Butternutz

My mom delivers seasonal fruits and vegetables to me every time I see her at my grandmother's weekly Sunday night dinner, like a CSA that knows your proclivities. She gave me a butternut squash, and after I roasted half of it with olive oil (delicious!!), I decided to try a soup. Butternut squash has the most wonderful natural flavor. Really does taste like butter.

This is the second veggie soup I've made (the first was potato leek; the post is forthcoming), and I am a total convert. Soups are soup-er simple (Margot isn't the only one who can pun!!) to make when you have a food processor, which I bought only about a year ago. So key.

This was, of course, a Minimalist recipe from his list of Thanksgiving dishes:

13. Sauté sliced shallots in olive oil, then add chunks of butternut squash, some rosemary and chicken stock or water to cover. As the soup simmers, bake strips of prosciutto until crisp. Purée the soup, swirl in some cream if you like and serve topped with crumbled prosciutto.

I used half of a butternut squash, about 1.5 cups of chicken stock, rosemary from the front of my parent's house, and one strip of BACON. so delicious!

Thanksgiving Eats: Coconut-Sweet Potato Pie

It's no secret by now that we love Mark Bittman of the NY Times. I totally jumped on his twist on the traditional sweet potato pie and was not disappointed. I'm not a fan of sweet potatoes (sweet potato fries: I am not impressed with you), but add sugar and I'll eat almost anything. The recipe is here, but I've also pasted it below.

Recipe

2 medium sweet potatoes (peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks, boiled for 12–15 minutes and mashed)

1 1/3 c. graham cracker crumbs (1 package, which has 9 sheets)

1/4 c. shredded unsweetened coconut

1/2 c. plus 2 tbs. sugar

1 1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1 1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1 stick of butter (8 tbs.), melted

3 eggs

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

pinch ground cloves

large pinch of salt

1 c. coconut milk

Pre-heat oven to 350 F. While the potatoes cook, crush the graham crackers and mix with 2 tbs. sugar, 1/4 tsp. ginger and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon. Add melted butter and toss until just combined. Press into 9-inch pie plate and bake for about 7 minutes. Let cool.

Mix eggs, rest of sugar, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt. Add coconut milk. Mix until just combined. Add mashed sweet potatoes, mix until just combined. Pour into cooled pie crust. Put pie plate onto a baking sheet and bake about 40–45 minutes, until mixture is set but still moist. Cool and serve.

I love the coconut, sugar and spices in the graham cracker crust. The coconut milk in the filling was a little too much coconut for my taste. But I'm still glad I tried this recipe out this year. Maybe Okinawan sweet potatoes or Hawaiian purple potatoes with the coconut milk would be an awesome combination for next time.

Thanksgiving Eats: Bacon-Balsamic-Roasted Garlic Deviled Eggs

I've never had to be at the helm of any Thanksgiving celebration before (thank goodness? Or should I be yearning to stay up the night before, freaking out?). So contributing a dish or two is a way to enjoy seasonal cooking without all the stress. This year, I had two T-Day celebrations to attend (score!) and I ended up making two dishes. The first one was a classic that gets devoured no matter how simple or fancy you make it: deviled eggs. While the bacon-in-everything trend has been beaten to death, that does not change the fact that bacon will always be a delightful salty addition to almost anything. So I took bits and pieces from this recipe and this recipe to create the egg-sellent appetizer.

Recipe

18 large hardboiled eggs

1 head of roasted garlic (in the future I'd either increase this to 3 heads or leave out the garlic and add more mayo)

6 strips of bacon, cooked to crispy and finely chopped

3/4 c. mayonnaise

1.5 tbs grated red onion

1.5 tsp granulated sugar

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

3/4 tsp. balsamic vinegar

chopped chives (optional garnish)

paprika (optional garnish)

Everyone has their own method of boiling perfect eggs. Mine is to heat up the eggs and cold water together in the pot from the get go. Once the water starts to boil, I lower the heat a little so the eggs don't crack. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes, then immediately rinse with cold water and dunk the eggs in an ice water bath so the membrane shrinks back from the white, making peeling a piece of cake.

Slice the eggs in half and dump the yolks in a mixing bowl. Mix all ingredients together, then spoon or pipe the yolk mixture into each egg white half. I don't have a piping bag, so usually I snip the tip off of a Ziploc bag and use that to pipe the yolk mixture in. Works pretty well, if I might say so myself. I chopped chives to use as garnish (the store was out of a lot of other herbs, ha) and added a sprinkle of paprika for color. EGG-STREME!

Hwe Dup Bap

As far as last meal’s go, for me this is it—hwe dup bap. It contains all of my favorites: sashimi, salad greens, rice, and something spicy to linger on my tongue. What lingers is cho gochujang, a vinegary pepper sauce that some Koreans prefer as their sashimi dipping sauce. It’s the addition of this sauce that differentiates it from chirashi sushi, which I find quite dull.

