Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, to those of you celebrating! I noticed that in the last few days, this post on the bunny cookies I made for CNY was getting hits like crazy. I guess lots of people were looking for cookie ideas for Easter! Hey--if you are one of the people that pinned it on Pinterest or bookmarked it or found it on Google or Reddit--let me know, send me a picture of your cookies, please :) Anyway, I didn't get around to making cookies for Easter, but I did try to recreate their shape in bread rolls instead. Kinda cute, right? (I photoshopped the eyes in, as I was too lazy to melt chocolate for drawing them on in reality. Plus I really wanted to eat them right away.)

Anyhow, it's a short post kinda day--I've got some more coming this week, including a post about the bread that was turned into these bunny rolls. Keep an eye out, because that bread is so good I've made it twice in two weeks, and I suspect I will be making it again VERY SOON.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Or as I say, Gong xi fa cai, hong bao na lai! (Good luck and fortune, now gimme my red packet! It sounds better in Chinese.) Today is the start of the Year of the Dragon; if you believe in astrology and all that, you can go look up your specific horoscope for how this year will go for you. I read that I'll be having a difficult year in terms of health, and specifically that I may be injured at work! I will be using this as a pitch to work from home more often...

Like our centerpiece?! You've always got to have apples and oranges (auspicious colors, see) and Cedric was our stand-in for a dragon. He's got wings, I'm convinced! But there are dragons in edible form, too!

Last year, I decided I was going to make all of the zodiac signs into cookie form (yes, this will be a 12 year project!). As it turns out, it was a good year to start on, the rabbit being relatively simple in shape. The dragon? Not so easy! I kicked around a few ideas (and Megg had suggested a Trogdor shaped cookie), but I really wanted something rounder and cuter (like the bunny cookies, but, you know, dragony).


So I took some green tea and vanilla shortbread dough, and made something vaguely dragon shaped. Here is a crappy cell phone photo of what I was going for. See? Kind of dragony?


Aaaaand here is what happened after baking. Total collapse, whoops! It should not have been such a surprise to me that shortbread dough wouldn't hold its own weight. Sigh.


So I took a break from dragon cookies and made pineapple tarts instead. As usual, I made my own jam; you can see check out this old post for step by step instructions on making pineapple tarts. I made them bite sized this year, figuring that would help with portion control.


Unfortunately, that just meant that they are that much easier to keep grabbing and munching! Whoops!


Then I made another traditional food, nian gao. This is actually somewhat untraditional, as the typical nian gao is brown sugar based and steamed, whereas this version uses coconut and is baked in the oven. Nian gao is a type of cake made out of glutinous rice flour, and is quite similar in texture to mochi. It is rather delicious, and has caused me to gain several pounds already.

So anyhow, after all that, i came back to my deformed dragon cookies and stared at them, long enough that I decided maybe all was not lost and there might be a way to salvage them after all. And so, with a little creative arrangement and some (extremely) rudimentary photo editing...


I give you dreaming baby dragons. Yes, they dream of cookies. What, don't you?

Happy new year! May it be healthy and prosperous, and full of nothing but good things.

Happy New Year!

So did you make any resolutions? I usually don't bother, but this year I have four:

1. Less procrastination
2. More bento
3. Less complaining
4. More exercise

Lofty goals, to be sure! If I achieve 2 of these, I'll consider myself successful (and then next year my resolution will be, as they say at work, underpromise and overdeliver). Ahem! I just also want to point out that I did not procrastinate this post, I just haven't had time because I'm too busy overpromising at work. :)

Anyhow, you're probably wondering about my hungry little dino friend and what it is he's eyeing so beadily. It's not very pretty, I admit, and I had second thoughts about posting these photos, but you know what, things don't always turn out perfectly, and that's cool. The important thing is, it's delicious! And if you want to see what a proper galette des rois looks like, then you should go check out the photos and recipe at Chocolate and Zucchini. I hesitate to actually bestow the name "galette des rois" on mine!


