A 3 Course Meal

Had a kind of an amazing meal last week that was also absurdly easy to make.

Recipe from here. A certain somebody wanted to be fancy and used cooking string to tie it up roast style. A quick youtube video taught us him the trick.

Having fun with some plating. We cooked the kale in the duck fat that was rendered from searing the breasts on the pan.

Yup more gratuitous shots because it was that good.

I always thought panna cotta was a really fancy dessert but turns out it is crazy easy to make. Modified the recipe from here by using whole milk instead of cream. Chilled the mixture in wine glasses which actually allowed the panna cotta to pop out perfectly. Made some quick strawberry sauce with just the berries and sugar.

Thai Cooking Class

About 1.5 years late but better late than never. Was going through my old photos and realized I never blogged about this!

Last last winter break, some girlfriends and I traveled to Southeast Asia and for part of our trip, we went to Bangkok for a few days (which I might add was nothing like what was depicted in The Hangover 2). One of the items on our to-do list was to take a Thai cooking class and we found an adorable place called Silom Thai Cooking School which was owned by an equally adorable man who had traveled the globe and then retired to open up this cooking school (gave me some ideas for retirement). We made 3 "real" courses and 2 mini courses which in total spanned about 3-4 hours. Everything, from all of the fresh produce to amazing spices to anthropolgy-like dishwear made it such a memorable experience (the 150+ photos I took also helped).

Having authentic Tom Yum Soup in Thailand was a dream. Cooked with the right ingredients, its light, savory, spicy and so satisfying.  

Part 1 of Tom Yum Soup involved making fresh coconut milk (ahh so exciting). Who knew it was so easy, all you actually need is just fresh coconut meat from the market...nbd.Oh well, everything else international has already become part of the foodie lexicon (and part of trader joes), hopefully this will soon too!

Ingredients for Tom Yum Soup, too bad I can't just stroll into FroGro or even Whole Foods and get some kaffir leaves and lemon grass whenever the mood strikes.

Never made soup in a wok before but it actually worked quite well. 

Mmmm Pad Thai, who doesn't love pad thai??

I wish I could remember all of the spices and sauces we used for everything...fortunately we did get a cookbook to go, I think it might still be in my suitcase in the attic..
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A light chicken salad that involve a lot of lime and herbs.

Never realized you made curry from pounding peppers into a pulp, this dish sure was hardwork, not even sure if we got it right...

Mashing the curry in a GIANT motar and pestle was also quite fun.

A giant basket of goods from the open air market.

My mom has been wanting to go to Thailand ever since I went (I've also been bugging her and my dad to go ever since I went). Hopefully, they'll be able to get some of their own pictures soon!

Brinner: Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

As promised, some lemon ricotta pancakes inspired by Cafe Lift. I cheated slightly by buying trader joe's buttermilk pancake mix (which I will say is amazing even on its own, perfectly fluffy pancakes every time and all you need to add is water and 1 egg). We had some fun playing around with the toppings and fillings including 1 topped with strawberries soaked in strawberry balsamic (from Garces Trading Co), & strawberry basil jam, 1 filled with begian milk chocolate (from TJ's), topped with Hershey's chocolate sauce and fresh blackberries, and 1 topped with blackberry sauce and mascarpone. Needless to say, it was a very satisfying brinner.

We had to think our batter out with milk since the pancake mix tends to puff up very quickly - probably why the pancakes always come out so fluffy.

Cook pancakes on a lower heat since the ricotta makes it easier to burn.

Mmmmmmmmmm...

Brinner: Stuffed Challah French Toast

Aka Brunch for Dinner. Stuffed french toast inspired by Sabrina's with some apples because a certain someone loves apples. Fortunately, this took way less time to make than the lobster ravioli and there was still plenty left over.

1. Making the Filling:

First time cooking with mascarpone but I love it!Its much lighter than cream cheese and offered a nice contrast to the tartness of the cream cheese.

2) Stuffing the Bread: 

Egg mixture of milk, egg, vanilla, & cinnamon. Used a whole lot of eggs since the bread pieces were enormous.

3) Cooking the French Toast:

Have to be patient cooking these things since they're so big! Burnt the first batch when it was on medium high so turned the heat down much lower for the second batch. 

4) Plate with Lots of Goodies: 

Maple syrup wasn't really needed since the dish with the apples is pretty sweet already but the mascarpone on top definitely added to the dish. 

Homemade Lobster Ravioli

Step 1: Cooking the Lobster

The lobster we bought from the RTM wasn't just for fun (although we did have a fun photo op with it hehe), we also managed to do something useful and turn it into dinner.  We saved about 1/3 of the meat for the sauce and chopped in the rest finely for the filling. 

Step 2: Making the Filling 

We sauteed the lobster meat in some herbs, butter etc and then mixed it with ricotta cheese. 

Step 3: Making the Pasta

For more information on making pasta dough, you can check out the previous ravioli post. We've invested in some new pasta toys since then including a nifty scalloped edged pasta cuter which makes the end result look infinitely better. 

Step 4: Making the Sauce

The pasta sauce has almost all of the same ingredients as the filling except with the addition of some of the water we cooked the lobster in for coloring.  

End Result

2.5 hours later and here it is! 

Probably won't be making this again anytime soon since it was so much work but it sure tasted good. 

