Forget love, I'd rather fall in chocolate...

Nuevo Blog!

2007-07-14T14:11:00.000-05:00

Hi peeps! As you may notice, there has been some formatting problems on my page. I tried to re-format the template for a new look in light of this blog's 1st birthday but it has been tricky in terms of the timing and actually doing the work. I've been spending some time in Indonesia hanging out with family and (of course) enjoying great food. Somehow, this homecoming has been very different from others. Not only did I finally understand that the full enjoyment of food requires all five senses, it also needs great companionship. No matter how delicious the food in front of you is, you won't enjoy it if the dining partner is your sworn enemy! :)

Anyhoo, besides a makeover in food/companionship philosophy, I also got a makeover of sorts: contact lenses, makeup (finally!) and a sharp new haircut (at least I think it's sharp, haha), which got me to thinking about a whole new blog with a whole new philosophy. So, The Foodiva, my new blog, is a reflection of this nuevo philosophy I aim to live by.

I find that I've been too solitary especially in the past few years. I enjoy a lot of solitude in Chicago because I'm so far away from my family and most of my friends who are either in Indonesia or Singapore. I like the freedom and independence of the US, but at the same time, I yearn for what I had earlier in my life (gosh, do I sound ancient or what?). Despite the craziness of it all, I want to lead a life similar to what it was like when I was a kid still living in Indonesia: endlessly surrounded by loved ones and (almost) daily gatherings around the dining table.

So, what I'm trying to say is that I'd like to adopt a more "social" and community-centric lifestyle (if you will). So feel free to visit any time and drop me a line at my new pad, The Foodiva.

I Like Killing Flies

2007-07-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

Being a self-professed food enthusiast (or foodie, if you will), I like to not only cook, bake and eat but also read, write, chat and think about food. An obsession? That's an understatement in my family. There was a short article in Gourmet magazine a few months ago about what they think are the best food-related movies and "I Like Killing Flies" is one of them.

"I Like Killing Flies" is an independent documentary about the unique, family-operated Greenwich Village restaurant, Shopsin's. Specifically, the film follows the eccentric patriarch and cook, Kenny, who is more interesting than many fictional characters. Profanity-laced and surprisingly peppered with many intelligent analogies and thoughts, this documentary was a lot of fun to watch. Kenny is as likely to serve someone one of his butter-laden, delicious creations as to throw customers out of his eatery for unconsciously breaking his rules.

Kenny's rants on his various philosophies in life are gut-bustingly funny and thoughtful at the same time. Having been used to customers leaving empty plates, he would taste the food on an unfinished plate just in case there's something wrong with his cooking. Weird in many ways, no? The extensive and interesting menu at Kenny's diner is sure to please any taste bud, ranging from mac'n'cheese pancake (yes, you read that right!) to "Blisters in my sisters" (some sort of corn tortilla, egg, veggies and meat concoction). The beautiful shots of the food that Shopsin churns out has made it a definite destination the next time I visit NYC (which isn't that far into the future, actually). Personally, I would like to try the mac'n'cheese pancake out of pure curiosity *haha*

Unfortunately, due to some complications (the nature of which I'm not 100% clear about), Shopsin's had to close down for a few months. Fortunately though, it's scheduled to be reopened by the time I visit the great city *yay* Unlike standard documentaries that aim to "teach" the audience something, this movie was pure enjoyment (okay, okay, I learned not to bring a party of five to Shopsin's!). If you like food and are up for some laughs, this is definitely something you have to watch!

Fire up your grills!

2007-06-17T13:57:00.000-05:00

It's summer and the smell of grilled food is everywhere. Being a urbanite without a nice balcony, I've been deprived of home-grilled foods for some time now. The last time I grilled was when J and I were in Wisconsin and we happened to have brought our grill along. We grilled our meats at a park near New Glarus and I must say that nothing tastes better than a freshly-grilled meat! Determined to end our drought of grilling fun, I've told J to clean his baby grill and we're going grilling! The main foods we grilled were burgers, sweet corn and pineapples. Very simple, I know, but this was our first time in some years, so we're starting slow.

We decided to bring the grill and the food just right across our apartment, to Jackson Park. The park isn't that large but is very nice and green. It is surrounded by busy streets but the lush trees and a nice playground manage to shield away the traffic hustle and bustle for the most part. The trees and vegetation used to be more lush before a huge thunderstorm destroyed (yes, literally) some of the trees. Most still remain but it would be nice if there were more greens, no?

We managed to get everything we needed down there in 1.5 trips (only I came back the second time) thanks to my organization *winkz* It took no time to light the charcoal and we started grilling our burgers. While our meat was grilling, we started to feel some water droplets. To our horror, it starting drizzling a bit and we happened to be situated on a patch of the park that had no tree cover at all. Unwilling to back down to mere slight precipitation, we moved our grill and other accoutrements beneath a large tree (not the smartest thing to do considering the increasing risk of being struck by a lightning under a tree, but hey! It's not a heavy thunderstorm!). Fortunately, the rain died down about 5 minutes later, resurrecting our first cookout of the year! Yippee!

I used a recipe I found on Allrecipes for the burger. It basicaly contains ground beef, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, egg, salt and pepper. I decided to make it sans bacon because we were going to have two burgers each so wrapping them with bacon wouldn't be so good for our arteries. The recipe yielded pretty tasty burgers: well-seasoned and tender. The only problem we encountered was that they didn't hold together so well. Some little chunks of meat got stuck on the grill grate and fell into the coal, but luckily for us, most of it was intact for us to devour.

It took a bit of effort to cook the burger thoroughly enough (we do not, after all, want to get Salmonella or E. coli!) but they turned out nicely-charred outside while still juicy and tender overall. Other burger accessories included the bunz (of course), lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced onions and ketchup.

Now, isn't that a beautiful burger or isn't that a bee-yoo-tiful burger? And delicious to boot too!

And check out this perfectly-browned corn! Tasting the charred corn topped with some butter and salt really brought me back to the weekends that I spent with my extended family in the mountains right outside of Jakarta. On Sunday, our parents would bring us to this villa complex that has a man-made lake (or a large pond, really) and a huge playground with a pool of plastic balls. There would be a stand that sells freshly-grilled corn that they also bathe in butter. My favorite part of the grilled corn was (and still is) the slightly charred, browned part for maximum smoky flavor!

For dessert, I wanted to try grilled pineapples. I was inspired by a recipe I saw while watching the Food Network. If I'm not wrong, it was Paula Deen who grilled the sliced pineapples and served it with some ice cream.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any ice cream or a nice, cool treat with us that would've been nice with the warm, sweet pineapple. Grilling the pineapples made it softer and even more juicy. The taste of warm fruit is a bit odd to me because I usually always have fruits either cool or at room temperature. The warm, grilled pineapple was interesting but I wouldn't have it stand-alone for dessert again. It would go better on a shish kebab or served with ice cream (or chilled by itself).

So that was the highlight of my weekend (in addition to just cleaning up around the house). Our bbq excursion took a bit of organization but it was tons of fun and delicious food. I plan on having more bbq sessions this summer and we're going to try to have it by Lake Michigan, which is only 5 blocks away and is way prettier than Jackson Park. So join me outside and fire up your grills!

Roasted garlic = A Taste of Perfection

2007-06-13T07:41:00.000-05:00

At Bistro 110, a chic French-American eatery in downtown Chicago, roasted garlic is served alongside fresh, warm bread and butter even before the waiter takes your drink order. It was the very first place I encountered roasted garlic. It was delicious! Roasting the garlic totally took away the heat factor but left a more sedate and tasty garlicky flavor. Warm, fresh, buttered bread is the perfect canvas for such a distinctive taste. It is obviously very popular at Bistro 110 because they have been printing the recipe for roasted garlic on a 4-by-6 card that they give out to every customer. Even though it's very simple, I don't know why I never got around to it sooner!

My interest in it is finally rekindled because: (1) I have some garlic lying around, and (2) I happened to see a recipe for roasted garlic in some paper that I was reading. So, here's how you go around making this heavenly treat! All you need are some foil, good quality (extra virgin, preferably) olive oil and garlic.

Preheat the oven to 400 deg. F. Meanwhile, chop of the top part of the garlic to reveal the cloves.

Tear of a length of aluminium foil enough to loosely warp the garlic. Place the garlic on the aluminium foil and drizzle the cloves with some olive oil, before loosely wrapping the garlic with the foil.

Put in pre-heated oven and let roast for 50 minutes to an hour. During this time, your house will smell like the kitchen of an Italian grandmother and attract hungry people like bees to honey! And voila, behold the sheer perfection!

I didn't have good bread around the house (only a pathetic loaf of generic brand rye bread). Fortunately, there's an Italian eatery in my apartment building where I immediately trudged my way to for a loaf of good Italian bread. I toasted a few slices to serve alongside the roasted garlic as an appetizer.

Now this is what a taste of perfection looks like. It's so simple that anyone should try it at least once. I can totally assure that you WILL be hooked because I am!

Happiness is ...

2007-06-10T15:21:00.001-05:00

... a tall glass of milk with chocolate chip cookies.

I found my digicam cable! Yippee!

2007-06-07T13:49:00.000-05:00

It's official! I'm back from the abyss of the lack of digital pictures to share. Whoopee! Anyways, I've been enamored with a few Chinese pop stars rcently. I saw "Curse of the Golden Flower" a few weeks ago and found out at the end that Jay Chou, a super popular Chinese singer plays one of the main characters! He's pretty cute in the movie and I liked his character, so I proceeded to find out more about his music. Along the way, I raided my sis' music collection and found another popular Chinese singer with a wonderful voice, David Tao. So I've been listening to their songs (mostly just their love ballads) non-stop (... I'll probably get sick of it soon *hah*). Check out my playlist if you have some time.

Now, on to less frivolous stuff: FOOD! As I mentioned previously, I did quite a lot of travelling in the past few weeks: one for my sis' graduation in Boston and another trip to LV with the family. Boston was quite hectic because not only did I stay merely for the weekend, my parents and I helped my sis pack up her shit load of stuff. Of course, despite the busy-ness, we found time to get bubble tea and have some much-needed girl talk!

And yes, my little sister graduated cum laude (whatever that means) from the BC school of management! I'm so very proud of her and so are my parents!

After the graduation ceremony, we went for lunch at a South End spot that supposedly has pretty good seafood, B&G Oysters. The restaurant belongs to same group as No. 9 Park, a posh Boston restaurant that has been rated to be in the top 10 American restaurants by Gourmet magazine. Here are what we had.

My father had the monkfish over a bed of veggies and asparagus, which was pretty well-cooked but lacked any exciting flavor.

I had their beautifully-plated lobster roll with some pretty damn good fries and stringy coleslaw-like thing (which I didn't touch, I have a thing against coleslaw). The lobster was slightly overcooked, giving it a rubbery texture but the mayo:meat ratio was pretty low, which is good in my books. I just hate soggy mayo salads! The roll was just a hot dog roll bought off the shelves of supermarkets, which was a tad disappointing. I was hoping for some freshly-baked demi-baguette but maybe that's just the foodiva in my talking *winkz*

My mum had the halibut with an olive consomme and tomatoes. It is a very appealing plate but the flavor was lacking.

My sister's friend had this cioppino-like stew. I didn't get a taste because it would've been plain rude to impose my fork/spoon on an innocent stranger's lunch!

My sister ordered a delicious-sounding dish with diver scallops, gnocchi, peas, lardon and truffle emulsion. Her dish was actually the one I was most excited about but it disappointed. The gnocchi was quite good: pillowy, chewy and tasty. The truffle flavor was quite exquisite also. but the star of the dish, the scallops, were way overcooked and were rubbery! I suppose we should've ordered some oysters because it is what they're known for. But really, what special skills does it take to just buy the freshest oysters out there and serve them raw? Based on our lunch there, it's not really worth a return trip. Most of the cooked seafood disappointed and their price point isn't even that great (that's the cheapskate in me!).

Due to the lack of adventurous eating in Boston, we more than made up for it in Las Vegas. LV is my aunt Elly's favorite place ever, it seems. In recent times, she hasn't failed to make a pilgrimage to LV every year. When I was little, I used to travel with her family and LV was one of the destinations. It had been a few years since I had been back to LV and boy, what a transformation it has been! Some of the older hotels are gone and there are many flashy, new ones mushrooming on or near The Strip. Everything about LV was so opulent, rich, garish and overpriced! However, most of the time, the food was pretty fresh and delicious. I guess it better be at that price!

The first meal I had in LV was at "Okada", a Japanese fusion restaurant in the Wynn hotel.

We started with a salad and sauteed mushrooms, which combined to yield a very delicious flavor!

We also shared a lobster roll and a spider roll. I didn't (and still don't) think that lobster should be served with rice at all. Without any accoutrements, it's pretty plain and the joy in eating lobster, in my opinion, is enjoying its smooth texture with maybe a dipping of butter and a bite of bread. The lobster maki roll turned out to be just ok even with the sauce on top of it but the spider roll was pretty awesome. I mean really, what deep-fried food isn't?

The entree I ordered was a broiled cod with soy sauce. It was perfectly cooked and had a succulent, almost creamy texture, which I found very unusual for fish!

My sis had a fish + foie gras dish that was also delicious. I've only had foie gras once, when my cooking whiz of a cousin, Helen, shoved it down my throat one Thanksgiving. It was a bit strange but I enjoyed it. So I thought the whole fish + foie grad combo was a bit odd, but the combination was actually quite good. The simplicity of the fish and the richness of the foie gras made good partnership.

