the pink cat's bakery

Banana-Caramelized Plantains-Walnut-Mini Cupcakes

2010-08-29T12:40:00.001-04:00

No frosting on these cupcakes. Because, well, I don't like frostings on cupcakes. Unless it is a really light sponge cake type of cupcake.

"Healthy" Cake

2010-08-16T23:37:00.000-04:00

Banana-oatmeal-oat bran-yogurt cake. Lightly sweetened with raw honey.

I may have to bake more of this and freeze them, and have them for breakfast (or for the occasional snack time).

Pork, Peppers, and Vermicelli

2010-08-15T15:54:00.001-04:00

Ginger Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

2010-08-14T19:26:00.000-04:00

Crispy, chewy oatmeal cookies with golden raisins, lots of cinnamon, and bits of ginger through out, as well as a slice of candied ginger nestled in the center.

Lemongrass Tofu with Cabbage Stir Fry

2010-08-14T18:53:00.000-04:00

Easy side dish: Shredded Cabbage and Red Pepper Stir Fry

Spicy Crispy Lemongrass Tofu

I like to score the tofu, so that the flavor can get inside too. Some people like to deep fry this, but I found that the lemongrass would fall off to the bottom of the pot and burn. Just a little bit of oil in the pan is fine for me, and I don't have to any waste oil either. The time consuming part is to turn them on all sides to get every surface crispy. But that's just me- I like crispness.

Steamed fish

2010-08-11T01:22:00.003-04:00

I have no idea what I made. This was from some time ago. Think this was ginger steamed fish with 3 kinds of salads and relishes on top.

Dark Chocolate Almond Cookie

2010-08-09T02:36:00.004-04:00

There were a few surprises to this cookie. For one, you might bite into a piece that has ginger, while another does not. I baked this as a very crispy biscotti-like cookie, but it turned soft after a few days. Weird! Wonder what it will be in a couple of days? Crispy again?? In any case, it was really good with a glass of milk or cup of tea.

I like using Valrhona 71% cacao dark chocolate. The 81% is a bit too bitter to leave as chunks in the cookie. Maybe next time, I will make a cardamon-pistachio-dark chocolate variety.

Dark Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti

2010-08-07T12:17:00.002-04:00

My first good looking biscotti! Yeah, the other times I've made them, they don't look like biscotti at all. My flour amount was wrong, so the previous ones didn't come out right! :( I think this is one of the easiest cookies to make, in terms on preparation. Just mix everything together, bake, slice, and bake again. No rolling dough into little balls!

Jícama Spring Rolls

2010-08-06T16:53:00.002-04:00

One is broken. Oh NOOoz..

One of my favorite summer food! Loves it with hoisin dipping sauce.

Spicy Stilton Walnut Shortbread

2010-08-05T07:45:00.005-04:00

Have some! ( ^ - ^ )*

Crispy, crunchy, nutty, spicy!

I'm afraid to make this again, because I'll eat the whole batch!

Wonderfully Soft Bread

2010-08-04T16:59:00.000-04:00

100% Whole wheat bread. I like this bread because it's a tasty whole wheat bread and it's not hard as a brick by the 3rd day. In fact, it stays soft for a long time! It's also not mixed with white flour.

Used only natural ingredients: whole wheat flour, eggs, yeast, yogurt, and a bit olive oil.

Eggs and halloumi

2010-08-03T00:51:00.001-04:00

Egg, asparagus, and fried halloumi (looks like a slab of tofu). I didn't do too well frying the egg.

Almond Cookies

2010-07-31T14:30:00.004-04:00

(SHhH! I ate a cookie while taking the photos. ^-^*)

A cup of green tea with one or two cookies- that's how I like to relax in the afternoon.

Banana Bread Love 1

2010-07-30T09:15:00.005-04:00

Banana bread with walnuts and cranberries.

Some people like banana bread plain, with nothing but banana flavor. I like the difference in texture, flavor, and color. Soft, sweet, nutty, crunchy, tart, and sweet again. Each bite is a surprise, and that's what I love.

Banh Cong & Banh Tom Chien-(Fried Shrimp and Chips Cluster)

2010-07-28T19:49:00.000-04:00

Fried shrimp cakes with clusters of fries. Sorry, I have no idea what to call these in English. But this is one of the traditional and lesser known Vietnamese dish. Wiki doesn't even have a page for me to link you! :( There is a video on Youtube showing you how to cook it, if you can understand Vietnamese. It's much better if you can make it at home, because you get more filling, rather than dough. I don't like when restaurants try to cheap out and give you more dough and a smaller grade of shrimp, which would dry up during the cooking.

The coconut milk batter and mung bean filling is filled into small muffin shaped ladle, topped with a raw shrimp, and then lowered into hot oil to be fried. The fried cakes kind of magically release themselves from the mold after they've been cooked for a while. You know they're ready when they're crispy and golden brown! These are eaten with seasoned, preferably spicy, sweet and sour fish sauce and wrapped in lettuce and herbs.

Another version of the shrimp cakes would be replacing the muffin shaped cakes with clusters of potato sticks (or french fries). I used sweet potato here, because they taste better. The sticks of potatoes are coated in a tapioca-rice batter and a shrimp would stick to it, forming a cluster when fried up. I actually love eating the battered cluster of fries sans shrimp, because they'd stay crispy for some time and then turn chewy after. But chewy in a good way! Great to snack with hot sauce.

::Happy BirthDaY::

2010-07-28T00:59:00.002-04:00

! ! ! ! Happy Birthday to YOU ! ! ! !

I somehow didn't buy enough cream to make the frosting, so I couldn't decorate it too much. Not a very grand cake, but he didn't care as long as he had cake on his birthday.

And I still have yet learn how to write neatly on a birthday cake. So hard to do with chocolate frosting.. But it's something I must learn to do!

Happy Birthday, cowboy

Chocolate Banana Brownie

2010-07-27T01:31:00.013-04:00

☆ Chocolate Banana Brownie ☆

With walnuts & cinnamon

The brownies weren't very dense and fudgey. More like cakey-brownies. I don't like a thick glaze on my brownies, so I didn't glaze them.

I was going to bake a chocolate banana bread (hence, why they're not dense brownies), but couldn't find my loaf pan anywhere! So I had to bake it in a sheet pan, and cut it into squares!

And I couldn't find my cooling racks either! So these were cooled in the pan they're baked in.. Where are all my baking tools??!

Brownies all gone! Love them warm, straight out of the oven!

Chocolate biscotti

2010-07-21T11:15:00.006-04:00

Are biscotti the only cookies that are acceptable to eat for breakfast? Because you can have it with your morning coffee.

This was my first time baking biscotti, and it's kind of a failed one. Not sure what I did wrong, because I ended up adding a bunch of uncalled for ingredients into the cookie dough. Maybe that's what's wrong! Adding additional ingredients and that messed up the ratio between the flour:eggs:oil!

• Do I really want extra dark chocolate chips in mine as well as melted dark chocolate? YES.
• Do I want to add a bit of butter? YES, don't be afraid of a little butter!
• How about a little ground almond? Might as well, so I can wash the container!
• Got some extra walnuts? Yes, dump that in too. To clean up the extra odds and ends in my baking cabinet.

By this time, the dough looked nothing like it's supposed to. But let's pop this in the oven anyway and wonder for an hour if they'll end up being dumped in the trash.

Nah.. they still came out deliciously crunchy and chocolatey in the end.

Maybe next time, I will make ginger-chocolate biscotti!

Back in business!

2010-07-21T01:38:00.011-04:00

Pink Cat's Bakery is open again! Let's get rolling with some egg-rolling! These are traditional Vietnamese egg rolls, called chả giò. To be honest, this is one of the only Vietnamese food that's not good if you make it vegetarian. Has to be made with PORK and has to be crispy! Or else, it's not even worth eating.

Here's a secret if you're making them: Roll these egg rolls ahead and freeze them in a single layer. After they're hard frozen, you can stack them up and wrap in foil paper. Then when you're ready to eat, SLOWLY and carefully drop the still frozen egg rolls into hot oil. Once they float up, and golden brown. They're ready!

Best part- The egg rolls will stay crispy for a long time if you fry them this way. Because, who wants to eat a soggy egg roll?

Going back to what I love doing ^-^*

2010-07-21T00:11:00.013-04:00

That's baking!

And baking for people that I love. I'll be baking, making, and creating some (hopefully) very good cakes, sweets, and savories, and whatever is on my mind that day.

