Homemade Marshmallows! (12/29/2007)

yummy freshly made marshmallows right after cutting


even better after covered in chocolate...

This recipe was featured originally at one of Emeril's Halloween candy show as Lemon Marshmallows. I've done the exact recipe last year as gifts. It's good, but not as versatile as regular marshmallows... Lemon flavored hot cocoa just doesn't sound right :P This year I decided to make just a plain version of the recipe. While making it I added a bit of vanilla extract kinda of an after thought thinking it would be ok. Either I didn't whip it enough for the flavor to be blended in or maybe it's just the way the extract tastes, the marshmallow tastes a bit chemically by itself. Bleh... It tastes quite ok in hot cocoa though, thank God. Since I don't really have hot cocoa that often, I decided to experiment a bit to see if covering it in dark chocolate would mask the vanilla taste, and indeed! It goes perfectly well with dark chocolate and the whole thing turned into a very very yummy decadent treat! It is so easy I can't believe they charge about $18 for a box of 18 (plain, not even covered in chocolate) at William-Sonoma. That's like $1 per marshmallow! Goodness! It costs at most $1 to make a batch of about 5 or 6 dozen of plain ones at home, and about $15 worth of dark chocolate from Whole Food to cover them all. Cheaper chocolate would work too except I happened to have some Whole Food ones at hand anyway. Semi or bitter-sweet chocolate really complements the sweetness of the marshmallow without making the whole thing overly sweet.

Herbed-baked eggs... yumm!! (01/28/2008)

I love Ina Garten. Not only for the elegant, delicious and unpretentious food, but also for her soothing motherly voice. I can just hear her saying "Mmm... Doesn't that look good?" in my head when making a dish of hers when everything just comes together beautifully. Since Chris has been working hard on his paper, I've decided to make something extra special for the Sunday breakfast. Also the fact I finally got the right dish from Crate and Barrel helps :P So here it is, Herbed-baked eggs! The yokes are creamy and gooey, perfect for dipping toasted sliced baguette. The flavor of all the herbs, cream, butter and Parmesan cheese melted together to create this heavenly aroma that fills the entire house. Not sure if my amateur description does the justice of this fabulous dish but I can tell you we both loved it for sure :) See recipe here.

---- Below is my snooty rant about something stupid, skip if you feel judgemental ----
A funny story of me buying the gratin dishes at Crate and Barrel. Yes, that's what I got at Perimeter last weekend part of my justification of going to the mall. Anyway,. the goal is to pick up 4 cream brulee dishes and 2 gratin dishes. Somehow they had the cream brulee dishes in this wood bucket with some shreaded wood material, sure it's cute and all but PITA to pick out the dishes I want. Anyway, being as anal as I am, I carefully picked out the dishes making sure each one of them is perfect, and set them aside on its own little pile. While I was doing that, this woman and her husband came to my little corner (yes, I was squatted on the floor at the time next to the bucket) and start picking up dishes from the pile I picked out, mumbling to her husband something like "Oh I don't know, they are too shallow looking... " while also discussing how the ceramic ramekins in the next bucket are too small blah blah... I didn't think much to it other than "Stop touching my dishes!!" lol.. Anyway, and just when I was about to grab the gratin dishes, again she was touching the gratin dishes I am buying and blah-blahing about something to her husband. So I tried to crack a bit of joke saying "Gee, we must be making the same dishes!" She went "Oh, you are making French onion soup too?" Uh... Seriously lady, French onion soup?? And you are looking at cream brulee dishes, gratin dishes and little ramekins?? Do you know what you are doing at all? Of course I kept my snooty comments to myself and only smiled and said "Oh no, just cream brulee and bake eggs... " Yes, EXACTLY like how these dishes are meant for. Anyway, she's totally at the wrong place looking for French onion soup dish because at my next stop the Sur La Table store right around the corner to Crate and Barrel, they had at least 5+ different kinds of French onion soup dishes available. I was seriously considering to go back to look for the lady to tell her about it, but on second thought, eh, it's better not to be some strange stalker girl who are too helpful for her own good :P Good luck to that lady and her husband lol...

