The Saucy Choppers

Myulchi Bokkeum - Korean anchovies

2013-04-18T07:29:00.001-07:00

This is my all time favorite banchan dish at a Korean restaurant! ALL TIME FAVORITE! Why? Because it's just like the Vietnamese dish called cá cơm kho. It might look gross with all the tiny fish eyes staring up at you, but it's so delicious with its savory sweet and chewy taste. Let's get over eating fish eyeballs and proceed with the recipe, yes?

I decided that I want to make a huge batch with two 4-oz packages of dried anchovies. These can be bought at any typical Asian grocery store. They come in different sizes. I like to get the really tiny anchovies but sometimes, they don't have that so I settle for the medium size (what is shown).

Before I forget, I got the recipe from Korean Bapsang and The Squishy Monster.

The first time I ever made this, it turned out very very bitter and it was annoying. You know why? It was because I didn't know any better and left the fish innards and biles in. According to the adorable The Squishy Monster, you were supposed to pull them out prior to cooking. Sounds cool!

Anyway, I tried to do that and I got through about 4 and gave up because there was no way I'd go through all 237 of them! Well, shit, I don't want to eat bitter myulchi bokkeum again! This was when I decided that laziness is the mother of all efficiencies. I boiled them all!!! I boiled them for about 10 minutes on a rolling boil. It got pretty gross since all of the sea gunks were floating to the surface. *Warning* It will also make your kitchen, and in my case, my whole apartment, smell like the stinky fishy sea! Do not do this prior to inviting someone you want to impress over.

Boiled and drained! I let it dry overnight but I think a couple of hours should be good enough. You just don't want it soaking wet like the ocean.

Now for the sauce!

- 3 Tbs red pepper paste
- 3 Tbs mirin
- 2 Tbs fish sauce
- 4 Tbs soy sauce
- 3 Tbs honey
- 1 Tbs sugar
- 1 Tbs garlic/ginger paste. If you do not have this, chop up a couple of garlic cloves and call it a day
- 3 Tbs water

Mix it all up, soldier!

Get a large pan and throw in some oil. Heat it up!

Bring the anchovies into the pan, cook and stir until they're nice and golden. Then you take them out.

Don't wash the pan! Throw in the delicious sauce that you made and cook until it gets all bubbly and boiling gently.

Now, introduce the fish back in with the sauce. Stir well and make sure every single fish is coated. No fish left uncoated!

Keep stirring and cooking on medium heat until you can see the caramelizations; i.e. it gets thick and sticky.

That's it. Remove from heat and eat. You add in sesame seeds if you'd like. I prefer no sesame because the seeds always get stuck in my teeth.

Back in the motherland, we Vietnamese eat this with cucumber and rice as a meal. Here in the new country, I just eat it by itself as a cold salty protein snack. And then I drink a lot of water.

Asian foods make you thirsty not because of the MSG but because of the insane amount of sodium.

Shrimp and Quinoa Salad

2013-04-06T17:26:00.001-07:00

I used to be a fool and pronounced quinoa as kwi-no-ah because I didn't know that ki-nwa was the correct way. Anyway, I walked around like an idiot saying KWI-NO-AH for the longest time and no one corrected me until someone laughed at me. I'm glad those days belong to the past now.

Hopefully, I helped someone step into the light on the pronunciation of this seed with this post. Let's move on to the actual food part.

Oh, wait, there's one more "lesson." I used to not know that I'm supposed to wash/rinse the quinoa like crazy before cooking them. Waaaah? Right? I just poured water into the pot with the dry quinoa and cooked it. Result? The shit tasted so bitter (due to saponin) and I wondered why people love it.

I learned my lesson. I now soak (20 minutes) and wash (3 times) my quinoa prior to cooking it every time!

While the quinoa was soaking, I diced up about 3" of a large cucumber (or 1 small cucumber if you'd like). I also diced up 1/4 of a small red onion but forgot to take a photo.

This mixture was concocted using 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (or just plain white vinegar), 1/2 cup of water, 2 tablespoons of sugar. I suggest you stir in the sugar a bit a time to stop and taste to your desire.

I let the cucumber and onion soaked in the vinegar/water mixture for at least 20 minutes. I like to do this mostly to the onions to remove that sharp taste in raw onions.

While the cucumber and onion were soaking, I cooked 1/2 cup of quinoa (soaked and washed) cooked with 1 cup of chicken broth in the rice cooker.

At the same time, I boiled about 20 shrimps, drained, and let them cool. The onion and cucumber should be done soaking by now, they should also be drained.

When all were cooked, drained, and cooled, they joined forces in a large bowl! Party! Cracked in some black peppers and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Before I forget, juice of 1/4 of a lime to add a bit of excitement. Then toss like there's no tomorrow!

You thought I was done? Nooooooo! I got an egg, beat it a bit with some salt.

Fried up a thin thin slab of egg. Yummmm.

Shrimp quinoa salad on top of a fried egg = delectable!

Note: I was told that red quinoa has a different texture than the normal yellow quinoa. I couldn't tell the difference so I think I'll stay with the normal yellow ones for now because they're way cheaper than the red ones. Can someone tell me the differences in tastes and textures of those two?

Pulled Pork Al Pastor Style

2013-03-21T21:06:00.001-07:00

Heyo! I did not die or somehow got eliminated from the face of the earth! I was just having way too much fun to cook anything decent. That, and I also made a bunch of culinary flops not worth sharing. But now I'm back and hopefully to stay. Let's see if I can get my creative juices flowing and cooking again.

A quick back story of why this is "Pulled Pork Al Pastor Style" and not just "Pulled Pork" or "Al Pastor Taco": the boyfriend really likes al pastor tacos but we're trying to eat less carbs because we are getting fat. So I can't make al pastor tacos, I decided to make the al pastor meat anyway but instead of chopping it up in cubes and fry them, I'd just make it pulled pork. I'm a genius, I know.

I used Marc Matsumoto's al pastor recipe for this.

I didn't have achiote paste so I did what my mom would do, I cooked about 1 teaspoon of achiote seeds in 1 tablespoon of olive oil. I wasn't being very careful with the heat so the achiote seeds popped and flew everywhere! Anyway, when it was done boiling, I fished out the seeds and threw them away while keeping the achiote flavored oil.

I got 2 anchos and 2 guajillo chilies into hot water to remove the seeds and stems. They smelled delicious.

1/4 of an onion just sliced roughly and 8 cloves of garlic because I'm crazy about garlic. I didn't bother to chop up the garlics because they were going to get mashed in the blender anyway.

Blender party right here!
Cast of Characters:
- Achiote flavored oil
- 2 anchos chilies
- 2 guajillo chilies
- 1/4 onion
- 8 cloves of garlic
- 3 slices of canned pineapple - 2 chipotle chilies with 2 tablespoons of the adobo sauce in the same can
- 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- 1 teaspoon oregano

Everything got blended into thick paste. The original recipe used fresh pineapples so he did some cooking after this. However, I was using canned pineapple so I didn't cook the paste.

I got 2 pounds of pork shoulder sliced into 1" pieces and 2 pieces of small chicken thighs.

I threw the meat and the marinade into a large gallon sized bag, removed all the air, and massaged the meat a bit to make sure that all meat surfaces have a chance to meet the marinade. Then I left the whole bag in the fridge for 24 hours.

After 24 hours of swimming in the delicious marinade, I cooked them per Marc's instructions: 450F for 30 minutes and then 300F for 3 hours in a dutch oven. Then I asked the boyfriend to shred them for me.

We ate the pork with some guacamole and had a ton of leftovers for lunch the next day. I just ate the leftover pork with sliced avocado, cilantro, and lime to make it pretty.

Stuffed Eggplant

2012-07-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

I saw this Stuffed Miso Eggplant recipe over at Steamy Kitchen and decided that it was easy enough for me to make. In fact, it was so easy that I made it twice now.

Since there is only one of me to feed, I only used 1 eggplant. Chinese eggplant. The steps are pretty simple:

0. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
1. Slice eggplant lengthwise.
2. Use a spoon to scoop out eggplant innards.
3. Save eggplant innards.

To make the eggplant innards less lonely and more colorful, I diced 1/4 of a medium onion and 1/2 of a red bell pepper.

For 1 eggplant, I used about 1/3 lb of ground pork. The seasoning? Just 1 teaspoon of fish sauce and a bunch of ground black pepper.

I like garlic, so I heated 1 tablespoon of vegetables with 2 cloves of sliced garlic. Yummmm.

Those colorful vegetables got saute in the pan along with the garlic and 2 tablespoons of miso paste. The original recipe said to use Easy Miso or miso with mirin. I had neither, so just plain Jane miso for me.

