The Inaugural Use of my Stand Mixer

I finally became the owner of a long-coveted KitchenAid Stand Mixer last Christmas, thanks to my sister-in-law.  So, now that I have this thing, what to make?  I felt like its first use should be special, should have meaning.  But the possibilities were endless and I couldn’t decide.  In the end, I flipped through a Williams Sonoma Baking cookbook and stopped randomly on…cheesecake?  Sure, why not?  Here are few steps in the process of making this absolutely fantastic espresso cheesecake.  A great start to what I hope will be a beautiful relationship between my mixer and I.      

This was the closest thing to a "chocolate wafer" that my husband could find at the store.  We lovingly scraped away the Oreo filling to make the cheesecake crust.

Just seeing a picture of this mixer makes me giddy.

A small slice of the finished product, served as part of a brunch for some friends who were expecting their first child.  With a newborn ourselves, I made sure to use decaf espresso!  

Kiss my Shrimp and Grits!

One of the first signs that I am slowing turning into a Southerner was when I found myself craving sweet tea.  Another is that, over the last several months, “shrimp” and grits has become my go-to, easy meal to whip up quick.  I have no idea whether the version I make comes close to mimicking the real thing, but I do know that when I’ve made this for dinner my husband and I have practically licked our bowls clean.

No real recipe here.  I make the grits following instructions on the box and add a ton of grated cheese.  I sauté lots of garlic, vegetarian shrimp (I’ve found this in Asian stores and, just recently, in Whole Foods), spinach, and/or whatever else I have on hand (e.g., pine nuts, shallots, the tiny nubs of chard I have growing in my container garden on the deck…) and serve on top of the ooey gooey grits. 

I’ll have to figure out a substitute for fried oysters to complete my transformation. 

Lentils: Good Enough for Meat Club!

My husband is in a Meat Club.  Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like—a group of guys (of course) who get together and eat meat.  Most of the time, they check out a restaurant that has, say, all-you-can-eat sirloin or is well-known for a particular dish.  However, one of the members recently had a house-warming party and invited the Meat Club over for a barbeque (family and vegetarians welcome!).  What’s a vegetarian to do at a Meat Club event?  I decided to consult my trusty “Quick Vegetarian Pleasures” cookbook (no joke, not one recipe has yet let me down) and make “Crunchy Lentil Salad” to share.  Pretty simple—lentils, finely diced veggies like celery, carrots, and onion, tossed with some lemon juice, olive oil, and herbs, but soooooo delicious!  Although my husband was certain that others would scoff at my meatless contribution, I’m proud to say that it was a big hit.  The host even asked to keep the small amount that remained at the end of the evening.  Move over bacon, now there’s something “meatier”!

Faan with Grammy and Grandpa

Family faan was even more special last week because Grammy and Grandpa joined us from California!  On the menu: lotus root stir-fry (similar to my inaugural meal), my version of "beef" with broccoli, and kung pao tofu.  Sort of.  I envisioned kung pao tofu but had forgotten that this dish has peanuts instead of the cashews that I thought were involved.  Ah well, I'm not so sure that kung pao tofu is terribly authentic anyway.  

Faan (June 3)

I made spring rolls for our next Family Faan!  Now these turned out as lovely as I envisioned.  Also on the menu: braised radish (from another dormant Chinese cookbook) and my own concoction of noodles with black bean sauce (buried under the tofu, bok choy, and swirl of extra sauce).  Delish!   

Family "Faan"

My mother recently taught my husband some Cantonese.  “Sic faan” is perhaps the most essential of all phrases to know since it basically calls everyone to the table for a meal.  Seems like a fitting label for my new tradition of Sunday Chinese dinners.

For May 27^th’s Faan, I tried my hand at siu mai, Chinese greens, porridge, and tofu.  The original plan was to make sui mai with tofu, inspired by a small Chinese cookbook that’s been lying dormant in the back of the closet, mainly because I’ve already been too overwhelmed with trying to convert grams to pounds or milliliters to cups.  I was also planning to make porridge with salty duck egg whites as an accompaniment.  I ended up changing things up a bit when I did some googling in an effort to figure out what to do with the yolks!  After seeing an interesting recipe, I switched gears and used vegetarian ham for my siu mai and the only package of tofu I had on hand for this...

