Brunch for a crowd

I had invited a few east side coworkers over for brunch. I've been cooking up a storm the day before. Two kinds of strata, chard/Gruyere and mushroom/onion/Monterey Jack. Pan roasted red potatoes with thyme. Pan seared pork and chicken sausages. And of course, my famous cinnamon cardamom buns with cream cheese icing.

Gerard is taking a huge bite of the cinnamon bun.

Happy 2012!!!

For the first blog of the new year, I decided to recap some of the yummy homemade stuff we've eaten in the last week of 2011. There was oven fried calamari, minestrone with shredded chicken, potato stuffed pastry top with an egg, tender duck legs, cinnamon buns, dark chocolate haystack bars and wait for it... pumpkin cheesecake.

Oh, yeah, we said we were going on a diet coming back from India to recover from the rich food we ate there. Oh well... Happy 2012, everyone!!!

Moon-sized Calzone

We had some home-made pizza dough left in our fridge after a pizza party. Jose's been hinting at me that calzones would make him very happy. So I looked through the fridge for things to fill the calzone with, left over chicken sausage, half tub of ricotta cheese, a bunch of rainbow chard and some mushrooms.

Once the veggies been sauted separately, just roll out the dough and start layer things on half of the dough.

Fold the other half of the dough over and seal along the edges, brush the outside with egg wash and cut a few slits for venting.

Pop it in the oven at 350 for 30min or so and voilà, you have yourself a fulfilling dinner.

Flipping a zucchini pancake

This was the most successful one among the four I attempted.

Peach crumble

I bought 10lbs of peaches and nectarines from Saturday farmers market over the weekend. I had to think of a way to use them all up before they go had.

A simple peach crumble would do. The extra topping is always a treat.

Lenka and Chris' garden

We were invited to Chris and Lenka's place for bbq last weekend, and got a tour of their backyard garden. It's not huge, about 10ft by 20ft, but it's got a lot to offer.

The tomatoes are starting to take on red hues. There are lettuce plants of different kinds. Some pea pods are getting plump on the vine. The peas inside are sweet and tender. Juicy cucumbers are hiding underneath the leaves close to the ground. Broccoli is peeking through the leaves and stalks. There are also a couple of sunflower plants towards the back of the yard.

We had salad that's picked from the yard

One of the things they made for dinner was grilled corns on cobs, dressed in Mexican style with Mexican cheese, sour cream/mayo combo and dusted with cayenne pepper. It was out of this world good. 

Mexican corn on a cob

It makes me jealous of their yard and wish that we had our own.

Tina's killer oven fried wings

This was an accidental recipe that I adapted from two different recipes and improvised a little more. But it turned out the best wings both of us have had.

Tina's killer wings

I rub the wings (padded dry) with salt, five spice powder and some old bay. Let them marinade for at least 8 hrs. Just before putting them in the oven, I lightly coated each wing with a corn starch and baking powder mixture. Arranged on a wire rack over a baking pan, and baked at 425 degree for half an hour, rotating half way through.

light coat of corn starch mixture

While wings were baking, I made a sauce with sriracha, tahini, rice vinegar, honey, fresh garlic and ginger. Blended all ingredients till smooth. Once the wings are out of the oven, throw them in a big bowl, pour the sauce over the wings and shake to coat well. Consume immediately.

Srirachi/tahini sauce

Just out of the oven wings; the skin is so incredibly flaky

need I say more?

Beeting heart

I went by a farm a mile away from my work on Friday, and picked up some fresh organic produce for the weekend. It made me feel all Portlandic. =)

I got lots of beets, both golden and regular. Gave them a good scrub and roasted them in the oven. They're super sweet. The flesh is beautiful. They are also really good for improving bowel movement, if you know what I mean...

Blueberry pie

It's farmer's market day again on Nike campus. Unger farm was there too with their enticing berries. I went a little overboard and got a whole flat of berries, four pints of blueberries and two pints strawberries. For people who haven't had Oregon strawberries before, it's hard to describe to you how much better they are than the standard ones from California. The blueberry has a silky buttery mouth feel and it's juicy and sweet.

I bought more than we can eat fresh, so I decided last second to make a blueberry pie. Because it's last second, ready-made store-bought pie doughs have to do. I use Pillsbury one that comes in a pack of two roll-up doughs.

Blueberry pies are the easiest to make. You dress the berries with some lemon juice, a bit of sugar and touch of salt. Coat them with 2-3 tablespoon of cornstarch. And that's it. The berries are fairly sweet naturally, I cut the sugar down to 2 tablespoons. You can find more elaborate pie recipes at America's Test Kitchen, which involves using natural pectin from apples. That's not something I was going to attempt on a week night. =)

The baked pie has such a rustic look with over flowing blueberry juice, still bubbling out of the oven.
Guess what's for breakfast tomorrow?

