4 posts tagged “birthday”

Yesterday (which was just an hour ago) was my 23rd birthday - the beginning of the age when we are expected to suddenly go from college students to being grownups. How intimidating! Things have been going quite smoothly in my work life, and in the next few weeks I will make my final decision about which medical school I will be going to this fall. Maybe the continued schooling will give me an excuse to be a "student" for another few years :)

I had a chance to celebrate my birthday early with my family this week. We had a cake freshly decorated for us from the only Chinatown bakery that was still open at 8pm on a Sunday night, so I'm quite grateful that I got a cake at all haha. The decorator made me a bull out of whipped cream on top of the cake, since I was born in the year of the Ox. It was done quite well if I do say so myself - I really liked the cute chocolate accents :) I was originally tempted to make my own cake, but you never make your own birthday cake heh. The cake had a mixed fruit filling, and the sponge cake layers were soft. I wasn't terribly fond of the whipped topping, as it was more fluffy and marshmallow-y than I would have liked, but the flavors came together pretty well. My family and I enjoyed the cake with some freshly brewed aromatic white tea that my dad brought back from China this past week, mmm.

My birthday cake ox :)

On the actual day of my birthday, I went out with my boyfriend for some nice sushi at one of our favorite sushi joints in Boston: Shino Express. Unfortunately, we realized that in the time we had not gone, they had not only changed their name from Shino Express to Shino Newbury, but that they also dramatically raised prices. More startlingly, they changed all of their sushi from using regular white sushi rice to using some special kind of brown rice. That's right, they don't even carry white rice sushi anymore, and for this they are charging us extra. What happened to the Shino that used to be heaven for students because they had delicious sushi of high quality for a dirt cheap price in a casual setting? It seems like with this new brown rice sushi comes on the tail of Shino trying to remodel itself into a trendy spot on Newbury St. They've changed all their plates and dishes to look modern, but all I really want is the good ol' Shino sushi that was good to my tastebuds AND my wallet (or in this case, my boyfriend's wallet :). I honestly may not go back anymore, since the sushi is no longer priced competitively.

That said, the meal I had tonight was still as amazing as Shino's has always been. I didn't really notice the flavor of the brown rice. It might have been slightly more chewy, but it definitely was a subtle difference (grr, not one I'd want to pay for), which is good because I was so worried that brown rice would ruin the sushi experience. I had a regular salmon roll, a crispy eel roll (eel, avocado, cucumbers, flying fish roe, and topped with mayo and crispy tempura bits drizzled in unagi bbq sauce), and one of their specials, the Boston lobster roll (avocado cucumber roll topped with warm baked lobster mixed with chopped raw red onions in a wasabi butter sauce). The rolls were all amazing, with fresh and fatty fish that melted in my mouth. The lobster roll is one of my favorites because it has such a unique flavor - the wasabi butter sauce really brings together everything in that roll, and it really is a monster to behold with all that lobster! My boyfriend also got a shrimp tempura roll which he said was really good too. Mmm I really wish I could go back to the days when Shino's was cheaper...

Crispy eel roll and shrimp tempura roll

Boston lobster roll

After dinner we went to Cheesecake Factory for some dessert - the Godiva chocolate brownie sundae :) Deliciously rich and a perfect end to a wonderful birthday dinner. I never knew this, but apparently Edy's makes a special vanilla ice cream specifically for Cheesecake Factory to use in their desserts. I wonder what exactly is different about it...

Godiva chocolate brownie sundae

Thanks for a nice birthday dinner Greg! Gosh, I still can't believe I'm 23 already... time just passes so fast. There are so many things I'm looking forward to this year, and I'm also sad to be leaving Boston in just a few months. It really is a wonderful city filled with an endless array of amazing places for every taste. I am certain that the years I have spent here will be fond memories I carry with me forever.

Me and Greg

It's hard to believe that today marks the one year anniversary of my Vox. How quickly the time passes! I'm so glad to have started this blog last year: I've learned to appreciate food in so many ways - whether it was in making it, eating it, photographing it, writing about it, or the constant pursuit of new things to make. And along the way I've met so many of you wonderful Voxers whose ideas and skills inspire me and encourage me to maintain this food blog. It has honestly become one of my most beloved hobbies.

