaps this is nothing to write home about. :)

Well, air holes or not, it will be the perfect complement to the tortilla soup I have brewing on the stove as I write this.

New Year's feast!

2008-01-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

New Year’s is not the same without some おせち．This year, I did not go to Japan for the holidays, so unfortunately, I missed out on my family's annual cookfest and eatfest tradition.
This was our spread from Oshogatsu 2005:
And from 2006:
And 2007:
Thus, between two New Year's Eve parties, I decided to make a few dishes and then find someone help me eat it. I did not make 10 things like my parents usually do; I made 3 or 4 items: 紅白なます大根 from a cookbook recipe that looked intriguing 、たたきごぼう、春菊のおひたし、and of course, 雑煮． Here are some pictures from Oshogatsu 2008:
The green stuff is the 春菊のおひたし(I don't know the translation in English); the middle orange-ish dish is the 紅白なます大根 (daikon and carrots braised with ground sesame seeds) and the one in the green dish is my favorite: burdock root! As popular as Japanese food is around here, I wasn't sure who would be a willing guinea pig to try this stuff; these are my friends who were gracious guinea pigs. :)
So in my own way, I was able to participate in my own oshogatsu feast. I did not have 年越しそばthough.

un-brittle

2007-12-27T12:53:00.000-08:00

Rather than make my usual holiday fare, I decided to take a stab at making brittle this year. I saw a recipe for walnut brittle in Cooking Light that looked intriguing. Plus, I remembered my former H.S. bio teacher talking about making brittle and how it was an annual tradition for his family and how it was a highly coveted item. It also seemed far less time-consuming than baking cookies and making rum balls.

The only problem with the recipe was that it calls for a cup of corn syrup, and in addition to my goldilocks method of baking, I also employ the "one percent" doctrine when it comes to potential problem ingredients, which is not to be confused with Cheney's one percent doctrine: if there is a one-percent possibility that I might want a person who has an allergy to a particular ingredient to try my finished product, and there is an easy viable substitute to problematic ingredient, then I use the substitute.

I have one friend who is allergic to corn. That coupled with my own weird conceptions of a hierarchy of the virtues of different sweeteners (Brown sugar>regular sugar> corn syrup>HFCS), I was happy to substitute another sweetener for corn syrup.

The problem was in the science. It turns out that corn syrup has a useful purpose in baking. The longer chains of glucose molecules present in corn syrup disrupt the motion of the molecules thereby slowing down the crystallization process. Corn syrup, according to Harold McGee's wonderful On Food and Cooking, is also slightly acidic, so when you add baking soda (NaH₂CO₃) at the end, you get a nice neutralizing reaction that produces carbon dioxide bubbles and gives brittle that characteristic hollow bubbled consistency. The alkaline properties of baking soda also make it useful for speeding up the browning process.

Is it possible to make brittle with just sugar? I posted this query on my favorite food board and promptly got answers. Yes, it was, with careful temperature monitoring and a few modifications.

Thus I tried the all-sugar method with thermometer in hand: brittle batch #1 was toasted hazelnut brittle. The first thing I discovered was that my thermometer is not a candy thermometer, and therefore, doesn't register temperatures nearly high enough to be useful.

So long for meticulous temperature measuring. I was on my own now. So I dumped the sugar and water into a pan and waited.

At some point, the sugar began to look murky. The crystallization had begun. Being the novice candy-maker that I am, I then started stirring with a metal spoon in the hopes of retarding this process, but it kept getting worse. It didn't have the characteristic light-browned hue of brittle yet, but since it was on the brink of crystalizing, I poured in the butter, nuts, cream of tartar and then spread it out on a pan.

Batch #1 was a disaster, but I was loathe to waste a whole thing of hazelnuts. Thus once it cooled and hardened and looked like an opaque whitish mess, I stuck it in the oven, which didn't exactly turn it into brittle, but helped salvage my product. Instead of the characteristic opaque hue of brittle, "brittle" #1 was translucent, but with the requisite browned hues.

I posted more queries on the food board, read up on the science of crystallization and why you absolutely do not want to stir the sugar (the agitation increases the bumping motion of the sugar molecules and helps the crystallization process.) and if you must, then why you absolutely do not want to use a metal spoon (the lowered temperatures caused by the metal spoon form pockets of super-saturated sugar areas, thereby potentially initiating a crystallization process.) to do the stirring that you are not supposed to do in the first place.

