Thanksgiving 2012

I contributed three dishes to Thanksgiving dinner this year: curry persimmon and squash soup, sticky rice pork stuffing, and persimmon pie. My parents gave me so much persimmon from their tree, I needed to use up the supply before they spoiled! Everything I made turned out very tasty I must say. The soup was so naturally sweet and creamy...it did look a lot like baby food though. Hmmm... And Sergio couldn't stop eating the stuffing! It was a ton of prep work but I might keep that recipe in regular rotation. I used half the sugar called for in the recipe for the pie but it turned out just the right amount of sweetness anyway. (I'm patting myself on the back as you read this.)

Regretfully, I didn't take any photos during dinner at my parents' house. Too busy putting food in my face! :)








The parentals ended up watching Chinese soap operas after dinner. :)

I have so much to be thankful for always. This year, with baby growing in my belly, even more so. Life is kind of grand right now.

Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful!

Sunday Farmer's Market + Julia

I had absolutely no recipes in mind while shopping this morning at the Atwater Farmer's Market (my fave!). I don't even know what to do about the squash blossoms. They were just so pretty, I couldn't pass them up!




Mother nature is a pretty sharp packaging designer, don't you think?

As you can see, I've been reading a biography on Julia Child. The book was already on the table so I nudged it into the shot. All the beautiful food seemed to be a nice homage to her. I've read up to the section titled:

Spying and Romance

Exciting, right? I can't say I'm loving the author's writing style, but I am finding Julia's life fascinating nonetheless.

Saturday Scramble

Remember Jen gave us greens from her garden and homemade pesto? This is what I did with it.



Mini-heirloom tomatoes
Crimini mushrooms
Fresh mozzarella
Eggs
Garlic
Scrambled and served atop lettuce
Topped with snippets of fresh parsley, chives, and homemade pesto.
A few extra of those sweet tomatoes on the side.

yummy!

We ate out on the patio and watched all the crazy bird goings on in the yard. There has been so much going on out there lately.

Quick Soup

Didn't feel so great this morning so I came home early from work to rest. It was lunch time and what better under-the-weather meal than soup? I quickly took stock of what I had in my kitchen and this is what I did.

Heat olive oil in medium saucepan/stock pot.
Sautee fresh garlic bits and roughly cubed purple potatoes.
Salt.
Add roughly chopped leek leaves and cover but remember to uncover and stir once in a while so potatoes don't stick too much. I needed to do a little light scraping with my wooden spoon.
Add oil as needed.
When potatoes are soft-ish but not necessarily cooked through, add dry barley and stir.
Cover for a tiny bit.
Add low-sodium broth. I used the entire box.
Salt to taste.
Add lemongrass. I cut the leaves lengthwise to release aroma but left them on the stem intact. It's not edible and this makes it easier to fish out or avoid ladling when plating.
Add a sprinkling of red chili pepper flakes and loads of white pepper powder (as found in Asian markets).
Bring to boil and then low heat simmer for 30 mins.

It was quite perfect actually. Just a little heat from the pepper and the earthy potatoes were melt in your mouth soft but held their shape in the bowl. Just a hint of lemongrass scent wafted with each spoonful.



Not bad for impromptu sick day meal making, huh? And, I personally feel soup tastes better eaten off of ceramic spoons. :)

Off to rest.

Fabulous Fava Beans

Happily, we've been trying lots of new veggies since we began frequenting the Farmer's Market as our main grocery source. We go to the market on Sunday morning and pick up whatever catches our eye. And hopefully, I can work a little kitchen magic, with the help of an online recipe search. I never have all the ingredients but I improvise. This sort of kitchen bravado isn't always reliable but hey, it's been fun.

A couple weeks ago, we bought fresh fava beans for the first time. You can see one peeking out right above the egg carton in the basket.


So, fava beans are kind of more work than I expected. In fact, even before I had finished cooking the dish, I already swore that we would never buy them again. You have to shell them twice! But then, we ate them. Yum. Yummmmmmm....

I bought them again and I cooked them last night.



What I did:

Shell beans from outer pods.
Cook beans in heavily salted water for 3 minutes.
Drain and quickly dump beans in ice water to stop the cooking.
Shell skin from beans. You'll be tempted to pop the bean out of the skins by squeezing the little suckers but you risk smashing the tasty bits if you do. (I did the first time.)
Sautée fresh garlic and onion in butter. Salt.
Toss in the beans until all coated and warm again.
Salt again as needed.