Until the onions started to get translucent, I threw in the ground pork and stirred it around for 2 minutes. I didn't want the pork to be cooked through since it'll have to go into the oven later.

Then I stuffed the pork and vegetable mixture into the hollowed out eggplant halves. Those went into the oven for 20 minutes.

To make it pretty at the end, I sprinkled on some thinly sliced green onions instead of basil.

All in all, this dish was really good and this should mean a lot because I don't even like eggplants!

English Muffins (and Crab Benedict)

2012-05-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

My favorite brunch place in the city is a little place called Town's End Restaurant, which we've nicknamed "the muffin place" because of their complementary muffins and scones. It's my favorite restaurant for three reasons: 1) delicious complementary baked goodies 2) it's a nice walking distance from my place and 3) their crab benedict. Trust me, whenever there is a crab benedict on a brunch menu, I've ordered it, and from all the places I've been, this restaurant has the best. I think a main reason for this is that they bake their own english muffins (they bake all their baked goods there). So I decided to make a little challenge for myself and make a crab benedict with everything from scratch.

So in my absentmindedness, I added sugar into the photo. I forgot that we weren't going to do that whole yeast thing. I also forgot the cornmeal. Oops, my b, dawg, my b.

Ingredients (for muffins only):
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp instant yeast
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour
2 tsp wheat germ
1/2 tbsp butter, melted
cornmeal

Condensed Version:
1. Mix everything in a bowl.
2. Knead dough for 10 minutes.
3. Cover and let rise for an hour.
4. Divide dough into 4 equal sized balls. Oil the balls of dough, separate with 1" of space, cover, and let rise another hour.
5. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
6. On a pre-heated griddle, sprinkle corn meal and griddle the muffins for 3 minutes each side.
7. Place the muffins on a baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes.
8. Cool on cooling rack.

Long Version:

So this recipe only makes four muffins. Why? Because who really needs 16 english muffins all in one morning, amiright? I secretly wish that I had friends so I could one day make 16 english muffins, but I haven't showered in three days, but it's okay because I haven't seen anyone except for my cats. I heard rumors that good hygiene is key to making friends. I guess I'm screwed.

I like to mix all the dry ingredients first to make sure everything is well combined. Make sure your yeast is active (not expired) since we're not going to pre-froth it. I'm pretty sure that's the wrong terminology. Try reserving a tablespoon or two of milk. Depending on the humidity and altitude, you might need more/less liquid. If it's too dry you can add in the remaining milk.

Dust your griddle (in my case, a non-stick pan) with corn meal. I just turned the heat on medium low and placed my muffins in there. You want it on a pretty low heat so you don't burn your muffins.

Once your muffins are nice and brown on the bottom, flip them over and do the same thing to the other side.

Once you've finished browning both sides, put them in the preheated (350 degree) oven for 8 minutes. The photo here shows them when I pulled them out. Place them on a cooling rack.

Here's a close up of how the muffin looks like on the inside. Sorry for the bad lighting. My kitchen has no natural light. It's all nooky and cranny, yeah? Yeeeeeeeeah.

To assemble a crab benedict:
1. Have a toasty english muffin.
2. Make a hollandaise sauce. Don't be intimidated! It not that hard and it's pretty fast. This recipe on Julia Child's hollandaise sauce has pretty thorough instructions & tips. I cut the recipe by to 1/3 for my one muffin.
3. Obtain crab! I went to Safeway and got 8 oz of lump crab meat from the seafood department. It was $13/lb (or $7/lb with a club card). 8 ozs will make two muffins (or four halves)!
4. Poach two eggs per muffin.
5. Assemble. Muffin > crab meat > poached egg > hollandaise sauce ---> Your mouth.

This was pretty good, man. I am a glutton and I ate 3 muffins along with some other pretty bad things today. I should never be left alone. ... Be my friend?!!?!

Moroccan Lamb Shank and Chickpeas

2012-05-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Sit down, make yourself comfortable, I have a story to tell. I found this recipe sitting in my inbox (from me, no less) with the label "Recipes" attached to it. That was great and all, except I didn't recollect reading this recipe or emailing it to myself. It's from Blue-Kitchen which is a new food blog to me. It's a very good one, by the way. Somehow, I led myself to discover this wonderful dish without knowing it. Thank you, past me, you were great!

I had a bag of dried chickpeas from the Dixon fruit stand on the side of I-80. I remember deciding to stop by the fruit stand one weekend while I was driving toward Sacramento. Reason? None! Not only that, I was in my pajamas from the night before. Yes, I like to drive long distance in my pajamas. So, I stealthily stripped off my pajamas in the parking lot and pulled on some jeans and a hoodie from the laundry basket in the back seat before heading to the fruit stand. Somewhere in the sky, a dramatic baritone voice said "She's the epitome of class. Yes, she is."

And that was the story of how I started to make this dish, a recipe from a sleep-walking recipe search (or something along that line) and the chickpeas from a randomly classy act on the I-80.

Wait, I have another super short story. I only had lamb shanks because I planned to make palak gosht but that didn't happened. A quick scan down to the bottom of the Moroccan lamb chops recipe, I saw leg of lamb with Moroccan spice rub recipe. Close enough! I screamed and used that one instead.

I know the spice list looks a bit intimidating, but here is what I used in picture form. I didn't have saffron (fuck that, I'm not fancy!), five-spice powder, and parsley. By shear laziness and cheapness, I decided to omit parsley and saffron. If you look closely, you can tell that I'm right-handed. Notice how all of the powder are spilled toward the left? You're welcome for this free detective lesson! Or, I could be left handed and decided to flip the photo upside down to trick you (look at the turmeric, it's an anomaly)! Oh ho ho ho.

But, what did you do about the five-spice powder? You ask. If you search for what made up five-spice powder, you will find that it is star anise, cloves, cinnamon (checked!), Sichuan pepper (ground pepper will do), and ground fennel seeds. At the lower right corner of the photo, you will see that I had cloves, star anise, and fennel seeds. The set was complete!

The whole spice thing got roasted on medium heat without oil for about 5 minutes. Helen was nice enough to let me borrow her brand new stone mortar and pestle! It was so pretty and new. I ruined it by smashing all sort staining spices (ahem *cough* turmeric *cough*) in it.

As you can see, I ground up those spice pretty well with about 4 large garlic cloves. The key here is to save about 1 tablespoon of this spice mixture for the chickpeas. When I was cooking, I completely forgot about it and used up all of the spices so I had to remake the spice mixture.

I prepared two lamb shanks with bones total about 2.5 lbs with a large gallon Ziplock bag. Before making a mess, I seasoned both sides of the shanks with some sea salt (about 1/2 teaspoons). After that, it was a party in the Ziplock bag with the shanks, the spice rub, and juice from 1/2 of a lemon! And by party I mean: dump everything into the bag, squeeze out as much air as possible, zip up bag, and massage away.

Leave that whole thing to chill in the fridge over night. It'll thank you.

If you are using dried chickpeas and not a 15 oz. cooked can, do this: soak 3/4 cup of dried chickpeas in water overnight.

If you are using a 15 oz can of cooked chickpeas, skip steps 1 and 2.

1. Rinse and drain soaked chickpeas.
2. Cook chickpeas until tender. It took me a good 45 minutes. Rinse and drain.
3. In a large pot, add 1 teaspoon of olive oil and 1/2 large onion, chopped. Stir around and let it cook until the onion is all translucent.
4. Add 1 tablespoon of ground up spices and stir until everything is well mixed.
5. Add 1 can of stewed tomatoes (14.5 oz) and 1/2 cup of vegetable broth.
6. Add the chickpeas, stir, and cook for 20 minutes on medium low heat.

While the peas are cooking, you should preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. La di da. If you have a rack with a roasting pan, you are totally awesome! If you are like me and don't have one, steal a rack (oven safe) from the toaster oven and place that over a dutch oven*.

The recipe said to roast the lamb for 15 - 20 minutes for every pound. I roasted mine for a total of 30 minutes because I didn't have one single leg of lamb, but two separate lamb shanks. I flipped them over half way through.

I had an accident involving fire with this lamb, so be careful. It was a happy accident, though. For the last 3 minutes, I decided to switch my oven to broil trying to char the outer skin. What I didn't think about was that my lamb shanks were sitting very close to the broil wires (because I was ghetto and hoisted the whole rack on top of a dutch oven). The result was that the shanks caught on fire! Don't worry, I was a pro and beat the hell out of the fire. That got me my desired result of a charred skin.*

Charred!

I served the lamb with chickpeas topped with some cilantro for garnish. The boyfriend brought over some duck fried rice and we ate the lamb with that, too.