Thus, with brittle #2 (walnut brittle), I vowed not to stir. But again, despite my diligent non-stirring, the crystals started to form again. At one point, the entire pot was one white opaque mass.

However, this time, instead of stopping, I waited. And waited.

Eventually, the crystals melted and the sugar became brown and liquidy again. The consistency of brittle #2 turned out to be the same as #1. So some kind of carmelized sugar glass candy with nuts, but a far cry from brittle.

Still, it was edible, so I decided to give it to people anyway and told them it was "not brittle".

I think next year, I will stick with my usual holiday fare and give people rum balls.

A tale of two breads

2007-12-26T19:29:00.000-08:00

This is the story of two breads-- or more precisely, the bread-bakers, and their bread-baking outcomes.

Both aspired to make Mark Bittman's famous no-knead bread.

Baker 1 followed Bittman's recipe to a T.

Baker 2 more or less followed Bittman's recipe to a T.

Well, except that she increased the amount of yeast to 1 tsp, b/c she read in a more recent version of the no-knead recipe, that the scant amount of yeast means a long rising time and the need for a dutch oven to contain its amorphous shape. Baker 2 doesn't have a dutch oven. She also didn't have an apartment that would stay at 70 degrees for 20 hours straight, so she attempted to get around this by increasing the yeast content. After all, recipe #2 calls for a tablespoon of yeast.

She also didn't add 1 5/8 cups of water, because she doesn't have a measuring cup that measures down to the eighth of a cup, so she averaged the two water quantities given in the two recipes.

She also used all whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose bread flour, because she hasn't baked white bread in years.

And mixed in some smoked mozzarella and radicchio, because it needed to be used up.

Ok, so baker 2 didn't adhere to Bittman's recipe at all, except maybe the salt content. (Baker 2 has Baking ADD and often employs the "goldilocks" method of following recipes, which is to say, if there are two recipes for the exact same thing, instead of adhering to one, she will average the two recipes.)

At the end of the rising period, the two bakers put their breads in the oven. Baker 1 followed Bittman's directions and put hers in a pot with a lid. Baker 2 followed the other recipe's directions and baked on a pizza stone.

Baker 2's bread came out fine, but with a funny crust. It was good and edible enough, but nothing to wow over. The consistency was very dense.

Baker 1's bread came out looking like artisan bread-- with a hearty crust, flecked with just the right amount of flour and with a beautiful golden crust. This bread could've been sold at a bakery.

Baker 2 is yours truly. Baker 1 is my downstairs neighbor.

When it comes to baking, I suppose it pays to follow directions.

"Three" Ingredient Recipes Part II--I Heart Chowhound

2007-12-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

For someone as obsessed with food as I am, Chowhound is a wonderful resource. I've asked several questions on the board, and 98 percent of the time, I've gotten an answer. Then there are the times I find a fabulous idea for a simple recipe. Like the "3 ingredient" beer recipe that someone put up just yesterday. I haven't had a whole lot of time to bake, with choir and finals and everything else going on, but here was a perfect way to get rid of my Guinness beer that I've had in my fridge for 8+ months. Plus, this bread required no kneading to boot. Thus, while eating dinner, I baked this bread. I tweaked it a little by adding rosemary and grated gruyere cheese, and using half whole wheat flour. I just pulled it out of the oven 10 minutes ago and had it with the wonderfully yummy pumpkin seed butter that Patita gave me. YUM.

Someone on the board called it 3-2-1 bread:
3 cups self-rising flour
2 TBSP sugar
1 12 oz. bottle of beer

If you use regular flour, you add 3 tsp of baking powder and 1.5 tsp NaCl to help it rise.
You bake in a 375 degree oven for 1 hour.

Be forewarned-- it does have that distinct beer taste, but the rosemary, cheese and the sugar abated it a bit or complemented it nicely. It goes splendidly well with this pumpkin seed butter, though, and would make a grand side to a hearty soup.

It was my first try, so I need to do some tweaks (the crust came out too dry/hard, for example), before I can bring it to a party and wow people with it, but 3-ingredient recipes--even if the "three" is really a "five"--are a godsend around this time of year.