For this coming year, one of the things I would like to improve on is my photography. I think the first step will be to improve my camera... after all, it is a point and shoot from 2003! (I use a Nikon Coolpix 3200... really one of those ancient puppies that is very reliable but limited in its abilities). Of course, I am still a student, and will be for many years yet if you tack on medical school, so I don't have the money to buy a nice DSLR camera. My boyfriend knows how much I love food photography, and generously offered to buy me a newer point and shoot for my birthday next month - a Canon A720, which is very well rated and what many consider to be the perfect compromise between a point & shoot and an SLR. I'm so excited! Of course, I am still very limited in my resources for photography. I have no access to daylight in my apartment (just one window in the bedroom that gets indirect light), and I enjoy baking at night anyway. I also have no mini tripod (plus shaky hands), no natural looking lighting (only the harsh fluorescent overhead lighting of my dorm kitchen), and no nice bowls or plates. These are all things that I can do very little about, but that have not stopped me from doing what I love. I hope to improve these conditions with time, so bear with me :) Here's to another year of baking, cooking, and eating!

Now then, you didn't think I'd forget to bake something to celebrate my Vox's birthday did you? Of course not... except I looked in the kitchen and realized that I have no eggs and less than 1 stick of butter. Well I figured I could find some sort of vegetarian or vegan recipe that is free of eggs, and I did find many of those at eggless.com (of course, haha). A recipe for cream cheese butter cookies caught my eye, and I noticed that it was basically a thumbprint cookie recipe. That sounded cute and refreshing to me, and a nice way to use some of the jam I had lying around, since I don't eat bread much. The recipe was super simple, which originally made me a bit suspicious, but the end product eased all my worries. Even though these cookies are eggless, they taste fantastic... with a light buttery scent and a slight sweetness that pairs great with the jam filling in a small bite-sized cookie that looks pretty. Love it!

Eggless cream cheese thumbprint cookies

Eggless Cream Cheese Thumbprint Cookies   (makes 2 dozen small cookies)
                                                                                           adapted from eggless.com

Ingredients:
4 tbsp butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
2 oz. cream cheese
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
jam of choice to fill cookies

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Cream together butter and sugar. Stir in cream cheese until well-mixed. Add vanilla.

3. Gradually sift in flour and stir until blended. Chill briefly (30 min) if desired, to make dough easier to work with.

4. Roll dough into small balls about 3/4" in diameter, and place on an ungreased, foil-lined baking sheet. Using your thumb, push down to make an indentation on each ball. Fill with about 1 tsp of jam each.

Eggless cream cheese thumbprint cookies before baking

5. Bake cookies for 15-20 minutes, until they just begin to brown. Remove and cool on a wire rack.

For my cookies, I experimented with several fillings - orange marmalade, raspberry spread, milk chocolate kisses, and creamy peanut butter (at the request of my boyfriend). I personally thought the raspberry filled cookies tasted the best, followed by the orange marmalade ones, then the chocolate ones. The jam cookies were in general better than the others, because the tartness offsets the sweetness of the cookie to make for a bite that is well-balanced in flavor. The chocolate kiss cookies were decadent, but were a bit sweet, though probably perfect for kids. Finally, the peanut butter ones were lacking a little something, I think it would have been better if I had added some sugar to the peanut butter itself, as it has a native saltiness to it that was odd with the cookie.

I had a lot of fun making these though, it was so easy and the end products are so colorful! When fresh out of the oven, the cookies are slightly crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside, which I loved. They firm up more as they cool down, but the jam-filled ones will stay moist in the center and crispy on the outside. I'd definitely serve these as a casual snack for guests, with tea or coffee. Be warned though, their small size means that wandering hands will pluck them from the cooling rack without hesitation! :)

11:00AM Mala's PhD Thesis Defense (Building 6)
Half a plain bagel from Dunkin' Donuts, with cream cheese. 6 oz of orange juice. I kind of forgot that we were going to have Whitehead's usual Friday Forum at 12:30, but when I remembered I stopped eating my bagel to save room for lunch.

12:20PM Whitehead Friday Forum
1 medium pasta shell filled with ricotta and topped with marinara sauce (it was like the size of half a fist). 1 coconut chocolate chip bar. 1 bottle of spring water (17.5 oz). The actual entree for the forum was a beef burrito, and I seriously hate burritos, so I went for the vegetarian option of stuffed shells, which also isn't all that exciting to me. But I guess it all worked out, since I wasn't very hungry after that half bagel earlier.