And I'll be sharing them all with you!

The picture above is the last strawberry sponge cake that I made. I ended this blog with a slice of it, so now I'm going to pick up where I left off. Giving you a whole cake 6 months later.

Enjoy, and hope you'll continue to read!

hello, and happy new year!

2010-01-07T22:34:00.021-05:00

Happy new year to all.

Just an update to the Pink Cat's Bakery:

This blog possibly will end here. I may return to this blog in the near future. In 2010.

I need to find my baking muse again.

Thanks to all for reading it in the past.

xoxo

Thanksgiving Pizza?

2009-05-29T21:43:00.004-04:00

Another one of my odd pizza creations. My first Thanksgiving pizza! Why not? Since I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat turkey and the same o' Thanksgiving sides do seem kinda boring... Hence, pizza with Thanksgiving toppings is awesome! They are awesome in general. ^_^

Squash, feta, caramelized onions, chive pizza?

Or... Squash, feta, caramelized onions, chive, and dried cranberries pizza?

I like the first one better! Without cranberries! The squash was good in its own way, but I think cranberries would be better with a sweet potato pizza for Thanksgiving. Sweet potatoes are sweeter, so they can contrast better to the sour taste of cranberries.

This will be what I'm making this upcoming Thanksgiving!

What's that cake?

2009-05-24T23:59:00.018-04:00

This was Cake X! It's not a mystery cake anymore, but it was one that I contemplated in making for someone's birthday. The name of this cake is Mille Feuille Crêpes Cake. Mille Feuille means thousand layers.

The cake is simply layers and layers (21 of them, specifically) of sweet and soft crepe, with sweet vanilla pastry cream sandwiched in between each. I decided to play with the flavors a bit by adding fresh slices of strawberry between every five layers of crepe.

This was my first time making a crepe cake, so I was quite afraid that it would turn out very badly. But hey, a cake's a cake. Julia Child once said, "the grand thing about cooking is you can eat your mistakes." And I concur.

In NYC, there is a bakery named Lady M, and its signature dessert is a Mille Crepe Cake. People have swoon over this bakery, and truthfully, I'm very interested in trying it too. But since I'm not in NYC, and at $40 for a 6" cake, I think my mille feuille crepe cake tasted pretty darn good too, even if I need more practice making it. ^-^

If you are interested in making this cake too, then here is the recipe. It is fun and easy to make; however, time consuming. Try it out if you have time, and the best part is you don't even have to turn on the oven on a hot summer day. The recipe also called for making the crepe batter and pastry cream the day before serving the cake. Yay for do-ahead prep work!

So why didn't I go with this cake, instead of the normal sponge cake for the birthday cake? Because I didn't really know how to frost it to make it nice and grand. Also, I didn't really want to frost it because you wouldn't be able to see the layers and layers of crepes. This is more of a casual cake.

At least my little nieces and nephews got to enjoy a test run of someone's b-day cake! ^o^

Bear calzones!

2009-05-11T12:58:00.004-04:00

Calzone fillings: grilled eggplant and green squash, onions, feta, tomato sauce, lots of black pepper.

Happy Birthday to Chi!

2009-05-04T00:38:00.012-04:00

Happy Birthday! Happy Happy Birthday to you!

3> 100% Homemade from PinkCat's Bakery! <3

Lessons learned from this cake baking experience:

A. TRY to sketch out a plan for what the cake will look like. Don't try to come up with the design last minute as you are assembling the cake together, because the mind will just go blank. (Like mine did! And I tried to think and think and think....)

B. If you want to do some handmade chocolate design, then it's best to do it ahead of time. You need time for the chocolate to harden up again.

C. Don't know if anyone tasted the difference, but I whipped my frosting with sweetened condensed milk instead of powdered sugar. I think it's actually better, because sugar is kind if flat tasting. I'll try that again next time.

D. To make fruits shiny, just brush them with a simple fruit glaze. That is a ratio of one part raspberry or strawberry jam to one part water (or half water and half liqueur). See recipe here. These are just minor details, but it does make a cake more attractive, even if you make it hours ahead. The fruits are not going to look dried up from being in the fridge.

My only disappointment with this cake was that it was not very orangey. I think I got a bad orange! I used the zest of one orange just like the last time I made it, but it wasn't as fragrant...

Sponge cakes can sometimes be plain, which is why I thought of making a different kind of cake for this birthday. I happened to do a test run of this other cake (Cake X) when my nephews and nieces came over. They liked it, but I didn't so much. Maybe I'll give Cake X another chance, since I still have left over creams and fruits in my fridge right now.

I'll tell you more about it in the upcoming post!

Piggy Bread (Burger Buns)

2009-05-02T10:11:00.004-04:00

Slice it in half and make it a sandwich or a burger! These are healthy (100%) whole wheat piggy bread. I wish my other niece was here, she'd love these so much. I remember the last time I made her piggy shaped buns, she loved it so much and wouldn't eat it. Instead she'd keep kissing it all the time, until she bit of its nose accidentally and cried. (^o^)

For these piggies, the dough was different than from the previous time. This was whole wheat, and the other was white flour. I'll need do more piggy testing.

2 dinners, 1 night.

2009-05-02T07:29:00.007-04:00

Both dinners, all homemade.

I think I'm very indecisive sometimes, and very gluttonous always. Or vice versa...? Hehehe

So, the first dinner that night was a baigan bharta, which is one of my favorite indian dishes. It is comprised of roasted eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and lots of spices. This was a lot of fun to make, but took a bit of a long time.

The second dinner that we also made simultaneously was... pizza! Having indian eggplant with a side of fragrant saffron rice and cheesey roasted tomato pizza. It was delicious! ^-^ There was a lot of leftovers from both dinners for the next day.

Grilled vegetables... It looks like a flower, doesn't it? (Pic Above)

I was the grill master- keeping an eye on my veggies! I don't know why I did the criss-cross grilled marks, when the veggies will all be blended up anyway! But it looked cool!

It was strange, because a few nights later, we unconsciously made italian food with a side of indian, drinking chai... and eating with chopsticks.

I've been very undecided lately...

Stinky Heart Crackers

2009-04-23T23:57:00.007-04:00

Salty blue cheese crackers!

These were so smelly when they're in the oven baking!! Maybe I'll try another version- with Stilton and walnuts next time. This time, it's just blue cheese, garlic powder, and black pepper.

Chickpea and Black Beans Wrap

2009-04-17T03:24:00.006-04:00

Homemade chickpea patties, black beans, rice, and hummus wrap. This was suprisingly very good, especially with a bit of hot sauce and pickled jalapenos.

Pan-fried chickpeaa patties, with garam masala, garlic, onions, cumin, and lots of parsley!

Coconut Ginger Tofu Pudding

2009-04-17T03:02:00.002-04:00

I know that tofu pudding can never replace the real creaminess of regular pudding, so think of this as a lighter, more tropical dessert that you can eat 2 or 3 bowls of in one sitting (without much guilt).

This dessert is really simple:

1. Buy unsweetened tofu pudding. It'll actually say 'tofu pudding' on the container, NOT soft tofu.

2. Bring a can of coconut milk to a boil and simmer for about 5 minutes, and then let it cool down. Store in a container until ready to use.

3. Julienne about 3/4 cups of ginger. In a small pot, over medium-low heat, melt about 7 oz of rock sugar with 1 1/2 cups of water. Add ginger to the sugar syrup and continue to simmer until the syrup is reduced down and thickens up to a consistency of honey or maple syrup. Let the syrup cool down and then transfer to a lidded container too.

Now you're all set to have tofu pudding at anytime! Store the ginger-infused syrup, coconut milk, and tofu in the fridge.

When ready to eat, take 1-2 TBS of the ginger syrup, 2-3 TBS of coconut milk, and scoop out about 1 cup of tofu pudding. Try to mix the 3 of them together and careful not to break up the tofu pudding too much. Adjust the sugar and coconut milk to your liking. If you like to eat the pudding warm, then reheat it in the microwave for a bit, but not too much, or it'll melt into a puddle of sweetened soy water.

I personally like to eat this cold on a hot afternoon, with lots of ginger from the syrup and light on the coconut milk (maybe just 1 tablespoon for the coconut essence). Now that you know the recipe/technique, anybody wanna make it for me?? :D :D :D

Eight Treasure Congee

2009-04-15T23:55:00.006-04:00

Did you know that congee can be made with other grains, other than rice? Like millet, barley, and sorghum. These types of congee are common in the north of China. Here, I've made an 'eight treasure congee.' The eight treasure really just means 8 ingredients that you will put in the congee (excluding water), and those are any 8 ingredients that you have on hand.