It frees up time for me to blog and extol the virtues of such recipes, for example. :)

Brussels sprout pasta

2007-12-07T21:12:00.001-08:00

My friend sent me a recipe for a brussels sprouts pasta dish that called for 3 ingredients: brussels sprouts, fettuccine, and pine nuts. Ok, it calls for butter and olive oil, too, but I don't count those as ingredients. She raved about this recipe so much (plus the fact that it called for just 3 items), that I had to try it.

Oh my gosh. It was sooooooo simple and delicious. If you don't have a food processor, you will spend a bit of time thinly slicing the brussels sprouts, but after that, the recipe doesn't take long. You want to have the water boiling before you start sauteeing the brussels sprouts, b/c they will cook very quickly, and you don't want to get them to turn brown. You basically saute the brussels sprouts in some fat (1/2 butter and 1/2 olive oil), which alone is quite good, but then you mix this in w/ pasta and toasted pine nuts. I sprinkled Pecorino cheese on top, and voila.

It says it makes 4 servings, but it was so good, I probably ate 2 servings worth. It's not as good the day after, so this is the perfect dish to invite yourself over to other people's places and cook for them.

Thanks to Celadon for helping me rediscover brussels sprouts.

Killing the last vestiges of summer

2007-10-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I finally killed my tomato plant. I have been in denial for the past month, but bidding adieu to my tomato plant is my way of finally admitting that fall is here. For a while, I was refusing to buy squashes and apples in protest and denial of summer going away, but now that tomatoes are starting to taste like cardboard, and figs, peaches, and nectarines--quintessential summer fruits of yore--no longer taste like they should, the boycott was getting a bit silly. Besides, I couldn't resist the butternut and delicatas any longer. Thus, after I got back from the farmer's market with all this fall produce, I reluctantly dug up my tomato plant. Actually, I hadn't meant to kill it off, really. But the plant was getting unwieldy and tall, so it started out with just a pruning. Then I got carried away and eventually ended up just digging up the entire plant.

I also made what is probably the last batch of pesto with the remnants of my basil plant, whose leaves are turning yellow and getting tougher. Plus, what's the point of having basil w/o any tomatoes?

Now I have to wait another year for juicy yummy tomatoes. . ..

How sad.

Un-soy milk

2007-09-29T22:42:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how some words are so onomatopoeic that one can instantly figure out what a word means upon first encounter. Take "meh" for example. The word just exudes its definition, the apathy, the "ugh"ness, the negativity.

It is the perfect word to describe how I feel about all soy milk, organic, fru fru, fresh, sugared, flavored or otherwise, that I have tried in this country. In fact, how dare it call itself soy milk. Thanks to it, many of my friends think soy milk is "nasty". That's because they've only had white people soy milk. (Pardon my un-PC ness.)

For real soy milk, they need to go to Asia, where it is unadulturated and has no remote resemlance to the stuff that masquerades as soy milk.

First, real soy milk does not have that nasty annoying chalky taste that is so pervasive in soy milks sold in stores here.

Real soy milk doesn't have that disgusting aftertaste.

Real soy milk doesn't come in cartons whose shelf life is over a year.

The best soy milk I've ever had was in a department store right across the street from where Verdant Broccoli lived, in Beijing. In fact, I got so hooked on it, that I had it at least once a day the whole time I was there.

Now, as I sit here drinking its vastly inferior cousin sold in the U.S., I yearn for more of that real soy milk I had while I was in Beijing.

This soy milk was ever so slightly greenish in hue. Not surprising, since soy milk comes from soybeans.
It had no chalky aftertaste. It had no added sugar, yet had a tinge of natural sweetness. It tasted like lightly perfumed pureed soybeans.

How I wish I could return to Beijing for more of that good stuff.

Super yummy sauce ala BJ

2007-09-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

With all of the postings about tomatoes (here and here) of late, I wonder if I shouldn't change the name of this blog to "tomato musings". . ..

I went over lala and bj's for a dinner and movie night the other day. BJ concocted this really good tomato-y ricotta sauce. I admire people who can just stare at things in their cupboards and fridge and invent fabulous dishes out of thin air. I cannot do such a thing. I am a follower-- perhaps a modifier and a tweaker, but never an original.

Let's see. Let me see if I can describe what she said she did. She put sun-dried tomatoes (the oil-packed kind) and tomatoes in a food processor, mixed it with ricotta cheese, some Parmesan cheese, half and half, seasoned it with basil, and let it simmer on a stove top. To this she added tiny diced up bits of firm tofu (pre-sauteed, before adding it to sauce).

