tea time

so i discovered ann arbor spice merchants today, which apparently just opened up the other week, and bought a few teas and tea blends to try. i spent a long time looking through all their varieties, but decided on a classic darjeeling, good for taking to class. then there was a berry black (a mix of dried raspberries, strawberries, hibiscus, rosehips, and darjeeling) which sounded interesting, but upon further inspection and steeping, was difficult to maneuver because the berries would so easily come to the top of the bag and be hard to work around and get an even distribution with the tea. but very fragrant and sweet. then a ginger-blended green-based tea which i have yet to explore. its called "ginger twist" with a mixture of ginger, orange and lemon slices, lemongrass, mint, papaya, apple, ginseng, and licorice. supposedly it "promotes focus" and is a powerful antioxidant. who knows.

but what i finally broke into is my dried chrysanthemums that i picked up at the asian market a few weeks ago. i spoke of "flowering" teas to tristan, which i've since discovered to be black tea leaves tied in intricate patterns so they "bloom" but are merely black tea leaves with some colorful petals in the middle to resemble flowers. chrysanthemums, however, are a staple of many chinese tea-houses (authentic dim-sum restaurants during mid-day always have this as an option, either alone or mixed with pu-erh). they're truly the "flowering" tea that i had in mind because they are purely the dried flowers of chrysanthemums. they are not very pleasant looking when dried (or pleasant smelling for that matter), but when steeped, truly bloom (seeing a handful of bright white flowers with vibrant yellow centers floating aimlessly, mingling in your cup/pot) and become deliciously aromatic. perhaps its an acquired taste since i've grown up with it, but it's really pretty.

cornmeal-sprinkled dijon chicken 10/23/07

cornmeal-sprinkled dijon chicken
i had some chicken that i needed to make before it went bad, but i wasn't sure, so i made this concoction based partially on what i had, what i knew, and the ability to not get out the chopping board

• 4 chicken pieces (thighs, breasts, or whatever, I prefer dark meat)
• touches of olive oil
• tad bit of dijon mustard
• coarse cornmeal (roughtly 2x more cornmeal than combination of other ingredients)
• dried poultry spices (sage, thyme, rosemary)
• coarse sea salt
• lots of ground black pepper
• little bit of dried parsley
• cayenne pepper to your liking

place chicken in a roasting pan. preheat oven to 375. (i'm all about letting meat warm up a bit before cooking it) coat lightly (!) with olive oil depending on fattiness of pieces. salt each side lightly, pepper generously. spread on top (skin side up if using skin) with a knife a thin layer of dijon mustard. in a separate small bowl, mix cornmeal with dried spices, salt, pepper, maybe cayenne, and parsley. mix well, and sprinkle lightly over dijon-ed sides of chicken. not so much that it forms an entire crust, but enough to be able to taste the flavors and the crunchiness of the cornmeal afterwards. bake for 40-50 minutes, or until juices run clear when poking through thickest part of chicken piece.

dinner with tristan 10/19/07

what better way to revive this blog than with recipes from a dinner tristan and i just made together. well. i made all of this one. but you get the idea.

we started off, with what other than cheese. the cheese was very distinctive. a bright orange french pave de (something?) which was described to us as almost a french cheddar, slightly salty. the other cheese had a hazelnut flavor, slightly peppery, and a lingering bitterness when eaten alone. but when paired with a cracker, was very smooth, but again, french.

unnamed steak.
i found a random large cut of beef in the market that looked very tendonous (i love tendons in meat that just melt in your mouth) and very fresh, came up with a simple marinade for a sweet, flavorful finish to a simple sear. not very expensive either.

• 1-1.5 lb steak-like cut of beef, very tendony, about an inch thick - enough for 2-3 people
• half a head of garlic, smashed and minced
• 4-5 shallots, peeled, smashshed, minced
• generous sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• .5-1 c. cabernet sauvignon (mondavi's woodbridge in this case, quality is not of the essence)

place meat in shallow baking dish (about the size of the steak), and rub dry ingredients lightly over meat, pour in red wine turn a few times to mix everything well, and cover with plastic and marinate overnight in fridge

in a large nonstick pan, heat pan on high, add a few tablespoons olive oil (and butter if desired, but not only butter) and with tongs, place steak in to sear, about 4-5 minutes on each side (or until medium-rare). cover meat with a slightly smaller pan lid while searing to let steam/smoke escape but to prevent splattering if desired. when finished. let rest, or to keep warm, wrap in foil before serving/slicing.

sauteed balsamic green bell peppers.
just taking advantage of pan drippings to flavor some relatively bland green bells into something a little more tasty. fresh sauteed green vegetables (asparagus, green beans, snap pease etc) and balsamic vinegar are always a good way to go.

