Valentine Truffles

Like the good little Japanese wife that I am (ahem), I made some truffles for Valentine's Day this year. No, I'm not trying to put myself down. It's just that many, if not most, Japanese girls will have experienced making chocolate at some point in their lives. Why is that, you ask. What about the men? Will I include an actual recipe this time? Find out after the jump.

Ramen

It pains me to know that for most people in the English speaking world, ramen brings to mind three-minute snacks laced with artificial flavoring and msg. I do respect Momofuku Ando, the creator of instant noodles, as one of the most innovative and motivated businessmen of post-war Japan, but unfortunately the convenience over quality of the instant noodle fails to capture the glory that is true ramen.

Ramen, sometimes referred to as “Chinese noodles”, is one of the foods I miss the most when I’m away from Japan. Imagine slurping perfectly firm noodles out of a bowl of hot, oily soup, occasionally interrupted by slices of rich roasted pork. A complicated aroma of soy sauce, ginger, browned meat, and a fresh heaping of spring onions fills your nose, and every bite is garnished with a generous addition of freshly crushed garlic. Just thinking about it makes me drool. 

Thanksgiving at Chez Fenson

I can play the slideshow game too!

Thanksgiving is perhaps my favorite holiday ever.  As my sister put it, it's the one day of the year when we, as Jews, can be pretty sure we're doing exactly the same thing as the rest of the country.  It's a day of humility and gratitude, sleep, family time, and lots of delicious food.  What's not to love?

This year we had an intimate nine-person evening.  For the past few years, my sister and I have been in charge of planning and cooking the Thanksgiving meal, with my mom as sous chef and advisor.  Because there are always several vegetarians at my family's Thanksgiving table, we always make a meatless spread (except for the turkey, of course).  But that doesn't mean our Thanksgivings aren't flavorful, vibrant, and joyous.  In fact--well, see for yourself.

Simplified Pollo en Pipián Verde (Chicken in Pumpkin Seed Sauce)

Every once in a while I just pick up recipes from random sources on the Internet, copy them to my "Recipes" folder, then forget about them until one day I decide I want to try cooking something new. This is one of those times.

I know next to nothing about Mexican dishes -- they are more Esteban's thing than mine -- but a quick Google search reveals that Pollo en Pipián Verde translates to "Chicken in Green Sauce," which is certainly to the point. If you're a gourmet with some time on your hands, you could take the time to scrounge together the 15 or so ingredients you need to prepare the dish from scratch; if you're a busy/lazy adult who needs something quick and easy to prepare for a weeknight dinner, however, this recipe is for you. All you need is some chicken thighs, pre-made salsa verde, pumpkin seeds, and a pair of zucchinis, give or take a few spices.

Beware, however: salsa verde comes hot. I grabbed a bottle that was rated "medium" and my sauce came out a bit too spicy for my and my parents' liking (even if they were quick to qualify that it still tasted delicious). Granted, I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to hot peppers, but I tend to find that when my mouth feels like it's on fire the sensation completely overrides the other flavors of a given dish -- and this is undesirable. I'd recommend you find a "mild" variant of the salsa, if at all possible... but perhaps you can handle the heat better than me and my family! 

Recipe after the jump:

Asparagus Salad with Sweet Balsamic Vinaigrette

pictured with"Bass in Paper," a recipe I'll reveal at a later date

So here's the dilemma: I want to start cooking more seasonal fruits and veggies in my dishes, because that's what all the cool kids do nowadays and because it's a practice that goes hand in hand with buying local. I also want to cook asparagus, which I find quite tasty. The problem is that a) we're fast approaching the end of the summer season and b) asparagus cannot, in good faith, be considered anything but a spring seasonal. Oh well -- better late than never.

This recipe comes out of my mother's recipe box and has quickly become a spring/summer favorite in the household. While Dijon mustard, olive oil, garlic, and balsamic vinegar aren't by any means a revolutionary combination -- it makes for an excellent marinade on chicken -- I'm happy to report that it works very well as a base for an asparagus salad vinaigrette. There's also comparatively little prep time involved, which is always a plus for a side dish.

Finally, I should mention that this recipe is Emily tested and approved (she even went back for seconds!), which means that it can be a good choice for friends and family members with a minor aversion to veggies. Give it a try the next time you want to try something new alongside your entree... though you may need to act quickly, lest the asparagus disappear from the markets until next March.

