Scallion Pancakes . Lo Mai Gai Tofu . Gai Lan

I was thinking about how I've been cooking for about exactly a year now, and I've made good progress. I'm consistently making 3 solid courses a night. This night I got a little help. And I needed some comfort food, and there really is nothing more comforting for me than Chinese.

The scallion pancakes were a gift from my old boss/neighbor's wife. They totally rocked. I forgot about them, I had them in the freezer.

Gai Lan is a chinese vegetable which is much like rapini, or brocolli. It's a little bitter. I cooked this with some ginger, garlic, olive oil then poured some vegetarian stir fry sauce, the veg oyster sauce replacement.

The Lo Mai Gai was a failed attempt at a raging success. (stole that line) If you were to ever ask me what is the one meat dish I miss the most, this would be it. It is lotus wrapped glutenous rice with chicken on the inside. It usually also has chinese sausage and mushrooms in it, this usually gets the rice all greasy something that I failed at.

The task is a lot less scary than it seems, it just takes a little prep time. First, soak lotus leaves in water for 1 hour to make them flexible enough to use. Soak short-grain "sticky" rice too, to make it more sticky. What is going to happen is much like a tamale, you will layer rice, filling, and rice
then wrap it in a lotus leaf and steam it. So the filling possiblities are endless. I decided to go with, marinated pressed tofu, garlic, ginger, shitake mushrooms, water chestnuts, and baby corn. everything diced up, its a filling remember.

This will be stir-fried in a sauce, I think the rice-wine is important hear as its got a distinct taste that I remember. Mixed that with light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, vegetarian stir-fry sauce, white pepper, and a some water and corn starch. I really barely cooked it.

My roommate told me I was good at wrapping them, I thought about it... it's much like rolling a cigar, I can roll up a mean burrito too. You want to make little square packages. Then steam it for 30+ minutes.

I really love the idea of these lotus flavored rice packages. And the filling came out perfect for wontons... which I will try very soon. I need to re-work this filling and get it greasier.

I had 2 cups of jasmine scented white tea, I think it really wanted to be in ice cream though. I need an ice cream maker.

Vegetable Pot Pie . Mac and Cheese . Angel Food Cake

Vegetable Pot Pie

I still had some tart pastry left over from the apple turnovers from last night, and it was actually better today than it was yesterday. I rolled this out thin and lined a couple of ramikins, cut some circles for the top, and stuck it in the fridge to keep the dough from melting anymore.

I started by caramelizing onions, and soaking some porcini mushrooms in hot water. Added a small amount of dry white wine once the onions were done caramelizing. Then I added some basic soup veggies, carrots cut into sticks, potatoes, celery sliced, mushrooms sliced and some dinosaur kale. Sliced up the re-hydrated porcinis and put the mushroom water in with some thyme and a bay leaf. Salt and Pepper.

I finally covered and sealed up the ramikins with the top circles that I made. Brushed the tops with a egg/cream mixture and baked the pies at 350 for 1 hour.

I guess I didn't seal them good enough because they started leaking about 20 minutes in. I had to stick a pan underneath them to catch the soup. really not so good at this baking stuff.

Mac and Cheese.

This was sort of a make shift side dish. I wanted to make a side of something, and its been about a week since I last made mac and cheese so I thought I'd make use of those apples my parents gave me. The only issue was that all I had was cream and no milk. I ended up busting out the dry non fat milk I use for white bread along with the heavy cream... I probably should've used more butter and flour in retrospect but it came out okay. I used some sharp cheddar and parmesan.

On another note, my roommate just came back from Napa and said she had Mac and Cheese with Gorgonzola and Truffles. Not fair.

Angel Food Cake

I finally saved up enough egg whites. I laced it with some orange-blossom water. My cake came out too cakey, maybe I needed to get more air into it when whisking. It still tasted great.

Potato Leek Soup . Roasted Yam/Potato Pizza . Apple Turnovers

This started out with trying to figure out what to do with these apples my mom sent me home with. Apple Pie! Shit. Alice didn't print a recipe for apple pie... apple tart? Not feelin' it. Apple Turnovers, yes, sounds good. (wait, don't all these taste the same?). Google.

I went with Tartine's tart crust recipe. Cut into squares.

Filling, a variation on an "All Recipes": 1 apple peeled cored sliced 1/4", chopped. 1 Tbsp Raisins. 1 Tbsp. Dried Cranberries. 1 Tbsp Chopped Walnuts. 1/4 Cup Sugar. 3 Tbsp butter. So, what went different here is that I forgot to put in 1/8 tsp of vanilla, I didn't have dried currants so I used rasins and cranberries. And I didn't have apple sauce so I used butter.