My mum, as usual, stuck with her favorite Japanese restaurant staple, salmon teriyaki. The one at Okada was slightly overcooked for my taste but had a nice teriyaki flavor.

My father had some beef bowl thing that he thoroughly enjoyed.

We also had breakfast at one of the cafes in the Wynn hotel. The breakfast menu is simple and straightforward, offering breakfast standards such as eggs, granola and cereals. I had a crab omelette that was just ok. The crab was obviously canned and it wasn't even enveloped in the eggs, like an omelette should! The eggs were slightly overcooked and wasn't seasoned enough.

My sister's eggs benedict though, was top notch. The eggs were nicely poached, the ham was delicious and the muffin was toasted well. To top it off, the hollandaise was very tasty.

My father had the strawberry waffle. The name was slightly midleading because I thought the strawberries would be incorporated in the batter. It turned out to be plain waffle with a huge, fresh pile of ripe strawberries! I absolutely adore berries. I should've had the strawberry waffle instead!

Our cousin ordered the yogurt granola bowl that also had berries (I'm jealous!) drizzled with honey. It was very refreshing and beautiful!

I really enjoyed hanging out with my family in LV. Besides engaging in pure gluttony, we caught a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon, and grand it was! The Grand Canyon was just 100% majesty and stark beauty. It would've been more awesome if we had savored the sight during sunrise or sunset when the lighting would've been more dramatic. It would've been better also if the helicopter ride wasn't so nauseating. My sis and I almost threw up our breakfast after the choppy ride there! In addition, we were able to catch the Cirque du Soleil show based on the Beatles lives and work, Love. It was thoroughly enjoyable and I loved the dancers' expressiveness and pure energy. I find LV to be a city of not only sin but also of excess and opulence. Although I had fun visiting the city of sin, I don't think I can live there. I wouldn't be able to bear the heat! And how on Earth can I cook if it's so hot out? Here are more decadent pics of my Vegas adventure!

Where in the world is Maria?

2007-06-04T08:16:00.000-05:00

It sure has been a crazy past few months for me! 2 separate weekends in Boston and another one in Las Vegas. I love to travel but it does get a bit tiring after a while, especially when there's so much work waiting for me in Chicago. My immune system got compromised a bit and I ended up with a mild cold/cough combo while in LV.

But anywayz, the main reason I haven't updated for so long is because I misplaced the USB wire for my digital camera. Thus I haven't been able to upload my most recent adventures to share here. The school year is winding down now (thank God!) and with a little bit more time, I really hope my USB wire surfaces otherwise I'd just cry a river!

I love Boston!

2007-05-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

Boston is one of my most beloved cities. I was pushed by my family to go there for college because there is a large Indonesian population there. Being the rebel that I was, I chose not to. I don't regret that decision and I've been fortunate enough to visit Boston because my cousins and sister are there. I especially love Boston's food! When I visit Boston, I always try my best to eat as much seafood as I can due to the lack of good seafood here in Chicago.

So, anyways, I went to Boston over Easter weekend to hang out with the sister and here are some of the places we went to. I had French-style macarrons for the very first time at a little chocolatier named Burdick near Harvard. I fell in love instantly! I've read a lot about how delicate and delicious and irresistible they are on a favorite blog of mine but I've never had them! Imagine that! Anyways, thanks to my sis' adventures, she got wind of this exquisite little place and brought me there. The store front is very charming and quaint, with a green-and-white striped awning and glass window and door.

The cafe/chocolatier itself occupies a very small space inside supposedly because most of the store space is used for chocolate-making. My sister ordered their specialty thick drinking chocolate and macarrons while I wanted to try out some of their chocolates. Although their chocolates are just ok, the macarrons were to-die-for! We had the raspberry, lavender and pistachio-flavored ones. The lavender and pistachio macarrons were exquisite while the raspberry is rather "common" if you will. But their texture was perfect: crunchy on the outside with a chewy, even creamy, middle.

I made the mistake of not getting more of these macarrons to bring home. We first went to Burdick on Thursday and thought that if I bought them then, they wouldn't be good any more by Sunday. So my sis said that we could go again on Sunday, right before I leave for Chicago. We trekked down to Burdick on Sunday afternoon, only to find out that they're closed for Easter. *SIGH*

Since my sis had a pretty long weekend (her school is Catholic so they celebrate Easter), she came up with the idea of taking a mini road trip to one of her favorite patissiers in Providence. I thought it was rather silly to drive all the way to Providence for dessert, but I relented. She brought me to Pastiche, a little charming bakery/patissier in Providence's Little Italy neighbourhood. The store front is pretty and the interior is very cozy.

Pastiche had quite a large selection of pastries and coffees; from cheesecake to rugelach. I'm starting to salivate just thinking of their beautiful and delicious creations. My sis decided to get a slice of their fruit tart and I craved for something chocolatey so I got a slice of the chocolate gateau. My chocolate cake with raspberry sauce was sooo good! It's super chocolatey, moist and rich, which hit the spot for me!

My sis had always been raving about how she couldn't get a fruit tart like Pastiche's in Boston. I tried a bite and agreed that the custard layer was really yummy and I loved the freshness of the fruit but the crust wasn't quite there. The crust was a tad dry and tasteless. But isn't it just so pretty?

After our delicious lunch (yes, that was our lunch), I wanted to walk around the neoughbourhood since I had never been there before. We stumbled upon a large Italian grocer, Costantino's. The smell that hit us when we entered was of cured meat, cheeses, garlic (I luuurve garlic) and olives. The store was super clean and super crowded. They sold everything from olive oils and espresso pots to pre-made stuff like lasagna, tiramisu and meats. There were also tables in the store for those who want to eat there. I was in heaven, except that we were already full and couldn't eat any more. I managed to sneak in a picture of their deli counter before a staff told me not to *oops* Maybe I'm just being sensitive but in Providence, I didn't feel very welcome. Maybe it's just an East Coast thing.

Back in Boston, we went to one of my (and my parents') favorite spots, Shabu Zen. It's a Japanese-style hot pot place in the heart of Boston's Chinatown. Shabu shabu is an Asian do-it-yourself "cooking style" where each person on the table cooks his/her own food by dipping it into a boiling pot of broth. It's kinda like the more familliar Korean bbq, except with boiling broth instead of a grill. It's plenty of fun doing this with friends and family and you get to pick and choose your own food. A unique thing about Shabu Zen is that they also have a DIY system for your dipping sauce. They supply 4 different ingredients to add to your soy sauce: minced garlic, chopped scallions, chili flakes and a spicy paste thingy that I don't know the exact name for. You mix whichever ones you want in whatever amount you want. Ta-daaah! Individualized dipping sauce! I usually just dump everything that's given to me into the medium-sized bowl and ask for more garlic. I cannot get enough of garlic!

The other cool thing about Shabu Zen is that they have a few different varieties of broth that you can choose to cook your food in besides the normal chicken broth. My family and I always pick the kim chee broth because we love spicy stuff! Other offerings include some mushroom broth or a ginseng thingy (Ewww). But anyway, they were kind enough to bring some kim chee to start off because by the time we were finally seated, we were famished! This place is so popular, especially on weekends, that the wait can be rather long! The bad thing is, they don't accept reservations.

The things we ordered included enoki mushroom (yum!), beef tongue (sounds gross but is quite delish), assorted tofu, baby bok choy and fish paste (our absolute favorite!). I'm not really sure what fish really is but it's probably a mush of fish, starches and water to form a paste. The paste is then portioned into tablespoon-sized "balls" to be boiled. It's very chewy and has a very nice un-fishy flavor.

Another Asian place we went to is Dok Bua, a Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant in Brookline, the neighbourhood that my sis used to live in. It's a very cozy restaurant with a rather odd decor that consists of murky aquariums with some fish in them, a tiki-like bar section and a mini mart-like section by the cashier selling random Vietnamese snacks and spices. This place is also one of my family's favorites because their cooking is quite similar to Indonesian cooking. We started with the tofu soup that was highly recommended by my sis and it provided us with a tasty warm counterpoint to the cold weather.

My sis recently found out that she likes Vietnamese summer rolls. She used to only like the deep-fried spring rolls so I was quite surprised at her conversion. The summer rolls at Dok Bua were very refreshing, what with the lemongrass, veggies and rice wrapper. Summer rolls are quite bland so the nutty, spicy dipping sauce that came with is gave it a nice flavor.

Dok Bua apparently had been pretty renowned for their pad se eu. They supposedly have the very best in Boston, so we decided to go with that, in addition to a beef and veggie stir fry dish. Both were very yummy: the pad se eu was glistening with oil but was very well-spiced and the beef was awesome. They gave so much meat!

As I mentioned, I'm a bit of a seafood fanatic, so whenever I visit my sis in Boston, we always have to have sushi at least once! One of our most beloved Japanese places is New Ginza, a Jap restaurant right next to my sis' apartment building! Can you imagine that? If I lived right next to a good Jap restaurant, I'd probably eat there or order take-out 5 times a week! But anyway, despite being owned and operated by Chinese people, it's a great Japanese restaurant. It's very clean, the service is always very good and the food ... ohhhh ... the food is just amazing! There's this broiled mayo-scallop dish that my father loves but I always start off with a humongous pile of seaweed salad! Can you imagine getting such a big serving of seaweed for less than $4?!?!? In Chicago, for $4, I'd probably get a pile of iceberg lettuce that has been concealed with a thin layer of seaweed!

I then had 3 fat pieces of heavenly salmon sashimi and my sis had their eel-avocado roll.

My trips to Boston are always great. Not only do I get to see and hang out with my dear sis, the food scene there is great! There are many other places we missed that weekend (yes, we missed at least another handful of good restaurants), which I hope to eat at when I'm there again (which is not too far away because my sis is graduating in less than a month!). Yay!

Unfortunate are the students whom I'm a teacher (TA) to...

2007-04-18T10:13:00.000-05:00

Busy as bee for the past few weeks! It includes working in lab, coming in on weekends for the second job, visiting my sister in Boston over Easter, preparing review notes for a class that I'm a TA for, etc. The list goes on and on and on...

Enough complaining! Amongst this busy-ness, I've been able to squeeze in little joys. I made pretzels (again) this past weekend. We also walked around downtown, basking in the temporary sun and warmth for a few hours on Sunday. I was planning to make macarons (or French-style macaroons) but didn't have a key ingredient: almond flour, so that'll have to wait until at least this weekend.

But, even my TA experience is enjoyable. It pays just ok and some of the lecturers have been ... let's just say, difficult. It's a bit of a pain having to xerox copies of notes (what am I, a secretary?). However, I really enjoy interacting with the students. People may ridicule the undergrads here for being sombre, weird, strange, bookish or even (gasp!) nerds, but it's quite fun for the teacher (or TA, in this case) to know that our effort in sharing knowledge isn't wasted. The students in my class actually participate and ask thoughtful questions! I mean, it makes me feel crappy when I can't answer them (after all, Science is an evolving process and I can't know everything), but it's pretty cool to at least know that the students are paying attention and using their brains!

I initially took on this job to bolster my (limited) presentation/public speaking abilities. I'm quite shy in a large group of relatively unfamiliar people but I know that if I were to continue on the academic research pathway, I will have to give talks in front of people I don't know all the time. I must say that I'm getting better at not being nervous before a talk, but I still have lots of work in terms of poise, style and organization. Also, I may know a bit about insulin resistance/diabetes/obesity but having to explain it to beginners/younger students who haven't had the exposure I did is a challenge I like. After all, there are always going to be doubters and it's part of a scientist's job to engage the interest of the non-scientist public. Although I never thought of going into teaching as a career, it's definitely an open option if the whole academic research schlepp doesn't work out. It's a lot of behind-the-scenes work but now I kind of understand why some people actually enjoy it.

That's all my rambling for now but I'll be back with an update on my awesome Boston trip! Ciao!

Birthday weekend

2007-03-19T10:32:00.000-05:00

I had a really nice and relaxing birthday weekend because I got what I wished for! I basically wished for a sushi dinner and an ice cream cake, both of which I enjoyed very much. We had dinner at Sushi Loop, a Japanese/Korean restaurant in Chicago's Greektown (an odd location). I got some uber fresh salmon sashimi and a spicy tako (octopus) roll and J got Korean bbq and chap jae. We were their very first customers of the day and we were the only ones eating in the place until we were about to leave. I mean, really, who goes to an Asian restaurant on St. Paddy's? The service was very attentive and the food was delicious. And thanks to J's big mouth, telling our waitress that it was my birthday, the sushi chef created their special birthday roll (I'm guessing) and gave it to us gratis and the staff sang me "Happy Birthday". It was very nice but a bit embarassing on my part. Thank God no one else was there!

We were both very happy with dinner and it was topped off with ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery! Yay! I picked the Peanut Butter playground flavor due to my absolute love for PB and we ordered a small cake that would serve 6. It was surprisingly expensive at a little less than $30 but it was delicious! I must say that it's not peanut buttery enough for me but that might just be the nut in me talking. Even though we both enjoyed the ice cream cake, I don't think it was worth the whole $30 (and probably also not worth the gazillion calories per serving!). I think I'll try making my own ice cream cake next time!

