40 posts tagged “italian”
I mentioned not long ago that I've been learning to enjoy tea, and it's been especially comforting in these past few winter months. I did however, often crave some sort of snack to go with the tea - something light and simple. I guess that's what tea cookies and biscotti are for! I went in search of a recipe that I would be able to make easily, without the need for almonds or almond extract (since I don't have either of those ingredients in my apartment at school), and without the use of an electric mixer. All I have for nuts are salted pistachios, which are generally not too forgiving in baked goods. I landed on a recipe for cranberry pistachio biscotti that allowed for salted pistachios, which everyone seemed to rave about, and even though I had no dried cranberries, I was determined to make a similar biscotti with what I had on hand (I did need to make several adjustments). Mmm I love the crispy crunchy bite of biscotti, but I especially like them dipped in coffee or tea. It's like dunking Oreos in milk, except the grown-up version :)
Pistachio Chocolate Chip Biscotti (makes 32 cookies) adapted from Allrecipes.com
Ingredients:
1/4 cup light olive oil (I used a combination of canola and regular olive oil)
3/4 cup white sugar
3 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup shelled salted pistachios (if using unsalted nuts, add 1/4 tsp salt to recipe)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Prepare a baking sheet covered with foil or parchment.
2. In a large bowl, stir together oil and sugar until blended. Mix in vanilla, then beat in eggs.
3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and cinnamon. Gradually add flour mixture to the egg mixture, stirring to incorporate. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. (I used whole pistachios without cutting them up, and it worked fine, but you can chop them up for a finer texture).
4. Divide the dough in half and form two logs about 12x2 inches each, laid out on the baking sheet several inches apart from one another (the dough will be very sticky). To handle the dough more easily, I suggest chilling it for 15-30 minutes, and wet hands with cold water when touching the dough.
5. Bake for 35 minutes, or until logs are light brown. They will spread a good deal in the oven. Move logs to a cutting board and as soon as you can, use a sharp non-serrated blade to cut the logs on the diagonal into 1/2 inch thick slices. (Reduce oven to 275 degrees F while you are cutting the logs).
6. Carefully move biscotti slices back onto baking sheet, laying them on their sides. Bake again for about 30 minutes, or until the biscotti feel firm to the touch - they will continue to firm up as they cool. Remove and cool completely on a rack. Store in an airtight container.
I didn't have the time to pursue it, but lots of people like to decorate their biscotti with melted chocolate: either by drizzling it over the biscotti or by dipping tips of the biscotti into melted chocolate. Either way, it sounds like a great snack! I refrained from adding chocolate on top because I already had chocolate chips in the biscotti, and I figured the chocolate would melt into my hot tea when I dunked the cookies in, and that would be odd. So they're not as pretty as they could be, but I loved the flavor! It was not at all too sweet, with a great cinnamon scent and a roasted nutty flavor from the pistachios. They were simply divine dipped in my pomegranate flavored black tea, what a treat! These cookies keep for a very long time too, which is great for me since I now have 32 and can enjoy them with my tea for a long time without having to make more :) Since they store so well, I'm sure they'd make a great gift as long as they were packed properly (the tips are brittle so if you don't pack them correctly they might break off during shipping). I only wish I had a beautiful clear jar to store my biscotti in, just like I see them at coffee shops. But alas, they'll be sitting in my tupperware until I can afford the luxuries of a real kitchen.
When I was at Trader Joe's last week, I picked up a bottle of balsamic vinegar (my first!) to try cooking with. Of course, in the moment of choosing, I made the mistake of being cheap (I'm a student after all...), and ended up with a 16 oz. bottle of balsamic vinegar for $1.99. It certainly looked better to my wallet than the half as big bottle that cost 3 times as much. When I got home of course, I did a little research and realized that the longer balsamic vinegar is aged, the better it is, and the more expensive it is. The one I bought was aged about just 1 year or so, and was very thin, just like regular vinegar. But I think on the bright side, cooking with a less quality balsamic vinegar means that I can be more careless with it, experimenting and learning without worrying about my money going down the drain. One of these days, when I become a better cook, I promise I will invest in a higher quality bottle of aged balsamic vinegar :)
Tonight's dinner was up in the air when I remembered I had a couple of frozen vacuum-sealed salmon fillets in the freezer that I had been meaning to make. I usually go with a trusty teriyaki salmon, but today was the day to take my balsamic for a test drive! I saw a recipe on Allrecipes.com that looked great and that I had most of the ingredients for. I made a few substitutions and additions, and it came out great! I overcooked my salmon a little bit, but that's my fault. The glaze for the fish was tart with a hint of sweetness (very different from teriyaki), and very healthy too - no fat and almost no salt! I served my salmon with white rice topped with Japanese rice seasoning (as you can probably tell, I don't go very far from my rice haha).
