March 10, 2010
sorry for the fuzzy photos
Here’s the unfortunate truth. I’m writing a thesis. It’s due terrifyingly soon. I’m unsatisfied in my progress. Also, I am catering, and teaching, and taking classes, and trying to maintain all the various relationships in my life.
An additional unfortunate truth: Marcus works a dizzying palate of jobs.
I feel stretched thin and anxious and tense in all my fingertips. It’s hard for both of us, I think, to slow down, to relax, and to take time to just enjoy each other’s company. This is why planned date nights are amazing. It’s awful that relaxation with Marcus has to be such a scheduled thing but it is necessary nevertheless.
Marcus is a dear.
He suggested that we cook dinner at his place tonight and so we shopped at Trader Joe’s together and bought ingredients to make steak and roasted potatoes, brussel sprouts, and red onions. We set off fire alarms, cooked in dual cast iron skillets, and ate our meal over an aerial map. I like that we’re both not steak people but felt enormously satisfied by red meat tonight. I like that I now know that Marcus likes his steak medium while I like mine rare. I like that we struggled with butter knives in the absence of proper cutlery.
Afterwards we had Scoops!
February 15, 2010
Whatever. I don’t care that Valentine’s Day is an invented holiday for Hallmark. Blah blah blah.
I totally think Valentine’s Day is great. What’s wrong with an excuse to have a nice evening with someone? I don’t even buy Hallmark cards. And even if I did, I probably wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Not that there’s anything wrong with feeling morally flummoxed about the whole thing. Good for you.
For our first Valentine’s Day Marcus and I made potato gnocchi. Notice, I used the verb “made”, not “buy”. This was a labor of love. I’m talking boiled potatoes, pureed in a food processor, kneaded with flour, rolled out into long cylinders and then cut individually. Maybe more labor intensive than necessary. Sometimes store bought is just more worth it. We also made a tomato sauce that came highly recommended from Marcella Hazan’s dearly loved “The Essentials of Italian Cooking”.
But really Valentine’s Day is about the dessert. We had port poached pears (ooohhh alliteration!) with lavender honey ice cream and oreo cream cheese ice cream. Poaching sounds so fancy but it’s almost embarrassingly easy–you just let it simmer. And the color is so gorgeous. Everything should be poached in wine! Cereal. Eggs. Shoes. Pajamas. Hair.
Ingredients:
4 Bosc Pears
1 cup Port
3/4 cup sugar
2 strips of orange peel
2 strips of lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups of water
ice cream for serving
1. in a medium pot combine the port, water, zest, cinnamon and sugar and cook at medium heat for about 10 minutes
2. in the meantime, trim 1/4 of an inch from the bottom of the pears and peel them
3. add the pears to the pot and bring the whole thing to a boil
4. lower heat to simmer and leave for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to make sure that all gets cooked through
January 13, 2010
attempting the upper limit
the dish that was supposed to be pineapple rice but ended up as pineapple porridge and then “salvaged” as pineapple risotto
sam with bravado! me–what the hell is wrong with my posture. note to self: never wear those clothes in public again
rustic cabbage soup. rustic!
broccoli apple salad
Hilarious. This is the amazing thing about cooking with friends. The result is sort of secondary to the process. Sure, I would have liked for our rice to not have been a mild disaster but it was entirely enjoyable to cry over chopped onions and taste test every 3 minutes. I am sure that there is something magical and healing about cooking communally.
December 15, 2009
can you tell which ones are mine and which ones are by marcus?
For what ever reason, meatballs have been a strange re-occurring topic of conversation in my life lately. They just keep coming up. It’s the season of the meatball. Sam and I had a conversation the other day–about the clumsiness of certain foods. Foods like: meatloaf, meatballs, pizza, casseroles, one pot/one dish meals. In truth, I’ve avoided things that contain compressed ground meat for the greater part of my life. Ground meat takes mysterious forms. You could hide all sorts of things in a meatball.
I’m reconsidering my prejudices. Meatballs can be nice. They’re adorable and spherical and the kind of thing I might like doing with my future-probably-never children. Whatever, I’ll make Saeyoung’s kids make meatballs with me. But can’t you picture it? Making meatballs with your children in the afternoon to have for dinner, showing them how to roll it perfectly, just so.
