Is this what they eat in heaven?

(Photo by distopiandreamgirl)

Man, that's one fancy, three-tiered pavlova! That would definitely be awesome to have at a wedding.

Pavlova, or pav, is a New Zealand/Australian meringue dessert topped with whipped cream and fruit; it was named after the ballerina Anna Pavlova. This dessert, though, doesn't have to be so complex. It can be more simple (but still delicious-looking) like this:

(Photo by thenoodleator)

I had the opportunity to first taste and even help make pavlova a few years ago with an Australian resident at my dormitory for a couple Australia-themed events. These desserts were much loved by the people in attendance, but I didn't think about this dessert again until I designed a food newsletter that featured a recipe for pavlova.

While I have had the pleasure of eating this fabulous treat, my boyfriend hadn't, and I really wanted to share it with him by making one for his birthday. While it's one thing to look at delectable pictures (such as Flickr's pavlova group pool), it's totally different to experience the taste firsthand. Part of the beauty of pavlova is its contrast: A crispy shell contains a marshmallow texture inside; the sweet meringue with whipped cream can be topped with different fruits, including more tart ones such as certain berries, kiwis, etc.

I did a lot of research online, checking out different recipes and helpful hints. Here are some that I found especially useful:

• The Joy of Baking - This provides a great introduction/explanation of pavlova.
• Simply Recipes - This has pictures to illustrate each step of the process and is especially useful to people interested in making individual-size pavlova, instead of one, big cake.
• About.com - There are instructions for making a regular pavlova and mini versions, but what I found the most helpful was an article called "The Biggest Mistakes When Making Meringue."

I read a comment to a pavlova recipe somewhere that this is what they must eat in heaven. Wouldn't that be great?

I actually ended up using a recipe from Recipezaar (the website is currently going by the name Food.com) called My N Z Pavlova. I ended up choosing this recipe because it's suppose to make a pavlova that serves 10-12 people (at the time, I thought I wanted to make a large pavlova), and it had glowing reviews. Plus, this is a family recipe for the person who submitted it: In 2005, Jen T said she had been making it for 35 years! She must be doing something right.

I followed her recipe almost exactly, except for the first step:

"Prepare a baking sheet by greasing lightly with butter and placing on it a sheet of tinfoil or baking paper. Grease the tinfoil and then shake on a few drops of cold water and smear around leaving a thin film of water."

I wonder if this would have been helpful to do to make it easier to remove the cooled pavlova from the "baking paper" (I used parchment paper). While cookies have slid off easily from parchment paper without this treatment in the past, the pavlova was so delicate that I was afraid to break it when it didn't come off easily. Therefore, the parchment paper stayed.

To get an idea of what my pavlova looked after it cooled, here's a picture of me getting ready to put whipped cream on it:

(This and the rest of my step-by-step photos are by my boyfriend)

Cooled and out of the oven, it looked like the right color. The cracking of the shell is totally normal. However, it had started to cave in at the top, perhaps from the indentation I made with the spatula before baking it. My boyfriend started snacking on the flakes from the cracking shell, while we were transporting it from my place to his house.

The whipped cream was made with a half-pint of heavy whipping cream, a half-teaspoon of vanilla, and a one-eighth cup of granulated sugar that were whipped into a lightly sweetened cream:

The cream was just enough to cover the center, but nothing else. For such a big pavolva (8 inches in diameter), I should have made at least double the amount of whipped cream if I cared about aesthetics (e.g. covering up more of the collapsing top and spots where the shell flaked off). However, this was just a tester pavlova, and besides, the most important thing is taste!

You can be very creative with your toppings. For mine, my boyfriend happened to have blueberries at his house, and I brought along some strawberries that we sliced up. I had chosen strawberries because I thought they'd make a nice combo with a special ingredient I had made while the pavlova was baking: lemon curd (you know, for a strawberry lemonade effect).

