all the things in my tummy

A catch-up post of sorts; I haven't been in much of a baking mood but I am starting to get back into a cooking mood, a bit. And of course, I am still getting quite the haul of vegetables every week from the CSA. I've taken to roasting beets and then keeping them in the fridge to toss into salads or to eat plain. Above is one of the many salads I've eaten this summer--watermelon and cucumber (based on a salad we ate at Otto), beets in honey-lime dressing, and mixed greens.


Another salad with the first of this season's tomatoes--so simple, and so delicious. It's really a genius combination!


Of course, man (or woman) does not live on salad alone, so I made a batch of zha jiang mien. It's basically a ground pork sauce with a load of vegetables in it (in my case, zucchini, onion, and carrots) that you eat over noodles. I topped mine with grated cucumber, but that's totally optional.


Last week I got this epic haul of peaches and pears; I've eaten a bunch just plain as snacks, but I'm thinking I will probably make another batch of jam (and one of plums, too!) and then I'm debating poaching the pears and making an almond pear tart. I mean, assuming things get less crazy of course!


I do love having homemade jam around though; it made this very simple breakfast of toast and peaches a little more special. And hey, peach jam, AND fresh peaches--I am definitely getting my fill of this fruit this summer!


And today, it's finally a bit cooler; cool enough to make me want some good old niku jaga. This is such a comfort food; potatoes and bits of meat (I used pork) simmered in a dashi and soy sauce broth together with carrot chunks, onions, and shirataki noodles.


And to end the weekend on a positive note--check it out! Margaret's still alive, and has started blooming again. Hooray!

Stuffing My Face in Vancouver

I promised in the second to last post that this one would be all about the food, so LET'S GO! You've seen the ice cream croissants...well, that wasn't all I ate, not by a long shot. I ate a lot in Vancouver. A LOT. I didn't get photos of all of it, but I certainly took plenty of photos of the desserts I had :) But I'm starting with something savory first (okay, well it's also kind of sweet)--an early evening snack of salmon candy and a honey lager from Granville Island Brewery. As far as I can tell, salmon candy is pretty much salmon jerky, smoked and glazed with maple syrup. The smoking makes the fish very dense, almost meaty in texture, and the syrup...delicious. It makes such a great snack with beer.


One of my favorite things to do in Vancouver is to hop on one of the tiny ferry boats and go wandering around Granville Island. (You may be interested to know that it is not actually an island.) There is a great market here full of all kinds of interesting food stalls, lots of fresh produce, fishmongers, butchers, sausage makers, bakeries....then there is the totem pole workshop and lots of little shops to browse in. It seems mostly to be full of tourists, but I've been a bunch of times and still enjoy it every time I go. Plus it's hard to resist all the piles of fresh fruit (a lot of it grown in B.C.). And I get to eat things like the smoked meat sandwich above! It came wrapped in greaseproof paper with a pickle and mustard and is oh so yummy.


This, people, is a regular portion. And can I point out that that's a bagel, not sandwich bread? Still despite its size, I have no problem polishing the whole thing off, and unlike my run-in with the aggressive seagull at English Bay, this time I was able to eat my sandwich in peace. (The seagulls were otherwise occupied by someone who was actually feeding them.) But I digress--vacations are all about indulgence so hold on to your hats because the desserts, they are coming:


Butter tart! I think the pastry might have been made with shortening because it was surprisingly lacking in flavor, but the filling was sticky and delicious (and had raisins buried in the bottom.)


I bought this peach tart from the same bakery on Granville Island; this was actually for Py (I only snuck a quarter of it!). This was good, with a poached peach half baked into some almond cream. (Screen-cleaner Cat also did not eat any.)


I cannot get enough of riding the ferry to Granville Island! This is from another trip (apparently I also cannot resist buying food there) and a different bakery than the previous desserts. This was labeled as an apple focaccia and it certainly is on a bready base but it's definitely more dessert. Or decadent breakfast. There was quite the pool of caramel on it before I carried it home upside down. Which turned out to be good, because I think that would have been too sweet for me.


Aaaand, from the same bakery, a simple but completely delicious blueberry galette. As you might have gathered from my bento posts, I love blueberries. Ergo, I love this galette.