China Part I: Homecooking

Meal spreads paired with "bai jiu"

Usually when we go to China, its filled with lots of eating out where I wind up stuffing myself silly. This time around however, most of the eating was done at home (where I still wound up stuffing myself silly). My na-na whom I guess would technically be my great aunt in law (or something like that) cooked us the most scrumptious breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. I only managed to capture 1/4 of all the food she made us since the rest of the time I was too excited to eat. Added to that are my aunt and grandma and grandpa who are also amazing cooks (most be a family trait). Life back in the states these days has appeared quite sad compared to all of the great food I got to eat for the past 2 weeks :(

Welcome Lunch

Fried fish, thousand year old eggs, fish meatballs, pressure cooked chicken, pork belly, spring veggies, potato salad

Valentine's Day Dinner

A beautiful dozen of roses

A long day of foody and cocktail (drink post forthcoming) adventures. Although we've been cooking steak almost every week since last semester, I just never bothered to blog about it. Valentine's Day seemed like an appropriate time to finally gave the steak the spotlight.

Homemade Ravioli

A picture perfect dinner

Naturally, we weren't going to let V's pasta-making classes and all of our pasta eating in Italy be for naught. The moment, we had that pear and cheese ravioli, V went ahead and ordered a pasta-making machine. For the past week, we've spent a good portion of our days making ravioli. I am happy to say that we've finally reached the point, where the ravioli are respectable to blog about. We made some rather impressive pear and cheese ravioli over the weekend but scrambling to finish on time for our potluck meant no time to take pictures. Tonight, however, I was free to snap away as much as I wanted.

All stacked up and ready to go.

We also decided to branch out tonight and try a new filling (another one we tasted at Zeb): potatoes and sausage. Step by step instructions below.

Making the Filling:

This one yummy and easy to make. Just have to cook the potatoes long enough to mash them with a fork. For the sausage, we bought Italian sausage links and removed the skin around it so we could break up the meat.

Mashed potatoes on left with seasoning
Italian sausage on right

Dough Making and Rolling:

Pasta dough is a lot easier to make than I had originally thought. All that's needed are eggs and semolina (aka pasta) flour. The key to use the right ratios (which for a few days, we weren't): 3 eggs for every 2 cups of flour.  The pasta rolling machine makes it pretty easy to get the dough to the right thickness. For ravioli, you have to roll it through 9 times to get to level 9 which is the thinnest option. We also, (quite wisely I may add because it made the process a lot easier), bought a ravioli making contraption which allowed us to fill and make 12 perfectly sized raviolis. 

Rolling out the dough (...9 times)
Putting the dough into the ravioli pouches

Putting 1 + 2 Together:

Technically, you need a rolling pin to roll the second layer of pasta dough over the filled pouches but a full jar of pasta sauce worked quite well as an impromptu rolling pin. I'll have to make sure to pick one up this weekend.

Filled the pouches with filling
Covered the filling with another layer of dough.

Cooking the Ravioli:

Make sure not to overcrowd the ravioli when cooking it. For al dente perfection, cook for 2 minutes, move to sauce pan and cook for another minute. For pasta that's a little softer, leave the ravioli in the sauce for up to 3 minutes. I added the left over potatoes and sausage meat to the tomato sauce which made the sauce heartier (and more delicious).

Boiling Ravioli
Simmering Sauce

Plating Ravioli

Tradition demands that ravioli be plated in odd numbers. So make sure to always have an odd number on your plate! Sprinkle with pecorino cheese for extra saltiness and enjoy.

A plate of 13 raviolis. Bon Appetit!

The plan is to move on to spaghetti with truffle sauce and mushrooms next. And there are of course lots of Italian posts left and some other new eating adventures of Philly. Stay tuned :)

Carrot Cake & Birthday Weekend

First blog post in weeks and weeks and weeks. Naturally, it was a celebration (and a new camera!) that finally prompted me to start blogging again! My parents and I have always been a fan of carrot cake - a big deal considering my parents don't even really like cake. The problem I have with most carrot cakes is there's either too much stuff in the cake or its wayyy to sweet. So instead of driving all the way to the store to buy a cake no one really wants to eat, I decided to bake one instead. Recipe is a combination of what is provided by Smitten Kitchen's maple cream cheese frosting carrot cup cakes, a can of canned pineapple and various googling of carrot cake recipes online (recipe shown below).

Carrot grating, nut meg grating & grounding of spices.

One of the reasons why I love carrot cake is the richness and depth of flavor you get from all of the different layers of ingredients. There's also a reason why carrot cake is a pain in the butt to make - grating cups and cups of carrots. At first, I tried to find a way to use the electric mixer...which failed miserably, and opted for the old-fashion method of hand grating instead. Since this was a birthday cake after all, I also went for some freshly grounded nutmeg, all spice, and cloves.

Mixing in the carrots to the cake batter & making cream cheese frosting (with a generous portion of maple syrup)

Feeling particularly ambitious, I also decided to pipet the frosting onto the two layer cake...which didn't go all that well. Apparently, its really not as easy as it looks! And homemade piping bags made from ziplog bags also don't work all that well. Nevertheless, after a few hours of chilling in the fridge, the cake came out respectable enough for me to take some pictures :) Only thing that matters is that it taste good right?

Some guesswork in the baking time but still managed to  produce a rather tasty cake :)

And that's not all! I can't skip the celebratory dinner can I?

1/2 a bushel of crabs, growler of beer and some Irish car bombs.

Happy Birthday dad :)