Mix the filling together. Split the filling amongst the squares, fold into triangles, and try to seal it up. Use a fork to clamp more and make those stylin' imprints. poke some venting holes on top. Bake 20 mins at 400 degrees, or until brown.

What I would do differently next time: I got lazy and didn't make an egg wash which probably resulted in leakage and why the top didn't come out all golden brown. I was thinking that I should've used the ravioli cutter, and why not just make them ravioli sized? Would be fun.

The pizza. I attempted to copy a pizza I had at Pizetta which was roasted yam with mustard greens. I didn't see mustard greens at the store and I didn't feel like walking any further to another grocer, so I settled with Arugula... it's kinda bitter spicy... I added some walnuts to get some nutty.

The dough, since this was last minute I made a quick Yeasted dough. Half of the flour was rye, half all-purpose. I thought I'd help out the yeast and match the potatoes and yams with some lavender honey. I was wrong; more later.

I used some left over Russets/Yukon Golds from the soup. And sliced up a yam. Tossed it all with olive oil, rosemary, lavender, and thyme. Salt and Pepper. Roasted them.

The cheeses were boring, Mozzarella (this organic brand is pretty good for a dry one, but I don't remember the name of it anyway) and Parmesan.

** What I would do differently next time: ** The crust was too sweet, I shouldn't have put the honey in. I think a very plain crispy crust would've worked better. And also find those damn mustard greens, arugula was a nice try though.

The potato leek soup turned out OK. I love this stuff. I'll probably be drinking it for a bit.

Pupusas

I set out on a mission today to make tamales. I've been obsessed with the idea of cutting out my lunch expenses entirely or near entirely, such that I have a $5 budget on a side order at the ferry building. I went to the mexican grocer on clement and id guess 24th. I was planning on ripping off Donna's Tamales chipotle tofu filling. So I found the Chipotle in Adobo sauce and masa de harina, i was still short on those corn husks. I wish somehow highschool spanish taught me enough to ask for tamale wrappers or corn husks, but it didn't. I bet it was a funny sight me all squinty eyed with a smile on my face making hand gestures of what I think means tamale wrapper. The lady laughed at me and just said "sorry nino".

Well, I had my heart set on some tamales, what am I going to do? Reading the label on masa it said tortillas, tamales, pupusas.... PUPUSAS! life's a lot less coincidental than you'd think. I did end up learning that tamale and pupusa filling should definitely be a different chunkiness. I should've just made cheese and blackbean pupusas.

Anyway, the filling. Carrots diced. Onions diced. Can of black beans, rinsed. corn kernels. chipotle peppers, some of the adobe sauce. tomato paste.

So now the fun part, filling the pupusas, don't worry I watched a few youtube videos... I'm good to go.

You roll them into a ball then thumb out a little cavity, fill it up then seal it trying to have no air in it. then you press it down into a pancake. Due to the chunkiness of my filling I had a hard time getting the thickness down to where I wanted it.

Then you just fry it in a very lightly oiled pan.

As it turns out, my roommate decided to have an early thanksgiving day dinner... so this ended up going out to a dinner party... i didn't taste enough to know if it was as horrible as i think it was. The filling with diced extra firm tofu added ended up being great in these burritos I made the next day. Just add rice, cheese, sour cream, lettuce. Rockin.

Big Game Pizza

I had a few friends over for the Big Game (Cal vs Stanford). I woke up early to get some dough started, I've been really bad about the over-night rise or using sourdough starter lately. I use
my usual 25% dark rye to all-purpose that I took from Alice and combine it with the cheeseboard recipe for pizza dough.

Zucchini and Feta Cheese Pizza with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto. p203 the cheeseboard collective cookbook.

Well the only real reason why I wanted to write about it at all is because one of my friend works at CPK and said that my pizza was the best vegetarian pizza he has ever had. I'll take it, even though its cheating when you got cheeseboard pairing your ingredients.

French Onion Soup

my first dinner party
i caramelized onions for 5 hours
and only made 2 of 5 courses
im sure everyone was still hungry
but when you have more wine than food
its all good

Salad
French onion soup with herb broth, Gruyere and Ementeller
Sauteed Kale with Vinegar and Cranberries
Quiche
Almond Cake with Berries

Butternut Squash

Butternut Squash Roasted Red Pepper Tomato and Mint (Greens Cookbook)
Butternut Squash and Sage Risotto (Chez Pannisse Vegetables)
Killer Granola Cookies (Cheeseboard Collective Works)

I added a very special ingredient to all of it ;-)