Today I made Lentil Meatballs with Lemon Pesto as seen on Marin Mama Cooks.
My substitution was chives instead of basil for the pesto since my chive plant was looking like it needed a good hair trimming. We really enjoyed this for lunch, especially with the pesto mixed around in some wheat pasta. The lentil meatballs were really tasty!
Fig Pig Jam with Camembert!
Last night we watched "This Means War" (it was OK) and made "Fig Pig Jam" from the blog Feeding My Folks. Since the hot chocolate mix I used was very non-sugary as it was home made by a friend, we also added two soup spoons of Dalmatia Fig Spread to sweeten it up.
Snacking on the spread with a bit of camembert was quite successful. We also tried baking it in phyllo dough with some camembert to good, but ugly, results...I need to work on my pastry wrapping skills before posting that picture.
I grew up eating and loving Chinese steamed fish with scallions and ginger paired with a lovely soy and oil sauce. Every time we made it, my mom had to keep reminding me to "not eat the fish with the rice" as she was scared of me choking on bones. The trouble was that the sauce and fish went so well over rice it was really hard not to.
Recently I was given Modernist Cuisine or, as I like to call it, "the most expensive cookbooks ever" and I decided to start with something familiar that tapped into my asian pantry and did not require me to order a bunch of lab ingredients.
I chose:
My conclusions:
In any case, it was fun to try something from the books. I think my next targets are the Gruyere Spheres in Oxtail Consomme with Onion Puree and Rye Crisps in book 4, page 190.
p.s. I did not take a picture because the plate was pretty ugly and we were starving. Next time!
This week we made Kitchen Circadia's Korean Fried Chicken Recipe and it was quite tasty as well as my first time working with Gochujang. I used Annie Chun's brand Gochujang because it was what Whole Foods happened to have.
Changes to the original recipe:
We otherwise followed the recipe exactly with double frying the chicken, blow drying it on the cool setting, and then saucing it up with a brush.
Thanks to Kitchen Circadia for the awesome blog!! I look forward to trying other things.
Finally, here is a picture of me with the blow dryer!! ^_^
Got legumes? I need to work on eating down the pantry in the coming weeks!
“KFC” korean fried chicken I was introduced to the phenomena of Korean fried chicken not too long ago, and it really blew my mind, how crispy it was. I decided to write it on the menu this week and it was a surprising hit. We tried recipes off the internet, but they just weren’t cutting it, so we attempted our own. It was pretty good from the get go, but we tweaked the recipe bit by bit each day, trying different flours and ratios until we got one that was very close to one of my favorite joints nearby, 99 Chicken.
Here’s the recipe: batter 2/3 c rice flour 1 tbl cornstarch 1 c soda water 1 tsp baking powder
Whisk together in a bowl. Don’t worry about the lumps. sauce 5 tbl soy sauce 5 tbl gochujang 3 tbl rice vinegar 1 tbl sesame oil 1 tbl honey 2 tbl sugar 2 knobs of ginger 1 head of garlic 1/2 onion, chopped Sautee onions, garlic, and ginger in a pan on medium high with oil. When onions are translucent, add remaining ingredients. Let simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Pick out ginger and discard. Dump the whole thing in a blender and puree until smooth. brine 2/3 c sugar 1/4 c salt 1 gal water I use only dark meat, but use whatever you prefer. Whisk the sugar, salt, and water until it is completely dissolved and then slip the chicken in and let brine for at least a day, and as long as 4 days. Drain and wipe dry before cooking. Once you have the chicken, sauce, and batter ready to go. Set your fryer at 325 F. Coat the chicken in cornstarch, dust off any excess, then dunk it in the batter, and then into the fryer immediately. Fry for 10 minutes. Remove the chicken and let sit for 10 minutes. Return the chicken to the fryer for another 10 minutes. This is where it gets a little weird. After frying, let the chicken drain on a rack and then blow-dry with a hair-dryer on the cool setting for about a minute. I’m not sure what this does exactly, but I’ve seen them doing it at the authentic Korean joints so I’m going to follow suit. Finally, brush (don’t toss!) the sauce onto the chicken and then garnish with finely crushed peanuts. I like to brush the sauce on, rather than tossing it because I think a light coating works best. Also, tossing it can break the crispy skin, although, if you’ve done it right, the skin should pretty resilient and should retain a fire-cracker crisp even after 15 to 20 minutes of being sauced.