Since a meringue-based dessert like pavlova requires only egg whites, you need to figure out what to do with your yolks. I decided to make lemon curd because my boyfriend loves lemon flavor; he was the one who almost overdosed on lemon bars, after all. In fact, he thought the lemon curd tasted like the filling in those bars. I followed Alton Brown's recipe, except I added six yolks (since I had used six egg whites for the pavlova) and I cooked it on the stove for 20 minutes like some people suggested in the comments, instead of eight. I also found that refrigerating it for at least a few hours before using it helped thicken it:

Luscious, isn't it? After adding more berries and drizzling more lemon curd over the top, this was the result:

Including me, eight people tried some (good thing my boyfriend had some family over at his place). You know what? They loved it, and so did I! You know what else? The texture was just as it should be: crispy on the outside and marshmallow-like on the inside! It was almost like I didn't need to make a test pavlova at all, since it turned out so well. However, I'm glad I did because I definitely learned while making it.

I had a mini-dilemma when it came to whether I should make pavlova for my boyfriend's birthday as planned: His family will celebrate on his real birth date when they're out-of-town this weekend for a wedding, probably with cake and presents. That means they won't be having a celebratory gathering for him when they return, one in which I can participate. That means that I probably shouldn't make a large pavlova like I did for my "test" -- if I should make pavlova at all.

A dry pavlova can last several days if it's stored properly in a non-humid place, but once you add the whipped cream, fruit, etc., it will only last a few hours before it becomes a soggy mess. I had leftovers after my test pavlova because the slices were fairly large to begin with and no one wanted second slices. It was edible the next day, but it definitely was not as good as when it was freshly decorated.

My boyfriend encouraged me to make pavlova again for his birthday if that was what I had wanted to do all along, instead of feeling discouraged that I wouldn't be making it for his birthday "party" (he said he just celebrates with his family informally, instead of have a party anyways). He certainly enjoyed pavlova the first time around and would definitely look forward to it if I made it again. This time for his belated birthday, I think I'm going to make individual or mini pavlovas, so that we only decorate what we can eat at the time and the rest of the meringues maintain a fresh, contrasty texture for much longer. He wants the exact same fruit toppings as before, especially the lemon curd.

Well, whatever the birthday boy wants, that's what he'll get!

Food: 'universal yet personal'

(Photo by my boyfriend)

As I mentioned in my last design post,  I co-organized a newsletter for my dormitory this past spring. Well, it was finally posted online last week. You can view the pdf here. 

The newsletter's theme is food, which is pretty remarkable considering how I became interested in cooking and baking only recently. Food seemed like an appropriate, international, and maybe even easy topic to write about because it is both universal yet personal: Everyone needs to eat in order to survive, but what they eat can depend on their culture, preferences, health, beliefs, etc. Food is something that can be shared, which is exactly what people did through their writing in this newsletter. They wrote an article related to food or shared a recipe along with an introduction for why that particular dish is significant to them and/or their culture.

Design-wise, my favorite part is definitely the cover:

 

I wanted to include food-related images that were meaningful to my dormitory, so the four  images on the cover are zoomed-in shots from dormitory events that featured food (Using zoomed-in, detailed images was also a feature that I employed in the table of contents). The arrangement and various sizes of the text visually suggest a dessert, such as a cake on a cake stand. My boyfriend's input was very helpful and appreciated when he saw an early draft of the cover. Among his contributions, he suggested putting a cherry on top to make my intentions more apparent. Plus, it's a fun detail, don't you think?

It was hard not to get a little bit hungry when putting together this newsletter, especially when it came to searching for images to accompany some of these recipes. The Flickr search for pavlova was  definitely a mouthwatering experience that actually inspired me to try making this Australian/New Zealand meringue dessert myself. I used a different recipe than the one in the newsletter, but I'll share more about that in a different blog post. In the meantime, I've left you with a teaser of my pavlova in the first photo above.