For my eight treasure congee, I put in red kidney beans, glutinous rice, raw peanuts, lotus seeds, barley, red jujubes, dried logans, and grated ginger. This is a sweet congee instead of a savory one, so I seasoned it with rock sugar (or jaggery). I guess that'll make this a Nine Treasure Congee and not eight? I can't count! This is sort of like a mixed up Vietnamese sweet dessert soup. :)

When you have left over noodles...

2009-04-09T23:28:00.014-04:00

... those noodles will appear in different forms for days and days after. Noodle stir fry with meat, with veggies, noodle soup, noodle with fried eggs, fried noodle patties (my creation), etc.

All thanks to SOMEONE (whose eyes are bigger than her stomach), who decided to boil SIX packages of noodles for 5 people. We barely ate half the amount.

So this is the first reincarnation of those noodles- a veggie stir fry with homemade fried tofu. If you can fry tofu at home, it is definitely MUCH better than those in the supermarket.

Pongal with Spicy Cashews

2009-04-09T14:47:00.005-04:00

Pongal- saffron, cracked pepper, peppercorns, moong dal (mung beans), and basmati rice cooked together in lots of water (like congee).

Toppings: Spicy cashews and fried shallots.

Happy Happy Cake!

2009-04-08T00:35:00.009-04:00

Happy Birthday Happy Birthday! Someone got a Hana-made cake recently!

However, too bad this time, my whipped cream melted after being refrigerated for a few hours. I still don't understand why. That's why the frosting is bad looking. :( Oh well, it looks like a pillowy cloud of cakey goodness!

Cake: scented with the zest of an orange.

Filling: strawberries, whipped cream, and shaved chocolate.

What I did differently this time: This is a 3-layer cake! The cake to filling ratio is much better; and hence, yummier! Really! :D Also, the chocolate icing is mixed with coconut milk instead of regular milk or cream. I tasted the icing, and just wanted to drizzle that all over an ice cream sundae.

Maybe my next cake will be a coconut cake with chocolate coconut icing. Mmm... I'm gonna dream of that tonight.

Stilton Pizza-Dessert Pizza

2009-03-23T22:27:00.005-04:00

What's on this dessert pizza: Apricot Stilton, bosc pears, caramelized onions, walnuts. Too bad I didn't have time to toast the walnuts, to get more flavor out of them.

And yes, I have a whole in my pizza. That's because I stretched the dough too thin in that area, and it burnt as the other parts were still cooking.

Flat noodleees!

2009-03-20T23:53:00.002-04:00

Veggie-tofu stir fried flat noodles.... with a fried egg!

Coconut Sticky Rice

2009-03-19T23:48:00.006-04:00

On the right (green): pandan-flavored beaten sticky rice with fresh grated coconut.

On the left (yellow): sticky rice cooked with split mung beans and fresh grated coconut too.

Festive looking, aren't they? I used to make a pink color sticky rice too! You eat these as snacks with sweet and salty roasted peanuts on top.

Congee and pot sticker dumplings

2009-03-16T20:37:00.013-04:00

Warm congee on a chilly day. Here, this congee is accompanied with homemade veggie pot stickers and sauteed cabbage and carrots. I actually enjoyed making pot stickers, and it might be something that I'll play around with on a rainy day.

So some additional add-ins that I used and you may also like in your congee too: sesame oil, scallions, fried tofu puffs, hot sauce, parsley, thousand year old eggs, quail eggs, chicken eggs (yolk only), etc.

I used the Shanghai Style dumpling wrapper, because it's the right thickness and the right texture too. They're crispy and chewy at the same time.

Spicy Scallion Corn Waffles!

2009-03-14T23:48:00.003-04:00

These corn waffles are definitely my favorite so far from all the waffles that I've made. They actually got more crispy as they cooled down from the heat. I was going to add some mexican cheese to the batter too, but I didn't have any and was too lazy to run to the store. Ahh, well. They still taste very good! The scallions work well with the cornmeal batter and bits of jalapeno and sambal oelek sauce.

The batter I used was a mix-n-match of things I have on hand. Only one jalapeno! So I used some sambal for more heat.

Brownieeeees!

2009-03-10T23:48:00.003-04:00

Black bean brownies with walnuts.

Truthfully, I don't like brownies. At all. Except the one time I had this AWESOME sour cherry brownie from Clear Flour bakery in Brookline. MMm! I actually still think of that today.

This recipe was very interesting and intriguing. However, I'd rate it 7/10. I guess brownies are just not my thing. For my preference, I'd like my brownies very fudgey, not cakey. This came out pretty fudgey, but I still didn't like it. :(

Braised pineapple chicken

2009-03-09T23:00:00.003-04:00

How do you select a pineapple? And how do you tell if it's ripe and ready to use? You sniff it! If it has the sweet smell of pineapple, then it's ready to use. When you buy it in the store, it's probably not ready to be eaten, so just store it in a cool and dry place for a few days.

Pineapples are one of those fruits that will continue to ripe after being cut off from the tree. Well, not really. Pineapples don't grow on pineapple trees,, but on short bushes about two feet tall.

If you must... then use canned pineapples. If not, then definitely go the fresh route. It doesn't take much work to slice into one. There are recipes for orange chicken, so there's nothing strange about chicken 'n pineapples together. ^-^

Spicy Stir-Fried Pork Blood with Chives

2009-03-03T12:33:00.006-05:00

Stir-fried blood pudding with chives, bean sprouts, lots of garlic, ginger, and chilies. I didn't eat it, but I think it was good! :D

My mind thinks the blood pieces taste better if it's a little crispy on the outside when stir-fried with garlic first, which was what I did.

Rice Cooker Banana Cake

2009-03-02T23:57:00.002-05:00

You've heard of people baking bread, chocolate cake, brownies, etc. in the rice cooker, right? I've been really intrigued with this method for a while now, so I decided to test it out. I actually baked this banana cake in a rice cooker.

This is just a regular whole wheat banana bread recipe that I like, but I adjusted it by adding some yogurt to make it more moist. To be honest, this experiment was not entirely successful for me. I have 2 rice cookers in the kitchen currently, one for cooking brown rice (for myself who likes brown rice) and one for cooking white rice (for others who likes eating white rice) ^_^. One of the rice cooker is more modern, with a timer that you can set to cook congee or other things for an extended period of time, and the other rice cooker has only a switch for cooking and keeping warm.

Anyway, since the batter I made was way too much for rice cooker baking (the recipe was for regular baking in a loaf pan in the oven), I decided to divide the batter in half, one for each cooker, so that it'll bake faster.

This successful cake picture is from the modern rice cooker. And the one from the other cooker? Well, it was burnt (badly)! It was my fault actually. The switch from that rice cooker flipped from "cook" to "keep warm" after just 7 minutes! I didn't believe the cake was actually cooked, so to "override" the control button, I held down the switch by plugging in some paper towels. Very high tech. After a little while when I was cleaning up the kitchen mess, I smelled smoke... Wha??

Ahh, my burnt cake! :(

If you're wondering how I got the cake to be nicely caramelized like that in a rice cooker, it's because I put it under the broiler for 3-5 minutes after the baking. I think this saves more energy, because you're cooking in a smaller enclosed space, as opposed to heating up a big oven. Though, turning on the oven to bake on a cold winter day does make the house feel nice and cozy.

Lunch: Rolls, rolls, roll it up!

2009-03-01T12:04:00.000-05:00

Crisp apples, creamy avocado in maki rolls.

I want some more now!

Dill Encrusted Salmon

2009-02-28T02:18:00.009-05:00

I think one of the best herbs that go well with salmon is dill. It has a citrusy taste that brightens up the taste of that fish. I use dill often when cooking (after parsley), even in vegetarian food. Herbs just freshen up and bring a whole other dimension of flavor to a dish.

Here, before pan-frying these pieces of salmon, I seasoned and then encrusted them with dill. When cooked, the herb will stick to the fish. However, be careful not to flip the fish too many times (I flipped it once, twice the most), because the fish will break and the herb will fall off. Just fry one side for a few minutes and then repeat for the other side.

Before serving, squeeze a bit of lemon juice over them and enjoy with rice.

Aloo Tikki Burger!