The duck fried rice was delicious but that was way beyond my skills.

I hope you will enjoy making this delicious meal and don't get too annoyed with my walls of text.

*Note: Maybe you shouldn't be so dangerous like me with the dutch oven and broiling stunt. Be smart, don't be like me!

Winner Winner Cookie Dinner

2012-05-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

The winning day is here! I entered your comments in a random generator and it came out with...
...
...
drum roll, please...
Winners:

1. Adorably Dead
2. Helen Lam
3. Carrie

Since I know where Helen and Carrie live, I'll go have an awkward conversation with them. Adorably Dead, please email me at altoidsnation[at]gmail[dot]com so I can get your address.

However, since the entry pool was so small, I decided to just get cookies to everyone! Yay! But, you other guys won't be getting 12 cookies, though. Maybe a few to munch on.

Hoorah!

Epic Pizza

2012-05-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have a confession. It's a serious one. I cannot make anything bread related. That includes: bread, sweet bread, pizza dough, buns, etc. To make pizza, I have to rely on Trader Joe's ready made dough. For this exercise, I did not make my own dough. But if your name is not LeTran and your online persona does not have the name The Chopping Block, you should check out Helen's pizza dough recipe because Helen is awesome since she can make bread and stuff.

So my boyfriend and I decided to make an epic pizza. He called it a shit show pizza but epic sounds way better.

We got 2 bags of fresh herb pizza dough from Trader Joe's and used 1.5 bags. Why 1.5? I don't know. One was too little and two was too much carbs so we Goldilocked that stuff. We even rolled it out to fit into my pizza "pan." Actually, I rolled it out, ripped it a bit and tried to patch it up...but you can't see anything! No no, that lump that you see there is nothing, it was just the weird light I have in my kitchen...yeah...

After the dough, we smeared it with some Jack Daniel BBQ sauce, layered it on with a ton of cheese and about 4 oz. of baby spinach. In retrospect, we should have added double the amount of spinach because they shriveled up and became nothingness with just 4 oz.

1/2 of a medium red (purple?) onion in chopped form landed on top of the bed of spinach.

It was my turn to distribute the jar of marinated artichoke hearts. Yes, I'm a little neat freak and had to line up my heart quarters.

This was when all of the important VIP arrived. We semi-cooked 4 slices of bacon and 2 spicy Italian sausages. The other VIP guests were Trader Joe's salami and about 15 shrimps.

It wasn't done! Noooooo, on top of the meat madness, we added more cheese and BBQ sauce. Cheesus!

The whole pie went into the preheated oven at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. We took it out and sprinkled on 1 stalk of chopped green onions and 2 sprigs of shredded sweet basil as garnishes. The pie went back into the oven for another 5 minutes.

Then we feasted.

...and nomed...

...like no tomorrow.

I don't have really a "recipe" for this because it was just an everything-but-the-sink pizza. The point of this post, I hope, is to inspire someone to go crazy with the cooking and have fun. Cooking is really fun when you say "To hell with the rules!" and just make up your own stuff. Sometimes, you end up with something horrific that goes directly into the trash, but you'll gain one more don't-do-this experience and a good story to tell. There is no shame in creating a monster in the kitchen. So, please, join me in making more "shit show" pizzas and other dishes!

*Random note: I cheated and did absolutely no prep work (chopping, slicing, cooking, etc.) except for rolling out the dough.

Celebrations!

2012-05-10T09:46:00.001-07:00

Photo stolen from my sister.

Folks! I have a few reasons for celebrating:

1. I'm done with finals! And guess what? I'm not taking summer school!
2. Summer is here! The temperature in San Francisco is above 68 degrees.
3. My allergies aren't bad at all this year.
4. I feel great!

What to do with all this free time and good weather? I actually have a long long long list of all the things I want to do. So what do I want to do first? I'll tell you via a proposal.

Proposal:
I avoided a lot of friends and people during the time that I was taking classes. Now that classes are done, I'm crawling out into the sunlight with my great white pasty skin, saying "Friends? Where have you all gone?" In an effort to look for old friends and new ones, I want to bake cookies.

If anyone who reads this blog would post a comment on some of your plans for this summer, I'll use a random generator to pick 3 people. Then I'll bake each of the "chosen ones" a dozen of chocolate chip cookies and mail them to the "chosen ones." Just to be clear, that will be a total of 36 cookies (12 x 3), not a total of 12 cookies (4 x 3).

So, what are your summer plans? Be it something huge like "I'm going to buy an island and make myself king" or something tiny like "I'll learn to bake bread," just tell me!

The TL;DR version:

1. Comment about your summer plan
2. 3 comment monkeys will get chosen randomly
3. Each chosen comment monkey gets 12 chocolate chip cookies
4. END DATE for commenting: TUESDAY, 5/15/12 AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT!!!

Hack 1: Be the only one commenting, that way you'll get all 36 cookies.
Hack 2: Live in the Bay Area. I'll deliver it to you in person and we can have an awkward conversation.

I repeat myself a lot.

Velvet Pork Stir Fry

2012-05-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend asked me if know how to velvet meat. The answer to that question was "No, who do you think I am? Some kind of fancy pants chef?" Nevertheless, it isn't a bad idea to learn to velvet meat, so I looked it up. I got this recipe from Serious Eats.

It actually wasn't hard at all to do. I got a 1/2 lb block of semi-frozen pork loin. This made it really easy for me to cut the pork into match sticks.

To make the meat "velvety," I added 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp rice vinegar, 1/2 tsp soy sauce, 1 1/2 tsp corn starch.

I also added 1 egg white to the pork. I just used my hands to mix everything around, covered it and left in the fridge for 30 minutes.

It was a good time to chop up a crown of broccoli and one medium red bell pepper. However, if you feel like putting any other vegetables like snap peas, bamboo shoot, cauliflower, zucchini, etc.

When the pork was done marinating, I boiled some water and blanched the pork for 30 seconds. Some other recipes tell you to quickly deep fry the pork but I didn't want to deal with so much oil. The main purpose is to cook the meat on the outside so the moisture is sealed in and won't be lost when it's stir fried.

The following step were easy. I heated 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and stirred in about 1 teaspoon of garlic-ginger paste. Then I stir fried the broccoli and red pepper.

To make things interesting, I added a teaspoon of Guilin Chili Sauce to the stir fry along with the blanched pork.

Food was ready for nom after sprinkling on some fresh ground black pepper!

Enjoy!

Oatmeal Lemon Blueberry Scones

2012-04-29T00:34:00.000-07:00

If you want to impress people, make them scones. They won't know how easy it actually is! Biscuits and scones are pretty easy, believe it or not. Making biscuits from scratch, from start to finish (minus the baking time) takes about 10 minutes. Scones take a little bit more time, but it's totally worth it if you want to eat a bunch of scones.

Ingredients:
1.5 cup oatmeal (not instant)
1.5 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
8 tbs cold/frozen butter (1 stick), grated
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 cup blueberries

1. Mix all dry ingredients together (oatmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt) in a large bowl. Set aside. I'm using oatmeal because I have a container of oatmeal I need to use up, but if you don't like the texture/taste of oatmeal, feel free to substitute it with all-purpose flour. I kind of like the oatmeal texture though.

2. Your stick of butter doesn't need to be frozen, just really cold because you're going to grate it with a cheese grater. This makes sure that your butter isn't over mixed into your dry ingredients.

3. In a separate cup or bowl mix together lemon juice, milk, and egg. I've used the juice of two lemons before, and it was super lemony, but I think that might not be for everyone. With only one lemon, the taste is less overwhelming, but still pretty potent.

4. Mix your dry ingredients with your butter. It's better to use a spatula than your fingers to make sure you don't melt the butter. All you want to do is make sure everything is evenly distributed. You don't want to have your butter fully incorporated with your flour. You want to have little chunks of butter for the nice crumbly texture. If you mix the butter into the flour too much, you just get a piece of brick.

5. Fold in your wet ingredients to your flour mixture. If it's too dry, add more milk. If it's too wet, add in a little more flour. You want the dough to hold together and sort of dry. You don't want it to be sticky. The photo below shows a mixture that is too sticky.

6. Roll out your dough to 1/4" thick. I like to sprinkle my blueberries on half of the dough and fold the other half over. Cut into triangles. Then I like to sprinkle a couple of blueberries on top.

7. Have your oven be preheated at 400 degrees. Put your scones on a baking sheet and into the oven for 15 minutes. Time will vary depending on your oven and the size of your scones.

8. Scones will be on the soft side when you take them out of the oven, and you'll think you've ruined them, but rest assured, they will harden up as you let them cool. They also taste much better after they've cooled.