• 1-2 green bell peppers, seeded, sliced into strips
• pat of butter, some more wine
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar (or more if you'd like)

with the same pan above, add in leftover marinade (including garlic and shallots), and a little extra wine and a tablespoon of butter, let reduce, or not. allow pan to get hot. add cleaned and sliced bell pepper strips to saute for a few seconds, add balsamic vinegar. cover for a minute, stir, cover, stir, up until bell peppers are cooked through while still green. once cooked, immediately remove from heat and serve.

risotto-style orzo with sauteed mushrooms, orange bells.
i do this recipe pretty often, with many variations. i love the idea of risotto-style orzo because it is so quick, so manageable and comes out pretty creamy and flavorful just because if its own natural pasta starches.

• 1/2 head of garlic, smashed and minced
• 1 medium red onion, small-diced
• 1 lb white mushrooms, sliced
• 1-2 orange bell peppers, seeded, large diced
• fresh oregano
• dried oregano, rosemary, thyme, basil (to your liking)
• olive oil/butter
• 1 cup dry orzo
• 1-1.5 c. chicken stock
• generous sea salt/freshly cracked black pepper
• fresh shaved parmesean cheese (doesn't need to be fresh, its all i had on hand)

using a wide, shallow pot (5-6 qts), or a deep , walled, frypan with a lid, add olive oil (and butter if desired) on med-high heat. add garlic and onions, and saute until onions are slightly translucent and fragrant. add mushrooms and saute until mushrooms are soft. add bell peppers, along with the fresh oregano, and generous dried italian herbs to your liking. saute a minute or two more until everything is cooked through. add a pat of butter, and once throughly melted in center of pot, spread vegetables to the side of the pot, and add dried orzo to the melted butter in the middle of pot to saute. stir and scrape (a little sticking is okay) until some more liquid is evaporated up to a minute. add enough chicken stock to slightly more than submerge the orzo and ingredients. stir and scrape off anything that is sticking with a spatula, and wait to boil. once boiling, cover with lid, place on low heat (just so it barely boils) and let cook for 12 minutes. at 12 minutes, check, done-ness of the pasta, if a little dry, add more chicken stock, or add more just because. add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. salt brings out the flavors of this dish. and, still on low heat, continue stirring until any excess fluid is absorbed. (about another minute or two with the lid off. once orzo looks dry and creamy, add parmesean to your liking, and stir in while removing from heat, until parmesean is well incorporated.

this all was paired with Riparosso Montepuliciano d'Abruzzo, Vintage 2005. supposedly a dry wed wine that pairs well with meat and the strong cheeses we picked out, we found this italian wine to be very acidic, and not that great. oops.

dinner was finished off with chewy ginger snaps (recipe to come later, when i manage to make a second batch) and an australian muscat from R.L. Buller & Son. very sweety and syrupy, a good close to a nice diner.

Red Bean Paradise

So if you've ever been through an asian grocery store, or an authentic Chinese place, area, people, whatever.. You might've heard of this infamous "red bean" stuff that we people use as dessert. Beans? For dessert?

Well to first start off, it shouldn't be THAATT weird of a concept. Beans are treated like a basic starch oftentimes. Their texture, mushiness (yuck) etc. And besides, JELLY BEANS? HEHEELLOOOOOO! Haha. And vanilla "bean"? So the concept of sweet/dessert with the word bean isn't completely unfounded and exists in even Western food culture. But back to my concept of a starch, many types of starches can be both savory and sweet. Rice pudding is a prime example.. since the basic flavor of rice is pretty simple and modifiable, adding some shuga n' spice is all that you need to kick it up to being a dessert. Same things with beans.

I grew up with red bean soup, Cantonese style, all my life. Its one of the standard desserts that they give out after Cantonese banquets, or something to have on the chill at home for whenever, or to mix into ice cream or milk to make a red bean ice drink. ANything to sweeten it up will do well. J even suggested putting it on greek yogurt.