2009-02-27T14:44:00.014-05:00

Aloo tikki burger with lots of Indian spices and encrusted with poppy seeds before cooking.

In the picture, I topped it with tomato and black bean salsa, but I had another tikki burger the next day, and I topped that with horseradish hummus, a fried egg, and a drizzle of sesame oil. Both versions were good.

What I liked about this burger are the spices. It is one of those food that gets better with time, because the burger I had the next day was so awesomely spicy. To make it, I think you should mix the aloo with spices the night before, or at least a few hours ahead. That would give time for the spices do its thing- the garam masala to release its flavor, the chilies to mingle with the cumin and potatoes, etc.

Sticky Rice Cake- Baby Banana Filling

2009-02-27T00:41:00.010-05:00

This cake is called 'banh tet' and you have it with tea during the Vietnamese New Year (Tet). However, I felt like drinking chai, so I made a REALLY spicy chai to have with the sticky rice cake. Even though I used regular Tazo chai mix, the brewing, the milk, and the ginger made it into a great drink. The sticky cake had a banana/tea flavor on the outside, and had freshly grated coconut and black beans mixed into the sticky rice part. Baby bananas made up the filling, and it became red from braising for hours.

This is one of my favorite things about Vietnamese New Year- making AND eating sticky rice cake. I prefer this sweet banana filling to the dense savory filling of mung beans and pork.

Though, the savory version is also very good when pan-fried up and served with pickled shallots, thai chili peppers, and pickled crunchy cauliflower. Mmm!

Lunch: Tomatoes 'n Eggs

2009-02-26T22:27:00.003-05:00

Tomatoes, onions, and eggs. Very good with rice, and nothing complicated.

Challah French Toast Waffles

2009-02-25T20:31:00.009-05:00

What to do when you really want a waffles for brunch, but also really want to make french toast, because you have Challah bread? Well, if there are lots of people around, I'd make both (to eat both) because I'm a little piggy. But since it's just my sister and I, I made challah french toast in a waffle machine. It turned out really good too!

I gave the french toast extra flavor by adding the zest of an orange and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. For the sauce, there wasn't any maple syrup in the house (not a fan of it much anyway) so I made some dulce de leche to drizzle on top. You can buy it in a jar, or just slowly cook it on the stove. It is very simple.

The orange zest added a taste of freshness to the french toast. I think I made a bit too much dulce de leche though. There is still too much left in the fridge currently, and I may need to turn that into dulce de leche cupcakes... ^_^

Soaked challah, with flecks of orange zest, ready for waffling!

The challah bread I used was simply a knotted challah bread bun from TJ's. I split it in half, so that each piece is about 1/2 inch think. It's the right thinkness to make french toast waffles.

This is just a technique post, so I don't think there's a need for a recipe. You can flavor the french toast anyway you want. With chili flakes, stuffed with cheese, encrusted with herbs, cinnamon-banana, different bread, etc. Limitless. I know I'll be having fun with the waffle machine.

P.S. Thanks again Kiwi, for the waffle machine. :)

Sunday Crepes

2009-02-18T23:58:00.007-05:00

It's been over a year since I last made crepes, I think. I made these again a few weeks ago, and they were very good with chili sauce and herbs. The cucumbers were there to cool me down, in case I couldn't handle the spice. :D

NO, no! Actually, you eat crepes with cucumbers, mustard greens, and herbs. I love having them with mustard greens, because you get the different kinds of spice in just one bite. Hot and sour from the Sriracha-garlic-lime sauce and a peppery wasabi taste from the mustard greens.

The crepes were awesome, but I made too much... Took 3 days for 2 people to finish them. I think I'm all creped out 'til next year. Too bad I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the meat crepes my sister also made side-by-side on the stove next to me. Those meat crepes had minced pork, shrimps, bean sprouts, and mung beans in them. She, too, was sick of crepes, still having to finish them 5 days later. Next time, we'll scale back the portions. :)

Pink Cat's Special 3-Rice Fried Rice

2009-01-28T14:30:00.003-05:00

Red jasmine rice, regular jasmine rice, and basmati rice.

What's in it: tofu, scallions, eggs, green beans, corn, chili flakes, broccoli (or whatever veggies you have on hand... carrots, peas, etc.) Remember to finish it off with some sesame oil at the end. I added some almond slices for additional crunch too.

A Vietnamese New Year's Offering...

2009-01-27T01:21:00.014-05:00

Just a few pictures from my New Year's... (2008!) I just never posted it, for a full year now. The offerings were done simply, but the meals with family were more elaborate.

Due to some personal matter, I didn't get to do anything for New Years this year. So there wasn't any celebration or red envelopes to me! :( I can only hope that this year will get better, because I am having a rocky start already in so many ways.

Happy Lunar New Year to all!

Lunch: Spicy rice, sauteed spinach, and soupy soup

2009-01-26T00:37:00.003-05:00

Spicy basmati-saffron rice and sauteed spinach with tofu curds.

Kabocha soup with soft tofu.

If I am to choose between a kobocha squash or a butternut squash, I'd definitely go for the former. The texture and the taste is far better than a butternut in my opinion. It is sweeter and has a 'toothy' bite to it, like a drunken noodle would have more of a 'toothy' bite than a pad thai noodle.

You can cook a kobocha squash into a savory soup, or make into a sweet dessert like Asians do. Leaving the skin on is also better, because it has lots of nutritional content. If you make a savory soup out of it, then make sure to watch it when you're cooking it. It tends to fall apart and dissolve into the broth if you cook it too long, to death.

When shopping for one, be sure to look for one that is small or medium size, but dense and heavy in feel. The ones that feel light doesn't really have a good smooth sweet taste to it, maybe because it hasn't ripen fully.

Eggplant noodles!

2009-01-08T06:21:00.001-05:00

Spicy Indo-Chinese noodles with marsala spiced eggplant!

What's in the noodle itself: onions, scrambled tofu, lotsa garlic, turmeric, hot spices, carrots and noodles.
Eggplant: Mix of different indian spices encrusted on the eggplant, and then pan-fried.

Soft Bread Loaf

2009-01-08T00:49:00.003-05:00

I hope you can see how soft it is, because this bread is very soft and fluffy with the extra vital wheat gluten I added to the dough. The extra kneading also helped! It was a good biceps-triceps exercise. ^_^
I have lots of sesame seeds on hand, that's why all my breads are decorated with them.

The bread was ugly before the cut... But the slices looked good after! Riiiightt?? :D

There was nothing really special about this bread, except I played around with the proportion of ingredients from the recipe I posted before.

My Very Fiiiirrrsst Cake!

2009-01-07T01:24:00.004-05:00

This was my first cake that I ever baked! Done last June '08. It is kind of a badly decorated because this was done without any decorating tools. But I put a lot of hours in to researching how to make the cake and lots more hours into making one. However, I remember it tasting very good because of the sweet strawberries during the summer.

I can make a cake faster and easier now than before when just starting out. What I'd like to do is expand my cake baking away from just strawberry sponge cakes, even though they're my most favorite kind. That is my cake plan for 2009!

I'm thinking... coffee flavored cake, caramel cake, mocha cake, pandan cake, opera cake, blueberry cake, checkerboard cake, etc. ^-^

Oversized Dinner Rolls?

2009-01-05T20:45:00.006-05:00

I like poofy bread! These look so funny to me. ^_^

These are whole wheat bread.

Lots of dough waiting to be baked!!

I loooove baking bread in the fall/winter. It makes the house warm and cozy, and smells great too!

Whole Wheat Raisin Bread

2009-01-05T18:07:00.008-05:00

Soft (100%) whole wheat bread with extra plumpy raisins.

This bread had lots of flavor from the whole wheat flour, honey and raisins that I didn't even eat it with any jam or other spread. The crust of this bread stayed crispy even after a few hours.

Loved this bread for breakfast.

Lunch: Vietnamese Quiche and Buttercup Soup

2009-01-02T00:53:00.005-05:00

Vietnamese steamed quiche with minced pork.

I made this to have with a crab and tomato noodle soup. Some people eat it with rice. Vietnamese quiche are not as heavy as American or French, filled with lots of cheese. This one was just mixed with pork, but I can also make it with mushrooms! I used to loooove putting in shrimp paste, which would make the house smell for hours! Not anymore.. ^-^

Buttercup soup with tofu and Vietnamese rice paddy herb.

