Gung Hay Fat Choy! (Happy New Year!)

Today is the big family Chinese New Year dinner and our contribution is, as usual, dessert.  I’ve had an inkling to go back to my roots and decided to make some traditional and “fusion” Chinese desserts.

One of several experiments was traditional sesame balls, or phonetically, “jien duy”.  These are made of glutinous rice flour and filled with red bean or lotus seed paste, then covered with sesame seeds and deep fried to be puffy, sticky and crispy goodness.

This really brought me back to the days as a little kid sitting at the kitchen table helping my Grandma around Chinese New Year.  She would work using an old round waiter’s tray and I mainly remember lots of flour and kneading.  Wish I had made more effort to learn the language and the recipes – many have been lost with her passing.

One of my parents’ woks has a nifty rack attached to the top to drain oil:

The most difficult part was preventing the bean paste from squishing out.

Key Steps:
1) Roll a ball of dough in your palm
2) Use your 2nd knuckle on your opposite index finger to make a well.
3) Spoon some bean paste in the well, leaving adequate room on the sides to pinch.
4) Pinch closed like a dumpling, then gently re-roll into a ball.

I did substitute some of the glutinous rice flour with some regular rice flour based on another recipe, but their ratio made the dough too dry.  in the end i probably had an 8:1 ratio glutinous to regular, and added maybe 2 cups of water.  It’s one of those things where you just keep practicing and recognize what it’s supposed to be like.

It really came out tasty and light!  My aunt said Grandma would be proud.

We also made Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream, but made it creamier and more like a gelato by adding cornstarch ;

and Lychee Ice Cream that was inspired by a few recipes, but tweaked so much I think I can pretty much claim it as my own (not that I could repeat it because it morphed so much).  Extremely flavorful but it was much icier than I would have preferred due to the excess lychee juice.  I think I’ll try to drain it next time and use a custard base (used coconut milk and whole milk, no eggs or heavy cream);

plus Yellow Split Pea Pudding (ma dao gou).  My dad said, “Since when did you want to be so Chinese?”

Since I remembered how yummy roots are.

Homemade is Better. Trust Me.

Pasta and ice cream are so cheap nowadays that I think people overlook how simple they are to make.  Making either yourself when you have a couple of free hours on the weekend is SO WORTH IT.  The only problem is fighting the cravings for these high-carb, empty calorie treats!

Tip: Super fun activity for 2+ people!!!

Tagliatelle (Lidia Biastianich recipe), accidentally cut the wrong direction making really long noodles.  But who cares?  They’re heartier yet infinitely more delicate than dried pasta.  Top it with some slowwww braised pork and peas – OH MAMA.

Hubby and I have managed to resist making ice cream every day since he bought me the KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment for Christmas.  I am a sugar addict and just the thought of it in the freezer makes me salivate.  Hence we’ve only made two ice creams.  But alas warm weather will be on the horizon eventually!!!  I’m dying to make some hazelnut gelato and salted caramel ice cream.  I’m salivating now.  Disgusting.

We ate most of the vanilla bean ice cream before we thought to take a picture.  Yes, if you follow some homemade recipes the milkfat % is oh, just about 3 times that of the maximum 16% allowed by the commercial ice cream industry.  But is it worth it (and some post-piggy lactose intolerance)?  I think so.  We worship David Lebovitz and the beauty of the vanilla bean.

This picture is of the very lemony Meyer lemon ice cream.  If you don’t like lemon, don’t make this.  It was pleasingly tart but as with the beauty of Meyer lemons, doesn’t make you pucker.  Strawberries helped to cut the lemon lemoniness.

Sushi!!! Cupcakes!! For Two!! At Home!!

After a day of eating for Chinese New Year, we came home to enjoy a romantic Valentine’s Day making sushi and cupcakes.

The spread: salmon nigiri, salmon and scallop sashimi, spicy salmon, spicy scallop roll, and salmon/cucumber/avocado roll.  they were all out of tuna but this was an enormous amount of rice and fish!!  had to throw out the frozen edamame that turned out to be about two years old (when we moved in).  You can see the cute V-day napkins from my mother-in-law in the corner.

My plate for him:

His plate for me:

Finished with vanilla cupcakes filled with pb frosting and topped with chocolate ganache (from Martha Stewart Living cupcake issue February 2009, so good we had to make it again for this V-day).  Hubby was upset that I wanted to take some to the neighbors, lucky for him two of them weren’t home!