In a combo that I would've never thought of partnering, Italian meets Asian. And splendidly so.

This was served over pearl barley. YUM. It reminded me a bit of korma sauce or butter chicken sauce, with the Indian cheese.

Tomato Paella

2007-09-23T20:43:00.000-07:00

Yes yes, I know. I've been remiss about posting anything for a while. . .. However, sometimes the best time to blog is when you've had a blog-worthy meal that truly wowed you, as I did tonight. Tonight, I tried a tomato paella recipe that I saw in the 5 September edition of the NYT. A Mark Bittman recipe, which is usually very simple, but sometimes hit or miss, in terms of flavors. Well, this one was right on. I think because it called for saffron and smoked paprika and roasted tomatoes, which I believe will make anything taste very good, but I was truly wowed by the robust flavors, and even better still, the recipe was very easy to boot.

One thing I like about recipes in the NYT is that the author/cook explains the recipe a little and then presents the recipe, which puts the recipe in some sort of tangible context for me.

In his article, Bittman started with the premise that normal paellas are time-consuming to make. Indeed, this is why I hardly make them. I did make a seafood paella earlier this year. But paellas usually end up being once- or twice-a-year things for me, for precisely this reason. (It also usually makes about 8-10 servings, which means I need help eating it.)

Bittman promised a very simple recipe in his tomato paella recipe. It almost being the end of tomato season, today (the first day of autumn) was the perfect day to bid summer farewell and bring in the fall season with a tomato paella recipe.

I used brown rice instead of white rice, but the recipe worked beautifully. I cooked it slightly longer on the stovetop before putting it in the oven to account for the brown rice.

The recipe calls for smoked paprika and saffron, both of which Bittman says are "optional", but in my unhumble biased opinion, I feel that this is hogwash. The whole reason this paella tastes so good is because of the smoked paprika and saffron. I cannot imagine how this would taste without these two key ingredients, especially the smoked paprika. Bittman says that regular paprika is a fine substitute, and that may very well be the case, but the smoky flavor was what I think made such a strong impression in my mind (and taste buds).

How sad that I've only discovered this recipe just as tomatoes are on the wane. . ..

Tomatoes for dessert

2007-09-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

I saw an intriguing recipe for a tomato-based dessert in the SF Chronicle the other day. I have to admit, I was a tad skeptical, but given that I conveniently had a surfeit of sungolds, some mascarpone cream and some cream cheese left over from my mango cheesecake experiment, I decided to give this recipe a try. However, I don't like making dessert just for myself, so I invited one of my college friends over to be a guinea pig. From salad to main dish to dessert, it ended up being an all-tomato affair. But back to this dessert.

I had to halve the recipe, since the original recipe made 10 servings.

The first thing I liked about this recipe is that I didn't have to modify the sugar content much. The custard part has a mere 1/6 cup of sugar, which I may have reduced slightly, but turned out to be not cloyingly sweet and nicely offset by the slight acidity of the lemon. As for the tomato compote part, this called for less than 1/2 cup of sugar, which after you add the lemon peels, raisins, and tomatoes, ended up being the right amount. If you have a sweet tooth, you might even add more.

The result was a pleasant surprise, to which none of the pictures I took can do justice:
The budino is an Italian steamed custard. It almost tastes like a very light, subtle cheesecake. This one had a light citrus flavor from the grated orange and lemon peels that the recipe called for. It tasted pretty good unaccompanied. However, the tart/sweet tomato compote enhanced and really brought out the latent citrus flavors. The tomato in dessert thing actually worked really well. The compote is essentially candied lemon peel w/ carmelized cherry tomatoes. The one modification I made was to use really good demerra brown sugar, which imparted a rich toffee-like taste. The slicing and roasting of tomatoes was a bit of a hassle, but without the roasting/carmelizing, the compote would not have tasted the same.

All in all, I was pleased with the results. My friend, who is not much of a dessert-eater, even seemed to like it enough to finish his portion.

I am now a tomato-dessert convert.

Mango Cheesecake

2007-08-22T22:31:00.000-07:00

For the longest time, I've had a recipe for mango cheesecake sandwiched between one of my recipe scrapbook pages. I'm not overly crazy about cheesecake (unless my mom makes it; she has a really good non-heavy cheesecake recipe), but the bright yellow color caught my eye. I thus clipped the recipe and added it to my ever-growing pile of to-try-someday-when-the-inspiration-hits recipes.