The herb's flavor is really complex and hard to describe. But it adds a depth to soups, especially Vietnamese spicy and sour fish soup. You can find this herb easily in Vietnamese groceries, and even Chinese supermarkets too. Just remember to use them fresh.

Santa Claus Cake!

2008-12-28T21:03:00.013-05:00

Hello! I hope everyone had a very excellent Christmas last week, with lots of food, laughter, and love. Did you get a lot of presents? It snowed in Boston a few days before Xmas come, so the 'white Christmas' was ruined by all the cars making puddles and dirty snow. :( And it became icy too.

I didn't do much, and didn't make this cake until the day after Christmas really. That wasn't laziness, I planned it that way. ^-^

Anyway, this cake has been on my "To-Bake List" forever, since I first saw it here. I was waiting so long for Xmas to come to bake it!

In the demo video, the instruction said to use white chocolate curls for the beard, but I don't have any white chocolate on hand. It would be weird for Santa to have a milk chocolate beard! That's why I used whipped cream for the beard too. It kinda looks like a scruffy beard. ^o^

What's different about this cake (from the regular recipe I use) is that this time I added orange zest to the cake batter, to lighten the flavor up more. It does taste good! I also added a thin layer of chopped milk and dark chocolate on top of the strawberries and cream filling.

Yay! Cake for lunch!! Yum yum!

Someone made a big mess in the kitchen! Booo!

Whole Wheat Honey Yogurt Loaf

2008-12-24T23:58:00.007-05:00

100% Whole Wheat Bread

I'm so excited! I finally found a recipe that is a soft 100% whole wheat. A bread that is not hard as a brick after a few days! This one is very soft, like store-bought breads, except without all the artificial things.

One thing that I regretted doing the most when baking this bread was the decorative braiding on top. When it came of the oven... it reminded me of hair too much. But when I sliced it, the slices look better! Phew! :) This would be my go-to recipe when I want to bake a whole wheat bread, and a recipe that I'll play with more too.

The recipe below is my adapted recipe from this adapted recipe here. You can experiment, and make changes to get the texture of the bread that you like.

Whole Wheat Honey Yogurt Bread

400g whole wheat flour
1 beaten egg
94g vanilla yogurt (a bit less than 1/2 cup)*
6 oz whole milk (180mL or about 3/4 cup)
40g honey (about... 1/4 cup honey)
1 tsp instant yeast
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
2 tbs vital wheat gluten (see photo at the end)

(*Note: I used plain European-style yogurt from TJ's, thinking it'd give the bread more flavor from the sourness.)

Procedure:

1. In a very large bowl, combine flour with salt and vital wheat gluten. Mix well, then add in yeast.

2. In another bowl, warm up the milk a bit- warm to the touch, not boiling. Then add in honey, yogurt, and beaten egg. 3. Combine the wet ingredients to the dry. Mix well and knead it for about 10-15 minutes. It'll be a sticky dough, but try kneading it. Add the olive oil on top of the dough at this point, and it'll help make the kneading to be easier. Or, you can also add the olive oil to your hand and this will also help you knead easier- less sticky dough.

4. After kneading, put a plastic wrap on top of the bowl (or you can also put the dough in a big oiled container with a lid, like a Tupperware.) Place the dough in the fridge overnight- about 8-12 hours.

5. The next day, take the dough out and let it come to room temperature (About 1 0r 2 hours). Then punch down the dough and spread it out to about 1/2 inch thickness. Give it a business letter fold first, follow by another business letter fold.

6. Oil your loaf pan to make sure it doesn't stick. Then gently shape your dough into an oblong shape and place it in the loaf pan. (Another way of forming the loaf bread is to divide the dough in half and shape each half into a long rolls and place each roll side by side in the loaf pan. When baked, it'll appear to have a slit in the middle.

7. Oil the top of the dough a little and cover with a plastic wrap. Or you can also spray the plastic wrap and place it on top of the dough. Let the dough rise until it goes over the top of the loaf pan a bit. But when the dough has almost risen to the top, preheat the oven to 375F.

8. Boil some water and pour that in a large oven safe pan (up to about 1/3 inch of pan). Place the loaf pan in the larger tray with boiling water and bake for around 35-40 minutes on the middle rack. Remove the tray that is underneath the loaf pan in the last 15 mins of baking. The tray of water is there to create steam, to give the loaf a crusty top. Tent the bread with an aluminum foil if the bread is browning too much.

9. Carefully take bread of oven and let it cool on a cooling rack completely (about 1 hr) before slicing.

Box of Vital Wheat Gluten

I know I lack some photos in the directions, but it is hard taking photos with sticky-doughy hands. I tried to keep one hand clean to take photos, but somehow both hands were sticky with dough and flour in the end.

Hurrying = Bad Cake Decorating

2008-12-18T07:29:00.006-05:00

This was a birthday cake for my sister back in November. I was busy the whole day and didn't have much time to decorate the cake- no writing name, no candles, no pretty decorations... The peaches were also laid out half-thought through.

Overall, everyone loved it because the inside had a thick layer of durian. I used twice the amount of durian I'd normally use. Yum yum. Well, almost everyone. One of my nephews ran up afterward to put in a request for the next cake: NO durian. ^_^

My only disappointment was that the kiwis I bought did not ripe in time. They were still sour. I wish I had some sweet strawberries like in the summer. Le sigh...

Bunny Bread

2008-12-17T06:58:00.001-05:00

I made this awhile ago... Being in a hurry, I didn't shape the bunny ears very well.

Dried Bamboo Shoots Soup

2008-11-29T07:06:00.002-05:00

You can actually eat this with either noodles or rice. I prefer noodles. Good with egg noodles, big flat noodles, or thin rice noodles. There are few ingredients in this soup, only dried bamboo shoots, soft tofu, and scallions.

Masala Chickpea Burger

2008-11-28T09:50:00.000-05:00

What should I cook? What should I cook?? I want to make chana masala, but I'm also in the mood for a veggie burger too!

Let's combine the two together, and make a very spicy masala chickpea burger! I used all the spices that'd go into a chana masala- coriander, ginger, turmeric, chillies, chili flakes, garam masala, cumin, garlic, paprika, and amchoor powder! Wow! That is a lot of spice. You can make this if you have the spices available already in your/your friend's cabinet. ^-^

Spicy Chickpeas Masala Burger

1 (15 oz) can of chickpeas (TJ's brand or any kind)
1/2 cup of chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup small diced celery
1 egg
1/2 red onion, diced
1 inch of ginger- minced/small diced
1 or 2 toasted bread slices (whole wheat) OR 3/4 cup toasted bread crumbs

Spices: salt, pepper, chili flakes chopped green chilies a splash of olive oil 2 tsp garlic powder a little coriander, 2-3 tsp of cumin 1 tsp turmeric 1 1/2 amchoor powder 2 tsp paprika garam masala- to taste- i put a lot, and didn't measure.

poppy seeds
buns/bread slices

Topping ideas: Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced onions, Sriracha, hummus

1. Put the following in a blender/food processor: chickpeas, bread crumbs, egg, splash of olive oil and all the spices. Blend together until it is a chunky hummus. (Be careful not to over blend, like I did.)*

2. Scoop out chickpea mixture into a big bowl and stir in chopped parsley, celery, ginger, and onion.

3. Heat oil in a large pan over medium-high heat and also put some poppy seeds out on a large plate. Then divide the chickpea mixture into burger-size portions and form into patties. Put the patties on the poppy seeds and encrust both sides with the seeds before frying in a pan.

4. Cook for about 6-8 minutes on each side, until the chickpea burgers brown. Check occasionally. Slide out on a plate. Toast up buns and spread them with a tangy hummus. Add the chickpea burger and top each with sliced onions and tomatoes, or anything you like.

5. Enjoy immediately :D

Dinner: Braised Smelt and Stir Fried Gai-lan

2008-11-17T23:31:00.009-05:00

Braised smelt in caramel sauce.

This is a savory caramel sauce, not the sweet kind that you usually associate with. The caramel adds a depth of flavor to any Vietnamese braised meat or fish dishes. I don't like smelt, because the fish breaks up too easily during cooking and there's too many tiny bones in it to eat. These were cooked with ginger, garlic, chili and fish sauce too. And you eat these with rice!

Pork and gai-lan stir fried.

Milky Adzuki Bean Dessert

2008-11-14T13:39:00.004-05:00

Adzuki beans with seaweed and red jujubes in lightly sweetened soymilk. I heart adzuki bean desserts.

