Tung in Cheek

Chocolate Covered Bananas w/a Twist

2009-04-16T19:05:00.001-07:00

Today I donated my meal swipes to the YHHAP fast, benefiting homeless shelters in New Haven. It's a great program and they've made it so signing up for it is easy, but it always leaves me with the problem of figuring out what to eat. One of the things I absolutely cannot live without is a bundle of fruit, so last night before I headed out to Miya's for dinner with Amy and Liz, I stopped by Trumbull to swipe some fruit. I came away with 6 blood oranges, 2 apples, a pear, and two bananas. I know. It sounds like an atrocious amount of fruit--but trust me kids, I inhale the stuff. Anyway, I've been itching to relive my childhood lately, especially since crunch time is starting to feel especially crunchy these days. The last day of classes is next Friday, and then it's Reading Week, papers, finals etc. You get the horrible picture. This stress all made me think back to this time I performed with the Irvine Unified School District's Honor Orchestra at Disneyland. Of course I remember having fun playing music and all, but what I distinctly remember is how hot it was, how gruesome the lines on my 10 year-old feet, and how fun it was to devour sourdough bowls full of soup at Disneyland's New Orleans quarter.

My friends and I would buy popsicles, water, or anything cold we could get our hands on as we waited in the hour-long lines. Once, in front of the Haunted House ride, four of us decided to buy frozen chocolate-covered bananas. As the vendor opened the cart, dramatic wisps of liquid nitrogen flowed out of it, and our bananas emerged solid as concrete. This all would have been fine, except that as we neared the end of the line, a sign cautioned us to eat or drink all of our food unless we wanted a ghost to follow us home. I nearly dropped the banana when I read it. My mom grew up with her large share of superstitions, and was terrified of death, spirits, and wackiness. Standing there, I had two options. Wolf down something that refused with great frozen energy to be eaten properly, throw it away (which I couldn't let myself do because Disneyland charges exhorbitant prices), or take a ghost home with me. I chose the first option, which is probably why I remember the scene so well. The brain freeze was like nothing I've ever experienced.

This time around, I was less interested in cooling off, and more interested in taste, quality, and smaller bites. I took one of the bananas I'd pilfered from the dining hall last night, chopped it into pieces, and came up with what I think is a new, sophisticated take on the standard kid-friendly frozen banana. I used organic rose-berry dark chocolate. Dagoba brand makes it with raspberries and rosehips, which I thought would give a depth of flavor to the treat. I froze the bananas, melted the chocolate in a make-shift double-boiler, and scooped the melted chocolate over the banana slices until they were covered. Then I froze them again, and took them out after about a half hour. I couldn't believe I even waited that long!

Recipe to make 6 chocolate-covered banana chunks:

2 oz dark chocolate (I used Dagoba rose-berry, but feel free to use regular or other flavored chocolate)

1 pot boiling water

1 bowl (to melt chocolate in over the pot)

1 banana

(optional) garnish: chopped nuts, berries, or coconut

1. chop bananas into thick chunks, freeze on platter

2. melt chocolate

3. take bananas out, and scoop melted chocolate over them

4. refreeze chocolate-covered bananas until set (about 15 minutes)

You can keep these in your freezer for a while, and take them out whenever you want to eat them. They make a beautiful dessert!

Roasted Red Pepper Deviled Eggs

2009-04-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

"The opaque white outer layer lay open-faced on my plate in two halves, looking rather despondent without its sunny yellow center: the Tin Man without his heart. The purity of the yolk was damaged, mixed with gloppy mayonnaise, mustard, and pepper and stuffed back into the body cavity of the egg in an imperfect transplant. The hardboiled egg had gone into surgery and not come back the same. I shrugged and took a tentative bite. I remember the sweet creaminess of the deviled egg, interrupted by the Jello-like intervals of egg white and the generally sulfuric smell of hard-boiled egg neatly disguised by the smokiness of fresh-cracked black pepper. More importantly, I remember that I proudly taught my parents the recipe right when I got home."

That was my first cooking experience. Deviled eggs and I go way back to the tender age of 7. Back then, I had to make them for a class project, though I don't remember what it was. Leave it to me to remember the food and not the assignment. Of course Sunday was Easter and eggs and Easter go hand in hand. Eggs symbolize new life, which all ties in pretty neatly with the Resurrection. The thing is, Easter, like many other holidays has come a long way from its religious roots to become an opportunity for many to hang out and feast with family or enjoy a basket of too many chocolates. That's great for people like me, heathens with no spiritual roots other than the sacrosanct necessity to eat.

Thus: the deviled egg. The perfect recipe to use up all those painted creations that now serve no purpose and will stink up your garbage if left to their own ends. I made this recipe with some spices in my dining hall. It's Italian inspired, that's for sure. Which I suppose is fitting with Catholic and Easter tradition. I diced some roasted red peppers and sprinkled some dried rosemary, basil, and thyme on top for added flavor. They were delicious, easy, and quite classy-looking. You could certainly serve them as appetizers at a party. In fact, you should, if you've got eggs left over. If you've got fresh ingredients as well, by all means, use them! I was limited to dried herbs because that's what my dining hall has--but if I had choice or form of transportation, I'd be all over some fresh basil.

Recipe for Roasted Red Pepper Deviled Eggs:

1 hardboiled egg
1 tsp mayonnaise (I used pesto mayonnaise)
1/2 tsp mustard
2 slices roasted red peppers
1/4 tsp combination of dried basil, thyme, and rosemary

Makes 2 halves, multiply for multiple eggs.

1. Halve the egg lengthwise. Put yolk into bowl. Dice red peppers. Add mayonnaise, mustard, and peppers to bowl. Mash and mix until you form a kind of paste.
2. Scoop the egg yolk mixture back into the hollow of the egg white. Sprinkle the dried herbs on top. Yes it is that easy.

Matzo Pizzo

2009-04-10T06:48:00.000-07:00

The following is excerpted from an article I wrote for the Yale Herald:

Here in America, we have three main pizza categories: you can get your pizza on thin crust if you’re into the Atkins diet; normal crust, which actually varies across the country between a base with pita-thickness and one nearly twice as bready (think 10 year old birthday parties and Pizza Hut); and deep-dish, which is Chicago’s original attempt to thwart (or support) Jenny Craig. Once you’ve figured out what kind of crust you want, you get to choose between the old-school red sauce and white sauce, which is usually made with parmesan, garlic, and olive oil. Then your mind becomes overwhelmed with topping combinations and you spew them out in a disorderly fashion and hope that what you’ve made isn’t going to end up uneaten, stale, and wasted.

The original Neopolitan pizza, on the other hand, was nowhere as complex. Though the first pizzas were fired in the ovens of humble folk, they quickly became part of a stubborn Italian culinary tradition. The Japanese might have their so-called “Sushi Police,” but the Neapolitans have their equivalent pizza brigade at the “Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana,” or the “True Neopolitan Pizza Association,” founded in 1984 in response to worldwide degradation of the original pizzas. Officially, these pizza fanatics only recognize two varieties as authentic. The first, margherita, made with tomato sauce, basil, and a small bit of mozzarella, has become an American favorite. The second, marinara, is nothing more than really good bread with an amazing tomato sauce on top. Here in the United States, where food is ridiculously plentiful year-round, we rarely have the stomach for Naples’ pizza pretension.

This week marks the Jewish holiday of Passover, and with it, I’ve come up with a variation on my recipe for rebellion against the pizza mafia: matzo pizza. I might not be Jewish, but I love the versatility of the unflavored cracker. It’s a welcome treat amongst the endless isles of salted, sugared, and buttered crackers. Because matzo is bland, it can be dressed up in countless ways. The original matzo pizza that I came up with is your go-to LBD, nothing fancy. It requires just a little tomato sauce, some shredded or fresh mozzarella, and an oven or microwave.

This year, I decided to go all out. I bought some goat cheese at the Wooster Square farmer’s market this past weekend, and brought it to Commons with me. I had a delectable experiment in mind. Goat cheese tastes great with something sweet like honey or fruit to undercut its tanginess, so I was set on grilling pears for this matzo pizza. I know, you’re thinking, pears on a pizza? Just trust me on this. If you’ve ever had crostini, you know what I’m talking about. Cheese, fruit, and carbs make a magical combination. First, I had to check to see whether I could use a panini press or George Foreman-type contraption to grill my pears. A simple Google sesh revealed that those machines can grill anything from fruit to flesh. Perfect. As the pears were grilling, I drizzled a little olive oil on the matzo. No sauce. I layered some tomatoes on top, lightly salted them and crumbled an ounce of goat cheese on top. I then added my grilled pears on top and crumbled the remaining ounce of goat cheese onto the pizza. Ideally, I would have stuck it in an oven for a few minutes, but the closest thing Commons has to that is a microwave, so I nuked it for about a minute. I also happen to like heat, so I sprinkled a smattering of crushed red pepper on top before I cut into it.

As I bit into my creation, I couldn’t help but think that I’d successfully made my point. Food is an art, and pizza is no exception. Tradition is beautiful, but variation is what makes tradition special in the first place. So really, I guess the Associazione actually see eye-to-eye. Of course, using matzo in place of pizza bread is somewhat outlandish and in many ways fruit on a pizza is an act of sacrilege as offensive as not kissing the Pope’s ring, but Signore, I swear I mean no disrespect.

To make One Fancy Shmancy Matzo Pizza:

1 matzo cracker
1 pear sliced
2 oz. soft goat cheese
4 slices tomato
1 tsp olive oil
Pinch of salt

1. Grill the sliced pear on your college panini press. If you don’t have one, go to a dining hall that does, like Commons, Davenport, Pierson, or Trumbull. Should take about 5 minutes.
2. While the pears are working, drizzle a tsp of olive oil on the matzo. Layer the tomatoes on top and season them with that pinch of salt. Crumble 1 oz of goat cheese on top.
3. Retrieve the pears, layer them on top of the cheese and tomatoes, and then crumble the remaining cheese onto the pizza. Add some red pepper or freshly ground pepper, if you so like.
4. Microwave it for about 45 seconds, or eat it raw if you’re against microwaving. It tastes great either way.

*Note: if using oven, preheat oven to 375 degrees and bake for 10 minutes

Eat your heart out

2009-04-07T17:04:00.000-07:00

Until some time during the middle of my high school career, post-Joy Luck Club personal ethnic crisis and pre-"Material Life in Modern China," I'd always thought that everyone all over China ate the exact same mish-mashing of vegetables and meats, rice, breads, and noodles. I never thought twice about the difficulties of transporting food in a nation where, until recently, the vast majority of the population biked or walked. It barely occurred to me that, in another country where food seemed plentiful for the most part, the people there might still leave their crops to the seasons rather than force them to grow when the skies said they shouldn't. Which isn't to say that food here is grossly homogenized. In fact, dishes everywhere have distinct, regional ties--I just never really thought about them until that moment I discovered that instead of the stringly yellow egg noodles of my childhood chow mein, I'd walked into a restaurant that was serving thicker, doughier ones typical of northern Chinese cuisine, where flour/breads/noodles are staples. The south, however, serves the food that we in America are more familiar with: rice and side dishes.

