Souvenirs from Japan

Wednesday was the first day in...oh, I don't know, a year, possibly 2 that I actually bothered to pack a Mr. Bento lunch and I forgot to take a photo. Nuts! Also, we discovered during a lunchtime walk that there is such a thing as a cupcake truck. It's a brilliant idea, and I'm only annoyed I didn't think of it myself. I would show you a photo of the teeny red velvet cupcake I got (minis are a buck) but...no camera. But you can check out Cupcake Stop for yourself and see when they'll be near you!

In the meantime, my mom went to Japan recently and brought back all kinds of delicious snackies:


I love the packaging on this. Most of the snacks were variations on mochi, a chewy, sticky confection made out of glutinous rice flour. This box contained a whole lot of mini mochis.




They are wee and cute (a driving force in my life, if you haven't noticed already). The box came with four flavors, black sesame, green tea dusted with soy powder, strawberry (I think), and I can't remember the last flavor.


There was also an assortment of what I'm calling mochi dumplings; I've never seen anything like these before, and they were actually a little bit weird to me in texture. Not my favorite, although the black sesame was pretty tasty.


This is my favorite of the snacks--White Melody sandwich cookies. Again, beautifully packaged (and per the package wording "splendid in taste".)


It's two tuiles sandwiched with white chocolate, which I'm normally not a fan of, but together with the cookies...let's just say I wish I had a few more boxes.


Tea and tea snacks. Quite a haul, huh?


Not to forget though, this awesome amulet (I believe they are called omamori) from Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto. There's a little tablet inside it with a Buddhist prayer for good luck/protection. I have it hanging at my desk at work and so far, I've resisted the urge to open it up to see the tablet.

And that's that! We are off on a camping trip shortly (my first one); I am greatly looking forward to setting marshmallows on fire.

Yup, it's summer

Well, summer is definitely here, if the awful humidity today is any indication. I'm not crazy about hot weather and mugginess makes it that much worse, especially on the subway platforms! So you sweat through the commute and then freeze in the office. Fun times!

Anyway, it's not all complaints. For one thing, all the local summer fruits are starting to appear in the markets. And for another, we got 6 ears of delicious, juicy, fresh corn in this week's CSA pickup and I ate one for dinner tonight, simply boiled quickly with a little salt/pepper/butter. So good. I went through a phase where I refused to eat corn on the cob (which I blame on Children of the Corn) and I'm making up for lost time now. There are 5 more ears waiting and I'll do my best to restrain myself from eating all of them and not sharing....

Has anyone seen my baking-fu?

I think I am in a serious post-vacation rut. It's been really hard to get back into the swing of work (which I guess might be a sign of burnout) and generally speaking, I feel kind of...blah. I'm actually pretty busy but I sort of wish I could just curl up and hibernate for a while.

The blahness has even extended to my baking. I am just not feeling very excited about it. For starters, it's too hot now to turn the oven on much--one of the big downsides to our apartment is that turning the oven on heats the whole place. So, I either have to wait for a cooler day or do my baking early in the morning or late at night. The net result is that I am just not baking very much.


So it's super frustrating that I DID actually have plans to make some little desserts to bring to a party and it was just a big giant pile of fail. The plan was to make mini raspberry cream chocolate tarts, and at first everything seemed to be going fine--the pastry cream and tart dough both came together very quickly and all I really had to do to finish was to blind bake the tart cases and fold raspberries into the pastry cream. I made the tart cases in my mini-muffin pan (shocking) and they seemed to bake up just fine, with none of the shrinking or cracking that I sometimes get....but the shells, when cool, were SUPER fragile. But since they were meant as single bite desserts, I thought that perhaps this would not be a big problem.

Then I retrieved my pastry cream and it had chilled into a solid mass! I mean, really solid. Like, play-doh solid. I ran the immersion blender through it, which loosened it up (especially once I added the raspberry puree) but...it was a little lumpy and not silky smooth like pastry cream usually is. Sigh. But okay, I can pretend the lumps are raspberry seeds. So, I put together a test tart with a spoonful of cream and a raspberry on top and presented it to Sir Didymus...and as soon as he took it, it fell apart in his hand (and all over the floor). GRRR!!!! Well, at least they look nice in the photos and they taste okay.

So, to cut this already too-long tale short, I left the desserts at home and we bought a bottle of sake instead. Phooey. And now I have shattery tart shells and lumpy pastry cream languishing in my fridge. Suggestions for using them up would be MUCH appreciated!

(I'm not going to share the recipes here since they did not produce very good results for me. I mean, it was probably my fault but I want to tweak them...if I ever dare make this again.)

Still kicking

No, I haven't forgotten about this blog--I've just been busy with getting back into the swing of work after (our awesome) vacation to Vancouver and the Olympic Peninsula! Not to mention sorting through the hundreds of photos I took (surprisingly few of them involved food, I am sad to report). I know this is a ostensibly a food blog but I'll be making a couple of vacation related posts in the near future (in addition to some back-dated baking posts).

In the meantime our wonderful CSA program is in full swing and we are overwhelmed with lovely, organic vegetables, like the carrots above. Sir Didymus* is currently making them into soup along with some spring onions and some cabbage and it smells amazing. I think we're going to be eating pretty well (and healthily!) this summer!

Lemon rounds

Well, I've been going through quite the baking drought lately. It's been super busy and as I mentioned a few posts back, there have been a distinct lack of birthdays to bake for. So, I was pretty stoked about being invited to a barbecue--yay, a reason to bake!

