Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Uncategorized category.
the new yorker college tour
I *love* The New Yorker. They’re doing a College Tour at Berkeley from 11/13 11/15; looks great: http://www.newyorkercollegetour.com.
bye bye, vox!
I just tried out Vox, a new blogging tool. However, they put Google ads on my blog, and I don’t want anyone but me to do that. I feel weird that they’re making money off of my blogging. It’s a cute interface with nice templates, and I like the ability to recommend books, music, etc. WordPress, after less than 24 hours, I’m back.
San Francisco Chronicle: Bargain Bites
Nice little guide. In San Francisco, I love So, and would like to try Pagolac and Turtle Tower (two Vietnamese joints in the Tenderloin). In East Bay, Lao-Thai Kitchen sounds good. As for Peninsula/South Bay, I wholeheartedly agree on Santa Ramen, although I wonder why Happy Cafe on 2nd Street in San Mateo didn’t make the list. Their xiao long bao is excellent, although the rest of the food is rather forgettable. I guess that might explain it…
volunteering
I’ve never been a huge fan of volunteering, because I haven’t found that many causes that i have a fiery passion for. But now I think I’ve found two: Litquake and CUESA. I love books, words, reading, and I think Litquake is a lot of fun. CUESA stands for Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, and promotes understanding of sustainable agriculture.
I’ve never been a fan of just being a body when volunteering, although oftentimes that’s the best way to help an organization. However, I want to volunteer somewhere where I don’t just spend a few hours ushering and then get to see a free performance; I want to volunteer with an organization where I can meet a lot of cool people, and where I can use my skills and knowledge to make a difference. More soon…
trail runs
Last weekend, while hiking near Santa Cruz, I was feeling energetic, and started running along the hiking trail. It made me think about trail running: it would be a pretty cool thing to start doing. This one looks cool: http://redwoodtrails.com/final/maps/sf.gif. In fact, the group Redwood Trails looks pretty neat. They do a lot of outdoors activities.
nibs are all the rage
Recently, I’ve been seeing a huge # of recipes with Cacao nibs. Perhaps if I’m looking for a green VW bug, I’ll start seeing them all over the place. Well, here’s one for Nibby Scones from the Bittersweet Blog:
Nibby Scones
Once upon a time, long (not so) long ago, Bittersweet had a little chocolate nib scone that had quite a few fans. We’re not making the Nibby Scone at the moment, but for all you who miss it, here’s a way to try it at home! Have fun…
608 g flour
100 g sugar
2 t baking powder
.5 t baking soda
.25 t salt
227 g butter
230 g nibs
500 g heavy cream
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Cube the butter to 1″ squares.
Pour dry ingredients into a bowl and add butter, the flatten the butter into disks using your fingers.
Toss in nibs.
If the ingredients are warm, refrigerate until cool.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the heavy cream, then mix well until moistened.
Pour the crumbly dough out onto a lightly floured surface.
Shape using a bench scraper into a rectangle and then roll. Laminate this mixture 4 times. you will start with a crumbly dough and end with a smooth striated dough. If the dough is soft after shaping, then refrigerate.
Roll the dough to 11″ X 7″ and trim the edges.
Cut the dough into six equal squares, about 3″ X 3.5″, then bisect the squares into triangles.
Brush the trops with egg wash and sprinkle with rough sugar.
Distribute evenly on a cookie sheet, place in the preheated oven and immediately reduce heat to 300 degrees. Bake from 18-22 minutes.
fruits of labor: grilled eggplant, red pepper & onion flatbread
My travel companion is a lover of pizza and all its variants, so I decided to try a flatbread recipe from Williams-Sonoma. This might make for a nice pre-drive snack/lunch. While I could make a sandwich, somehow I always feel weird eating meat in front of a vegetarian. Besides, I’ve never liked meat that much anyway — something about the super greasy nature of most meat really repels me. Sometimes the recipes at Williams-Sonoma are hit and miss, but I found this one to be rather good:
The dough was easy to make, the veggies just took a little patience to roast, and it makes for nice, hearty, veggie fare. It’s the perfect tableau for fresh, organic, local veggies, including heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, red onion, and eggplant.
My variation included the basil, and I used sea salt instead of regular salt to season the veggies.