I can't say that I prefer one or the other--it's a bit like asking someone who really likes The Beatles which song is their favorite. I'd say mood has a lot to do with it. Hunger always has a direction. When I'm at school though, I often miss the freedom of my own, fully stocked fridge and the resources (read: parents) to go out and buy any produce I want. This noodle recipe was the last thing I made before I came back to campus. My dad made it for our family's Christmas gathering and I was really impressed at how great it tasted and how simple it was to make. Unlike the chow mein or other noodle dishes you'd get at a restaurant, this recipe uses a minimal amount of oil. In fact, the only oil in it is sesame oil for flavoring rather than for cooking. You can add any mix of vegetables or meat to it. For this particular recipe I used shrimp and spinach. I probably would have used gai-lan, which is commonly known as Chinese broccoli, if I had it.

Recipe for 1 bag (14oz or 16oz) of egg noodles:

1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoon light soy sauce + 1 tbsp if needed
2 tablespoon water (make it easier to mix)
4 quarts boiling water

1.Cook noodles in boiling water for about 2-3 minutes. You don't want them to end up mushy.
2. Mix in the sauce
3. Put any combination of stir-fried vegetables/meat or steamed vegetables on top

Goat Cheese, Honey, Pear, and Grape Crostini

2009-04-05T06:15:00.000-07:00

My friend John got one-week's leave on account of good behavior from the labor camp he was sent to for failing to pay his barber's bill. Out of all the places he chose to vacation, he picked New Haven, Connecticut. So I've spent almost every waking moment of the last three days with him, natch. Before you gasp and tell my mother that one of my best friends is a Siberian-age criminal and she doesn't speak to me for a month, I guess I should rewind and say John's actually studying abroad this semester at Goldsmith's College in London. I'm not sure whether he's failed to pay his barber's bill, but I know that he no longer has his Jimi Hendrix fro. And he has got a new, VERY ridiculous jacket.

I want to say this jacket of his is European, genteel, and tweedy. Something he could wear to, say, an uppercrusty soiree or Saturday afternoon cricket. Alas, no. This jacket is puffy, shiny to the point of patent, quilted, sweater-lined, attitude-collared, and all together fab-u-lous. So I decided to tame it with crostini.

Ever since my first visit to the farmer's market a couple months ago, I've been in love with Beltane Farms' fresh soft goat cheese. I'm totally obsessed with the idea of salty and sweet and love the combination of fruit and cheese, like many people do, so I was really looking forward to this venture. But alas! I don't have an oven, so I had to improvise a bit with a little bit of olive oil and a pan.

I think John and Amy were happy with the results, which made me happy--yay!

Recipe
1/4 baguette sliced into thin pieces, about 1 cm thick (approx. 10 pieces)
1 tbsp olive oil for pan
1 oz fresh soft goat cheese
1/4 tbsp honey
1 pear
a few grapes (optional)
pinch of salt

1. coat bread slices in olive oil in pan, toast them until crispy and lightly browned.
2. smear goat cheese on crostini, take a pinch of salt and sprinkle it on all the pieces. you don't really need to salt them, but it helps bring out the flavor.
3. drizzle honey over the crostini
4. thinly slice pear and put on top. halve some grapes if you've got them.

Americana: Blueberry muffins

2009-04-02T05:59:00.000-07:00

The night before I flew out of LAX bound for Budapest, I asked my dad to pick up a blueberry muffin for me on his way home for the long plane. "Isn't there anything else you'd want to eat? Anything better?" he asked. My dad doesn't believe that muffins are "real" food. But I believe that muffins can be everything. They can be savory, they can be sweet; they can be gooey and half done, or moist and ready to eat. Muffins satisfy all kinds of cravings with their almost cake-like texture, endless combination of flavors, and the individualized muffin cup that says me, Me, ME! They assuage all kinds of doubts or apprehensions. Just one poorly pinched corner of a warm, moist, buttery muffin is enough to make me think that some day, muffins will save the world. Not that I advocate emotional eating.

Anyway, I had to have that blueberry muffin.

I had this vision that it would give me unparalled peace as I squirmed uncomfortably for 14 hours in the leather, supportless, bad-tv airplane seat. That poor muffin had high expectations to fulfill. The thing about muffins that I've found, though, is they're a bit like a comfortable, wrapped up nap after an early, hectic morning and an awfully late night: easily satisfying.

So I waited until the bad airplane movies started to get even staler as they began to be replayed over and over. Until the illusions that I was even sitting in a chair gradually fell away as the circulation in my lower body started to grow frenetic. Until the small well of beverages and services began to dry up because I was 20 feet outside of business class. Then, and only then, did I take out the moist blueberry muffin. I was comforted by the known: what it would taste like, the store it came from, that nursery song, the fact that ever since I could remember, blueberry muffins were part of my American life, and a food I associated almost entirely with the old U.S of A. I didn't know what to expect in Budapest. But I wouldn't have to think about that until I was done with the muffin.

Recipe (adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook):
6 tablespoons butter (3/4 stick) softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 extra-large egg
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/3 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries (tossed in 1 tbsp flour)

1. preheat oven to 375 degrees. prep muffin cups or grease muffin tin.
2. cream together butter and sugar. add milk, egg, and vanilla.
3. in separate bowl, mix flour and baking powder and salt.
4. add dry ingredients to wet.
5. gently fold in blueberries.
6. scoop batter into muffin cups, about 1/2 to 2/3 full.
7. bake for 20-25 minutes.

Makes 12.

Bar Pizza: "Better than Anything?"

2009-03-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

Easter's coming up pretty soon. I'm not religious or anything, but I kicked off Ash Wednesday with Erin in a way that probably made the pope proud: in the study room on my floor with some homework and a good talk. That is, studiously, seriously, humbly, and in good faith. She asked me what my goals for Lent were, and I replied that as much as my dad circa 1990 would have loved it if I followed Catholic tradition, we had all fallen out of that tree and hit the frustrating, but still grounding, ground. "But why not set some goals? Give something up--I think it'll free you more as a person," she said.

While most people I know gave up things, foods, and quirky habits (collecting toe nail clippings, for example...ew just kidding), I think Erin picked the best thing to shed. Self-doubt. The second I heard her say it, I threw my atheistic crap out of the window (but not too far) and joined up. Self-doubt, as I have discovered in college, leads to a slew of nasty things that perpetuates self-sabotage, which causes irrational, but very emotional jealousy, and more self-doubt. Bad, bad, bad.

So this weekend, I went out to dinner to celebrate a friend's birthday and indulged in what I would have given up because if left to my own devices what I would have spent 40 days pining for would have been a lot shallower than Erin's brave idea. Like a lot shallower. Thinnest-crust shallow.

Bar Pizza serves some of the best pizza I've ever had, and I've sampled some of New Haven's favorites (Modern and Pepe's). As I ate my Bar pizza I couldn't help running that old song through my head:

Better than making a million/Better than being a queen/Better than oil wells and gold mines/Better than pastures of green/Better than finding a horseshoe/Better than losing your head/Better than anything ever thought of/Better than anything ever said/Ah, ha,better than singing right out loud/Or being, ha, spotted in a crowd/Better than anything except being in love.

And it was. I've never been loyal to the Pizza Hut-type thick crust, though before California Pizza Kitchen and the Atkins Diet, it was all I had to work with. I like the flavors and ingredients in my pizza to taste balanced. A hint of bread here, a glimpse of sauce base there and a complementary taste and texture of toppings everywhere. Bar's brick-oven accommodates a seemingly infinite combination of toppings, so I like to try something new every time I have the chunk of change to drop by. This time around I ordered a chicken, basil, and sundried tomato white pizza and ate some of my friend's bacon and spinach concoction. The chicken was tender, which generally isn't the case after someone's cooked it, added it to the pizza, and thrown it in the oven. The basil was Thai basil, which wasn't the plant I was expecting, but it tasted great. The sundried tomatoes added a good brightness to the pizza. As for the bacon pizza...I've come to the horrible, artery-clogging conclusion that bacon tastes great on and with anything. Bar's ambiance is fun and taverny, with long wooden benches and tables and candles mimicking old world lanterns. It's a great place for a good, solid group of people, but bring your wallet and make sure it's thick and not thin.

And you know, about three weeks into this whole Lentish thing, I'm not sure I've done a great job throwing off self-doubt, but I'm more aware of it and I've never felt more humbly human in my life. I've never felt more ok with being it, either. Now I just have to work on accepting it in others.

Where: Bar Pizza 254 Crown Street, New Haven CT 06511
See site for hours, menu, and culture vibe.
$$$
Large groups can't split checks, so bring your math skills.
Casual
Other notes: Fabulous

Fresh Bagels!

2009-03-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

"A bagel is a round bread made of simple, elegant ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast and malt. Its dough is boiled, then baked, and the result should be a rich caramel color; it should not be pale and blond. A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it instead of a whoosh. A bagel should be eaten warm and, ideally, should be no more than four or five hours old when consumed. All else is not a bagel."-Ed Levine, NYTimes

My first and last real crushes were Jewish. My most recent one is too. If you really want to know, they go by Pretzel, Challah, and Bagel. Sexy, I know. There's just something in the bread.

As with most crushes, I started with some reconnaissance. I figured, it's always best to know if it's even worth getting burnt, right? I'd say 9 times out of 10, it isn't. Although, I am only 20 and I've made a verbal commitment to let loose. So I'm going to make that 7 times out of 10. And I'm going to lower my expectations. But I'm still going to hope for quality and success.

That's the mentality I had going into this baking venture. And it worked! I was really happy with these bagels. They were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Ideal. No burn. There was very little anyone could do to keep me from eating one right out of the oven. Anyone except the bagel, that is. Think back to the myth about Icarus. Me=Icarus. The bagel=the sun. So I left it alone for about a half hour before I got out my jar of peanut butter, slathered it all over the bagel, and ate it. I know. I kind of bastardized the bagel with peanut butter, but I didn't have cream cheese or lox! I'll do right by the bagel next time.

A good bagel is hard to find, so why not make your own?

Ingredients (recipe adapted from Emeril. love the irony)

2 cups warm water, about 110 degrees F
2 (1/4-ounce) packets active dry yeast
3 tablespoons granulated sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoons vegetable oil

Makes 12 bagels

Directions:

Combine the water, yeast, and 3 tablespoons of the sugar in the bowl of an upright mixer fitted with a dough hook. Stir and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Gradually add flour and the salt, and mix until the mixture comes together.

Lightly flour board or surface and knead until smooth and no longer sticky, about 5 minutes.

Grease a large bowl with 1 teaspoon of the oil. Place the dough in the bowl, turning to coat. Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free spot until almost doubled, about 1 hour.

Remove from the bowl and punch down the dough. Divide into 12 equal pieces, roll each ball into a 4 to 6-inch log. Join the ends around four fingers to make a hole. Repeat with the remaining dough. Place on a lightly greased surface, cover with a clean cloth, and let rest until risen but not doubled in a draft-free spot, 20 to 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Grease a baking sheet with non-stick spray or oil.

In a large pot, bring about 10 cups of water and remaining tablespoon of sugar to a boil, add a couple bagels at a time and boil them in the water for about 30 seconds to a minute on each side. Flip bagels onto the prepared sheet pan. Bake for 15 minutes, rotate pan 90 degrees and bake for 15 more.

Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.