Slow cooker pulled pork

Since it's been wet and cold all weekend, I took out our slow cooker, which hasn't been used since we moved here. I was wanting meat, tender falling-off-the-bone pork, in particular. Ever wonder why people tend to crave comfort food when it's cold and miserable?

America's Test Kitchen has a simple pulled pork recipe for slow cookers. It calls for a 6-7lb pork butt and a couple cups of BBQ sauce. You just put both in the slow cooker pot and cook them on high setting for 8hrs. I set it up in the morning and left the house. By 6pm, dinner's almost ready.

The result was amazing. I did have to boil the cooking juice down to thickened sauce once the pork is taken out. When the sauce is simmering, I shredded the meat with forks. Mix in the sauce and we were ready to eat. It's good on a bun, in a tortilla shell, over rice or noodles. We served it with a simple salad.

summer tomatoes and romaine salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing

steamed fish

Uwajimaya is a Japanese chain grocery store in the northwest. The original one is in Seattle, I think. There's one not far from my work. We picked up a red tilapia from the seafood section, all gutted and scaled.

One of the best way to cook a whole fish is steaming. We stuffed it with garlic, ginger and fresh cilantro, and generously salted it. It took about 15min on full steam to cook this pound and half fish. The flesh was tender and flavorful. The best part was the head of course. =)

You can call it fresh fish at its simplest.

Braised short ribs

I wanted to make something fancy for our anniversary dinner. Braised short ribs came to mind. I followed a recipe from America's Test Kitchen cook book. A very similar recipe can be found online, but it's not quite the same. For one the recipe from my book didn't call for gelatin.

I bought about 4lbs of short ribs. For most of the pieces, there was a considerable layer of fat on one side. I trimmed them off with a knife. Be very careful when you do that. I sliced my hand when the knife slipped.

First step is to sear the ribs to give them nice crusts and also to help develop flavor. This would render a lot of fat off the meat as well. I did it in batches to not crowd the pan. 

After the ribs were all nicely seared and browned, I took out excess fat from the pan and sauted some carrots, celery and garlic to "mop" up the brown bits from searing the ribs. I then added tomato paste and flour to the pan, before pouring in red wine and broth to build up a sauce. Once the sauce is simmering, the ribs would go back in. The whole pan would go in a 300 degree oven for 3 hours until the meat is following off the bone tender. 

The entire house was filled with that intoxicating aroma the whole afternoon. Once it's done, take out the ribs and set aside. You are supposed to strain the sauce and use just the liquid. For reason of laziness, I decided to forgo that step and just use the sauce as is with all the cooked up veggie bits. You could serve this with mashed potatoes or egg noodles. We decided to go with a slightly healthier option, brown rice. It was every bit as delicious.

For those who don't like brown rice, try Sweet Brown Rice from Asian stores. They are nutty, tender with a hint of sweetness and occasionally bitterness, in a good way. It's my favorite kind of rice.

Sunday brunch

It was a dreary Sunday morning, cold and drizzling. I woke before 7am and came downstairs to start prepping for brunch. I've invited Lisa and Cecilia to come over at 10am. Lisa works with Jose, and she's extremely nice and likable. We just discovered Cecilia, another IDer/IITer in Portland, about two weeks ago. She has an infectious laughter.

For brunch, I had three things on the menu: chard/gruyere strata, cinnamon rolls and home fries. I had started on the first two the night before. All I needed to do this morning for the cinnamon rolls was to roll them out and let them rise for another hour or so. For home fries, I wanted to do a mix of potatoes and sweet potatoes. The strata looks fabulous this morning. All the ingredients have been soaking in the egg/milk/cream mixture overnight. All I had to do is top with more cheese and pop it in the oven for an hour.

Home fries with potatoes, sweet potatoes and green peppers

For recipes of chard/gruyere strata and cinnamon rolls, you can find them on Serious Eats blog. I substituted rainbow chard for spinach in the strata.

After raising in a warm oven for an hour, the cinnamon rolls looked so adorable.

Luckily both the strata and the cinnamon rolls would bake at 325 degree. So half way through baking the strata, I threw in the cinnamon rolls. They'd be finished at the same time.
Even though I specifically asked Lisa not to bring anything, she brought over treats from her favorite French-y bakery from her neighborhood. Cecilia also brought her home-made bread pudding and strawberry salad. We ended up with enough food to feed an army of ten.