Braised Bitter Melon, Tofu, and Plantains(!)

2008-11-13T01:05:00.001-05:00

I love bitter melon, I love tofu, and I love plantains! So, why not the three together in a pot?

It's actually very good, with the right seasonings, by yours truly. :D The key is to choose a slightly ripe, but not too ripe, plantain. This way, it'll not be mushy in the pot.

Critusy Pineapple Upside Down Cake

2008-11-13T01:02:00.006-05:00

This wasn't a cake I set out to make. I just happened to have a large amount of fresh pineapple at home. Never having a pineapple upside-down cake before, I don't really know which recipes are good and which are not. I found one on the Epicurious website that look pretty good. And what's exxtrrraa good about it is that Smitten Kitchen also did the same thing. I can see how other people like it then.

I know I don't like the cake very sweet, so I reduced the amount from one cup to a half cup, and it was really perfect for me. And since I don't have any cardamon on hand, I substituted it a teaspoon of cinnamon. It was silly of me, because after mixing in the cinnamon and being busy with other things, I saw brown specks in my flour and wonder what they are. Cinnamon!

However, I figured, cinnamon alone might be a bit boring. Hence, I added the zest of an orange and it really made this cake flavorful and fresh.

The pineapple pieces are caramelized in a pan with some sugar and a teeny bit of water separately before arranging in the cake pan. That's why it's more of a golden color, and this also avoided using lots of butter too. Sweet and sour, and so good. ^-^

Oh yeah, no rum in this cake. (-___-)Booooo. The kids have to eat too.

Crispy Warm Beans and Spinach

2008-11-11T14:31:00.001-05:00

One of the simpliest, and best side dishes ever. All you have to do is boil some beans until soft (ahead of time), drain them, and crispy them up in a pan with a bit of olive oil. This recipe is versatile too! Use any greens you like. The original recipe called for kale, but I only had baby spinach on hand.

I like to season it a bit- with garlic powder (or fresh garlic in hot oil), salt, pepper, and chili flakes. Just don't add any sauce of any kind. That would make the beans soggy. You can add an herb too, if you like. But it's sooooo good simply with some rice, and maybe a fried egg? ^-^

It is the texture that make this dish good. The beans become crispy on the outside, yet warm and soft on the inside. Crispy bits of beans also break off and cling on to the spinach. I think a drizzling of toasted sesame seed oil at the end would make it good too, but I didn't do that last time. Try it out!

Three Humps Bread

2008-11-10T23:09:00.006-05:00

Whole wheat bread studded with sunflower seeds throughout and sesame seeds on top.
(This whole wheat is not a hard doorstop. Yay!)

Bread proofing up before the bake.

I think this a good bread, except it's a little too big to fit in someone's Pop-Up Toaster. :-( It's fine in my toaster oven. :D

When I'm done with this bag of sunflower seeds I have, I'll make walnut bread! That is, if the walnuts don't end up in my banana bread again. Or, perhaps a walnut cookie request from someone?

Soft Pretzels

2008-11-09T00:40:00.008-05:00

(＞＊Pretzels!＊＜)

I love pretzels! Yes, these may look like some weird twisted buns, but this was my first attempt at making pretzels! Yay! I'll have to practice my rolling skills. The ones above are scallion-ginger pretzels (in the dough, as well as on top of the dough itself.) I topped some with chili flakes, hoping for a spicy kick, but I guess I need to dip them in mustard or Sriracha to taste something spicy.I also made some miniature normal pretzels too, below. These have an egg wash and then topped with sea salt. I think I may have sprinkled on the salt too much, because I scrapped off some on top when eating. These are good chewy soft pretzels- definitely a recipe keeper. What I would change is using less baking soda in the poaching water.

Since I also tested a few pretzels with cinnamon sugar on top, I learned a very important matter... that is to put the cinnamon-sugar after the baking, after brushing on yummy melted butter. Because my sugar was almost burnt. (￣〜￣) Hehe
So if you have a free afternoon, make some pretzels! I made the dough a night ahead, and kept refrigerated. One thing you need to remember is to use less yeast. Because the yeast would eat up all the food and wouldn't make your dough rise the next day. I'd say, use 1/2 of the yeast called for, and stick the dough in the fridge. The long fermentation would actually make the dough taste better.

I wish I have some pretzels now, but I gave them all away. (` - _ -` )

Squared Quinoa Bread

2008-11-08T23:12:00.000-05:00

I don't think my family like quinoa. Yes, it's very healthy and has a complete set of protein and all that. But I bought a small box of the stuff since last year, and we haven't touched it much. So where is it gonna end up? In my bread! Quinoa Bread!

As you can see, there is that same reincarnation of sunflower seeds in this bread. Well, only sprinkled on top. I have a whole bagful of sunflower seeds left. ^_^ The inside is whole wheat flour and cooked quinoa.
I was going to buy a pullman loaf pan, to make perfectly squared bread, but this one came out that way. Almost squared though. That's because the quinoa caused it to be dense and didn't rise much. Next time, I'll soak the grains and add it to the bread uncooked.

The bread tasted fine, after toasting up and with a good slathering of hummus. (+_+)

Turtle Bread!

2008-11-06T20:59:00.003-05:00

100% Whole wheat turtle bread. I used dried currants for the eyes, because they're smaller and cuter as eyes than raisins. ^_^ But I need a sharper razor to score the lines for the shell. It didn't come out very well.

Braised Pork, Pork Belly, More Pork, and Eggs

2008-11-05T17:14:00.003-05:00

Another go at the braised pork in coconut juice for dinner! Well, it's been a while since I made this again. Partly, because I've been busy and lazy. You have to simmer for a very long time for the flavors to come together, and the meat to be very tender. The pork is braised in coconut juice with spices like star anise, chinese five spice powder, garlic, and ginger. The eggs go in the pot towards the end, and will take on a caramelized color. You eat this with rice and a crisp salad (lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and mints).

Too Cheesy??

2008-11-02T00:05:00.014-04:00

The Spicy 'Chi Heart Pizza- Kimchi Pizza!

Heart shaped is kinda cheesy, but I liked it! I've read a lot on the internet, and apparently, a great combination is pepperoni and kimchi on pizza. Pork goes with everything! :-(

Instead of kimchi alone, I put some crispy veggie ham and sauteed onions to give the pizza more flavor. The sauce is mixture of several different HOT hot sauces and some tomato sauce. However, thinking it over the next day, I thought it might be good to have some pickles on it. Weird, but it needs a sour or salty taste to go along with the spiciness. And some more herbs too. A kimchi pizza do over is in order, I guess!

Breakfast Egg Pizza

Second pizza that night- runny eggs, red bell peppers, chile flakes, corn, cheese, and green onions.

This is my favorite out of the two! Maybe it could use some more eggs. Maybe the kimchi pizza could have used an egg or two, too.^o^

Lunch: Curried Cauliflower and Tofu

2008-10-31T00:58:00.011-04:00

Cauliflower tends to be bland, so not many people like it... :( That's why you gotta season the heck out of it to make it tasty! I love just sautéing cauliflower with some curry powder, chili flakes and spices to make it tasty and healthy. You don't need to deep fry it, although a veggie tempura would be good too. The important thing is not to cook it to a mushy death. Keep it crisp!

I always think that if a cauliflower head and a broccoli head were to battle each other on the nutritional level, the broccoli would win. Broccoli just seems more powerful and almighty. But cauliflower is very nutritious too!

Low in fat, high in dietary fiber, folate, water and vitamin C, and possessing a very high nutritional density (whatever that means).

Lunching with some rice, cauliflower, and crispy lettuce.

A Summery Vermicelli Dish

2008-10-28T01:16:00.011-04:00

Damn! Forgot the peanuts! (-____-)

I don't know which I prefer eating- soup noodles (pho) or dry vermicelli (bun). Both is really popular in Vietnamese cuisine. I guess it depends on the weather really. In the summer, I don't pho as much, and would prefer the cooler and more refreshing dry noodle dish.

Dry vermicelli is usually eaten with grilled meats, herbs, cucumbers, and a diluted seasoned fish sauce. This is vegetarian version I made is with stir fried jicama, fried tofu, cucumbers, herbs, and spicy soy sauce.

This dish is like an unrolled version of a summer roll. ^-^ So, if you have rice paper, roll it up!

Choose your sauce!