Mrs. Presley's take on the Elvis Classic: Peanut Butter Toast with Strawberries

2009-03-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

Ever since high school, I've been convinced that at heart, I am a child of the 60s. I listened to The Beatles relentlessly, almost to the point where I had psychedelic dreams. The Rolling Stones were on every mixed CD I made--back when music came on CDs--though I guess that made me more of an LP kid. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Moody Blues, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, KEARTH 101; I listened and loved.

I guess I was fated to be this way--my dad's plane landed from Hong Kong the day that Elvis died. He got me started on oldies early, although I guess during the 1990s, Elton John was waning before he became "classic," and The Eagles...well maybe at that point, they were "classic rock." I went through that phase where I wanted to fit in with everyone else and pretended I cared about 'Nsync and Britney Spears before Kevin Federline. It's funny that these days I actually really like 90s music. Anyway, by my sophomore year in high school I was obsessed with 60s and 70s culture, movies, cars, political history, and fashion. I still am.

Elvis might be dead, but The King lives on in many ways--Vegas impersonators, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, "Jailhouse Rock," just to name a few. My favorite reincarnation of his spirit though, is the peanut-butter and banana sandwich. Ooey, gooey, and delicious. I decided to use fresh strawberries instead and toasted the bread, although we all know Elvis would have grilled or fried it. That's why I called this venture "Mrs. Presley's take." It's a little more delicate, but just as good. The fresh version of peanut butter + strawberry jam.

The ingredients are simple: peanut butter, bread, and strawberries.

White House Garden

2009-03-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

What they will be growing...

yay!

Homemade Egg-less pancakes with Ginger Syrup

2009-03-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

I love breakfast and brunch. I could eat cereal for every meal. I wrote a 20 page paper on oatmeal last semester. I love muffins. Scrambled eggs. Sausage. Bacon. Potatoes. Quiche. Fruit salad. The thing is, high blood pressure runs in my mom's side of the family so I'm careful of how much sodium and fat I eat and I make sure I get some workout time in every week. I saw something great on the news last night: there's a gym in L.A. that is harnessing energy from its exercise machines. They strapped Duracell charging boxes to a room of spin bikes and basically had the class power itself. How is that for green engineering and sustainability? I feel like all gyms should do that. Maybe I can get the campus gym to participate!

Anyway, whenever I come home for break, I like to make pancakes for lunch. They're easy, filling, delicious, and piping hot--perfect for break because I basically spend the entire day in bed reading or watching movies. I whipped these up in about 15 minutes and used the leftover ginger syrup that I stored from the candied ginger recipe. The ginger syrup was amaaaaazing with these pancakes.

This recipe isn't fat-free, but it IS egg-less, which helps cut down some of the cholesterol. I also added blueberries for some added anti-oxidant kick and good fruity sweetness.

Ingredients for pancakes:

1 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1 cup milk
1 tsp water
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp vanilla

Note: add in blueberries or other fruits if you wish, and feel free to use whole wheat flour!

Makes 4 pancakes

1. mix wet ingredients together, add in flour, baking powder, and sugar
2. fold in add-ins. I chopped in some candied ginger and added blueberries
3. heat griddle or pan, and spray with Pam or use a tablespoon of butter to grease the pan
4. spoon in batter, flip when they start to bubble

Candied Ginger, Candied Life

2009-03-17T13:41:00.000-07:00

I found a huge ginger root in my fridge a couple days ago. Enough ginger to beat someone over the head with. Since I don't condone outrageous and unnecessary violence, I figured I'd help my parents get rid of some of that ridiculous amount of ginger. I sat and vegetated in front of the television for a while when my mind wandered to the taste of this sweet ginger candy wrapped in rice paper that my friend Yinshi once shared with me on a long bus-ride back from NYC. We were there with our other Yale Center for British Art student guide buds and had spent a long, but visually and intellectually stimulating day looking at the Gilbert & George exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. At the end of that day, a little ginger candy spiced up my sluggish mind, and got me through the late and long bus ride.

After watching 5 episodes of 24, I needed something to get me off the couch. And in that moment, the only thing that could get me to do anything other than waste away in front of the tv, was to cook something. So I looked up a couple of basic candied ginger recipes, decided I wasn't going to follow any of them because they called for way too much sugar, and proceeded to dump things together in a pot. Risky. But, I figured, if I totally messed up the ginger, at least I'd come away from the whole mess with some yummy syrup, right? I told myself that that was right.

The ginger was zingy, chewy, and sweet. And beautiful. And, turns out I was left with some glorious spiced syrup.

Ingredients:
1/2 large ginger root, peeled and sliced into thin coins
2 cups water
3/4 cups sugar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp rice flour

1. bring water and sugar to a boil.
2. put ginger root in, stir to coat, cover pot, lower heat to low simmer.
3. simmer until ginger is chewy and tender, about 45 minutes-hour.
4. take it out and cool it on a rack
5. mix 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp rice flour in a bowl, and roll cooled ginger in mixture to coat
6. eat it and brainstorm other recipes you can add it to (like scones and cookies, etc.)

*note: watch it, and make sure it doesn't burn!

Marinated Tofu Spinach Salad

2009-03-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

There's nothing I love more than a light, carefree, sunny Sunday Morning. The kind of day where I get up at a reasonable 9 AM and crunch on cereal as I read the morning headlines on my computer and the sun's rays stream through my window. The kind of day without a jury summons. Murphy's law is a wise-old adage that we know all too well on bad days: "anything that can go wrong, will." I guess it's pretty funny though that my jury summons came a couple of days after I had a conversation with my parents about student status and jury duty. I think I know better than to talk about jury service in casual conversation now.

Luckily, I'm getting out of it this time around, simply because I won't be in CA for more than a week for the next year, but they'll track me down. Which got me to thinking--what would I need to get me through a day of jury duty? Something fresh, yet savory, to get me through an entire day of sitting or the embarrassment of channeling Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, who tried to get out of jury duty by dressing up as Princess Leia.

My dad had some extra spinach (read: about 4 pounds of extra spinach). He picked up 5 pounds of it at 10 cents a pound from some Asian supermarket in Irvine. I don't know how that's possible, so don't ask. I figured I'd take that spinach, raise it a salad, put some tofu in it, and make an Asian dressing. It was really easy to throw together and tasted bright and great. I think I'm going to take the idea back to school with me and experiment with more ingredients. The dressing was a random concoction, but it turned out really nice and perfectly complimented the salad.

Ingredients:
1/4 package marinated tofu, cubed
1/2 large carrot, shaved
1 1/2 cup spinach leaves (not packed)

For Dressing:
1 tsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp black vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp yellow mustard
1/2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp finely chopped green onions
1/4 tsp finely chopped ginger

Note: you can substitute any kind of grilled meat for the tofu and use a different vinegar if you don't have Asian black vinegar. Feel free to add more veggies to the salad as well!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S (in) Bread!!!!

2009-03-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I mentioned that I bought some bananas for the express purpose of making banana bread. First, a confession. I only made my first loaf of banana bread a month ago. Since then, however, I've been talking about it as if I make it all the time. But I swear I am not a fraud--this recipe is delicious, ask any of my friends who have tried it. So what's the reason I can sit here and type this post with any kind of authority on the matter of banana bread? The answer: The Gourmet Cookbook's banana bread recipe.

In February, my friend Jake and I were bored, tired, and hungry--the three things that plague all college students even as we have stacks of reading and pages of writing to do, right? Right. Anyway, Jake has a great starting collection of cookbooks, so we pulled out the bright yellow volume, edited by none other than the fabulous Ruth Reichl. After flipping through it for a couple minutes, we decided to try the banana bread recipe. It wasn't anything I had ever eaten before (though I wasn't an experienced banana bread baker at that point, I definitely had a few loaves under my belt as an experienced banana bread eater. Pun intended, unfortunately.) The recipe had macadamia nuts and coconut flakes in it--two things that neither of us wanted or had to put in the bread. We settled on being semi-adventurous and kept the lemon zest in the recipe. And then we got to work!

That was the first time I made banana bread, and this is the third time I've baked it. I'm still not a b-bread baking expert by any means, but I think I've found my favorite version in that Gourmet Cookbook recipe sans nuts and coconut. This time around I decided to try applesauce as a fat substitute for a healthier, nearly fat-free bread. The only fat in it came from the egg and the tablespoon of low-fat yogurt. Not bad, eh? I also added an extra half of a banana for more flavor.

I can't tell you how much I love the smell of fresh-baked banana bread. It filled my house with sweet-scented warmth. The bread itself was incredible: moist, steamy, and chock-full of bananas. For a household that isn't much into sweets, that banana bread was transformative. I baked it before lunch and it was gone before dinner.

I figured I'd stay in line with the healthy theme of the bread and melted a square of dark chocolate on top. It's a better alternative to butter because it has antioxidants in it. This still doesn't beat a bag of spinach in the war against diabetes, but it's one of the best things I've ever tasted, and I'm sure you'll love it too.

Ingredients for low fat banana bread (adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook)
1 1/8 cup flour
3/8 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/8 cup applesauce
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp lemon zest
2.5 large bananas mashed
1.5 tsp low-fat plain yogurt

Makes one loaf

1. grease and dust pans w/flour
2. preheat oven to 350 degrees
3. sift together dry ingredients
4. beat applesauce (original recipe is 3/4 stick butter) and sugar in bowl, add eggs one at a time, add bananas, add vanilla, add zest, mix in yogurt
5. add dry ingredients. avoid overmixing
6. bake for 45-50 minutes
7. remove bread from pans and cool

Blueberry Cinnamon Banana Oatmeal

2009-03-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

I love oatmeal. A while back, I wrote a review of Starbucks' "Perfect Oatmeal," promising that any of us can make our oatmeal just as "perfect" for less. I swore that it was true, but I never followed it up with a recipe. So I figured it was time to put my money where my mouth is--or so they say. I bought about five bananas the other day so I could watch some of them turn brown and make banana bread, but that meant I had about two bananas to spare. What to do with them? Arrange a three-way marriage between bananas, blueberries, and cereal, of course!

Some of my friends are well aware of my obsession with fruit. I eat about six pieces and three different varieties of fruit a day. At least. Hey, it's going to go bad in the dining hall if no one else eats it, anyway! I'm always eager to incorporate them into baked goods, hot and cold cereals, salads, and sandwiches. Fruit makes everything taste great. Sweeter. Better.

This is an easy oatmeal recipe that you can make using either steel cut oats or instant. All you need is some fruit, cinnamon, and brown sugar--basic pantry items or standard dining hall inventory. I made this with steel cut since I have the convenience of a larger kitchen and a fully stocked fridge for a few days before I head back to school. This was creamy, slightly sweet, and highlighted by the freshness of the fruit--perfect for a cool near-spring morning!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup steel cut oats (Irish or Quaker, doesn't matter)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup soymilk (or regular milk)
1 1/2 tsp. brown sugar
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup frozen organic blueberries (or any other kind of berry. 1/2 cup might seem like much, but that's because I love blueberries!! Plus I bought a giant bag from Costco.)
1/2 banana sliced

Makes 1 serving.

1. Put oats, water, and soymilk in a pot. Stir the oats a little as the mixture comes to a boil. Once it starts to bubble, turn the heat off, put the lid on the pot, and let the oats sit and soak in the heat and moisture and cook. Should take about 5-8 minutes.
2. Once oats are cooked through, add brown sugar and cinnamon.
3. Slice bananas and put them on top.
4. Put blueberries on top.
5. Comfort self with warm, bright oatmeal, and face the day!