So the other highlight of my week was my homemade pretzel experiment. Since I've started playing with yeast a few weeks ago, I have found baking with it to be very addictive. Outside of my amateur mistake of killing the yeast with super hot water, I've been successful in NOT killing them, and thus letting them do their job of fermenting and rising the batter. It's very rewarding to see your dough double or even triple in size after some time of leaving it alone in the kitchen. I also love to use my favorite gadget ever, the Kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook, to knead the dough. I know, I know, how can a "real" baker not knead by hand? I guess I haven't graduated to that level yet. I might get there ... some day.

So anyway, after experimenting with cheddar jalapeno bread and pizza dough, I decided to explore the world of pretzels. I love mall pretzels. Yep, those soft, pillowy, fragrant, seductive twines of cooked dough simply sprinkled with coarse salt or topped with more elaborate ingredients like garlic parmesan salt or cinnamon sugar. They're pretty expensive for a snack at about $3 each and that doesn't even include the decadent dipping sauces. Occasionally though, I'll fall prey to their irresistible fragrance and succumb to standing in line waiting to purchase one. So I looked for pretzel recipes on my favorite recipe site, Allrecipes.com and found a very highly-rated and relatively simple one. After reading positive reviews about the buttery soft pretzels, I decided to follow it for my project.

As in all bread baking recipes, it starts with proofing the yeast in some sugar and warm water for about 10 minutes or so, until it froths and bubbles, just to make sure the yeast isn't dead! It turned out super bubbly and frothy probably because the recipe called for quite a lot of yeast (4 teaspoons worth!).

The dry ingredients are then mixed in the large bowl of the mixer ...

... before the yeast mixture is added and the whole thing kneaded with the dough hook until it forms a dough.

The dough is then kneaded for about 7-8 minutes until it looks like this.

It was then transferred to a bowl that has been oiled thoroughly with a tablespoon of vegetable oil. The oil was distributed evenly all over the dough before it was covered with plastic wrap and left to rise for an hour in a draft-free environment.

Look at my baby grow! It never fails to amaze me what yeast can do! It's magic!

Before more dough playing can begin, I dissolved some baking soda in hot water which will substitute for the lye bath that is usually used by hard core pretzel bakers. Yes, you read it right: LYE BATH. The caustic base solution supposedly reacts with the gluten on the pretzel surface to precook it, thus allowing the surface to caramelize in the oven and give it that special pretzel texture. I wasn't about to actually purchase lye just for this so I settled with baking soda in hot water. After all, the thought of handling such a harmful substance in my kitchen, surrounded by my edibles just isn't that appealing, however unique a taste it might impart to my pretzels. The baking soda will fizzle and bubble quite intensely when you dissolve it in hot water.

After that, I turned the dough onto a lightly-floured surface before cutting the dough into 12 about-equal portions.

Each portion is then rolled by hand until it is about 12 inches long. Flouring the table surface and your hands will really help with the dough rolling.

My dough rolling got better with each portion. The first ones were rather fat and pudgy-looking. The last ones are stringier and longer (which is the way I like it, I don't really like pretzels that are too dense). The dough-twisting into a pretzel shape also got easier with practice.

I let each pretzel swim in the baking soda solution for about 30 seconds before fishing it out with a Chinese-style strainer.

The pretzels are then lined up on a lined baking sheet before a sprinkling of coarse kosher salt and other topping of your choice, like sesame seeds (for on of them, mine!). Lining the sheet, I find, is uber important because if you don't line it with either a silicone baking sheet or parchment paper, it WILL stick onto your pan! One of my pretzels' sides got stuck to the side of the baking sheet and I had to soak the pan overnight to even barely scrub it off. I suspect the baking soda solution reacts with the heat in the oven to make it super sticky.

So this is what the first batch looked like: all nicely-browned and it was really fragrant too! I overcooked the first batch slightly so it didn't turn out as soft or as pillowy as I wanted it to but it still tasted very good.

Here's my sesame topped pretzie.

The second batch turned out a lot better not only because it's stringier (the way I like it) and I baked it for one minute less than the recipe recommended so it turned out softer and chewier.

It was a ton of fun making these pretzels at home. Not only is it much much cheaper, they taste as good! J had about 4 of these babies with his beer before I could freeze the rest for future snacking! However, the pretzel texture wasn't the same as the mall pretzies and I think a butter or egg wash glaze might've helped. So the next time I make these (which will be really soon), not only will I glaze them before baking, I'll also try out more adventurous toppings! Garlic Parmesan pretzies here I come!

Happy Birthday to me!

2007-03-17T15:57:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! Thanks for the kind comments on my quarter-life crisis. I'm feeling a whole lot better with the help of some booze *haha* but I can't be sad on my birthday weekend, can I? Anyway, I find it to be rather impressive that I've been on this Earth for 25 years now. 25 years is a long time in human years but is a mere insignificant blip in the timeline of humankind. So what have I done in the quarter century that I've spent alive?

I have amassed a lot of "useless" knowledge about cooking and baking. I say "useless" only because I'm no pro chef or baker and the knowledge is going to be utilized only for my own pleasure (and the pleasure of the guinea pigs who I feed my concoctions to). I suppose bringing pleasure/joy to the stomachs and taste buds of people isn't THAT "useless". For example, if you're making pretzels from scratch at home, it's imperative to soak the shaped pretzel in a basic bath. Usually some baking soda in water suffices but the hard cores can buy lye (a caustic base that is an ingredient in drain cleaners) at a hardware store instead. The base breaks up the gluten on the surface of the pretzels and pre-cooks them, allowing them to caramelize beautifully in the oven. And how on Earth do I know this? I've made pretzels at home with and without baking soda (yea, I know I'm a geek at heart) and Google happens to be my best online pal. But no, I did not use lye. I'm not THAT crazy.

I have maintained a great relationship with my sister, which I'm oh-so thankful for! Seriously, I cannot imagine life without my sister! I mean, have you met my parents?!? Don't get me wrong, I love my parents to pieces but like a lot of parents, they can get really kooky and they know how to push our buttons without even knowing it! Anyway, my sister is a really awesome sister because besides being a great fellow symapthizer, she's a wonderful friend who listens and is always non-judgmental.

I have fallen in and out of love ... maybe a tad too much. Each time I've learned a lot about myself and I have a better idea of what I want in a life partner. I suppose it's rather greedy of me to want a passionate love affair that at the same time has some stability and peace, but that would be ideal.

My birthday wish?

I would hope that I have made the world a teeny weeny bit better by my being in it. I also hope that I have made some people a teeny weeny bit happier by my presence in their world.

Oh, and an ice cream cake would be divine!

Quarter-life crisis

2007-03-07T14:26:00.000-06:00

Yes, you read it right. I'm having a bit of a quarter-life crisis here. Well, maybe not just a bit. Make it a lot. I think it was triggered by a few things that happened pretty recently.

First, some people at work are going through a lot of change. One of them is probably moving soon to wherever her husband (who is a soon-to-be med school graduate) is posted for his residency and another has recently got engaged. On the one hand, I'm happy for them with the new developments in their lives, but on the other I'm rather envious. I'm not an easily-jealous person but I can't help but ask myself where is my own life/career/family/relationships heading? I like being in graduate school not only because I enjoy science and the scientific process, but also because it's a pretty "luxurious" stage in my life. I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful advisor who basically lets me roam freely, as to what, when and how I do my experiments. However, I realize that this cannot last forever. Neither do I want it to last forever because that'll mean that I would not progress as a scientist. The path that a science PhD graduate usually takes involves a postdoc stint or two at another lab before starting his/her own lab as an assistant professor. Those who get disillusioned by the challenges of finding independent funding and the fierce competition usually joins "industry" (which is normally considered the dark side of academic research) or becomes a consultant or patent analyst, etc. I will probably do a postdoc or two but I wonder if I'll be able to succeed, or let alone survive, in a super competitice environment?

The second reason I'm going through this is the failure (or lack of results) of my recent experiments. There are multiple ongoing projects in the typical lab not only because the more data, the better, but also because it is expected that not all the projects will yield results. It could be due to mistakes but more often than not, I wish I were lucky enough to be prepared to observe the right thing at the right time. I'm probably graduating within 2 years and this has caused a bit of anxiety in me. I mean, I'm quite happy at the prospect of finally getting my PhD but the idea of what comes after that intimidates me. First of all, if I decide to continue in academia, I'll probably stay in the US to pursue that path, but which lab should I choose to do a postdoc stint in? Not only is the research project important, it is also crucial to have a good mentor. On the other hand, my parents really want me to go back to Indonesia, get married, have babies and all that jazz. I do want to start a family some time in the future but if I do go back to Indonesia, I know that I'll be so depressed and bored that I'll just want to shoot myself.

Gosh, my whining is so irritating that I'm starting to get annoyed by myself! Most of the time, I'm fine with not knowing what tomorrow brings. I don't know if it's just being surrounded by people who are moving on to greater things that brings out this anxious and anal side of me. I suppose sometimes, it just feels nice to have roots and to at least have an idea what tomorrow might be like for me. When this happens (which is not often), I just try not to think about it. Right now, I can console myself with the fact that graduation is still 2 years away and I can just hope for the best that I'll have a clearer picture between now and then. For now, I'm just going to bake, knit and experiment my way to cheeriness!

Cheddar jalapeno bread

2007-03-07T11:37:00.000-06:00

I don't know what I was thinking on Friday but I decided to bake bread. I've only attempted to bake bread with a bread machine that a friend gave me. I say "attempted" because the end result was a total failure! The bread didn't rise and it ended up super dense and hard. I probably used water that was way too hot, thus killing my poor yeast. So I approached this mini project with some trepidation but I think I was just bored enough to foolishly continue.

I first saw the recipe for cheddar jalapeno bread in the March issue of Gourmet magazine. The magazine described it as "a delicious variation on a grilled cheese sandwich" and how "it fills the kitchen with an overwhelmingly wonderful cheesy aroma". Seriously, who can resist that? So I bought jalapenos and the cheeses that are required in the recipe. The only "specialty" ingredients required are jalapenos and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, if you even consider it to be specialty. I don't have these in my pantry because I rarely use them. Who can afford Parmigiano-Reggiano all the time at $17 per pound?

I started by assembling all the ingredients, which is what I don't usually do. This is an extra special occasion because it's my virgin bread!

(Left to Right, Top to Bottom): AP flour, warm water, olive oil, egg, Parmigiano-Reggiano, jalapenos, Cheddar cheese and yeast.

The most nerve-wrecking part, I thought, was the first step: proofing the damn yeast. This time, I used the "wrist test" where I dipped the water with a finger and splashed it a bit on my wrist. If its temperature is about what one would feed a baby, then we can proceed. I know it doesn't sound very scientific, especially coming from a science graduate student (God knows how I was admitted into grad school), but that was how I did it. I wasn't sure that it foamed but there were some pretty small bubbles and it looked creamy after 10 minutes so I proceeded with it anyway. The next step was to mix the dissolved yeast with olive oil, the rest of the water and the flour. And for this, I used my lovely KitchenAid mixer with the special dough hook that basically did all the work.

I poured in the cheeses and jalapeno before it was mixed further and left at room temperature for the first rising of the batter.

This is what it looked like after rising, all puffy and smooth. My baby is growing! Mwahahaha!

After rolling the dough out into a rectangle, I folded it into thirds and plopped it into a greased loaf pan for the second rising.

God, isn't it friggin' big or what?

I sprinkled leftover Parmigiano and shredded cheddar on top before putting it in the oven for extra crispness and cheesy goodness.

And look at my perfectly browned cheddar jalapeno baby!

Even though it was already 2.30am by the time this baby was done, I cooled it for an hour on the wire rack before slicing a piece of it to taste it. The bread was evenly studded with cheese and jalapeno.

It didn't disappoint! It tasted like a spiced grilled cheese without the gooey-ness of the cheese (which is a shame). If I do this again, I will probably add more jalapeno because even though th bread had a kick to it, it wasn't nearly spicy enough for me. Also, I'd probably make this a weekend day project instead of starting it on Friday evening after work. Nevertheless, even though it was close to 4am Saturday morning by the time I was finished up with my mini project, there's nothing like the taste and texture of freshly-baked bread! The bread lasted for about 10 days primarily because the boyf was a bit freaked by it and didn't favor it too much. My favorite way to have it is to pile on a slice of cheese (one can never have too much cheese!) and some cold cuts like the turkey pastrami on this baby, before toasting it.

Shrugs in action!

2007-03-03T10:56:00.000-06:00

I've been browsing around for a new, more ambitious knitting project recently. I've made a couple of bags, a very utilitarian afghan, a number of scarves and some random stuff (coasters, cable sampler, etc). There are only so many bags/scarves/knick-knacks I can have around the house before I become a total hippy so I've decided to graduate to clothing! Argh! Rather antsy about it because I'm positive it won't be that great. The first anything I knit usually doesn't turn out so well. For instance, I didn't line the first 2 bags I made with cloth so they were free to stretch (and stretch) forever from the weight of their contents, resulting in lopsided bags. I subsequently learned to line my bags with fabric so they'll stay pretty forever!

Anyways, the two projects I decided on are two cardi/shrug type thingies. The first one that I'm currently making good progress on is the Flirty Shrug which I encountered on the DIY network website. The directions are rather vague at best and do not include diagrams that could've helped in putting together the pieces to create a shrug. I suppose that's what you get when you don't want to pay for patterns, but anyway, I've finished knitting all the pieces. One of the hardest parts for me is sewing/seaming all the pieces together. Somehow, I'm not as motivated when it comes to the last stretches of assembling my knitting projects.