Balsamic Glazed Salmon Fillets (for 1 fillet) adapted from Allrecipes.com
Ingredients:
1 salmon fillet, thawed (5 oz.)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp rice wine
1 tsp honey
1.5 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp mustard (yellow or Dijon)
onion powder
garlic powder
salt & pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a small pan with foil. Place salmon fillet in center of pan.
2. Stir together ingredients above, adding in a few generous dashes of onion and garlic powder, and just a little bit of salt and pepper. Spoon over salmon fillet.
3. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until just starting to flake when forked. The sauce will have bubbled and reduced to a thicker glaze.
4. Remove salmon to serving plate, and spoon remaining glaze from the pan onto the salmon.
I love being able to have dinner ready without any hassle and without having to dirty up dishes and pans for the prep and cooking. I think this salmon would be a great with a refreshing salad (the balsamic glaze makes for a great salad dressing flavor!). Enjoy!
I mentioned that the seafood risotto I had at McCormick and Schmick's was my first taste of risotto. Well it was on the salty side, but I thought the texture was quite nice and I loved the creaminess. So I looked up how to make risotto, because I was always under the impression that it was hard to make, but it's actually not bad at all - it just requires a bit of your full attention for half an hour or so. That's encouraging! So tonight when I came home from work and needed a good idea for dinner, I decided it was finally time to pull up my sleeves and give risotto my best shot. I had those crab cakes in the freezer from my Christmas present food basket, so that seemed to be the perfect pairing with a nice risotto.
There are so many possibilities with risotto, but I actually didn't have any ingredients for making it exotic or even for making one of the more popular risottos involving mushrooms or lemon. Well, like any good student, I accepted the fact that my empty kitchen cupboards were a sign that I should probably start from the most basic risotto recipe and work my way up. For your most basic risotto, all you need is rice (Arborio is the preferred rice, but any short grained rice will also do), onions, broth, and optionally a bit of cheese and butter. Luckily I had gotten some chicken broth from Trader Joe's last week (they have these really cool condensed chicken broth packets that you can dilute in water to achieve regular chicken broth - 12 cups worth of chicken broth takes up about the size of a salt shaker in my cupboard!). Perfect timing! I'll try and describe the cooking process in the recipe
Basic Risotto (serves 2-3)
Ingredients:
1 cup short grain white rice, raw
2 cups chicken broth, plus water as needed
1 medium onion
garlic powder
olive oil
optional:
powdered Romano cheese
salted butter
Directions:
Okay, so I did quite a bit of improvising making this risotto, because I didn't copy down a recipe (I just read the page I linked to above). So I'll just walk you through what I did and you can feel free to adjust as necessary.
I first brought a few cups of water to a simmer on the stove (my condensed chicken broth paste requires hot water to dissolve - if you are using canned or homemade broth, just heat it up to almost boiling and keep it hot).
Next I diced up half of my onion and threw it into a skillet with olive oil on medium-high. I sauteed the onions until they turned soft and brown... I actually thought I had burned them! I decided to set the browned onions aside and start over. I diced the second half of the onion, into finer pieces this time, and cooked them again on medium high except I took them out of the pan when they were still yellow and beginning to turn translucent but were not browned at all.