My "health nut" meal: steamed sauteed mushrooms and steamed broccoli on brown rice

2009-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

I've been home in California for about a week now, and as much of a hermit as I am when I'm home, I ventured out to the mall with a couple of friends yesterday. I had a $20 with me and no wallet--insurance to keep me from spending too much. You'd be surprised what you could buy with a $20 and the Gap Company's Give and Get 30% off sale: one nautical-inspired t-shirt from Banana Republic with about $7 left over! For those of you who don't know about the Give and Get (I only found out about it yesterday), it lasts through the 15th. The Gap Company (Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic) will donate 5% of your sales to one of 6 non-profits. Now that's fashion the way I like it.

As for food...my shopping trip exposed my bitterly cold New England butter-mind. I was no longer in Connecticut. These tan and toothpick-like Californians don't understand using real buttermilk in biscuits! Now I know how Dorothy felt.

So in my efforts to re-immerse myself in this land of sun and sand, I came up with this recipe on the ride home. It's incredibly tasty and easy to make. I can't believe I'd forgotten how gloriously flavorful food could be without butter!

The beech mushrooms are deliciously perfumed, the soy sauce broccoli is tender and savory, and the flavors match really well with the nutty brown rice. The best part about this meal is it leaves you with two options: you can eat it and take your lean self to the sunny beach OR you can treat yourself to a cookie because you didn't just eat a bread bowl full of cream of broccoli!

Ingredients:

2 bags of beech mushrooms (about 10 oz)
3 tbsp Lee Kum Kee Oyster sauce
one head of broccoli
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp canola oil
2 cups brown rice
4 cups of water + 4 cups for steamer (depending on the size of your steamer)

Makes 4-6 servings

1. put brown rice and 4 cups of water in a pot, turn burners on to boil. watch the pot to make sure it doesn't foam over. should take about 20 minutes.
2. place the broccoli and mushrooms in separate pans and arrange in the steamer.
3. steam broccoli for about 4-7 minutes and mushrooms for 5-10 minutes. they're basically done at the same time.
4. in a hot wok or pan, combine oil and soy sauce. when broccoli is done, pour the soy sauce and oil on the broccoli and mix, coating it.
5. when the mushrooms are done, add about two pinches of salt and the 3 tbsp of oyster sauce (which is salty itself) and mix. add salt to taste.
6. when the rice is done, your meal is done. yay!!

Breadaholics, unite!

2009-03-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Yes. I love bread. Three to four years ago when the South Beach and Atkins diets were all the rage, I tried to cut down on bagels, crackers, french bread, pasta, rice, and cereal. Tried. Okay, so I actually didn't really make that much of an effort, but I've made up for it by committing myself to the gym four to five times a week. Of course, the worst thing for someone like me, other than eating and buying massive amounts of carbs, is learning how to make them myself. As the saying goes, you make it, you eat it. All right, I'll admit I made that one up, but it's true.

A couple weeks ago, I was on Food Gawker and I saw the most delectably warm, salty, and perfectly browned soft pretzels. I nearly died. Here's the thing--while I'll most definitely eat your basic sliced wheat (not white anymore, ha!) bread, store-bought crackers, and Special K with Redberries until I die of carb overload, I would swear to stop eating any of those things for an entire year for just ONE bite of fresh home-baked bread. I'm that crazy. About fresh bread.

This was the first time I made these pretzels, adapted from sugarlaws' recipe. I did some things differently to make the recipe work for me and the next time I make them I'll be a little more adventurous with flavors. For starters, I added about 1/3 cup more water to the dough to help it come together and I didn't have that instant yeast stuff so I had to wait about an extra hour for my dough to rise. My pretzels also turned out darker because of the eggwash. I'll also probably boil them for fewer seconds a side next time to avoid that extra baking soda getting to the flavor of a couple of my pretzels.

Anyway, you should totally make these. The steamy, bready pretzel smell when you break one apart right out of the oven is worth giving up at least a week's worth of any other bread. I'm serious.

Ingredients (adapted from sugarlaws):
1 tsp active dry yeast
Pinch of sugar
2/3 cup warm water
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp canola oil

3 tbsp baking soda
2 cups of water
Sea salt
1 egg + 1 tbsp water

1. let yeast proof in warm water with pinch of sugar. about 5 minutes.
2. mix dry ingredients and 1 tbsp canola oil in separate bowl, then incorporate into water and yeast mixture.
3. knead for about five minutes, cover and put in a relatively warm place. let rise for an hour if you used active yeast out of the packets, let rise for about two hours if you used traditional yeast.
4. preheat oven to 425 degrees. line baking sheet with parchment paper.
5. crack egg and beat with 1 tbsp water to make eggwash.
6. divide dough into six pieces and roll out into about 1/2 inch diameter ropes (about 15 inches long). make a "U," cross ends and bring inwards, twist one more time, and rest them on the bottom of the "U."
7. boil water and baking soda. Put pretzels in for 20 seconds a side. Take them out and put them on parchment paper.
8. brush egg wash and sprinkle salt or other seasonings (cinnamon sugar, cheese, etc.) on top
9. bake for 12 to 14 minutes.

Sweet, never tart

2009-03-08T15:35:00.001-07:00

This lemon blueberry yogurt cake is deliciously lemony,sweet, and not at all tart. But as life goes and as people go, something is bound go sour. I think it makes life a little more interesting. And besides, perpetual sweetness is suffocating. I have no doubt my aversion to and skepticism of over-bubbly and sugary personalities have translated into my distaste for super-sweet desserts. I'm not saying that I won't eat a Mrs. Field's cookie or that I won't have at least four huge bites of that pumpkin pie from Costco when late October rolls around, but I am saying that most of the time, I like my food the way I like my life: slightly romantic, but mostly real. And real life ain't a cuppa shugga, honey.

So for this cake, which I tried baking for the first time, I cut the sugar by a quarter, didn't make the lemon glaze, and dismissed the zesty frosting that looked so good in the Ina Garten recipe I adapted. If I'd been making this cake for friends or something, I probably would have followed the recipe more to a T. I figured, though, that since I'd be the only one eating it, I might as well do it my way. Somewhere out there Ole Blue Eyes Sinatra is pretty proud of me. I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the way my cake turned out, too. While it's dense and moist, I think it verges a little on being too moist. It might be the applesauce that I used instead of canola oil, or the extra tablespoon of yogurt that snuck in because I did a quick job of measuring it. Nevertheless, it's delicious and basically guilt-free. Wish I could the same for that batch of cookies I made a little while ago.

Ingredients for cake:
1 1/2 cups flour + 1 tablespoon
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup blueberries (frozen or fresh)
2 tsp lemon zest (two lemons)
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 cup low-fat plain yogurt
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. in bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups flour, baking powder, and salt together
3. in a slightly larger bowl whisk together yogurt, eggs, vanilla extract, lemon zest, and lemon juice
4. slowly add and incorporate dry ingredients into yogurt mixture
5. fold in applesauce
6. coat blueberries with 1 tablespoon flour to keep them from sinking to the bottom of the cake and fold them in.
7. bake in oven for an hour
8. love it to death.

Genesis, my way

2009-03-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

And on the sixth day, her stomach said, "Let there be food. And there was." And on the seventh day, her shivering bones said, "Let there be light and warmth and joy. And three thousand miles across the country, THERE WAS."

I've returned to me native land of palm trees, blue skies, and a persistent 70 degree Fahrenheit reading. With all this comes the return of sanity, rest, my own kitchen, and hopefully a tan. Hopefully. At the pool today, I was the palest one. Paler than a 6 month old blonde baby. The color of New England clam chowder. You get it.

After my swim, I was famished, so I rang me mum and asked her what she had planned for eats. And boy did she come through--with steamed pork buns. We made these together. YUM.

I don't like "cute," but these are cute.

For the dough wrappers:
5 cups flour
2 cups of warm water
1 tsp yeast

Add yeast to warm water, let stand for a few minutes until it starts to foam.
Add flour and incorporate until dough starts sticking.
Knead dough until sides of bowl look relatively clean.
Let rise for 1.5 hours.
Roll the dough out into 1 inch logs
Cut 1 inch pieces of dough
To make 3 inch diameter rounds: flour rolling surface, roll pin in place with right hand, rotate dough counter-clockwise with left (or the opposite, if your brain is wired that way)

For the filling:
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cooking wine
1 tsp ground pepper

1 tsp corn starch
Mince in food processor: 1/3 cup scallions and 1.5 inch hunk of ginger
1 tsp sesame oil
1 1/4 pounds ground pork

Mix all of these ingredients together in a bowl, let marinate while dough rises.

To make:
Put 1.5 tsp of the filling into a wrapper, pinch the edges together, give them a little rounding encouragement on the counter, and set them in the steamer
Steam them for about 20 minutes.

Serving size: makes about 25 small buns

Cookies-->Euphoria

2009-02-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

I was going to start this post later, but these cookies absolutely can't wait. Like thousands of other bakers, after what I think was one of the greatest cookie investigations of this decade, the New York Times column on the chocolate chip cookie, I knew that I had to try this recipe. No question. All Recipes, as great as you are, this cookie is different from the countless concoctions on your website, although this one is sure to be on it now. It was brilliant.

A lot of us are experienced chocolate chip cookie eaters. We've had them as treats in school, at birthday parties, from the grocery store, made by our best friend's mom, with nuts and without, overpeppered with chocolate chips and with not enough chocolate chips. I remember when I first came to college and organic chocolate chip cookies were a trendy novelty. It's been a while since I've had any dining hall sweets, but I'm certainly not looking back. Why stuff your body with butter and sugar if it doesn't taste good? I feel li ke unhealthy things have to be worth your while. These cookies definitely are.

Of course, as a college student, baking means working in a college kitchen that doesn't necessarily have all the ingredients you need. And being a college student means that you don't necessarily realize it until you're in the midst of baking. So I made a bastardized version of the New York Times cookie. It was missing its last 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla and I couldn't find the two varieties of flour the recipe called for (bread and cake), so I just used all-purpose. All-purpose flour saves lives. I also didn't have expensive chocolate available nor did I have the money for it, so I used semi-sweet morsels from the dining hall. If the splurged version is supposed to taste better than the budget one I made, then OH MY GOD is all I have to say about it.

Out of all the chocolate chip cookies I've had, I think that the best ones have been the ones with those toffee undertones the article refers to. Cookies worth remembering are chewy at the center and slightly crumbly at the edges. And they always have semi-sweet morsels. Cookies are a tradition and they stand for comfort and indulgence. I used to think it was homemaker-ish when my friends told me cooking or baking relieved them of stress. But now I think I get it. There's a certain element of control in making food, a power over what goes into a recipe that I think people find calming and centering. Even if you're following a recipe you can tweak it to taste, and chances are even if you take a crazy risk, the food will be edible. If only life were that way.