Red (Kidney) Beans & Rice

2012-04-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

My neighbor, Chris, gave me his mom's "Red Beans and Rice" recipe back in November 2011. I've made it a few times since then, and I've altered it to my liking, but I put the original recipe (that Chris sent me) at the bottom of the post.

Ingredients:
1 pound bag of red kidney beans
8-10 cups of water
1 bay leaf
1.5 lbs hot Italian sausage, chopped
6 strips of bacon, chopped
2 medium white onions, sliced/chopped
1 bunch of celery, chopped
1 green bell pepper
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
Tony Chachere's seasoning
Salt
Pepper

1. Rise and sort beans. Soak them overnight with 8-10 cups of tepid water. Beans should be totally submerged. You can skip all these "bean prep" steps if you just use canned beans.

2. In the morning (or whenever), put your beans in a big pot and fill it up with 8-10 cups of water again (or use the same water you used to soak the beans in). Bring water to a boil and then lower the heat to low (where beans are simmering). Add in bay leaf, some salt, and some pepper. Let beans simmer for 1.5 hrs.

3. While the beans are simmering, pan fry the sausages and bacon until cooked. Pat the bacon dry with some paper towels. Pour out half of the rendered bacon fat and add in the onions and celery. Cook for about 7 minutes and throw in the green peppers, garlic, and half of the parsley. Cook for another 5 minutes or until all vegetables are tender. Season vegetables with salt and pepper as you're cooking.

4. After the beans are tender, take out the bay leaf. Reserve a cup of the bean water and drain the beans. Take out 1 cup of beans and mash them with the cup of bean water until you get a nice puree. I used a blender, but really, this is just to add texture, so do it to whatever texture you want it to be.

5. Pour the meat and vegetables into the pot with the beans and mashed beans and turn the heat up on high. Add in some Tony Chachere's to taste. Stir until everything is evenly mixed together. Turn off heat.

6. Serve beans with rice!

The exact transcript that Chris sent me:

Ingredients:
1 lb. red kidney beans
1/2 lb. sausage
8-10 cups of water
1 onion chopped
1 toe garlic
1 T. celery chopped
2 T. parsley chopped
1 large bay leaf
salt to taste ~ 2 t ?? /lb of beans

Rinse and sort beans. Cover with warm or tepid water (never add cold water to beans as it tends to make them hard). Start to cook over low fire in covered pot. Render meat in saucepan and add to beans. In meat drippings, saute' onion, garlic , celery, and parsley. Add this, with bay leaf, to beans and cook for 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours Add water if necessary while cooking. 15 minutes before done, mash 4-5 T. of beans with fork against side of pot, stirring into the liquid. This makes liquid creamy. Serve over fluffy (long grain) rice with hot French bread and salad.

Cloth & Dagger

2012-04-14T18:43:00.001-07:00

Hi guys! I'm hijacking The Saucy Choppers to plug in a project that I've been working on.

clothanddagger.com

That's all! I hope you guys are having a great weekend!

Beef and Broccoli

2012-04-14T08:00:00.001-07:00

I've been super busy with work lately, and haven't really had time to cook elaborate fancy-pants meals. But lucky for you, that means this recipe will be really simple. Yay. I've been making a lot of beef and broccoli because it is seriously the easiest thing in the world to make. The only think that might be hard is getting the Oyster sauce if you don't have access to an Asian grocer.

Ingredients:
8 oz of sliced beef, any cut
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small nub of ginger, julianned
12 oz of fresh broccoli, roughly four florets
1 tablespoon Oyster sauce
Salt & Pepper

1. Mix together beef, baking soda, garlic, ginger, and some salt and pepper. I used the cheapest cut of beef I found at FoodsCo/Krogers. I think it was Top Round for $3.29/lb. It really doesn't matter what cut of meat you use because the baking soda will make all cuts of beef taste roughly the same. The baking soda acts as a tenderizer, so the meat is really tender. Set aside.

2. Chop broccoli into stems and wash. Pour 1/2 cup of water into a large sauce pan/skillet and throw in your broccoli and some salt & pepper. Let it boil until 90% of the water evaporates. Turn of heat and set aside (with the remaining 10% of water).

3. Heat up your skillet and pour in some oil. When the oil starts to smoke slightly, dump in your meat mixture. The meat will cook really fast because it's thinly sliced. Once beef is just about done, throw your broccoli and water into the skillet. The water from the broccoli should deglaze the pan and you'll get that yummy fond off the bottom.

4. Add in your Oyster sauce and maybe some salt and pepper to taste. Once everything is mixed together, turn of heat, and serve.

Kale Chips

2012-04-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

Kale chips have been the buzz on the food blogosphere for quite sometimes, but it seems rather odd to me, so I didn't make any effort to try it. One day, I was at the Ferry Building downtown San Francisco when this all natural food company was giving away free kale chip samples. Curiosity told me to just take the little paper cup. As I nibbled gingerly at the crunchy leaves with a slight hint of salty cheese, I thought to myself "LeTran, I think you made a mistake ignoring this kale chip trend." So, here I am, making kale chips, following the trend.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

I got about 3 handfuls (be warned, I have tiny hands) of the chopped and ready to eat kale from Trader Joe's. They were all washed and ready to eat...or so the packaging said. If you get a bunch of kale from the market, just wash it and dry the leaves in a salad spinner.

Take some time to remove the hard stems in the middle of the leaves. I forgot to do that for some of them and it was not tasty at all.

The important thing is to put the kale in a large bowl. You want room for the kale circus.

1 tablespoon of olive oil. When I read the recipes floating around the interwebz, they all said to use only 1 tablespoon and I thought that it was too little. But I was wrong, it was just enough. The leaves shouldn't be drenched in oil, it should just be coated in oil.

It took me about a minute of tossing to get all the leaves coated.

I added 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper powder. I forgot the salt picture. Oh well!

The juice of about 1/4 of a lemon joined in the fun. Seriously, if I hadn't been such a silly duck, I would have used lime instead. Lime + pepper + salt = a good thing. Always.

I went back to tossing everything really well again to distribute the seasoning evenly. I used some parchment paper to line a baking sheet and spread the kale evenly. The idea is to go with single layers so that you won't end up with some of the leaves soggy and the other ones crunchy.

Remember the preheated oven? Yeah? I made good use of that preheated oven by baking the kale in it for 10 minutes.

I ate the whole bowl by myself. No sharing! It was delicious.

A note: It's best to buy the whole kale leaves and cut it up yourself. That way, all of the chips would be roughly the same size. This prevents the problem where the big pieces will still be limpy while the smaller ones turn brown. But if you're lazy like me and get the ready cut leaves in a bag, just eat the brown ones like a winner. They're still tasty.

Some thoughts:

1. Would it still be tasty if I use butter instead of oil?
2. If it doesn't take long to eat, is it a good idea to add in the mix some bacon bits? I already know the answer to this one.
3. I might use the Japanese rice seasoning to season my chips next time.
4. Maybe the chips can be broken into small bits to be used as toppings for soup, rice, poridge, etc.

Note:

If you don't eat the chips right away, they will lose their crispiness and you will end up with limp chips. Who wants that?

Some people said to put a bag of those desiccating beads in to keep the chips dry. I have no idea how effective that will be. However, I've tried putting my kale chips back into the oven for a couple of minutes to dry them again. That worked out pretty well but I had to keep an eye on them all the time in case they burn.

My overall advice is to make the chips and eat them within 1 hour. Spicy Kale Chips

Ingredients:

3 large handful of cut kale (or 1 bunch of whole kale leaves)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Juice from 1/4 of a lemon or lime

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Remove tough middle stems. Wash and completely dry kale.

Add in olive oil and toss to coat all pieces evenly.

Add salt, pepper, and lime. Toss again to incorporate seasoning.

Spread kale leaves on a large baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Minty Oreo Cheesecake Brownie

2012-04-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

This is the illegitimate love child of three recipes. In addition to those three recipes, I also bastardized it with a little of my own madness. Oh yes, this brownie is a dirty dirty brownie.

My boyfriend requested that I make this Triple Layer Fudgy Mint Oreo Brownie except he said to make it really fudgy. I know fudgy brownies! I decided to borrow the minty oreo idea, modified this brownie recipe from My Baking Addiction as the brownie base. I'm not a big fan of the white chocolate/marshmallow tops of the Triple Layer Fudgy Mint Oreo Brownie recipe, so I decided to top it off with minty cheesecake from this cheesecake brownie recipe also from My Baking Addiction.

My sister sent me an IM that said:

"Omg your brownies are too much ... I'm going to have a heart attack and die."

So yeah...this will also be known as the Heart Attack Brownie.

