Duan Wu Jie (aka Dragon Boat Festival)

Well, the last time I wrote about these was in 2009, and when I went home this weekend to help make zongzi, my mom said "What, you need to take pictures again??" Well yes, yes I do! So here is another post on one of my favorite foods ever!


I always refer to these as sticky rice dumplings, but I don't know if that's really an accurate name. At any rate, they are parcels of sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, and either filled with pork or sweet red bean paste. The fillings vary by region (and by family) but in our family, we make them Shanghai style (so my mom says) filled only with pork. Other styles may include salted egg yolks or chestnuts or pure giant chunks of pork fat etc. But I like them our way the best.


Both the pork and the rice are marinated first in soy sauce (and other seasonings). The bamboo leaves come dried, so you have to soak them, boil them, and scrub them before they can be used. Fortunately, all of that hard work was handled by my mom, and I was just needed for the actual wrapping.


So you make a cone out of the bamboo leaves, add a spoonful of rice to the bottom, a big chunk of pork, and then top it all off with more rice, as my mom is demonstrating here.


You then fold the extra leaves down and to the side to seal in all the goodies, and then tie the whole thing shut and end up with...


This! A nice, neat bundle of deliciousness. This is one of my mom's--you can tell because she's tucked all the extra leaf away neatly.


And this is one of mine, after cooking. As you can see, I like to leave my extra leaf bits stick up--I think it looks nicer this way. And personally (and I said this last time too, haha) I think mine look better ;) But the really important thing is the taste, and that is always flawless, thanks to my mom's preparation.


Mmmm, sticky rice and pork....we made a mere 66 this year (plus another 20 sweet ones, filled with red bean paste) which means I will have to eat them sparingly to make them last. But I think I will go have one for breakfast, it is the day of the actual festival, after all....

Well, hello there (and a green tea cake)

It's been a while since I've posted with any regularity, I know. But I'm still here! And look--I'm embarking on a new project this summer, windowsill gardening. For some weird reason I woke up at the ungodly hour of 7 this morning (on a Sunday! on a long weekend! Sheesh) and rather than try to go back to bed, I got up, did yoga (!), took a shower, and went to the farmer's market a few blocks away just as it was opening. Believe me, that is far more productive than most of my weekends. And it was kind of nice, there was hardly anyone out yet so I could chat with some of the folks running the stands, which is how I got talked into getting this awesome strawberry plant. Look it ALREADY HAS STRAWBERRIES. I'm going to repot it into a bigger container and hopefully I'll have yummy strawberries to snack on this summer. I also picked up a geranium and had previously bought a lavender plant...we'll see who's still alive by the end of summer.


But wait, that wasn't the end of my productive spate--I came home to drop off my goods, and went back out for a long walk through the park, then read for a while in the sun (Game of Thrones, if you're interested--I'm loving both the book and the series. That Jon Snow is a cutie.) and when I came back, I made cake! Green tea cake, to be exact, using the last of my stash of good matcha (must get more). I l-o-v-e how this cake turned out and would be happy to eat it by itself, maybe with some iced green tea.


But I wanted something a little fancier, and filled the cake with some whipped cream and some diced alphonso mangoes (this combination being inspired by my new favorite bubble tea flavor, mango green tea). By the way, I have not eaten nearly as many mangoes this year as I did last year, but I'm getting an early start on the watermelon!


And here's my cute little frosted cake. It's just whipped cream, because it is way too hot to be eating buttercream. Also, I'm not really that big a buttercream fan.


And here it is sliced, and about to be eaten! It's not the prettiest cake I've ever made, but I'm very happy with how it tastes. And now I can officially say that I'm done celebrating my birthday (even though it was 2 weeks ago) because it's not a birthday without cake!

Which isn't to say we didn't celebrate it at all, of course--Pyota took me out for a very fancy dinner to Del Posto, where I did not take any photos (and it would have been too dark even if I didn't feel self-conscious) but the food was really good. I especially loved the pansotti and the spaghetti with crab--and the gazpacho! It was quite a trip having such formal service (I lost track of how many people served our table) and although I wouldn't want to make a habit of it, once in a while is nice.

And actually, it is Pyota's birthday tomorrow--we will have to have a delayed celebration in June, but in the meantime, happy birthday :) I promise a bigger sandwich.

A quickie post

No time to post lately! Work busy (boo)! Pyota visiting (yay!) But here are some pictures of what we've been eating (and drinking)....(starting with this drink from Angel Share.)


Duck appetizer from Robataya. They have a ridiculously good value tasting menu, but you should be really really hungry before you order it. I'll have to try to recreate their gyu daikon.


Sashimi, also from Robataya. Both photos (and the one on top) taken with Py's new camera.


We went for an afternoon tea at the Peninsula Hotel--it's definitely not as good as the tea at the Peninsula in Hong Kong, but still pretty good. Quieter, too (but no string quartet playing Kiss covers!)


Py had an incident with his scone, but mine was good :)


Mm, tiny pastries.


Maybe I should just have a tea set-up like this at home....

Well, that's all for now! I think after this week things will be calmer at work, and I'll probably sleep for about 2 days straight. And I'm really excited about our dinner plans tomorrow, because it's my birthday :)

Saturday Breakfast

Sometimes you just have to take out a little time to relax and take care of yourself, and that's exactly what this breakfast is. I woke up surprisingly early today so I took a walk over to my favorite neighborhood bakery and got some milk bread (I have mentioned before that I'm totally obsessed with this bread, right?). Some sliced strawberries, some iced coffee, and the new Raveonettes album (which is TOTALLY AMAZING, by the way)....an excellent start to the morning.