Once the onions were out of the pan, I added about 2 tbsp of olive oil to the pan, heated it up on medium-high, and then put in my cup of raw rice. I stirred it so that all the kernels were covered with oil. All the recipes I've seen tell you cook the rice in the oil until the kernels turn translucent, but I noticed that mine were translucent right after I coated them in oil (probably due to using regular short grain rice). So I pushed the kernels around until some of them started to turn an opaque white color, which I assume is the point where the rice is starting to toast.
Now, it was time to add the chicken broth. I ended up diluting 2 cup's equivalent of condensed chicken broth into 4 cups of water. I added 1/4 cup of broth to the rice in the pan, and stirred it in as it sizzled and sputtered. The rice absorbed the water very quickly, so I added another 1/4 cup of broth and stirred it some more. You simply repeat this step, each time stirring the rice until the broth has been mostly absorbed but not completely dried, before you add more broth. After 10 minutes, I added the cooked onions back into the rice, sprinkled on some salt and garlic powder to my discretion, and continued to cook it with broth, tasting a few kernels as I went along to check for doneness. You can make the risotto as soft or as chewy or crunchy as you'd like, but I prefer mine to be al-dente, soft on the outside with a bit of chew on the inside. When you've just about reached this stage (it took me about 20 minutes), stir in a final little bit of broth, then add your grated cheese and a pat of butter, stirring it all together so the cheese and butter melt. Let the broth cook down until the risotto is nice and creamy but not watery or dry, and serve immediately.
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After plating my risotto with my baked crab cake and some Shanghai bok choy (I needed some greens and it was all I had in the fridge - sorry it doesn't match the dish well), I tasted some of my browned/burnt onion bits from earlier and discovered that it was actually like caramelized onions, with a nice bit of sweet smokiness to it. So I sprinkled those onion bits on top of the risotto for a garnish, and my boyfriend actually thought it was really really good that way.
So how did it turn out? Well, having not had other risottos to really compare to, I thought this simple and basic risotto tasted wonderful! It was creamy and soft with a bit of chew, and the chicken flavor really came through. I'm glad I used Trader Joe's broth, it's a good quality chicken broth with a lot of flavor minus the sodium. I also liked the creaminess that the Romano cheese and a little bit of butter provided, and the second batch of onions that I put into the rice came out nice and soft, melting into the risotto. Honestly, I was very very pleased with how it turned out, and I just couldn't get enough of it! (Don't save any for leftovers - it just dries up) I'm excited to try it again in the near future with other fun ingredients too. Risotto is really jazzed up rice, and I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with just plain rice ever again haha. The risotto went really well with the crab cakes too, which were very savory and a bit on the salty side, thus complementing the mild nature of the risotto. Yum, as I'm typing this I'm craving more!
A few weekends ago I had to go into work on the weekend (which is one of the things that I dread most), so I dragged my boyfriend along to grab lunch afterwards. Hehe the 30 minute walk to work in the cold weather is a bit more bearable when there's someone with you, and a hot lunch afterwards is great incentive for both parties :) Unfortunately when we were leaving my workplace and making the 10 minute walk to the Indian restaurant for lunch, the weather reared its ugly head. It was cloudy as I left my work, and then a minute later it began to rain, just a few droplets at first, then a little more, with the wind picking up dramatically. I was getting blown over, when next thing I knew, there was a gust of small snowflakes, which then turned back into rain. But no, the sky couldn't make up its mind, and in the next minute, the rain became a wall of little tiny ice pellets, flying sideways with the strong wind. Within literally a few minutes, I could no longer see ahead of me... the icy rain was coming down so hard and dense that it was completely white-out conditions. I was caught right in the midst of it all, and the icy rain came pelting down so hard that my face felt like it was being battered with needles, and I had to take cover next to a building before running the rest of the way to the restaurant yelling "ow ow ow!" the whole way there. Crazy weather I tell you! Of course, minutes after I was seated, the icy rain turned to a falling blanket of giant snowflakes, and another few minutes after that, bright sun. What a storm!