I did pick up a couple of souvenirs (all of which are the edible type); this is a box of caramels from a local chocolatier, Wendy Boys. Unfortunately, I have not yet tasted one; I'm pretty sure I can convince the recipient to give me one though. In the meantime, I have sneakily opened the package and taken a photo:


My god, do these look amazing or what? You have to congratulate me on my willpower, I have managed not to eat these myself. :)


Finally, here is one more raccoon photo! So cute. Happy Wednesday!

Greetings from Vancouver

I'm a week into my vacation and I feel utterly relaxed. I left 90 degree weather and arrived to 65 degree weather and I'm sitting at the kitchen table in Py's apartment. There's an absolutely amazing view of English Bay from here (the photo above is pretty much exactly what I'm looking at right now, if you add in a few more clouds) and I've got a mug of tea. These are good conditions for blogging, my friends. (Even if I've only got a tiny little netbook at my disposal! It's cute and functional but dang does it make me feel like I have giant fingers!)


On my first day, we went to Wreck Beach and listened to music and waited for the sun to set. Actually before we did that, we went to Japadog and I had a spicy cheese terimayo; Py has a photo of me looking positively gleeful but you'll have to wait until he uploads it to see. But anyway, back to the beach.


This guy showed up with a shovel and started digging an enormous hole--eventually he ended up planting a bunch of tree trunks in the ground, as you can see above. I dunno if he was out for some exercise or what, but...okay! It looks kind of neat.


This was as close as we got to sunset, as eventually it just got toooo cold. So we adjourned to Chutney Villa and ate entirely too much food. But it was delicious. And then the good eating continued:


One of my Flickr friends is always posting shots of awesome looking food on her stream, and she happens to be from Vancouver! And ever since I saw her photos of Sun Yee Cafe, I knew we had to go check it out. And we did! This is really far out from where we are, but it happened to be on the way to Rice Lake, so we hopped in the Zipcar (man, what a brilliant service) and drove over to East Hastings. Sun Yee Cafe is kind of an HK style coffee shop and they have absurdly cheap prices. Py got the chicken chop above and I ordered a lunch special of stir fried beef and hor fun noodles (which I neglected to take a photo of). What arrived was an absolutely enormous platter of flat noodles. ENORMOUS. Like, enough for 3 people huge. And that was $6 or $7! It included a drink (lemon tea for me!) and because we had no idea that the portion sizes would be so enormous, we also ordered an appetizer of fried squid:


Salt and pepper style. Delicious, especially the bits of spicy chili. A bit tough, but for the price, I'm not going to complain. We rolled out of there with leftovers and made our way to Rice Lake for a much needed walk. Rice Lake is pretty, but it was starting to drizzle when we got there so we probably didn't get to experience its full glory. Nice for a walk, though!


On another day we went to Stanley Park and saw a couple of raccoon families--I love raccoons! They are so cute and make the best noises.


There were a couple of young ones which were extra cute; you can see a short video that Py made. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the place we had dinner that night but they had a very reasonably priced set menu which included the new-to-me "tofu cheese". I think it was pretty much cream cheese (possibly mascarpone) and tofu, topped with honey and strawberries and it was surprisingly good. Not enough tofu, though.


Apparently I arrived at the tail end (no pun intended) of the wild sockeye salmon season; from what I've been reading, they've had the largest run in 100 years. Lucky me! I picked up this gorgeous salmon fillet for something like $7 CAD; do you know how much this would cost in NY???? Probably triple that amount.


We made a really simple dinner with it; the salmon was just salted and then pan-seared for a crispy skin. It was amazing, and I'm not sure I can ever go back to eating farmed salmon. (The roasted potatoes and sauteed sugar snap peas were tasty too, but man, that salmon.) Just what the doctor ordered!

Tomorrow we're hopping on a sea plane (exciting!!) and going up to visit our friends' marina. Hope I get to see some seals!

Happy New Year!

Well, dear readers, gong xi fa cai and happy new year! February 14th marked the start of the Year of the Tiger (the metal Tiger, specifically) and like all good holidays, this one involved a lot of delicious food. (It was also Valentine's Day, I know, but the extent of my celebrating that involved looking at all the pink-hued treats on Foodgawker and Tastespotting!)


We had a very low key CNY dinner at home this year of hot pot (steamboat), and a non-traditional one at that. Of course we had all the usual suspects of fish balls and fish cakes, tofu, cabbage and other leafy vegetables, but my dad also added zucchini, carrots, and tomatoes. Different...but good! There were also some shirataki noodle bundles, but of course, the main event is the thinly sliced meat (pork and beef this time). Hot pot is a very communal way of eating and is good fun as everyone is gathered around the pot, busy dipping their slices of meat into the bubbling soup. Swish it around for a few seconds, and it's ready to eat!