The only thing I'm a bit hesitant about it the crocheted lining. I don't know how to crochet (yet) but I used to when I was in secondary school. For some reason, I have lost that skill over the years. I hope that I can acquire it quickly once my new book arrives. Looking at the crafty and cool things DIY Network has on its site, I wish I had DIY Network on my cable TV package! *SIGH* So I suppose the next best thing to having it on my TV is being able to enjoy the free patterns and cool tutorials on their website.

The second pattern I found appealing was for a delicate, lacey shrug from the book "Knit 2 Together". I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and thought it would be oh-so pretty for spring! I bought the recommended silk/alpaca combo yarn, which is the most luxurious (read: expensive) yarn I've bought for my hobby.

Before this, the yarn I've been using are on the cheap side from Joann.com. However, I've been getting tired of the cheap yarns that have a synthetic feel. The yarns I've purchased except for the ones I used to make a scarf has some acrylic in it. I think acrylic is to knitting like plant starch fillers are to food: hollow and tasteless.

A Week in Paradise -St. Martin

2007-02-20T11:32:00.001-06:00

Hello again friends! It's truly horrible to be welcomed back to Chicago with piles and piles of snow but hey, c'est la vie. Actually, I couldn't have picked a better time to scoot away from Chicago to the Carribean because by the time I got back, the Arctic chill is about to end. Yippee!!!

But anyway, St. Martin, my Carribean vacation destination, was pure heaven on Earth. Beaches abound, only the most delicious, freshest foods and great great people. We stayed at the Hotel La Plantation , on the French (or northern) side of the island. It is an interesting place just because it's a mere 5X7 miles but is shared by two countries: France and the Netherlands. People cross the borders freely and the two sides have very different feels and systems. For instance, although the US$ is widely accepted the official currencies of the French and Dutch sides are the Euro and the NAf (Netherlands Antilles florins) respectively. Both sides are blessed with beautiful beaches but the French side (though generally more expensive) has many world-class restaurants while the Dutch side is more known for the good deals you can get (in stuff like liquor and jewelry). It is also surprising the while we encountered many French people, we didn't meet any Dutch person. The actual traveling part of the trip was a drag relatively because our flights to and from St. Martin were delayed for at least an hour due to some engine-related issues and other delay reasons. The flight was long enough (~5 hours) that I wished that we were in business or first class instead of coach. And I thought it was simply inhuman for the airline to NOT give us any food during the whole ordeal. If you want a snack pack (which contains a combination of the following: meagre meat-deficient sandwiches, mini-size mini goldfish crackers, mini-pack of 2 Oreos, mini-cup applesauce, etc, you get the idea!), you have to pay $5. Yessirree, $5 for a pathetic box of snacks!

Complaints aside, the actual vacation was wonderful! We spent most of our days at the beach lazing around, reading, playing in the water or eating/drinking. It was really relaxing and wonderful but towards the end, I got tired of lathering on sunscreen every other hour (hmmm, sounds so snobbish!). Our resort was located only a mere 5-minute walk from Orient Bay Beach, the beach that was voted to be the best beach in the Carribean and I must agree (though it is the only Carribean beach I've been to so my vote doesn't really matter). The sand on Orient Beach was sugary soft and warm (never hot!) and alongside the whole stretch there are many restaurants, bars and water sport rentals. Although it sounds rather commercialized, it really wasn't that bad. I wanted to try parasailing but I just didn't get around to it...

As expected, the weather was what most would consider beautiful. I grew up right on the Equator so I don't really equate a cloudless, sunny day to beautiful. But anywayz, the days were super sunny (thank God for my SPF 50 sunscreen!) and were mostly cloudless. The nights were comfortable and the sky was so clear that we could see millions and millions of stars! I don't think I've ever seen that many stars! The resort we stayed in was also very beautiful. There are about 20 individual villas that are very colorful and surrounded with lush vegetation. Our room had a huge bed with mosquito net, kitchenette and a lovely balcony. I adored the nice little balcony and we would always spend a part of our mornings reading or knitting or just hanging out there. I really liked the natural feel of our resort but it would've been slightly nicer if the vegetation was slightly trimmed so we have an even better view of the ocean.

We only woke up super early one day (the last day) and I managed to pry my eyes open enough to snap a heavenly vision of the sunrise from our balcony.

Sights aside, the food we ate during the whole trip was really good! The worst meal we had on the island was way better than the worst meal I've had in Chicago. We wanted to take advantage of the fact the we were in the Carribean and thus, ordered a ton of seafood. In retrospect, we should've had a more balanced diet that includes fiber and minerals and stuff but whateva! We were on vacation and I made sure that we had a multivitamin every day. The best meal I had on the island was our Valentine's Day dinner. Thanks to friends at the internet food forum I frequent, I chose La California at Grand Case (a town on the French side). The town is essentially a row of restaurants along the sea. Someone on the food forum really enjoyed their pizzas and the breathtaking view. And breathtaking it was!

We were lucky enough to catch the beautiful sunset over a chilled pina colada and a strong martini.

Instead of their pizzas (which looked good too), we went with the specials: shrimp salad with smoked salmon and grilled lobster and vegetables. They were both out-of-this-world delicious! The combination of shrimp, smoked salmon, boiled eggs and greens were just so refreshing and yummy. The grilled lobster was simple but very good. It was served along with three sauces: cocktail, garlic butter and Creole. We didn't touch the cocktail sauce at all (I mean, really, cocktail sauce on lobster?!?!?) and our absolute favorite was the garlic butter. For whatever deluded reason that I can't remember, we didn't order dessert there but the dinner at La California was the best meal we had in St. Martin!

Another meal (it's more a snack, really) we thoroughly enjoyed was at L'Escargot, a cute almost chintzy restaurant at Philipsburg, which is on the Dutch side of the island. Upon entry, one can see the various mementos that decorate the restaurant, on shelves, tacked on walls and even the ceiling. Unfortunately, we weren't hungry enough for a full-blown lunch and decided to sit at the bar for a drink. We had the pina colada and their special, guavaberry daiquiri and both were very tasty and cooled us down considerably after our long walk.

My travelling companion was hungry enough for a snack and ordered the restaurant's special, escargots (duh!). We had half a dozen escargots in garlic butter with some French bread. The escargots were tender and scrumptious! They were super garlicky (which I totally love!) and were perfect to munch on a slice of fresh Franch bread. Of course, it doesn't hurt that it they were also bathed in butter!

Another remarkable meal we had was at Claude Mini Club in Marigot, the French side's capital. Marigot is a cute town that is known for its marketplace, that sells the usual chintzy souvenirs but also has gems like local fruits and vegetables and crafts. I bought a rather large bottle of vanilla extract and a dozen vanilla beans for only $20! I can't wait to bake with them! Ok, back to Claude Mini Club. We went to Claude Mini Club almost by chance or luck, if you will. We actually had sat down in another restaurant that was nearer the heart of the town (I think it was Cafe de la Mar or something along that line) but no one approached us at all even after 15 minutes of sitting around. So we decided to take our business to Claude Mini Club, which was just a 5-minute walk south, where we were seated immediately.

Claude Mini Club has a unique decor and has a seaside treehouse ambience. The two palm trees growing right through the two storeys of the restaurant and through the roof helps with that. For our lunch, we ordered a set lunch menu and a daily special, starting with their divine fish soup that was served with toast, a special sauce and shredded cheese. The soup was tasty and the crunchy toast with sauce and cheese was a great accompaniment to it.

As part of the lunch set menu was the fish. We selected red snapper with Creole seasoning and two sauces: Creole and garlic butter. The fish was tender, flaky and well-seasoned. The daily special was a combination of cold lamb and beef with a light salad. It was succulent and deliciously meaty (duh?).

However delicious the soup and entrees were, the dessert was the absolute highlight. We ordered one dessert each: the lime cake with sorbet and creme brulee. I know it's very decadent for lunch but we were on vacation after all! The lime cake was very yummy. It has a few different layers of cake and/or lime-flavored pastry cream. It was topped with a very refreshing lime sorbet (you can easily discern the chunks of lime zest!) and together, it was very good (I'm running out of decent descriptive words for food. Sad). The combination of the cold, creamy sorbet with a moist lime cake was perfect on a hot Carribean day.

The creme brulee was also out-of-this-world good! It was one of the best creme brulees I've ever had. The custard part was smooth and creamy; the bruleed sugar was of the perfect thickness and cracks like the way creme brulees should when I dove into it.

That's it for the highlight of my week in paradise. It was a much-needed break from reality but at the same time, it feels good to be back around familliar people and surroundings. I really enjoyed exploring around and lazing around in St. Martin but there's really no place like home. One interesting thing that happened was that one day when we were out scouting out restaurants for dinner, there was a blackout in the Orient Bay area, which I'm pretty sure affected the whole island too. We were stuck waiting around for the electricity to come back on at a snack bar kind of place and at the adjacent table were a group of local Frenchmen who just continued to hang out and smoke and drink like it's nothing out of the ordinary.

Another thing I found interesting (but rather sad, in a way) is that St. Martin has so many stray dogs! Surprisingly, they were all very tame and well-behaved. On the beach, they would seek out shade and then nap. Other times, the bolder ones would approach humans for scraps of food. They were all surprisingly clean-looking for strays and were very cute. There was even a golden retriever stray dog! Can you believe that such a prized and expensive dog is a stray in St. Martin? Well anyway, so I thought that was mildly sad but at the same time, I think it's a little better to be a stray dog in a warm climate than say, Chicago, where winters are cruel! Below is a picture of the cutest one I encountered who came to our breakfast table one fine day and accompanied us through the morning. I gave him a bacon scrap, which he thoroughly enjoyed, but forgot me afterwards (haha!).

I sure will miss being able to knit in paraside without the threat of a snowstorm but then again, who wants to cook/bake in the hot kitchen? Thank God for Chicago!

Oh, the weather outside is frightful!

2007-02-08T06:30:00.000-06:00

It has been so cold and windy outside that I minimize my time outdoors. I had to come to work this past weekend and I was skeptical of the regularity of the weekend bus service so I decided to walk to campus. Was that a big mistake! The walk is usually pleasant and takes about 15-20 minutes. By the time I reached campus, my thighs were frozen and when I entered the building, they were so cold that it felt like they were burning! I'm guessing that was frostbite? It happened to me a few times because I was too stubborn to cancel a sushi date with a friend (yes! My sushi buddy's finally baaack! Yippee!).

With cold weather, along comes hot foods (and drinks too!). I decided to mull some wine this past weekend with some mulling spice that I bought at Williams & Sonoma. They were on sale ($2.99 for a whole box!) and I couldn't resist. I've also been wanting to try mulling some wine! On Saturday, after my sushi date, I stopped by at Trader Joe's and bought a bottle of their two-buck-chuck Syrah and mulled that. Talk about Trader Joe's, I love love love them! But that's another topic altogether. Next post, maybe. Anyway, mulling wine is very simple yet subtle. The only ingredients required are wine, some sugar and the mullling spices, so in that sense, it is very simple. The mulling spices include cinnamon, allspice, cloves, etc.

Now, the subtlety comes from how you mull it. I've read that you absolutely CANNOT boil it, you're supposed to simmer it gently for about half an hour. Otherwise, it'll turn out mucky and taste like crap. I followed the directions and even stood by the stove most of the time to ensure that it is simmering, not boiling. However, I got distracted by an urgent phone call and let the wine boil for maybe less than a minute! Fortunately, it turned out ok. I served it warm with a cinnamon stick as garnish and added flavor. It was a delicious winter drink but unfortunately, didn't taste so good when it has cooled. So if you do mull wine, try to finish it before it cools down. On the can of the mulling spice, it says that the mulled wine/cider can also be served when it's cool but I'm just guessing it's not to my taste.

Another thing I've been quite enamored with is a new brand of breakfast cookies that I recently discovered on Amazon.com. I've enjoyed Quaker's breakfast cookies that come in oatmeal raisin and apple cinnamon flavors but this new brand I found is way, way better! I encountered it on Amazon while I was browsing around and chanced upon Baker's Breakfast cookies. I read the reviews and found that overall, people really enjoyed the taste of these cookies in spite of the fact that they're really healthy. How healthy? Think 6g of fiber, 6g of protein, 0 trans fat and 0 cholesterol for under 300 calories! I was still skeptical but ordered some anyway. I chose the double chocolate chunk cookies and unfortunately (an fortunately) Amazon only sells them in packs of 24. Unfortunate because I wasn't sure that I was going to like them and fortunate because it turns out that I love them!

I love them because they're not only good for you, they are actually very tasty. The texture of the cookie is very soft and chewy so I guess this won't be for you if you like your cookies crisp and snappy. It is also very very chocolatey and I love biting into one of the rich chocolate chunks. It is also very filling and satisfying with the ample protein and fiber in it! They're perfect for on-the-go breakfast and snacks. Thesedays, I've been one almost every day (as part of a balanced food plan, of course) with a mug of freshly brewed piping hot Harrod's Earl Grey or delicate green tea. It's just so comforting to savor a delicious cakey cookie with a warm caffeinated drink. They'd probably be delicious with some strong coffee too. I can't wait to try out the other flavors, in particular peanut butter because I'm crazy about all things nuts! Haha~

I was rather adventurous last week and decided to try making chocolate souffle (yes, that intimidating dish that puffs up in the oven like nobody's business). It wasn't as intimidating as I thought, only rather detailed. I found that you absolutely have to butter the souffle dish thoroughly and then sprinkle sugar in it thoroughly too. And then, before sliding the souffle into the oven, you have to slide a finger between the souffle and the dish and go around so that the souffle can rise maximally. I only dipped a finger halfway down the dish on the side (should've been all the way down so it touches the bottom) and my souffle didn't rise as magnificently as I believe it could have. However, it was still awesome tasting. It wasn't too sweet and the texture was very dream-like: light, fluffy yet moist and smooth. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it was the perfect dessert: a mix of cold and warmth. The only disappointing thing is that the souffle almost immediately shrunk when I pulled it out of the oven because of the cold temperature in my apartment (yes! It was THAT cold!).
This pleasant souffle experience has inspired to make a cheese version with Gruyere and Ementaler some time in the near future. How exciting!

