Ingredients

• 4 or 5 pounds of ground pork (you can use other meats, but they have differing textures)
• A small-medium head of napa cabbage
• A bunch of scallions, thinly sliced
• A bunch of Chinese garlic chives, minced, or if you can’t find them, garlic paste made with coarse salt (about a tablespoon, more if you really want)
• An inch and a half chunk of ginger, grated
• 3-4 eggs (I use about one per pound to pound and a half of meat)
• Soy sauce

Making

Begin by separating the leaves of the napa cabbage and rinsing thoroughly. Roughly chop and place into a large colander, salting very liberally along the way. Let sit for at least 30 minutes, but a couple of hours never hurt. The salt will draw out the water and wilt the cabbage. Once it’s wilted, rinse thoroughly and squeeze the water out using your preferred method – mine is my potato ricer. Twisting in cheesecloth also works. Roughly chop/mince further, using a food processor if you have one. If the cabbage is still very wet, go ahead and squeeze out more water after mincing. The more water you get out, the better.

While you’re doing all of the water extraction, take the ground pork out of the fridge to let it warm up a little bit, or else you will be very unhappy while mixing the ingredients together. To make the garlic paste if needed, use the back of a knife or, even better, a mortar and pestle to smash garlic up with kosher salt until it becomes a paste. When grating the ginger, keep both the pulp and juice, discarding any stringy bits. Dump everything into a big bowl and mix gently but thoroughly with your hands. You can use a spatula if you really want, but I find it to be difficult. Add soy sauce to taste.

Before filling any dumplings, be sure to taste. Take about a teaspoonful and put it on a plate and microwave for about 30 seconds, or pan fry. It will sizzle and smoke a bit in the microwave – don’t worry, just keep an eye on it. If it’s crumbly or falls apart, add another egg. If it’s not salty enough, add more soy sauce. A good filling will be tasty on its own without the need for dipping sauce.

Serving

If you’ve made wontons, they are delicious boiled and then eaten as-is or in soup. I usually make cheater’s soup with Better than Bouillon, a little white pepper, and more sliced scallion (I also have a baggie of them pre-sliced in the freezer). If you want to bulk it up, add some bean thread noodles.

Dumplings are especially delicious when pan fried. Pour a little oil into a cold pan and set over high heat, or medium-high if it’s cast iron. Before the pan gets hot, arrange the dumplings in a single layer slightly separated and pour in enough water to come about halfway up the sides. Cover the pan and let it boil away merrily until the water is gone and the bottoms are browned. If the wrappers had a lot of flour on the outside, they may stick a bit.

Dipping sauce is also infinitely variable, but I keep mine simple with ingredients I always have on hand: 2-3 parts soy sauce, 1 part rice vinegar (balance them depending on your own preferences – I’m not a huge vinegar fan), a sprinkling of sugar, some minced garlic (if you use the pre-minced stuff like I often do, the liquid in the jar is perfect), and a dash or more of chili oil if you like spicy. Mix/whisk it all together, though it’ll separate if it sits.

Bonus

If you have a bunch of leftover filling, you can make Chinese bao zi (buns) with the same filling. I’d add some more soy sauce and maybe a dash of oyster sauce, and then wrap up in a circle of dough and steam each on a wax paper square. You can look for dough recipes if you’re industrious, or do what Chinese-Americans tend to do: buy canned biscuit dough and roll each one out before wrapping some meat inside. They steam up quite deliciously. You can also buy sweet red bean paste (sweet, NOT fermented) and make sweet bao zi.

If you have leftover wrappers, toast them and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, using a little egg wash or maybe butter to make it stick. Also delicious.

More bonus

Videos on how to wrap them! I use water as the glue, but I guess egg whites would work too.

I’ve been promising myself I’d write up the process of making this three-tier wedding cake for Vivian and Julian’s upstate NY half-wedding, so even though it’s been well over a year now, it should still be worth documenting.

