Dinners at home with my family almost always turns out to be a feast or buffet. If anyone’s coming over, you’re sure to be leaving with a very full stomach. Ever since the recent trickling of companies started to send me some of their products to eat or drink with for the past few months and my garden’s growing quite a bit of cucumbers, I thought I might as well utilize them for my dinners (and of course, my parents chipped in the help, both cooking and eating).
Big ol’ cuke
Large, fat cucumbers that are larger than my hand’s grasp are bursting out from its vines, I made a simple, refreshing salad by using the mandoline. The remarkable difference between homegrown cucumbers to the ones you buy from a grocery store is the freshness and the flavor; it’s so much sweeter and juicier. Continue reading “Dinners at Home” »
Please note, this is sort of a book review done all in one post. If this doesn’t interest you, feel free to peruse around my blog for restaurant reviews or other recipes.
For the past week or so, I went into a strange tunnel vision-like obsession for all things sweet and frozen. I’m talking about ice cream (along with granita and sherbet). Thanks to Helen to contribute my madness by lending me her ice cream machine, I got myself David Lebovitz‘s book, Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompaniments, gathered a bunch of ingredients from my local market (my main haul was heavy cream). The guinea pigs were pretty much my parents and I.
Crema di Pistacchi Bronte; viscous
As a long time fan of Mr. Lebovitz’s blog, I bookmarked his pistachio gelato recipe a while ago since I hope that one day I’d make this myself. In case you didn’t know or you’re reading my blog for the first time, I LOVE pistachio gelato! There’s something innately seductive about this particular nut that I can’t explain. (Possibly it’s so buttery and creamy when it’s in a paste form?) Continue reading “Ice Cream Madness: Book Review “The Perfect Scoop”” »
As of the past weekend, my entire family have been scheming what to cook and eat for Lunar or Chinese New Year. Coincidentally, Chinese New Year falls on the same date as Valentine’s Day this year.
Proofed, filled buns; Brushing on egg
Anyway, as we’re planning out loud what we can do and must do for tradition and for the sake of ambition of tackling dishes we’ve never done. Going along with the latter, my dad and I collaborated the effort of baking cha siu bao-style buns (aka baked Chinese BBQ pork buns) except we’ve replaced the pork filling with house ground sirloin beef. We are planning to do the real cha siu bao around next week so we won’t ruin his delicious roast pork. (Trust me, you haven’t lived ’til you tried my dad’s pork. Unless you don’t like or can’t eat pork, that’s a different story.) The meat filling must be cooked prior to filling it in your bun. We flavored the ground beef with ginger, garlic, and scallions (all finely chopped) and flavored with oyster sauce and black pepper. Let it cool to room temp and proceed working with your large glob of fermented bread dough.
After kneading, cutting the dough, rolling them out like dumplings, filling, wrapping, and proofing (as in letting the buns rise and get puffy), I brush them on with a beaten whole egg. The reason behind the latter is to give the buns a nice glazed look and it helps the browning (caramelizing) process while it’s baking away in the oven.
Cooling
What pleasantly surprised me was the fact that these buns actually look…pretty and edible. For some strange reason, I tend to be afraid of baking buns more than a loaf of bread. At any rate, they look gloriously golden brown with a beautiful sheen.
Innards, done two ways
When the buns were chomped by the teeth or cut with a knife, a gentle steam exudes from them, releasing the incredible scent of meat, garlic and a gentle hint of scallion. These were tasty. The modifications I have to do next time is to increase the oven temperature I used and shorten the baking time.
During the course of my work week, I was craving something crunchy. I can’t explain it but it’s certainly one of those times that I have the strongest, indescribable desire to eat crunchy food. Since I didn’t want potato chips or pretzels, even though it was Super Bowl weekend, I searched my house and found a bag of mixed unshelled nuts. I perused my recipe collection I collected over the years and found this: hazelnut strawberry thumbprint cookies.