I've also been more motivated to knit recently not only because it's just so comforting to feel the soft yarn in my hands when it's cold, also because I've been trying to minimize my trash TV time on weekdays. I'm trying to limit myself to one hour of television per day; however, I'm still watching a crapload of TV during weekends though. Anywayz, I've been learning two techniques: multi-color knitting (also known as intarsia) and cables. I know how to knit multiple colors in rows, but I've been interested in acquiring the skills on how to knit patterns with many colors, not just rows. The first swatch (or knitting sample), I did with some scrap leftover yarn from my legwarmer project and I decided to do a heart pattern. It was a little bit complicated with the sparse description in my Stitch'n'Bitch book but I managed to do it! It looks so cute and awesome from the front but is rather messy in the back due to the need to twist the yarns and start new colors often. I thought that it's sooo cute that I decided to make a coaster out of it. So I made another one just like it and seamed them back-to-back together. It turned out to be a bit on the chunky side but it's a good coaster!

I'm so inspired that I plotted out a star knitting chart and I'm going to knit another coaster with the star pattern with my scrap yarn! I've also mastered the fine (and deceptively easy) art of knitting cables. Cables are those snaky patterns that twirl back and forth, very popular on sweaters. This time around, the Stitch'n'Bitch book was very very helpful because not only are there step-by-step illustrations, there are also step-by-step written instructions, making it very idiot-proof for people like me. check it out!

That'll be it for the next week or so because I'm going to St. Martin for a 8 days starting next week! Yes! Can you believe my luck? I'm going to be basking in the Carribean sun, lathered with an SPF 50 lotion, reading trashy, easy chick lit novels while sipping on a ice cold alcoholic beverage with a teeny weeny paper umbrella. Fortunately, St. Martin is also known as one of the best culinary destinations in the Carribean! I'm sooo loooking forward to fresh seafood and innovative food, which I'll update you with when I come back (... if I come back, hah!).

What dessert are you?

2007-02-07T11:44:00.000-06:00

You Are Cheesecake

Rich, sweet, and simply perfect.
You're not boring - you're just the best!

What Dessert Are You Most Like?

(Long) Ramblings about food memories...

2007-02-05T11:00:00.000-06:00

I'm currently reading "A Cook's Tour" by Les Halles executive chef (or more commonly known as bad boy chef), Anthony Bourdain and it's a really funny anthology of his travel stories while he was filming his Food Network Program of the same name. In the book and TV series, he travels all over the world in search of the perfect meal. I haven't finished the book yet but a few lines in the first few chapters tell me that he will not find his best meal anywhere in the world except home. Kinda cheesy I know, but don't you think it's true?

Ask anyone what his/her best food memory is, and most of the time, they won't tell you about the time they dined at a 5-star, molecular gastronomy restaurant that you have to get all starched up and dressed up for. My best (and warmest) food memories are simple yet so potent that I still remember them as if they just happened yesterday. They are also associated with family, childhood, friends and home. I think my numero uno food memory is my grandmother's home-made lychee agar (or what Americans know as jello) that's studded with real, plump lychees.

As a kid, I used to hang out at my maternal grandparents' house a lot because they lived right across the street from us. I would be part of a huge battalion consisting of my cousins because most of us lived within a 4 block radius from each other. I guess we were one of those families that can be considered to be "clannish", which is not necessarily a bad thing. My parents still live pretty near their siblings and see them practically every day because they work together at the business that my grandpa established. My cousins and I used to go swimming at my grandparent's huge pool and refuse to get out of the water until our nanny threatened to throw a snail into the pool. Once we have been coaxed or coerced out of the pool, we would stampede into the dining room, bundled up in towels, still dripping with chlorinated water, all famished and our "po-po" (Chinese for grandmother) would have a feast of goodies ready for us. My favorite goodie that she always made was the lychee agar. She always made them in special, pretty cupcake-sized plastic molds that has many patterns and in each precious agar was one (or two!) plump lychees suspended in the middle. Unlike American jello, agar is firmer and has more "bite" to it. It also requires more effort and time to make. Like millions of doting grandmas worldwide, she spoiled us rotten by letting us eat however much snacks we wanted! Recently, many relatives have been remarking on how similar my looks and mannerisms are to po-po's. I can only hope I've also inherited her patience, love and skills in the kitchen :)

I also remember our family delicious celebrations during Chinese New Year, piled high with succulent noodles (a Chinese symbol for longevity), freshly cooked meat dumplings (associated with wealth/prosperity) and tangerines (for luck). My parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, sister and I would be all clothed in our brand new garb and proceeded to assemble at my maternal grandparents house for a day of cooking, eating, playing, chatting and drunken silliness (for the adults). It's also a total bonus that I would get red packets filled with some money from all the adults, which is an awesome Chinese tradition! Haha. And of course, there are the tables brimming with piping hot Chinese-Indonesian dishes, including nasi goreng (fried rice), lightly steamed fish and heart-warming soups.

One Chinese New Year when I was only 6 or 7, I wanted to organize a gift exchange among everyone and I lugged along a big box of my most precious stuff to the grandparents'. The box contained my Lucky Luke comics, random dolls that my father "caught" in one of those cheesy arcade machines and various video tapes of Hong Kong cartoons. Of course, silly me failed miserably because no one else brought anything for me (after all, it's supposed to be a gift EXCHANGE). But fortunately, that meant I could keep all the kiddy stuff I brought.

Besides humongous family gatherings, I loved to shop with my mom at the markets in Central Jakarta (now known as Chinatown) on Sunday mornings. Usually, after the morning cartoons and pastries purchased the night before, my mom and I would make our way to the markets, just the two of us (my sister would eventually join in the revelry after she was old enough). My mom was and still is a prolific barterer. At every fruit/vegetable/meat/fish stand, she would argue and pick and flirt and reason her way to get groceries for ridiculously cheap prices. I remember walking around the stalls admiring the brilliant colors and distinct scents of piles after piles of fruit. Occasionally, one of the workers there would generously bribe me with a slice of mandarin orange or a succulent lychee so that I would ask my mom to buy me a bunch of it to eat at home.
Tagging along with my mom to the market also meant going to this particular knick-knack shop I absolutely loved as a kid. The store was called "Gloria" (I think) and they'd offer cute little pencil cases, pretty sticker books and other things that only a child would cherish.

Trips to the market would also involve eating in Chinatown and my two favorite places are the Appolo Hainanese Chicken rice shop and the Jangkung fried kway tiaow stand. The Appolo chicken rice shop was my favorite restaurant ever and I particularly adored their perfectly cooked rice. The rice is special because it is not cooked in plain water but chicken stock. As with many places in Indonesia, everything is made from scratch. No canned or boxed chicken stock here! And the Hainanese-style chicken would be steamed so perfectly that the shredded chicken pieces that had been sprinkled with some sesame oil melted in my mouth. The shop itself was very bare and the decor consisted of only calendars that they probably got free of charge but it was just so cool!

The Jangkung fried kway tiaow stand had even less frills. The kitchen was an outdoor, open one what consisted of a hot gas flame with a tap somewhere and the only kitchen utensils used were the giant wok and metal spatula for frying the kway tiaow. The eating area was cramp but was always filled to the max. There was also only one cook who's nicknamed "Jangkung" which means skinny because he's as thin as a bean. He would skilfully fry up the glistening flat rice noodles with bean sprouts, chicken and shredded vegetables wearing only a white wife-beater top and cotton pants. Not very sanitary I know but he made the best kway tiaow in the whole city! And man! When you're waiting for your order to be cooked, the seductive smell of the kway tiaow being fried is enough to make you hungry! Jangkung has died since then from a heart attack (maybe he ate too much of his own product) and my parents have yet to find another kway tiaow shop that even comes close to his.

I suppose in the end, it doesn't matter what I ate as the perfect meal. Along with these saliva-inducing memories, there has always been my family who actually made them. If it weren't for the rowdy company of my parents, relatives and sister (or the quiet dignity of my po-po), I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much.

A Wonderfuly Costco weekend!

2007-01-29T11:51:00.000-06:00

I luuurve Costco! I'm a huge sucker for cheap stuff and good deals and that's why I love Costco! For the benefit of those who have been living in a cave for the last decade or so (though, if one has been living in a cave, I suppose internet access isn't likely), Costco is an American-based warehouse supermarket for the members. The basic membership costs a little more than $30 a year and membership benefits include purchasing groceries in insanely huuuge quantities for very cheap. I had not shopped for groceries in more than 2 weeks so this Costco trip was waaay overdue. Can you believe I spent over $200? I can't either. But anyway, we did get a lot of stuff (including liquor) so it wasn't too bad.

The highlight of my splurge was the frozen Maryland crabcakes. For the past few months, I have been having a seafood withdrawal symptoms due to the shortage of good, fresh seafood in my diet! Living in the Midwest, it's quite a challenge to get reasonably-priced fresh seafood. Recently, I have been craving for crab in particular. I think those scintillating Ruby Tuesday commercials featuring the new crab cake appetizer dish helps to fire a lot of the seafood withdrawal neurons in my brain. Being the suckah that I am, I did go to Ruby Tuesday (RT) and tried their crabcake. It was quite tasty but at $9 per pop (only one pathetic crabcake per order), it was a bit too rich for my blood. The RT crabcake was a little overcooked (charred) but there were quite sizeable crab meat chunks visible. It was served with a spicy mayo sauce and a mini baby green salad.

Since then, I've just been wanting to eat some seafood all the time. It doesn't help that my one and only sushi-eating friend was out of town for a whole month! Solution: Costco crabcakes. We immediately made some as soon as we got home. There were a few ways to heat them up: (1) microwave, ech(!), (2) pan-fry, or (3) bake and then broil. I chose the third option because I was a bit occupied (which I will get to later) and so, couldn't labor over my pwetty crabcakes the whole time. The turned out beautiful and delicious! I had mine with some Indonesian Cap Jempol chili sauce and it was perfect!

As you can see for yourself, the crabcakes didn't have gigantic chunks of meat (which I would've preferred) but it was very well-seasoned and is really, really good considering they ARE frozen! I mean, really, us beggars in the Midwest cannot be choosers. Fortunately, I bought two boxes of these yummy crabcakes at Costco. It'll have to last me until I visit a place with access to the sea.

Besides a whole lot of frozen seafood and unhealthy stuff, I managed to squeeze in a lot of wonderful fresh fruit. I bought a whole pound of Chilean-imported blueberries. Not only are they nice and plump, they pop and ooze fresh, sweet yet tart goodness when you bite into them. I especially luuurve a handful of blueberries with my morning cereal. Also, I can just eat blueberries naked, all them themselves. Now, THAT is perfection.

However, I have also been in the mood to bake muffins. There's nothing better than a warm blueberry muffin with a cup of hot tea on a cold winter day while you're knitting or reading or just watching TV. But, I restrained myself from degrading my fresh blueberries and made oatmeal cookies with dried fruit instead. It was horribly cold yesterday and the the wind never stopped blowing! I flipped open one of my favorite cookbooks, The Best Light Recipe, and used the oatmeal cookie recipe. Before adding the raisins, I halved the dough into two portions. Into one, I added the classic, traditional raisins. To the other batch, I added some dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks.

BEFORE

AFTER

The cookies turned out delicious and were crisp on the outside while it was chewy in the middle. Now that they have been sitting around for a day in the tupperware, they have crisped up more. I personally like chewy cookies so I probably should've underbaked them even more but the flavor is good. The oatmeal raisin cookies are simple and you can't go wrong with them. The oatmeal white chocolate cranberry cookies were quite exciting to me. It has a refreshing combination of sweetness and tartness that I really enjoy. I gave some to my colleagues and they remarked how they couldn't believe the cookies were "light" and that's pretty cool. So far, the light recipe cookbook hasn't disappointed. Even though all the recipes call for lower-fat or lighter substitutes, the flavor and taste is never compromised.

Another thing I tried out this weekend (I sure did a lot of stuff, huh?) was to make mochi. Not really "make" because I just basically heated one dried mochi in the toaster oven. It was pretty cool because the mochi transformed from this flat disc to a puffed-up ball of chewy goodness. I had it with some soy sauce and sugar, but it wasn't as delicious as some other mochi I had with peanuts and sugar. Hmmm... I think I need to get a pack of kinako (soybean powder) that the Japanese traditionally sprinkle on mochi.