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Well, really, Christmas is over.  Happy New Year!  We really did celebrate practically 12 days of Christmas – with 12 houseguests, attended 3 parties, hosted another 3 parties, and had another 4 houseguests.

In 7 days we went through the following:

• 24 pounds of prime rib
• 24 croissants and Danish
• 24 spanakopita
• 20 bottles of wine
• 18 slices of Canadian bacon
• 16 cups of flour (I didn’t have time to bake cookies)
• 9 English muffins
• 9 loaves of bread
• 8 pounds of ham
• 6 dozen eggs
• 4 pounds of sausage
• 4 cups of arborio rice
• 4 cups of oatmeal
• 3 pounds of butter
• 2 quarts of heavy cream
• 2 quarts of chicken broth
• 2 pounds of asparagus
• 2 pounds of linguine
• 2 pounds of shrimp
• 2 pounds of ground turkey
• 2 cups of cocoa
• 1.5 boxes of clementines
• 1 quart of plain yogurt

…and 1…pound of peas!

I have to owe my sister a lot of the credit for the cooking, as I caught a cold from the other sister after Christmas and was rather incapacitated for our niece’s 1st birthday party.

The menus (what we made)

Christmas Eve:

Creme brulee with vanilla sugar (we brought to hubby’s uncle’s house, while my sister entertained 10 people back in our townhouse with sausage and peppers, and meatballs)

Christmas Day:

Brunch – Eggs Benedict, fruit salad, local pastries, homemade cinnamon rolls

Dinner – Rosemary prime rib with horseradish sauce, red wine risotto (Giada de Laurentis), salad with pistachios and clementines, glazed carrots, molten chocolate cake with strawberries

Niece’s 1st Birthday/Family Christmas:

Ham & cheddar pretzels, thinly sliced prime rib, glazed ham, shrimp and pea pasta salad…and oh yes, we served a Costco chocolate mousse cake.  Yes we did.

Pictures: Molten chocolate cake, 30% of the giant roast (which I expected to be 15-18 pounds and they gave me 24), perfect prime rib with rosemary, eggs Benedict (my Hollandaise was terrible – or rather, the recipe was), homemade ham & cheddar pretzels

What I learned

• You can poach eggs ahead of time and keep them in ice water – reheat in simmering water for 30 seconds before serving
• It’s worth the extra money ($1.70 per lb) to get a rib roast from the local butcher versus Costco
• Anticipate you will be gifted with lots of wine and cookies over the holidays if you are hosting so you don’t necessarily need to provide your own
• Catching a cold will slow you down – back up reinforcements are necessary!
• If you insist in homemade everything, make things that can be frozen and reheated (i.e. pretzels were baked and then frozen couple of weeks early, cinnamon roll dough and icing were frozen unbaked and later thawed)
• It’s ok if you mix fine china with paper napkins…really
  

Home for the Holidays

Ok, we were actually at 2 homes for Thanksgiving (not to mention 4 homes for Christmas…but that’s the next post).  This will be the last time we travel 1.5 hours between dinner and dessert – we’re just too tired taking dessert for 35 over at 8PM!!

I don’t have any pictures, but we also made mini toast crudites and asparagus wrapped with prosciutto, asiago, and phyllo (Martha Stewart) for hors d’oeuvres.

The dessert rundown:

• Linzer cookies (butter cookies filled with jam that I reduced with some lemon juice)
• Chewy gingerbread men and trees
• Buche de Noel (Yule log) – this one was a chocolate flourless cake filled with whipped cream and topped with ganache – tore pretty easily and mine was very sloppy when cutting
• Chocolate covered strawberries
• Mini pains au chocolats (chocolate croissants) – Epicurious recipe that is simply puff pastry wrapped around a bar of chocolate and glazed with cinnamon sugar (I used turbinado sugar so it was less sweet)

More Good Eats

Homemade Philly cheesesteaks:

The story on this is we had a pack of buffalo short ribs which I had braised perfectly the night before.  I set it out to cool and neither of us remembered to set an alarm to get up and put them back in the fridge!  To make up for it, hubby made cheesesteaks with some awesome steak rolls and thinly sliced steak from the local Italian and farmer’s markets.  Forgiven.

My first cherry pie:

I have been very unsuccessful making double-crust pies.  They tend to tear, and when I make apple pies they sink.  This one came out well though – my first sour cherry pie, fresh picked from the local orchard.  Apparently lattice tops are more difficult than the normal crust, but I found it easier.  Follows my pattern of being able to do difficult things and executing poorly with simple tasks.  Pretty, no?