The process:

1. Find a pretty design and a delicious cake recipe.
2. Make two colors of royal icing: mauve and a deeper purple.
3. Pipe hundreds of tiny little mauve flowers with purple centers in a couple different sizes over a couple of afternoons while watching trashy television. Let dry.
4. Buy foamboard and custom-cut plywood for cakeboards (the plywood gets glued to foamboard for the bottom one). Carefully wrap in foil.
5. Bake seven cakes. Weep in frustration when an entire 12 inch layer cracks and crumbles (hence seven and not six).
6. Wrap cakes and let sit overnight to firm up.
7. Start chocolate ganache for top tier’s frosting, which also has to sit overnight.
8. Level cakes (4 layers per tier) and brush with simple syrup.
9. Start whipping ganache and weep again when it breaks for no good reason. Start over with a simple chocolate frosting.
10. Make an ungodly amount of simple vanilla buttercream frosting. Ditch the idea of tinting it ivory due to the sheer volume. Remind yourself to buy a covered bucket for next time.
11. Fill each tier – dulce de leche for the bottom, strawberry jam for the middle, and chocolate for the top.
12. Carefully construct each tier on its base and crumb-coat.
13. Put each tier into a box and transport all materials to car. Drive car 2 hours to the wedding.
14. Unload everything at the house and put an apron on over the pretty dress you’re wearing because you’re also giving a best-friend speech.
15. Cut straws to size and insert as supports (I like them way better than dowels – easier to cut, less wasted cake, and just as sturdy).
16. Stack cakes, lightly icing each one. Slide parchment paper strips under the edges of the bottom tier to keep the board clean. Don’t bother with a center support.
17. Really ice the whole thing and make it all pretty and swirled. Sigh because the heat and humidity are making the icing slump and not hold stiff peaks. Get over it because it’s dusk anyway.
18. Arrange flowers all over the place. Allow your husband to attach some flowers and roll your eyes slash giggle when he makes straight lines instead of pretty clusters.
19. Pipe their names in extra royal icing on the board. Contemplate learning a prettier ampersand another time.
20. Go give an awesome speech.
21. Hold your breath while others carry the VERY HEAVY cake out to the table.
22. Smile shyly and say thank you hundreds of times while cutting and serving the cake (no caterers).
23. Go home and be glad you did not try to make your own wedding cake the month before.

I actually had a TON of fun doing this, but for me it’s definitely a hobby, not a career. Our kitchen was a DISASTER and I don’t even really like sweets to begin with, so I was very much caked-out by the end.

The super-awesome cake recipe I used, from a book that is 100% worth buying. The 12-inch and 4-inch tiers required slight adjustments in baking powder. The exact science of leavening can be found in some other cake book, but I cannot remember which. Either one of the Rose Levy Berenbaum ones or the also-awesome Martha Stewart Wedding Cakes book.

Yellow Butter Cake
from Baking at Home With the Culinary Institute of America

Ingredients:
3 1/2 cups cake flour
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, diced, at room temperature
1 cup whole or low-fat milk (divided use)
4 large eggs (room temperature)
2 large egg whites (room temperature)
2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Coat two 8″ pans with baking spray (the kind with flour).
2. Into the bowl of your mixer, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. Add butter and ½ cup of the milk.
4. Using the whisk attachment of your mixer, mix together on medium speed until smooth, about 4 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
5. In a separate bowl, mix together the other ½ cup of milk, eggs, egg whites and vanilla.
6. Add egg/milk mixture to flour mixture in three additions, mixing for two minutes after each addition. Scrape sides of bowl after each addition.
7. Divide the batter between prepared pans. Bake 35-40 minutes or until layers spring back when touched in the center.
8. Remove from oven and allow cakes to completely cool in their pans on wire racks. Release sides and bottoms of cakes with metal spatula or knife. Unmold and finish with filling and/or frosting.

Well, we had some delicious calamari fritti last week and I thought, well, that wasn’t so bad… I should learn how to eat it even with the tentacles and the color. Adrian had requested a recipe for roasted squid with garbanzos recently, so I thought we’d give it a try. Turns out… it was delicious!