Anyway, we were getting lunch buffet at the Indian restaurant, which is called Royal Bengal. They serve mostly Northern Indian and Bengali cuisine, even though I don't really know what that really means hehe. Indian buffet is always a good time, because well first it's all you can eat, and that's always exciting for students living on a budget, but also because I don't eat Indian food often and it's fun to have something different every once in a while. The prices uses to be great, with the lunch buffet costing about $6 on weekdays and $7 on weekends (more meat dishes), and over the years it has risen gradually, to the point where weekend lunch is now $9.50 per person, which is at the threshold where I would not be willing to pay for it if it went any higher. Luckily MIT and Harvard students get a 10% discount, but honestly that's like less than $1 off, so it's not that much of a difference. So that particular weekend they were serving goat curry, fish tikka masala, and fish curry as their specials. The usual fare includes chicken tandoori, aloo gohbi (cauliflower and potatoes cooked with tomatoes, onions, herbs and spices), vegetables curry, daal (a creamy lentils dish), samosas, vegetable pakoras (battered and fried pieces of cauliflower usually), and some fresh vegetable salad with chutney and pita bread available on the side. Yum, here's my first platter of goodies. I try to get a little of everything, but I have to admit I'm not very good with spicy food, so I try to stick with less spicy stuff or else I'd be drinking water like crazy. I usually get a generous portion of the lentils, and some masala item, as they are mild and help give a little buffer to the spicy curries :)
Other things I've had lately include a good deal of homecooked meals. On the day that I got back from my latest NYC visit, my boyfriend had prepared dinner for us, which I thought was a really nice gesture especially after my long bus ride back. He pan fried together some onions and a bunch of garlic marinated pork chop medallions, which were thin and juicy with a slightly crispy layer of thin cornstarch. We ate them with rice and a side of garlic stir fried broccoli, and it was a great satisfying meal to come home to after a long day traveling. It's really nice to have someone there who can pick up the cooking when you just don't have the time for it (I had been thinking of getting fast food for dinner when he called me on the phone to let me know he was making dinner - good timing!).
There's so much personality in each dish, so much room for variation, that I honestly believe no two dishes I ever make come out the same. Which is fun for me, but I guess difficult for many Westerners to manage, since so often Western cooking is governed by recipes (even when they don't really need to be). That said, I believe cooking is a very intimate thing, and one that you can really only improve on with experience and a flair for experimenting. Whenever I ask my mom how to cook the dishes she likes to make at home, she can never spit out a recipe for me. Never. She'll just insist that I come and watch her cook, and she'll be able to rattle off the general steps, just never the amounts of the ingredients used. And now that I've done a bit of cooking myself, I know just how true that is. When you're just adding and adding an ingredient until you get that satisfactory taste, you definitely lose track of how much is going into the dish. Anyway... heh tangent.
So that night I made a simple cabbage and bacon dish, which is one of my go-to dishes for fast and fool-proof cooking. First off, cabbage must be the world's easiest vegetable to cut. All I do is rinse it, peel off the outer layer, cut the head in half. Then I cut out the stem and proceed to cut the half-head horizontally and vertically in just a few fell swoops before the entire thing is cut into a bunch of small rectangles, since the head holds together so well. So fast! Then I sizzle up some bacon until it's a little bit crispy, and I set that aside. I leave the oil from the bacon in the pan to cook the cabbage with, until the leaves are nice and soft and a bright light green color (the parts closer to the stem will stay a light yellow color). A dash of salt goes in, and then I throw the bacon pieces back into the pan for a quick twirl and it's ready to serve. I personally think cabbage is just as tasty without the bacon, but my boyfriend really likes it with bacon, so I throw some in to humor him. Cabbage just has a great mild but slightly sweet flavor that makes for a nice refreshing vegetable side for most dishes I think.