To make about 2 dozen small cookies or 20 medium-ish (adapted from Jacques Torres cookie recipe on NYTimes.com)

1 5/6 cups all-purpose
5/8 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoons coarse salt
1 1/4 sticks unsalted butter
5/8 cups light brown sugar (two-thirds of ours was dark b/c we used up the light)
1/2 cups + 1 tbsp granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (we only had 3/4 tsp.)
1 1/4 cup semi-sweet morsels

1. mix dry ingredients together.
2. in a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar. add egg and vanilla extract.
3. slowly add in flour to butter/sugar mixture. once dough comes together, add in chocolate chips.
4. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP TO HAPPINESS: refrigerate dough for 24 hours. I made it to 22. Who knows what those two lost hours would have meant for these cookies. There's something about the chemistry (the column explains it) that brings out something different in the sugar.
5. preheat oven to 325 degrees. scoop onto Pam-ed cookie sheet or parchment paper and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Rosemary Focaccia Bread

2009-02-28T05:46:00.000-08:00

I'm relatively new to intense baking. I've baked a few cakes, cookies, and scones, but I'm still trying to forget that I had to restart the sugar cookies I baked for my brother's 3rd grade class three times over because they kept tasting like baking soda. So there was that. But I didn't give up, and neither should you! Because those who love bread shall one day succeed.

My mom is really into making Chinese steamed rolls and growing up, she'd throw flour, yeast, water, and oil together in the kitchen at least once a month. It looked really easy, but I was afraid to try something that seemed really complicated. Besides, it involved upper body strength. I didn't have it then and if I told you that's improved over the years, I'd just be lying. Of course, that's before I believed that great food is 70% love and 30% hard labor.

Last night, ignoring the art project and the grant proprosals I have due, I strolled through the rain to Jake's apartment. That sounds really nice doesn't it? Because actually Jake's apartment is one of the farthest places on campus from my dorm and I hate the rain, but I did it all so we could flip to the "Breads and Crackers" section of The Gourmet Cookbook, edited by none other than the fabulous Ruth Reichl, and get our bread on.

We picked rosemary focaccia for two reasons: it looked like it was really easy to make and we love rosemary.

Right off the bat we switched it up a bit with some whole wheat flour. Just as an experiment. I thought it was a good decision--it made our bread healthier and trust me, there was definitely no sacrifice in flavor. We probably could have let it rise more the first and second times, but the bread still came out great. The apartment smelled like a pizza oven. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Atticus started buying its bread from us. Just kidding.

Our bread came out crispy on top, with a salted crust (thanks to some yummy sea salt) and a nutty flavor with the proper focaccia texture (slightly dense). We barely waited for it to cool.

Here's the recipe we used, adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook:

1 3/4 cup warm water
2 1/2 tsp yeast
pinch of sugar
5 cups flour (3 cups all purpose, 2 cups whole wheat)
2 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup olive oil + 3 tablespoons
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary + thyme

1. mix warm water and yeast. allow to foam (approx 5 minutes). add pinch of sugar
2. mix in flour, salt, and 1/4 cup olive oil.
3. work dough until combined, then knead for approx 3 to 4 minutes. dough will be slightly sticky. add 1-2 tablespoons of dough and incorporate.
4. lightly oil a bowl and coat kneaded dough ball. cover and let rise for 1-1.5 hours.
5. oil a 15x10x1 inch baking pan. press risen dough into the oiled pan, cover, and let rise for another hour.
6. preheat oven to 425 degrees.
7. mix chopped rosemary and thyme with 3 tablespoons of olive oil. when dough has risen, make wells with thumb and put herb+oil mixture into them.
8. bake for 20-25 minutes.
9. ENJOY.

New Discovery!!!!

2009-02-26T17:23:00.001-08:00

Ladies and gents, I have uncovered Yale's most underrated food gem: the Hall of Graduate Studies.

One of the premises for this blog is that I'm basically done with dining hall hot food and I've taken to making my own combinations of raw ingredients. Failing that, I settle for the ole pb&j, cereal, or my new fallback, mounds and mounds of goldfish crackers. Healthy, I know.

Today, however, I was persuaded to go to the Hall of Graduate Studies dining hall. I knew it existed, but I'd never been there for some reason. Some probably really stupid reason. Like laziness. Yes. That was probably and unfortunately it, because this place is amazing. Their cereal collection is rather lacking, but that's not what I'm going to go there for from now on. Now, I might just actually be finding my way back to some dining hall menu. This was the spread when I walked in:

Yeah, I know. Thai lettuce wraps! I'd just eaten a plate of homemade baked goods at the Josh Viertel Master's tea and was in a rather carb-free mood. This was more than perfect. This was guilt-free perfect. Well, almost. I tried a piece of chicken while in line, since I'm picky about how my meat tastes. I don't like it when it tastes old or isn't well-seasoned. It was kind of iffy, so I went with the tofu, which also could have used a little more flavor, but it was still pretty good.

I feel myself going back to HGS for "real food".....

Brooklyn goes Berkeley

2009-02-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's NY Times Dining section was great. There was a column on Brooklyn's new boutique market and restaurant emphasis on homemade fresh foods with quality, often organic ingredients.

"Brooklyn's New Culinary Movement"

Picture by Andrea Mohin for NY Times: Betsy Devine making ricotta cheese at Salvatore Bklyn in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

Because I love cheese, here's a link to Serious Eats' feature on Salvatore:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/03/a-cheese-grows-in-brooklyn.html

"Make yourself a dang quesadilla!"

2009-02-23T16:07:00.000-08:00

I looked at the dining hall menu tonight and decided I would make my own food instead. As much as I wanted to try the apple stuffed pork loin, I wasn't quite in the adventurous mood. Besides, I wanted to save enough room in my stomach for some goldfish crackers, which I recently rediscovered and can't stop eating. I'm going to have to get someone to help me out with that.

Anyway, I looked for a flour tortilla in Trumbull dining hall, but couldn't find one. I settled for half of a spinach wrap and went to the salad bar to figure out what I wanted to put in it. I saw a shredded cheese blend sitting happily by some mushrooms and spinach leaves and decided to make myself a "dang quesadella!" a la Napoleon Dynamite. I ground some fresh black pepper on top of the cheese for some added flavor.

This is what it looked like before I grilled it in the panini press.

I guess if you wanted, you could microwave it, but I wanted that crispness. Besides, microwaving has more eerily processed connotations. Anyway, so I let it sit in the panini press for about a minute. That time will vary depending on how serious your press is. Don't be afraid to check it from time to time to make sure that it's crisp. Also check to make sure you're not about to burn the place down.

This was what it looked like after I dotted some tabasco on the plate and cut my quesadilla in half:

I have to say, it was surprisingly good, although toasted bread and melted cheese are rarely ever a combination for epic failure. The mushrooms were meaty, the cheese was deliciously melty and the tortilla was perfectly crisped. More importantly, I was happy. Yay!

Salmonella is only a minor deterrent

2009-02-22T17:08:00.001-08:00

I am a peanut butter fanatic. My best friends can attest to this. It got so bad first semester that I asked Sinead to help me watch my peanut butter intake after I ate half a jar in a week. She was actually pretty successful. I managed to make the rest of it last for another month or so.

Last night, my suite held a game night and invited a few of our friends over. By a few, I mean we had almost 20 people in our small-ish room at one point. We started with this game called "loaded questions" in which one person poses a question like, "what kind of animal do you think you are?" to the rest of the room and then has to guess who responded what. It's kind of complicated and difficult to explain via internet. Anyway, I think what I should have asked last night, had I the fortune of wisdom upon me (I didn't), was, "what would you want your last meal on Earth to be?"

Because my response would have DEFINITELY included peanut butter. Also, while most people would have put down a main dish and a side, I think my last meal would be a meal in name only. In reality, it would probably look more like those 12-course feasts that Shakespeare memorialized in Hamlet. But I digress. Back to peanut butter.

Last summer, in Budapest, I ate about 5 European-sized jars of peanut butter. In American terms that's about 2.5 jars. Embaraaaaaaasing and freeeeeaky. I'm still justifying it by saying it's the poor man's steak. Let's hope I come up with a better argument for the history paper I have due next week. Anyway, that's the first time I really paid attention to peanut butter and all its different varieties. Processed peanut butter has a lot of sugar and some hydrogenated oils mixed in. Organic peanut butter, like the kind I bought in Austria, is strictly roasted peanuts. Then there's Dutch peanut butter, which my friend Sarah bought at a Dutch goods store, Kaas & Co., in nearby South Norwalk, CT.
It's called Calve and evidently, as Sarah explained it, Pindakaas translates to "peanut cheese." Appetizing.

Just kidding. This peanut butter tastes pretty good. It's got a deep smokiness to it, probably because they roast their peanuts longer than Jiffy does. It's also got less vegetable oil in it, although it isn't organic peanut butter's "just peanuts" by any means.

Personally, I still love Santa Cruz's organic crunchy peanut butter. It's lightly roasted and intensely satisfying.
Yes. Yes it is.

My friend Sam, who is also a peanut butter fanatic of sorts, introduced me to the Peanut Butter Company earlier this year. Its URL is more than appropriate. www.ilovepeanutbutter.com. It's for people like me, who are obsessed. And for those who just plain like it. Anyway, he brought over the cinnamon-raisin variety, and I immediately fell in love. Here's a way to make it if you don't want to spend $6 on a jar or want to eat it in smaller batches because you're skeptical:

2 tbsp of peanut butter (organic or not, crunchy or not, but you know which one I favor)
1/4 tbsp of cinnamon (that might seem like a lot, but I love cinnamon)
1/4 to 1/2 tbsp of honey, to taste (I think PB co uses brown sugar or just plain sugar, but I prefer honey. They say that sugar has half the sweetness of honey. Obviously peanut butter isn't the place to calorie scrimp, but hey I do what I can, right?)

Und voila!!!

Happy p-b and j!!!

My "take a break" meal

2009-02-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

It's almost the end of February here in old New Haven, and crunch time is getting too er...crunchy. Before I know it, the papers I'm pretending not to agonize about will be over, and I'll be home. But that doesn't mean I can't be just a little homesick for some Californian sunshine and the carefree/tanned attitude.

My dad makes the BEST scrambled egg sandwiches. They're light, golden brown, fluffy, and warm on toasted bread. Sometimes he adds slices of tomato in them if he's making them for lunch instead of breakfast. Unlike traditional American scrambled eggs dumped in a skillet with melted butter, Chinese scrambled eggs are quick fried in a dollop of canola or vegetable oil at high heat. I did my best to replicate those settings with my tiny kitchen's "fry" stove setting and my spray can of Pam (used quite a few extra squirts).

First I toasted some wheat bread stolen from the dining hall in my skillet (read: no toaster in my room).

While that was toasting, I threw together a salad that I packed in the Davenport dining hall, which, along with Pierson dining hall, has the best Yale College fare, in my opinion. Ingredients: edamame, diced pear, white raisins, roasted eggplant, a couple pieces of tofu, mesclun greens, and spinach with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil drizzled on top.

The toast was done after I finished futzing with the salad (in college the two things I've learned are efficiency and timing). Then, I sprayed the hell out of the Pam can. I know I said I used a few extra squirts, but really I used so much Pam I don't think the 0 calorie reading was right anymore. As it started smoking, I dumped the salted and beaten eggs in. I love a good sizzle.