Prepping the squid

Mise en place

Roasted Squid with Garbanzos and Chili Oil

Close up

Plated! (with croissants in the background)

Roasted Squid with Garbanzo Beans and Chili Oil (adapted from Serious Eats)

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 pound squid, cleaned, bodies cut diagonally into 1/2 inch strips
• 1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 1 cup frisée, chopped (we used an escarole/endive/radicchio mix and it was fine)
• 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
• 1/2 tablespoon sherry wine vinegar (we used red wine vinegar because it was on hand)
• 1 tablespoon chili oil (commonly found in the Asian aisle/supermarket)

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 500°F. Pour olive oil into an oven safe skillet set over medium-high heat. Toss in the squid, and cook for about 1 minute, stirring often.
• Add the garbanzo beans, lemon juice, garlic, and lemon zest. Stir well, and season with a pinch of salt. Transfer skillet to the oven and cook for 5 minutes, stirring every minute.
• Remove skillet from the oven, and add the frisée and parsley and stir. Divide the squid and beans between two plates. Drizzle the sherry vinegar and chili oil on top of both and season with salt and black pepper to taste.

Snickerdoodles (Photograph by Adrian)

So, the other night we were watching Throwdown with Bobby Flay because he’s the man, and they were doing chocolate chip cookies. It was 9PM, right about the time we start craving a tasty treat, but alas, I had no chocolate chips! Terrible, I know. I should always have a reserve. Of course, I found out later that I actually had semisweet baking chocolate in the back that would have served for chocolate chunk cookies, but I digress. Anyway, I figured that I could make snickerdoodles with what I had on hand – simple fluffy cookies with cinnamon sugar, right? WRONG. (Well, sort of.)

Turns out that your traditional snickerdoodles have cream of tartar. Honestly, I’ve never used the stuff and have no reason to keep it around, so I thought I was doomed. Luckily, Google + Martha Stewart came to the rescue! I made the cookies as directed and they were perfectly fluffy and tasty and held up really well against milk, both in terms of flavor and dunking them (as Adrian always has to do). Here’s the recipe with my additions in italics, from Martha’s Holiday Cookies 2005.

A couple of notes first: baking them on a Silpat made for much better cookies than a nonstick foil-lined sheet pan (I don’t have parchment paper at the moment, either), and beating the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes until pale and fluffy is absolutely crucial.

Ingredients:

• 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350F.
• Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside (if you have a stand mixer, you can do the sifting while the butter and sugar are beating). Put butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture.
• Stir together cinnamon and remaining 2 tablespoons sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into 20 (1 3/4-inch) balls (really easy to do with an ice cream scoop, was about 3/4 of mine); roll in cinnamon sugar. Space 3 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper (or a Silpat / silicone baking sheet).
• Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes.

Risotto Cakes (Photograph by Adrian)

I’ve been growing my first herb garden this year and lately it’s really begun to grow in earnest, so I was excited to catch Barefoot Contessa doing a show on herbs. The risotto cakes looked (and sounded) fabulous – I mean, creamy risotto breaded and fried? Yes, please! However, in her recipe, she just boils arborio rice in water and then drains and rinses it. I’m sure that the fontina and chives add flavor, but it seemed questionably tasty to me, so I figured I’d give it a go, but with a little more flavor in the rice part.

Ingredients:

• 3-3½ cups chicken broth
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 3-4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 extra large eggs
• ½ cup plain Greek yogurt
• 1½ cups (5 oz.) grated Fontina cheese
• 3 tablespoons minced fresh chives
• 1 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumb)
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Directions:

• Heat the chicken broth to a simmer and keep it simmering.
• Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan over medium high heat and toast the rice in it for 30 seconds.
• Add the chicken broth a ½ cup at a time, letting most of the liquid absorb between rounds.
• The rice is done when it is creamy but still has just the tiniest bit of bite to it. You may or may not use up all of the chicken broth; you can use water at the very end if you run out of broth.
• Turn off the heat and stir in the butter and Parmesan cheese.
• Spread the cooked risotto on a plate or baking sheet and let cool until no longer warm to the touch.
• Once the rice is cool, prepare the next part of the mixture. In a bowl, beat 2 eggs and add in the yogurt, cheese, chives, a large pinch of kosher salt, and about a ½ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper. Mix well.
• Mix in the rice and stir well.
• Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight until the mixture is firmed up.
• Put the panko in a wide shallow bowl or plate. Form patties of the rice mixture and coat in panko.
• Heat a layer of olive oil in a pan until it is rippling and just starting to smoke. Fry the coated cakes until browned, about 3 minutes per side.
• Drain on a paper towel and serve hot. If you have to fry in batches, put them in a 200°F oven to keep warm until serving.
• Should make 12 cakes, enough for 4-6 servings. We added thin strips of pancetta on top for an extra flavor dimension. Goes well with a spinach/arugula-type salad (perhaps with strawberries and a balsamic glaze) and a crisp white wine.