Pretty though the yellow hue may be, it sat in my recipe pile for a few years for a variety of reasons.
First, the recipe is a Nigella Lawson recipe from the NYT, which typically means that the recipe is very involved. (It was. More on this later.)

Second, her recipes typically call for a lot of butter and sugar (It did.), and not that there's anything wrong with that, but to assuage my guilty conscience, it often means modifying her recipes, which takes a few attempts. I'm not sure I like cheesecake that much to want to try multiple renditions before I declare it edible.

Third, as I mentioned, I'm not overly crazy about cheesecake. Thus, I can't just make this when I'm having people over. I need a party or something to bring it to, so I don't have too many leftovers. (Cheesecake also doesn't freeze well.)

But on this weekend was hot, and I was going to a barbecue birthday celebration in Berkeley, and when I flipped through my recipe pile in search of inspiration, the brilliantly yellow-hued cheesecake jumped out at me. Well, not literally, but still, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try this dessert.

My first mistake was grossly underestimating the amount of cream cheese I needed. I don't really like cream cheese much, so I hardly ever buy it, unless a recipe calls for it. The recipe calls for 1.5 pounds of cream cheese. I thought one package of cream cheese was one pound, so I bought two, thinking I'd have half a container left over. Wrong. I ended up needing another package. That is three packages of cream cheese. More cream cheese than I've bought in the past ten years, mind you. Perhaps this was reason number 4 for not having tried this recipe before.

The graham cracker crust called for a stick of butter. I looked at the 3 packages of cream cheese appallingly and made my first recipe modification. I used a WF whole grain graham cracker recipe, which called for 2 tbsp of butter total and worked perfectly fine as a graham cracker crust.

The recipe calls for a cup of sugar. Second recipe modification: I cut that as well-- but since I was taking it to a barbecue where others were eating it, I didn't cut it as much as I would have were I making this for myself.

The recipe is straightforward enough. (But still very time consuming.) First you make the graham cracker crust, then puree mangoes, mix with the cream cheese (all 3 packages of it), sugar, and 6 eggs. Then it calls for baking it in a water bath for about 2 hours. I was a little skeptical about this, b/c I don't remember my mom ever baking cheesecake in a water bath. Plus, 2 hours of oven time in the heat of summer was just a very long time. Ah well, at this point, I was committed.

2 hours later, the cake came out beautifully. I really wanted to try a sliver to make sure it was fully cooked and also make sure it was edible, but it probably would've looked odd to bring a cheesecake with a gaping hole in it.

The verdict? Well, let me start with a picture of it. It came out looking very impressive and very pretty. Here it is garnished with raspberries. (The raspberries was C's idea.)

Despite the many compliments I received on it, I think I was more impressed with its looks than its taste. I did like it better than a typical cheesecake. It turns out that the water bath steams the cheesecake, which makes it seem deceivingly fluffier/lighter, and also I think helped prevent cracks, which made the above photo op possible.

The mango taste was very subtle-- in fact a little too subtle, for all the time I spent pureeing mangoes.
For the amount of time it took, I wasn't overly wowed by the taste. For this reason, I don't think it is a practical all-purpose or weekday (or even weekend) dessert. However, it does make a good crowd dessert. It has the mango-unusualness factor. It is also very photogenic. It might make a very good alternative to your quotidian pumpkin pie at a thanksgiving gathering.

In the end, I ended up keeping the recipe precisely for that reason.

Foolproof pudding with a few modifications

2007-08-11T16:57:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I clipped out a recipe that I saw in the NYT, b/c the title caught my eye: "Foolproof pudding".

Now I am all for foolproof, since I seem to have a knack for mangling the simplest of recipes. But it gets even better. The author promises the dessert will take no more than 20 minutes, and it calls for a vanilla bean. A foolproof dessert that takes 20 minutes to make and calls for only 4 ingredients? Who wouldn't want to try making such a dessert? Plus other than the lack of fresh fruit, it sounded like a very quintessentially summery-sounding dessert.

I bought all of the requisite ingredients (whole milk and a vanilla bean, since I already had the sugar and corn starch and salt) last weekend and set out to make it sometime this week.