These galettes, also known as king cakes, are eaten in France to celebrate Epiphany. But there's no prohibition on everyone else enjoying them too, and if you've got frozen puff pastry and ground almonds handy, you can knock this together in very little time. Oh, also, since I was just making it for me, I made a mini version and didn't bother with the little token inside (traditionally it's served as a large cake and whoever gets the bead, bean, or whatever inside is the king or queen). Well, mine may be on the ugly side, but that almond cream certainly is delicious. I've got about a cup left and I have plans for it which will hopefully result in something more photogenic.


By the way, this is Cedric, my dino friend. He's Canadian.


And, guess what! I was watering my remaining plants and discovered that Margaret had put out new flowers! And one of them is even forming a strawberry. Apparently Margaret does not care about seasons. I'm very pleased that she's still alive because I managed to kill many plants in 2011.


And finally, our first meal of 2012. I spent NYE in Vancouver and Py whipped this up the next day (I think we slept through breakfast). Sort-of-cioppino (but really fish soup). Delicious, and a nice, relatively healthy start to the year.

Merry Christmas from the Great White North

Hello! Gosh, only a few more days left in the year, can you believe it? It feels like the year just flew by, doesn't it? Anyway, I'm still here in Vancouver and thought I'd do a quick update on our Christmas, starting with a trip to the Christmas market (I arrived on Christmas eve which was the last day this market was open, and I was determined to make it there, rain be damned!) And of course, it was raining! But not too badly, and I think it helped keep the crowds down (or maybe people were at home, cooking Christmas dinner!)


There were lots of stands selling things like ornaments, clothes, lebkuchen, toys, and so on (most of which I believe was actually imported from Germany) but I was there for the food, and more specifically, the raclette. I haven't had raclette since Py was in Switzerland, so there was no way I was going to pass up the chance to eat it again. If you haven't had it, it's basically cheese, toasted under a grill, and then scraped off and served with potatoes, pickled onions, and cornichons. This version came with bread instead of potatoes and added some ham and was pretty good!


Py had the roast chicken, which was also pretty good. It's hard to go wrong with roast chicken, if you ask me.


And then, because I am greedy, we got a waffle-on-a-stick. (I say we, but I really mean me.) This was yummy, and I ended up totally covered in powdered sugar, which is not necessarily a bad thing! Oh, and we also had mugs of mulled wine, which was significantly more delicious than that horrible jaegertee we had at the Basel Christmas market years ago.


We were invited to Christmas eve dinner at our friends' place; check out their lovely tree! So pretty. We brought them a box of cookies and a couple of little gifts, and received a copy of Bakerella's cake pops book (thanks!) Dinner was turkey, brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing...in short, pretty close to what I would have eaten if I were celebrating Christmas in the states! Followed by an insanely delicious cranberry cake that was drowned in a butter-brown sugar sauce. Mmm, butter.


I neglected to take any photos of dinner, so instead, here's a picture of a handpainted ornament from their tree. I like the beady eyes of the snowmen.


Christmas Day itself was nice and quiet; we opened gifts and then went for a nice long walk. Actually we were hoping to find an open pub somewhere for a drink, but everything was shut down, so we went to T&T (that supermarket wonderland), bought some vegetables and then went home and made Christmas dinner--sauteed steaks, salad, and potato-leek soup. As Monokuro Boo would say, Simple is best! For those celebrating, I hope you had a merry Christmas!

Tis the day after Thanksgiving

and obviously I am having a hard time coming up with blog post titles ;) Actually it's not even accurate anymore--it's now several days after Thanksgiving. Oh well, punctuality has never been my strong point, but we did have a lovely, low key Thanksgiving at home.


There was very little planning ahead this year, aside from actually buying and defrosting the turkey (which Pops did). We went with frying like we've done for a couple of years now, except this time we really had no other option because the oven at home is out of commission! Yes, this photo was taken in the garage. Yes, that is a terrible idea and you should do your turkey frying out of doors. Don't get me started. Here's a picture of the frymaster at work in a previous year; you will note that he is still using the same Doraemon glove.


While the brother was diligently watching over the frypot (and while the dad was diligently watching football), I put together the rest of the meal. We went very, very basic this year with mashed potatoes, sauteed asparagus, cranberry sauce (made with lots of orange zest and orange juice), and homemade sausage stuffing. The asparagus was actually supposed to be brussels sprouts, but I went to two different supermarkets and the Korean grocery and there was not a single sprout to be found. Oh well, we like asparagus too! We're easy going like that. And I was pretty happy with the stuffing, although it's never as good when it's not cooked inside the turkey (can't do that when you deep-fry though). Oh nuts, I should have tried deep-frying stuffing balls!


