Green onion pancakes

I've had this recipe (from Use Real Butter) bookmarked for a LONG time. I've been hesitant to make it because with all the rolling and flattening, I figured it'd take a long time. And since you're spreading oil onto the dough and then rolling it out and flattening it- I thought it'd be a big mess as well. I was completely wrong- they go fast, once you get the hang out it and they weren't that messy (I did it all on a wee little cutting board). I ended up making it today because I had a bunch of extra green onions.

I love green onion pancakes! They're so crispy and salty- mmmmm! I usually buy them frozen, but I thought I'd try to make them. They're really cheap to make, the only ingredients are flour, warm water, salt, oil and green onions.



First of all, these are small pancakes- like 5-6 inches across. I was kinda surprised since the frozen ones can be a foot across. SALT LIBERALLY. I thought I was overdoing it, but they came out great. I use the back of a wooden cutting board to do my kneading and dough work... my counter is not the cleanest place. You'll notice my "rolling pin" in the middle. It's my salt shaker wrapped in plastic wrap and dusted with flour. Hey, it works!


The camera decided to poop out and not focus on anything. This is the first rolling of the dough- like a burrito without tucking in the ends.

Then you roll it again on its side.


Flatten it again. Some of the bigger pieces of green onion will fall out- it's okay, just smush them back in.



Flatten it a bit more and then fry it- these taste best fresh (like most fried foods).

The Perfect Italian Dinner

...with a little dab of Asian inspiration, of course ;)

In this post, you will find: Garlic Bread, Asparagus, and Lasagna.

GARLIC BREAD

Delicious! This recipe I adapted from some trial-and-error cooking at the nice dinner party I had a few weeks ago. I added a few dashes of basil this time and I think the taste matches very well. :)

Ingredients:

• bread of your choice (I used French bread but after this experience I'd recommend going for something softer)
• 5 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/2 tsp salt or to taste
  
• few dashes basil, or one fresh basil leaf
  

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 F
   
2. Melt butter in microwave or over stove.
3. Add minced garlic and basil to butter
4. Spread butter-garlic mix onto sliced bread to your liking
   
5. Bake for 10 min or until bread is crispy
   

ASPARAGUS

Ingredients:

• bundle of asparagus
• kosher salt
• rice vinegar or balsamic vinegar
  
• soy sauce

Directions:

1. Boil asparagus ~5 minutes in boiling water (or until ready) [I don't know how long since I made the mistake of over-boiling mine... stupid electric stoves]
2. Drizzle soy sauce and rice vinegar (has not regular vinegar) at about a 60:40 ratio, or to your liking.
3. Sprinkle kosher salt to taste

This one was a really fun one; it's simple, light & delicious, and visually very appealing. From the ideas of other recipes and The Food Network (I really should give more credit to them for what I know!), I kind of made this one up on the fly. I chose soy sauce and rice vinegar to provide strong flavor, yet lightness to the asparagus--exactly what you want a vegetable to do to balance a carb-heavy or meat-heavy meal!

Explanation to my deliberate choice of kosher salt over sea salt and table (regular) salt: Table salt will likely dissolve and it's harder to see/less visually appealing. Generally speaking, table salt is used while cooking and not thrown on afterward as a garnish. Kosher salt worked best for the presentation because it offers large, flaky pieces of salt. Sea salt is the one I haven't quite figured out yet... in appearance it looks like large crystalline rocks, probably similar to a blown-up version of table salt. I believe (and I may be wrong here) that choosing kosher over sea salt really depends on how you want your dish to look; some dishes will be better with flakes and some will look better with a rocky-looking salt. Although all probably taste about the same, you'll get less concentration of salt in a pinch of kosher or sea salt versus a pinch of table salt. Also, based on the chef's vision, the presentation is probably the key to the decide which salt is used.

LASAGNA

I have to note that this is not the freshest picture--it's a microwaved piece of leftover lasagna, but it's the only photo I've got. =/

This recipe is adapted from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Worlds-Best-Lasagna/Detail.aspx. I liked this recipe so much that this is the second time I'm making it. I did make a few changes though:

Ingredient differences:

• swapped the sweet Italian sausage for 1 package of Adelle's Chicken and Portobello Mushroom Sausages, chopped into bits
• added 1 tray of white button mushrooms (whatever size in those blue containers they sell at Safeway), sliced
• did not add garlic
• tomato sauce was flavored with basil
• no basil leaves (cost effective when you buy the above instead, haha)
• no parsley
  
• added slightly more beef and ricotta cheese than called for

I liked it a lot more this time when I swapped some ingredients. :D
Notes I made: Do not add too many fennel seeds. Next time will probably expand use of mushrooms to include portobello mushrooms, and will add garlic. For the future I will also try to use as many fresh ingredients as possible, including upgrading to real tomatoes and chucking that canned stuff!

Croque Monsieur

Mmmm this is like a fancy grilled cheese. The sweet, salty ham, the gooey grueyere, crisp buttery bread and the the nutty sauce. SO GOOD! I had a croque madame (a croque monsieur with a fried egg on top) at Morels at the Grove. It was good, but they put a LOT of sauce on so it was soggy. I didn't make as much sauce as the recipe called for so that the bread would still be crisp. I also substituted thyme for nutmeg and the bay leaf because that's what I had on hand. Also... no chives, but they would be great the next time I make them. I used the Trader Joe's 4 cheese sour dough bread because I love sour dough.


This is like my 10th time making a roux so I'm starting to get the hang of it. The first time I made it was for a mac and cheese and I was not sure what the hell flour + butter was going to taste like. For this one, I let it cook for awhile (on accident) so it had a nuttier taste. I'm going to experiment more with the roux and see how it affects the recipe.