But until recently, I only knew of it as some bean.. just as red bean. But apparently it has a real name: azuki beans! They're tiny and much smaller than typical beans (more on this later and its implications on the flavors), and are dark red like so:


So to make red bean soup, one washes the beans first, they're relatively clean to begin with, but just for good measure. Then let them soak in water for however long you like. The longer the better, just makes cooking time that much shorter (or maybe that's just a myth). Then into a big pot, with lots of water, and boil. Sooooo simple. BUT from how I learned, not through the hard way, but just being taught, you boil for several hours, more like simmer, until they reach the desired softness.. I like them as mushy as.. well.. cooked beans, but my mother likes a little chew, so you can actually feel like you're eating the bean. At that point, you add sugar to taste. I went through almost half a pound of sugar on my last batch, but it was big.

Another thing you might want to add is some sort of citrus peel. My mom adds orange peels, a little bit, supposedly to offset the unfortunate side effect of beans (you know.. GAS). Perhaps there's an interaction between the citric acid, or some other chemicals in the skin. I like zesting a lemon, finely mincing the zest, and tossing it in with the beans once they're a little more concentrated. It ends up being fairly sweet (to your taste of course) and interestingly, to me it doesn't taste like beans. My THEORY on this is the fact that these beans are so small, so their surface to volume ratio is much greater than normal beans. As a result, its the inner starchiness that gives the bean flavor, and because these have less, less bean flavor! Voila!

Yoochoy, choy sum.. hiza-wha?!?!?

Mothers always tell you to eat your vegetables in American culture right? Well, my mom always told me to eat my choy. Choy, in Cantonese (maybe other dialects as well), refers to most types of leafy greens that the we, Cantonese people, often steam. Well, its not so much steaming, but quickly boiling.. like parboiling without the cooking afterwards part. The use of really hot boiling water, and throwing washed and picked greens, like the above choy sum (literally, heart of the greens), until they're just cooked through yet still very tender and crisp, and quickly taking them out again. A light coating of "cooked oil" (my mother always made a huge pot of boiling oil, would fry up a bit of potatoes or garlic into it just for flavor, and then reserve the oil in a bottle specifically for use in this purpose), and soy sauce would complete the dish. It leads to a very pure taste in the greens, not at all overcooked, and leaves a lot of texture to be savoured. Unlike many Western cooked greans, they're not a mashed up pile of.. who knows what. No cheese, no excessive use of cream. Pure, simple, healthy. Its the Cantonese counterpart to a crisp salad, nutrition wise, and is often the primary side-dish to most meals.

I was surprised to find this at Korean grocery store.. not so much cause it would be an unlikely candidate of their produce department, but simply that I hadn't seen much of this at all since not living near Chinatown. On my receipt from HanAhReum, this was named yoochoy as well. Never seen it like that before, but perhaps... I looked it up on wikipedia, and apparently its sometimes referred to as yu choy sum, as a whole. Interesting...

Well, this was a half of my lunch.. I made more onigiri today as the starch component of my meal. This time instead of splitting the rice into 3 obscenely large triangles, I went with 4 and decorated each differently. No need for pictures, they were gone immediately :)

My First Onigiri

I MADE MY FIRST ONIGIRI! This was my lunch today :P So with the Kokuho Rose medium grain white rice, I cooked it in my little rice cooker, mixed a bit of sushi rice vinegar, and folded it all in well. Then when it was cool, I wet my hands and formed these little triangles, and the whole time I couldn't help but exclaim to myself how cute they were :P THen I wrapped two of them in laver and well.. yum. I didn't feel like starting a new sheet of laver so I just sprinkled some nori fumi furikake on it.

Oh yeah, and I re-cooked some of my leftover beef stew to go along with it. I must say.. there wasn't much beef in it but that didn't really matter.

HANAHREUM!!!!

I went to HanAhReum in Catonsville with J today. H-Mart (what they call it now apparently) is this big chain of big asian (more like Korean) supermarkets along the East Coast. They had so much good produce and I bought some choy sum and snow peas and super cheap chinese garlic. Dried udon noodles, chacharoni ramen, kokuho sushi rice, and rice vinegar for sushi. What's funny is that they call nori "laver".. I've never heard of it referred to as that before, but I got some of that too. Perhaps it's a Korean thing. Anyway, in addition to tofu, red bean daifuku, and pickled radishes.. I found these little fish wiener/sausages in the refridgerated section, and I was so intrigued by them that I bought them. I'll update when I finally decide to make them.... OH YEAH! and the most exciting part was that I found super cheap, frozen masago!!!!! Wow.. I really am on my way to bento boxing. Man, I should've brought my camera... but unfortch they didn't have any bento supplies there at H-Mart.