It's true that I am a bit of a food snob but really, I don't care what ppl eat / what they want to do with their food as long as they doon't touch my perfect little ceramic dishes that I took time to pick each one of them carefully out of a pile and ready to buy :( Yah yah, I am total bitch I know! lol...

Happy Valentine's Day!

As part of the tradition, also to save money, I always try to make some yummy treats for Valentine's day. I think I've made tiramisu at least twice now including last year, so I am sorta switching it up this year making heart-shaped chocolate flavored marshmallows instead :D It's the same basic marshmallow recipe I always used except with cocoa powder added toward the end and dusted with cocoa powder instead of corn starch. Let me just say... I think the name for these little things should be DEVIL's HEARTS! OMG what a complete PITA to get them out of their tiny heart shaped molds!! I had to scrap the side of each one to get them out, all 32 of them!! And each little heart is only about a bit more than an inch wide. I think the problem is mainly because I replaced the usual step of spraying non-stick spray and dusting the pan with corn starch with dusting with just cocoa powder thinking it'd be ok. WRONG!! I guess cocoa powder is just not the same when it comes to stick prevention. Oh well, you live and learn everyday I guess :P They are mighty tasty though, kinda reminded me of chocolate flavored taffy actually... weird...

Also I made Hainanese chicken rice again for dinner hehe.. very yumm!! Gosh I should've taken some pics.. oh well..

Happy Valentine's Day Part 2 - Marbled Cake!

Being Asian and all, I suck at baking cakes and what not. (Is being Asian really an excuse for this!?? lol...) Anyway, the only thing I managed to bake perfectly so far are cheese cakes and the "light" Japanese cheese cakes. Sure I've baked other sweet treats, but being picky and spoiled and all, most of them are not as great as say the ones from au bon pain or something. Sure, if I could bake like that I should be in my own bakery not sitting here in front of the 20" dual widescreen lcd typing, but having high standard for my own baked goods is ... good right? Anyway, long story short, knowing my own short coming in baking, about 2 years ago I volunteered to host Stephanie's baby shower, in return she gave me this great cake recipe, even baked the cake with me once at her house, walking me through each steps and I have to say, the cake is absolutely fabulous! Even a baking idiot like me can master it :D It's also great the next day after microwaving it for couple seconds hehe.. The recipe is from Great American cakes by Lorraine Bodger. Don't think the book is in print anymore though.

Marbled Cake
Baking pan: 2 9" round cake pans or 1 9x13x2 sheet pan
Preheat oven to 350 degree.

2 1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

for Marble cake:
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled ( could be a bit more I think)
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

1/ Stir or whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt, set aside
2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs for several minutes (8 - 10 minutes) , until they are
light, thick and pale Add the vanilla and beat again.
3. Add the sugar one tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition
4. Add the dry ingredients and the cream alternatively, in three parts
each. After each addition, beat just until blended.

For plan sweet cream layer: divide the batter equally between the two
prepared pans

For marble layers, Put half of the batter in a separate bowl. To one
bowl of the batter add the melted chocolate and the cocoa powder and
blend well. Drop alternating spoonfuls of dark and light batter into
each prepared pan, ending up with equal amounts of batter in each pan.
To make the marbled effect, draw a knife back and forth through the
dark and light batter several times. Do not over do the marbling.

5. Bake 9" layers for 30 minutes in 350 degree oven and sheet cake for 35 minutes or
until a test come out clean

cool on wire racks for 10 minutes, turn them out to cool.

Cream Cheese Icing
1 16oz pack confectioners sugar
1 8oz pack cream cheese
5 table spoon unsalted butter

Let the cream cheese and butter soften in room temperature. Blend them all together and done! You've got cream cheese icing!

This is how it looks like right after being marbled in the pan


Fresh out of oven yumm...