You know... it boggles my mind, but how DO people come up with names for their dishes? Like the one I improvised above, I wouldn't know the first thing to call it other than just describing what it is. Who came up with the names like scallopini and casserole? Pad thai? General Gau's? I'm going to call this... hoisin chicken... even though the translation into Chinese makes it mean seafood chicken lol. What, I'm not good at making up names! :P
For Chinese New Year, which I apologize for not having had any interesting entries about despite being Chinese and enjoying its cuisine (I just don't have the ingredients to make those special new year's dishes), I spent the day eating something pretty normal. Greg had the chance to grab a big family dinner in Chinatown though, and brought back some leftovers for me which included a beef clay pot dish, some taro fried duck, beef with tofu, and Cantonese style chicken. He also brought back some dessert that one of his relatives picked up at an Italian bakery... some mini cannolis! Mmm I love cannoli... it has the most interesting texture combination - crunchy outer shell with a creamy but gritty ricotta-like filling. The big cannolis can be a big daunting to handle in one sitting, but the mini ones are great for a bite-sized dessert :)
It's been a busy week, with school starting and coordinating Vday plans, but surprisingly I found time to cook and bake several times, so there will be updates forthcoming as soon as I get off my lazy bum to write them heh. On Valentine's Day, I was pretty excited to get my very own big heart shaped frosted cookie :D Apparently there was a lunch meeting and this cookie was the only one left over, which my boyfriend nabbed and presented to me at lunch. Yum! It was chocolate shortbread with royal icing on top, rich and buttery. We shared the cookie, but I refused to break it down the middle on principle, so we just ate from both sides until we got to the middle lol. I've always thought Valentine's Day cookies are so pretty, and even though it was a left over item from an event, it still made me giddy :)
For dinner, my boyfriend and I got off work early without any concrete plans, and after discussing it briefly we decided to relax and order in for Italian food and watch a movie together. We got our dinner from Stefani's Pizzeria, which consisted of tortellini alfredo for my boyfriend (we ordered fettucini alfredo, but apparently they misheard us), and linguini carbonara for me. We also got a nice complementary Caesar salad, soft garlic bread, and some flatbread to go with the salad. I really liked my linguini carbonara, it wasn't made with a cream sauce like most carbonaras are, instead it was made with a white wine sauce, with olive oil, shallots, mushrooms, and prosciutto. I really liked the flavor of the white wine in the sauce, it was a strong but refreshing taste that went quite nicely with the rest of the ingredients.
Then for dessert we shared a decadent molten chocolate cake together, which I whipped together in no time at all (recipe to follow, with less blurry pictures). It was a delicious way to end the day and I liked being able to add a homemade touch to our meal.
On Friday night, we had made reservations to eat dinner at McCormick & Schmick's, which is a chain seafood restaurant similar to Legal Seafood. There was a coupon for $20 off any entree, so we thought it would be nice to get dinner at a pricey restaurant without breaking the bank. The atmosphere was a bit stuffy for me, and not very romantic, with the place catering mostly to the older folk (something like a men's club). We had a pretty crazy meal that night... first we were seated in a center table, surrounded by cozy wrap-around booths, which made us feel like we had gotten brushed aside in the seating department. Next our table tilted heavily to one side if we both leaned on it (poor weight balance on the legs?), and our table candle was not lit. We ordered our food and started off with soup, clam chowder for me and Maryland crab soup for my boyfriend. (Sorry for the black & white photo... I accidentally had my flash on, after setting the white balance, so the whole thing came out with a terrible tint of blue that I couldn't fix in photoshop... so I just discarded all color information altogether haha). The thing with this restaurant is that they are very heavy with the salt in everything. The chowder itself was not bad, but a bit too salty (I definitely prefer Legal's chowder) and not as creamy as I expected it to be.
Before I forget, happy belated Chinese New Year to all! I didn't get to do anything special to celebrate, and I didn't have any of the necessary ingredients to make classic Chinese New Year desserts (I only had a navel orange in the fridge... that counts right? haha), so unfortunately, as much as this blog is related to Chinese food most of the time, I don't have anything to post about CNY. I'll try to make up for that with a post about my visit to NYC on Superbowl Sunday :)
So last Sunday I woke up bright and early at about 5am to pack and drag myself to the Boston bus terminal to ride the Greyhound bus down to NYC. I have to say, 4.5 hours is a long time to be cramped in a chair, with the sun shining in your eyes the entire time. Still, I got to the Big Apple just before noon, and met up with my hung over friend Zheng to grab brunch near his apartment haha. I've been on a brunch roll lately, it's almost like I've uncovered a whole new cuisine altogether (I guess there were benefits to never eating breakfast!). At this place, whose name I can't remember but I know it's located on 9th Ave, I saw that eggs benedict was $9 (hah, no way I'd pay that price now!). What sparked my interest however was the large assortment of omelettes that the cafe served, and with a choice of whole eggs or egg whites.