Kanelbullar (Swedish Cinnamon Rolls)

So it's been a while since I last posted...(holy crap, almost 3 weeks in fact). I have to admit, I really lost my interest in cooking/baking (and therefore, taking/posting photos or blogging) for a while there. I always thought that I was the kind of person who baked to de-stress--well apparently there is a point beyond which even baking is too much to handle. So I've been holing up lately and just letting myself be lazy--I've been reading a lot (and watching lots of movies--well, on the weekends, at least). I'm starting to feel a bit more like myself, don't worry--and there are positive things to look forward to (like Py coming to visit in a couple of weeks). And warmer weather, and flowers blooming. Yes, it's not all bad, and what does not kill me (work) can only make me stronger (unless it does kill me).


Easter isn't a big thing for me, and with my current state of mind, I wasn't in the mood for making my army of bunny and chick cookies, like I had originally planned. But I wanted to make something a little more special, and cinnamon rolls sounded like just the thing, so I browsed around a bit and found this recipe for kanelbullar (Swedish cinnamon rolls) at My Kitchen From Scratch. It was the photo that convinced me, and I happened to have pearl sugar in my pantry. There really is something to be said about the therapeutic value of kneading dough..not to mention the smell of butter and cinnamon. (Most of the other recipes I saw included a bit of cardamom, so I did the same, but you can certainly leave it out if you don't like the flavor.)


These are nice and tender (they should be! There is a lot of butter in these.) and only lightly sweet. The glaze and pearl sugar add a little bit of crunch and all around, these are great with a cup of tea (or coffee). I won't tell you how many I ate but I'll add it to my list of "things that make me feel better."

For those that celebrate it, Happy Easter!

Village Voice Choice Eats

Yeah, I'm a little late--the 4th annual Village Voice Choice Eats Tasting took place on March 29, so here I am, a whole week late posting about it--I actually blame the festival itself. I was too full to do anything afterwards (even type!). That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, better late than never, right? So as you might have guessed from the name, it's a giant tasting event featuring over 50 restaurants (and bakeries and food trucks); let me just remind myself that next year I must do some serious strategizing first because that is a whole lot of food, and I didn't get to taste nearly as much as I wanted to because I filled up so quickly. It's not just food either, the liquid side is well represented, with an entire row of breweries (although must say, my surprise favorite drink was a shot of whiskey with a pickle juice chaser.)


I actually sprang for the VIP tickets because it was a birthday present (very belated) for my brother, and I thought it turned out to be well worth it! For starters, we got to start tasting an hour earlier--above is a lobster roll from the Red Hook Lobster Pound. This was hands down my favorite from the entire night (and I think they were serving shrimp rolls during the general tasting hours, so woohoo lobster!) and I ate two.


Another favorite, a chipotle chicken taco from Cascabel Taqueria. I didn't take a picture of it, but my other favorite taco was from Mercadito involving shrimp and chorizo. Mm, chorizo.


Some delicious tofu and fungus from Umi-Nom. We loved the guy working at Umi-Nom; he had an Iron Maiden t-shirt on! I debated asking him if he would take a picture with my brother (my brother being a big metal head) but chickened out and then later it got too busy. They served a very spicy and super delicious Thai sausage and sticky rice as well during the VIP hour.


Smoked cauliflower on top of a waffle from Dirt Candy. It's a beautiful plate, but I am not a cauliflower fan to begin with, and I thought the smoke flavor was overpowering. Actually it reminded me of the flavor of the bacon mints my former co-worker made me try once.


Okay, please excuse this terrible picture, but this was so good! It's the Chocolate and Eggplant from Del Posto--yup, eggplant! There's a slice of battered and fried eggplant under the ice cream, and it worked really well. Actually we thought it kind of tasted like banana. So tasty. (So tasty that I'm debating going to Del Posto for my birthday dinner this year, hehe.) During the dessert sessions they also had little mini lollipops of olive oil gelato dipped in chocolate.


An octopus salad, which I also enjoyed. Unfortunately I don't remember which restaurant this was from; at this point in the evening I was starting to not want to eat anymore. And there was a lot more we tried, including a hot dog with mac and cheese on it, some straight up mac and cheese, meatballs, a delicious arepa, pig's head sandwich, roast pork pastry....but wait, there was still dessert to come:


The cupcake was delicious, with the frosting tasting like pretty much pure butter. But after this I had to throw in the towel. I took a couple of samples home (cookies, a honey cake)--oh, wait that's not true--on the way out, we snagged a port and ricotta mini cupcake from Kumquat Cupcakery. So delicious.


I'll leave you with a shot of my brother and his new best friend, the Kyochon chicken mascot. Haha. He looks pretty happy considering I forced him to take this picture :)

Irish Soda Bread

Just a quickie posting today--argh, my brother and I went to the Village Choice Eats festival last night and I don't think I want to eat ever again. I'm soooo full! Pictures/post to come, as soon as I can think about looking at food again. I'm going to have to rethink my food festival strategy...in the meantime, Totoro wants to know what the fuss is about soda bread, to which I say:


How could you NOT want to eat this? Mmm, currants and buttermilk. Want to make your own? Try this recipe here!

Ok, back to my current regimen of ginger tea and lots of vegetables...