Creature of the Kitchen Counter.
Despite the super hot and rather humid weather today, Mom, Dad and I ventured over to our local Pathmark.
I enjoy supermarkets. I really do. And today after we picked out watermelons and continued to the meat section, I accidentally lost my parents. The way a little kid gets lost in a supermarket. But I eventually found them. And lost them again. Then wandered, wandered…
After a determined hunt at Kam Man, a supermarket on Canal Street, I found where they keep the coffee makers. Percolators, French presses? No, not for me. I made a micro splurge– a little less than four bucks got me a Vietnamese Coffee filter.
I’ve recently become a little obsessed with Vietnamese style coffee since I started buying iced coffee again in Chinatown. There’s a little, family-owned bakery on Mulberry street that I frequent the most out of any bakery, because it’s got the homestyle feel to things. It’s a Mom and Pop type store and retains not only traditional family values (it’s reflected by the way the place runs, in my opinion) but also traditional Chinese bakery goods.
Enough reflection. Time to hit the lab.
Hardware: 1 Vietnamese coffee filter, glass that is heat tempered (eg. will not shatter if you pour hot water into it!), spoon.
Software: ~2 spoonfuls of coffee grounds (either pre-ground or grind your own,) hot water (less around 200° F) and condensed milk.
(I’ve heard that these filters are available online, but if you can find them in a well-stocked supermarket, it’s probably going to cost less.) Why use it? It’s easy to clean, easy to use, makes one serving and takes up hardly any space. It requires no paper filter, so if you’re trying to make efforts in going green, this helps a bit. Read the rest of this entry »
It wasn’t until I purchased a new camera this past Black Friday (you know, almost a year ago) that I realized I had macro mode on my old Canon all along. Hmph.
First task: clean up the mess of chronology in this blog. Admittedly, the last time I logged in and did something was at least a year and a half ago. And now…I’m not sure why the entries are in reverse order.
I’ve been uploading photos onto Flickr like crazy. It could be my iMoleskine if there ever were such a thing. This will make task two easy: writing entries once again.
Sunday morning was spent waking up another 2 1/4 tsp of yeast cells. This time it was to make cinnamon buns instead of focaccia. The recipe I had was adapted from the Wheat Foods Council’s website.
WW Cinnamon Buns
Cinnamon Smear
Measure out 1/2 tsp sugar from the 1/4 C sugar. Dissolve the dry yeast in the warm water, adding this 1/2 tsp of sugar and let it stand for 5 minutes. In a large metal bowl, melt butter, add milk and warm over low heat (just so that the milk isn’t coooold.) Add a sprinkling of salt and the rest of the sugar. Stir and add the yeast mixture to this large bowl. Add WW flour and mix well; add AP flour slowly. Dough should be sticky and soft.
Knead until smooth and elastic (10-15 min by hand) and place in a greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and keep in a warm place. Let it rise until doubled in size. Punch down, cover, and let rise. Repeat and let rest for 10 minutes.
Cream the smear ingredients until soft and pliable. Roll out the dough into a 12″ by 16″ rectangle and spread the smear into the dough, leaving 1″ uncovered. Brush the uncovered strip with water. Starting from the covered short-edge, roooooll. Cut into 12 pieces and place into a 9″ by 13″ greased pan. Let rise until double in size (15-20 minutes)
Preheat oven to 375° F. When ready, place the pan of risen dough into oven and bake for 20 minutes or until golden.
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This year, I wrestled with ingredients in the kitchen for about 3.5 hours to make 4 dishes. Fortunately, my brother is home now, so he helped out a lot by caramelizing onions and stirring things on the stove top.
Anyway. I started by cleaning the chicken, which was really no challenge, except yanking off the fat as much as possible was a little tricky. There wasn’t a little packet of giblets in the chicken. 
So sad.