Feeling like I should eat healthy, I settled on an egg white Irish omelette, which had corned beef, onions, and peppers in it, topped with swiss cheese. It was served with a side of smashed and seasoned potato chunks and whole wheat toast. I have to say, it being the first time I've ever had egg white omelettes, it was really tasty! In fact, I would definitely choose it over whole egg omelettes simply for the health benefits, because I honestly thought it was just as good as the real thing. I think the swiss cheese helped give it a lot of savory flavor that perhaps the plain egg whites would have been lacking. The corned beef was also really tasty with the egg whites, something a little different from the usual ham or sausage meat additions. The potato side was not very interesting though, but I suppose it was nice to rotate amongst the different foods on the plate. And as you'd expect things to be in NYC, the price tag was steeper than I would see in Boston. This brunch platter cost me about $9 before tax and tip, and I only got water to drink on the side.
Moving on... the Superbowl itself was a pretty intense game to watch, and it was a lot of fun with a room nearly split 50/50 Pats fans and Giants fans. Zheng's friends had an enormous apartment (they had an entire floor of a building to themselves... with 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, and a giant living room with kitchen. In fact, and this was exciting to me haha, the elevator of the building opens right up into their living room when you hit their floor button. How cool is that?!? Okay... sorry haha I clearly am easily excitable. We had the usual pizza and wings and chips and beer at the party, and then we stuck around for a while after the game since there were riots going on in Times Square (near where Zheng lives). We walked through some of that on the way back, and Zheng, a Giants fan, high fived a lot of random people in the streets haha. I saw policemen sitting on horses, trying to keep the order, but everyone was screaming and shouting and cars were honking (I almost got run over crossing the street). It was pretty crazy and a little scary too I have to admit, although I guess we've had our fair share of riots up in Boston for the Red Sox too heh.
We started off the meal with two appetizers, which the waiter told us were tapas-style and great for sharing. We got the warm calamari with potato salad, and a plate of prosciutto crostini with sheep's milk ricotta and balsamic syrup. (Sorry for the pictures with flash, it was just too dim in the restaurant).
The calamari (right) was not fried as I had expected, instead it was naked and tender, probably braised. It came with little jalapeño pepper slices and grape tomato halves that were so sweet and juicy, in a savory vinaigrette sauce, on top of a small bed of skinned and cubed potatoes. I'm not a fan of spicy, so I let Zheng eat all the peppers, and he's not a fan of seafood, so he let me have most of the calamari (oops! I forgot he hates seafood and he didn't tell me not to order it when I suggested it). But in any case, the squid was just so tender, with that warm and perfectly soft chew that fresh and lightly cooked squid has.
On the left is the prosciutto crostini with sheep's milk ricotta and balsamic syrup. It was soooo good. The prosciutto was fresh and lean, sliced very thinly so that it pretty much melted in my mouth. The flavor was wonderful too, not too salty, not too bland. It paired perfectly with the creamy sheep's milk ricotta, which was much milder than I thought it would be, but I thought that was nice, because it would have competed too much with the prosciutto otherwise. And then, with the sweetness from the balsamic syrup on top of a crunchy slice of French bread, I was in heaven with each bite. I really liked the ricotta, it was nothing like cow's milk ricotta with its gritty texture. This cheese was so smooth and creamy I could have sworn it was a different cheese altogether. What a perfect pairing of fine flavors and textures!
Next came the entrees. Zheng ordered something that was pretty much like spaghetti with marinara sauce (it's not on the online menu right now), which wasn't interesting enough for me to waste a flash photograph on :P I ordered the crab ravioli, which came in a lobster cream sauce with fennel and parmesan.
