What a Feast: Rosemary Focaccia (vegetarian)

I just realized I haven't posted on this blog for a very (!) long time.  My jet-setting life has prevented me from doing some serious blog posts, so here's a short one.  I bought some awesome deli meats from Goose the Market in Indianapolis, IN (official website, yelp review) on my latest escapade.  I picked up some very soft baguette in the Italian Market area of Philly, but I made sandwiches with all of those.  I came home staring at the deli meat and realized I had no more bread to make sandwiches with!  While the fruit-and-meat plate (no cheese, because I don't want to be suffering all the time) idea is always classy, sometimes a little grain goes a long way in the stomach.  I wanted to buy some focaccia for the sandwich, but then the cold weather made a total wimp out of me and grounded me at home.  I looked for a recipe online and found this, which was simple enough.  


I did use dried rosemary instead of fresh because I don't have fresh ones on hand (and did you miss the part where the weather kicked me in the groin real hard so I was staying in to lick my wounds?).  Also, since I don't have all night to wait for the bread to rise twice, I split the rising between 2 different days.  I kept the dough in the fridge in between so that it doesn't ferment (and the mice won't get to it).  I suspect that the original recipe asks for fresh spices for a practical reason (and a slightly food-snobbery reason)-- dried-up leaves and twigs tend to catch on fire easily.  Since I let the dough sit for over 20-some hours, the dried rosemary should have a little bit of time to hydrate, saving us from having Smokey the Bear coming out of the oven.  


Here're two shots of the finished product:  

Close-up shot of the grains.  Bun height is low because I didn't have enough dough and probably didn't let it rise for longer (I did leave it out for at least 3 hours, but the dough was cold so go figure).  I do like the slightly denser texture of the bread though, so letting the dough rise longer may not be an option.  

Top-down shot.   My hungry self already trimmed the end to " test the product out" by dipping them into high quality extra virgin olive oil (thanks Mariana and Domingos for bringing me the highest quality olive oil back from Portugal!).  The dimples on top are very nice.  For some reason, my oven won't brown the top of my bread.  I took matters into my own hand-- I used the broiler to achieve the "oven-fresh" look.  Without that, my bread looks like a stereotypical computer science geek's skin color-- white-washed.  


When I baked the bread, I started smelling the rosemary around like 16 minutes in, which lead me to believe that my rosemary hydration therapy worked (look for that in your local pharmacy's skin care aisle!).


I'm very happy with the way this comes up except the height issue.  I did not document how I make this bread because...  I don't want my phone to have dough on it...  Now I just need to try this with the fancy deli meats.   


Bon appetit!    

What a feast: Homemade Thai Food (vegetarian, pescetarian)

I felt like making Thai curry since I haven't had Thai food for a while a couple nights ago, so I went ahead and made myself some green vegetarian curry.  As luck would have it, just after Monday Thai food night, I was invited to have Thai for dinner on Tuesday (yay!  more Thai food...)  JP came back for her monthly visit this week, so the two of us and a couple other friends went to Erawan in Chinatown (official website, yelp review).  


Enough about my restaurant adventure (that's another show)!  Drum rolls please for my green Thai curry... 

I adjusted the color of the photo slightly because my kitchen has very yellow lighting.  "Edible" ingredients were bell peppers, straw mushrooms, baby corns, eggplants, and mock duck. Yes, I said mock duck-- this is vegetarian remember?  I like a stronger curry taste so I ended up adding about 40% less coconut milk than recommended on the package.  It turned out really spicy.  JP had beef green curry too at Erawan, and she couldn't finish hers because it was too sweet.  I tried the curry as well and I noticed the intense sweetness-- it's definitely unnatural for a curry to be this sweet!  I stepped in, took that curry home, and blended it with my green curry.  The result was a less spicy green curry.  This double batch curry would last me through the week.  


It isn't Thai food night without some Tom Yum Goong soup (wiki here).  For the record, the supermarkets do sell Tom Yum soup base, but I used Thai chili paste and crab paste instead for my Tom Yum soup-- this is as close to scratch as I possibly can get in the US.  Since this is Tom Yum Goong (and not Tom Yum Gai), I made it with shrimps (Goong means shrimp in Thai), I got some shrimp heads that I didn't want to waste.  First thing is the soup base, which is made with shrimp heads, lemon grass, galangal, and onion.  I'm pretty sure the Thais have their "holy trinity" (or "mirepoix" or "sofrito"), It probably isn't those 3 vegetation though (NY Times think it's cliantro, green onions, and culantro in the north, a guy on Tumblr thinks it's cilantro, garlic, and bird's eye chili).  Good enough for now I guess...