Sunflower Seed Oat Bread

2008-10-27T01:18:00.018-04:00

The story behind this bread is very simple, and kind of silly too. I really love sunflower seed bread, and the only good place I know where to get it from is Clear Flour Bread in Brookline, MA. They have an excellent bread called Organic Vollkornbrot (a German bread). This bread has tons of sunflower seed in it, which I LOVE. However, the bread is made with rye meal, which I HATE. So, it's basically a rye bread studded with s-seeds.

I want a whole wheat version instead. Just like the Vollkornbrot, I put lots of sunflower seeds in mine too, along with Irish steal cut oatmeal, to give it a rustic nutty flavor. This is a really dense and earthy bread.

But if you're wondering why my bread is kind of short, that's because I split the dough for one bread into two. I prefer having a higher ratio of crust to crumb for this bread because the crust is really good.

Sunflower Seed Oat Bread- great as toast strips for slathering on tangy horseradish hummus or dunking in stews. Or with some cheese, perhaps? (*^__^*))

Spicy Tomato Chicken Stew

2008-10-24T13:43:00.012-04:00

Ingredients:

olive oil
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 stalk celery, cut into small pieces
1 carrot, peeled, cut into small pieces
1 small onion, medium diced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 (14 oz) can low-salt chicken broth
1 (14.5 oz) can chopped tomatoes
3 boned chicken thighs (about 1 1/2 pounds total)
1 package (8 oz.) thawed frozen artichoke hearts, quartered if large**
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces**
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
Red chile flakes, to taste
Crusty bread

Preparations:

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add chicken in a single layer and cook, turning once, until browned, 4 to 5 minutes total. Transfer chicken to a plate.

2. Reduce heat to medium and add in about 2 tsp more of olive oil. Add garlic first, then onion, celery and carrot and stir just until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaf, and thyme and simmer, scraping up browned bits from bottom of pot, about 3 minutes. Add broth and chicken and return to a simmer. Lower heat slightly to maintain simmer, cover, and cook 25 minutes. Turn the chicken over half way and stir the mixture occasionally.

3. Take the chicken out after 25 minutes and let cool a bit. Discard bay leaf. Add in artichokes. Shred or cut the chicken into bite- size pieces. Return the chicken meat to the stew and stir in basil. Bring the stew to a simmer. Season with salt, pepper and chili flakes, to taste.

Serve with some crusty hearty bread.

** Optional:
If you don't like artichokes, you can use 1 (15oz) can of organic kidney beans instead. If you don't have basil, substitute with 1/2 a cup of flat-leaf parsley chopped.

Banana Nutella Cake

2008-10-22T19:07:00.011-04:00

I love the combination of banana and Nutella. (I went through a phase of eating all nutella-banana sandwiches for breakfast and lunch one semester in college. But that's another story!)
So why not make a banana Nutella cake?

It was really hard to resist swirling in lots of Nutella because it's so good. I love eating through this cake- bits of crunchy walnuts, wonderful banana flavor and melty Nutella all through out.
This cake was topped with banana slices too, and as the cake baked, the bananas caramelized as well. When the cake was done baking, the top was not that brown, so I sprinkled on some sugar and put it back under the broiler for a minute or two. I love the crunchy sugary bits on top.

And each slice will get a piece of banana too!

Banana bread is one of my favorite things to bake because it makes the house smell so good! So if you need to freshen up your house, bake something! Don't use artificial Febreze! ^_^

(Not that my house smelled bad from durian or anything... :D )

A Sesame Cookie and Its Mutations

2008-10-21T23:46:00.000-04:00

I was reading through several blogs, to find something that would be nice and easy to bake. Cookies! Awesome! The weather is cold, so I'll make sesame cookies! This recipe looked good and very easy too.

Well, the batter was a mess. It was too liquidy, so I started adding a bit more flour, and then started adding oats. Thinking, hey, I'll just turn them into oatmeal cookies anyway. Those are always good. The batter thickened, and I thought it'll be all good and done. Until I poured it onto the baking sheet. Damn, still too liquidy!

I decided to bake that messy batch anyway. About 20 minutes or so later, out comes....

Sesame oatmeal flakes! And they were awesome! So thin and crispy on the outside, yet chewy in the center.

Too bad I decided against baking any more of the liquid mess, or else I'd have more of these giant flake cookies. :(

I added more flour and sesame seeds to make one tray of sesame seed cookies. And these still came out very tasty.

Then I thought to myself- I still want oatmeal cookies! Hence, I added more oatmeal and bits of chopped chocolate into the now thickened batter. The sesame seeds on top of the oatmeal were sprinkled on to make 'em look nice. :D

And someone was enjoying lots of cookies in the end... ^_^

(Shhh.... I'm not sneaking away cookies Auntie! ^o^*)

Lunch: Peanut Buttered Tofu and Long beans

2008-10-20T00:23:00.000-04:00

Spicy sauteed long beans with carrots and peppers.

I like cooking them with lots of chilies and garlic, and another version with shrimp paste. They're crisp and tender when eaten young, which is what you should be looking for when shopping for them. The Chinese long bean, also known as the yardlong bean, is actually only about half a yard long.

Heheh.. Such a messy bowl. This is fried tofu in peanut butter sauce (nothing special). Hey, I kind like it... Eat with some noodles or rice.

Homemade Kimchi

2008-10-19T00:58:00.004-04:00

Even my 3-yr old niece knows what this is.

Today, when I asked her, "Liz, what is this? You know?"

In a squeaky voice, she said: "KiM-CHEEEEE!!!"

Auntie: "Can you eat kimchi?"

Liz: "No! Hot! Too hot!!" ^-^

..........................

You can buy kimchi in Korean stores, but it's so easy and cheap to make.
And as spicy as you want it!

So you know what's gonna come out of this?

Hmm... Kimchi pizza, anyone? ^_^

Meringue Cookies

2008-10-16T14:06:00.016-04:00

These may be the best cookies ever for me. They are light, airy, and SO easy to make. If you want to impress someone and bake him or her cookies, definitely make meringue cookies.

All you need to do is whip up egg whites with a bit of cream of tartar and powdered sugar until stiffed. That's it! Then you can add any flavoring you want. Here's a recipe that tells you about the basic technique of making meringue cookies. Most recipes call for 1/4 cup of sugar for each egg white, but I find that to be a bit too sweet. Maybe it's just with the additional chocolate chips that I mixed in. Experiment and see what you like.

Above is a green tea meringue cookies that I made, though you can't really see the green matcha tint. A few of them I topped with sesame seeds and nuts, and some I topped with raspberry jam. The jam was a bad idea! It deflated the meringues as it melted down into a puddle. :( See why the cookies are flat?!

Below is my meringue with chocolate chips and nuts. These were very good, my favorite out of the two. My nephew loved both and asked for more the next day, even though I hated the green tea version. ^_^ I just mixed chopped chocolate chips and nuts into the meringue after it's been whipped up. My most important tip for you is not to pipe out the meringues with the nuts. The nuts got stuck in the nozzle and it was a pain in the ass to take out. :( It will be much easier and faster if you scoop out the meringue and put dollops of it on the baking tray (non-stick Reynolds). Topped with some more chocolates and nuts. Yay- a free form look!

There are two ways of baking meringue cookies if you search around on the net. One is baking them at a high temperature for a short time, and the other is baking for a long time at a low temperature. I prefer baking them at 225F for about 1 3/4 hrs- 2 hrs. You don't have to worry about them burning! The cookies will be dry, crispy and airy. This is a good cookie to make to warm up your kitchen on a cold day.

Dinner: Chicken and Soup

2008-10-15T01:08:00.004-04:00

I was tired (or lazy)! So, a simple dinner it was! What's faster than pan-frying some chicken on the stove? It's fast and easy. No need to wait for the oven to preheat.

What I did was simply de-boning chicken thighs (yay! dark meat) in the morning, then marinated them with spices. With what ever style you like- just don't make it bland. For me, this usually means Chinese 5-spice powder, fish sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar, pepper, minced garlic, ginger and onion, and some curry powder blend I've got in my house. That's it! Prepare it in the morning before work, and you can cook quickly in the evening. (*You do need to plan ahead.*)

As a veggie option, I made cannellini beans with green veggies, any kind that you have on hand (kale, swiss chard, Chinese broccoli, etc.). Tonight's lucky green was... collards! Then throw in some other veggies that you like, to have a variety in the soup. I don't like eating plain old collards and beans. Season it up, spice it up!

And of course, enjoy everything with brown rice.