It didn't actually take us that long to put everything together, but still, I was starving by the time the food was ready. Here's my first plate, minus the turkey, and let me tell you, I spent some time staring forlornly at my plate while my brother took his sweet time carving, and while my dad was off making use of the deep-fryer:


Yech! Prawn crackers! Taste and look like styrofoam! I had had these grand plans of deep-frying everything under the sun, but in the end I was too lazy. Which is just as well!


Here's the beautiful turkey (sorry, vegetarians!). The best part about fried turkey is that the skin is crispy and deeeeeelicious.


Afterwards, there was pie (yes, this is that less-filling-more-crust pie; this is the 4th one I've made in the last couple of weeks, I think?)--no pumpkin this year, but I missed it, and I think I might make myself a mini one....and I don't know if it was all the sugar and food that went straight to my head, but I was suddenly inspired to play with my food.


Hello Snowman!


You seem to have lost your head! Eek! (I thought this was really funny; my family thought I was nuts. What do you think?)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Me, I am thankful for a lot (family, friends, you wonderful bloggers, quiet neighbors), but especially for getting to see No comments:

Happy Halloween!

Well, I didn't get around to carving any pumpkins this year, but here is some pumpkin-ginger bread instead! Happy Halloween!!

In closing, here are two of my favorite pictures from the annual Ghoul's Procession at St. John the Divine, one of my favorite NYC Halloween events! The full set is here.

Mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival

It's been mooncake season for weeks, if not months now, and the stores have been overflowing with more types of mooncakes than you could shake a stick at (and the packaging gets fancier and fancier every year, although the selection here is still nothing compared to what you can get in Asia!) I, however, have not had a single mooncake (and no, my mooncake-molded fish cookies don't count) yet this year! Which is okay, because I'm not really a fan of the traditional type--too sweet, too oily, and too rich. Fortunately during my food blog browsing, I kept running into photos of the gorgeous, spiralled Teochew style mooncakes and decided I might as well try making my own mooncakes this year! I really liked the instructions at House of Annie's blog, so I went with her recipe, omitting the pandan flavoring. Anyway, enough babbling, on to the process!


The first thing I did was to make the filling. In this case, I used Okinawan sweet potatoes which I microwaved and then pushed through a sieve (you could use a ricer, or just mash it with a fork) and mixed with butter, a splash of milk, and a bit of sugar. Make sure you taste your filling and adjust because mine definitely needed more sugar. Next time, I might actually mix some condensed milk into this, that sounds pretty delicious actually. And I think steamed and mashed kabocha squash would also be a great filling. Roll into 20 balls and set aside.


The key to making the flaky, layered pastry is the two different kinds of dough. The un-colored ball of dough on the left is made with butter (and kind of with the techniques you would use to make a pie crust), while the dough on the right is made with oil and simply stirred together. Oh, I used a few drops of food coloring to tint the oil-based dough.


Wrap the oil-based dough in the butter dough, and pinch to seal. Then roll out into a rectangle (or an oblong, if you are incapable of rolling things into rectangles, like me). Then roll it up, like a jelly roll, and turn it 90 degrees:


Roll into a rectangle/oblong again.


I really like how you can see the colored dough sealed inside. Roll this up again into a jelly roll, and then cut in half.


And you'll see this! You can see all the layers that have magically formed. I thought this was really cool! And I don't think it's because I'm easily impressed--this is really kind of like magic, if you ask me! You then flatten and roll this into a round, and if you can, make the edges a bit thinner than the center (like when you are making dumplings!).


Flip the round over, and put a ball of filling in the center, then gather and pinch the edges to seal. I found the dough a bit stiff and had problems getting it to stick together occasionally, but that was easily fixed with a dab of water to moisten the dough.


This is what you'll end up with. You'll be able to see the rings/layers of pastry, and this dough seems to be able to stand up a fair amount of handling, so it's not quite as fiddly as I would have expected. Repeat with the remaining dough, and place your shaped mooncakes on a parchment lined baking sheet. They'll need to be baked at 350F for about 30 minutes, or until set and lightly browned on the bottom.