Ok, one last thing I did (the activity that kept me from pan-frying my crabcakes) was I (FINALLY!) finished my second knit bag, lining and all! If you remember, a while ago, I made a knit bag for my sister. Since I had so much leftover yarn, I decided to make another one for myself. The second bag is considerably bigger and the main difference is the lining. Instead of a pretty, flowery pink lining, I chose a green tea-ish shade of cotton that matches the green color of the yarn. It turned out pretty awesome and I'm so glad I finally finished this project. And hey, it doesn't hurt that I can use the bag and show my creation off the world. Yippee!

New Year, New Adventures

2007-01-25T14:06:00.000-06:00

Man! Has it been forever since I last posted! It sure has been a pretty hectic new year indeed. I now have a new part-time job in another lab that works with human subjects. So now, instead of just tinkering cells in petri dishes and mice, I mess around with people. Haha! So far it's not too bad. I wanted a part-time job for 2 main reasons: (1) the extra money (d'oh!) and (2) the experience doing "clinical" or translational research might just benefit me in the future if I decide to continue a research career. So anyhoo, that's it with the boring stuff!

It was the boyf's birthday in January and I baked a birthday cake of course! It's a basic yellow butter cake recipe with chocolate frosting. I cheated with the cake, I used boxed Duncan Hines mix (hey! It was only 99 cents a box! I couldn't resist cheap, easy stuff), but I made the frosting from scratch with my new pwecious Kitchenaid stand mixer (it worked soooo well!). The cake turned out fragrant, moist and delicious. The frosting was good on the day I made it but somehow the taste deteriorated as the days passed (we couldn't in good sense finish the cake in a day!). Part of the reason might have been the fact that I used Dutch-processed cocoa instead of plain cocoa. Maybe I just didn't use enough butter! Anywayz, it looked pretty good, right?

Besides the cake, I was also inspired to make beef stew last week. The cold, blustery weather outside made a perfect accompaniment for a comforting stew dinner. The recipe was very simple and consisted of the standards: meat, potatoes, celery and carrots. It turned out delicious and was awesome for dunking sliced, toasted Italian bread! What made it really special was the tomato sauce that was added in the stew, making it tastier and appear redder than normal stews.

Talk about red, did you know that Florida now grows strawberries? I know that California has always grown strawberries all year round but Florida?!?! The strawberries below were grown in Florida and they're pretty juicy and yummy. The boyf and I have been having a pound of strawberries per day because I bought about 4 or 5 boxes of them when they were on sale at our local grocery store. So, I've been stuffing them down our throats so we'll have finished them before they go bad. I mean, really! There are worse things to stuff down your throat!

The highlight of my week is tasting wagashi, a traditional Japanese sweet, that my sister's boyfriend brought back from Japan for me (Arigato gozaimashta, Motoi-san!). I was just browsing on Amazon.com and encountered wagashi in their grocery section. Many reviewers really liked it and that got me really curious. Having done some research on Wikipedia and Google, I found out that it is a category of Japanese sweets that are traditionally served in the Japanese tea ceremony. They're usually made of rice flour and red bean (anko). Although I'm a big chocolate and ice cream fan, I also like subtler desserts that are not as sweet or overpowering. My kind sister e-mailed his boyf about it and he brought back a box of them! Joy! Check it out! Isn't the packaging simply adorable?

This kimono-clad cartoon girl is soo cuuute and the drawing of the wagashi is pretty accurate!

So anyway, I had these triangular goodies with green tea and it was perfect. Lightly sweet, delicate, chewy and oh-so Japanese! It would have been good with other light teas too, eg. ginger, herbal, etc. There are two different flavors. The first is black bean, which tastes very similar to red bean (or azuki) but is slightly stronger. I don't know what the second kind is but I'm guessing something along the line of persimmon. Both are tasty but I prefer the black bean one just because I know what it is and less bland. If you look at the pictures below, the one I suspect to be persimmon appears to have a less amount of stuffing.

That's all the new adventures so far this year but 2007 sure looks like it promises way more to come! Ciao!

Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate!

2006-12-08T10:56:00.000-06:00

I had a blast in SF hanging out with the cousins and trying out the SF food scene. What I didn't realize was what a big chocolate city San Fran is. I mean, SF really likes its chocolates! Everywhere we went, there would be specialty/artisan chocolates sold in all sorts of stores. I suppose I should've expected it because after all, Ghirardelli started in SF!

There was a chocolate store we chanced upon in the North Beach (or Little Italy) neighbourhood that offers a huge variety of chocolates, most of them made in California. I have been a bit of a chocolate junkie, like my mother, and I have been getting into dark chocolate. I find its complexity and mouth feel to be very rich and enjoyable. Hey, I like the occasional Hershey too but recently I've been finding milk (or even semisweet) chocolate to be a tad cloying on the tongue. I've also been inspired by a recent posting on a Chicago-based food forum that I belong to about a chocolate tasting party. Wouldn't that just be perfect for the holidays? Hmmm... I might cross that with a knitting session too! Hooray! So, anywayz, I bought a lot of chocolate in SF and they're all pretty good. The shop we encountered is "Z. Cioccolato", very Italian-ish, since it's in SF's Little Italy.

One of the chocolate bars I purchased there was a dark chocolate bar made in Boulder, Colorado for about $3.50. It contains 70% cocoa and tastes just heavenly! Unlike many other dark chocolate bars, this is smooth, creamy and rich without the slightly waxy mouth feel. The bar is not too thick and not too thin and has a nice surface area exposed for optimal tasting! There's also a love poem (awww!) in the inner side of the wrapper (which I haven't bothered reading ... yet). It would make the perfect gift for your sweetheart! Besides 70% cocoa bar, the same company also makes chocolates with other exotic flavors. They offer various cocoa percentages of dark chocolate bar in addition to raspberry-filled, espresso-infused and orange-flavored chocolate bars.

Also, at 160 calories for a third of the sizeable bar, it is a pretty good dessert or snack! Check out the other flavors they have and if you're interested, go to www.chocolove.com. They're available in select grocery stores but I found none in the Midwest. Sigh~

The other chocolate bar I got at the chocolate boutique is this 65% bittersweet chocolate by Charles Chocolates. I was too blinded by the prospect of hazelnuts in this dark chocolate and didn't realize that it also contains candied orange peels until I was about to open it and have some a few days ago. Part of the reason that I bought it was it's made in California. I mean, really, when in California, buy Californian stuff to bring home! However, this chocolate was a bit of a disappointment because to me, it doesn't have enough hazelnut flavor and the orange peel taste is too strong for me. The chocolate bar is also pretty thick (I like my chocolates thinner). Overall, it's not too bad but I wouldn't get this again. I would try the other bars this company makes but this wasn't really worth the $3.99 I paid. You can find the rest of the collection at www.charleschocolates.com.

I'm so happy that we had the chance to go to Little Osaka (SF's Japantown) for dinner and that we stopped by one of the grocery stores there! I luuurve grocery stores and I like to just even walk around and see what's available although I might not buy anything. Naturally, this grocery store has so many more Japanese products than the one I go to in Chicago. I was so excited at the sight of new, cute Japanese snacks I've never seen before that I just had to have a picture!

Okay, back to business! And of course, I bought a couple of snacks to tide myself over on the plane ride home and for times when I need some Jap goodness back home *sniff* *sniff* The first item I got was this box of milk chocolate bars called "Ghana". It's pretty dang good for milk chocolate and it has portion-controlled packaging for snacking at work. I had the impression that it was dark chocolate (which is why I bought it) but I think I was just too excited at the sight of so much Japanese snacks that I didn't read the box too carefully. But that's cool because this is one of the darkest-tasting milk chocolate I've had. Yay! I'm guessing that by naming it Ghana, the company's trying to tell us that the cacao beans they use to make it is from Ghana? Hmm, I need to learn Japanese!

Another Japanese chocolate snack I got was a box of "Meltyblend", which is basically individually-wrapped square truffle-like chocolate bites that has a strawberry-flavored center. The chocolate coating is very delicious and dark-tasting, and the individual wrapping is, again, a great portion control.

My favorite Jap snack from SF are these green tea wafer-ish cookies that has a light green tea mousse sandwiched between a thin shortbread-y cookie and a thin wafer-like cracker. It is not too sweet and you know me, I luuurve green tea!

Another huuuge favorite are these black sesame Pockys! The sesame flavor is delicious but I wish it was stronger and more potent, but that's just the sesame but in me talking.

And now, for the worst Jap snack ever, is this green tea-flavored protein-y energy bar. I thought it looked interesting and I checked out the nutrition info and it sounded really good. Since it's green tea-flavored, I thought I'd give it a shot. What could be better than a green tea power bar? ... A lot, apparently! The bars are shaped like shortbread but it does NOT taste or feel like shortbread AT ALL! It was brittle and dry and tasted like cardboard. I could make out some green tea essence but it was mild and it was just not delicious. Although I'm not one to waste food or money, I threw the whole box out after one bite. Fortunately, I only got one!

I bought a bar of the new 72% cacao bar from a Ghirardelli boutique. They had a special promotion and since my cousins and I combined our purchase, we got two additional 72% free of charge (score!). Overall, I liked the taste, it sure was intensely dark, though still not as intense as the 70% Chocolove bar above. I also liked that the bar is thin and this exposes more chocolate surface area for my tongue. However, it is a little ... what's the word ... kinda, waxy, I guess. It's not as smooth as some of the other dark chocolates I tried. At $3.50 for a big bar, it's not too bad. I'll definitely be getting more of those if they're not too expensive. Well, that's all for m forays into the rich, dark world of chocolate in SF! Have a great weekend!

More Frisco Thxgiving!

2006-12-04T12:46:00.000-06:00

The arctic weather has frozen Chicago solid and it's way too cold to do anything but to stay in and snuggle in my blanket while watching an unhealthy dose of TV. Besides the addictive "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" marathon, I managed to rustle the boyf out of our comfortably warm cocoon to shop for groceries on Saturday and we had steak and a bottle of wine at home. It was one of the best steak dinners I've ever had and it was well worth the money! (Yah, I'm cheap, I know, I know!)

Anyway, back to more of my SF Thanksgiving adventure with my fellow cousins! We went to the restaurant Citizen Cake for lunch on the day after Thanksgiving. We were really excited about it because we had heard a lot about this place (whether it's on the all-pervasive TV or magazines or word-of-mouth). It is a place known for its individual-sized cakes and pastries. After a whole morning of shopping (we got our asses off the bed at 6 am, in an attempt to scout out post-Thanksgiving deals), we were hungry and were hoping to have brunch at Citizen Cake. Unfortunately, they don't serve brunch on weekdays (sigh, and I was eye-ing the French toast already). However, their lunch menu had some yummy-looking fares too. It consists mostly of sandwiches and salads, all very light and delicate (how Californian! Oooo). I had a smoked turkey sandwich called the Pavo Rico. In addition to the smoked turkey, the sandwich also has cocoa nib mole (which I didn't really taste), delicious mozzarella, roasted red peppers and cilantro mayo in between grilled panini-style bread. It was served with a small baby salad on the side and I loved it! It's possible that my hunger (remember, no breakfast) made the sandwich taste even better but hell, it was good!

My dear sister ordered the pizza with marinara, pepperoni, mozzarella and baby arugula. It was very simple but well-done.

My cousins had their ultimate grilled cheese sandwich which had cabot sharp cheddar, gruyère on acme italian bread also grilled to a delicious crisp with a small side salad. It was also very scrumptious.

Having made a thousand-mile pilgrimage to Citizen Cake, we just had to try their desserts, right? I mean, after all, it IS a restaurant owned by a pastry chef. The item that was recommended by out waitress is this rich, chocolatey cake covered in a delicate ganache. It was perfect: not too sweet, not too bitter and 100% dark. Yum!

The second dessert item we had was less impressive: the rose petal creme brulee with saffron cookies. It was bruleed perfectly but the creme part was way too soft and liquid-y for my taste.The hint of rose syrup in the creme was nice and unique, but I found the saffron cookies unnecessary and too sweet.

The third dessert (yes, you read it correctly, THIRD) was the worst. I mean, it was rather disappointing but I must give them credit for inventiveness. It was named "gleaming the cube". It consisted of date-soft chocolate, sherry-date purée, pumpkin purée and coconut-thai sorbet. The plate was like a modernist piece of art but overall, the taste was bizzare and unfocused. I thought it was trying to do too much and ended up botching everything up.

I think maybe we should've stuck to the patesserie section of the place for dessert instead because the patisserie offering ranges from sinful cookies and cakes to fluffy, angelic meringues and cheesecakes and tarts. Maybe next time? Overall, it was an unexpectedly good place for lunch! And the sourdough bread they served was quite good. I mean, really, who in SF does NOT serve sourdough bread?

A better place we went to on our last night in SF was NIck's Lighthouse at Fisherman's Wharf. I know, I know, a rather touristy area but hey, they're by the wharf! So their seafood must be pretty fresh and it was. My cousin Jessy recommended this place and we started with a cup of lobster bisque and clam chowder. Both were delicious and creamy.

We then shared two main courses: the lazy man's Cioppino in tomato broth and a plate of lightly sauteed shellfish. I loved the freshness of everything and how well-cooked the seafood was. Sigh~ Just thinking of it makes me want to move to the coast.

Well, thanks to this entry, I'm now famished and it's time for lunch! Oo-ee! Leftover stuffing and microwaved Boca soy burgers, here I come!

Happy Frisco Thanksgiving!