So then on our way back to Zheng's apartment, I stopped by a busy little bakery called Amy's Bread, which had some tasty looking cakes on display, as well as a lot of sandwiches and breads. Apparently everyone else waiting in line was getting some of their fresh handmade bread to take home, too bad I'm not a big fan of bread. What caught my eye from the street were their red velvet cupcakes, complete with lots of whipped cream cheese frosting on top. It was no Magnolia, but it looked just right for dessert (although $2.50 for a cupcake is steep!).
So those were some of my food exploits on this trip, yummy and pricey as always! Until next time, NYC!
When your significant other makes you an entire meal for dinner without you knowing ahead of time, the food tastes a lot like love. I was having a terribly busy night, trying to finish and submit a homework assignment that I had been working on for 9 hours straight during that day (not including the countless hours I worked on it on previous days). I was ecstatic to come home to my boyfriend having made pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce for dinner. Sure, he was unhappy that I came home so late (he cooked everything an hour before I was ready to come home, so it had gotten cold), and sure the meatballs had been bought pre-made, but the thought of him rolling up his sleeves to boil the pasta and make up the sauce was touching. It also brought a smile to my face, thinking about him enthusiastically making the pasta sauce. Getting a man to enjoy the thought of cooking can be so tough sometimes! :)
According to him, the sauce was made using a jarred pasta sauce from Classico (tomato and basil flavor), to which he added fresh garlic, onions, and seasonings. He also sauteed the meatballs before letting them simmer with the sauce, and the flavor was wonderful because you could really taste the meatiness in the sauce. I always get kind of disappointed when sauces are made separately from the meat, and combined at the end. By cooking the meat with the sauce, the flavor of the ground beef really came out and heightened the taste of the tomato sauce. Just wonderful, over the perfectly al dente ziti.
In my ever-continuing quest to mimic Cafe Mami's pork cutlet curry in the comfort of my own home, I had the idea to make mock pork cutlet by taking pork tenderloin and baking it in Shake n' Bake to get a crunchy coating. I also had some Vermont House brand Japanese curry roux cubes, so my boyfriend and I whipped up this dish for dinner. We only had onions in the curry sauce, but we kept it separate from the meat unlike last time when I made it. The taste was actually quite good, though we could have used more sauce and less onions. The only thing was that the flavor of the Shake n' Bake crumb coat on the pork competed with the curry flavor (unlike the milder flavor of simple fried pork cutlet), and the tenderloin was very lean, which was a bit different in texture from the restaurant cutlet (read: fatty). But hey I'm getting closer to the real thing, and this is probably about as healthy as the dish is going to get heh.
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Now, for some eating out experiences...
This past weekend I went with my lab and the other labs in my research institute for a scientific retreat in New Hampshire. It was cold and rained quite a bit, but I had a lot of fun getting to know my lab members better, listening to presentations of the research being done, doing fun activities like mountain biking, and of course taking advantage of the free food :)
Sorry that I didn't get to update much this summer! Thanks for the support, I'm back and hope to catch up on some of the things from the summer. I'm currently applying for medical school while doing a masters program, so things will be super hectic this year, but I'll try my best to stay on top of my Vox :)
Anyway, to get started, here are some of the meals I made over the summer:
Sometime last year my boyfriend and I discovered the joys of making dinner with those skillet meal-in-a-box type things like Tuna Helper. We particularly like the tuna helper because it only requires canned tuna, whereas we never have any ground beef sitting around for the hamburger helpers. The tuna helpers come with dried pasta in the box, along with a packet of flavor powder, which usually reminds me of the smell of sour cream and onion chips. Sometimes there are little bits of dehydrated broccoli in the powder. When we cook the tuna helpers, we like to add to it by cutting in fresh veggies that we have on hand and adding extra pasta and tuna to make the food last a few meals. In the photo above we added red peppers, broccoli, and onions as vegetables. I actually enjoy the flavor of the meal even though we've added so much stuff that the original flavor of the flavor powder is diluted, I guess the intended flavor must be stronger than I would like. Lately we've experimented by adding some canned salmon in place of the canned tuna, and though it sounds good, I actually prefer the tuna, which has a much stronger flavor than the salmon.