Are you ready for this monster?

One stick of butter. Always start with the butter. Cut it into chunks like that for ease of melting.

PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350°F!!! I always forget this.

I used the whole slab of Pound Plus dark chocolate from Trader Joe's. The thing was exactly 17.6 ounces, or so said the packaging. I broke that into chunks with my bare hands because I have the strength of 10 Hercules.

If you have a fancy pants double broiler, use it to melt the chocolate and butter together. If you don't, fill a large pot with water to about 1.5" deep, drop a large bowl in the pot, put the butter and chocolate in the bowl, and heat the water. I don't believe in a double broiler until I have a 500 sf kitchen and $1,000,000 to spend.

Remember to stir the melting chocolate and butter once in a while for a good mix. Remove from heat when the mixture is smooth.

While the chocolate and butter are melting, crack 4 eggs. Beat them with love!

Stir in 1 1/3 cup of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. That's what the recipe said. I poured in about 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

When the chocolate and butter are melted and cooled down a little, stir in the eggs and sugar mixture until all is well mixed.

Measure out 1/2 cup of flour and mix that with 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. Then stir the flour into the chocolate-butter-egg-sugar mixture until flour is incorporated.

A stack of mint Oreo cookies! Let me count...12 cookies! I also broke those into quarter pieces with my 10-Hercules strength and stirred them into the brownie batter.

Spread the batter into a 9x12 baking pan.

In another bowl, beat together 16 oz of cream cheese, 2/3 cup of sugar, 2 eggs, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla until smooth.

Add to the cream cheese mixture about 2 tablespoons of creme de menthe. To avoid making the cheesecake tasting like Listerine by going overboard with the creme de menthe, I adjusted the coloring by adding a drop of green food coloring.

Pour the cheesecake batter on top of the brownie batter.

I tried using a knife to make swirls of cheesecake and brownie batters but failed.

Crumble more Oreo cookies on top of the cheesecake batter. I used about 10 more.

Bake in the oven (350 degrees F) for 30 minutes. Pull it out. Let it cool completely. Go chill and do other stuff like petting your cat or something.

If you don't have a cat, here's a picture of one.

Here's another one.

This was my bastardization part. I spread some scoops of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream on top of the cheesecake brownie. Hah! Then that whole thing went into the freezer for about an hour (covered!) so that the ice cream could set and harden for a bit.

My MO (modus operandi) is putting ice cream on top of everything sweet. Ice cream is my MSG for baked goods.

That resulted in a chocolate mint party in my mouth. Have fun playing dirty with this brownie.

Here's the real recipe without the silly photos.

Brownie:

1 stick butter
17.6 oz of dark chocolate
4 eggs
1 1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
12 mint Oreo cookies

Melt butter and chocolate until smooth. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

Beat eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract in another bowl.

Mix the melted chocolate with the eggs and sugar mixture.

Mix the flour and baking powder together then stir into the chocolate and eggs mixture.

Crumble the Oreo cookies and stir into brownie batter.

Spread batter onto 9 x 12 pan.

Cheesecake:

16 oz cream cheese
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons creme de menthe
green food coloring

Beat together cream cheese, sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract until smooth.

Add creme de menthe and about 1 drop of green food coloring. Stir well to mix.

Assembly

Pour cheese cake batter over brownie batter. Use a butter knife to draw swirl in the batters for pretty-ness.

Crumble about 10 - 12 mint Oreo cookies on top of cheesecake batter.

Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes.

Let brownie cool completely.

Spread as much ice cream (chocolate or mint flavor, or both!) on top of cheesecake brownie as you like.

Cover and let sit in the freezer for about an hour.

Remove from freezer, cut into squares and eat it all.

Do not share!

Hit the gym.

Lemon Bars

2012-03-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

(Click on photos for larger images)

I actually made these lemon bars the day after I made the lemon strawberry cheesecake squares because I had so many lemons. Don't worry, I brought the lemon bars over to my friend's house along with the cheesecake squares.

I pieced together this recipe using a little bit of Martha Stewart's crust and David Lebovitz's filling with some tweaks from Ina Garten. I guess I'm very particular, I don't know, I always do that. I just can't follow a recipe exactly as it's laid out.

Ingredients:

Crust:
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1/8 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Lemon Topping:
1 lemon, peel removed
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 large eggs, room temperature
4 teaspoons corn starch
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Optional: powdered sugar, for serving

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with rack in center. Coat a 9-inch square baking pan with cooking spray. I lined it with some foil so that it would be easier to pull out.

2. Make the crust: In a food processor, pulse flour with confectioners' sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add butter and vanilla; pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Just use small pulses, you don't want to over mix the dough or else it'll be too wet and hard to work with. Also the texture of the crust turns tough when over mixed. Press into bottom and 3/4 inch up sides of prepared pan. Refrigerate 15 minutes. Bake until crust is lightly browned 20 minutes.

3. While the crust is cooking, cut the lemon in half, remove the peel and seeds, and cut the lemon into chunks.

4. Put the chunks of peeled lemon in a food processor or blender along with the zest, sugar, and lemon juice, and let it run until the lemon is completely broken up. Add the eggs, corn starch, flour, and salt, and blend until almost smooth. (A few tiny bits of lemon pieces are normal and encouraged.)

8. When the crust comes out of the oven, reduce the heat of the oven to 300 degrees. Pour the lemon filling over the hot crust and bake for 30 minutes or just until the filling stops jiggling and is barely set.

This photo sucks because I set up my camera on my tripod and I forgot to adjust the settings! I was shooting on manual mode and I left it on a super high shutter speed. Oops! But at least it was on a tripod so the photo was somewhat salvageable. My bad.

9. Remove from the oven and let cool completely. Once cool, carefully lift out the bars grasping the foil. Cut the bars into squares or rectangles. Sift powdered sugar over the top just before serving (optional). If you shift the sugar too early, the sugar kind of melts and "disappears," so try to sprinkle the sugar right before serving.

Sift that powdered sugar! You don't want to have little clumps!

I stole this serving plate from my neighbor, Chris. He's much fancier than I am.

Lemon & Strawberry Cheesecake Creme Brulee Bars

2012-03-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

(Click on photos for larger images)

My mom has a lemon tree that grows a lot of lemons. The Chopping Block's mom has three lemon trees! Do you know how many lemons that means for us? A whole lot of delicious lemons! I saw these cute little lemon cheesecake squares on Lauren's Latest, and I thought what a good way to use up some of my lemons! I doubled her recipe to get 32 squares! Whoa! I bought them over to a friend's house to share, so don't judge!

I totally played around and altered a large part of her recipe. I decided to add in some strawberries because why not! My mom came back to California for a visit (she moved to Seattle), and when I went to visit her, she gave me a big thing of strawberries. And you know, strawberries and lemons go together like raspberries and lemons (as in awesomely well). I also changed her cheesecake recipe. I wasn't too sure about the cheesecake portion of the recipe, so I switched it out with a more familiar version from Chef John, which I also altered because that's what I do.

Here are some of the lemons I picked from my mom's tree.

Lots of photos of lemons because they're so cute and pretty!

I squeezed and zest-ed a whole bunch of lemons! It was a lot of work!

I was taking photos of the strawberries, and Soy Sauce decided she wanted to know what's up. (Soy sauce is my cat).

This strawberry was gynormous! You probably can't use my hand for scale because my hands are freaking huge too, but look! This is like the only photo where my nail polish isn't all chipped. Yay.

Ingredients:

Cookie Crust:
1 cup softened butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cheesecake:
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice (about 2-3 lemons)
1 egg
3 tablespoons lemon zest
About 9 large strawberries, sliced
1/2 cup granulated sugar for brulee-ing, approximately

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. I'm kind of lazy so I didn't line my dish with parchment paper, but if you're a go-getter, I think you should. It makes it a lot easier to take out of the dish. Line a 9" x 13" glass dish with parchment paper and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.

2. In large bowl, combine butter, sugar, flour and vanilla until dough forms. I used a rubber spatula at first, then I decided it was a lot easier to just mix it with my hands. Don't worry, I totally washed my hands before doing that. Then I used my hands to press the dough into the bottom of prepared dish. I find it easier to use my palms rather than my fingers. Set aside.

3. In another bowl, mix flour, sour cream and vanilla extract. Set aside.

4. In a separate bowl, mix softened cream cheese with sugar. Once that's well combined, add in the lemon juice little by little. I whisked it by hand, and incorporating the lemon juice slowly makes sure that you have a smooth batter. Now mix in the egg. Make sure you scrape down the sides as you're mixing. Once the eggs are incorporated, add in the lemon zest and mix one last time.