To me, nothing is more perfect for a summer barbecue than lemon bars. I love all things lemony, but I especially love lemon bars--shortbread crust, sticky sweet lemon curd, yum! Maybe throw in a raspberry or two and that's my idea of perfection (at least in hot weather--we'll see how I feel when it gets cold again).


Anyway, you are probably wondering why this post is titled lemon rounds instead of lemon bars. Well, I have a terrible habit of misplacing things, and that includes baking pans. I know at one point I owned a square pan AND a rectangular pan, but damned if I know where they have gone. Muffin pan to the rescue! (Plus, sometimes individual portions are nice.) The sides are, of course, a bit crustier than they would have been baked in one large pan, but I happen to like the crusty edges.


I think my crust to filling ratio is slightly off as there is just a tad more crust here than I really wanted. But that's a minor quibble, and next time I'll just keep that in mind. Oh, the recipe? Well I had to go back to the Barefoot Contessa for this one. I am not a big fan of her show, but the woman does know her way around a lemon bar!

Well, we are off to Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest tomorrow--see you (all 4 of you wonderful readers ;)) in a couple of weeks!

Lemon Bars Rounds, adapted from The Barefoot Contessa
Makes 12 muffin sized rounds

For the crust:
8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

For the filling:
3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest (from 2 lemons or so)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan. For the crust, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and salt together, then add to the butter mixture and beat until combined. Knead briefly, then break into 12 equal portions and use to line the bottoms of your muffin cups. (This gives you a fairly thick crust, so you may actually want to use less crust, your choice.) Bake until just set and very lightly browned. Remove from oven, but leave the oven on.

In the meantime, combine all the filling ingredients and whisk until smooth. When the crust is done par-baking, pour the filling evenly into each cup over the hot crust (it's easiest to do this if you transfer your filling mixture into a pitcher, or a large measuring cup--anything with a pouring spout). The cups should be about 2/3 full. Bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until set (a little jiggle is okay). Let cool to room temperature, and dust with confectioner's sugar, if desired.

Countdown to vacation time

Well, the craziness of May is over, but the craziness of work has not let up. Haven't had time or energy to bake or cook much lately, but our CSA boxes start next week...just in time for us to go on vacation! Whoops! Oh well, we are headed to Vancouver in a week--anyone have any recommendations for things to do or eat? There probably will not be much in the way of updating here until after our trip, but hopefully there will be LOTS to write about soon.

In the meantime, we visited the Cloisters yesterday (my first time in years) and had a lovely time exploring. Photo above is from the herb garden, where we got to see all kinds of plants used in medieval life (for love, for magic, and for cooking, of course!; if I remember correctly, that is anise. I wish I had more pictures to show but apparently I have gotten too used to photographing food and can't photograph anything else well!

Birthday dinner

May seems to be a remarkably birthday filled month! I think I have drunk and eaten more this month than March and April combined--good thing I can only think of one June birthday.


Yesterday was the Man's birthday, and in honor of it, I made dinner. Please to note that I attempted to make it look nice! I'd been planning on making Jacques Pepin's stuffed pork tenderloin since I saw him demonstrate it on More Fast Food My Way. I discovered that it is not as easy to butterfly a pork tenderloin as he makes it look, but I thought my first attempt was credible. It is very easy (once you are done mutilating your tenderloin) and very quick and really delicious! (As an aside, you should read his memoir, The Apprentice--it's fascinating.) The recipe includes a quick "sauce" made with sweet grape tomatoes, and for completeness I added some sauteed sugar snap peas (with a little lemon zest).

And dessert was maple pecan tartlets. One of the first baked items I made for the Man was a pecan pie, which he ate an entire quarter of at one sitting. I took that as a promising sign. :)

Maple Pecan Tartlets
Crust:
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup toasted pecan meal
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
9 tablespoons butter, frozen and chopped into small chunks
1 large egg, beaten

Filling:
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
3 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups pecan pieces

To make the crust, dump everything but the egg into a food processor and pulse until the butter is cut in, although you don't want everything evenly incorporated. What you want is a sort of pebbly texture with some pea-sized chunks of butter left. Add about half of the egg and pulse again until the dough starts to ball up. You probably won't need the whole egg. Turn out and knead briefly. Divide the dough into 6 pieces and use to line 6 4" tartlet pans; you can pretty much just press this dough into the pans, no need for rolling! Place the lined pans in your freezer for at least an hour. When the crust is done chilling, preheat the oven to 350 F. Theoretically you should blind bake the crusts but I was lazy and all I did was prick the crusts with a fork and bake as is. They puffed up a bit but you can just press them down, so I leave it up to you. Bake until set but not browned. Cool while you prepare the filling.

For the filling, whisk the maple syrup, brown sugar, and salt together until smooth. Whisk in the butter. Add and beat in the eggs, one at a time, until you have a smooth mixture. Stir in the vanilla and pecan pieces.

Fill the crusts to the rim; you may have a bit of filling leftover, which you can bake in custard cups (to make the filling lovers happy, of course!). Bake at 350 F for about 20 minutes, until the filling is just set and puffed. Cool, and eat. Or, eat it hot out of the oven, but try not to burn yourself. That maple syrup gets really, really hot (noooo, I don't know from experience). And can I suggest a little whipped cream?