Then afterwards, the double T diner right across the intersection. I think the waiter was offended by the fact that we asked him if this was a Greek diner, and then consequently deciding out loud that the chicken souvlaki would be good there. Well, that's surely what I got and it was amazing. What disappointed me, however, was that in my mini-greek salad, there was definitely way more uncrumbled feta than there were vegetables. Naturally, I only ate about 3 of the blocks of feta and the rest of the veggies. But the souvlaki was really good. I really really wish I'd brought my camera.

Octodogs!

Mmm.. yeah... so I've had a recent intrigue into the world of bento boxes, and apparently in the art of bento, cutting little hot doggies into cool shapes like squids and prawns and stuff, is pretty popular. But I ran across this American website that has this tool, called the OCTODOG maker, and it essentially turns it into this awesome thing...

Only the funniest part, was the instructions! Need I really say more?

But it's pretty awesome, go check it out!

http://www.octodog.net

My grandmother, and the pescado en salsa. Amazing...

This is real Chinese Food...

Mmmm.. real taquitos in Mountain View, right before Kelly Clarkson. The way real Mexican fare should be served: cheap, fast, intensely savory, and unfortunately slopped onto a plate.

Fresh fruit from the Cross St. Market.

jealous? they were so good, and so were the cheese fries! lovely way to end a horrible race in philly.

guac and red corn tortilla chips, yum

Success!

It was great! We however, made a small modification to the menu. Added bruschetta appetizers with grilled italian bread, mozarella, basil, and a cherry tomato topping. Rachel made a dried fruit couscous that went well with everything. Emily brought an awesome avocado, mango, black bean salad. For dessert, we had fruit skewers, grilled, and topped with cream. And grilled, halved bananas. And Rachel's blueberry-peach cobbler as well.

Things to remember for next time, bring more charcoal if you plan on grilling for 5 hours straight, and the corn takes freakin' forever! Otherwise, it was one of the easiest things ever, just a lot of prep work that was totally worth it in the end. Rachel and Jeremiah were there with me from the way beginning, and so were Emily and Pete. Helena and her friend Ellen stopped by for a good while, Nana came by with some quick entertainment from Morty, and finally Becca showed up with the hebrew nationals :)

Then, went to the harbor to see fireworks... who knew that the barge closer to the inner harbor would only have fireworks every 5 minutes?

Pre-View July 4th Picnic

So Rachel and I have been planning this for a while.

Recently got a mini grill so we could have a picnic for July 4th wherever we wanted, and the proper heating source as well.


Our plan: to find a nice place outside in the shade and have a great picnic, but as things often do in the culinary adventures of Hopkins Crew, things go from fun and simple to fun and extravagant


the current menu, estimated for roughly 8 and several hours of cooking fun:

grilled corn with lime butter. butter mixed with lime juice and fresh zest, spread over corn, which is then rehusked and grilled on hot coals to allow the butter to absorb while the corn maintains its moisture.

simple vegetable skewers. cubed zucchini, whole white button mushrooms, red onion chunks, bell pepper pieces. olive oil, coarse sea salt, freshly cracked pepper. fired up on the grill on bamboo skewers.

grilled herb shrimp, ina garten style. peeled jumbo shrimp garnished with fresh parsley, basil, garlic, and shallots, in a lemon-mustard marinade. skewered and quickly grilled after marinating overnight.

for dessert... possibly grilled fruit (yeah, going with the grilled theme here, nice and slow, we have all day) fresh strawberries, peach halves, large, sweet summer fruits, carmelized under flame.

and sandra lee style cocktail time. if I can find good peaches or nectarines.. making a white sangria to put on ice.. yum. peach nectar, lots of fresh fruit, a bottle of white wine, Cointreau, and bubbly club soda, on ice, garnished with more fruit.


comments: still deciding whether or not having shrimp as the only protein will be enough. granted its mostly coxswains and their friends, the meat fiends won't necessarily be an issue, but perhaps some chicken skewers in a similar citrus marinade will help placate any that might show up.

mr. del monte

sometimes... dinner just isn't that complicated...