Lemon bars overdose

(Photo by EvaSan)

Yum, don't those look delicious? If you had asked me that question last week, I'm not sure if I would have given much enthusiasm. I've rarely eaten lemon bars in my life. Earlier this week, after making a batch from scratch for the first time, I can now certainly give a resounding yes! There are a lot of recipes for lemon bars out there; I ended up using one from Joy of Baking:

Lemon Bars
Recipe Courtesy of Joy of Baking
Yields 16 bars (2 inches each)

Shortbread Crust:
1/2 C unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 C confectioner's (a.k.a. powdered or icing) sugar
1 C all-purpose flour
1/8 t salt
Lemon Filling:
1 C granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 C fresh lemon juice (approximately two large lemons)
1 T grated lemon zest (the yellow outer rind that contains the fruit's flavor & perfume)
2 T all-purpose flour
Garnish:
Confectioner's (a.k.a. powdered or icing) sugar

Tip: Always remove the zest first before halving and squeezing the lemon. Use a fine strainer to remove the seeds and pulp from the juice.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Butter, or spray with a non stick vegetable spray, an 8 x 8 inch (20 x 20 cm) pan.

2. Shortbread Crust: In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the flour and salt and beat until the dough just comes together. Press onto the bottom of your prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool while you make the filling.

3. Lemon Filling: In your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the sugar and eggs until nice and smooth. Add the lemon juice and zest and stir to combine. Fold in the flour. Pour the filling over the shortbread crust and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the filling has set. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. 

4. To serve: Cut into squares and dust with powdered sugar. These are best eaten the day they are made but can be covered and stored in the refrigerator for a day or two.

From what I've read in different lemon bars recipes, they seem basically the same, minus the measurements and small differences, such as using baking powder instead of flour for the filling. One of the things that I like about lemon bars is that they're really easy to make: The ingredients are essentially things you may already have (which was the case for me). The process takes less than 1 hour, and most of that hour is when your concoction is in the oven (That hour, though, doesn't include refrigeration after it's all done, if you want your lemon bars cool instead of warm).

Here's a picture of my lemon bars (the filling with the crust) fresh from the oven before they got powdered with sugar:

I didn't have a 8 x 8 inch pan, so I ended up with a 8 x 11 pan, making 20 bars (some larger or smaller, depending on you look at it, than others). I thoroughly enjoyed eating the leftover crust dough from the bowl and spatula that I used for mixing, as well as getting the remnants from the dish after I powdered and cut up the lemon bars before putting them into containers. If you want to make a good presentation, you may need to powder the individual bars again, in case the powdered sugar came off. Here's a picture of the completed yummy, lemony goodness (excuse the quality of my cell phone's camera):

Now, who overdosed on lemon bars? Why, it was my boyfriend! After my previous experiences with lemon-related food, I found out from his mom that he likes lemon bars. After seeing how simple the recipe was, I decided to give lemon bars a shot just for the heck of it. When I mentioned to him earlier in the day that I made lemon bars, he decided to come over after his internship was done. His more than 1 hour commute was just enough time for me to make a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few items, rush back, and cook something on the fly for dinner. No, we're not just going to eat lemon bars for dinner:

The bottom of the picture shows fried egg in toast. My boyfriend snacked on half of the (formerly) heart-shaped bread on top, while I was finishing up making mine. The top of the picture shows something I created from what I had on hand, plus that quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things, beans & rice with ground turkey & veggies:

• In a pan with oil, I cooked chopped garlic and onions on the stove on medium heat for 5 minutes. Then I added 2 small chopped up jalapeño pepper, 1 drained can of kidney beans, 1 small drained can of corn kernels and 1 can of diced tomatoes with the juice to the same pan. 
• After cooking that for five minutes, I added ground turkey to the pan, crumbling it with my cooking utensil. I then added leftover cooked white rice to the mixture. Salt, black pepper, red chili flakes and curry powder are added to taste. 
• When the meat is all cooked (which should take a few minutes), it's done. It's a colorful dish with a little kick to your tastebuds, and it can be a whole meal (generously serving 4 people) or a side dish (for maybe 6).

My boyfriend said it was delicious, but he was even more impressed with the lemon bars. In fact, he probably had about 10 until his poor tummy hurt! It was interesting to me that he had so many bars in one evening because he's the type of person who is concerned about portion sizes and eats small snacks or meals throughout the day when he's hungry, instead of three square meals per day at the requite times. Apparently, lemon bars are a weak spot of his. For me, making lemon bars helped me to better appreciate this treat. I can definitely add this to the list of yummy lemon dishes.  