It’s a simple cookie recipe. The small problem was, I didn’t have enough hazelnuts. (I’m presuming my dad liked that particular nut a lot since there weren’t that many from the beginning.) So, I thought what nut would go with hazelnuts well and almonds popped in my head and I started cracking my way through. After fifteen minutes of nut shell debris flying across my kitchen counter and floor, I had enough nut meat for the recipe.
Look like blond Rocher chocolates
After making the buttery mass of cookie dough, forming it into one-inch balls and rolling it in the coarsely ground, toasted, nuts, it does look like Rocher chocolates, except, of course, it’s made of cookie dough.
Happy New Year, Everyone! I hope you all haven’t partied too hard on New Year’s Eve…
To ring in the New Year, I wanted to make (not much baking involved in this particular cake) a showstopping cake. Since my GREs are done I had time to kill and might as well do something ambitious than the typical layer cake.
Around the beginning of November, my mom told me one morning that she wanted me to bake desserts for Thanksgiving. This wasn’t news to me since I’ve been baking desserts for my family over a decade. She requested a cheesecake (again, nothing new) and she wanted to indulge herself with a key lime pie. I rolled my eyes and said, “Sure. Just get me some ingredients that we don’t have in the house. I have the chocolate for the cheesecake.” She replied, “Chocolate? For the cheesecake?” I said, “Yes, I want to change things up. I’m tired of making the same [raspberry] cheesecake I’ve been doing for the past several years.”
I still had the bittersweet chocolate baking bar and the cocoa powder from Scharffen Berger (from the previous event they’ve invited me a few months ago) so I should be set. Thing was, I wasn’t planning on making the cookie crust from scratch since my mom kept harassing me multiple times not to waste time by baking – a blatant oxymoron (How can anyone expect desserts made from scratch NOT take time?).
The weekend prior to Thanksgiving, my parents went to their local supermarkets and told me that after visiting three different stores, they don’t carry chocolate wafer cookies. Obviously, I have no choice but to make the cookie crust from scratch now…
My dad, being a sweetheart, offered his help to get his hands dirty for the cookie crust, kneading and mixing the dried ingredients of flour, cocoa powder (admittedly, I used a combination of Valhrona and Scharffen Berger), sugar, baking soda, salt and lots of butter, until it becomes a large blob of cocoa scented dough. Then I sealed it up in plastic wrap, place it in the fridge until Wednesday evening when I have to bake everything off so it can be consumed on Thanksgiving.
Making the TKO cookie dough and the dough blobs
On Thanksgiving eve, I had to roll out the cookie dough into sheets (it’s from the TKO cookie recipe found within the Essence of Chocolate book) and bake it off until it’s hardened and dry but not burnt.
The weekend of my mom’s surgery (that’s two weeks ago), I baked her coconut-lemon sablé cookies. Why? She loves any and almost every coconut dessert or confection and I think cookies are a cinch to bake. I just chose sablés because she likes the crumbly, sandy texture of this rich cookie except she never remembers the name of it. As some of you bakers out there know that sablés are sort of hard to bake because of the texture, I found out from Cook’s Illustrated that there’s a secret to getting it right and it all goes down to… Continue reading “Coconut-Lemon Sablés” »
Happy belated new year everyone! I hope all of you had a great time partying all night long or had a quiet time at home with friends and family. If you’re wondering what the heck I did, I went with the latter option. I’m not exactly the nightlife-lovin’ gal. I just shared a bottle of Prosecco with my family at midnight and made this cake several hours before. [Points down] Continue reading “Happy (Belated) New Year!” »
Two weeks ago I baked a cake for my younger brother’s 21st birthday. Yeah, he’s all grown up now and I feel kinda old just thinking back how little he was.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family! I’m going to skip a few posts about places I’ve eaten since it is time-appropriate and it’s one of those rare home baking posts. Ooooh… I can bake.
Big ol’ cuke