Extra Banana-ey Banana Walnut Bread

2008-10-13T16:42:00.004-04:00

I used 6 ripe bananas in this bread! These look like big loaves in the picture, but it's actually one batter divided into 3 mini loaves. Cooking time is quicker, and each being mini, it is cuter too! I love it!

This is actually a good and healthy banana bread recipe that I adjusted, using only 1/3 cup of olive oil and no butter. I added in 2/3 cup non-fat yogurt, because it would prevent the bread from drying out. Yogurt or apple sauce is a good substitute for fat in baked goods. I just prefer yogurt... because I don't like apple sauce! :D Instead of regular white flour, I used whole wheat flour (either white or traditional brown is good). Also, don't add a lot of sugar. IMO, I think 1/2 a cup of brown sugar is perfect. You get lots of sweetness from the ripe bananas, and you want to taste the banana flavor too.

After adjusting all the ingredients to make a healthier banana bread, it may seem like it doesn't taste good anymore, but I assure you, it does. Extra banana-ey, extra good, and healthy! (Don't mind the sesame seeds on my b'nana bread, I like the extra crunch.)

Just find your favorite banana bread recipe and tweak it to your liking!

Curried Noodle Stir Fry

2008-10-12T12:09:00.004-04:00

I don't think curry flavor/powder should be confined to making curry alone. I like it with fried tofu and noodle stir fries too! I also added turmeric powder, because I like the flavor. It's good for your health and goes well with curry powder too. (Even though some people might not agree that there is such a thing as curry powder.) :-)

Cucumber Apple Roll

2008-10-12T11:47:00.006-04:00

Snacking: Cucumber, apple, horseradish hummus and red rice roll. Hey, it tasted good to me! ^_^ Though I think avocado apple combination would be much better.

(And yes... Very shitty cutting on the pieces.)

Banana Peanut Butter Cookies

2008-10-10T00:35:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I just have an urge to bake something... Maybe I'm stressed out, maybe I'm sad, or just plain bored. Two weekends ago, it was a combination of all three. :-( In the mood for some sweets, I thought cookies were the easiest to bake.

Cookies then! Soft, crunchy, chewy, chocolatey, nutty... Everything I like, I will put in a cookie!

This is not a recipe from any master chef. I just made it up, approximating the amount of each ingredient to my liking. (Another way of saying it is, I was too lazy too look up recipes.) ^_^

Banana Peanut Butter Cookies

A:
1 banana (well mashed)
1 egg (well beaten)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda + 1 tsp baking powder
1/4-1/3 cup peanut butter (I think I used 4 big scoops of a soup spoon. Whatever, it's just pb.)

B: 2 cups rolled oats (oatmeal) + 2 TBS whole wheat flour

C:
1/3 cup chopped chocolates or chocolate chips (dark chocolate is best)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Optional: Smarties or M&Ms

1. Combine ingredients of A together well first, then add B.
2. Mix in chocolate chips and walnuts (from C).
3. Roll out the cookies into 1.5" balls and flatten them out a bit. Press a Smartie candy in the center.
4. Bake 350F for 12-14 minutes.

Makes about 2 dozens, depending on how big you want your cookies.

p.s. You don't really taste any banana in these cookies at the end. Only the peanut butter. The banana is only there as a binder (like the egg) for the dry ingredients. It also keeps the cookies soft on the inside, and adds a natural sweetness, so you don't have to use as much sugar.

Summer is Gone

2008-10-09T19:56:00.002-04:00

But I still want all the juicy bountiful fruits of summer... Strawberries, cherries (my favorite), sweet cantaloupes, refreshing dragonfruits...

I wish summer is still here.

Tofu and Zucchini Blossoms

2008-10-09T19:29:00.003-04:00

My simple lunch: Red rice with braised tofu, ginger and pineapple, and sauteed zucchini blossoms on the side.

Some people like to stuff the blossoms with cheese and then fry them. I just like to prepare 'em simply and healthy.

Turmeric Sticky Rice

2008-10-09T18:59:00.006-04:00

Because turmeric is good for you! And turmeric tastes good too!

Sprinkle some sesame seeds on the sticky rice, and it makes a delicious afternoon snack! When eating sticky rice, I especially loooooove eating the burnt crunchy rice at the bottom. Everyone thinks the good part is the soft cooked rice on top, but the best part is the bottom. ^_^

And no sticky rice in the rice cooker- because it never gives you that crispy bottom rice. Stove top is the only way to make this!

You can read about all the benefits of turmeric here.

Plantain-Tapioca pudding

2008-10-07T20:15:00.006-04:00

This Vietnamese dessert (Chè Chuối) is usually made with bananas, but I prefer using ripe sweet plantains. There is more texture to it after cooking. Soymilk is substituted for coconut milk, because it's just better health-wise.

Ingredients in this pudding: diced sweet potatoes, tapioca pearls, plantains, milk, sugar. Very simple, but very good. Oddly, this is one dessert I only like to eat hot or warm.

Basically, you boil diced sweet potatoes, drain and save for later. Then in a pot, simmer plantains in milk and sugar first, then add tapiocas. Put potatoes in again when tapiocas are cooked.

FAILED Bread

2008-10-06T22:59:00.003-04:00

The name of this bread is Speja Apricot Raisin & Walnut Bread, one of my baking failures. Why? Because it's so short and dense! It didn't rise properly, probably because of my too many add-ins to it. Also because I modified the recipe without properly baking it as directed from here.

It's supposed to be very good with cheese with all the nuts and apricots! I will bake this again properly (without any mashed potato add-ins)! ^_^

Pork and Collard Greens Soup

2008-10-05T21:45:00.001-04:00

A pretty hearty dish for the cold season.

What's in it: pork (with bone is more flavorful), carrots, collard greens, cauliflower, and a few left over green beans.

For non-vegetarian soups, I always poach or boil the meat to cook them first, to get a broth. If you don't want the meats to get tough, simply remove them and then add back at the end. Sometimes I will saute them in oil and garlic before adding water to make the soup broth.

In my opinion, I prefer not to cook the collard greens to mush. I've found that the stalk part of the collard greens are tougher, so you should cook those ahead for a few minutes before adding the leaves.

Dinner: Roasted Ribs and Sauteed Veggies

2008-09-26T00:01:00.006-04:00

Green beans and sugar snap peas sauteed with garlic and some chicken.
Ginger + Five-Spice Ribs Roast, and spicy hoisin sauce glaze.

Also along with these is a mixed salad of cucumber, lettuce, and tomatoes. (Hehe.. No, I did not eat this dinner. Maybe the tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce sandwich.)

Smarties Cookies

2008-09-24T23:50:00.010-04:00

Smarties cookies, with some almond pieces (for crunch). I also used almond meal too, to make a softer cookie, rather than just flour.

I will need to experiment more with this! Maybe add rolled oats? Additional dark chocolates? Hmm...

Healthy Oat Cookies

2008-09-22T17:27:00.015-04:00

The healthy oatmeal cookies- no added sugar, no butter, no flour, no eggs.

I didn't think these will be good, but they are! The sweetness comes from the ripe bananas and chopped chocolate, and they are just right. If you prefer a little bit more sweetness, then add a bit of brown sugar or honey.

Here's the recipe:

Banana Oat Cookies

Makes about 3 dozen bite-sized cookies.

3 large, ripe bananas, well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup almond meal
1/3 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 - 7 ounces chocolate chips or dark chocolate bar chopped
almond slices, sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1. In a large bowl, combine bananas, vanilla extract, and oil. Set aside.
2. In another bowl whisk together the oats, almond meal, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until combined. Fold in the chocolate chunks/chips and walnuts.
4. Spoon the dough out, about a tablespoon each. For each one, you can roll it in sesame seeds if you like, or put almond slices on it too, to make it look nicer.
5. Bake 15 minutes for a soft cookie, or 25 mins for a crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside cookie.

Sweet Tapioca Balls- Chè Xôi Nước

2008-09-15T21:28:00.006-04:00

Secret dessert! Secret dessert!

Check out the texture of these balls! :D

What are inside these balls? And what's that on the outside?

This is chè xôi nước. It's like dumpling balls in a lightly sweetened ginger syrup. Inside these balls is mashed mung bean, and on the outside are tiny tapioca pearls.

The tiny tapioca pearls are mixed with some water first to make a paste, and then form into a shell of tapioca. This creates a very good chewy texture to it, as opposed to making the shell with normal glutinous flour (See second picture).