Food Detox

Wonder why all these people are standing in line? Well, they're waiting to have Father's Day lunch at Kome Japanese Seafood & Grill. There was already a line out the door at 10:30 a.m., even though the restaurant opens at 11 a.m. People get there early and get assigned a number on a first-come, first-served basis. When their number is called (as the employee with the megaphone is demonstrating), then they  can finally head to their table.

After a wait of 30 minutes or more, what awaits patrons of this Japanese and Chinese buffet? My plate shows a sample of the Japanese fare:

The line for the Japanese food was relatively shorter than the much longer one for the Chinese food, so I just went with the flow, since I was hungry. It's possible, though, to be so overwhelmed by the crowds and lines, not to mention all the food and choices at such a buffet. Maybe some people can go crazy:

That cute kid is one of my cousins, Joanna. She was able to cut in line for particular Chinese food by sweetly saying, "Excuse me, excuse me!" and laying on the charm real thick. However, if you're not blessed to be a second-grade girl and you're eating at this buffet with family and friends, my suggestion is for you to coordinate with your companions: Maybe one person can get food from the Chinese area, another from the Japanese, another from the noodles area, etc., and everyone shares the wealth with each other:

Maybe you're in a food coma just looking at that picture? I did try to be careful with what I chose to eat, sticking mostly to relatively healthy fare, like seafood instead of beef and pork, as well as making sure I  got my veggies and fruits. Still, I didn't want to overwhelm my system later in the day. Let's just say that all for dinner I had that night was a granola bar, dry cereal, and an apple. 

After eating some home-cooked leftovers for breakfast and lunch (part of the joys of seeing my family) on Monday, I was on my own for preparing dinner. After a jog/walk, I was in the mood for something pretty light after my weekend dietary habits. I think this fits the bill pretty well:

I made a tuna fish salad without mayonnaise. Instead, I used lemon juice, lemon zest, ground black pepper, red pepper flakes, and a little extra virgin olive oil for seasoning. I also used drained canned tuna that was packed in water instead of oils, along with chopped fresh celery and red bell peppers. I used one slice of a nutty wheat bread for my tuna sandwich, and another slice of bread for fried egg in toast for something warm and a little substantive. With some baby carrots and a white nectarine for dessert, it certainly fit the bill of what I was looking for:

What's cooking? Quick, affordable meals!

Recently, it seems like I've turned into a bit of a food blogger. In my last entry, I talked about how I'm starting to do more cooking. Since I'm staying at my dorm over the summer, which is when the dorm residents and I have to fend for ourselves when it comes to food, I'm starting to do a little bit of experimenting in the kitchen.

Last Friday, I went to a Vietnamese grocery store for cheap produce and a Safeway for other groceries. Since I've been suffering from a sore throat, cough, and stuffy nose, I made my own chicken noodle soup, loosely based off of this recipe for Spaghetti Soup, minus the tomato soup. I happened to have a large package of spaghetti on hand, so this I used that instead of the egg noodles usually found in chicken noodle soup. I had bought ground turkey, which is cheaper than chicken breasts and cooks pretty fast. The vegetables were celery, green beans and peas.

The soup tasted good, though if I were to make this soup again, I would have either put more chicken broth or less "stuff" in the soup to make this dish more like a soup, instead of watery pasta (this isn't the fault of the recipe, but rather from my estimated proportions). I also would have broken the noodles into even smaller sizes. On the other hand, the next day, I did find a stray can of tomato soup in the kitchen and used that with my leftovers -- great! It was practically like spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Eggs have become a standby for me in recent months and something I like to have on hand. They're an affordable source of protein and are quite versatile, whether it's for cooking or baking. This morning, I used this recipe for Cookie Cutter Toad-in-Hole. Instead of using a cookie cutter, I cut a square-like shape (it doesn't look like a perfect square!) with a knife in the middle of the bread. The traditional shape for the hole is a circle, so if you don't have a cookie cutter, you can use a glass rim to get that shape.

While the egg cooked in the bread, that was enough time for me to heat up a pan with oil and quickly saute ground turkey, green beans, and peas, all seasoned with freshly ground black pepper. I used canned green beans and peas in my earlier soup and had a bunch of leftover vegetables that I needed to use. This dish plus the fried egg in toast took only 10-15 minutes to cook, since I was doing them simultaneously. Delicious!