5. Pour your sour cream mixture into your cream cheese mixture and mix, mix, mix. Sorry for the lack of photos for steps 1-5. I took photos, but they all came out bad. I seriously have no natural light that comes into my kitchen. None. Nada. It's pitch black in there.

6. Now we're going to go back to the cookie dough crust. You want to pour in 1/4 of the cheesecake batter onto the dough. Then layer the strawberry slices on top. I alternated the strawberry slices so that I would have better coverage since they are kind of triangular shaped. Pour the rest of the cheesecake mixture over the strawberries and smooth the top.

7. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes and then drop the temperature down to 250 degrees and bake for 45 minutes or until cheesecake is set completely. This means that it won't jiggle when you shake it. Cool, then refrigerate overnight.

Oops. My cheesecake cracked a little here and there.

8. Cut into 32 squares and separate. Sprinkle the tops of each square with 1 teaspoon of sugar and spread around with finger to evenly distribute sugar. Torch the tops until the sugar melts and turns an amber color. If you don’t have a torch, place under the broiler. If you don't serve the bruleed pieces within a couple of hours, the hardened sugar will dissolve into liquid... so you should probably serve it soon after you brulee your pieces.

I need to clean my knife between cuts. If you don't, you'll get this sloppy cuts like me, kids.

Sprinkling some sugar.

For some strange reason, the flame didn't show up in the photo, but I swear, there's a flame!

Hasselback Garlic Cheesy Bread

2012-03-17T08:00:00.001-07:00

I was over at Lauren's Lastest a while back when I saw this delicious looking garlic cheesy bread. This thing screams out that it needs to be made, am I right or am I right?

The original recipe calls for bread flour, but you know what? You can make your own bread flour! "For every 1 cup of bread flour that you need: Place 1 tablespoon of vital wheat gluten into a 1 cup measuring cup. Then top it up to 1 cup with all purpose flour. Dump this out into a bowl and whisk together until well combined" (Quote from Cooking with Alison). So make your own bread and cake flours from now on, okay? Okay!

The original recipe also uses store bought garlic butter, but I'm too lazy (and cheap) to go buy some garlic butter, so we're going to make our own. Yay! I got the recipe from this really shady looking site named Garlic Butter Recipe. I'm sure that means their recipe is totally legit.

Ingredients:

Bread:
1 cup warm water (about 100 F, not Celsius!)
1 Tablespoon Honey
1 envelope Active Dry Yeast (2 1/4 Teaspoons)
1 teaspoon Salt
3 cups Bread Flour
Olive Oil, For Greasing Surfaces
⅓ pounds Sharp Cheddar

Garlic Butter:
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/8 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Pinch of ground black pepper
Pinch of ground paprika

1. In a large bowl, stir water, honey and yeast together. Let yeast proof 5 minutes. Once you know yeast is active (when it's all bubbly and puffy), stir in salt and the flour in 1/4 cup increments. I didn't bother using a mixer, so I used a spoon to mix.

This is the yeast mixture right after being mixed.

This is when the yeast is active and all puffy.

This is the dough right after it came together.

2. Once the dough comes together, let it rest for 5 minutes. Come back and knead the dough until your hands are super super tired. The dough should be smooth and tacky, but not sticky (as in does not stick to your fingers). Grease a bowl with some olive oil and roll the dough around in it so that the ball of dough is also greased up. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rise 1 hour or until doubled in size. Keep it in a warm place like in a sun beam with kitty cats or an oven (that is off).

Right after lots of kneading. It's so smoooooooth!

I actually went away for like 4 hours so the dough's really really big!

3. While you're waiting for the dough to rise, make your garlic butter. In a small bowl, combine softened butter, minced garlic and parmesan cheese. Season with salt, Italian seasoning, pepper and paprika. Mix until smooth. I used fresh parmesan, not the dry Kraft stuff, but I'm sure it'll be fine with it too.

4. When the hour is up, check on your dough. Punch down dough and cut into two equal portions. Form into two long baguettes the length of the cookie sheet. Basically I just made the dough into an oval-ish shape and then wrung the two ends while pulling the dough apart slightly. This formed a nice even diameter shape for me and a nice twisty appearance.

5. Cover with plastic wrap and rise 30 minutes. Start to preheat oven to 400 degrees F and place dough close to the oven where it’s nice and warm. Once oven is preheated, remove plastic wrap from the dough and reduce oven to 350F. Brush on a nice thick layer of the butter mixture, leaving enough for a second brush later. Put the bread into the oven and bake 30 minutes or until bread begins to turn a golden brown.

Brush brush brush.

I got this silicone brush from Daiso for $1.50!

The photo is colored really weirdly, sorry. :(

6. While the bread is baking, cut your cheese into thin slices and melt your garlic butter in the microwave.

7. Pull loaves of bread out of the oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes. Cut 1-inch slices 3/4′s of the the way through the loaves. Do not cut through the bread. Brush garlic butter in between each slice and fill with a slice of cheese. Bake another 3-5 minutes or until cheese is completely melted. Serve immediately.

Here's a close up of the bread after it was pulled from the oven the first time.

Cheese!

The bottom of the loaf, note that the slits did not go through the loaf.

The loaf when it's finished!

Close up!

The bread was really soft and I think it was well received!

Coconut Chicken

2012-03-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

I call this coconut chicken, but the recipe is actually called Evil Jungle Prince Chicken from Pepper Fool. In fact, I think this dish is more like Thai chicken curry without the curry. It's quite easy to make and still very delicious.

You want 3 stalks of sweet Thai basil and 2 - 4 leaves of kaffir lime leaves.
Note on the kaffir lime leaves. They are expensive. $34.99/lb. Good thing the bag I got with about 30 leaves was $6 because I cannot afford more than that. I froze the leftovers so I can use it at a later date.

I think 4 bird's eye chilies would be enough for a nice kick.
You would also need a stalk of lemon grass.

About 1 cup of bamboo shoots and 1/2 of a large bell pepper, slice. Aren't they pretty?

The thing to do is to put the kaffir lime leaves, chilies, and lemon grass into a food processor and grind everything. However, I do not have a food processor so I just chopped everything as fine as I could. My mom gave me a tub of ground up lemon grass so that made it very easy for me.
In a large pot, heat up 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. Throw in the lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, and chilies and cook for about 1 minute.

Pour in 1/2 can of coconut milk and 1 tablespoon of fish sauce. Cook and stir occasionally until the coconut milk starts to boil.

Throw in about 1 lb of chicken thighs that have been but into strips. People always cook with chicken breasts and I have no idea why. The thighs taste delicious and I can get them boneless and skinless for anywhere from $1.59/lb to $1.99/lb. It's not like it's extravagant and I get to avoid dry and flavorless breasts. Enough ranting! Cook them thighs for about 5 minutes or until the strips are cooked through.

Add the bell peppers and bamboo shoot. Stir up that party to evenly coat everything with coconut milk. It should take another 3 - 5 minutes to cook the vegetables.

Toss in tons of basil leaves. You can never have enough basil! Cook until the leaves are wilted and sad looking.

That's it! Ladle it over some jasmine rice, sit your ass in front of the TV, and eat like a champ.

Coconut Chicken = Evil Jungle Prince Chicken

Ingredients:
1 lb chicken thigh cut into strips
4 kaffir lime leaves
2 tablespoons ground lemon grass or 1 stalk
4 bird's eye chilies
3 stalks of Thai basils
1/2 can of coconut milk
1 bell pepper
1 cup bamboo shoot
1 tablespoon fish sauce
vegetable oil

Directions:
Grind kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, and chilies in a food processor.

Heat about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a pan and cook the lemon grass, chilies, and kaffir lime mixture for 1 minute.

Add coconut milk and fish sauce to cook until mixture boil.

Add chicken and cook for 5 minutes.

Add bell peppers and bamboo shoot and cook for another 3 minutes.

Toss in Thai basil and cook until leaves are wilted.

Serve piping hot over steamed rice.