The siu mai came out better in my head than in reality.  I don’t know if it had something to do with the wrappers (not sure if wonton wrappers are the same as siu mai wrappers, but the wontons were the closest thing I could find at the store), but the “skin” or “pei” was sort of chewy.  The filling resembled my typical filling for dumplings, perhaps because the flavor of vegetarian ham overpowers everything else.  You couldn’t even really taste or tell that there were handfuls of baby turnip greens from my container garden in there!* A fun first try though. 

*With encouragement (and seeds) from my Master Gardener sister, I started a little container garden this year.  While I planted, my husband kept asking different questions about my overall process to which I repeatedly replied, “I have no idea what I’m doing!”  Indeed.  I recently learned from my sister that I should have only sowed one or two seeds in the relatively small pot that I selected for the turnips, rather than the hundred or so that I planted!  My plan was to thin the seedlings out (see my daughter helping) and use the baby greens to add a turnip-y bite to the siu mai.  I’m glad they didn’t go to waste but I’m not sure they added much to the flavor.

Sunday Chinese II (still need catchy name)

(1) Traditional egg and tomato dish--so authentic that I've only seen it offered in two restuarants in my lifetime, both in SoCal.  Once as part of a small, take-out buffet in Riverside, and once described as a "country" dish in a weird little place called Mao's Kitchen in Venice Beach.  Although my versions come close, my mother's is simply the best thing you could ever eat. 

(2) Cabbage and shitake stir-fry.   

Mother's Day Sundays

Going along the themes of culture and tradition, I’ve always thought there was something cool about the way some Italian-Americans talk about Sunday “gravy”.  Hmm, wouldn’t it be fun to start such a tradition and perfect a homemade marinara?  But, wait, we’re not Italian and my husband doesn’t even like tomato-based sauces.  So why not begin a tradition of our own that’s more relevant to who we actually are? 

Sunday, May 6^th, seemed like a fitting day to begin a tradition of Sunday Chinese dinners.  Given the date, I saw this meal as a tribute to my mother who recently spent four weeks living with and taking care of us after Baby #2 arrived.

On the menu, clockwise from top left, was tofu with Hoisin sauce (so yummy with snap peas, carrots, and cashews, from the cookbook “Quick Vegetarian Pleasures”), and two dishes that I learned from my mother--faux chicken and celery (one of my husband’s all-time favorites), and a stir-fry with lotus roots, carrots, asparagus, and various types of mushrooms. 

Love the idea of cooking Chinese at least once a week.  I just need to come up with a creative name for this new weekly event!       

Gifts That Keep on Giving

Recent birthday gifts have inspired several culinary undertakings over the last few weeks. 

This growing kit produced enough mushrooms for my visiting mother to make a stir fry that also included dried bamboo shoots, wood ear mushrooms, carrots, and lotus root. 

My first shot at using my new mini-pie maker yielded four delicious gruyere and onion pies.  I mostly followed a recipe in “Mini Pies” by Abigail Johnson Dodge (included as part of the gift), but used fresh thyme from my container garden on the back deck. 

What’s great about both of these dishes is that I was able to use fresh ingredients straight from the garden (loosely defined)!  Inspired by Wendy at Greenish Thumb, see how she and others have been enjoying garden-to-table creations.       

Luck o' the Irish

Not to leave my daughter’s Irish heritage out of the mix (approximately 3/16, as estimated from my husband’s limited knowledge of his own ancestry), I recently made a “traditional” Irish meal for St. Patrick’s Day.  “Traditional” is in quotations because I basically took the Internet and the Joy of Cooking’s word for it.  On the menu: “Beef” and Guinness Stew, colcannon, Irish soda bread, and apple barley pudding.

Here’s the link to the stew recipe. 