*Even though the recipe calls it toad-in-the-hole, there's a British dish with the same name that has sausages in a Yorkshire pudding batter. Instead, this egg and toast has been called a load of other names, such as egg in the basket, cowboy eggs, bird's nest, etc.

For lunch today, I had more time on my hand to prepare a meal. Still, this took less than 30 minutes to prepare and cook, especially since I was doing it all at the same time. I've grown up eating rice at home, but it was always prepared in a rice cooker, instead of on the stove. Rice cookers are pretty convenient because all you need to do is measure and pour the rice into it, measure and pour the water into it, turn the rice cooker on, and in less than 30 minutes, it should be done. It's so easy, and you're not likely to burn or otherwise mess up your rice if you cook it in a cooker, instead of a stove. However, I gave stove-cooked rice a shot. Instead of water, I boil about 1.25 cups of chicken broth and 1 tablespoon of butter on the stove on medium and added more than 1 cup of white rice. After adding the rice, I put a lid on the pot and lowered the temperature to a medium-low, so it could simmer for 20-25 minutes (I ended up doing mine for 25 minutes).

Meanwhile, I chopped up some celery and red bell peppers (I forgot to add garlic!) and added that to a pan with olive oil. I sauteed it on medium, and then I gradually added other ingredients: ground turkey (yes, I have a lot of it for one person), one egg, and more green beans and peas. I seasoned the dish with black pepper, garlic salt, and cayenne pepper. It tasted good, especially paired with the rice, which surprisingly (for me) turned out nice and fluffy, not dry at all.

While this definitely doesn't qualify for quick from my experience, I wanted to give you an update on my lemon Italian ice. Today was the first time since last Thursday that I took it out of the freezer to check it. You know what? The ice basically stayed as shavings from the last I scraped it, instead of going back to a solid block. The picture above is from the baking dish that is holding the ice. It's still good, though, to shave any ice that's still in rather large blocks. It was quite a refreshing dessert to my meal.

Listening to my little chef

(Photo by altemark)

Do you like the "Ratatouille" reference in this blog post's title? Anyways, if you've read my recent entries here and here, I've been blogging about food. I would consider my family and I to be foodies. While growing up, I watched many cooking programs with my family. Instead of eating out a lot, my parents, particularly my mom, cooked the meals that weren't just food associated with our cultural background. My sister has recently been cooking a lot, too, after taking a cooking class in high school. During her university's school year, when my sister lives with one of our aunts, she's the one who does the cooking in that household.

While I appreciate food, I wasn't very interested in cooking it myself. Instead, I would rather "eat for food," as the sign says in the picture above. Sure, I could at least boil Top Ramen, as well as make pasta with sauce from a jar, but I'd avoid it if I could. Even if my mom tried to get me to help her in the kitchen, it was half-hearted on my part (plus, I don't feel very comfortable with kitchen knives). When I became a university student and started living away from home, you may think that that would have given me an opportunity to start cooking more regularly. Nope. For the past handful of years, I've lived in dormitories in which room and board came with a meal plan to eat at the various dining establishments on campus -- so easy, so convenient, and so unhealthy for you, if you're not careful with your options. It was either that or eating out.

When it was winter or summer break, I usually went home, where I could enjoy those home-cooked meals again. However, I spent last summer in Philadelphia for an internship, so I was on my own when it came to food. I gradually formed somewhat of a weekday food routine: cereal with nonfat milk for breakfast; a venti white mocha from the Starbucks counter at my office; a small salad and soup with a Snapple at my office for lunch (mixed with a splurge at Panera's once in a while if I went out with co-workers); Easy Mac, microwavable noodles, or a plain turkey sandwich on wheat bread, salad from a bag usually without dressing, and fruit; Triscuits or granola bars for snacks in between all that. Still no real cooking to be found.