Recipe after the jump:

Hot chocolate with a kick

Mark Twain is thought to have said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco."  Whether or not he did say it, the fact remains: the City by the Bay is damn cold in June and July.  Five days a week, I commute from Silicon Valley, which I love for its hot blue summers, to San Francisco's financial district, which is almost always foggy in the morning and breezy come midday.  It's now starting to settle into September, when the weather traditionally heats up--the past week in the city has been sun-kissed and stunning--but for most of the past few months I've been wind-blown and cranky, mourning the loss of my inland summer.

So, when I come home for the weekend, I make hot chocolate.

Grown-up macaroni and cheese

As promised, Sawa decided to attempt to make mac n' cheese from scratch after our mac-n'-cheese-in-a-box last week. The recipe is on p. 93 of Anne Willan's "The Good Cook", which as I've noted previously, is one of our major sources of inspiration for recipes and general cooking concepts.

Basically, the main difference between this and the boxed kind that we made last week is that you make the cheese sauce yourself, whisking together flour, butter, milk, grated cheddar cheese and nutmeg on the stove. Also, rather than just pouring it over the boiled macaroni, you bake the whole thing in a casserole dish for half an hour.

It's hard to say exactly how we feel about the finished product. True, it was very tasty, but it was almost nothing like the nostalgic mac n' cheese of our youth, either in taste or in ease of preparation. If you think of it as a completely un-related food group, it'll probably be less jarring.

Here are some action shots of the cooking process:

Red Velvet Cupcakes

In search of something to eat for lunch this past Monday afternoon, I stumbled over an unopened container of Duncan Hines Cream Cheese frosting.  “Well,” I thought to myself, “someone really ought to use this …”

I love cupcakes.  Who doesn’t love cupcakes?  And my absolute favorite kind of cupcake is Red Velvet – but I’ve never made them before!  It just so happened that we also had Ghirardelli unsweetened cacao powder in the house (no idea why), so I obviously had to give them a whirl. 

I searched for a while to find a recipe I though sounded good and settled on one I found on the website pinchmysalt.com (a really great site with beautiful food photos and recipes).  I followed the recommendation to use unsalted butter instead of shortening (staying true to that butter-loving French chef in me), and I made my own decision to use white wine vinegar in place of normal white vinegar – because everything tastes better with wine!  Actually I also like the more complex flavor of white wine vinegar, and I think it made a scrumptious substitution, so I say try it!

These cupcakes definitely weren't the easiest to make, but they were oh so worth it.

Best Coast Scramble

 ...I call it that because I am newly enamored of the west coast, and because it involves avocados!

The day before law school classes started back up, I had a lovely potluck brunch with some people from my awesome study group. M hosted and made peach bellinis and a spinach and apple salad; T brought these delicious little maple apple cinnamon muffins that she made with yogurt and applesauce; J brought her lovely self, fresh from a run in DC's 90-degree heat. I brought the ingredients for this scramble, which was really easy to throw together at M's place.

I had most of these ingredients on hand because I'd gone to Eastern Market the week before; I usually buy what I see that looks good and then come up with a way to use it. Salmonella is not a big thing to worry about when your eggs come from a farm, so we didn't hesitate to enjoy these.

Mantı: how the Turks do meat dumplings

I'm seeing an alarming lack of good ol' fashioned MEAT dishes on this blog. Also, I promised in my first post that you would see some authentic Turkish dishes from me, so here you go.

Mantı ("dumpling"), pronounced MAHN (as in
"Ma" and "Pa") tooh (as in "woof"), can be found all over central Asia and even into the former Soviet bloc and Northwest China. As might be expected, it is a touchstone of classical Turkish cooking. However, it's not the sort of dish you will find readily in the restaurants of Ankara or Istanbul. That's because mantı, despite being a relatively straightforward food to make, tends to be rather time-consuming and labor-intensive if you want to do it right. The only occasion that I ever had the pleasure to sample this dish in all its home-cooked glory was when one of my Turkish co-workers invited me and some other American teachers into her Ankara apartment for a traditional Turkish dinner.

