27 fevrier / betsy : bread, spinach salad, zucchini casserole, strawberry sorbet
28 fevrier / lauren : black-eyed peas, collard greens, potato-cheddar bake, squash casserole, cornbread, peach cobbler
1 mars / keith : honey-apricot chicken, mushroom risotto with sundried tomatoes, banana splits
2 mars / nina : spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, risotto with wild mushrooms and peas, cinnamon swirl pound cake with almonds
3 mars / carrien : moroccan slow-cooked lamb, risotto, roasted vegetables, pretzels
4 mars / josh : tba
wow, three nights of risotto. menus have always tended to clump at lmf - meaning that suddenly we'll have tons of broccoli in one week, but generally we haven't had a clump of something as exotic as risotto.
27 février 2005
sensuous, glorious violet creams, how i love you
first (yes, first!), a digression : i have the most unsettling suspicion that i have undeniably american tastes in food. i unabashedly love chicken pot pie, cakes from mixes, fast food, and easymac. ok, maybe not easymac. and maybe the chicken pot pie is best when you expressly roast a chicken for it (while not particularly economically efficient, it is the best way to have pot pie). but cakes and brownies from mixes are unequivocally good. there's no comparison between the from-mix and scratch versions in my mind, because they're just totally different things - apples and bananas. or maybe apples and chinese pears. at any rate, i make up for it with my insane purist ways for other foods. cheesecake, for example, is only good plain, and preferably with a gingersnap crust. i will make one exception - for a key lime cheesecake - but it better be good.
anyway, this post was really to discuss the joy of violet creams. i was at cardullo's with nina - having waffled back and forth previously on whether or not to go at all before definitively deciding to go - and i was first attracted to the lovely, gorgeous, perfectly-proportioned bars of New Tree chocolate (see a picture here). their bars are non-gmo, 73% dark chocolate with additives like lemon zest and orange zest, and each of their 5 bars has a name - 'vigor' for coffee, 'forgiveness' for the lemon, 'pleasure' for the plain... i'm not sure if they're any good - i decided to shell out my five bucks for the violet creams instead - but they sure are gorgeous. i suppose it's the architect's bar of chocolate (with the 'vigor' bar as the most appropriate flavor).
and still you haven't heard about the violet creams. well, i was about to escape with my can of cassoulet (canned cassoulet, you ask? how could i even dare? read on.), threading my way through the fire-hazard-narrow aisles in search of nina, when i spotted them on a shelf. lonely, tossed asunder, i saw a pink box : rose creams. alack, no canary creams, and i'm not a huge fan of rose, despite the fact that it is really fun to sugar rose petals. but suddenly i saw the purple box - violet creams! i decided right then and there to blow my five bucks on these luscious-looking "dark chocolate with violet flavour fondant cream centres." undeniably british - by Beech's Fine Chocolates. essentially they're high-quality violet-flavored thin mints.
while we're on the subject of british food, i'd like the world to know that i love british food. yet another weird quirk in the strange world that is my food likes and dislikes. i love yorkshire puddings, figgy puddings, full english breakfasts...oh, i need to go back to england.
and finally, the canned cassoulet. as i had leftover chicken pot pie for dinner (by the way, the only correct topping for pot pie is a biscuit topping; then you eat it out of a bowl with a spoon), i had no need to open the can of cassoulet. but i've been eyeing that can of cassoulet for about a year now - thankfully not the same exact can - and i finally bought it. i've always wanted to make a real cassoulet, but i've never had the chance; neither have i had the chance to go sample the cassoulet at pigalle. i also have a moderately-consuming passion to see if canned foods are actually good. currently the canned foods i do like include: peas, corn, creamed corn, beans, wolfgang puck chicken tortilla soup (a surprisingly good canned soup) and tuna. canned foods i do not like: spaghetti-o's and all related canned foods (canned pasta has that gross pale tan color). when i've had the cassoulet i'll update you all on whether or not it's actually good. in jeffrey steingarten's article about when he made boudin noir, he canned it, so canned things must taste good occasionally. i've also wanted to try Caledonian Kitchen's canned haggis, ever since there was a blurb about it in Saveur, but that will have to wait until i get my next paycheck.