French toast with fresh peach topping:

Yet another celebration of the local orchard and weekends – yay for summer peaches!  I thickened the sauce with a typical roux of flour and butter.  I think I may have snuck in some brown sugar in too but I can’t remember.  The light is great on our deck this time of day (but boiling hot).

Grilled shrimp skewers with brown rice and swiss chard:

The shrimp was marinated in ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, and other Asian flavors.  We’re still getting used to eating Swiss chard – the first time I didn’t rinse it enough and got the unpleasant sand pieces.  My dad stated this shrimp was “awesome”, a word I don’t think he’s ever used before.  Too bad I forget the recipe. 

Year in Review

Yes, it’s been quite a long time since I’ve updated this blog.  Partly because I keep forgetting about it, partly because I haven’t decorated a cake since January!

We did manage to eat a lot this past year, though.  I’ll be posting quick recaps to get you caught up.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

• Vanilla cupcakes filled with peanut butter frosting, topped with chocolate ganache (and of course more frosting)
• Chocolate covered strawberries (Dove dark makes an awesome melting chocolate)

Triple Chocolate Cookies (1st Birthday Party)

Homemade sausage calzones (no, we didn’t make the sausage)

Foccacia – one with caramelized onions, one with tomato and rosemary

Happy Mother’s Day!  An alternative to chicken cordon bleu: chicken stuffed with spinach, onions and swiss wrapped with bacon

More to come.

The Shower Cake That Could Have Been

So here’s a story for you cake-lovers – I was hired to make a baby shower cake for someone at work as part of a surprise shower.  I had training that week, so I couldn’t go and had to send my delivery boy (aka hubby) in my place.  This shower had been planned for months, and everything was planned to a tee.

When hubby showed up to drop off the cake, what did he discover?  The mother-to-be was out sick for the week!

Tip #1: Cake doesn’t last forever.  I’ll keep a slice in the fridge for about a week (but I have no idea what the FDA thinks is an appropriate number of days).  But a whole, uneaten cake?  Might as well toss it after 2-3, because the colors will start running together.

So, good sports they are, my team decided to make the best of the situation – and ate it.  Apparently it was delicious.  The next week when she was back at work, they showed her a picture and had a Costco substitute (which no one ate because we also had a pre-holiday potluck).  Ah well.

Here’s the vanilla cake with tangy chocolate filling and buttercream icing, as the mother-to-be saw it in pictures (design based on the crib sheets):

Pretty Pretty Princess

I should note that whenever there are ugly cake pictures on here, it’s because hubby wasn’t home to take them.  Any tips on good cake photography?

A coworker asked me to bake a cake for her daughter’s 1st birthday.  Not being a mother myself, I never thought that babies need special cake ingredients – think I grew up on regular sugar and flour and I turned out…fine.  Anyway, she had a recipe for a baby-friendly carrot cake, but all the special ingredients made me nervous that it wouldn’t turn out properly.  In the spirit of fall (this was November), we ended up choosing an apple cake with cream cheese inside and out.

As inspiration, she gave me a napkin with the princess theme.  I love sparkles!

Napkin below:

For the crown, I used royal icing on parchment, then laid it on the side of a pot for curvature.

Tip #1: If you plan to stand something 3D up, make sure you draw the bottom flat!  I decided to curve it at the last minute, so when I went to put it on the cake, the bottom part wouldn’t sit.  Hence the corner attempt.

Tip #2: An object is only as strong as its weakest point.  I put too much pressure on the crown and it cracked!  Oh lord.  I did a quick royal icing repair job, but I wasn’t very happy:

The letters weren’t those storebought candy ones.  Oh no – I didn’t even think of that option until after I did these.  I used more royal icing and use pink sparkles to make it shine:

Tip #3: Make at least 3 times the amount of royal icing decorations you will need.  Even if you’ve done it a thousand times, you don’t want to risk last minute breakage.

The finished product – thanks for asking me to do this, Christine!

Go Phillies GO!

Since today is a lazy Saturday, I decided I need to desperately start catching up on my posts.

Halloween this year coincided with a great Philly victory – the Phillies won the World Series!  In tribute, I carved a pumpkin (it’s not blurry, I was afraid to carve them any straighter for fear of pumpkin implosion):

Makes me happy. 

I carved this with some small dremel bits.

Tip: CARVE OUTSIDE!  And wear clothes you don’t care about, or that can be easily washed.  See exhibit A below, with the pumpkin guts down my front within just a few minutes of carving.