Here they are, after they've puffed and browned. I tried to make them as square as possible to fit the bread. I hate it when you have yummy eggs that don't fill the bread and so all you get when you get to the corners is...bread:

I put my a bed of extra spinach from the salad onto one piece of toast, perched the eggs on top, added the last piece of toast, and cut my sandwich in half. I like eating things in fun pieces. Just kidding, I think it's just easier to eat a meaty-ish sandwich when it's cut in half.

Voila, here is my meal as it looked before I voraciously dug into it:

And now that I've had my little taste of home, I'm dreading the next week and a half a little less. But only by a little.

Growing Power: urban farm and community food center

2009-02-16T15:23:00.000-08:00

After a rather long day, I was looking for an outlet. A nap, or you know, a giant dark chocolate cake with raspberry cream. I looked down at my phone and thought about calling someone to see if they wanted to study with me at a cafe and saw a text message from Jake saying, "Come to Saybrook Master's tea on urban farming!" So what did your resident farmer-at-heart do? I went, obviously. And I walked REALLY REALLY fast.

I'd read an article in The New Yorker for class about local food in Brooklyn, NY and I wanted to know how it was possible to grow greens, fruit, and animals in the middle of a giant metropolitan area. As a native Californian, I've never been able to really fathom growing anything in weather below 40 degrees. I mean I believed it, but after hearing Will Allen talk about growing intensive amounts of spinach, arugula, various other greens, yellow perch fish, and a huge number of other things on farm in Milwaukee in the WINTER I was just completely amazed. I was like a five year old at a Macy's Holiday Parade. I think I gasped "Wow!" at least seven times. And I'm not easily moved or fazed.

Allen is the CEO of Growing Power, a non-profit dedicated to helping communities develop sustainable food systems. Their national headquarters are in Milwaukee and they've got a developing project in Chicago.

Visit their web site at www.growingpower.org

The Rustic Life

2009-02-15T11:39:00.000-08:00

My friend Jake and I are going to farm all summer if we can't find summer internships within the next month and a half.

WWOOF-ing, as it's called, sounds far superior to pencil-pushing at a desk, coffee runs at a slowly dying magazine, drooling over your boss's sandwich that he/she just had delivered because you're not getting paid nor are you getting lunch comped, etc.

Just kidding.

But who wouldn't love 2 months on a farm with a spa, fresh, organic produce, sunshine, and other fun people?

You have to sign up for at least two weeks on each farm. They vary in terms of amenities and kinds of produce, but generally you can expect a place to stay and food in exchange for 5-8 hours of farming.

Check out WWOOF USA at www.wwoofusa.org

there's also an international one: www.wwoof.org
(My friend Liz was a goat caretaker at a beautiful rustic farm in Italy this past summer. You have to admit that sounds appealing)

Happy farming!

Organic Eggs and Pilfered Vegetables=Happiness

2009-02-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

Mark Bittman gets paid to make delicious food in a really small kitchen and post videos of it online. I didn't get to enjoy the same measure of press, but I did have a lot of fun. A couple times a semester I'll give in to the tiny burners in my dorm kitchenette, choosing to boil a pot of water on them or making an omelette instead of going to the dining hall or my friends' apartments which are equipped with real ovens and real pantries.

On this particular evening, I stopped by Trumbull dining hall to swipe some veggies from their salad bar (tomatoes, spinach, green, yellow, and red bell peppers), bought some eggs from Gourmet Heaven, stole some salt and pepper packets from the seating area of Gourmet Heaven, and schlepped home to make my omelette in a borrowed skillet. Ah, the college life.

First I sauteed the vegetables and set them aside in a container/bowl:

Then I beat two eggs with a good amount of salt and pepper:

I sprayed the skillet with Pam and dumped the eggs in, swirling them around to make sure they coated the bottom of the pan. And to make sure I didn't end up with a veggie scramble. Although, back at home, there's a great brunch place, called Pacific Whey, that makes a worthy veggie scramble. I added the veggies back when the egg looked half done.

Then I flipped it over (it's all in the wrist, folks), and slid it out of the pan onto a plate. If you want to make it pretty, you could find some parsley and shred it on top, or do what I did and make it breakfast for dinner with a fanned strawberry on top.

The last thing I did, which isn't pictured here for obvious aesthetic reasons, was DEVOUR the omelette in five minutes because I had to run to a show.

Dining Hall desserts for the chocaholic, part one of series

2009-02-13T13:43:00.001-08:00

This is a day of the double post.

In addition to a sandwich, I thought I'd treat myself to a gooey, chocolatey, cold dessert. One of my favorite things to do, as you probably have noticed, is to mix salty and sweet flavors. I find that it heightens the taste of my food because I am aware of the contrasts and different sensations on my tongue. Of course, if you're into Oreo cookie crumbles for pudding toppings, I'm totally into that, too. Who doesn't appreciate a good pot of soil? Ah, third grade.

So:

I got a small bowl and scooped some chocolate pudding into it. I sliced a banana and crumbled a sesame stick, which I thought was a pretzel stick. Pretzel sticks sound more appetizing and probably taste better, but the sesame stick turned out to be pretty tasty with the pudding anyway. Besides, the whole idea was to add texture anyway.

These are the ingredients, sitting on my tray together:

Here is my dessert, after I put it all together:

It's really easy to make, and it's something that is really versatile. If you think certain flavors might go together, try them!

In the spirit of Valentine's Day: a sandwich date

2009-02-13T13:14:00.001-08:00

Ever so single on Valentine's Day, I decided to treat myself to a little sandwich-making creatherapy to make up for the spaztarded day I had yesterday. As you can tell, I'm into making up words.

As a third year dining hall customer, I've also really gotten into making my dining hall selection work for me. I usually go over to the law school, where I swear they have a better deli, and have my sandwiches made, but today I thought I'd try my hand at invention.

Last night I had a craving for a turkey sandwich on rye with some honey mustard.

This morning I made a mental list of ingredients as I walked into Commons. I wanted spinach and apples and honey mustard. As I approached the bread selection, I ended up bypassing rye for wheat. I loaded sliced turkey onto the bread and went in search of spinach. Unsuccessful, I settled for a piece of lettuce--I generally avoid dining hall lettuce because it just looks so wilted and sad. Then I grabbed my tray, walked by a bowl of raisins and thought--why not? And for added texture I scooped some walnuts onto my plate to put into my sandwich. I put some honey and dijon mustard onto a small plate, grabbed a crunchy apple and carried my tray back to my table. Here's a picture of the lesser, but by no means less flavorful "condiments" for my sandwich:
One criticism I had of the law school sandwiches was that their honey mustard seemed kind of runny and suspicious-looking. Of course this was before I made my own and realized that well, that's just what happens when you mix honey and mustard.

This is what my sandwich looked like after I sliced the apples and put it all together:

Once again, with a little ingredient manipulation, Commons does the trick!

The Great Wall has come to New Haven

2009-02-11T17:49:00.000-08:00

Last night, two friends and I took the long walk from Swing Space to Whitney Avenue in the pursuit of a fun dinner detox from our horrendous neurobiology midterm that we took earlier that day. With rats, cocaine, and saline control solutions out of our minds until the next lecture, I looked forward to climbing this Great Wall that I had heard about from one of my friends who went there to celebrate Chinese New Year. "It has legit Chinese food!" she said.

The Great Wall used to be some other store, but now it's owned by Hong Kong Grocery, which is next door. HKG used to be this dinky little place, but has since remodeled and expanded--it's got an upstairs (dried goods, snacks, cakes, pastries) and downstairs portion (fresh produce). It's pretty nice, actually. I bought some frozen dumplings to celebrate the new year--they were juicy and fabulous.

As we approached the restaurant, it looked bright and vibrant. Flourescent lighting isn't my favorite, but the restaurant was spacious. Right when we walked in, I was instantly hit with the garlicky, oniony smells of traditional Chinese restaurants everywhere. At the front they've got take-out combo options 2+rice and soup for 4.99 and 3+rice and soup for 5.99. Choices looked delicious: garlic eggplant, ma po tofu, pork chops, fried salt + pepper shrimp, various veggie dishes, chicken and beef., etc. They have plenty of booth seats that can seat up to 6-8 people per booth.

Dinner entrees were moderately priced, but expensive for student budgets (unless you're splitting). They were $9-11 for meat dishes, and around $15 for seafood. They have a few vegetarian options, and those are about $9 as well. They have a pretty diverse menu and serve dim sum on the weekends. We chose to be safe, since we weren't sure what kind of quality to expect. The waitress was really nice and helpful, especially when we told her it was our first time there. The three of us ordered kung pao chicken and Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, a favorite dish of mine that my dad makes back at home. Each main entree comes with a bowl of rice free of charge. Two dishes for three people was definitely enough. Generally, I'd say the number of dishes you order should be one less than your party. Unless you're starving.

As for taste and authenticity? Let me just say that this reminded me of Chinese restaurants at home, and I'm from California, where real Chinese food stopped being a fad and became a staple at least ten years ago. I was impressed by the unexpected deliciousness of The Great Wall. East Melange might be closed now, but in my opinion, The Great Wall is better than East Melange ever was. They're bigger, friendlier, less kitschy, and tastier. If you're more into Americanized Chinese food, which I also enjoy from time to time, they've got General Tso's and sesame chicken and the like.

Hike to The Great Wall on Whitney. It's totally worth it. Especially for lunch or take-out.

Where: 67 Whitney Ave., New Haven, CT

What: Szechuan or Cantonese (probably the kind of Chinese food you've already had) cuisine, dim sum on weekends

Price: cheap takeout, moderate-expensive dine-in

Casual

Hours: 9am-10pm 7 days a week

Gourmet salad, college dining hall

2009-02-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

I’ve been in a salad mood lately. That’s unusual, since I generally have maintained a non-salad stance since birth. A couple weeks ago, I went to my friend Amy’s house to make mashed potatoes, stir-fried beef, and salad. I asked her if there was anything I could bring. “Sure!,” she said, “I’ve got everything but salad ingredients. Well, I have olive oil and balsamic.”

Like the good scrimping and saving college-student I am, I headed to Trumbull dining hall to swipe what I could of its salad-making ingredients and put them in the Glad containers my dad correctly swore would come in handy. Lucky for me, they had a ready-made salad that night that was great: mixed greens with beets and crumbled sweet goat cheese. Unfortunately, I was stupid and only brought one container with me, so we ended up making do with some pears, blood oranges, and whatever greens, beets, and goat cheese I could fit into my Glad box.

We tossed the sliced fruit, greens, beets, and cheese with a little bit of olive oil, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of salt, and some freshly cracked black pepper. At that moment, with the combination of salty and sweet, salad won me over. Since then, I’ve become a new eater.

Today I went to the salad line at Commons determined to recreate the vibrancy of fruit and salad. I loaded my plate with spinach, topped it with raisins (ideally, I’d go for Craisins), sprinkled it with a small spoon of sunflower seeds for nuttiness and sliced some Honeycrisp apples on top. I drizzled the whole affair with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and peppered it. No pinch of salt here, since there wasn’t as much fruit or citrus involved as the salad I made at Amy’s. Then I noticed that Commons was serving lemon-herbed chicken breast, so I decided to make it into a chicken apple salad with raisins and sunflower seeds. Who needs ABP anymore?? Here’s a picture of my efforts:

and another one for good measure:

What you need:

your choice of greens
raisins/craisins if you so desire/have them
some chopped nuts if you like
fruit (apples, pears, or oranges generally)
some protein. or you could go without it
your dressing of choice (mine is always e.v.o.o. and balsamic. thanks rachel ray)

Where: a dining hall. mine was commons. yours might have different ingredients available

Time: it took me literally 4 minutes to make

Cost: FREE(!) if you’re on a meal plan

Bagel Brunch!