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/soupssalads/r/GuinnessStew.htm

A few notes.  You’ll see from comments on the website that there is some controversy over whether Guinness is actually vegetarian.  I guess there’s fish intestine that is somehow used in the finishing process—only in some breweries but not others.  Well, this was news to me and, as a stout lover, this dubious information might not necessarily stop me from imbibing in the future.  In any case, I did use Murphy’s Irish Stout instead because it happened to be $.50 cheaper than Guinness at the store.  The recipe comments also note that the overall taste of the stew turns out quite bitter.  Even though I followed suggestions to reduce the stout and increase the vegetable stock to try to reduce the bitterness, I still found it rather bitter and wasn’t sure my three-year old (or invited guests) would like it.  I doctored it up by adding touches of brown sugar, honey, and even a trickle of molasses and I thought the overall product was quite yummy.  Perhaps not surprisingly, my husband, who had a stout to drink with his meal, didn’t think it tasted bitter at all.

The colcannon was delightful—drawn from the Joy of Cooking. 

The Joy of Cooking also supplied the recipe for Irish soda bread.  I had made Irish soda bread before using other recipes and it never has really wow-ed me.  There never seemed to be much flavor.  This time, however, I used the “tea bread” version in the cookbook, which basically adds a touch more sugar, buttermilk, and calls for it to be baked in a loaf pan rather than in the round.  I also added raisins and caraway seeds and, wow, was this tasty. 

The dessert, apple barley pudding, was borrowed from the Internet.  Reading the history of how a dessert like this came about was really interesting, and something that was fun to talk about during dinner. 

http://www.europeancuisines.com/Ireland-Desserts-Irish-Apple-Barley-Pudding

As my daughter gets older, I hope she’ll be proud and knowledgeable about both her Chinese side as well as her “butt” side (as she very jokingly called it after earlier hearing her father referring to himself and his heritage as a “mutt”). 

Gung Hay Fat Choi

Moving away from home, living in areas with less than 2% Asian representation, and starting my own family have all inspired me to carry on certain cultural traditions (or at least try to).  One of these traditions involves making dumplings to celebrate Chinese New Year.  Dumplings are believed to signify wealth and prosperity in that each morsel is made to resemble a pouch of money.  My sister has written about my father’s infamous dumplings, which he learned to make from his grandmother.  See how every “money bag” is perfectly shaped and practically identical?  

http://www.greenishthumb.net/2010/02/growing-buying-cooking-napa-cabbage.html

The dumplings that I make, while fairly decent tasting, are not nearly as good-looking or delicious as my father’s.  There is just something about his technique and his filling that is difficult to replicate.  In any case, I have observed his method over the years, asked for tutorials, and have come up with a process that allows us carry on the tradition as best we can. 

The dough is “simply” flour and cold water.  The quotation marks are used because I have made many a batch where the dumpling wrappers turn out tough and/or gummy.  Each time I make them, I pray that they’ll be at least edible.  Fortunately, the kitchen gods have been good to us for the last several years. 

The filling that I make changes each time based on what I have in the pantry.  I’ve found that the vegetarian ham that can be purchased in most Asian grocery stores (even the ones found in NC) does really well and, when whirled in the food processor, even slightly mimics the raw meat (whether it be fish, pork, or beef) texture of my father’s filling.  Sort of.  I’ve also put in Chinese chives, shitake and/or wood ear mushrooms, shredded scrambled eggs, edamame, lily flowers…the possible variations are endless.  I typically bind the ingredients together with some soy sauce and sesame oil. 

Hmm, as I’m finally getting around to writing this entry months after Chinese New Year, I’m feeling like I shouldn’t necessarily wait another year to make another batch!      

I Don't Hate Okra

Once in a while I crave bhindi masala and will forego my usual saag paneer or malai kofta at an Indian restaurant.  But, I have never bought nor cooked okra myself until this interesting and somewhat intimidating vegetable (in its potential slime factor) showed up in my CSA bag over the summer.  What to do?  Well, if developing a taste for sweet tea doesn’t make me that much closer to being a Southerner after living in NC for 6 years, then fryin’ up some okra should!  I found some inspiration from allrecipes.com and fried up a batch.  Y-U-M.  The cornmeal breading was perfectly seasoned with whatever I grabbed from the spice cabinet.  I think I ended up adding Lawry’s seasoning salt, garlic salt, and lemon pepper.  It smelled like popcorn while cooking and, in fact, I popped these puppies in my mouth like said popcorn!  As did my husband (who steers clear of bhindi when I get it) and daughter.  Just as good, if not better, than the fried okra I’ve ordered in those Southern restaurants where it’s often the only vegetarian item on the menu.