Near the end of my stay, I finally started to cook -- a little. It mostly amounted to whole wheat spaghetti with a jar of marinara sauce or Top Ramen with a dash of sesame oil and some lettuce from the salad bag, so it was still not exactly gourmet. However, there was still something satisfying with cooking your own meal, that feeling of accomplishment after it's all done, and savoring the delicious results. Plus, it made me realize that I could have done this cooking thing all along that summer -- it would have saved me more money in the long-run than to eat out or buy ready-made stuff. Plus, I might have felt more satisfied.

During the past academic year, I was back to my meal plan, so I didn't take much advantage of cooking. However, in recent months, I've been cooking with my boyfriend once in a while and baking for him and his family, too. I like picking and trying out recipes on him, as well as cooking (he makes a nice sous chef) and eating together. All this has been a nice lead off to another summer away from home when I'll have to depend upon myself to come up with food. This time I'm looking more forward to grocery shopping and trying to come up with things to cook from what I have on hand. Sometimes what I have on hand is kind of random (e.g. someone left me a couple cans of green beans, a couple cans of tuna, and a box of chicken-flavored couscous), but that's when you need to get creative.

I read a May 29 article from The Seattle Times about an unemployed restaurant critic who now makes due with food stamps. It was interesting to read about his experiences, and it was especially interesting to read about how he uses his knowledge and creativity to come up with things to cook, not simply for survival but for a "gastronome's quest to eat well, to maintain a nutritious diet, to satisfy my foodie cravings, and to help those who help me." He writes: "By shopping wisely and scrimping compulsively, by cooking and savoring each meal as a blessing, I am sustained. Even that mysterious can from the food bank generically stamped 'Pork with Juices' promised culinary communion." That's inspiring.

Ice ice baby

(Photo by roboppy)

The above picture is lemon Italian Ice from Libby's Italian Pastry Shop. In my last blog post, among other things, I wrote about attempts at making lemon Italian ice (a.k.a. water ice, if you're from Philadelphia), using this recipe. The recipe says to "pour mixture into a 10 by 12-inch baking dish that's sitting on a sheet tray and put in the freezer." While I did find a glass baking dish of comparable dimensions, I didn't use the sheet tray at first. I wondered how big of a difference it would make to put a sheet tray underneath it. After the mixture was still in a liquid state after one day, I put my metal cookie tray right underneath the baking dish and continued waiting for it to freeze.

Two days after I had originally put the baking dish in the freezer, the liquid was ... still a liquid! The recipe had made it sound like the whole thing would freeze after 1.5 hours! I wonder where I went wrong ... or if the recipe is wrong. The liquid is rather thick, so maybe I shouldn't expect it to freeze so fast in this massive container Speaking of container, I wonder how deep was Sunny Anderson's baking dish; if hers wasn't very deep, maybe her ice froze faster? Also, perhaps her freezer was much stronger than my dormitory's one.

Fortunately for me (and the freezer's door), I could take a break from obsessively checking the lemon Italian ice. I went home on Monday and came back to my dormitory on Thursday. It was nice to see my family and get home-cooked meals (hello, boeuf bourguignon!). However, I had to deal with allergies-related sore throat, cough, snuffy nose, and sneezing the whole time. I even squeezed in a doctor's appointment, where I was prescribed three medicines. "Yay" me.

Today, I'm still dealing with these symptoms. One bright spot about my return to San Jose on Thursday, though, was that my lemon Italian ice was totally ... frozen! I "scrape(d) the ice with a fork, being sure to mix the softer center with the more frozen outer edges":

The yellow specks underneath the scraped ice are little pieces of lemon zest. For some reason, all of the lemon zest ended up at one end of the baking dish (the relatively gooey, softer-yet-icy side), while the other end of the tray was more clear and seemed more like ice (you know, hard) -- all the more reason to mix everything together. Here's a close-up picture:

After all the scraping and mixing, I definitely wanted to try my handiwork. Verdict: It makes a refreshing, summer treat! It wasn't too sweet, and the zest added some nice texture to it, too. I let two other people try some, and they also responded positively with words like "nice," "it tastes like frozen lemonade" and "great." I definitely want my boyfriend to try some, too. I was told by one of my taste testers that it's not good to eat cold stuff in my current health condition -- hmm, I wonder if that's true.