2009-02-08T16:01:00.000-08:00

I woke up early Sunday morning and took the elevator down to the Swing basement for some continental breakfast fare. I did some work, got dressed, and had a regular, normal, easy morning. It was not meant to last.

I put on my shoes and got ready to meet my friend, Sarah, for brunch. As I gave my outfit a last once-over in my mirror, my traction-less shoes slipped, I pitched forward and fell into my dresser. My mirror came crashing down on my head as my knees hit the linoleum floor. I thought to catch it, but figured it wouldn’t break if it landed on the ground, since I thought my head had taken the brunt of the force.

WRONG.

It shattered, and so did my hopes for an ordinary day. So did my faith in my AP Physics education.

Of course, that’s why good friends are great. They remind you of happy things, like Bagel Brunch.

I’m not particularly superstitious, otherwise I’d be more concerned. Plus I think mild head trauma is a good price to pay for breaking a mirror.

Anyway, back to Bagel Brunch, which livened up my day…

Here are the steps:

pick up a plate
grab a bagel (from New York, apparently): poppy seed, sesame, regular, cinnamon-raisin, or onion
pick a schmear: veggie, plain, scallion, strawberry, or hummus
pick a topping: tomatoes, lox, onions, or tuna
want a pasta? sometimes they’ve got bowtie+olive oil+greens or a more traditional macaroni+chopped tomato
grab some fruit (pre-cut)
pick a dessert: cake, cheesecake, tart, or pie (trust me, they’ve got a great tasting selection. recent desserts: red velvet cake, orange glaze tart, almond tart with strawberry glaze, cheesecake, carrot cake, etc)

This here is Sarah’s creation: cinnamon raisin bagel+regular cream cheese+onions+tomatoes+lox

*note: bagel varieties are constant, but sometimes they’ll have different combinations of the other stuff.

What: Bagel Brunch

Where: Slifka (Wall Street right across from Silliman)

When: Bi-weekly 11-1(?) (see adverts in Herald/YDN/I think there’s an email list)

How: it’s a normal swipe

From the comfiest chair on campus, Blue State Coffee

2009-02-01T16:30:00.001-08:00

On Wednesday, January 28, liberals and the coffee curious alike trudged through the snow to Blue State Coffee’s opening day.

It’s only been a couple days since Blue State opened its doors across from Silliman on Wall Street where Ciao Bella used to be, but I’ve been there for a total of about twenty hours since then. All I have to say is: Thank God for Blue State Coffee.

I walked up the stairs and sauntered past boards chalked up with the day’s brew options and a brightly lit display case half-full of pastries and bottled drinks. Standard coffee-shop fare. What makes Blue State different, however, is its openness. Its neutral light-chestnut colored walls, granite countertops, light floors, and embedded ceiling bulbs give it a homey feel. A model homey feel. This sense of comfort and luxury is emphasized by large, accommodating, incredibly plush leather reading chairs by the French windows.

Blue State's spaciousness makes it a better study spot than than The Publick Cup, Starbucks, Koffee on Audobon, Willoughby’s, and Thain Café. The house is divided roughly into three sections. I liken it to the way Bass Library has different levels of intensity: there’s the café where you’re lightly reading, but mostly eating that muffin or talking to a friend, the upper level where you write that reading response, and the basement, where fun and papers go to die. Blue State seems to have the same dynamic, spread horizontally. What makes it better than Bass is soft rather than fluorescent lighting, cell-phone reception, and the fact that you don’t feel like you’re entering a dungeon. And, 5% of proceeds go to the cause of the customer’s choice. Each quarter, Blue State offers its customers the opportunity to vote for which local initiative they would like to support. You buy, you vote, you donate, you drink/eat, you are happy=Blue State is great.

The first Blue State Coffee opened in Providence in 2007. Drew Ruben (SY ‘11) and his father came up with the concept of a liberal-minded coffee shop after the disappointment of the 2004 elections. They started in 2006 as a website, and after iffy sales, they decided to shift from cyber to real space. Best decision ever (at least I think so). Their coffee beans come from all over the world (they’ve got an Obama blend!), while their teas come in biodegradable packages from a certified organic company called Two Leaves and a Bud. The delicious pastries hail from La Cuisine in Branford, Connecticut and the friendly baristas? Well, that’s all local.

One small kink, which I think is just part of starting up and getting settled, is that a slice of bread (granted, it was a thick slice) cost me $3.00 while scones and cookies are roughly $2.00 and change. When asked, Drew graciously considered it and, I assume, set about reassessing the bread’s serving size. They’re a great family joint, and the fact that the Rubens frequent Blue State a lot really makes it feel welcome. Liberal or not, stop into Blue State Coffee for the great space, the comfy chairs, the natural lighting, the terrific cupcakes and deliciously flaky scones, and of course, for caffeine.

Things definitely worth trying: cupcakes, scones, bread (make sure you get it toasted, with jam, and in the right serving), excellent Earl Grey and Chai teas, sandwiches.

Your oatmeal is just as "Perfect" as Starbucks'

2009-01-29T10:10:00.001-08:00

Starbucks has said that “The Perfect Oatmeal” was its best food product launch ever and its most popular food item (http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE48M9WT20080923). Many people commented on how great the stuff was shortly after its premiere. But is it worth the hype? And, more importantly, is oatmeal worth $2.60?

For the last 7 months, I’ve had an unshakeable and stable romance with oatmeal. I’ve eaten it almost every day. Our affair began after I woke up late one cool summer day the week before returning to Yale. After five minutes of shifting boxes and turning cans looking for something warm, thick, and filling to anchor my stomach in the hopes that the heat from the food would radiate to my limbs from my core, I came across a box of oatmeal after denying ten cans of Campbell’s New England clam chowder the opportunity to take my palate out on a date.

Oatmeal seemed perfect. As the microwave hummed away I sliced some juicy, meaty plums, the kind that ooze the abundance of California’s Central Valley, and waited with salivating breath for the perfect quick breakfast on that breezy day.

When I heard a couple days later that Starbucks was launching a new product, boldly titled, “The Perfect Oatmeal,” I knew I had to try it. Unfortunately, living in Swing Space with my miraculously never-ending box of Costco Quaker Instant Oatmeal kept me from making the trek.

Today, however, I made time for “The Perfect Oatmeal.” As I waited in line, I pondered which topping I was in the mood for. I’d heard that Starbucks offered brown sugar, dried fruit, or nuts to go with their oats. For comparison’s sake, since I usually take my Quaker Instant Oats with dried fruit, I decided that was what I would go with.

My expectations were high. I knew only I was guaranteed oatmeal in a perky, 1960s minimalist-mod container in the display case. Turns out that first of all, Starbucks serves it all day—it doesn’t discriminate against post 11 AM oatmeal cravings. As an oatmeal lover, I thought that was rather considerate. The barista handed me my oatmeal in its autumn-color themed carton. My dried fruit was resting neatly on top in its plastic packaging. I hadn’t expected that I was supposed to add my topping in myself, but I suppose it was a nice touch, since people probably like their dried fruit in different quantities.

here it is!

I shook out the 100 calorie bag of dried cherries, cranberries, raisins, and blueberries, mixed it into the thick, milky mixture of barely steaming oats, and took my first bite. Something was amiss. Sugar. It desperately needed sweetening. I should have known. Luckily, Starbucks keeps free Splenda and sugar handy. Following the theme of healthy snacking, I picked up a packet of Splenda and shook it into the cup, stirring the oatmeal until it was sweetened to taste.

Once the seasonings were adjusted, I focused on the rich, consistently smooth texture of the oatmeal. Boy was it creamy! Although I didn’t ask, I think the Starbucks secret might be adding a little bit of steamed milk to their oats for that extra richness. Where is this coming from? My oatmeal looked a little milky before I stirred it together. Skim would probably be my guess, since they tout that their standard oatmeal serving is 140 calories on their website. I thought I would never make instant oats using just water ever again. I only wished that they’d used hotter liquid to make the oatmeal, because it quickly became a lukewarm failure in that respect.

The tartness of the dried fruit cutting the richness of the oatmeal was probably the highlight of the cup. While the oatmeal is delicious, the combination of fruit and oatmeal is something that I know I can enjoy at home. More importantly, I would prefer to eat my warm oatmeal in my room and savor its affectionate embrace as I gear up for the cold, especially since Starbucks’ oatmeal is $2.60 including tax. It’s at least worth a try. Who knows? You might be a repeat customer. I think I’ll stick to finding the milk to water ratio I’m crazy about and make “The Perfect Oatmeal” for less money per serving and much less pain in my fingers.

fleur de sel, fleur de my soul

2009-01-03T21:51:00.000-08:00

The day started out all January-like. It was overcast and droopy, with a wet chill in the air. I was so sure that nothing extraordinary would happen today, except perhaps, that excellent nap I would take later to go with the stay-in-and-drink-hot-cocoa weather. I pitter-pattered through the morning as usual. One bowl of Special K with Redberries and plain soymilk, a 40-minute brisk walk/jog around my neighborhood, and to top it all off, a cooking show waiting for me when I got back home. In the afternoon, I thought I might read some more American Pastoral, watch Benjamin Button, or start The Road. Was I in the mood for nostalgia Americana, period drama, or potential thriller? As it was all a little unclear, I chose to think less about all of that and more about what I would make for lunch. As I made my way back along the last 1/2 mile towards home, I had it. Miso-glazed broiled salmon and snow peas. This has more or less been the state of affairs in the soverign nation of my mind since winter break started. It sounds quite structured, but I assure you, there was quite a lot of rambling between the lines.

The post-lunch slump rolled around, and the sky looked no bluer. In fact, it was a great deal greyer and heavier. I remembered that I planned to meet a couple of friends at Whole Foods for a shopping/browsing trip, so uninsured as I am, I asked my mumsy to drop me off. After really getting into ingredients and flavors last year, I have to say, I've grown even easier to please and entertain. All you have to do is take me to a grocery store and I'd be content for hours, just milling around the isles and thinking about all the recipes I could make. And that's just your basic old Ralphs or Albertson's. But at Whole Foods...at Whole Foods, I can see myself wandering around for days, savoring the baked goods, candies, hummus, cheeses, cereals, fruits, vegetables, kabobs, etc., etc., etc.!!!! I want to say weeks, but at the risk of already sounding a bit freakish, I think I will keep it at days.

First, we hit the produce section. Cashew juice, anyone? I'd never heard of it before today. Lesson number one down! Then, because I've had an awful sweet tooth lately, we traversed the market floor straight to the baked goods/gelato/chocolatier. I picked up and longingly looked at the contents of several plastic-sealed treasures. Raspberry-coconut bark. Bite-sized melty dark chocolates. Gingerbread cookies. But alas, the courage of my wallet failed me, and I set it all down. I also knew that I would be in danger of devouring the entire contents of any of the things I saw, and after Christmas and New Year's, I figured I should lay off extremes. We wandered through the ready-made hot-food section and wound up oggling cheeses. I sampled a Monterrey aged white cheddar: quite nutty, quite good. Dubliner's still my fave, though. We were passing by the meat and seafood sections back towards the produce area where I was hit with desire for....trail mix!!!