I’m not sure how it came up with Marcus but he claimed to have an excellent recipe for meatballs and because the weather is cold and because I’m generally always hungry and because cooking with lovely people is one of my favorite activities ever, we decided to try our hand at spaghetti and meatballs. There was some debate as to whether bread crumbs should or should not be included. I am of the bread crumb lobby. Marcus is of the all-meat lobby. We did a few meatballs with breadcrumbs but later forgot which ones had them and so our debate is to be continued. Other ingredients included onions and garlic and Marcus’ secret ingredient which I’m not at liberty to divulge without his permission. I will say, it’s not of the Italian pantry.
As for sauce, we cheated and bought a jar. Next time, we will master tomato sauce.
The meal was pretty fantastic. I am now a fan of meatballs, it’s official.
July 26, 2009
homemade kettle corn
cantaloupe, watermelon, mint, and white wine salad
pear and bittersweet chocolate cake
i really love the idea of a movie night. i think they’re nice. and relaxing. and usually there is food involved. i had a few people over the other night to watch “in the mood for love” and “talk to her”. Are movies at movie nights supposed to be light and easy? Because, these movies were decidedly not. But I think that’s a good thing. We actually had conversations about the movies…like little discussion sessions after the viewing. it felt—-productive (??). In any case I had a lovely time and i think my friends are peachy.
When I have people over, I get really host-y. It’s probably obnoxious but I all of a sudden feel responsible for everyone’s comfort. The best way to deal with this is to stuff people up to the gills with food. Speaking of gills, Gil brought the most amazing pita bread–unusually doughy and adorably misshapen. I think he said it was from a bakery on Fairfax. I will have to get the address from him. Also, Sam brought an excellent fruit plate. fruit and summer. thomas brought hummus and babaganoush (which he mistook for tabouli/tabbouleh). lan brought her buoyant and joyous self. I made a pear and bittersweet chocolate cake, a melon mint white wine salad, and homemade kettle corn.
Pear and Bittersweet Chocolate Cake
Ingredients:
3 pears diced in cubes
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick of 4 ounce butter
1. preheat the oven to 350
2. either use a decorative disposable cake mold or butter a 9 inch springform pan
3. sift flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside
4. with a mixer, whip the eggs on high speed for at least 5 minutes until the eggs have greatly increased in volume and the mixture looks pale and thick
5. brown the butter at medium heat in a sauce pan. the butter is done with brown solids begina to form and the butter turns just slightly brown. careful not to burn. as soon as the brown solids appear, remove from heat
6. add the sugar to the whipped eggs and mix for a few minutes more
7. add the brown butter and flour in alternating additions, being careful not to over beat
8. pour the batter into the cake pan
9. top with the pear cubes and chopped chocolate
10. bake for about 50 minutes
adapted from smittenkitchen.com
June 12, 2009
tofu dumpling soup
This is a gushy one, I’m just going to say that right now.
I love my friends. For what ever reason, I have the most lovely friends in the world, friends so lovely that I’m sure I don’t deserve them.
Among them, is Lan. Lan couldn’t make it to my birthday party due to the terror that is employment at Starbucks but instead she offered to make dinner for me. And I think most people who know me, know this: there are few things I love more than cooking with friends and/or eating with friends.
We made tofu dumplings in a ginger and chicken broth. She also made a broccoli and tomato stir-fry that we had with brown rice. Everything was delicious and startlingly easy to make. The idea of making dumplings seems intimidating, I think partially because whenever my family makes dumplings it’s only for special occasions and we make like a hundred at a time, all gathered around a table and spooning filling into wrappers from a communal bowl (it’s actually a very pleasant experience and all of a sudden i’m nostalgic for moments like those). Maybe because Lan and I didn’t use meat as a filling the process didn’t seem like such an ordeal.
Also, Lan made a series of three framed collages for my birthday. I think they’re thrilling. Yes, I think thrilling is the appropriate word. They are now hanging above my bed and I’m so grateful for Lan, for friends, for general good feelings.