2006-11-27T14:57:00.000-06:00

I just came back from San Francisco for Thanksgiving and I must say that I was rather impressed by SF's food scene. Maybe I'm just too deprived of great Asian and seafood options in the Midwest but I am very happy with what I tried out there. It was also just wonderful to catch up with my cousins and be with (somewhat) like-minded people in terms of food. Most of my friends just don't understand why I am so passionate about something they consider to be a mere necessity. I personally believe the enjoyment of food with all the senses is a daily joy and is something to look forward to. So anyway, we tried many different places but I'm not going to bombard you with too much in too little time. I'm going to recount our culinary adventure little by little.

I'm going to start out with the best places we went to so that if I got tired of writing about the trip, you would only miss out the places that weren't so great. Yay! So the best joint that we went to is Swan Oyster depot. It's a hole-in-the-wall kind of place that serves some of the freshest seafood I've ever had. I first saw it on Rachael Ray's "$40 A Day" and my interest was piqued. It is also the place that many chefs cite as not to be missed when in SF when I was reading issues of Gourmet magazine. Swan Oyster Depot is a very small place, it fits approximately 12-15 customers at the bar. My cousin, Jessy, and I waited in line for a little under an hour and we both thought it was totally worth it!

Besides being a restaurant, Swan Oyster Depot also sells fresh, raw wholesale seafood to those who want to cook their own seafood at home. We saw some of the biggest and juiciest-looking scallops but unfortunately, they weren't on the menu (unless we wanted to have them sushi style). We started with a half dozen fresh oysters that our server recommended. There were six different varieties and we thought we'd try them all. All of them were super fresh and awesome! Each had a different taste and mouth feel to it and they were all very well-shucked. Topped with a small dab of cocktail sauce and horseradish, the oysters were heaven on a shell!

The other items we had were lobster and crab cocktails. When our first cocktail came, it was already mixed up with cocktail sauce and we thought that it would be served with the sauce on the side so we asked our server if we could have ours on the side and he obliged immediately. Now is that great service or what? So he went ahead and cracked open a new, freshly boiled lobster and collected the meat for us with the sauce on the side. The crab and lobster were tender and tasted so fresh that I almost cried. The bar that all the customers were seated at was very intimate in that we get to essentially witness the food preparation. There was a huge slab of smoked salmon in front of us and we weren't sure what it was and so we asked about what it was. The proprietor gave us each two slices of the smoked salmons and that's how I had the best smoked salmon ever! Not only was it perfectly smoked, it tasted fresh and didn't smell fishy at all. Its pure salmon taste filled my mouth and I felt like it melted in my mouth.

I am so happy that I found and ate at Swan Oyster Depot. Like many others, I think Swan Oyster Depot is that place not to be missed when in SF. Not only is the service friendly and warm, we were made to feel like we were just visiting a friend's place (a friend who happened to be a fisherman). Even though it's on the pricey side and we had to wait in line to eat, the fresh seafood was totally worth it!

The second awesome place we went to was this small bakery in Chinatown that sells the usual slew of Chinese pastries. My cousin, Jessy and I went there the morning we were departing SF for a small breakfast. Prior to the bakery we had already visited another Chinatown eatery for the famous leaf-wrapped steamed glutinous rice (for lunch on the plane) and shiu may (part of Jessy's breakfast). At the bakery I ordered my two all-time favorite Chinese pastries: egg tart and paper-wrapped steamed chiffon cake. Jessy had a custard filled bun that was topped with a layer of sweet cookie.

The egg tart I had was the very best egg tart I have ever had. The puff pastry crust was rich, buttery and melted in my mouth. The egg custard filling was even better! It is not too sweet and has the perfect texture. The filling was like the creme of creme brulees that one can get at top notch restaurants, not too creamy yet not too solid. If only I had bought more to bring home to Chicago...

Jessy's custard bun was also delicious. I had a bite of it and really loved the crispy cookie crust that topped off the bun. Its custard filling was a tad sweet but the bread was soft and pillowy, and the cookie crust was perfectly baked. Eaten with a piping hot cup of tea, this is the breakfast for (Chinese) champions!

The paper-wrapped steamed cake was also very good. I like that it was only slightly sweet and its faint vanilla aroma was just nice. Its texture was very light, even lighter and fluffier than an angel food cake. The shiu may that Jessy bought were also delicious. They were packed with meaty goodness and so much flavor. Dipped in some soy sauce, it was even better and provided some protein for our breakfast.

So these were the two top places (I think) that we had the fortune to eat at. They are definitely places I will return to when I visit SF in the future. I find that the SF culinary scene is alive and bustling with a lot of excitement, whether it is a good old American seafood or a quintessential Chinese meal.

Most recent confections

2006-11-21T11:03:00.000-06:00

You know, weekends are way too short when you're enjoying yourself! Even when you're doing nothing or just vegging around the house, they fly by so quickly! Weekends feel even shorter when you have to go to work (like I did) for almost half a day (on a Sunday no less!). Thankfully, I still had time to try out a few recipes, which I was super excited about, before the family and I descend upon Frisco for a rollin' good time!

So for Saturday breakfast, I made crepes for the first time ever! I thought it would be really challenging but I was really inspired by Dave Lieberman's simple recipe . and he made it look so easy when I first saw it on his show. And boy oh boy, were they easy to make! The only "special" equipment you need is a non-stick pan. I don't think that's such a specialty equipment because virtually everyone owns a non-stick pan, right? The batter is also very simple; it consists of flour, eggs, milk and vanilla extract. The only minor hassle is you have to refrigerate it for at least an hour. I think you can do it overnight if you really have to have breakfast ready as soon as you get up.

The first two crepes weren't very pretty but as with making pancakes, the first few would always look ugly. Subsequently, my crepes turned out evenly browned and nice. Check out how beautiful my virgin crepes turned out!

I filled the crepes with either Nutella spread or strawberry jam. As you can imagine, the Nutella-stuffed ones were very decadent and rich, just like a dessert! The strawberry jam ones (also served with fresh, sliced strawberries) were light and delicious, and are more appropriate for breakfast. Also, you can taste the crepe more with the strawberry jam while the rich Nutella tends to overpower the palette.

The boyf had the strawberry-filled crepes with a (huge) dollop of whipped topping and it was a piece of heaven, man!

Another recent new recipe I tried out was for cream puffs. I didn't have heavy cream on hand so I couldn't make the cream filling. Instead, I substituted it with ice cream and made profiteroles! As you may know already, ice cream is always good in my universe. The puffs were very simple to make and the recipe starts by making the dough batter in a saucepan on a stovetop before spooning them onto baking sheets and baking them in the oven, where they will puff up beautifully. These puffs' texture reminded me of some popovers that I had in Boston a few months ago. They can be eaten plain or with a mere pat of butter when they're warm. Of course, they make perfect cream puffs and profiteroles.

To create the profiteroles, I cut the puffs in half, filled it with vanilla ice cream, topped it with the other puff half, and drizzled chocolate sundae sauce to top it off. I must say that the home-made profiterole is one of my favorite home-made desserts ever. Because when you make it yourself, not only can you add as much (or as little) stuff you want, you can bask in the glory of having created the dish yourself *harharhar*

That's all the decadence for now before Thanksgiving but you can expect more, especially after Christmas. This is because I have convinced the boyf to get me a Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas when Amazon was having a huge houseware sale. Can you believe he got the Artisan mixer for under $200? I always love getting a good deal, even if it's someone else paying for it! Of course, being a Christmas gift, I can't open or use it until Christmas. Argh! Can't wait for Christmas!

Well, anywayz, I hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving, blessed with good food and even better company! Ciao!

It's that time of the year agaaaain ...

2006-11-16T12:43:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving is around the corner and I am so super excited because my cousins and I are descending upon good ol' Frisco for a long weekend reunion. I am particularly looking forward to meeting Hendra, a cousin whom I haven't seen in years and years and years! What I remember of him last is a 12-year-old game-crazed boy but he's almost 20 now and is in college! Wow, time sure flies!

Besides spending some Q time with the cousins, I'm so excited about eating around SF. Two particular spots I must visit are Swan Oyster Depot and Citizen Cake. I have heard so many good things about Swan Oyster Depot from many different people and magazines. I was made aware ot its existence of Rachael Ray's "$40 A Day" San Francisco episode. It is a small spot that sells cooked and raw seafood that was caught the very day. They close the place when they've run out of fresh catch. Now is that awesome or what? Subsequently, I've read many chefs is different foodie mags rave about it being the place not to miss when in Frisco. I also first saw Citizen Cake on the same show, actually, but it never really struck me as a must-eat-at place until recently, when the owner went on Iron chef America to take on Cat Cora with a honey-themed challenge. If I'm not wrong, she beat Cat Cora and well, someone who can handle that much pressure should own a pretty decent establishment. Also, who can resist a place that specializes in dessert?

Sigh~ I can't wait to get to Frisco and see my sis and cousins! For now, I'll just dream of it ...

Inspired weekend

2006-11-07T11:13:00.000-06:00

The weekend can never be too long thesedays. I had such a wonderfully relaxing but short weekend of lazing, baking, reading, knitting and watching TV. Ahhh! Simply heaven. And I'm here to show off to you what I've accomplished. I was partiularly inspired and I actually finished the first of my knit bag! I hauled my ass off to Jo-Ann (an awesomely huge crafts store) to get a simple sewing kit to sew the bag lining. I had previously purchased the lining fabric so I didn't have to get that. After joining the lining fabric to the bag, I next sewed the circular bamboo handles onto the bag with the yarn that I knit the bag with. Initially, it looked a little lopsided but I was able to mend it. Check it out!

Isn't it just the daintiest knit bag ever? (You better say yes, you!) Anywayz, the second bag will be slightly bigger and will have a green cotton lining, so that will be less cheery than this bag. I must say that I'm pretty proud of the hemming and sewing I did for this bag, considering I hadn't sewn since home ec class secondary school. I got some tips from the Web and they were very helpful. I did make some mistakes that I will try to avoid for the second bag, though ;)

Besides the crafts department, I also baked. Yippee! I was inspired by Alice Waters' recipe for her famous apple tartine that she serves in her restaurant, Chez Panisse. I encountered the recipe in the Sunday papers' magazine and since it's apple season, I just couldn't pass up making this beautiful apple tart. The original apple tartine recipe was made by Jacques Pepin but has since been tweaked by many other chefs. For instance, I saw a slightly altered apple tartine recipe in a recent issue of Gourmet magazine that uses apricot preserve.

I wanted to use my new food processor to made the pastry dough but was disappointed to discover that it doesn't work!!! I was so sad that my new appliance is crap. I think it's probably the motor and I will call up Cuisinart soon to find out where I can bring it to be fixed! Sigh~ Fortunately, I have a pastry blender on hand and decided to use that instead. It was my first time making pastry dough and it was quite fun though very time-consuming. I had to make sure the fats and water were cold, and after making the dough, the recipe calls for a 30-minute refrigeration before rolling it. Then, I believe I over-handled it because it turned out a bit on the brittle side, but still delicious.

Now is that beautiful or is that beautiful? The sugar that was sprinkled on the apples and crust caramelized beautifully to brown the tartine. However, in retrospect, I used to few apples, I should've lined the up more densely for more apple flavor. So I served the tart with a scoop of extra rich light Haagen-Dazs vanilla bean ice cream and it was pure heaven on a plate. It is so thin that it is reminiscent of a New York style pizza. So my boyf spread the ice cream over the whole slice of tart and used his fingers to eat it like a pizza. I still have a few slices left and I can't wait to wolf it down after dinner!

Is it friggin' cold or what?

2006-11-02T16:54:00.000-06:00

The weather has taken a chilly turn and so has my activities. Besides work at the lab and my salsa classes, I don't do anything outside of my home any more recently. I just want to stay cooped up in my cozy apartment knitting, baking or watching TV *sighs blissfully* I really don't mind because I find all these activities very comforting, although I run the danger of not burning enough of the calories from my baked goods. Thank goodness for the gym in my apartment building!

Anywayz, I've been in a knitting mood again recently due to the cold weather. When it's hot out, I just don't feel like having my fingers swathed in beautiful, warm yarn in my wonderful knitting corner.

I'm currently working on two main things: an afghan (also known as a blanket) and a bag. The afghan is going to be so perfect to snuggle within when it's snowing outside. I am knitting it with two different types of yarn together: the first is a basic acrylic yarn with multi colors (yellow/purple/blue combo) called "Monet" and the second is a finer, somewhat "hairier" (if you will) yarn of a pretty magenta shade. The afghan is knit in a sort of checkered pattern, check it out!

The second knitting project I'm working on is a bag, as I mentioned. Actually, I'm making two bags of the same pattern and yarn because I purchased way too much yarn. It is a knit bag with circular bamboo handles and the yarn I'm using has a color combination of light pink and leafy green, it's very pretty. I got the pattern from my very first knitting book, "Stitch'n'Bitch" by Debbie Stoller. I must say that "SnB" is a very good beginner knitting book and the patterns included are basic yet cool at the same time. I've pretty much finished knitting it, now all I have to concentrate on is sewing the lining fabric (so that the bag won't sag under the weight of its contents) and sewing the bamboo handles onto the bag. I'm making one for my sister and another for me. I can't wait to finish them!

So anyway, we ended up not going to a friend's Halloween party out of laziness. He lives really far away and I felt like rewarding myself with a "vegging" weekend in lazing away. I wasn't that unproductive because I baked! Instead of baking the hazelnut cookies as featured on Giada de Laurentiis' show, I baked something similar. It's called "Cyclops" cookies on allrecipe.com, the site where I found the cookie recipe. It is so called due to the presence of a chocolate kiss in the middle of the cookie, resembling Cyclops' single eye. Kinda geeky, check out the recipe here . So, instead of dipping the rounded cookie batter in white sugar before baking (as the recipe instructs), I dipped them in orange sugar for an extra layer of Halloween vibe!