Unfortunately, I had a little mishap w/ the milk expiring before I ever got around to making the dessert, but undeterred, I got another container of milk.

The recipe calls for 2.5 cups of whole milk or half-and-half and 2/3 cups of sugar. It wasn't quite the appalling 1 cup of sugar that I often see in recipes, but the sugar content still seemed a tad high, so I cut it to 1/2 cup, which granted, isn't a whole lot less than 2/3 cup.

Well, after mixing the sugar, milk and vanilla bean in a saucepan for a bit and tasting it, I decided that even with this slight reduction, it was still too cloyingly sweet for my tastes. What is it w/ recipes and their annoying penchant to overestimate the amount of sugar one needs to put in a recipe? Anyway, I ended up dumping the entire carton of milk--which btw, is twice the amount of milk that the recipe originally calls for--into the saucepan. The result?

Not counting the cooling time, the dessert did really only take about 20 minutes to make. I was a little skeptical about the corn-starch overpowering the delicate flavors of the vanilla, which it did a little when it was hot, but when cooled, the corn-starchiness disappeared.

The end product lived up to my expectations. It was simple to make, called for minimal ingredients, and tasted yummy. I would still cut the sugar even more, perhaps, if I were making it for myself (especially if I plan to have it as part of breakfast as I did today. . .), but it came out quite well, otherwise, and looked cool, bespeckled with vanilla bean specks.

The recipe calls for either vanilla bean or vanilla extract, but if you are like me and get excited at the sight of real vanilla bean specks, it is well worth the $3 or $4 per vanilla bean pod to splurge for the real thing. I mean, look at how beautiful the specks look amid the pristine white surface:
On the other hand, if you decide to go for option b. and turn it into a chocolate pudding (by adding a few finely chopped up shards of chocolate to your liking), then don't bother with the vanilla bean. Vanilla extract will suffice.

I discovered that it makes a good weekend "almost breakfast" item (hey, the milk has protein!). I think this one is going in my dessert scrap book.

Figs and Tarragon

2007-08-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

Where did I get the title of my blog? From this divine combination.

It's such a simple combo, but truly divine. Just figs. And tarragon. That's it. You can grill the figs if you want, for an added bonus, but just plain will do the trick.

My New Favorite Bread

2007-07-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

It is not exactly bread-baking season (especially given that I live on a second floor apartment where it gets sweltering in the summer), but I had been fixated on the idea of eating an orange rye bread for a while, so on Saturday evening, when the temperature seemed deceptively cool (outside), I decided to whip out my Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book and give their orange-rye recipe a try.

I've had this wonderful cookbook for years, and as with many cookbooks, I have my stock favorites. I tend to make probably the same 10 recipes over and over again, while there are others that I have yet to make. In fact, I could probably plot a nicely skewed bell curve of the frequency with which I make the various breads in this cookbook.

I made the orange-rye a while back, precisely to break this habit/skewed bell curve pattern and ended up liking the bread and wondering why I hadn't made it all of these years.

Thus, here I was at a too-late-to-start-making-bread hour poring over my Laurel's Bread Book, debating whether to go through with it and bake this bread that I had been fixating over for the past two weeks.
However, while pondering over this and resolving to make the bread after all, another recipe for a honey-spiced rye on the opposite page caught my eye. I compared the ingredients and decided that the latter had more interesting stuff (honey, almonds, lots of interesting spices, orange rind, as opposed to just orange rind and honey for the orange-rye recipe), and made that instead. It calls for a 1/2 cup of almonds, but since I didn't have enough almonds, I also added toasted hazelnuts to the mix.

It called for a mere "pinch" of anise seed, but I added 1 tsp of caraway seed. (The next time I make it, I plan to increase this by another teaspoon.)

The other modification I made to the original recipe was to chop up slightly chunkier bits of orange peel (boil or soak in hot water to slightly soften) than the recipe called for.

Unfortunately, I didn't put it in the oven till 11-ish, so I didn't get to try it till the following morning, but I liked it so much, I think I must've devoured a third of the loaf in just a day.

For the time being, I've dubbed it my new favorite bread. Well, ok, favorite "quick" bread.

The quintessential summer salad I

2007-07-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

I have a feeling I will be posting about many quintessential summer salads, and hence the need for the modifier, "I". . ..