May 5, 2009
No photos here. I forgot to take them. I wish I had though because the dinner was great. Sam came over and we started the evening with a great red wine that Sam kindly brought over and two types of goat cheese. For dinner we cooked tomato basil angel hair pasta and because we share an obsession of beets we made a beet mandarin salad with feta and pine nuts. Fantastic!
Oh, and afterwards we went to Scoops, which never disappoints. I had mango poppy seed and tiramisu. Sam had mango poppy seed and raspberry mascarpone.
And you know what, despite the gratuitous amounts of food I ate this evening (did I forget to mention that i ate more pasta, salad, and a bowl of cereal after Scoops), I don’t really feel disgusting.
Tomato Basil Pasta
angel hair pasta
cherry tomatoes
basil
olive oil
parmesan reggiano
salt and pepper to taste
roasted garlic
1. preheat oven to 400 and roast garlic in a foil pouch for about a hour, or until tender and slightly browned
2. heavily salt boiling water and cook pasta
3. halve tomatoes and chop basil
4. mix the basil, tomatoes, 1/4 cup olive oil, roasted garlic and salt to taste
5. drain pasta
6. add pasta to tomato basil mixture with parmesan cheese until well coated
Beet Mandarin Salad
2 beets
1 can mandarin oranges
handful of pint
toasted pine nuts
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons mandarin orange syrup
juice of half a lemon
1/4 cup feta cheese
1. preheat oven to 400 and roast beets for about a hour and a half in a foil pouch
2. dice the beets
3. mix the beets with drained mandarin oranges
4. whisk the olive oil, reserved mandarin syrup, vinegar, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt
5. pour dressing over the beet mandarin mixture
6. toss with pine nuts and feta and chopped mint
May 4, 2009
the bounty
they are like my babies
farmers market breakfast
scambled eggs with asparagus, mushrooms, spinach, swiss cheese, onion, and yellow squash
vegetable pupusas
carmela’s ice cream
Last Saturday had all the components of my favorite things, making for a really extraordinary day. I started out the day going to the Silverlake farmer’s market with two of my loveliest friends, Lan and Thomas. I don’t even understand it, the farmers market makes me enormously happy. We stocked up on the weeks produce. I bought beets (my obsession continues), swiss chard, yellow squash, onions, yellow and red tomatoes, and Guinness ice cream from Carmela’s Ice Cream. We also whet our appetites with a vegetable pupusa, communally shared. I have to say though, the UCI farmers market is much more impressive in variety.
Afterwards we cooked breakfast together at my place, using the ingredients we had bought that morning. Toasted French and sourdough loaves. A vegetable scramble with parsley. Sliced tomatoes. Lemon-lavender goat cheese. And animal crackers to top it all off. While I was clearing the table, Lan and Thomas were watching youtube videos on my bed (see above) and something about that image struck me as hilarious. They all of a sudden seemed like they were my children, watching Saturday morning cartoons or something. It made me feel pretty warm and fuzzy.
Because we all ate the equivalent of like 4 eggs each we continued the day by meeting Nancy, another phenomenal and equally lovely friend, to bike along the beach. Biking on the beach is another thing that makes me happy.
April 25, 2009
lan et marvin
a telling of the future
garlic toast/salad
tomato sauce for pasta
I’m glad Lan Pham moved to Los Angeles, very glad indeed.
April 20, 2009
holy dirt dessert
nancy, in the process of solving all her problem
pleasantly soupy pizza
Cooking with friends is pretty high up on my list of favorite things, and when those friend happen to be Nancy, Janice, and Jeff–well, even better. Janice and Jeff invited us over to their house to make pizza, which was the simplest thing we could think to make while shopping (and partaking in free samples) at Trader Joe’s. We put fresh mozzarella, mushrooms, bell peppers, and roma tomatoes on our pizza. Rolling the dough was kind of hilarious and for some reason we could only manage to fill up like 7/8 of the pizza pan. It looked like someone had sliced off a wedge of our dough. Besides our pizza turning out inexplicably soupy, the pizza was very delicious, and also very filling.
For dessert, Janice promised that we’d rid our lives of our metaphorical crutches if we ate holy dirt from New Mexico. And because this sounded good, we ate it. It was very gravelly.
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