The Chicken who Wants to be a Turkey
Clean the chicken and use your hands to separate the skin from the muscles. Check for deep tissue deposits of fat and remove the fat. Rinse and pat dry. Squeeze one-half of the lemon and combine olive oil and seasonings together and rub into the chicken (inside cavity, between skin and meat, on top of the skin.) Slide in minced garlic and chopped lemon pieces into the chicken. Pre-heat oven at 450°F. Julienne veggies while the oven heats. Put the chicken in when it’s hot enough and let it cook by itself for ~15-20 minutes. Add the julienned veggies into the pan and lower heat to ~375°F. Cook for about 60-120 minutes, depending on size of confused poultry.
Ratatouille
Think about Pixar and Remi. Heat cast-iron skillet on stove top. When the pan is ready, add oil, garlic and onions. Cook until soft, then add the can of tomato sauce. Cook and season with thyme, salt and pepper; add bay leaf. Turn off heat and add carrots. Slice the squash, and zucchini evenly. Depending on the size and shape of the eggplant, slice and quarter the slices so that they’re almost the same size as the squash. Arrange eggplants on top of the sauce; arrange the sliced squash and zucchini on top of the sauce. Add minced garlic, more salt and pepper and drizzle olive oil on top. Bake at ~375°F, loosely covered in foil. Remove foil ~30 minutes into baking and continue baking until cooked.
Curried Vegetable Soup
Chop vegetables leftover from ratatouille recipe. Cook in a pot with oil and garlic; add curry powder, some apple cider vinegar and taste. Add some chicken bullion or other seasoning as needed. Puree with hand blender and add water as needed.
Whole Wheat Onion Focaccia
Dissolve yeast and sugar in water. Let the little critters burp for about 10 minutes. Mix both flours in a bowl and combine well. Add the proofed yeast and mix well; add water as needed until dough forms. Knead a until a ball forms; oil bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it sit for ~30 minutes, double in size. Punch down and flatten out on an oiled pan. Top with caramelized onion and drizzle olive oil. Bake in ~375°F oven for 20-3o minutes.
After a long hiatus, I’m writing again. Regularly? I hope so, but very uncertain.
Yesterday Irene and I went to the City Bakery. Melanie suffered many commuter disruptions and other incidents in addition to a rainy, Saturday morning. So she couldn’t join us.
For a very long time, I’ve heard about City Bakery. Supposedly, they make some of the best hot chocolate in NYC. At $4.50 per small cup and a small vat of chocolate that is continuously tempering, it’s hard to imagine them making any mediocre chocolate-related beverages.
Of course. I didn’t get the hot chocolate.
Instead, for breakfast, I had oatmeal. Why? Because I’ve never had oatmeal outside of the walls of my house. Seriously.
I needed to see how other people serve it, so I splurged $3 on a small cup, which is literally about one cup volume, of cooked oatmeal. Topped with wheat germ, raisins and toasted coconut to my liking.
It was great. It stayed on my spoon when I had it upside down, because it was that gelatinous. I’m a fan of super thick oatmeal. My parents usually make more of a soup-like consistency, so I need to beat them to cooking it whenever I want things my way. :\
As a side note, if you’ve ever cooked up oatmeal and saw it thicken? That’s what soluble fiber does in our bodies– thickens up and cleans our insiiiides.
But I digress.
Irene had caramelized French toast with a side of potatoes. Of the homefries nature.
It was a very big chunk of French toast. So much height, I thought was many slices of bread magically adhered together. With the magical-ness that is custard, butter and caramel.
Of course, I was wrong and it was just a really, really thick piece of bread to begin with. Irene couldn’t finish it, so I had a few bites. By far, it’s much better than the sad and depressing French toast I had at the Paris Paris breakfast buffet in Vegas. The caramel was excellent; its flavor offset the heavier effects of the moist inside.
After sitting and chatting, we went downstairs to find that brunch or lunch is ready to serve. It was a beautiful spread of very diverse foods.
City Bakery is located at 3 West 18th Street and is open 7 days a week.