And here is the most important component of hot pots (at our house, at least)--sa cha jiang (or as the bottle says, barbecue sauce). I can't explain what this tastes like--salty, savory, sure, but much more complex than that. This is the main ingredient in the sauce that the meat and other ingredients are dipped in before eating; everyone mixes up their own sauce to their taste. Mine is relatively simple and just includes a good dollop of this, a splash of soy sauce, a bit of sesame oil, and a bit of the soup. Some people would insist on fermented tofu, but I am just not a fermented tofu kinda girl.


Sorry for the er, half-eaten fishball photo but I wanted to show you the inside of my faaaavorite kind of fishball, the fuchow type! It's got a little, juicy pork filling that is just amazingly delicious. More so dipped in sauce! Mmm. I wish I had one right now. But it's not all savory foods, we also had to have some dessert!


To me, there is no sweet that is more traditional for Chinese New Year than nian gao. It's a sticky rice cake and there are some old stories about how you offer this to the Kitchen God so that you glue his mouth shut so he can't report anything bad about you or your family (hmph! there would be nothing bad to report for me!). It's also a bit of a play on words--it means new year's cake, but it also means "year higher"--as in, every year, you become more prosperous, more fortunate, etc. etc. But none of that is important--this is delicious and so easy to make. I am providing a simple recipe for coconut nian gao, although this is not quite as traditional as the good old brown sugar kind, which, sadly, I don't know how to make. Ready for the recipe?


Take one can of coconut milk (shake well!), one can of evaporated milk (shake well), 4 eggs, 1/2 to one cup of sugar, and one package of glutinous rice flour (available at any Chinese grocery). Whisk together until smooth. Stir in one cup of shredded, sweetened coconut. Pour into a greased 9x13 inch pan, and sprinkle an additional cup of sweetened coconut over the top. Bake in a preheated 375 F oven for about 50 minutes, or until browned and crusty on top. Easy, no?


Serve in small squares with a cup of tea. Actually, this is more civilized than how I usually eat it, which is to cut a piece off everytime I walk past it. It's chewy and stretchy and coconutty. You can keep this in the fridge if you can't finish it within 3 or 4 days, but you want to give it a quick buzz in the microwave to soften it up in that case.


I mentioned the classic brown sugar nian gao above...well, I didn't make one because I don't know how! Fortunately, my friend gave me a wedge made by her future in-laws--thanks!! I love this kind of nian gao specifically because of what you do with it after you refrigerate it and gets all bricklike--you batter it and fry it! Nian gao fritter!


The batter is very simple--a cup of all purpose flour, combined with an egg and enough milk to make a thick-ish batter. Sorry, I never measure this so I can't be more precise, but hopefully you can see from the photo how thick the batter should be. Dip your slices of nian gao, then pan fry in a little vegetable oil until nicely browned on both sides. The batter will puff up a bit as it fries, and you will feel the nian gao soften up. There's a variation of this where you make a sandwich with thin slices of nian gao and sweet potato, and THEN batter and fry it, but I was feeling lazy.


Drain on paper towels for a few minutes; this both removes the excess oil, and allows the nian gao to cool off a bit which is good. Trust me, this stuff gets and stays hot and since it's sticky, you can give yourself a nasty burn if you bite into it right away.


This isn't the greatest picture, but I just wanted to show the inside of one of these fritters. Hopefully you can see how sticky the nian gao gets.

Well I think this might be my longest post ever--if you made it this far, I congratulate you ;). Gong xi fa cai, xing nian kuai le! I think I'm going to play it safe and eat some more nian gao to ensure luck. And New Yorkers, don't forget--the Chinese New Year parade is tomorrow in Chinatown! Check back here for photos on Monday or Tuesday (I know, I know, the HK posts keep getting pre-empted! Soon!)

Happy New Year!