I was tempted to drizzle a bit of truffle oil on top. If I had a hunk of Parmesan I would have topped it with a few shavings. Next time, maybe I will.

Nearly Meat Free Monday

I read about the Meat Free Monday campaign on my friend Alyssa's FB post. And then I read that Mario Batali was embracing MFM in all of his restaurants across the country. It's a cool concept. From MFM website:

Meat Free Monday is an environmental campaign to raise awareness of the climate-changing impact of meat production and consumption. Many people are unaware that livestock production is responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – that’s more than the entire transport sector.

We've been eating less meat in general anyway. I didn't fully live up to MFM today - I did have a chicken sandwich at lunch. But I attempted to make an interesting meatless dinner using tempeh with a side of artichoke.



I used a little diluted Korean BBQ sauce in the grill pan to cook up the shitake mushrooms and tempeh -- which is already cooked but the packaging recommended grilling or frying it. I simply boiled the artichokes.



The shitake mushrooms turned out soft and flavorful. Delicious! The tempeh was sadly not. Yuck. We ended up throwing the tempeh out.



Maybe I'll try again. But probably not. The mushrooms, I'll cook again for sure though!

Gray Gruel 3.6.2010

It was more gray in person. It lived up to it's name a little more the next day when the soup had thickened and was very pasty and ... gruel-like. Globular even. (ha. glob. I like that word. It's one of those words that sounds and looks like what it means.)

Oh...it was tasty though. Really, really tasty. Sergio hates soup and he had seconds AND he couldn't wait to eat the globular leftovers the next day. There were many flavor levels, some nicely subtle like the black egg and tarragon. The barley had a nice texture. It took a long time to cook and a lot more chaperoning than I expected. The bare fridge and mostly bare cupboards had me pulling together these misfit ingredients:

• 3 Purple potatoes, cut into medium chunks
• A handful of Pearl Barley
• A smaller handful of Frozen Peas
• 32 ounce carton of low sodium chicken stock
• Large pat of unsalted butter
• A smaller pat of Maple Butter (I happened to have this still from Thanksgiving. I tasted it first - yep, still good.)
  
• A few cloves of Garlic, small bits
  
• 1 1000 Year Old Egg, cut into small chunks
• 2 Eggs
• Dried Tarragon (I'm not experienced to know if the fresh kind would have made a difference. Though, I bet fresh would have to be added way later in the process.)
  
• Dried Parsley
  

I apologize but I don't have any real cook times or accurate heat levels...and yes, salt was omitted on purpose. I'm consciously cooking with less salt these days. It was a perfect one-pot meat. Less pans to wash is a good thing, right? I used a deep, medium sized saucepan/pot.

1. Saute barley in butter with garlic - medium heat.
2. Add potatoes.
3. Tarragon and parsley. I like tarragon so I added a lot.
   
4. Maple butter.
5. Chicken stock.
6. Bubble until barley is not crunchy -- stir! Potatoes and barley will stick. This took forever. Damn that barley. I suppose cous cous or even rice would have been faster. But I like barely. You'll want to add about a cup of water, maybe more as you stir and it starts to thicken.
   
7. Peas. Turn down heat a notch.
   
8. 1000 Year old Egg. :)
   
9. Break in two eggs. It will just sit on top of the thick soup. Break the yolk, stir but don't fully incorporate. Keep the heat low until most of the egg is cooked.
   
10. Turn off heat but leave covered - the residual heat should cook the rest of the egg.
    

Yuuummmmy. I don't know if I'll ever recreate this meal. I sure hope so.

Dinner 2.2.2010

Simple dinner tonight.

Pork. Tomato & fresh Mozzarella. yum. Watching LOST now. bored.

Thanksgiving 2009! Finally.

Before I began cooking, we ran out to do a little more shopping. We went into Best Buy AGAIN. Dang it. I'm beginning to hate that place. I blame Sergio. We did see an actress from Gray's Anatomy there. Her character is Izzy. She was checking out the exact same DVD player we got the day before. Sergio was next to her and was about to dispense some advice when a swarm of sales people gathered round. We left without buying anything.

On the way home, we made a stop at L & L for a Chicken Katsu Masubi. Not bad. The Spam version is much saltier but maybe better. We sat in the Starbucks next door to eat our snack so I could also get a Chai Soy Latte. I needed the rare shot of caffeine to start my cooking!

While I was having my way with the turkey, Sergio gave Mia a massage. Yes, she will sit like that to be pet. Crazy cat.