anyway, this post was really to discuss the joy of violet creams. i was at cardullo's with nina - having waffled back and forth previously on whether or not to go at all before definitively deciding to go - and i was first attracted to the lovely, gorgeous, perfectly-proportioned bars of New Tree chocolate (see a picture here). their bars are non-gmo, 73% dark chocolate with additives like lemon zest and orange zest, and each of their 5 bars has a name - 'vigor' for coffee, 'forgiveness' for the lemon, 'pleasure' for the plain... i'm not sure if they're any good - i decided to shell out my five bucks for the violet creams instead - but they sure are gorgeous. i suppose it's the architect's bar of chocolate (with the 'vigor' bar as the most appropriate flavor).
and still you haven't heard about the violet creams. well, i was about to escape with my can of cassoulet (canned cassoulet, you ask? how could i even dare? read on.), threading my way through the fire-hazard-narrow aisles in search of nina, when i spotted them on a shelf. lonely, tossed asunder, i saw a pink box : rose creams. alack, no canary creams, and i'm not a huge fan of rose, despite the fact that it is really fun to sugar rose petals. but suddenly i saw the purple box - violet creams! i decided right then and there to blow my five bucks on these luscious-looking "dark chocolate with violet flavour fondant cream centres." undeniably british - by Beech's Fine Chocolates. essentially they're high-quality violet-flavored thin mints.
while we're on the subject of british food, i'd like the world to know that i love british food. yet another weird quirk in the strange world that is my food likes and dislikes. i love yorkshire puddings, figgy puddings, full english breakfasts...oh, i need to go back to england.
and finally, the canned cassoulet. as i had leftover chicken pot pie for dinner (by the way, the only correct topping for pot pie is a biscuit topping; then you eat it out of a bowl with a spoon), i had no need to open the can of cassoulet. but i've been eyeing that can of cassoulet for about a year now - thankfully not the same exact can - and i finally bought it. i've always wanted to make a real cassoulet, but i've never had the chance; neither have i had the chance to go sample the cassoulet at pigalle. i also have a moderately-consuming passion to see if canned foods are actually good. currently the canned foods i do like include: peas, corn, creamed corn, beans, wolfgang puck chicken tortilla soup (a surprisingly good canned soup) and tuna. canned foods i do not like: spaghetti-o's and all related canned foods (canned pasta has that gross pale tan color). when i've had the cassoulet i'll update you all on whether or not it's actually good. in jeffrey steingarten's article about when he made boudin noir, he canned it, so canned things must taste good occasionally. i've also wanted to try Caledonian Kitchen's canned haggis, ever since there was a blurb about it in Saveur, but that will have to wait until i get my next paycheck.
26 février 2005
ringing in a belated chinese new year
jessica and i (or, to better describe it, jessica) decided to throw a chinese new year bash this year. we decided to celebrate the following weekend due to impending homework. on our ambitious, but not too ambitious menu: scallion pancakes, a lotus root salad, vegetable dumplings (with green har-gao-like skins), sticky rice packets (which have a name in chinese - maybe 'joong'?), rice noodle rolls with chinese broccoli in them, tea eggs, a new year cake, red bean sesame balls, pineapple buns, clementines, and oh, there was one more thing, something sweet...but i've forgotten. i would love to describe each one of the things we made, but this will be a brief blow-by-blow because i don't seem to be in a writing mood.
i'm always thrilled when something i make looks like it's genuinely the thing i was trying to make. somehow it makes me feel more successrul, which i suppose is natural since i'm trying to emulate the photo anyway - but the feeling of success is disproportionate to the situation. anyway, the pineapple buns were an example of this - we even baked them on this huge pan that looks like the ones they use in the real bakeries. the filling could have been better, but they looked so pretty! as did the tea eggs and the red bean sesame balls; i was most excited about the red bean sesame balls, which puff up slightly when you fry them, and turn golden brown where there aren't sesame seeds. they're actually pretty easy to make - you just mix rice flour with sugar water and take balls of it to make little pods - but i'm mystified as to how the bakeries make them in an efficient way.
quick hits:
- the indian take-out in the back of shalimar (next to libby's liquors in central square) is pretty good, and cheap - a mango lassi, samosa, and two entrees + rice for $6-7.