I just kicked off the brining process for some tasty Korean Fried Chicken (KFC) using Kitchen Circadia's recipe!
In a small departure from the original recipe, I am very likely going to sous vide the drumsticks before I fry them. This has worked out really well us in the past when making Ad Hoc's Fried Chicken and again for our recent foray into Chicken Karaage (also known as japanese fried chicken or JFC). I love the sous vide method because you only have to worry about getting a nice looking brown during frying because the meat is already cooked. Not only is this method easier on the browning, but you can use wayyyy less oil to get the fry accomplished.
For folks without a sous vide set up I highly recommend Cook's Illustrated's "Easier Fried Chicken" recipe (you can also watch their video). They employ a hybrid technique of first giving the chicken a quick fry to get a nice brown crisp on the outside, again with a lot less oil, and then finishing the chicken in an oven until the meat is done. - This recipe IS behind a subscription pay wall but I also found an adapted version of it over at The Obsessive Chef.
I will post my KFC results later this week! ^_^
Umeboshi Onigiri making (japanese rice balls filled with pickled plums) - We grilled them with soy sauce to turn them into Yaki Onigiri. Then we wrapped them in nori (seaweed sheets) and ate them all before I could take a picture of the finished product. :) (Taken with instagram)
I cooked the rice using dashi broth versus water to impart some extra flavor into our rice balls.
Recipes I consulted before diving into rice ball fun:
Chawan Mushi (japanese savory egg custards) with chicken and shrimp cooked using a Sous Vide Supreme water bath set to 82 Celcius. Cooked for about 1hr and 20 min. (Taken with instagram)
I've made chawan mushi in the past using a number of recipes from the blogosphere and Gourmet, but my current favorite is from "Tess's Japanese Kitchen". We first tried this using chicken broth and then with dashi; I definitely prefer the dashi version although but both were very good.
We got the idea to use our Sous Vide Supreme for this task from the blog "Grace and Wen" and the method has had excellent results for us over the oven water bath and stove top steamer methods we've used in the past.
Sous vide chawan mushi (Taken with instagram)
Star Ruby - Fiona brought this wonderful hibiscus tea infused gin cocktail to our tea party. It accounted for most of the "tea" which was imbibed and is delicious. ^_^ She mentioned having made it with Star Buck's Passion Tea which has hibiscus flowers.
This is definitely on my "must drink again" bucket list.
Salmon Rillettes - A spread with wild and smoked salmon from David Lebovitz's blog.
Extreme tea partying yesterday!
Scrambled eggs with chive blossoms, bordeaux spinach, and a bit of white truffle oil on top.
For this I used Lidia Bastianich's technique (she once demonstrated it on TV - I believe it was the truffles episode - and I tried to find a link describing it but couldn't find one) where you pour the eggs into a cold pan which has olive oil already in it. Then you turn the burner up to high heat and start pulling in the eggs from the outside of the pan in until they are nice and fluffy cooked.
Before I start on my first blog post which, by special request from a few Tumblr users who pointed me at Tumblr, dives into the world of combining truffle products with tasty scallops and brioche, I have a quick story on the topic potentially going over the top with one's truffle habit.
At some point Darrell and I were sitting at the bar of Lavanda, a local Palo Alto restaurant, when the couple next to us generally says to the waitress "That is ok if you cannot truffle that dish, we carry our own bottle of truffle oil everywhere with us so we can truffle everything we eat". On the way home I said that if I ever got that ridiculous about a food item to please point out that I had gone too far.
After cooking this dish once or twice, I have decided that treating one's self to a bit of truffle madness once in awhile is definitely OK. However no bottles of truffle oil will be sneaking into my purse any time soon....could you imagine getting the truffle smell out of your bag if it broke open?
In any case, if you attempt this, happy truffling. This was actually my first time cooking a scallop and it was quite tasty.
Recipe: Seared Scallops with Truffle Salt and Champagne Cream Sauce over Truffle Butter Brioche
Tasty chive flowers