I signed up for a free promotion from Larabars (a brand of organic energy/snack bars made with natural raw ingredients) where they sent me 4 different full-sized Larabars as a sampler. The Larabars are mostly made of dates and nuts. They're moist, filling, and surprisingly delicious! I encourage you to try out a Larabar next time you are at the market. They have tons of different flavors. Larabars also makes a different bar called Jocolat, which uses organic cocoa powder to make a chocolate-flavored bar that still uses dates and nuts to provide the body. I really like the Jocolat bars, which you can see above looks pretty yummy. The cocoa flavor was nice, but it isn't for you if you are craving creamy sugary chocolate. The chocolate is all in the flavoring, it's somewhat subtle but I think it's nice for mature palettes. Plus, it doesn't get sickeningly sweet after a while, which I thought was good since I was eating it for breakfast. Yum.
(6/06) Lunch cruise in Boston harbor! Our class rented out half of the well known Spirit of Boston cruise ship for a lunch cruise in Boston Harbor today. It was to be casual dress, and parents were invited to come along with the seniors if they so choose. I was excited to finally be on that cruise ship again during the daytime, so I could actually SEE the harbor (the last time I was on this same cruise ship for a nighttime cruise on Halloween, called Boo's Cruise). This lunch cruise was to last 2 hours, and would be serving a buffet style lunch with various entrees, as well as dessert afterwards.
Being the food lovers that we are, Greg and I made a beeline for one of the tables closest to the buffet area to be seated as we entered the ship (I'm not even kidding, we passed up tables next to the windows with great views just to sit near the food in the center of the room). Hahaha. The big shiny lids of the food trays were tempting us with their secrets beneath, we could barely wait to see what was inside.
(6/07) It's the day before graduation, but I wasn't interested in going on the senior week events for today, which were Boston's famous duck tours (really just a tourist gimmick) and a Boston Pops concert. Well, I would have loved to see the Pops concert, but the tickets were extravagant despite being a class event. So I spent the day relaxing, mentally preparing for the long graduation day ahead and just enjoying my last day as a carefree undergraduate.
For dinner I went out with Greg to one of our favorite cheap eats place, Pho Pasteur in Harvard Square. It's a semi-trendy Vietnamese restaurant that caters to the American crowd while maintaining the authentic flavor of good Vietnamese food. Recently Pho Pasteur changed its name to Le's, which I find to be an annoying and unattractive name for a place that I am so fond of. So don't be alarmed that I continue to refer to it by its former name. Pho Pasteur is a quick bus ride down the street from MIT, and is located in the heart of Harvard Square in a cluster of stores called the Garage. The food is amazingly cheap for the quality and quantity, as long as you enjoy Vietnamese cuisine. A bowl of pho that is enough for me to eat costs only $5.25. Last time I went with Zheng I showed you the pho and summer rolls that I got. This time I decided to get something different for the sake of variety. Greg and I started off with an appetizer of Vietnamese spring rolls, which have a ground pork mixture inside, served with a side of fish sauce. These are delectable to start with, because they are fresh and crispy, and their small size (similar to a cigar) makes them easy to eat. Unfortunately the waitress misheard our order and brought us both the spring rolls as well as an order of summer rolls. Oops. At least they were both appetizers we liked haha.
For entrees, Greg got a big face bowl of pho (the bowl being bigger than his whole head), and I got a traditional Vietnamese rice dish whose name is "Com Suon, Bi, Cha" (I'm sure that is just a description of the dish rather than a real name). It is a plate with steamed white rice, a honey-grilled pork chop, julienned pork skin, and tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce. The plate comes with a side of fish sauce as well, which goes really well with everything on the plate. I know julienned pork skin sounds pretty weird, but it's a Vietnamese thing and it's really good. It's not strips of fat, it's the actual skin, which has a lot of collagen, so it's a little bit like eating small strips of tendon dusted with some sort of powdery seasoning. The pork chops are delicious too. They are thin and juicy, with lots of sweetness from the honey. I generally dislike American steak-house style pork chops, but these are so fantastic I pick up the bone and try to get off all the meat at the end haha. This dish usually also comes with a steamed ground pork, egg, and vermicelli meatloaf square, but sometimes it doesn't get served, and no explanation is given. Why???
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