Again, I adjusted the photo colors.  After filtering out all the unwanted heads and such, I mixed the stock up with more lemon grass, bird's eye chili, Thai chili paste (Nam Prig Pow), crab paste, de-shelled, de-veined and decapitated shrimps, cleaned squids, baby corns, Enoki mushrooms, and a handful of green and red bell peppers.  Why no straw mushrooms?  Because yours truly was too retarded and added all the straw mushrooms to the green curry...  As for the bell peppers, that's more for bulking up the soup.  The soup is seasoned with fish sauce and lime juice to taste (no kaffir lime and its leaves here, so lime juice would have to do).  Here's a shot of the finished product:  

On most US restaurant's Tom Yum Goong, I have three pet peeves, not in any particular offending order:  1.  there're tomatoes inside the soup, and 2. they are usually super light and taste like nothing, and 3. they are neither sour or spicy.  The red color from the broth is NOT from tomatoes-- it's from the Thai red chili paste (or if you're lucky, the shrimp/crab broths that the chef used to make the soup)!  Stop using tomatoes to fool those poor gringos!  My homemade version was rich with shrimpy, crabby (in a good way), and chili paste goodness-- may be a hair too rich for Thai taste, but I like bold punches on a cold night.  


A side note:  when I go out for Thai food, I usually take a test drive on their Tom Yum soup, curry, and maybe a saute noodle dish.  If either the soup or curry fails, I probably won't go back to the place again unless they make me a killer saute noodle dish that make me chase the wok hei dragon all night (hey!  Check out my previous entry on wok hei here if you haven't already!).  When a Thai place fails at making curry and Tom Yum soup, it is like an Italian restaurant fails at making pasta with marinara sauce and minestrone soup (and you know the "Italian" restaurant here would get a visit from Chef Ramsay... The Thai restaurant, likely not).  


Anyways, bon appetit!  If you would like me to feature any of these in GastroLab with Love or Mad Scientists at Work, drop me a line in the comments!  

What a feast: Meals for Snow-Sports "Champions"

A couple friends and I joined up with a bigger group this past Saturday for some powder icy fun up on Blue Mountain.  Seeing a great opportunity to show off and to make the other no-shows jealous, I decided to make some great food for all of us... well, I'm really not trying to show off... I just make something special for this occasion.

For Friday night, we had paella de mariscos:  

I don't really want to spend money on real langostinos (besides the fact that they're difficult to find head-on-- I believe Chinatown supermarkets sell them but I need to investigate further.  UPDATE:  LAGOSTINOS FOUND!) as my first attempt on paella, so medium shrimps with heads would have to do.  I originally was going to have mussels, but the fish monger at Whole Foods marked the wrong weight (there's absolutely no way that 15 mussels is going to weigh 3 lbs, I saw him weighing it too!), so I balked at the price and returned the mussels at the cashier.  I didn't realize the weight mistake until I got home, so no mussels for you!  

Here's a closer-up shot:  

Look at how classy this is....

Saturday morning before we went off to the slope, I made a frittata with spicy italian sausages, onion, shreds of basil, and fresh mozzarella cheese.  I figured since we'll be using a lot of our muscles, a high protein diet is called for (and I can actually eat it without repercussion too!)  Here's a shot of 1 wedge of the frittata:  

Look at the lightly melted cheese on top contrasted with the basil's green and the egg's yellow.  The eggs were just done so they were still a little soft-- great contrast with the chunky sausage bits.  

Continuing the high protein theme, lunch was self-assembled sandwiches with black forest ham, soppressata (although the one I got wasn't quite as dry-cured as the one on wiki), fresh mozzarella cheese, roasted eggplants, and basil.  I also threw in a couple Luna bar, sweet potato chips, and strawberry koala's march crackers to snack on throughout the day.  No pictures though...  hands were too greasy to take pictures.  

No meals are complete without dessert.  We went to Isgro (official website, yelp review) after lunch on Sunday before sending my friends off to New York.  Here's what we got: 

Top left:  "Peche alla creme."  Top right:  "Italian rum square."  Bottom:  "Mascarpone cannoli."  

The highlights were definitely the peche alla creme and the Italian rum square (Isgro is famous for their Italian rum cake).  The mascarpone cannoli was good but definitely got out-compared by other desserts here.  

All in all, it was a great exercise and great food weekend.  There's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to eat like this unless I go back on the slopes.  

Bon appetit!   

What a feast! Happy (late) Mardi Gras!

Technically Mardi Gras had already passed, but I figured I should let you, my dear readers, know what I made for Mardi Gras.  Being Mardi Gras is a Tuesday, the Pre-Mardi Gras party actually hosted by Brian from Louisiana in New York this past Saturday.  I got 1 bead without flashing (great news for everyone!).  Party features King Cake, seafood gumbo, saute collard greens/watercress, corn bread and beignets!  