- the food sections of the new york times and globe have been lackluster in the past few weeks. there was a semi-interesting piece on some pastry classes in the globe recently, but that was the only high point. brownie points to the new york times, though, on its issue that involved food and fashion.
- actually, i tried the grapefruit-lemon marmalade from that issue. my resulting marmalade is a shade bitter, as marmalade is wont to be, but it smells wonderful and has a great color. now i just have to find people to foist it off on...as is usual, i was really just experimenting with making jam, rather than wanting actual marmalade. the most fascinating thing about the whole process was the fact that you extract the pectin from the fruit membranes (you put em in a cheesecloth bag and simmer it with the actual fruit). that part of the process is akin to when jessica and i made flaxseed goop as an egg replacer in a cake for our IAP class. the jam, consequently, gelled like a charm, which is the first time i've ever made jam successfully. who would have known that there was so much pectin in the membranes of the fruit? (besides harold mcgee.)
- a note about that cheesecloth bag: it is one of my most useful acquisitions, oddly enough. jessica and i used it to make paneer, then the flaxseed goop, and now extract pectin. i'm sure we've used it for other things, too... at any rate, all $3 investments that provide such a return are definitely worth it.
- when making red bean sesame balls, you make the sugar water with "brown sugar." available only at chinese supermarkets, it was called "poon tang" on epicurious.com's recipe for the sesame balls. but "brown sugar" is so typically chinese-in-the-united-states.
i'm always thrilled when something i make looks like it's genuinely the thing i was trying to make. somehow it makes me feel more successrul, which i suppose is natural since i'm trying to emulate the photo anyway - but the feeling of success is disproportionate to the situation. anyway, the pineapple buns were an example of this - we even baked them on this huge pan that looks like the ones they use in the real bakeries. the filling could have been better, but they looked so pretty! as did the tea eggs and the red bean sesame balls; i was most excited about the red bean sesame balls, which puff up slightly when you fry them, and turn golden brown where there aren't sesame seeds. they're actually pretty easy to make - you just mix rice flour with sugar water and take balls of it to make little pods - but i'm mystified as to how the bakeries make them in an efficient way.
quick hits:
- the indian take-out in the back of shalimar (next to libby's liquors in central square) is pretty good, and cheap - a mango lassi, samosa, and two entrees + rice for $6-7.
- the food sections of the new york times and globe have been lackluster in the past few weeks. there was a semi-interesting piece on some pastry classes in the globe recently, but that was the only high point. brownie points to the new york times, though, on its issue that involved food and fashion.
- actually, i tried the grapefruit-lemon marmalade from that issue. my resulting marmalade is a shade bitter, as marmalade is wont to be, but it smells wonderful and has a great color. now i just have to find people to foist it off on...as is usual, i was really just experimenting with making jam, rather than wanting actual marmalade. the most fascinating thing about the whole process was the fact that you extract the pectin from the fruit membranes (you put em in a cheesecloth bag and simmer it with the actual fruit). that part of the process is akin to when jessica and i made flaxseed goop as an egg replacer in a cake for our IAP class. the jam, consequently, gelled like a charm, which is the first time i've ever made jam successfully. who would have known that there was so much pectin in the membranes of the fruit? (besides harold mcgee.)
- a note about that cheesecloth bag: it is one of my most useful acquisitions, oddly enough. jessica and i used it to make paneer, then the flaxseed goop, and now extract pectin. i'm sure we've used it for other things, too... at any rate, all $3 investments that provide such a return are definitely worth it.
- when making red bean sesame balls, you make the sugar water with "brown sugar." available only at chinese supermarkets, it was called "poon tang" on epicurious.com's recipe for the sesame balls. but "brown sugar" is so typically chinese-in-the-united-states.
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