While trying to make an omelette (red onion and gorgonzola — which I had in my fridge) go marvelously together, I realized that the spinach, eggplant, tomato, red onions, and basil I had would make a delicious pasta sauce. So, that’s what I opted for instead. Quick and easy. I also made some scrambled eggs, as I had an egg white left because there was an egg yolk used for the flatbread dough.
While I was aiming to make yellow curry eggplant, I realized that my curry paste was expired (yes, it’s been a while) and my pesto plan was foiled by a lack of garlic. Next time!
Next, I’m going to try the cornmeal pizza crust featured on Cook 1.0.
There’s been a little bit of produce wastage, but I think with cooking everything off, and freezing it, things should be okay. In fact, if I just eat produce from the biweekly vegboxes, I should be just fine.
locavore iron chef
I have more tomatoes than I know what to do with. I dislike eating too much salad, so what’s a girl to do? I have a surplus of tomatoes, basil, potatoes, red bell peppers, spinach, and (my least favorite) cucumbers. I think I’ll use the cucumbers in sandwiches. In the meantime, in order to ensure that the organice locavore veggies don’t go bad while I’m away for the weekend, I’m going to cook everything tonight, and pop everything in the freezer.
I think I’ll do yellow curry eggplant/tofu, pesto, and another tomato pasta sauce. The upside is, this will ensure that I’ll eat my veggies. The great thing about having all this local produce is the fact that I’m eating a lot less processed food, which is a great thing.
recipe: nutmeg sherry cake
My grandmother would make this cake because everyone loved it. It was a great special occasion cake, as well as a “I was just thinking about you” cake.
This comes from a book called BUNDT CAKES, and is billed as “a make-ahead ‘quickie’ cake everyone loves”. It’s moist, takes about 20 minutes or less to mix, and has a very simple list of ingredients. What’s not to love? It’s nice served with fresh fruit or ice cream. I hope you enjoy this cake as much as I always have.
1 package (2-layer size) yellow cake mix
1 package (3-3/4 oz.) instant vanilla pudding
1 teaspoon nutmeg
4 eggs
3/4 cup cooking oil
3/4 cup sherry
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour BUNDT pan. In large bowl combine all ingredients. On medium speed of mixer, beat until smooth, at least 4 minutes. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 55-60 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool 15 minutes in pan, then turn out and finish cooling on wire rack. Add a sprinkling of confectioners’ sugar or vanilla glaze.
Baking note: for a 9×12″ loaf, bake for 45 minutes.
recipe review – chocolate and walnut cookies
My test kitchen chef made this recipe this weekend. The nibs, if you like nibs, really make the cookies and are really nice. They impart a very intense fruity quality/taste to the cookies. Go Dagoba cacao nibs! Good texture on the cookies — they are soft and chewy, yet still firm. The oatmeal probably helped too. They reminded me of the cookies you get at Specialty’s.
It just goes to show that a good recipe is the key to everything; while chocolate chip cookies are a standard, having chocolate chunks makes for a very different taste than chocolate chips. In addition, the flavor of good, fresh cacao nibs makes a big difference. The soft, chewy, textured mouth feel of the cookie also makes the cookie much more fun/interesting to eat. While I like several other bakeries more than Tartine, I can imagine that the recipes are certainly worth trying.
Chocolate and Walnut Cookies
This recipe from Elisabeth Prueitt of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco is provided exclusively to visitors of npr.org. The recipe calls for both chocolate and cocoa nibs, which are actually bits of roasted cocoa bean. Substitute mini-chocolate chips if you can’t find the nibs.
2 cups white pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 3/4 cups packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, such as Valrhona Guanaja or Scharffen Berger 70% chocolate, chopped
2 cups (8 ounces) walnuts, lightly toasted and coarsely chopped
3/4 cup cocoa nibs or mini-chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and oats. Stir to blend. Set aside.
In the bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time, and mix well. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients. Add the chocolate, walnuts and cocoa nibs or chips, and mix until just combined.
Scoop 2 tablespoonfuls of dough into 2-by-2-inch mounds 2 inches apart on the prepared pan. Wet the palm of your hand with water and gently flatten each mound.
Bake the cookies until brown around the edges and soft in the center, 9 to 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and transfer to wire racks to cool.
Makes about 30 cookies.