7:30PM Home Sweet Home
I went home for the weekend because my family wanted to celebrate my belated birthday with me, and it also happens to be Mother's Day weekend. I again suck lots for not taking food pictures :/

I think I nearly fainted from the glorious smell of home-cooked food when I first walked through the door of my house. Seriously haha. My mom made Shanghai-style glutinous rice ovals with pork and Shanghai bok choy stir fried with soy sauce (炒黏糕), steamed whole blue crab, steamed corn, and tossed iceberg lettuce salad with tomatoes and Vidalia onion vinaigrette dressing. Yum yum. I love my mom's rice oval dish, it's savory and slightly sweet, and the ovals are perfectly soft and chewy. And the crab were delicious. Blue crab is usually the most savory and delicate of the crabs, but the ones today were even better than the ones I had before. It had a saltiness like fresh ocean seafood should have, and it was so good that I didn't even need to dip my crab in any sauces. This is how good seafood should be! I had 3/4 of a glass of Khalua mixed with lots of milk, which is not alcoholic enough to do anything to me, but just flavorful enough that it feels like a special drink to go with a special dinner.

After dinner we had fresh papaya, one of my favorite tropical fruits. It's very refreshing and not too sweet, but also not tart at all. It's flesh is soft, unlike that of other popular melons, so it's kind of a melt-in-you-mouth fruit.

10:45PM
Birthday celebration time! Before I came home I took a trip to Japonaise and bought my beloved green tea macha cake and adzuki cream puffs for my family to eat. It's way expensive though, considering that buying 4 cake slices and 4 cream puffs cost $25. Still, I wanted my family to try the best, and they really loved them. It didn't matter to me that I didn't have a birthday cake, you'd still just end up cutting it into cake slices right :P So we each had a slice of green tea cake and I had half a cream puff, with a cup of green tea.

I got some great gifts from my family too, a purse from my mom, a laptop webcam from my dad, a jewelry box from my brother, and a pair of 1/2 carat diamond earrings from my family as a graduation gift. I loved all the gifts, but seriously omg at the earrings! My mom says that I'm all grown up now and they wanted to get me something big for a graduation gift (even though I won't graduate for another month lol). I adore these earrings! Diamond also happens to be my birthstone, not to mention that I love them because they have the most beautiful glitter I have ever seen. My boyfriend tells me that I'm like a fish because I like shiny things haha.

Diamond earrings

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9:50AM MIT Campus - Walking to Lab
1 chocolate drizzle flavored Special K cereal bar. Heh I start off my birthday by being late to lab and eating breakfast on the run. How typical of me :P

12:00PM Biology Undergraduate Lounge - Lunch from Goosebeary's food truck
Chicken in green curry with basil, on white rice with side of mixed greens. I only ate some of this lunch, since it was a bit more spicy than I could handle, and for some reason I wasn't that hungry. But hey that's okay, that means more room for dinner :) Usually the green curry from Goosebeary's is really good. I find that green curry has a lighter taste than yellow or red curry, and it has a bite that feels refreshing. I especially like the chunks of eggplant in this dish, which are cooked until soft, and completely embodying the flavor of the green curry.

8:00PM Chef Chang's Chinese Restaurant in Brookline
Whole peking duck, served in 2 courses: first a course of the traditional skin and meat wrapped in pancakes with hoisin sauce, cucumbers, and scallions, followed by a soup course made from the leftover duck skeleton, with tofu, napa, and vermicelli added. Those of you that know me well know that I am a peking duck fanatic. I was so excited to be getting a whole peking duck for just me and my boyfriend to share, since that meant more peking duck-ness all around :D Here I am, happy as a fish, right before they served us the duck:

Me at Chef Chang's

The duck came out perfectly browned, and a chef went to work right in front of us and cut off pieces of the crispy duck skin that was practically falling off the duck. Then he cut off pieces of the duck meat from the breast and drumsticks, before taking the skeleton away for the soup. It's a feast for the eyes and the stomach! I unfortunately made the terrible mistake of not charging my camera batteries before going out, so I only snapped one picture of the duck before the camera died completely :/ But when I pull the pictures off of my boyfriend's cell phone camera, I will be sure to post them.