Baked goods from St. Honore Boulangerie

Cecilia's two-in-one bread pudding

The strata was very tender and so were the cinnamon rolls.

The strata's got a nice crust and a warm and gooey center

With pots of freshly pressed coffee, we sat by the table and devoured all the yummy food, determined not to let the dreary weather get to us.
It's gotta be one of my favorite things to do, Sunday brunch at home with wonderful friends.

Roasted artichokes

I think it's the artichoke season, because all grocery stores are advertising deals on artichokes lately.
Traditionally we would simply boil them in salt and lemony water. But I wanted to try roasting them for once.

I cut them in half lengthwise after trimming off sharp pricks, immediately brush the cut sides generously with lemon juice/olive oil/salt mixture. Then I'd place them cut side down on a roasting pan, roast them at 400 degree for about 35-40 minutes, rotating the pan half way through.

I have to say I wouldn't go back to boiling them now that I've tried roasting. The cut sides of the artichokes are caramelized and take on an even sweeter note. And they look beautiful too.

Goat cheese brownies

This is another recipe from Serious Eats. They're heavily featuring recipes from a book on all things goats recently. This was one of them.

We are fans of goat cheese. It's hard to imagine that I didn't like cheese just ten years ago when I first came to this country. I thought they all smelled and tasted like stinky socks. But I'm glad I learned to like cheese over the years, as there's so much wonder in the world of cheese.

I like buying cheese from Trader Joe's. They carry a variety of cheeses at very low prices. I can not see myself going back to WholeFoods for cheese unless we are throwing a fancy party. TJ carries this fresh Chevre that comes in an 8-oz log. That's what I used for making the brownies.

The resulting brownies have a distinctive goat cheese aroma, but a very subtle tang when you taste it. The crumbs are very moist. I also cut the sugar by 1/2 cup from the original recipe, as I don't like overly sweet things. It was just the right level of sweetness for me.

Homemade dumplings

Since we had those awesome dumplings at Frank's noodle house, I wanted to see if I can make them at home. The filling at Frank's is pork and chives. That's easy enough. Note what Chinese call chives is different from the common western herb. Chinese version is a lot more pungent when it's raw and is often used as a vegetable ingredient than a herb.

I made my filling with finely chopped chives (thanks to Jose and his sore wrist from chopping), ground pork, soy sauce, five spice powder and a dash of xiaoxing wine. I also added an egg for binding the ingredients together. I bought ready made wrappers to save time. I decided that we were going to boil them instead of pan searing or steaming in order to max the comfort factor. Nothing warms you up like a plate of just boiled dumplings.

They look really neat before cooking

Again it took me over two hours to make 50 dumplings. It barely took us 20 minutes to eat 30 of them. My filling isn't as soft as Frank's. Mine has higher meat-to-chives ratio (I sound like a nerd, I know), which might have contributed to the tougher texture. The store-bought wrappers are also inferior to home-made ones. But they are quite delicious indeed. For the amount of work I put in, this would remain an occasional indulgence.

Soup dumplings

It’s been a while since I blogged about what I’ve been cooking for the past few weeks (on the weekends only). So I’m posting multiple entries at once to catch up.

It’s been pretty much the same temperature in Portland since we moved here three months ago. High 50s and low above freezing. But the rain and lack of sun has made me crave comfort food. To me comfort food is typically carbs-laden and steaming warm. Kenji from Serious Eats was featuring Chinese dishes for a week. One of them was soup dumplings, which are small doughy dumplings with ultra juicy filling, so much so that you need to be careful when biting into a hot dumpling as to not burn your mouth with hot juice bursting out of the dumpling.

I decide to do a version with less fuss. In Kenji’s recipe he’d stuff a chunk of gelatinous “soup” in the dumpling. The heat of cooking would melt the gelatin and create the soupy goodness. But that’s a lot of work. Basically I made soup dumplings without soup. You’d say “would that be plain dumplings?” In Chinese dumplings refer to this other thing. So mine is really soup dumplings minus the soupy part. Make sense? I didn’t think so either…

I made the wrappers and the filling all from scratch. You can follow Kenji’s recipe on both components. I stuffed mine with a mixture of ground pork, shitaki mushroom and lots of chopped scallion. The wrapping of these dumplings isn’t too different from the “pork buns” from the previous post. 

The steamed dumplings have glistening exterior that's both soft and chewy at the same time, if that makes any sense. 

These yummy bites are juicy even without the additional soup gelatin.

The whole process of making the dumplings took about 2 hours. But it took no more than 15 minutes for us to eat them all up. Mmm, carb-y comforting goodness. Now I’m really for a nap.