About a year ago, a woman brought a wonderfully yummy savory watermelon salad to a potluck. The salad had watermelon chunks, some white thing that tasted like bland feta cheese, but had a good mouth feel and went really well with the other things in this salad, and toasted pine nuts. I found myself coming back for more and more.

I found my friend later that evening and asked her for the recipe. I also asked her what the mysterious white things were. Turns out the recipe is on epicurious, and the white thing is ricotta salata.

Here is the recipe. Note how few items the recipe calls for. Aside from the salad dressing (oil, lime, basil), it calls for just three items.

I have been making this recipe weekly for the past few weeks. I usually cut the watermelon into cubes and let it sit in a colander for a day or two in the fridge to sap out the moisture, as the salad tends to otherwise get soggy. I also add very little salad dressing and prefer to add it as I eat it, rather than pour it all at once. Actually, you could even eat this salad w/o the dressing.

The melange of the different flavors--the toasted nutty taste of the pine nuts, the succulent sweetness of the watermelon, and the firm texture of the cheese--and the slight tartness that the lime vinaigrette imparts complement each other so well. It is also colorful to boot.

Did I mention it also takes 5 minutes to make and requires no oven use (except to toast the pine nuts), and thus is the perfect summer dish? In fact, it is salad, main dish, and dessert in one!

Today, I made this very salad with yellow watermelon instead of the usual red. I enjoyed the colors (and of course, the taste) just as much. Next week, I might get both red and yellow watermelon and mix the colors.

Attempting to Replicate Pizzaiolo's Salad

2007-06-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

Although I would never make a great food blogger due to the fact that I often fail to remember to take photos when I go out to eat, I do like coming home and trying to reconstruct recipes of things that I tried elsewhere that I liked. Yes, I am a shameless idea-stealer in that regard.

For example, the other night, I attempted to recreate the yummy salad I had at Pizzaiolo where I interrogated my friend about his engagement status. Theirs was a faro salad; I made mine with hulled barley, but it came pretty close. Or perhaps I am flattering myself, but I liked the nutty taste and the combination of flavors that resulted.

I combined cooked hulled barley with fresh corn kernels, cherry tomatoes (the bigger ones chopped in half so the juices mix), toasted pine nuts, dressed it with olive oil and vinegar, then sprinkled shaved pecorino cheese over this, and put all this on a bed of arugula taken from my garden.

Voila.
The toasted pine nuts were my addition, but I have been putting toasted pine nuts in everything lately, and am convinced that they go well with everything, especially salad-type stuff.

Cherries in a savory dish

2007-06-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

Cherries are finally in season! Hurray! Now that apples are about to go out of season, I need other easy, colorful and yummy things to make with seasonal ingredients. This cherry crostini recipe fits the bill.

This cherry crostini takes about 20 minutes to assemble (maybe more--I cheated, b/c I already had the cream cheese made and the watercress washed and chopped up), and 5 minutes to eat, but is fully worth it. It is a winning recipe from one of our iron chef parties.

Need:
spreadable cream cheese (low or fully fatted)
dill
finely chopped walnuts
thinly sliced slightly stale (or toasted) baguette
watercress
chopped cherries

You mix the cream cheese with dill and walnuts (to taste), then spread a thin layer of this over the slightly stale baguette, then put watercress on top, and then top with cherries. I used brooks cherries in this photo, but you can use any kind, really. I also like them with rainiers. Make sure you admire the vibrant colors before you eat. Oh, and if you're a slob like me, make sure you are not wearing white when you eat this.

It probably sounds weird to combine dill with cherries, but I found that the combination of the strongly flavored dill, the nutty walnuts, the bitter watercress and the sweet cherries works really well.

Bon appetit!

A food blog?

2007-05-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

The last thing I need to do is start another blog, but I keep coming back to the idea of starting a food blog. In fact, in my other blog, I write about 4 things: food, rants and other random musings, history, and foreign policy. Lately, though, I've been writing more about food. I've also been reading lots of good food blogs, which of course is making me want to start my own food blog and obsess about food. (Just ask my friend N, who gets weekly updates of my new obsessions. Actually, she is the cause of most of my food obsessions.) Of course, I'm also supposed to be studying and doing other things, so I don't know how frequent my posts will be.

Since I always forget to bring a camera when I eat out, I will probably make a terrible "foodie", but we shall see what becomes of this.