In our Crate and Barrel cake stand, one of my favorite wedding gifts

Grapefruit honey green tea drink

Ok, I wish I were a bit more creative in naming this drink, but my mind is drawing blank right now so there it is, it's grapefruit juice with honey and green tea :D Actually it all came from me obsessing over this glass teapot featured in Martha Stewart's Mind + Soul magazine, and the recipe that came with the teapot, this spiced grapefruit juice thing that is meant to be warm and cozy. So I bought two grapefruits thinking I'd try out the recipe, except it's not winter anymore :P To improvise, there comes this refreshing grapefruit juice mix with a touch of caffeine I mean green tea...

Ingredients: (for 1 liter / quart)
2 grapefruits
3 teaspoon of sencha
1.5 cups of water just below boiling (to brew the sencha)
Honey, several tablespoon, to taste
Top the container off with ice, stir and serve!

I usually squeeze the grapefruit juice first, then brew the concentrated green tea (3 tp sencha + 1.5 c water) in a separate container. It looks great when they are first poured in (as shown in the pic) but really it's not going to stay like that once mixed :P sorry!

Mochi time! 白玉団子

Ahh... Mochi... Sure it's easy to get at Korean supermarkets, even the freshly made ones. Except they only stay good for about a day before going tough on you and heating them up in the microwave is just not that great of an idea... Yes, Chris had tried it and decided it's too much of a science experiment at that point :D Melting bubbly mochi is scary...

Anyway, so the best solution to this mochi craving problem is to make you own at home! Any time you want and even freeze it for later. The flavor possibility is endless for these homemade mochi. I am already planning on making honey flavor, sweet olive flower flavor, and even cocoa flavor ones in the future hehehe...

Ingredients: (for 4 servings)
Shiratamako (白玉粉, Japanese glutinous rice flour) about 125g
Water, about 100g
Matcha (green tea) powder, 2 teaspoons
Sweetened azuki bean paste (from the can is fine)
A bowl of ice water for soaking

Direction:
- Add water slowly into the shiratamako powder while kneading the mixture till clump free and not sticky, about the hardness of your earlobe (weird description I know...).
- Divide the mixture to two halves.
- Add the matcha powder to one of the halves, knead it in well.
- Roll each of the "doughs" out to 8" strips, cut each in 8 pieces.
- Roll each pieces to balls
- Press an indentation to each balls with your thumb to form the little "dimple".
- Cook them in boiling water till it floats
- Drain and soak them in the ice water bath for 2 minutes
- Drain again, plate and serve with sweetened azuki bean paste on top.

My panna cotta experience...

See recipe here. Keep reading on my thoughts on the recipe.

So my history with panna cotta started with when one of my friends from high school came to visit from Houston about 1.5 years ago. She was an exchange student in Italy for ... I guess a semester; therefore, a self proclaimed expert on Italian food apparently. Sorry, being a food snob myself that totally got on my nerve, especially knowing she doesn't cook at all on regular basis. Anyway, so we were at Fritti, my favorite pizza place in town. After arguing about whether to put prosciutto on every one of their specially designed pizza, we managed to have a civilized dinner till when it comes time for dessert. I've always heard of panna cotta, but at the time I just didn't recall right away what it is so I asked the usual question, What's panna cotta? She, snobbishly, answered "Oh! You don't know what panna cotta is? You've never had panna cotta! Gah! You have been missing out! I've had the BEST panna cotta when I was in Italy" blah blah blah... Those may not be the exact words but that's how it is in my mind at least. Anyway, turned out they ran out of the panna cotta that night so we never got it.

So of course I looked up what panna cotta is afterward and realize it's really just an egg-less custard, milky, made solid by putting in either gelatin or other such ingredient. BLAH!! WHATEVER!! I make honestly one of the best flan (an eggy custard) from scratch and this is NOTHING!! It's about as good as a kiddy dessert (think Jello) with a fancy Italian name.

Anyway, I was watching Barefoot Contessa the other day and saw this recipe and finally decide it's time for me to really try making this dessert and judge for myself how I feel about it. After cross referencing quite a few recipes, which are more or less the same, I made the panna cotta following pretty much exactly Ina's recipe. While it's not bad at all, sweet, creamy, vanilla flavored, it's nothing to write home about, and in fact WAY too creamy and fatty for my taste, also my waistline. If I were to make it again, I would use only half if not 1/4 of the heavy cream it calls for and substitute the rest with milk. I wanna say 2% but I am sure Chris would prefer whole milk. I also made the recipe using this vanilla bean paste thingy instead of real vanilla bean, which turns out great. It's my first time trying the vanilla bean paste and it gives exactly the same visual appearance of the tiny little black vanilla seeds and it's completely awesome, much more convenient than using regular vanilla beans to be honest.