So a brief history of the beginnings of my love for trail mix. I had never really loved the idea--liked the salty mixed with the sweet, but was never a huge fan of nuts or raisins or dried fruit. Then I spent the summer in Budapest, during my first year of flavor and food education/indulgence, and picked up my first box of muesli. After that, I have to say, few things make me happier than some sweet bits all shook up with some salty bits and put in a container. I've said it before, but only my good friends believe me: I'm quite easy to please.

I thought I might have found January 3rd, 2008's Holy Grail with the vast assortment of trail mix varieties blinking their choco-nutty eyes at me. I restrained myself with great effort, however. The tour through the living food-museum was not quite complete (I like to make a once-around Whole Foods before I decide what to spend my meager cash on). Today I was interested in that one special thing. The once-in-a-lifetime kind. Or at least, the once-a-year-splurge kind. Cakes. Cookies. Chocolate. Hm, I thought. I'd had chocolate on my mind for a while. I shuffled back towards the chocolatier and took a more critical eye to the display case of sinful treats. Immediately, I picked up on my favorites: the dark chocolates. Was I interested in a caramel? A fruity burst encased in at least 55% cacao? Some nuttiness, perhaps, to go with the deep sensuality of the chocolate? Alas, these things were not to be. Today I wanted pure flavor. I wanted a truffle that was so entirely dark and chocolatey that I wouldn't think about wanting one for a least another month.

Again, I scanned the gold-framed nametags pinned to the undersides of the smiling cubes and spheres. After a little more squinting, I found it. Dark Chocolate Truffle. Mmmmmmmm. How lush. But oh, what was this? There weren't any DCT's smiling back at me! Surely there must have been some mistake?! I started panicking a little. I get like this about chocolate sometimes. Especially when it runs at $2.30 a truffle. Actually, since I generally buy my chocolate in bars (when I do), I don't really know what the going rate for quality truffles is. But still, for someone who ate potatoes because they were like four pounds to a dollar all summer, $2.30 for a piece of chocolate is rather extravagant.

I needed a backup plan. I noticed DCT's friendly neighbor was a Sea Salt Truffle. This intrigued me. I'd heard that salt can enhance the flavor of sticky or sweet treats, and I was thinking that chocolate might be one of them. Plus, fleur de sel has been getting sexier over the years. Didn't I want to indulge? That recent article in the NY Times about caramel and fleur de sel got me thinking about the Starbucks salted caramel hot chocolate, which in turn brought me full circle back to what was in front of me. So I thought, Why not? We should all live a little on a dreary day. Or live more, even. "Excuse me, is the sea salt truffle made with dark chocolate?" I asked. I had to be sure. I wasn't going to eat some milk chocolate sea salt truffle. That wouldn't satisfy my specific craving. I can't tell you how excited I was when I was told that it was, in fact, GENUINE dark chocolate. It was a little like someone with SADD turning on their happy lamp for the first time. I was damn hopeful about that there Sea Salt Truffle.

I paid for it. I looked at it. Turned it over a couple of times. Wondered if it would meet my expectations. Tried to get through the plastic wrapping. Feared that I might drop this potentially forever-precious, half-egg shaped chocolate onto the shiny camel hell of the Whole Foods floor. Finally, I held it safe between my thumb and two fingers. I bit into it. I chewed. I transcended.

I came back down halfway through the truffle to really think about the beauty of what I had just tasted. The chocolatey, mysterious and deep-flavored outer and the velvety, rich, creamy and salt-flecked filling. The crystal-crunchiness of the salt. Fleur de sel. It was artfully salty, spread evenly through the truffle and through my chews, adding a third texture and dimension of flavor dimension that went beyond anything I had ever tasted before. I was swimming in smooth, luxurious cacao.

If you love chocolate, and you ever have $2.30 on hand, I'm telling you, run or bike (if you think you might feel guilty about it later) to your nearest Whole Foods or chocolatier and search for a truffle spiked with sea salt. I'm thinking of buying a couple dozen the next time I get paid.

bring on the cheesecake, it's new year's eve!

2008-12-31T17:08:00.000-08:00

ah, new year's eve. the year's end never fails to encourage a bit of introspection. i thought i might snake away this year and pass into the next one without falling into tradition and making a mental or literal list of resolutions. i was so close to getting away with it, but alas it was not meant to be. the second one of my friends asked me if i had any resolutions, i started thinking.

i can't remember where the motto "live it, love it, be it, do it," originated, but my friends and i use it frequently as terms of encouragement. of course any phrase loaded with that much enthusiasm has to be some kind of joke to some degree, right? right. but this year, i'm actually going to "live it, love it, be it, do it!" these are my new tenets of the LLBD philosophy:

1) live it: breathing is good. it's very good.
2) love it: if i don't love it, i'm not going to hope for it. if i do love it, then the next two steps follow.
3) be it: passion makes everything better.
4) do it: i'm throwing hamlet syndrome off, slaying paralysis, and becoming an agent of action!

happy new year (soon)!

note: i was on a bit of a blog hiatus while school was in session, but i guess one of my new vows is to try to keep up with it. i think i'd like to keep a blog list of my dining hall food inventions--new ways to make old things taste good.

for now...i will upload a picture of and recipe for cheesecake which my dad and i have been perfecting over the last three months.

CHEESECAKE

Regular Cream Cheese

16 oz. cream cheese, softened (Philadelphia brand works best) 800 calories x 2 = 1600

2 extra large eggs 75 calories x 2 = 150

1/2 cup. sugar 350

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ready made pie crust 800

total calories = 2900

Fat Free Cream Cheese

16 oz. cream cheese, softened (Philadelphia brand works best) 240 calories x 2 = 480

2 extra large eggs 75 calories x 2 = 150

1/2 cup. sugar 350

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ready made pie crust 800

total calories = 1780

1. With mixer at low speed, beat two extra large eggs and vanilla extract together. Add in softened cream cheese (2 hours at room temperature) and mix it at higher speed for about 2 mins.

2. Then mix in slightly less than half of a cup of sugar and check sweetness. (i tend to like my cheesecakes more tart, so i put in about 3/8 a cup of sugar)

3. Pour mixture in pie crust and bake for 40 minutes at 325, remove from oven after 50 min (leave in oven for 10 minutes after the oven is off).

my thighs only hurt when i breathe

2008-06-11T01:56:00.000-07:00

so saturday morning we woke up early and got ready for our trip to the countryside. i suppose it might be the european system to be a half hour late to the appointed time, but once everyone relies on being a half hour late, the system is broken. at least that's what we hypothesized as a group. so we were a little bit late getting into the taxi.

we were going along really easily, crossing the bridge from pest into buda and getting on the freeway without any problems. the lanes started to become fewer and fewer as we neared the countryside until there was just one lane for each side. here is where the nightmare began. hungarians have no problem passing each other on the road by driving on the opposite side. this makes for multiple memorable moments. i think i tried to flash my life before my eyes at least 6 times in case i forgot anything when the actual time to die came. we narrowly missed a big rig coming our way by like 10 feet. when we finally got onto the dirt road of the country, which now only had one lane for traffic going both ways, our cab driver decided to turn on 90s pop and alicia keys. when we expressed excitement at knowing the songs, he did too and decided to swerve the car to the beat. now i was going to die in the hungarian countryside. in a cab. in a cab that was lost and nowhere near its destination.

and i thought the freeway had been bad.

we finally got to the ranch resort, which was AMAZING oh god it was beautiful. we each had our own queen sized feather beds and bathrooms. it sat on 50 acres of green, lush land and had an equestrian club with 47 horses. one of the best riders in the world and in all of hungary used to ride at the club. the extravagant ranch bed and breakfast was built by a yale som grad and was effectively the meeting place for the yale club of hungary. not a bad choice. not at all. we took a tour of the land, which was absolutely beautiful. it was like the green you see in movies, with the wind blowing in the trees, and a provincial air that is so pure you half expect to see everyone in straw hats and overalls. oh wait most of them were.

lunch was beautiful too. having not eaten real food consistently, gourmet italian rustic was SO good: pancetta and cream pasta, creamy tomato soup, adn tiramisu for dessert. i thought all of that near death was worth it after all, and what could be better than the fact that we had great company? one of the hungarian yalies worked as the advisor to the prime minister and knew everything about hungary's military and political history. we talked about the attitudes of hungarian society and culture and its relationship with the germans, the turkish, the greek, the russians, and the austrians. one of the others had the most adorable family, with one of the BEST two year olds i have ever met. felix is a really, really smart two year old who is on his way to being a lady's man. anyway. so after lunch we were headed off to a wine tasting in a horse drawn carriage. romantic, right?

that is, until we walked outside and the horse drawn carriage was actually a 19th century harvesting cart with two horses attached to it. in addition distant thunder signaled an impending thunderstorm and we were piling into a cart made of wood and steel, headed for nothing but dirt roads for at least the next hour to the vineyard. there were several blankets in the wagon bed and we joked about pneumonia because that's the only thing you can do when you know it's coming. tony's dog chased after us until the thunder came closer, and he was smart enough to turn around and run back home as we trotted into the heart of the thunderstorm. we were all dressed in summer-wear and tented blankets on our heads to keep the water out of our skin for as long as we could. had this been southern california, someone would have ticketed the driver for transporting illegal migrant workers. as the wagon squeaked and nearly fell apart over bumps and ditches, we all swore that THIS time, THIS time, we would die. either of a lightning strike or of capsizing into fields full of lime ticks. after about an hour and our destination not in sight, our driver stopped by the side of the road, put a blanket over himself, stood there, and just waited. and so did we.

(here we are happy. well some of us, anyway. i am clearly fully aware of impending doom)

of course, nothing is good without a good ending. so we eventually DID get to the winehouse/vineyard and how funny is the world that the owner's daughters actually went to q-pac? anyway so we took a tour of the winery and learned that there are two main ways to make it from reductions and from barreling. (at least i think that was it) we sampled five wines, my favorites of which were a pinot gris blend and her prized red wine, which was voted as the best in hungary last year. and hungary is known for its wines. i hadn't felt that classy since karl lagerfeld asked me to walk in his runway show. wait, nevermind, that never actually happened.

for our way back we procured two cars and met up for dinner. which again, was exquisite. we talked for hours by the fireplace about everything in the world and then went to sleep for our morning horseback riding lessons.

so the last time i rode a horse, i was 6 and my family was in mexico. we were set to ride horses by the beach with a bunch of other tourists. my dad got his own horse and my mom and i shared one. a pregnant horse, apparently. the poor horse ahd to carry me AND my mom and her fetus horse. so while everyone else was running in a circle around the cliff, we got the slow treatment and slowly plodded around the narrow cliff head...i actually thought some passing horse was going to push us off and i would be found in the ravine a mangled mess, probably dead.

(here i am looking slightly disabled)

so this time, riding a horse was a much pleasanter experience. albeit a very, very sore one. three days later my thighs are still sore. but i'm really glad we went and that i rode the horse and met all these awesome people, nearly died 3 times, and took a lot of pictures!