Note: This recipe was surely originally meant to use up leftover risotto, so by all means, if you have leftover risotto, do it up.

Second note: Clearly I love me some risotto.

Risotto a la carbonara

Ingredients:

• olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 4 oz. pancetta, cubed/diced
• 1½ cups Arborio rice
• 6 cups chicken stock
• sweet peas (frozen or fresh) – about the same volume as the pancetta
• 2 tablespoons butter
• ¼-½ cup shredded Parmiggiano Reggiano
• freshly ground pepper

Directions:

• Heat the chicken stock to a simmer and keep it simmering
• Heat some olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium high heat
• Add the onions and cook until almost translucent
• Add the pancetta and brown it – don’t make it completely crispy
• Turn the heat down a bit (about medium)
• Add the rice and toast it, stirring constantly, for about a minute
• Add about a cup of the simmering chicken stock and continue stirring until most of the liquid is gone
• Continue the process, adding chicken stock about ½ cup at a time and stirring constantly
• When there is a cup or so of chicken stock left to add, add the peas so that they have time to warm through
• After all the chicken stock has been used (should be about 20 minutes of cooking time), turn off the heat and add the butter and pepper to taste. Stir until the butter has completely melted.
• Add the shredded Parmiggiano and stir until well combined. Be careful not to break the peas!
• Serve hot with more shredded Parm on top

I like risotto with a nice bright riesling, but we decided to have a beer instead:

Victory Prima Pils

Delicious! Oh, and the recipe makes enough to serve four as a main course.

cream cheese pound cake + strawberry coulis

I need to try this very, very soon. (via smitten kitchen)

Cinnamon Bread Pudding

Ingredients:

• 8-10 slices of cinnamon swirl bread, cubed (I use 10 slices of Pepperidge Farm)
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 eggs
• 1¼ cups milk
• ¾ cup heavy cream
• ¾ cup white sugar (can substitute in some brown if you’d like)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350ºF
• Put cubed bread in 8-inch square pan
• Drizzle with melted butter
• Mix eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla
• Pour egg mixture over bread
• Push the bread down and let absorb
• Bake for about 45 minutes. The top will brown a bit and it should spring back when poked.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any dessert pictures on Thanksgiving, so here is an approximate idea of what it will look like:

Cinnamon Bread Pudding

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• Eggs
• Dark soy sauce (mushroom flavored is good)
• Tea (loose or bagged) – black is the usual, but mother says anything goes. I would guess one bag for every 3 or so eggs.
• Sugar
• Star anise (??) – optional, but good for “more taste”
  

Directions:

• Cover the eggs with cold water and bring to a boil over low heat
• Boil for about 15 minutes (sounds like a long time to me but whatever)
• Drain the water and rinse the eggs in cold water until you can handle them
• Gently crack the eggshells, either by hand or with a spoon
• Add soy sauce, tea, star anise (if desired), and a tiny bit of sugar to enough water to cover the eggs
• Add the eggs and bring to a boil over low heat once again and let simmer for a couple of hours
• Let cool and continue to soak in the sauce in the fridge, at least overnight and up to a few days
• Enjoy them either warm or cold!

Even though Adrian claims to hate hardboiled eggs, I will be giving this a try after our weekend jaunt. I’ll try to remember to take pictures and write about it later on. Hopefully they’ll come out looking like this:

Tea Eggs (via Glass Petal Smoke)

By the way, I know at least my coworkers noticed that I made my first post during work time. It’s true – I took a break from programming and made an entry. My bad! I’ll try to refrain from doing that from now on, although it’s hard not to write a short bit about something at the moment I am thinking about it. Maybe I can just file things away for publishing later or something like that.