Many thanks to Andreas for letting me stink up his house with shrimpy smell mixed with burnt flour, Evan and Christine for crab and shrimp cleaning, Alex for killing those succulent crabs, Sinziana for lots of contribution around the kitchen, and Brian for hosting and tolerating our wanton ways in his kitchen.  By the way, the smoke alarm at Brian's house went off 2 times within a 2-3 hour period.  I bet this had never happened to him before.  Also, he has a really nice stove-- I'm very jealous.  Pictures on the food after the jump!  

Saute collard greens/watercress, corn bread, seafood gumbo 

Just the greens 

Seafood gumbo in serving bowl.  

This thing is homemade all the way down to the seafood stock!  

Beignets-- finished product.  

I'm that green monster on the right hand side with the vat of frying oil.  I need to scare people away from the beignets!

Bonus gallery:  

Close-up shot of just the seafood gumbo!  Look at those chunky crab meat... Thanks for picking them out!

Beignets frying-- look at how happy they are bathing in oil...

Beignets getting their trademark powder sugar dusting.  Hand model:  Sinziana 

No pictures of the King Cake, but I can tell you 1 person got both babies in the cake!  Also, thanks Andreas for providing color-readjustment to some of the pictures.  You can tell which are his and which are mine....

Feast on this over your dusty monitors...  

What a feast: Chinese New Year Eve edition

For us Chinese, there's not a single joyous holiday that comes without a feast.  Chinese new year (CNY) is no different.  The Hong Kongers usually celebrated CNY eve with a giant feast as it is considered the second most important holiday of the year (the most important being winter solstice).  When I was young, my dad's side family would get together on CNY eve for the feast.  Some of the foods were prepared during the day and were used as offerings to our ancestors, then were served as dinner later in the day.  This meal usually consists of items that allude to good luck.  We would always have chicken, fish, a stew dish with expensive dried goods (usually they are either some fungi or they are from the sea), and something vegetarian.  Having chicken or fish in a meal isn't particularly a big deal today, but way back in the day, it better be a big deal before you bust that knife out to kill the chicken and the fish because those are worth at least a couple weeks worth of regular meal.  We eat fish because fish sounds like "leftover" in Chinese, which really means you have so much that you have leftover or surplus.  As much as we gripe about leftovers today, it is a luxury to have leftovers because you have to be rich to have surplus of things.  The stew dish with expensive dried goods usually has some names with blessing for the next year  (e.g. 發財好市, i.e. make lots of money and have a prosperous year, translation here.  Or 橫財就手, i.e. unexpected wealth right at your fingertips, translation here.  The “seaweed” is really not seaweed, it’s a type of cyanobacteria from genus nostoc that grows in the desert.  It looks like hair, hence it’s called “hair vegetable”.  The truth is, you may get rich eating this stuff, but the land it grew on definitely loses when you harvest because the soil would lose vegetation and becomes poorer as the nitrogen-fixing capability is being removed.  See Chinese wiki entry here.  Translation here.).  The vegetarian dish brings in fiber requirements for the day and would be eaten as the first meal on new years day in my family.  I suspect that this really may have something to do with cleansing the digestive system for more feasting later, but my mom said it’s the chicken’s birthday and therefore we should not kill any animals for good luck (who wants to be killed, least of all on their birthday, unless the person is suicidal or something?)

Even though I’m mostly alone in Philadelphia, I try to keep up with the tradition as my own little way to celebrate CNY.  This year, my CNY eve feast is below:  

Four dishes... and they are:  

Back: 富貴雞  “Wealthy chicken” (pork-and-pickled-vegetable-stuffed chicken wrapped in lotus leaf and bake in “clay”, which is really bread flour for me, and I’ll trade out the bread flour when I make it next time.  Of Zhejiang origin)
Front left: 水煮魚片 “water-cooked” fish (it’s really not water-- it’s fish cooked in a broth with spicy fermented bean paste, “sichuan” peppercorn, star anise and dried chili pepper dressed with sesame oil.  This is a Sichuanese dish)
Front middle: 花團錦簇  “Bunches of flowers” (ground pork stuffed dried fish maw in abalone sauce.  Of Cantonese origin)
Front right: 齋 “The vegetarian dish”  (Mixed vegetable cooked with Monascus-fermented bean curd <南乳>.  See wiki here for what a fermented bean curd is. I believe this is Cantonese)  

Have fun drooling over the photos!  If someone requests a Gastrolab entry on any of these items, I may just put them up....