Recent Cooking

A month and a half ago, Lawrence got into making pizzas. We already had a brand new, beautiful Emile Henry pizza stone to replace the tile I was using previously. Our first attempt was a flop, literally. As Lawrence was trying to slide the pizza onto the stone from our bamboo cutting board, half of it got stuck beneath itself and the mozzarella and tomato sauce got seared to the 500F pizza stone. Thankfully, Barkeeper's Friend was able to get all the burned sauce and cheese off. The amount of dough we had was enough for 2 pizzas, so I slid the 2nd pizza onto the stone and we enjoyed a beautifully cooked pizza.

late night cooking

Late night cooking = bad idea. Especially when it's something I haven't made before. I had been meaning to make some Chinese pan-fried chive dumplings for a while now. Apparently for too long as the chives I bought were partially rotting. I had to go through each stalk, not just to wash them, but to pick off any slimy rotted portions. This took a LOT longer than expected. I started at 10:30pm but did not finish until 2am.

This was the recipe I followed: Stuffed Pancakes with Garlic Chives

The dough calls for boiling water. Why? I don't know. I didn't have any pork on hand so mine only had vermicelli, egg, and chives as filling. The second most time consuming part was wrapping the damn things. When a recipe calls for 1 lb of flour for a dough that then needs to be divided into small chunks to wrap things with, that should be a clue to either cut the recipe in half or not start it at 10:30pm.

Silly me, I made the entire portion of dough and separated it into 16 balls. I continuously wrapped until 2am, by which time my back and legs hurt. I couldn't even try one because Lawrence didn't want me to fry them up that late at night. Instead I got up extra early this morning to fry some up. I made them last night so that I could bring them for lunch so I better have some for lunch.

I was a little bit skeptical because the chives & vermicelli were not cooked before wrapping but they steamed up nicely inside the dumplings while they were being pan fried. It actually turned out pretty good, but I think I'll try cooking the next batch at a medium-high heat instead of full on high. I think the outsides got too dark before the dough could fully cook. However, the one I ate seemed cooked through so I don't know if it's even an issue.

Three pan-fried chive dumplings + 3 slices pan-fried turnip cake with sweet chili sauce = nom nom lunch!

Friday Dinner

Lawrence went to Gyu-Kaku for dinner with his brother...without me and without even telling me until I called him to ask what he was doing. :/ So, I made dinner for myself. There were a few recipes out of "How to Cook Everything" I had wanted to try and I already had all the ingredients. I made 2 dishes: quinoa with shallots, leeks, and scallions; and garlic roasted brussels sprouts.

The quinoa was pretty good. It was real easy to eat and is supposed to be *super* nutritious. I did not burn my brussels sprouts this time. They ended up nicely browned. I wonder if my oven runs hot? I only needed to cook them for 20 minutes at 450F, versus the 30 minutes instructed in the book. This time I also smashed each clove of garlic with the flat of my knife before adding it. They ended up deliciously crispy at the end.

Thursday workout & 4th of July weekend

Thursday:
- 30 double handed swings with the 16kg kettlebell
- 10 push-ups
- 10 sit-ups
- 10 lunges each side

repeat x5 = omg, 150 kettlebell swings with a 35lb kb!

Saturday:
Peggy's b-day bbq!

Sunday:
Fireworks in Fullerton with Lawrence's cousins! I spent the afternoon making a huge bowl of guacamole which everyone seemed to enjoy. :) I used the recipe from the How To Cook Everything book. I really need to start photographing my cooking too. There needs to be a pretty Ravelry-esque site for every niche!

I also picked up another plant. I've now got on the balcony: a tomato plant, a pot with cosmos seedlings, and a window planter with basil, thyme, rosemary, mint, cilantro, and serrano chili.

cooking

From Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything:
- Black Beans and Rice
- Lentils and Potatoes

From Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice:
- Broccoli Cheddar Cheese Soup

Soup turned out great. For the black beans and rice, I used canned instead of the dry beans called for in the recipe. I think I needed much more water while it baked because the rice took a long time and was still pretty hard by the time I was done. I guess I thought as long as the stuff was liquid, the rice would be getting water - not true. I used red lentils instead of the brown called for in the other recipe. Apparently red lentils cook A LOT faster. It was my first time cooking lentils and I wayyy overcooked it. It turned out to be more of a mashed lentils and potatoes dish than anything resembling an Indian dal.