It’s easy to assemble and requires no cooking aside from the rice. Or leave out the rice and save those carbs! It’s just as good without the rice. I suppose it’s the perfect summer meal, but for me it’s always a good idea.

Hwe Dup Bap
1 cup cooked rice
.5 lb. sashimi of choice (sliced into bite size pieces)
4 lettuce leaves, chopped
5 shiso leaves, chopped
1 handful daikon sprouts (these have a kick to them)

Cho gochujang
2 spoonfuls of gochujang
½ spoonful of sugar
3 tb. vinegar

For the cho gochujang, I always freestyle it à la Rachel Ray—glug this, eyeball that. Overall just start with the gochujang and adjust according to your palate. I discovered if you use seasoned rice vinegar then you can omit the sugar. The consistency should be similar to ranch dressing.



1. Spoon rice into bowl.



2. Layer lettuce, chopped shiso leaves, and daikon sprouts on top of rice Add sashimi pieces.
3. Add desired amount of cho gochujang. I would say start with 2 tablespoons.
4. Fold ingredients together.

Heirloom tomato and burrata pizza

Seriously, who the fuck am I? I'm thinking about putting this post together and making myself barf because of my smarmy San Francisco foodie-ness. I mean, look at the NAME OF THE PIZZA, for chrissakes!!

I'll keep it short. I spied some burrata at the Trader's and chose it as my ingredient du semaine - I learned through the Internet that it is often eaten simply with heirloom tomatoes as a salad, and after coming to the end of that road, here we are. I looked up burrata and heirloom tomatoes and pizza and found this blog post about pitfire pizza in l.a. and their burrata pie. i took the description of the pizza from the blog and recreated it:

On the crust is a layer of their tomato sauce that is then topped with caramelized onions. ... Then of course, there’s the burrata cheese. In case you’re wondering, burrata cheese is mozzarella cheese that has cream in the center of it, which makes it extra creamy when melted. Why more people don’t put it on pizzas will forever be a wonder to me. I could honestly be fine with this pizza as it is now, but then the guys at Pitfire go and cover the whole thing with fresh arugula and drizzle it with a hazelnut pesto. Hazelnut pesto!

I used TJ's whole wheat dough and made my own carmelized onions (MAN they make pizza tasty). I love pizzas with salads on top of them, but this one just wouldn't fit the arugula, so I had it on the side. I added heirloomies and basil and didn't bother with the hazelnut pesto (my yuppie-ness has boundaries!).

slow-cooker jook

november has befallen us, and with it, the scourge of the season - the icky cold. i felt miserable yesterday and made myself a big honkin' crock pot full of jook (gruel, as K calls it).

i actually didn't start to like jook (aka congee, aka "jewk" as biff [a jew!!] calls it) until very recently, in the last 5 years. i discovered its glories on a trip to hong kong in 2008 at the breakfast buffet of the salisbury YMCA hong kong (our preferred place of residence in hong kong). it was laid out with all the toppings alongside - i never even knew you could put soy sauce in it! my parents always make it very sparsely. i went crazy with cilantro and green onions (what do i always say about MAXIMUM ASIAN FLAVOR) and have never looked back.

i've made jook at home a handful of times, and i'm still not quite convinced that the time/effort put into it is worth it, considering you can get this meal for less than $5 usually (my favorite place is hing lung on broadway near stockton in chinatown). the other thing is that i LOVE to eat jook with the oily bread, and it's hard to find good oily bread around the inner sunset (the white sunset, as K calls it). i almost would rather not eat jook if i don't have that deep-fried bread! i remember driving crazily up and down clement street looking for that bread one day to eat with my jook. also i usually just make it with whatever meat i have around, but i prefer to eat it with fish or ground pork. so, jury's still out on making this at home.

i based it on recipes from both the minimalist and the traverse city record-eagle's blog but there doesn't seem to be a wrong way to make it. this time i threw in some leftover roast pork and sliced chinese sausage (in addition to ginger) and topped it with cilantro, green onions, and a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil. today i'm feeling much better. still thinking bout that oily bread.

parmesan chicken

i've made this recipe from ina garten for the past five years: it's simple, and the mix of flavors (salty parmesan and arugula with sour lemon vinaigrette) and textures is great. i have my mom to thank for this recipe - she loves ina garten, and i do too! i try not to eat too much deep fried food, and eating it with a big salad like this makes it feel "healthier."

be sure to use chicken breast, and pound them good (HEH) after you put some saran wrap or plastic over them puppies. dredge em in a mix of flour/salt/pepper, then egg/water, then bread crumbs (i used panko here, but i think the seasoned ones you buy at the supermarket are tastier) and parmesan.



fry em up in butter and olive oil and lay em over a nice bed of salad with lemon vinaigrette. don't forget to shear off some parmesan shards onto your salad for maximum umami!