After baking, the layers will separate a bit so that they're more defined. Isn't it gorgeous? I am best pleased, even if the filling isn't sweet enough!


I will leave you with a shot of the innards--I'm so happy that the sweet potato kept its purple color. Can't wait until tomorrow night when I can hang my head out of my apartment window and hopefully gaze at the moon while I munch on one of these!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, I'm not big on celebrating Valentine's Day, but who am I to pass up an excuse to bake something? I'll be bringing these linzer cookies (made with almonds instead of hazelnuts) to work (without the orange heart). Hope my new coworkers like them!



Happy Valentine's Day, if you're celebrating it! And if you're not, here is something we can really celebrate--did you know that on Feb. 14th, 1946 ENIAC was unveiled? :)

CNY Lunch at Home

Well, one of the downsides of living in the U.S. is that CNY isn't a holiday! (Although our HK and Singapore business locations are closed, lucky them!) So, we kind of have to celebrate on the days that are convenient--therefore, we had our main CNY meal over the weekend. I seriously think I gained about 3 pounds just from this one meal alone. Just take a look at our groaning board (another advantage to a lunch versus dinner--enough light for good photos! Hehe. You know you have a problem when you try to plan to have food ready when there's still natural light to shoot photos with.) All of this was made by my mom--she's very talented, right?


The "cold plate"--I suppose you could call these appetizers? Anyway, clockwise from the top: a type of bitter green cooked with mushrooms, dry-rubbed chicken, cabbage and carrot pickle, waxed meat and Chinese sausages. Braised eggs in the center. Most of these foods are chosen because they are symbols of luck, prosperity, and happiness, although don't ask me which means what. I was too busy stuffing my face to remember :)


Our other appetizer, stir-fried diced shrimp, water chestnuts, and mushrooms wrapped in lettuce. This is traditionally made with pigeon, but I vastly prefer shrimp (when I think of pigeon, I think of your standard dirty NYC pigeon. Which reminds me, does anyone know why there are so many freaking pigeons on 32nd St. by Penn station? What gives!)


Another cold plate, with kao fu (fried wheat gluten cooked with woodear fungus and bamboo shoots) and a vegetable salad. The kao fu is one of my favorites! I know the description doesn't *sound* that appetizing, but seriously, the chewy wheat gluten and crunchy fungus and bamboo shoots are so good together.


My absolute favorite! These are supposed to look like gold ingots and are egg sheets rolled around a pork filling. Some of them are wrapped in tofu sheets instead, and the whole thing is braised with napa cabbage. I took a huge container of this home with me. So yummy.


Claypot fish head soup! The fish head is underneath the other goodies (tofu, glass noodles, veggies, and chilis) and was really, really good. Fish cheeks, yum. This would not have made good leftovers, so I did not get to bring any of this home :(. The noodles soaked up all the flavor of the soup and were soooooo yummy.


Nice plating, huh? These are "red-cooked" (braised in soy sauce) pig trotters. Like any long-cooked, braised dish, the meat was super tender. Great to eat with rice, although we totally forgot that there was rice because there was so much other food. And the bok choy was good for fiber :) This is also the sauce that the eggs from the cold plate were cooked in.


And last, but not least, braised pork ribs, thick fried tofu, and bamboo shoots. Another good-with-rice dish. I should have brought more of this home, I loooooooove fried tofu.

Can you imagine that after all this, we still had room for dessert? Well, a few hours later anyway ;) We had bunny cookies, pineapple tarts, and jiu niang yuanzi dan. I don't know how to translate that, exactly, but it's a sweet dessert soup made with fermented (and slightly alcoholic) sweet rice, with dumplings, fruit, and egg in it. It probably sounds crazy to you if you haven't tried it, but it's delicious and winy and totally warming. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it, but next time I'm home, I will demand some and take a picture then. Oh, and of course, lots of nian gao (sticky rice cake) to snack on. You can check out this post from last year for photos of nian gao and a recipe to make the coconut type.

Well, I think that's the end of my CNY posts! The food is gone, but at least the memories (and photos!) are still there :)