All in all, it was a success, though it took much longer than expected for it to freeze (I wonder on which day it finished freezing during my home visit). There's still a nice amount still freezing in the freezer, now in scraped form instead of one solid block, so I wonder if that will change the texture even more.

When life gives you lemons...

(Photo by foodmuse)

...you don't only have to make lemonade! After a successful attempt at cooking for my boyfriend for the first time, I baked cookies for him and his family for Christmas, using a standby recipe.  A few months ago, my boyfriend and I went through the time-consuming (but rewarding) process of cooking wonton soup, making our little dumplings from scratch (minus the store-bought wrappers) and wrapping them each by hand:

No lemons were used in the making of this yummy soup, though. However, they were definitely used in our next cooking experiment: linguine with shrimp scampi. Knowing that we both like shrimps and wanted a quicker dish to cook than wonton soup, it seemed like a great choice -- and it was!

My boyfriend and I actually ended up cooking dinner for his parents, his brother, his brother's girlfriend, and us! We also used lemons to make lemon Italian ice, based off of a lime Italian Ice recipe. However, it took a lot longer than expected for the dish to freeze in his parents' freezer, so I never got to taste the fruits of our labor.

Instead, I was stuck with six leftover lemons from my lemon shopping spree (I had originally bought ten fresh lemons, unsure of how many would be needed to equal the recipes' measurements -- no bottled, concentrated stuff for me!). I have found a few personal uses for those lemons in the subsequent weeks. For example, I've used lemons on a couple occasions to make a variation of the linguine with shrimp scampi dish to feed myself. Instead of using shrimp, which I didn't have on hand, I used eggs to get my protein. I also added tomatoes to the dish. Something else I added was thinly sliced lemon skins -- essentially lemon zest:

(Photo by kightp)

I was surprised to find out neither my boyfriend nor his parents were familiar with zest. The colored layer of citrus fruits' rinds contains oils that can really flavor food. You can read more about it here. We ended up not putting any zest in the linguine with shrimp scampi, but that didn't stop me from put some in my future pasta dishes:

For my boyfriend's graduation BBQ, I also added fresh lemon juice and zest to cookies and their accompanying glaze: Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Glaze. Ricotta cheese may sound like a strange ingredient to add to cookie dough, but it gives the cookies a soft, cake-like texture. The cookies have a light taste, so the glaze gives them an extra zing. The glaze would probably be good for other baked goodies, too:

It was hot today, and I tried my hand at making lemon Italian ice, using water, granulated sugar, fresh lemon juice, and lemon zest. It's currently still freezing, and I hope the results are worth it. I've been craving Italian ice, a popular frozen treat on the East Coast that is also known as water ice in Philadelphia. I tried this treat a few times when I was living in Philly last summer (I recommend Philly Flavors), but I have yet to find a place here in California that sells it. The texture is softer and creamier than a sno cone, since it has finer ice particles:

(Photo by churl)

Yum! Also today, I finished off my last lemon with another linguine with shrimp scampi variation, this time with green beans, egg, and a handful of shrimps from a friend. I think I may need to buy some more lemons in the future: They're versatile fruits that give dishes, whether they're savory or sweet, some extra flavor, and they seem so fitting for this time of year. Hope these ideas are helpful for anyone who has extra lemons on hand. What are your favorite dishes with lemon?

Cheesy Chicken & Veggie Soup

This is a fuzzy cell phone picture of soup, but what it represents is significant: the first time I ever cooked for my boyfriend.

I don't really cook much in general, especially since during school, I have a meal plan at my dorm. Spending this past summer on the East Coast, buying groceries and doing stuff with them, gave me motivation, though, that I wanted to cook a little for myself and share the food with my boyfriend. Visiting a friend, who cooked delicious ceviche for his visiting girlfriend, my boyfriend, and me, provided even more motivation.

Instead of going out to eat before watching a ballet Saturday, my boyfriend and I had a home-cooked meal. It was up to me to decide what I would prepare. What ended up influencing my final decision for a dish was that my boyfriend was recovering from a cold, so a warm bowl of soup on a cold evening sounded wonderful. I found a recipe for Cheesy Chicken & Veggie Soup, courtesy of the blog vanilla sugar. My boyfriend especially seems to like creamy soup that's good for dunking bread into, so this definitely fit the bill. I would definitely consider this comfort food.