In the end, I didn't get to do more than taste a few partial spoonfuls of each. It's almost 2am and I'm too tired to be hungry. Ordinarily I'd be fine but I had a workout tonight and I probably really need the protein. :/

Oh, and by the way, tonight's workout:

3 sets of 10 reps each of the following series (using a 45 lb. bar)
- partial deadlift
- bent-over row
- clean
- squat
- press

Cooking [almost] every night?

I'm on a cooking roll!  I think what really kick started it all was when I subscribed to several cooking blogs.  They'd have really awesome sounding recipes, often using foods I never considered cooking before.  Before long it turned into a culinary adventure!  :)  I can't even keep up with tracking all of it here.  These are a few recipes I made lately that I ended up really liking:


smittenkitchen: moroccan-spiced spaghetti squash

The Wednesday Chef: carmelized corn with fresh mint

Just Hungry: new potatoes with butter and soy sauce

Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream

Busy day

This morning I went to Melody's Kettlebells 101 workshop. It was a basic intro to kettlebell exercises - swings, presses, squats, rows, lifts, and Turkish get-ups. We were outside at Washington Park, and it was actually really nice. The weather was great (we were in the shade of a large tree). It was really nice to do the exercises outside with the fresh air. Air circulation inside the gym is not good at all and you can really tell the difference when you work out outside. I actually want to go to next weekend's Kettlebells 102 workshop, even though I hadn't considered it before.

I at 5:30pm I started cooking. I had started a French starter (pate fermentee) yesterday for the French bread I wanted to attempt today. I made shinjaga shoyu bataa, or potatoes with soy sauce and butter. Lawrence and Wilson both liked it. :) I also roasted a head of cauliflower with olive oil, thyme, red pepper flakes, and chopped garlic (a recipe from Emeril). That was pretty good. Finally, I made potato salad using russet potatoes, and boiled eggs, carrots, frozen corn, and frozen peas mixed together with mayonnaise. Yummy...

I ran into some issues with the French bread - I think it dried out too much while proofing, so each of the shaped loaves formed a dry skin around the outside. This made it difficult to score and did not let the bread expand while baking. I've still got the rye bread dough I prepared yesterday from the ABin5 book.

Last of the ABin5 dough

I finished off the last of the Artisan Bread in 5 min dough today. It was probably close to 1.5 lbs. I had to leave a little bit of dough that had dried out on the edge of one of the containers. This loaf I cut with a scallop pattern on top after I let it rest for at least an hour after taking it out of the fridge. While baking I used some tips I picked up from Peter Reinhart's book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I let the oven (including my roasting pan) heat up to 450F while the dough rested.

After sliding the dough in onto the tile, I poured hot water into the roasting pan so it would generate steam. We actually picked up a mist sprayer from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, so I used that to mist the sides of the oven and generate more steam. 15 minutes in I flipped the tile around to help even out the bread's exposure to the heat in the oven.

I think I opened up the oven to mist toooo many times. Nearly 30 minutes in, I stuck in the thermometer and the internal temperature was at ~160F. I needed it to be at 200F, so I upped the heat to 480F and left the thermometer in the bread to monitor the temperature. The alarm feature is awesome. :) The crust turned out a nice color, and this time I definitely slashed it deep enough.

I just tasted it, and I think that I over-handled this dough again. The holes are not as big as I'd like. The crust, although crispy on the outside, is not as thick and flavorful as the first bread I baked with the ABin5 dough. I'll have to think about this a bit more to figure out what I did. Perhaps it was the changes in oven temperature from constantly opening the door?

2nd time - success!

Success of sorts at least. This time, I left it in the oven without having turned the oven on. I let it rise twice and baked it at 375F for 30 min.