Chicken Tikka Masala

2012-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

(Click photos for larger image)

You know what is ridiculous? Chicken Tikka Masala take-out from an Indian restaurant. Whenever we order this, we only get about four pieces of chicken with a lot of sauce. It's like I'm just buying a tub of sauce to dip my naan in. This is why I've decided to make my own chicken tikka masala. It's a lot of spices, yes, but once you have your cupboard stocked, you'll be able to make a ton of other things too. (Also it might help if you knew the Chopping Block... because that's where all my spices came from. :D)

So over at my place, we're kind of weird. We have a weekly menu where we only eat one thing all week. Seriously! That's how we do it here. This week it was chicken tikka masala, so I've made this about four times this week. Because I am very inexperienced with Indian cooking, I had to try a bunch of different recipes until I finally conjured up one that suited my taste. First I tried Indian Simmer's recipe, but it was just missing a lot of flavors, and it was way too spicy. So I learned that I cannot take 2 teaspoons of pepper. Can you? Maybe. Then I poked around at the Pioneer Woman's recipe, but it was almost the same as Indian Simmer's recipe in terms of spices. I watched this video by this guy. His recipe has so many more spices! Ahh! This must be it, right? All those missing flavors I'm trying to find? But his site wasn't that helpful. It wasn't what he showed in the video (where he didn't really give me any measurements). So I watched this really helpful video from Good Eats on Indian cooking! With all that stuff I made up my own recipe, and after a couple of tweeks, here it is!

Chicken:
2 lbs. boneless chicken breast and/or thighs, cut into 1" cubes
1/4 cup yogurt
3 tsp minced ginger
3 tsp crushed garlic
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp cumin powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp green cardamom powder
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp lemon juice

Sauce:
5 tomatoes, chopped
1 - 2 tbs cashews (or almonds or walnuts)
1/2 onion, chopped
2 tsp ginger paste
2 tsp garlic paste
1/4 tsp red chili powder
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp cardamom powder (or 2 crushed cardamom)
Salt To Taste
2 tbp sugar
1 tsp fenugreek powder
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup cream

Chicken ingredients

Sauce ingredients

Preparation:

1. Whisk all of the ingredients in the "chicken" section together in a large bowl. Marinate for at least and hour. You can also marinate it overnight in the refrigerator, but if you remember Serious Eat's note about mushy chicken, you might want to marinate it for a maximum of four hours.

2. Preheat oven to broil. Skewer the chicken pieces and place them on a 1/4 sheet lined with foil. Place the chicken about 10-12 inches below a broiler for 7 minutes per side (a total of 14 minutes). Watch carefully so as not to totally char the chicken. It should have slightly blackened edges. Remove from oven.

Raw chicken!

Cooked chicken! My oven is kind of not-so-great. I broiled it, and there was very little char! Boo!

3. While the chicken is broiling, make the sauce. In a hot heavy pot, add in a tablespoon of oil. Add onions, nuts, ginger and garlic paste and sauté. Once the onions are evenly cooked and translucent (~5 minutes), add in all the spices including the lemon juice (re: the chili powder, cloves, coriander, cumin, cardamom, salt, sugar, fenugreek powder and lemon juice). Add some water until all the masalas mix into a thick paste. Cook for several minutes, making sure not to burn the masalas (or else it'll turn bitter).

Onions, nuts, ginger, and garlic being sauteed.

Cooking/toasting the masalas for a more fragrant taste.

4. Pour in your tomatoes into the pot. Cook over low heat until reduced to a thick sauce. Remove from heat and put into a blender. Blend the sauce until it's a uniform smooth texture. Pour sauce back into pot. Add cream. Stir until well incorporated.

I tried using canned tomatoes once, and it just wasn't as good as fresh tomatoes. I don't know why!

Blended! You can see me in the blender along with an egg and yogurt. Good thing I wasn't naked, right?

After the cream was added. Sometimes when I want a thicker sauce, I'll throw in some yogurt in there.

5. De-skewer your chicken and put them into the sauce. Give it a quick stir, and you're ready to serve.

Of course this recipe is super un-authentic because I am totally not even close to being Indian or have anyone Indian eat it, but you don't have to tell people that!

"Cá Kho" (Vietnamese Braised Fish with Caramel)

2012-02-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

I've eaten this dish many many many times growing up. My grandma used to make a jar of caramel for these types of braising. The sad thing is that I never did learn to make it from my grandma and now I never will. Even though I walk around telling people that I'm so Vietnamese and speak with authority over everything Vietnamese, I know next to nothing when it comes to Vietnamese cooking. One of my goals is to at least learn to make the basic food so that it's not so embarrassing when the only advice I have for people regarding Vietnamese food is "Add a ton of lemon grass and a ton of fish sauce!"

Before I proceed, I have a few disclaimers and notes:

1. Why the hell is "Cá Kho" in quotes? Because people usually braise it floating in a bit more liquid and I like mine a bit thicker. Also, see point #2.

2. I have never made this dish before nor have I attempt to learn it. This is my first try just to see if I can replicate the same taste because I had a major craving for it.

3. It's usually cooked in a clay pot. I don't have a clay pot. Clay pots are supposed to give it amazing flavors.

4. Just a little note: cá means fish and kho means braise.

5. It can be made with all types of white fish, the most popular choice being catfish because they're fatty.

I drew a picture of a fatty catfish for your reference.

Just kidding!

Let's start, shall we?

Three tablespoons of sugar in a pan on medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil to that and stir around until the sugar are melted and caramelized.

Somewhere along the line, peel and cut about 1" knob of ginger into matchsticks. Turn the heat down to medium, add the ginger to the caramel and stir around for about 30 seconds.

Like this! This is the perfect time to drop in about 1 tablespoon of fish sauce. Stir that around, too.

Because I was too lazy to get catfish and also too lazy to deal with fish bones, I used 2 swai fish fillets. They were cut into halves to make it easier for flipping.

Turn heat back to medium high. Add the fish in and flip it a couple of times to make sure all pieces are coated with caramel.

Throw in a generous amount of ground black pepper or coarsely cracked peppercorns. I prefer the latter. Cover and let each side of the fish cook for 7 minutes on each side.

Some people even prefer the fish to be coated and encrusted with pepper. The subtle warmth of the pepper makes for a very good meal on a cold, rainy day if you ask me.

That's it! Serve with rice. You can drench the rice in the braising liquid for maximum tastiness.

I'm weird and I like to eat it with no rice and some broccoli. Since I had no rice, I cooked some kale in the braising liquid because I don't waste tasty caramelized-ginger-fish-sauce!

I made it into a nice lunch, too!

Ca Kho
Printable recipe

Ingredients:

2 swai fillets, cut in half
1" knob of ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
ground black pepper

Directions:

Melt the sugar and oil in a pan on medium high heat. Lower heat to medium or lower, be careful not to burn the sugar.

Add ginger and stir for 30 seconds.

Add fish sauce.

Turn heat back to medium high. Add the fillets and flip a couple of times to evenly coat each piece with the caramel.

Sprinkle on a generous amount of ground black pepper.

Cover and cook each side of the fillets for 7 minutes.

Oreo Cheesecake

2012-02-18T08:00:00.001-08:00

(Click on photos for larger image)

What a delightful surprise! I got a text from my neighbor, Chris, that he has a giant tripod he didn't need and whether or not I wanted it. In exchange for the tripod, I baked him an oreo cheesecake. That's what he requested! He didn't want any variation of the cheesecake, just the classic cheesecake. (I also made him go to the store and get the things I didn't have... like cream cheese). I know, I know. Everyone (and their moms) should have cream cheese in their refrigerators at all time.

So on one hand, I really want to make the Marlene Sorosky oreo cheesecake from her book The Dessert Lover's Cookbook, but on the other hand, I really want to make Chef John's New York Style cheesecake. Oh the dilemma! So what did I do? I mashed their recipes together. Their main ingredients and their proportions were similar enough (except for the sour cream) that I think it works.

Ingredients:
Crust:
25 Oreo creme sandwich cookies (about 2 1/2 cups crumbs)
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted

Filling:
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 packages (8 ounces each) Philadelphia cream cheese, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups granulated white sugar
Pinch of salt
1/3 cup cream (or milk)
5 large eggs, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups coarsely chopped Oreo creme sandwich cookies (about 15)

Sour Cream Topping:
1/4 cups sugar
2 cups sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees f.

2. Crust: With a food processor, break up the oreo cookies until they're fine crumbs. Add in the butter (still in the food processor) until the crumbs are blended. Pour the buttered cookie crumbs into your springform pan and press evenly over the bottom and the sides (about 2/3 of the way up or however high you want the crust to come up to). Refrigerate while preparing filling.
If you don't have a food processor, you can crumble your cookies and put them in a 1-gallon freezer bag. Grab a rolling pin and start rolling that sucker flat. This is what I used to do before I got a food processor, and it works just fine.

Oreos in the food processor waiting to be crushed to pieces.

Butter!

Patting down the crust was a pretty good workout for my arms because I am weak.

3. Filling: In a bowl, place flour, sour cream, and vanilla extract. Mix well and set aside. I used the spoon that I scooped out the sour cream to mix with. I don't like taking out the mixer unless I really have a need for it because I'm super lazy.