One of the things that I like about this recipe is how easy it was to make something so yummy, especially on my first attempt. I did feel a little bit of pressure (from myself), though, because I wanted to make a good first impression in the kitchen. Before starting cooking, my nerves definitely were getting to me when, for example, I couldn't find the milk that I had bought and my boyfriend had to go out and get some more. For the 10 minutes or so he was out, I was probably 80 percent done with chopping a medium to large onion (I'm not very confident in my knife abilities and tend to chop slow). However, things ultimately ended up working out for the best!

This is a dish where you can use whatever you have on hand in terms of leftover poultry and vegetables, which also helps cut down on the cooking time. Since I didn't have the "luxury" of leftovers, I used cubed pieces of turkey breast and grilled chicken from a supermarket's salad bar and a can of strained vegetables that had carrots, corn, green beans, lima beans, and potatoes.

I served this soup with slices of French bread that had garlic rubbed onto them, along with butter, cracked black pepper, and parsley. The bread unexpectedly got a little too toasty after just a couple minutes of broiling in the oven, but on the bright side, they weren't that burnt. Since this meal is hearty and kind of rich (with the creamed corn, cream cheese, milk, and mozzarella cheese), I served something light for dessert: fresh blueberries -- yum!

All in all, it was a great meal. My boyfriend and I were very pleased, and I definitely would like to cook again in the (hopefully near) future, not just for sharing food I had cooked (He also helped me a little in the kitchen, too), but also for myself.

10 more days ...

... until Pancake Breakfast, an outreach event / fundraiser I've been co-organizing at my work! At this event, the residents of the dormitory will cook, serve, and entertain hundreds of people during the morning of Oct. 25.

The residents wear clothing from different cultures while performing these tasks and interacting with guests. My workplace has some donated clothing of that sort, and Wednesday night was the first date that I started checking them out to people. 

It was interesting to see people trying on the exotic apparel -- sometimes it felt like a culture clash like the photo above depicts with the young woman using new technology while wearing a traditional dress.

I've already posted the Pancake Breakfast flier, and when they're finalized, I'll post other materials that I've made. I've designed the tickets, which will be simple leaves on colored paper. We've been so fortunate to have received so many great donated raffle prizes so far, and once all that has been finalized, I'll show you the prize information sheets that the people selling the raffle tickets will carry. 

I've also designed menus that will be on each table. Even though it's called Pancake Breakfast, we'll have three distinct buffets:

an American breakfast of pancakes and all of the related trimmings for that, scrambled eggs, bacon, beef sausages, and hashed browns

a Persian breakfast of lavash bread with toppings such as butter, feta cheese, labneh cheese, and mint leaves, and the bread is paired with a lentil soup called adasi

an Asian breakfast with pajeons (Korean pancakes) of scallions and kimchi that can be eaten with soy sauce and sesame oil and a Japanese miso soup

I've been so busy with the designing (gotta do programs too!), planning, and managing. Part of me is looking forward to Pancake Breakfast, while the other part can't wait until it's done and things have calmed down. Pictures from the event will be posted at this blog in the future, so stay tuned!

(Photo by

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogersmith/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

)

Yes, soup for you

This morning, the skies outside were gray, so there was nothing like a hot bowl of soup for a cold day.

While I wasn't drinking chowder from a bread bowl (doesn't that look nice in the picture above?), I savored a cultural dish from the country my parents (and many other relatives) were born, Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar). I've seen different versions for spelling the dish, such as Ohn-no-khaukswe (a.k.a. coconut noodles), but it's basically noodle soup with curry chicken and coconut milk.

My mom had made that soup and brought some over to me during the weekend. The coolest (or hottest) thing is that I got to share the dish with a special someone later on -- not only was I sharing the food itself, but it was like I was sharing part of my cultural heritage (even though my family and I are ethnically Chinese, the Burmese culture is also a big part of our lives). Food is a great -- and yummy -- way to share your culture and your life.

(Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/estreya/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)