If sitting and studying for endless hours were a sport, I’d be a potential Olympic favorite. Right before finals week, I had two exams, two weeks apart. Lucky me, that means studying nearly every moment possible for the last 3.5-4 weeks.
If I really had to, I would sit on a rock all day. But I didn’t have to. So I got up and had food occasionally. This was not the case if I were studying in the library, but at home, that was a different story.
Within this time frame, there was Mom’s birthday. And she loves egg tarts. So I got her egg tarts and a few other favorites that we haven’t had since long, long ago.
These were from Lung Moon Bakery somewhere on Mulberry Street in Chinatown. Why get them there? Unlike most bakeries, they are still purists in the sense that they make a puff pastry shell for their tarts. Many bakeries have a cookie-like shell that’s somewhere crunchy or tender. Mom doesn’t like those.
I also went to Savoy Bakery to get some Napoleons, which are layer pastries.
What I enjoy most about them is the fact that the spongy layer is soft, get chewy. It happens that these were sweeter than the Kolawster bakery that used to be near it.
Then, a few days later, as per Dad’s suggestion, Mom picked up some more flaky egg tarts from Dragon Pearl Bakery. Yes, they had a flaky crust, but they cost more and were smaller. Boo.
(Yes, I was studying fo’ physics that weekend…)
In regards to the smaller portion size, the custard itself wasn’t extra eggy or anything. A little bit more dense? Maybe. But there wasn’t too big of a difference in taste. Or maybe this is a reason for me to re-purchase these items and have a taste test, simultaneously.
Then the day after, while studying away the many chapters of Physics, Mom called to let me know she’d be home late. And that I can make whatever I want to feed myself ahead of time.
I wanted breakfast. For dinner.
After reheating the Chinese greens and string beans, I had also toasted a piece of whole wheat bread and scrambled two eggs with some cheddar. There: carb, protein and fat. With extra fiber.
That same night, we had dessert, because Mom bought an Entenmann’s cake. (I know, what a culinary crime.)
Listen. Don’t judge us, just because we had this box of evil lurking in our fridge. Okay? Face it, you do something downright dirty every once in a while. This is our “downright dirty” act.
For a sugar rush, this definitely was worthwhile. However, the frosting left a weird, polymeric feel on my teeth. Oh, gotta love them chemicals.
Your brain loves glucose.
Other foods I had during finals week to get through the studying? Generally, they all follow the trend of being complex carbs with some protein and fat. Yep.
Egg and bolona between toasted whole wheat bread.
Raisin bran cereal, sans milk. So I could eat it like a snack with my fingers. Or just plain eat it like a barbarian. 
Finally, the most time-consuming, but well-worth the time dish I made for lunch one day:
Eccola! Fettuccini with kidney beans and peas. I can’t remember what I put in the sauce. But I do remember that I was just about to study for Organic chemistry once again.
This would be the shortest summary ever of the last few weeks of my life…in food. I’m finally finished with school for the year, but there’s still more to study for (um, GREs and MCAT possibly…oy.) In any case, the lack of updates since having gone to Cornell? Errrr…I’ll try to remedy that, but I’m not particularly inspired to do so at the moment. It wouldn’t be surprising to find new entries that are backdated.
Lately, I have been horrible with my eating. In fact, I will even go as far as saying I’ve been a nutrition badass, in the worst way possible.
As if the random and between homework snackage isn’t enough, dessert tonight involved another sugar rush.
These are little bundles of sponge cake, covered on all sizes by a light later of creamy frosting and toasted coconut. These are generic finds in any Chinese bakery in New York City. These in particular were adorned with more frosting on top and and fruit curds, like strawberry and lemon; the other one was a flavorless (well, I guess sweet is a flavor…) icing gel.
They’re nothing spectacular or extrodinary. A particular pet peeve I have about cakes from Chinese Bakery is that there are generally n choices of toppings to go on top of sponge cake and two kinds of sponge– chocolate or vanilla. Oh, and n < 5.
Sigh.
But, they’re good for a lighter dessert cake that has a sugary frosting.