Well, I hope you all had a safe and happy new year's eve. Mine was very quiet, which I felt like I needed, and the best part was sleeping in really late this morning. I love sleeping and I never feel like I get enough during the week! I've been having a nice leisurely morning so far, and made myself a bowl of sweet bean soup for my first breakfast of 2010. This is not a very good photo of it--it's made with mung beans (although usually sold in packages labelled as "green beans" at Chinese groceries), pearl barley, some rock sugar, and a lot of water. Sweet bean soups might be a strange concept to some, but trust me, this is really comfort food! Ordinarily I would have made some little rice dumplings with glutinous rice flour to go in it, but a. I'm lazy and b. I had some tong yuan leftover from the solstice.


Tong yuan are basically glutinous rice flour dumplings with a sweet filling--common ones are black sesame, red bean, or lotus, but my favorite is peanut! These aren't that hard to make from scratch, but, well, see point a above. Much easier to buy and keep in the freezer.

I still have cookie posts coming; hopefully I will get some of those up before I leave for vacation--but more on that later. Here's to the new year--may it be the best so far!

Fish pie for a nontraditional Feast of Seven Fishes

Up until a week ago, when a coworker friend of mine mentioned wanting to hold one, I didn't know anything about the Feast of the Seven Fishes; now, I still don't know anything about it, besides what I just read on Wikipedia. (Isn't it strange to think that there are now generations growing up who will probably never have to learn how to do research in a library because of the ready availability of information on the Internet? Am I showing my age, or what?) But anyhow, it is apparently a mostly Italian-American tradition to celebrate Christmas Eve. I couldn't find anything too concrete about whether there are specific dishes that are supposed to be eaten, but the general idea is that they should be fish-themed, and there should be seven of them. And, anyway, a cocktail party consisting of fish-themed nibbles?? Sign me up!


Of course, I offered to bring dessert. I had initially kicked around the idea of bringing a stargazy pie but I didn't have enough time to buy fish (thanks to all you can eat/drink happy hour in Koreatown) and didn't feel like lugging a fish pie around all day! So I made apple pie instead, and shaped it like a fish. Cheating? Perhaps! Tasty? Naturally! I went with the less filling more crust version because it lent itself to shaping much more readily than a traditional pie, and because I love this recipe so. I think this is the 4th or 5th time I've made it now, incidentally.


Okay, so I didn't pack the apples down enough, and so the eyesocket looks a bit frightening, but aren't the scales neat? I cut them with just a regular old round biscuit cutter from the scraps and stuck them on with milk. I wish I had gotten photos of the other fish food (taramasalata, latkes with salmon, salmon pinwheels, crab dip, shrimp & pesto on endive, pissaladiere with anchovies...) but frankly, I was too busy stuffing my face. And the pie, though not fish flavored, seemed to go down well.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas! It is pouring down rain here, perfect for a day of going through photos and drafting recipe posts for my Christmas Cookie Boxes this year!

Chocolate-chocolate Cupcakes

Birthday baking is the best kind of baking, in my opinion. But maybe I like it because it gives me an excuse to make something? At any rate--yay birthdays!


Sugar star sprinkles may not be as elegant as silver dragees or sugar pearls, but they are undeniably festive looking and colorful! I feel a bit more cheerful just looking at this photo. This was my first time making the chocolate-chocolate cupcakes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours (my go-to!). I'm on a bit of a hunt for the perfect chocolate cupcake recipe, and the problem lies in the fact that I want something that is light but not spongy. Most recipes I've tried either fall into the very airy or the dense (like poundcake) camps. So far, the frontrunner is still the Old Fashioned Chocolate Cupcake recipe from Chockylit's Cupcake Bakeshop. But I have to give these a second try. Do you want to see what the frosting is hiding?


Is weird looking, right? Kind of like an all chocolate version of the popular self-frosting nutella cupcake? That is because I am a dummy! The recipe calls for both cocoa and melted chocolate in the batter, so I dutifully melted some nice 70% chocolate and left it on the counter to cool...where it stayed until I had already put the tray of cupcakes in the oven. Frickinfrackin!#$!!#$!#%!# So I tried to stir the chocolate into the already portioned cupcakes--unsuccessfully as you can see. But actually the cupcakes were pretty good, even with the screw up, and I bet they would be even better if I had made them right. So, next time. The glaze is definitely a keeper, though!

So, I just looked at my calendar and realized how close we are to Christmas--eep! Where did the time go! I'm going to have to start making batches of dough and freezing them this weekend!