After hours of cooking, my family showed up and we chowed down! Sergio and I both meant to change and get cleaned up but once my mom showed up, it all happened so fast...next thing we knew, wine was being uncorked and the turkey was getting cut.





On the Menu:

• Sage Butter Turkey with Gravy (Tasty!!! I swear by a minimum 12 hour brine!)
  
• Sourdough, Apple and Pancetta Stuffing (The tartness was weird at first but we got used to it and it was not bad. Next time, regular French bread.)
  
• Baked Purple Potato Chips (Semi-fail. I burnt half of them. What wasn't burnt was good though.)
  
• Asian Pear and Roasted Pecan Salad with a Pear Vinegar and Dijon mustard vinaigrette (My favorite dish of the entire meal! Even though I forgot to put in the Gorgonzola.)
  
• Boiled Corn on the Cob served with Maple butter (Maple butter is very yummy. I'm going to try it on hot muffin or biscuit next.)
  
• Mom brought our favorite Garlic Lobster from a Chinatown restaurant we've been eating at since childhood. (Delicious as always.)
  
• Jenny made Madelines for after dinner. (Wonderfully eggy and light. Perfect with the coffee.)
  
• Jenny and Chi brought really good wines that pared well with the dishes.
• We also popped open a pink bubbly and sparkling cider.

I regret not taking more photos of the dishes and the table. My feet were so tired that I just wanted to sit, eat and drink. So that's what I did instead.

Post meal, we watched the movie Up! My new favorite movie. I think I've cried every single time I've seen it -- all 3 and a half times.

So, that was our first Thanksgiving in our new house. It was fabulous and wonderful and worth the sore feet. I think I will start a new tradition of hosting Thanksgiving on the Saturday after...it was so much less stressful. Having two days to consider the menu and just run out to the store if I forgot anything was luxurious.

Funny Pizza

I made a funny sort of pizza last weekend.

Fresh and Easy has a great whole-wheat, pre-made pizza dough in their refrigerated section. It's perfect for those tail end of provisions moments where you just grab what you have left and throw it on.

I simmered some sauce using canned, no salt peeled tomatoes, dried herbs: basil, parsley. A bit of Agave nectar. I might have tipped in a splash of Marsala wine.

I cut up the last of the mushrooms and the last stalks of green onion. I even hid in a few mint leaves for fun. I then cracked a couple eggs on top. The fridge was seriously barren...was that a tumbleweed rolling around in there?

The egg turned out odd because it was overcooked. It certainly looked cool. The sauce was very nice and mushrooms too. I even liked the mint, which Sergio thought was strange. He liked it overall, sans egg and mint. Next time, tumbleweed pizza!

Dinner: 4/19/2009

Sergio was told by his doctor to try the Dash diet. There are very specific requirements for this diet. But generally, it means less sodium, less meats and a whole lot of veggies and fruits.

I took a look at the Dash diet specifications and it kind of made my head spin with the calorie intake and measured portions. Unless it's baking or I'm following a recipe, I don't ever cook with specific portions. So, I thought I'd start slow and easy by simply cutting out some blatant salt seasoning and adding in more fruit.

Last Sunday, I made an almost all veggie, low-sodium dinner and it turned out surprisingly yummy! I'm going to have to get used to cooking without pre-made sauces which I think are such great time-saving inventions. Gourmet chef I certainly am not.

Appetizer
We first snacked on some lightly salted veggie chips purchased from Tom's Farms. They were very good and we wish we had purchased two bags. They even had taro!

Eggplant with white beans
Sauteed red onions, garlic, parsley and basil until onion was translucent, then added eggplant. Added a bit of low-sodium chicken broth (eggplant is very thirsty so I had to keep an eye on it and pour more in as it needed). Once cooked halfway, I added canned white beans that had been soaked and drained. Kept on low heat until eggplant was cooked thoroughly. I added more broth as needed. I let the concoction rest a bit before serving.

Simple Salad
Mixed greens with sliced pears (ripe but not too soft yet), sliced red bell peppers, and a few of the white beans that I saved before tossing into the eggplant dish. Sergio skipped the dressing. I added in a tiny drizzle of Italian I had saved from a delivery meal. They always give us way too much and I feel like it's such a waste to toss it in the trash. I rarely buy Italian dressing and was surprised at how good this was with the salad.

Dessert
Lots and lots of super sweet, gigantic strawberries from the Eagle Rock Farmer's Market, purchased on the preceding Friday.

If we had ended here, it would have been perfect. But of course, I scrounged around and found some Italian chocolate I had hidden away. >sigh< This diet is going to be hard.