4. In a separate bowl, place room temperature cream cheese and work it a little. I find it easiest to combine all these ingredients with a rubber spatula. You don't have to bust out the Kitchen Aid (which, by the way, I don't have)... unless you want to. Pour in sugar and salt and mix until will combined. Add in cream and mix until combined. Add in eggs one at a time and mix it into the cream cheese. Once that mixture is mixed, throw in the sour cream mixture so everyone can mingle.

Did I ever tell you that the Chopping Block and I have the same exact mixing bowls? We're cool.

So at this point, I think it's time for a little snack break. I dunked two oreo cookies into this batter and at them. It was amazingggggggg. Do it!

5. Pour half the batter into prepared crust. Sprinkle with chopped Oreos. Pour remaining batter over and smooth top with a spatula. Some of the Oreos may rise to the top but it's totally cool because you're going to top this cheesecake off anyways, so no one will see it. Shhh... just our little secret, kinda.

I'm going to tell you that 15 oreos here is not enough. Put more!

6. Place pan on baking sheet. Bake in the 425 degrees oven for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 225 degrees and bake for an additional 50 minutes or until set. Remove cake from oven and increase oven temperature to 350 degrees.

As you can see, my cake cracked. Somehow I over heated the cake. :(

7. Sour Cream Topping: Stir together sour cream, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla in small bowl. Spread sour cream mixture evenly over cake. Return to the 350 degree oven and bake 7 minutes or until sour cream begins to set. Remove from oven and cool in draft-free place to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Now I am very impatient and I've made many cheesecakes in my day, and I gotta tell you, a cheesecake that's rested overnight tastes a million times better than a fresh cheesecake. In fact, a warm cheesecake is pretty gross. Trust me.

So when the cake cooled down, I made some ol' fashion cream cheese icing. That's just cream cheese, a splash of vanilla extract, and a whole lotta powdered sugar. I didn't add cream or butter for the frosting. This is also totally optional, I just really like cream cheese icing.

I'm not very good at frosting cakes or piping icing, but I try!

As you can see from this slice, there is definitely not enough oreo chucks inside this cake! Next time, I'm going to put twice as many cookies (re: 30 cookies) inside this baby. Then we'll have a fine lookin' slice. But regardless of the low cookie content, it was still super awesome! Of course I stole some of this cake from Chris. :)

Chinese Beef Belly (Ngow Nam)

2012-02-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

(Click on photos for larger images)

I was talking to my Chinese friend, Carrie, the other day, and she said that she really wanted to make ngow nam and her mom has a recipe. After she mentioned this to me, I was obsessed with making ngow nam. Ngow means cow, and nam means belly in Cantonese. Basically it's stewed/braised beef brisket with diakons and a very complex flavor that I can't describe. This dish may not be for everyone, but I know that if you're Chinese, you probably like it. Not very many restaurants serve this dish because it takes a while to make. It also includes lots of ingredients (that you can only find at a well stocked Asian grocery store).

I did not get Carrie's mom's secret ngow nam recipe, but I found a few recipes online, with this recipe being the best one (in my opinion). Below is my take on the dish. When I actually made it, I had doubled the recipe to feed four people.

Ingredients:

2 lbs of fatty beef brisket
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 slices of ginger (about 1/2 in. thick), roughly chopped
a splash of Shaoxing Wine*
2 tbsp Chu Hou Paste (or, depending on brand, Chee Hou Sauce)

2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 piece of rock sugar
2 star anise
1 cardamon pod
1 cinnamon stick
Water - enough to cover meat
Salt & Pepper to taste
1 daikon radish
1 tbsp corn starch

* Since I don't use alcohol in my cooking, I substituted this with rice vinegar. Close enough?

1. Cut up brisket and diakon radish into large bite size pieces, somewhere between 1-1/2" squares to 2" squares. The brisket should be pretty fatty, and this is what you want. You want that nice fat surrounding your meat, so don't trim it off.

2. Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a dutch oven or a heavy pot. Brown your cubed brisket meat. I had to do it in batches and placed the browned meat in a bowl while I'm browning the rest of the brisket. When all the meat has been browned, add in a little bit more oil and saute the garlic and ginger for 30 seconds (until they're fragrant). Toss in a splash of your rice wine to deglaze the pan. Now add in the Cho Hou paste and mix well.

3. Throw in meat (and any of the meat juices that came out while resting) and stir fry for another 3-4 minutes, mixing the meat with the sauce. Do not burn the sauce.

4. Throw in the rest of the ingredients (excluding diakon) and add water to cover. The water doesn't need to cover *all* the beef all the way to the top. It just needs to cover most of the beef. At the end, you want to have just enough braising liquid for a sauce, but you don't want a stew. Bring the water to a boil and simmer for an house. Check often to see if additional water is needed and stir the pot to make sure everything is mixed well.

5. After an hour, add in the diakon. There should be enough water left to cover most of the diakon. If there's not, add in a little more water. Simmer for another hour.

6. When the meat and daikon radishes are tender, remove them from your pot and set aside for a few minutes; turn off heat. You should be left with the remaining sauce. Take out the cinnamon stick, cardamom, and star anise bits. Taste the sauce and adjust taste with salt and pepper. In a small cup or bowl, place a two small ladles of your sauce mixture and add in the tablespoon of corn starch. Mix it until all the corn starch is all dissolved. Pour this into the pot with the remaining sauce and mix well. Turn your heat back on until sauce thickens. Add the meat and daikons back into the pot. Mix the sauce with the meat until it's all covered.

Meat & dikon out of the pot.

Meat & dikon back into the pot.

Extreme close up!

I served the ngow nam over rice, but you can eat it as is or serve it over some noodles.

No Recipe's Lamb With Green Chili Masala

2012-02-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

Winter is finally here! Time for warm stew-like dishes to replace a real heater. Not only that, these usually require little real hands-on time and the end results make me look like I'm a cooking genius to other people.

Of course I'm not a cooking genius! That's why I got my recipe from No Recipes. Haha! You didn't really think I could come up with stuff like this myself, did you?

First set of mix:
- 1 tbs kosher salt (I thought this turned out to be too salty, so maybe just half 1 tbs would be fine)
- 1 tbs cumin powder
- A bunch of ground black pepper

Second set of mix:
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1/2 tsp mustard powder (the recipe called for black mustard seeds, I'm not fancy!)
- 1/2 tsp fennugreek powder (the recipe called for fennugreek seeds, again, I'm not fancy!)
- 1/4 tsp fennel seeds

Note: I wasn't creative enough to make that smiley face, I can't take credit for it.

Seven, you read that right, seven jalapeños peppers quartered and de-seeded.

One giant onion sliced.

A thumb-size chunk of dried tamarind and about 1 tablespoon of hot water mixed into a paste.

I got a chunk of 3.28 lbs of lamb leg! The label lied, it said "semi-boneless," and I was being stupid so I only saw the "boneless" part. As it turned out, "semi-boneless" meant it still had a bone in it! What the hell? If it has a bone in, therefore, it's not boneless! What does semi-boneless mean, anyway?

I saved the bone for the next broth adventure, but the rest of the lamb got cubed and mixed well with the first mixture. *Remember, that's the one with the salt and pepper*

Heat up some oil in a large pot to brown the lamb cubes. This is what I learned: the oil and pan has to be super hot for this to work. You want to really brown two (or four) sides of lamb cubes. I made the mistake of being hasty and not wait for oil to get hot and basically ended up with some pale pieces.

Remove the browned lamb cubes from pan. Add more oil to the pan.

Add in the second mix. Stir around like crazy to toast the seeds. In my case, only the fennel and cumin seeds get toasted. Throw in a chunk, and by a chunk, I mean, about 1 tablespoon of garlic ginger paste. Stir that around quickly.

Add the onion slides and stir like mad. I decided that it was too dried, so I added a delicious tablespoon of butter. Let it cook for about 10 minutes or until the onion is all soft and squishy.

Add back the lamb cubes and their juices, stir to distribute. Then cover and cook that stuff on medium low for 1.5 hours. That's right. Sit back, relax, do other stuff. Basically, you want to cook the onions into soup!

Time's up! 90 minutes passed. Throw in the jalapeños and taramind paste.

I thought it was also too dry, so I added in about 1 cup of my pork bone broth. Of course you can use water or other types of broth. Again, stir and cook for another 1.5 hours!

You're almost done now! Do the following:

1. Scoop out to a bowl.
2. Dust it with plenty of black pepper.
3. Throw on some cilantro.
4. Devour.

One end note:
- It was really good. No complain there. However, I think if I added a bay leaf and some stewed tomatoes, the sauce would be amazing!

I'm planning to make this again with the bay leaf and stewed tomatoes.

Have fun pretending to be a cooking genius!