When you think of mantı, you should picture an assembly line consisting of a Turkish mother and her daughters (and in some cases, her sons) in the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, laughing and gossiping and talking about the events of the week as they patiently knead the lumps out of the homemade dough, pound out and roll the pasta into thin sheets, and assemble the dumpling pouches with precision and dexterity. For many Turks, the dish is just as much a socio-familial institution as it is a culinary one; that's half the fun of preparing it. It's very much akin to baking a cake/pie or grilling steaks in American culture -- the sort of thing you do with family and friends on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps the best thing about this dish is how much mileage you can get out of the leftovers. While assembling the mantı is time-consuming, cooking them is not: like any pasta, all you need is to boil some water and prepare a quick sauce. Many Turkish families will spend their Sundays preparing a week's batch of dumplings, storing them in the fridge or freezer to be served on those nights of the week when no one has the energy to cook anything else. I suggest that you do the same -- if your family doesn't gobble them all up like mine did!

So without further ado, here is my personal recipe for mantı, collated from the tips and tricks of my Turkish co-workers and prepared -- in the spirit of the dish -- with the company of my mother.

Pesto by hand

My boyfriend loves gadgets. He is by far one of the most gadgety people I've ever met. Going to Target with him is a dangerous proposition: he will happily spend an entire afternoon wandering the aisles of the electronics department in a gleeful daze, coming to life only occasionally to pull something off the shelf and announce, "I'm getting this." Grocery shopping is just as hazardous, because every grocery store I've been to with him has a cookware section. If it slices, dices, pulverizes, or serves food in a visually arresting manner, he is drawn inexorably to it like a moth to a ceiling lamp.

And yet, he doesn't own a food processor.

This became an issue one recent Saturday as we prepared to go shopping for dinner ingredients. I wanted pesto. I craved pesto. I was horrified by the thought of buying premade pesto for dinner, when it's so easy and satisfying to make at home. But I'd never made pesto without a food processor before. So I turned to the Internets to see if you could, in fact, make pesto entirely by hand.

Relaxing rice yoga...aka risotto

Today I was frustrated. I was tired, I was cranky and I was annoyed....with everything.

I had too much work to do, my feet had forgotten how to deal with shoes and had erupted in angry red blisters, the mosquito bite on my calf was most itchy and my evening's date got canceled.

So as I sat in my cafe stewing over my irritations and annoyances I decided, come hell or high water, tonight I'm making risotto.

Why risotto, you ask? Excellent question. At  a first glance risotto doesn't seem to be the first choice for synapse soothing but I promise it can be. There is something very zen about the art of risotto making, the slow stirring and systematic additions of broth...the add, stir, repeat cycle itself makes me breath and relax, and of course it doesn't hurt that I'm breathing in delicious smells. It's like yoga, in rice form...

This ended up being a BEAUTIFUL risotto and my realization of the day is a. shoes suck and b. risotto is all about the right wine and the right cheese. Read on after the jump!

Memere's Graham Cracker Cake: Easiest Crowd-Pleaser Ever

This recipe comes from my maternal grandmother. I don't remember seeing her cook much when I was younger, but I'm told she was quite impressive in the kitchen. I am one of a few family members who have become the "Keepers of the Recipes," and this one is one of my favorites. It's the easiest thing in the world, and everyone always flips over how delicious it is. We call it Memere's Graham Cracker Cake.

Ingredients

1-2 Boxes Traditional Graham Crackers (Depending on how big you want to make the cake)

1-2 Quarts Heavy Whipping Cream (Again, depending on how big you're making the cake)

White Sugar

Hershey's Chocolate Syrup

Vanilla Extract

Directions

1 - Whip heavy whipping cream into ... well ... cream. Think Cool Whip consistency. But don't over whip it! I made the near-fatal mistake of whipping my cream into butter once. Not good.

2 - Add sugar, chocolate syrup, and a little vanilla extract to cream. Now, you've probably noticed that there are no measurements. That's because Memere didn't have any measurements. You have to do it to taste. I usually start with sugar until it tastes sweet enough to me, drop in a bit of vanilla, then keep adding chocolate sauce until it tastes ridiculously good.

3 - In a glass casserole dish (I use my trusty Pyrex), smooth down a layer of the chocolate cream. Then put down one layer of graham crackers. Cover the graham crackers with another layer of the chocolate cream (probably a little less than a quarter-inch thick; make sure all of the crackers are covered!) Then another single layer of crackers. Keep layering the crackers and the cream like this until the dish is full/the cream is gone.