It turned out a little denser than optimal, and a little undercooked towards the bottom center. Perhaps it would have cooked more evenly if I didn't just stick it on a cheap baking sheet. If I let the dough rise in a warmer space, it might have also turned out a little lighter.

Taste-wise, it was pretty good. It didn't turn sour so I know I didn't let it rise for too long. The crust is actually decent. We don't have a spray bottle, so I just flicked some water into the oven with my fingers to add moisture (supposedly for better crust).

When it came out, the outside was not brown and pretty. That could have been due to not baking long enough or not putting stuff on the outside (olive oil? egg?).

I would love to do this again, but I think I'm not strong enough to knead the dough properly. It seemed to be kneaded so much better after Lawrence did it...and ugh, that sucks. I hate not being strong enough for things. With practice, I hope, it'll get better. This can be a supplementary arm workout for arm endurance.

Bread attempt #1

FAIL.

This is the recipe I'm using: Jo's Rosemary Bread.

I got the yeast activated and kneaded the dough. I let it rise for an hour but realized that it was just sitting on the counter and was probably not in a warm enough place to properly double in size. So, I put it in the oven on the lowest setting, 170F, which was apparently way too hot. I should have realized. One site I read said 80-90F was ideal. So...time to start over.

Julia Child

I wish I had watched her show when I was a kid.

Thanksgiving Cooking

Doh, I totally forgot to take pictures...

This Thanksgiving I got to cook a bunch of food and it actually turned out good. Thursday night at my parents' place, I made stuffing from a box (Trader Joe's) and yams. Unfortunately, my mom, dad, and aunt don't like cinnamon. My uncles liked it though.

For the potluck dinner with Lawrence's brother and cousins, I made those yams again, a prime rib roast, butter pecan ice cream, and Indian rice pudding. All of it was delicious! The only thing I would change is paying more attention to the butter I put into the butter pecan ice cream. I totally did not realize the stick butter I bought from Trader Joe's was salted, making my ice cream extra salty.

These are the recipes I used:

Paula Deen's 'Ol No. 7 Yams
Emeril's Prime Rib Roast
Alton Brown's Indian Rice Pudding*
Ben & Jerry's Butter Pecan Ice Cream

*For the rice pudding, I followed the instructions here to make candied pistachios.

Butternut Squash Risotto and Bailey's Irish Cream Truffles

Last week I really felt like cooking. I think it was when Lawrence and I went with Ally to the Italian restaurant, Lago, at the Promenade in Santa Monica. They have a dish called "Risotto di Zucca e Capesante," which is risotto with butternut squash with seared scallops and a balsamic glaze.

I wanted to make a butternut squash risotto dish so I Googled it and found this: Butternut Squash Risotto.

With guests coming on Sunday (Lawrence's cousins), I also wanted to make a small dessert item for them. I decided on Bailey's Irish Cream Truffles because I had made them several years ago with the Shoujo Club girls at Berkeley.

I spent Saturday afternoon cooking...and it actually turned out fairly well! Lawrence only had a spoonful but he said it was only "okay." :( I packed some for his lunch on Monday and when he came home he said that it was surprisingly good! I guess he didn't get a good taste the first time, but when he sat down and ate it he was able to enjoy it.

The truffles turned out okay even though I totally screwed up. It was only after I put the truffle ganache in the fridge to harden that I realized I forgot to put in the Bailey's. I was following the truffle recipe on Cooking for Engineers, but that was just a normal truffle recipe. I added cinnamon to the cocoa powder and powdered sugar used to coat the truffles so they would have some additional flavor.

The texture of the risotto after being in the fridge for a few days reminds me of a Chinese dish that I think is literally translated as "vegetable rice". It's been so long since I've had it but I think it had some leafy sort of vegetable mixed with glutinous rice and chunks of yam. I'll have to ask my mom about it. Yesterday night I bought some baby bok choy to add to the risotto leftovers so that there's more veggie content and to break up the thick texture so it won't be so buttery and heavy.