Peking duck at Chef Chang's

The soup that came out afterwards was also incredibly delicious. You could really taste the richness of the duck in the soup, and it didn't taste MSG-ish, which I liked. The soup was light but also went really well with our duck pancake rolls. Greg and I ordered the peking duck hoping that it would be enough for the both of us to eat for our whole dinner, but we ended up having tons of leftovers (guess we didn't realize just how much duckness is in a whole duck haha). The duck came with 10 pancake wraps, and between us we finished 6 of them. So we had 4 wraps plus tons of duck to take home, and the waitress was kind enough to pack up our soup too, of which we had 2 whole quarts left haha. It was a fantastic meal, yum! Chef Chang's supposedly has Boston's best peking duck, and though I don't have enough experience to confirm that, it sure was a good peking duck in my book. Not to mention everyone else at the restaurant was getting that dish. The only thing I would do differently is that next time I would order half a peking duck instead :)

11:45AM Dorm Room - Dessert from Japonaise
Before we went to Chef Chang's we stopped at a Japanese-French bakery called Japonaise right next door to grab some dessert and cake (the bakery closes at 8pm so we didn't want to miss it). I've heard tons of great things about this place, and when I walked in I instantly fell in love with all the beautiful desserts sitting behind the glass counter. Even the names were lovely: "African Queen, Mademoiselle, Chocolate Cointreau, etc". They have everything from special donuts (shaped like big teardrops), pre-made tea sandwiches with the crust cut off, melon pan, an pan, creme brulee, bread pudding, fruit tarts, Japanese cheesecakes, and much much more. Even though I was there at closing time, I was still impressed by the selection. The Japanese-French fusion was pretty well done, in my opinion. The only real downside? Well the prices are a bit extravagant. The cakes are priced at about $4-$5 per slice, and the buns were about $2 each. I would have loved to try a bunch of different desserts, but at $4 a pop, that's just a bit much. In the Chinese bakeries in Chinatown, such desserts would average between $1-$2 a piece. In which case you feel no guilt at all :P

As for what I got from there, I had heard raving reviews of the adzuki cream puffs and the green tea macha cake, so those were exactly what I picked from the display cake. I took one look at the adzuki cream puff and knew it would be absolutely divine hehe. It is a bun with a crispy croissant-like shell, dusted with powdered sugar, and filled with a layer of red bean paste and a layer of fresh cream. Hehe when I asked the cashier about the adzuki cream puff, he was trying to explain what red bean paste was (even though I am quite aware), and described it as tasting like chocolate. I wonder what the poor person who got it hoping it was chocolately ended up thinking haha. I am in love with this adzuki cream puff though, the combination of light fresh cream (Asian-style creams are almost not sweetened at all) with the sweetness of the red bean paste was just perfect, and the crispy croissant shell's texture and crunch really complimented the dreaminess of the filling. Aside from being a tiny bit messy to eat, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this dessert at all. I am craving one all over again just writing this :) And because I loved it so much, you get not one, but THREE pictures:

Adzuki cream puff top

Adzuki cream puff side

Adzuki cream puff interior

Next, the green tea macha cake. (I actually ate this on Tuesday the 24th, but I'm writing about it here for completeness). It looks innocent enough, cake with three shades of green. Two layers of green sponge cake, with green tea mousse between them, and topped with a thin layer of dark green gelatin dotted with bits of tea. The taste is unlike any Asian cake I have ever had before. My first bite seemed almost flavorless, until I chewed on it for a second and the subtle but definitely green-tea flavor of the cake became prominent, and it was a really refreshing taste. The green tea mouse is so light and airy it almost feels like whipped cream, and the sponge cake was very delicate, not too sweet at all. The gelatin on top gave the cake some texture contrast, which was nice too. I am so pleased with this cake, and incredibly happy that I chose it to try. What a wonderful new appreciation I have for green tea flavored foods!

Green tea macha cake

Mmm what a hidden jewel Japonaise is! I definitely recommend going there, and choosing a dessert or two to enjoy on the tables outside the cafe on a breezy spring afternoon. I am already craving more, and I'm so curious to try their other delights!

Japonaise

Thanks Greg for taking me out to get all this wonderful food on my birthday! :) It was all so yummy and I had a lot of fun!