An apple pie for crust lovers

This post is especially for my coworker friend, who, upon receiving a slice of pie said "Hey are you going to blog about this? Then I'll have eaten something you blogged about!" Plus, the apples I used were picked by her family. So, here you go babe ;)

Anyway, one of my favorite blogs is Baker's Banter, written by the awesome people at King Arthur. A couple of weeks ago I came across this post, which is a step-by-step recipe for making a non-traditional apple pie. This pie is all about the crust. There's a slim layer of apple filling, providing just the right amount of tart sweetness, but the star is definitely the crust. And it should be! Unlike most crusts that I've made, this one incorporates cream cheese and bakes up to be, well, crusty, and flaky and delicious. (Actually, I baked up all of the crust scraps and ate those first. I think honestly, I could happily just cut all the dough into cookies and eat them with no filling at all.)


How much do I love this recipe? So much that this is my second time baking it in a week. The top picture is my first attempt, which I brought to the office and which elicited this assessment from my coworker: "very very good. Nice caramelization on the bottom and delicious crust to fruit ratio. Crust v. flaky and tasty, crispy. Good amt of sweetness. A winner!"

Have I mentioned that I love my coworkers? Anyway, I made it again today for a potluck I'm going to, and it looks like it's going to be just as tasty--it's just now also slightly better looking. For one thing, I actually rolled the crust into a round instead of a lopsided ellipse.


For another, I broke out some of these leaf cutters I've had kicking around for years--I don't even remember when I bought them (or hell, *if* I bought them. They might have been a gift.) I am pretty sure I've never used them, though. Anyway, they are easy to use--cut them and then there's a piece inside the cutter that stamps the leaf vein pattern on. Brush the backs with a little bit of milk and apply decoratively (or haphazardly, whatever) to your pie. Then the whole thing is brushed with more milk and sprinkled with coarse sugar.


Now you'll notice right away the difference in color between the first and second pies. That's because the lighting in my apartment sucks, and so I have to take all of my photos in my front window. And it's been damned cloudy lately! So, trust me--this one is just as gorgeous and brown. It's just nasty weather out.


Here's a closer look at some of the leaf cutouts. Pretty, right? I actually have it sitting on a cutting board; I don't own any plates large enough to hold this pie (it's about 10 inches across). And I am not carrying a cake stand on the subway! Anyway, hopefully it'll be well-received, and if not, then I'm going to eat pie for breakfast!

More Crust Less Filling Apple Pie, from Baker's Banter
For the crust:
2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 ounces cream cheese
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and diced
ice water

To make the crust, combine the flour, salt, and cream cheese in a bowl and beat (either with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer or a hand held mixer) until the cream cheese is broken up and the mixture is crumbly. Add the diced butter bits and cut in until the butter is mostly incorporated. This shouldn't take very long if you're using a stand mixer, and you should have lots of different sized pieces of butter. Don't be too thorough. You definitely want visible pieces of butter left because they will make your dough flaky. Sprinkle two tablespoons of ice water over the dough and toss with a fork until moistened; squeeze a handful to see if the dough will hold together. If not, add a tablespoon more of water at a time; you just want the dough to hold together. Gather into a ball, and divide in half, one piece slightly larger than the other. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least half an hour.

For the filling:
2-3 medium sized Fuji apples
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1 tablespoon butter

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 425 F. Roll out the larger half of the dough to an approximately 11" circle and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Trust me--you are definitely going to need the parchment. Peel, core, and halve the apples, then slice then into 1/4" slices crosswise. Toss with lemon juice. Combine the sugar, cinnamon and ginger and spread out evenly over the bottom crust. Arrange the apples on top in concentric rings (you don't HAVE to, but it indulges my OCD side). Dot with the tablespoon of butter (cut into bits). Roll out your second piece of dough, and cut several holes for steam vents--you can use cookie cutters or just cut steam vents free-hand. Depends on how fussy you want to get! Fold into quarters and center it on the apples; unfold! Fold the bottom crust edges over the top crust and press to seal. Brush the entire pie with a little milk and sprinkle sugar (coarse or granulated) over the top. Bake at 425 F for about 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 375 F and bake for a further 30 minutes, or until the juices are bubbling and the apples are tender. My pie leaked a fair amount of juice, although it did not make the crust soggy. But you'll be glad you put that parchment paper down! Cool for at least an hour, then slice and enjoy.

(Another benefit of this type of thin pie is that you can slice it and eat it like a pizza slice, with your fingers. Convenient!)