So... the conclusion is... that Panna Cotta is just a simple Italian dessert with a fancy name. It could be nice if I had adjusted the recipe to my own taste, and I am glad I finally made it and I will make it again for sure. I enjoy food, cooking, fashion, and various nice things whether it is simple or uber fancy. Being able to make some of these things in my own kitchen makes me happy and feeling empowered. I hate it when people put things in a way that is unapproachable and can only be found somewhere in their distant memory, located in exotic location, as if you will never have it, let alone making it urself. Now that's snobbish, not good taste.

Chinese Home Style Dishes 1

Steamed Salmon and Tofu
This is one of my favorite recipes lately. It's so healthy, tasty, and super easy to make. Just cut, combine, toss and steam. It's from one of the new recipe books I got from my recent trip to Taiwan (Savory dishes by Paul Ho), but modified and made better by me :D

Ingredients:
Salmon 1/2 lb to 1 lb
Silken Tofu 10 oz box
Egg 2, scrambled
Green onion 1 stalk, finely chopped.

Seasoning:
Cooking alcohol (mirin) 1 Tbs
(Can be substituted by regular cooking alcohol with about 1 tbs sugar added)
Salt 1 ts
Corn Starch 1/2 Tbs
Ground white pepper 1/2 ts
Sesame oil 1 ts
Fish sauce 2 ts

Direction:
1. Cube the salmon, about 1/2 inch in size, add mirin, mix well, let sit for 5 minutes.
2. Cube the tofu same size as salmon, Add to 1.
3. Add eggs, salt, corn starch, ground white pepper, and sesame oil to mixture, toss to combine all.

4. Pour the mixture into a shallow plate, I used a glass 9" pie plate
5. Steam for 15 minutes over water in a covered pot, med to high heat.
6. Remove, drizzle the fish sauce and garnish with chopped green onions.
Enjoy!

Extra tips:
- I usually discard the salmon skin. However fresh the salmon is the skin part is always kinda fishy to me.
- The addition of mirin / cooking alcohol to the original recipe is to further reduce any possible fishy taste, also to add slight sweetness to the dish.

Useful tools for steaming:
- Use a rack to prop the dish away from water, a sterdy bowl would do the trick too.


- Use one of these tongs looking thingy to put in / lift the dish out. I got mine from Taiwan, but it should be fairly common in Asian grocery stores.

Pin Cushion

Before I started learning how to sew, the concept of having pins / pin cushion is just a myth to me somehow. Sure it's cute and all but why is it needed again? Then once I got into sewing thanks to Ayana and Ayana's aunt, having a pin cushion when sewing a project is CRUCIAL!! So I started searching Etsy for one and saw some cute ones and then realized... Why don't I just make one? Isn't it the whole point of sewing so you can make something yourself instead of buying? LoL... So after some googling I found this awesome tutorial for a biscornus style pin cushion. Although it still took me quite a while (about 2.5 hours) since I am such a newbie in sewing, the result was awesome and I am very proud of my homemade pin cushion :D Yay!!

Some extra tips from ultra beginners like me:
- I used a medium width straight stitch for stitching Valcro onto cotton twill tape.
My poor little beginner machine just would not go through the two thick pieces on the tightest straight stitch. Also to loosen the tension a bit seems to help too.

- I changed the fabric size from 3.5" to 4"
4 is easier to divide in the middle and the larger the easier to sew hehe...

- Step 12 about filling the cushion fairly solid using fibrefill is really important!
This would prevent the pins from poking through the cushion if it is not filled enough. Quite important consider this cushion is supposed to sit on your wrist... I ended up opening mine back up to stuff more :P I guess I learned this the hard way...