All in all, a very very good sandwich. But then again, where can you go wrong with cheese + ham + butter + bread?

Korean BBQ Chicken

JUST a side note: since I'm not allowed to BBQ at the place I live at, I had to improvise using an oven and some pan frying, but a charcoal BBQ grill will make this taste best. ;)


Ingredients:

• 1 Bottle Korean BBQ Sauce (find at 99 Ranch or Korean markets)
  
• 6-8 pieces of boneless chicken thighs (or whatever cut of chicken you like)
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• pepper to taste (if desired)

Directions:

1. Marinate chicken in a gallon-sized zip-lock bag for at least 2-3 hours, or overnight. I usually give it about 3-4 hours.
2. Bake chicken in a pan at 350 F for about 45 minutes or until ready (not bleeding if cut in thickest part of chicken). *The key here to keep your chicken moist is to COVER the pan completely with foil paper! (Caution: steam is HOT. Be careful when you remove the foil after baking!)
3. Heat oil in pan and pan fry the cooked chicken until you get a slight burnt look. Enjoy!

Korean BBQ Sauce

This is the best sauce I've found so far--same one my mom uses when she BBQs over a propane grill. Tastes wonderful, and this also works really well for bulgogi (Korean BBQ short ribs)!

Baguettes

Please ignore their pale color... I spritzed water too early

I don't have a lot of experience with baking bread besides things like banana "bread." The first yeast recipe I made was for soft pretzels (which I will post later on!). This is one of my first real "bread" recipes and it was a doozy. There is so much effing resting time. It's something you can do a few minutes everyday (until the final baking day).

I got this excellent recipe from King Arthur's Flour Blog. I LOVE their blog, they give very detailed descriptions of what to do and pictures at every step. Very helpful for people new at baking. They also have really cool gadgets like the gigantic cup measurer so you know if your dough has doubled in size. Also helpful.... is youtube. I had to youtube how to properly knead dough before I bought my mixer. I tend to use my mixer for stickier doughs and hand knead for everything else.

rest 1: 14 hours

My awesome mixer doing the hard work for me :)

The final rise

yummm

I definitely need to practice making these baguettes! But I think this was a good start

Scallops and Gougeres

I was craving some scallops so I picked some up from the frozen aisle at Trader Joe's. I used this recipe for Butter-Fried Sea Scallops with Thyme and White Wine. This was my first time cooking scallops and it turned out very well! I was really scared of overcooking them, but they had a nice crust on the outside and were very tender. There are only a few ingredients and it took less then half an hour to make. I put a little bit more white wine in and served it over some pasta.


After some online searching... I've realized what's wrong with my camera! It can only macro-focus starting at 10 cm from the subject )= omgz. So don't get a nikon coolpix s560 if you want to take pictures of things up close.


Next up is a SUPER DELICIOUS recipe from David Lebovitz. I haven't made my own ice cream yet, but when I do I will buy his book! I was craving some Brazilian cheese bread (not sure what it was called, wikipedia thinks it is Pao de quijo) so I used David's recipe for Gougeres. I used parmesan and it was SO EFFING GOOD. I want to try a different cheese next time with some different herbs because these were mild. Gruyere and thyme?



They cooked perfectly, no problems puffing at all. They were crisp on the outside, and a soft eggy texture on the inside. Also, if you don't have a Silpat yet you should get one because it is the best silicon baking mat. I got mine from amazon.

This is me trying to get a CLEAR photo of the inside. )=

Fancy Dinners

Earlier tonight I had a really fancy, delicious "Rustic American" inspired dinner at my friend David's (yes, homemade!). The three courses included: mushroom soup, pot roast (not pictured), and some kind of apple tart with salted butterscotch ice cream. I have to give him major props on presentation--that's something I need to work on... after I get my recipes down. Take a look (but seriously, these pictures do not do the food enough justice):

Mushroom soup. Corn foam in the yellow--yum! Black mushroom in the middle, dill on the side.

Pie-like crust filled with apple chunks/topped with thinly sliced apples (made into a flower/circular pattern). Salted ice cream out of focus on the bottom left corner. All from scratch ingredients!

And here come the drinks, as promised. I brought some white wine and champagne to bring to the dinner party to try out some stuff I learned in bartending school, etc.

WINE COOLER

Recipe: wine glass, fill halfway with white wine, fill with 7up or Sprite. Add lemon twist.
(I think the original recipe calls for 3/4 glass white wine and fill with 7up/Sprite, but I like my drinks a bit more on the sweet side.)

CHAMPAGNE (Sparkling Wine) SORBET

Recipe: wine glass, add two generous scoops of raspberry sorbet, fill halfway with champagne
Swirl and smash the sorbet until you get an icy/slushy consistency that looks like this:

This one I'll have to give credit to a Pan-Asian fusion restaurant in Berkeley called Unicorn. I got the idea of mixing the two from this restaurant about two years back, and since then I've been narrowing down better sorbets/champagnes over time. Last time I used Cook's champagne... dis-gus-ting! Cook's is a no-no. Try Ballatore! It might not be a champagne per se, but it's yummy (sweet, of course) and close enough to champagne.

Note: Bottle says sparkling wine, not champagne. It's perhaps sparkling wine but to me it's still champagne-esque. There's probably a whole convention of champagne-snobby folks who will say otherwise, including the reasons behind the name difference here. Pretty interesting to keep in mind, so we'll keep the two names separate for technicality's sake.


Sorbet used: Ciao Bella from Andronico's. Apparently "lampone" is Italian for "raspberry".


What a way to have fine dining in your own home!