4 - Put the cake in the fridge for at least an hour; the graham crackers will soak up all the yummy cream and it will be DELICIOUS. This is also good frozen, although it is a little trickier to bite into.

ENJOY!

Breakfast of Champions

I was born and raised in the Bay Area, and returned there after college to start my professional life. As a result, I am a spoiled, spoiled little foodie.

Everything you hear about California food is true. The produce really is that fresh, especially in the summer. The "ethnic" restaurants really are that good. The grocery stores really are that well-stocked. And yes, for all you New Englanders bemoaning your blue laws, you really can shop for wine and string cheese in the same store. My sleepy Silicon Valley town, with a population well under 100,000, has a huge year-round farmer's market--year-round!--and a wealth of gourmet, Asian and Latin American food purveyors.

I love it. I love fresh vegetables, and spices, and crazy-almost-pretentious California flavor combinations, and San Francisco sourdough with a good fatty Brie. I'll write about these things, I promise.

But for my first post, I'm going to talk about oatmeal.

Brioche French Toast (with lemon curd and blueberries!)

Greetings fellow food fans! 

As most of you may know, I've been living in the Oz-like city of Chicago for the past year. Now I grew up in sunny California and then moved to the less sunny but rather picturesque East Coast and that whole time, the Midwest was little more than a place to change airplanes. While I can't say my year of living here has made me love Chicago (sorry, I know it tries to be very friendly....), it has taught me to love two new things...blueberries and brioche. Especially in French Toast.

Go-To Stir-Fry

My first post was a little bit of a challenge. I'm writing from my parents' place in Grapevine, Texas, where cooking the way I like to can be difficult for me. I like to cook with local, seasonal ingredients, and otherwise vegan. Right now, though, I'm in the land of Texas-sized grocery stores and Texas-sized steaks. Plus, my family's tastes are pretty different than mine, so what to make that everyone would enjoy?

My mom loves American-style Chinese food, but it's something she'd rarely try to make for herself, so I decided on the perennial vegetarian go-to: a simple stir-fry. It's simple, it's a crowd pleaser, it's pretty healthy, and it's very flexible: I did up some veggies and tossed mine with fried tofu, while Mom added some chicken for herself and my brothers.

Tortilla Española

Hello everyone!

For fun, I present to you a cooking photo-adventure of a favorite of mine from study abroad.

The Tortilla Española!
But instead of your typical flour-based flatbread from Latin America, it's a unique way of preparing an omelette that turns out to be absolutely delicious. You can find them at all the restaurants you come across in Spain.

We will need:



1 Large Potato (Yukon Gold is best)
3-4 Eggs
Olive Oil (copious amounts of)
Salt

Optional:
Onion
Green Bell Pepper

You'll need a peeler, a good knife for dicing, and a small frying pan (~6 inches).

The standard tortilla is simply eggs and potato, but you can add any number of other ingredients (ham, squash, etc.). The optional ingredients I chose serve to add delicious flavor to the dish. The onion is vital, but the green bell pepper is a personal favorite.

Fillet of Sole stuffed with Shrimp and Mushrooms

Fillet of Sole stuffed with Shrimp and Mushrooms

Hello Amherst foodies!

If you don't know or remember me, my name is Zach and I graduated from Amherst in 2009. My cooking style is pretty much self-taught, drawing occasional insights and techniques from the internet, my mother, my girlfriend, and other sources. I tend to gravitate towards lean meats, fish, and pastas, because these seem to be the types of dishes that I cook best. Since my year teaching abroad in Turkey I've also added some Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, and Greek-ish recipes to my repertoire, so you can also look forward to seeing a few of those in my corner of the blog.

I've already posted this particular dish on planworld and my personal blog, but I'm sharing it again here for good reason: it's really, really delicious. You can substitute nearly any type of white fish for the sole, and the sauce works perfectly well in other dishes without the shrimp/mushroom stuffing. The cheese topping might run counter to some deeply ingrained culinary sensibilities (Italians, I'm looking at you), but I recommend that you give it a try even if you're skeptical.

This one's one of my favorites and I hope you like it too! Recipe after the jump: