Cucumber, cilantro and vermicelli salad

In continuing with the Asian food theme....I made this cucumber salad. My parents eat it all the time. The julienned cucumber is key...haha maybe not, but it makes it look very Asian IMHO! The vermicelli is average, I could do without it. It takes away from the vibrant green freshness of the whole thing. 
Oh and I'd like to just declare my love for cilantro..is there a more fragrant, refreshing herb? Too bad it is so pungent that I rarely cook with it but it sure is fantabulous when I do get to. I would love to start growing it on my windowsill but have yet to find a baby cilantro plant to buy.


Oh the recipe is just cucumber, cilantro and vermicelli mixed with a little bit of my spicy soy sauce mix. Any kind of sour + salt mix will do. 

Braised Bok Choy

I've always find Bok Choy to be kind of BLAH-watery, difficult and not tasty. 
But I saw this recipe, and thought to give it another go. They turned out pretty ugly...(both pictures were equally ugly so I put up both). I may have left it braise for too long but it was quite tasty. I like this way of cooking it either halved or quartered (although it makes it kind of hard to clean all the grimy little bits around the root). Nonetheless, it was very flavorful. The separately fried garlic is a nice technique, I think i'll do that again for other dishes-delish!

Chinese Tea Eggs

The incredible edible egg-they are so easy, cheap and versatile!
My mom would often make a batch of tea eggs when we had road trips since they were portable and I actually preferred them cold. This is my first attempt to make them myself and it was incredibly easy. I was horribly hung-over, and kept falling asleep while it was simmering but they turned out fine-great in fact. 
Here's how I made them: 
1) Boil eggs in water until they are cooked. I just let them cook for about 12 minutes. 
2) Pour out most of the water.
3) Smash the eggshells but don't let the eggshell break off. I think the more you can smash up the eggshell, the more flavorful they will be. Kind of like this:

4) Add tea. (I just added loose leaf green tea, I'm not sure where I got it from. My mom said you can use "any, ol tea" is fine but I think most people use black.) Add soy sauce. The eggs were about half submerged in liquid. 

Voila!

I've been eating them every morning..gobble gobble. Makes for a really really fast breakfast which is perfect coz I am not a morning person!

Roasted bone marrow

The things you can find at grocery stores these days...
Bone marrow!

I think I have a high tolerance for eating weird things because when I was a kid, my parents would feed me bizarre things before I realized what they were. Bone marrow was among the many things that were supposed to make me smarter (others being baby fish-like fetuses in whole fish and crab eggs). From what I remember, bone marrow was this delish, gooey mess and it was sort of a fun challenge to get it out of the bone. So I thought I'd get it and maybe put it in some soup but honestly, I never have time to make soup. After some googling, I found out that you can roast it and eat it on toast. It is also apparently Anthony Bourdain's choice for his last meal. (A LOT of food bloggers worship Anthony Bourdain.)
So here it is...vegetarians, look away!

Here's the thing. Everything was good up til this point. It was freaking disgusting! I should have known from hematology, bone marrow is at least 50% fat! When I poked it out of the bone, the whole thing was just a congealed, fat blob with yellow fat dripping everywhere. I ate 50 baby carrots afterwards to wash out the taste. 

Gross. 

Well, I will not give up on bone marrow and will try it in a broth but I doubt that will happen before June, (USMLE Step 1!!!). 

Blackened Mahi Mahi

Mahi Mahi makes me think of this line from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. 

Darald: What's the state fish of Hawaii?
Dwayne the Bartender: The Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. Yeah, bitch! 

Hahahaha love it. 

So this recipe was inspired by a wonderful blackened Mahi-Mahi salad I had in Miami. I am not sure what they used...but I decided to go with a cumin, paprika rub because I know that paprika burns on the grill, so I figured my fish would turn out blackened! 

Because I accidentally poured almost half my little bottle of cumin into the recipe, cumin turned out to be the main flavor in this, but that actually worked out. I cooked a random bed of vegetables in the same pan so everything had a smoky, grilled sort of flavor. Next time I think I'll make a corn salsa for some tangy contrast. Anyway, I loved it....even more than the fish I had in Miami!

According to another food blog that I checked out, the key to a good picture isn't a good camera but lighting! So I tried that and took this pic with my iPhone and I like the way it turned out!

[Side note: Cumin and I go way back. In fact, I loved cumin before I even knew what it was! When I was a little girl in China, they had these street vendors that sold lots of random snacks but my favorite were these skewers of grilled lamb. In retrospect, they were probably entirely unsanitary and I don't think they have these vendors anymore but I lovvvvved them. My four year old self could eat several skewers at once. I found out years later that the lamb was flavored with cumin and I still probably have a Pavlovian response to the smell of cumin. I've never cooked lamb but have used cumin with other meats and it's always delicious.]

Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

This is a recipe I've wanted to make for a while because it looked so cute in my cookbook and I had some fancy whole grain/flaxseed cous cous. So I finally got some portabella mushrooms but the recipe was a p-a-i-n in the ass. Things that went wrong

1) I am never buying unwashed mushrooms again. I hate washing them because, to be honest, I'm not really sure how. Rachel Ray says to wipe them with a damp paper towel but I think it's a waste of paper towel AND doesn't really clean them IMHO. 

2) The mushrooms were really delicate and I deformed them many times.

3) I burned the cous cous and I burned the chopped onions. 

4) The mushrooms are flat and soggy after they are cooked so not really "stuffable". 

Nonetheless..this is what I ended up with. I decided to just eat the mess and move on buttttt...to my surprise.....it was freaking delicious! I looooove portabellas!!

Here is a side view..see it is a mushroom under there!

Lindacake!

Linda turns 24!
Here is the cake Grace and I made. 
It looks just like a big Oreo at first, doesn't it. 

Linda cake

Linda below..I think the resemblance is uncanny..hahahaha. Happy bday Linda!

Engagement party cupcakes

Our classmates Matt + Maggie got engaged! 
Here were the muffins Grace L. and I made for their engagement party. And by us I mean mostly Grace who knew all the stuff about piping and decorating. I made the rings which is why they are all different in size, and look like spaghetti-o's. Nonetheless, they were muchos fun to make, and they were all eaten.

Pot Luck!

Here is a picture of a recent pot luck I had at my place. I did not get a pic of all the amazing food but here is a sample: 

There is..fried rice, sesame chicken, paella, spicy Korean rice cakes, my roommate's awesome chocolate cake, fruit salad and not pictured, fondue and mac and cheese. I loved all of my friends creations and ate enough for 2 or 3 people.


My dish is sort of in the middle, which is cold spicy noodles. I don't know if everyone else loves it as much as I do but if I were dying, I'd request this dish as my last meal. It is my mom's recipe and I loved it so much as a kid, it was the first thing I learned how to make. It's carbalicious (my fave), cold, spicy, salty, vinegar-y. All it really involves is making the sauce which consists of heating some chili flakes in hot oil, pouring the hot oil over some minced/sliced garlic and adding about 2-3 parts soy sauce to 1 part vinegar. My mom also adds shallots but I don't care for it nor do I usually have shallots around. The noodles are just rice noodles, boiled til soft and washed in cold water. I drown my noodles in the sauce and can eat many bowls all by myself. 

My version of Chicken Satay

Who doesn't love chicken satay appetizers at Thai restaurants?! I decided to make something like it, but I was sans grill and sans bamboo skewers so I just tossed some diced chicken breast in a pan with minced garlic, ginger, curry, S+P. Then I made some peanut sauce from this recipe and...voilà!  

The peanut sauce was very lime-y, probably because I used one very plump lime but it was sort of a nice acidic contrast to everything else but I would still prob use less lime in the future. Not quite the same grilled/satay restaurant goodness but an okay at home alternative. As a side note, peanut sauce is also really good with pasta. I love carbs. 

Egg souffle

I bought ramekins at least 2 years ago, because I love creme brulee (have not attempted it yet), and since then I've only used them once for French Onion Soup. So this recipe was a good excuse to use my ramekins and eat asparagus. I made many substitutions and it ended up being a small bed of onions+mushroom topped with some plain scrambled egg and lightly sauteed asparagus. I'm not actually even sure if it counts as a souffle anymore since I didn't add cream. Nonetheless, I figured I couldn't go wrong since I used some of my favorite ingredients and at worst it'd be a gamish of some good stuff. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually puffed up although it was more soupy/savory than creamy/bready which was fine IMHO. 

Egad I am awful at photo editing

Before...

After..poofy goodness!

w/ a little hawt sauccee

lamest post ever!

so here are my excuses for not cooking:

1) I've been at parents for xmas and eating mom's food

2) I came back to my apt with more of mom's cookings

3) one word..Robbins

but i did make a sandwich for lunch which i know is about the lamest thing i can write about. but look how huge the bread is! fit 2 slices of cheese length-wise!

well there you have it. my sandwich. whole grain bread, spinach, turkey, and pepper-jack cheese. 

Linguine with Shrimp Scampi

My sister loved the frozen/boxed shrimp scampi that we ate at our cousin's house over Xmas. The frozen stuff is good but drenched in scampi butter, so we decided to make our "own" with pasta from this recipe. It turned out okay: garlicky, lemony, buttery. Also, Barilla now makes whole gain linguine (exciting) so our dish was a bit healthier.

Christmas Sugar Cookies

Merry Xmas!

My (not-so) little anymore sister and I made some soft sugar cookies. Despite her best intentions, cooking with a 12 year old was nothing short of a small disaster. Nonetheless, if you add enough sugar and butter to anything, it will taste great. The centers were sugary and gooey-I like. Plus, the seahorse cookie cutters were pretty cool. 

Mark Bittman's Braised Turkey (chicken)

Well this is certainly not the most elegant/danty looking dishes, but good lord, it is freaking delicious!

Here is Mark Bittman's recipe. I made a stripped down version, I only had chicken breast and used bacon instead of pancetta. I recently caved/indulged and bought myself some absolutely amazing looking, thick sliced, hickory smoked bacon. Xmas gift to myself. 

I browned the turkey in bacon fat (and consumed bits of bacon while I cooked hehe), and then the vegetables (I used carrots, onion, mushroom and some sage leaves). I then deglazed the pan with some chicken stock and put it all on a baking pan. 

After some time in the oven (not sure how long, was watching TV), it turned out like this!

The chicken turned out...pretty good. I don't think I have enough of a  vegetable bed or liquid for the chicken to be as tender as Mark Bittman's. But the vegetables were AMAZING-sweet, tender and juicy. Very home-y, Thanksgiving-esque feel to the whole thing. In the future, I may just skip the chicken. Yay, very exciting!

Giada's Stracciatella Soup

Giada de Laurentiis is my idol, watching her just makes me want to get in the kitchen. This is her Stracciatella soup which she describes as an Italian egg drop soup. It was super easy and fast; the whole thing took less than 10 minutes to make. My egg turned out more lumpy than ribbon-y but it was delish nonetheless. The chicken broth is great with the egg, parm, basil mixture. 

Caramelized Sweet Potato

This is not one of my usual dishes because I don't usually like to play around with sugar (and hence rarely bake) but I was feeling nostalgic. When I lived with my grandmother, she had quite a sweet teeth and loved to make caramelized sweet potato. I knew it was going to be a pain, because 1) caramelized sugar is finnicky, 2) my grandma had a hit or miss experience with the recipe and 3) I could not find a suitable recipe online. Thus, this was a true experiment, based on my memories from when I was a toddler. Although I don't remember much of the cooking process (besides the fact that, like most Chinese dishes, it was cooked on a stove and not in the oven), I do remember the finished product. When done just right, the sugar would coat each sweet potato chunk, and when you tried to grab one, a long trail of caramelized sugar would follow. Mm..sweet childhood memories.
So first I baked the sweet potato at 400F until I could easily run a sharp knife through a piece, about 20 minutes. 

I then melted some sugar on the stove, and quickly tossed in some potato chunks. 

Well, the last batch looked the best. I did not recreate the stringy-sugar effect and there are clumps of sugar everywhere but it tasted like how I imagined it would. I don't know how to get the sugar to perfectly coat each chunk and for all the chunks to stick together in one perfect sugar-potato conglomeration. There seems like so many variables to this, such as how much oil to roast the potatoes with, the temperature of the sugar, and the perfect sugar to potato ratio. Well the dish needs a lot of work but I probably won't be reattempting this anytime soon-my teeth are hurting from all the sugar.

Potato and Leek Soup

This is the first recipe in the book Julie and Julia from Julia Child's "classic recipe". My mom stir fries leek with pork, but leek and potato is a wonderful combination! In the book, she uses some sort of potato emulsifier but I just mashed the potatoes with either a whisk or a fork. It's lumpy but I like it that way. Like Julie says, it really does only need about 3 ingredients: butter, leek, potato. 

Leek in butter

Potato

Mash..and serve!

This was not my best potato+leek soup since I only had 2 medium potatoes to one leek bundle so it turned out greener and leek-ier than I liked. Oh well!

Cod in Cartoccio

I think I first heard about this on Food Network's Good Eats. 
It's a super easy, fast and healthy way to make fish although I generally like to do this with non-fishy fish (i.e. white). 
My fave combo is cod + whole brussell sprouts. If you've never had cod, it is a tasty, relatively inexpensive white fish which is meatier than say tilapia. According to Alton Brown, the best material is parchment paper but since I am a poor student and don't use parchment paper for anything else, I just use aluminum foil. Just stick whatever you want in the foil with some EVOO, S+P, wrap it up and stick it in the oven. 500F, 12 minutes-FLAT (usually).

Before: 

After:

After with the fish all flaked up:

Cookies with cocoa powder

Today I have a guest recipe from the lovely Linda T. 
This is what she made
Here's how it turned out! I ate quite a few of them. Very delish!

Here is the cookie dough

Before and After. Please appreciate the artfully placed pumpkin and ribbon in the after picture.