BEFORE ENTERING THE HELLISH OVEN

AFTER RECEIVING CHOCOLATE KISSES
Don't they look awesome? By the way, I luuurve luuurve luuurve my new Silpat sheet liner. It works so well! Nothing, absolutely nothing sticks to it!

Besides these delectable peanut buttery cookies, I also made angel food cake. It was the very first time I made angel food cake with egg whites. The only other time I made angel food cake, I used a box mix because I didn't see the sense in wasting 12 egg yolks (even though I don't really like yolks). So anyway, the angel food cake sides burned but the insides was salavageable and tasted pretty good. I baked it for way too long (damn recipe!!!) and the cake doesn't have as light and airy a texture as I expected. Instead it had a bready feel to it, which is still not too bad. Topped with some whipped topping and served alongside some fresh strawberries, the cake was delicious.

The arrival of winter also means the return of comfort foods. The most recentl comforting creation was grilled ham and (Swiss) cheese on rye. It was simple, uncomplicated and simply heavenly. Have a great weekend!

Halloween goodies!

2006-10-24T13:38:00.000-05:00

Amazon.com just had a huuuge home & garden sale the other day (Oct. 23rd) and I convinced the boyf to buy my Christmas present then. Yippee yay yay! I'm gonna get a Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas! Woohoo! What's even better is that we got it at a great deal! Yeapz, I'm a suckah for great deals. When grocery shopping, I rarely ever get anything that's full price. If it's not on sale or if I don't have a good coupon for it, I don't put it in my cart 95% of the time. I also try to pay attention to the prices being scanned at the cashier because hey, sometimes computers make mistakes! Whenever I tell the cashier about the mistaken price, I always pay the correct labeled price despite getting dirty looks from both the cashier and the person behind me. Bah! They don't pay my bills *winkz*

Anywayz, with the approach of Halloween, I've been inspired to watch scary movies and bake Halloween-themed goodies. This past weekend, I watched the movie "Halloween" on TV. Yep, I've never watched it before and it wasn't too bad for being the first "slasher" movie ever. As with most other horror movies, I get frustrated with the characters' stupidity. For instance, in the movie, the doctor who was looking for the escaped psychotic murderer psychiatric patient Michael Meiyers, was waiting outside Michael's old home believing that he will eventually go there. It took him about 2 hours of standing around doing nothing outside the old house for him to spot the car that Michael stole before escaping the psychiatric ward. Sheesh!

And then, the main character is even worse! Each time she thinks she has killed Michael, she didn't even confirm that he's dead. She would then leave a weapon (the knife) near him and hang around the house instead of going to a neighbour's for help. Sigh~ I suppose if the characters in horror movies weren't that dumb, no one would be killed and the movie wouldn't be that scary any more.

I'll be attending a friend's Halloween party this Saturday and depending on the weather that afternoon, I'm either going apple-picking or watching "Grudge 2" in the theatres. I'm probably going to bake a super fudgy brownie for the party and I might bake a batch of nutella-kiss cookies to bring to work. I've never baked a brownie from scratch since I've always found the boxed mixes to be super cheap and easy. But I've usually had problems with the mixes. It would turn out charred around the sides a lot and it wouldn't result in the fudgy, thick consistency that I want. Maybe it's the mix or maybe I just baked them too long, we'll see. The nutella-kiss cookies were inspired by an episode of "Everyday Italian" that I recently saw on the Food Network. Besides containing the yummy nutella spread, the batter is then dipped in orange sugar (for a festive Halloween feel) and topped with a Hershey's kiss. I'm looking forward to that! I'll definitely take pictures of those cookies!

Indonesian Feast

2006-10-19T10:58:00.000-05:00

Hi friends!

I’ve been back from Indonesian homecoming trip for over a month now and I must say that I’m already home sick, not only because the majority of my family is there but also because of the delicious Indon foods! I hadn’t been back for two years before this trip, so you can bet your bottom dollar that I ate like there’s no tomorrow! I spent a mere two weeks in the Indon capital, Jakarta, and one night in Singapore. As you can imagine, it’s not enough time to sample all the delicacies.

The first thing I craved for was bakmi Gajah Mada (or Gajah Mada noodles). The original restaurant was opened on Gajah Mada (GM) street, and thus, the name. Their specialty is their home-made noodles that is served along with shredded chicken, fried dumpling, meatballs or vegetables (you pick!). The yummy noodles comes with a small bowl or the noodle broth that you’re supposed to drizzle over the noodles before mixing it all up and gobbling it down (along with a squirt of their home-made chili sauce if you like). Bakmi GM has become a cult favorite of sorts among “Jakartians” (who are famed in Indonesia for their passion for noodles). Oftentimes, Jakartians who have been abroad for a long time make a pilgrimage for bakmi Gajah Mada first before other delicious Jakarta eating establishments. I think part of the reason for its popularity is bakmi GM’s comfort food status among Jakartians like me.

After the scrumptious lunch, I proceeded to get some good old cakes I used to buy along the streets as an elementary student. It’s one of the “jajanan” (snacks) I love from “kaki lima” (literally meaning five feet). Kaki lima basically refers to food peddlers on the streets of Jakarta that cook and store the product on their carts! They are nicknamed kaki lima due to the fact that the combination of the sellers’ feet (2), the cart’s two wheels (2) and the cart’s back stand for balance (1) add up to five “feet”. So anyway, I spotted two carts selling some of my favorite sweet snacks: the sombrero-shaped kue ape, kue bolu cubit (pinching cake) and kue laba-laba (spider cake).

Another kaki lima dish that I got to eat again is soto Betawi (or Batavian soup; Batavia is an old name for Jakarta). Soto Betawi has a peppery, sweet, soy-curry flavor with a hint of lime, coconut and other spices. It also has shredded chicken, glass noodles (or other kinds of noodles) and is served with fragrant, fried shallots sprinkled on top.

Another good old favorite of mine and my family’s is sweet martabak Surabaya style. It is sold in open restaurants with open kitchens along the streets of Indonesia. Martabak is a round, thick pancake with a thin, crispy crust around it. When the middle is a little more than halfway cooked (think firm but soft and creamy texture), it is then generously buttered and then sprinkled with toppings of your choice. Toppings include crushed peanuts, chocolate sprinkles, shredded cheese and sesame seeds. I know what you must be thinking: cheese in a sweet dessert pancake? The kind of cheese that martabak makers use is one that is made in Indonesia. It is less salty and pungent, but sweeter and milder.

Batter preparation with an old-school mixer.
It is then poured onto a special heavy pan. They then spread a thin later of the batter on the sides of the skillet to achieve a crispy crust surrounding the pancake.
The cooked martabak is then transferred to a chopping board for generous buttering and sprinkling of the various toppings. You can “harass” the cook to give you more toppings. Yippee! More peanuts for moi!

It is then cut into smaller pieces in case you want to munch on them in the car. The man in the foreground is my father, who as you can see, just couldn’t wait to get his hands on our ooey-gooey, buttery, cheesy, nutty martabak.

Besides the sweet martabak, there’s also the salty martabak. They’re completely different not only in the way they taste but also in the way they’re prepared! The sweet martabak is grilled on a pan while the salty martabak is deep fried. Fortunately, the stall we go to makes both sweet and salty martabaks. Bonus! The salty martabak is filled with either sautéed vaggies, ground meat (lamb, beef or chicken) and/or eggs. The salty martabak starts with a really thin dough that has been tossed around skillfully by this cool guy.

It is then deep fried in oil, where the cook turns the martabak around continuously (for maybe, faster cooking?) and at the same time tries to keep the martabak flat by pressing a large flat spatula on it.

It can be eaten with a special soy sauce that the store gives. The alternating layers of filling and fried dough drizzled with the special sauce was heavenly.

Another “street” food of my childhood is called ronde. They’re basically balls of glutinous rice flour filled with crushed peanuts. The ronde are cooked in a ginger-laced broth along with barley. It is kind of like the popular mochi ice cream except that the mochi skin is thicker and it is filled with nuts instead of ice cream.

Besides delicious snacks, Jakarta’s streets are also chock filled with vendors selling delicious “ethnic” foods. Indonesia is such a big country that comprises of thousands of islands. There are about 300 different ethnic groups that contribute to Indonesia’s rich cultural fabric. I had the fortune the enjoy food from a street stall that makes Javanese food. The stall’s specialties are plain steamed chicken and bubur ayam (or chicken porridge), both of which I tried. The different regions of Indonesia enjoy their porridges in slightly different fashions. For instance, the Aceh people prepare bubur in chicken broth with shrimp and several spices. It is supposed to be good for restoring energy after a whole day of fasting during the holy month of Ramadhan. The Javanese Islam prepare bubur Suro, a porridge named after the 10th day of the month of Suro on the Muslim calendar. Bubur suro is served with Indonesian chicken curry sauce (also known as “opor ayam”) and a handful of pomegranates.

So anyway, our food was prepared in an open kitchen right next to the road and you can pick whichever chicken pieces you want. Unhygienic, I know. If there was such a place in the US, it would be closed down on its opening day *Har*
The chosen pieces of chicken were then shredded and served with a drizzling of a sesame oil, soy sauce combination and sliced cucumbers. The porridge can be eaten with their yummylicious home-made chili sauce and fried dough fritters (otherwise known as “cakwe” or “youtiao” in Mandarin).

Chinese influence also exists in the food scene of Indonesia, especially Jakarta. My family and I made a pilgrimage to a family friend-owned restaurant in the “puncak” (or mountain areas of Bogor for a day trip. It’s approximately a 2.5 hours drive through snakey roads that wind in the mountains. The restaurant is named “Pada Senang” which translates to “Everyone is Happy”. And that much is true when my whole family used to come here. When I was a young child, my grandfather used to own a villa in the Bogor mountains and the whole nuclear family would often spend weekends with my grandparents. Pleasing everyone was no small task when the whole family consists of 2 elderly grandparents, 14 uncles/aunts/parents and 17 cousins (including my sis and me). But there is something for everyone at Pada Senang. It now has a second branch in Jakarta but my parents are convinced that it doesn’t even come close to the food in Bogor.

The menu is written in Chinese on a blackboard. They serve favorites and occasionally have specials that use seasonal ingredients. The restaurant is sparse and still has about twenty copies of this year’s calendar on its walls as its main decoration, which is quite funny. They must really have a very short-term memory if they need a calendar in their face wherever they go J So we ordered our old favorites, including bihun ayam (rice noodles with chicken), sautéed tofu with pork, kuluyuk (or sweet and sour chicken), and fish head soup.
Isn't it weird that they sell bottled Guinness in hot, hot Indonesia?
The bihun ayam was as I remembered: perfectly seasoned, and there is no shortage of shrimp, eggs, chicken pieces and fresh vegetables!
I forgot the Indonesian name for this dish. This tofu dish was delicious even though it almost had the mushy consistency of porridge (almost!).
The piping hot sweet and sour chicken was topped with sliced sautéed onions and was not (thank God!) completely covered in the sweet and sour sauce, which is the way I like it. It allows each person to add as much sauce as he/she wants to and I happen to prefer mine with just a few drops. The fried chicken did not taste excessively greasy and I loved that the breading just right: not too thick, not too thin.
The fish head soup, as you can imagine, was rather fishy. I tasted a tinge of allspice, which mellowed out the soup. However, the fish was cooked very well: it wasn’t too tough and it wasn’t mushy.

We then ended this heavenly meal with a “gemblong” that we bought from a traveling vendor. Gemblong is basically spheres of fried dough that is filled with grated coconut. It is also then dipped in a combination of sugar and gula Jawa (also known as dark palm sugar). As you can imagine, it tastes very sweet. The gemblong consistency is quite chewy and while it also melts in your mouth.

The biggest meal (literally) that I had during my homecoming was in Eka Ria, a quintessentially Chinese restaurant near Jakarta’s Chinatown in central Jakarta. My late maternal grandfather loved to go there for special occasions. So we ate there for my lovely mother’s birthday celebration and boy, what a feast it was! So this is the menu written in Chinese. It was an 8-course dinner (not including the birthday cakes) served family style.

We started with “ee foo mee” (or Ee Foo noodles) that is both crispy and soft at the same time. It is served with fried egg yolks, chicken and vegetables. As you can see from the glistening noodles, it is pretty greasy, and man, was it delish!

Next, came the 7-colored (or rainbow) platter heaped with (what else?) seven types of Chinese delicacies. In the middle of the picture is a pile of stringy, crunchy, spiced jellyfish with sesame seeds. On top of the pile are quartered century eggs (that are normally served with rice porridge). To the left corner, the white, creamy-looking stuff is shrimp with mayonaisse (my favorite of the seven); going clockwise to its right, is some fried tofu skin, followed by chopped braised liver; the light colored item closest to the camera is steamed chicken. To the left is some sliced duck meat and deep-fried Chinese style chicken fingers.

The following course was one of Eka Ria’s specialties, their famed fried pigeons! They were super salty (too salty for me). Their skin is very crispy and rich, the meat was tender and it literally melted in my mouth. However, I didn’t think all that work (tearing the wings and legs off, trying to tease out the meat) was worth it just because these pigeons didn’t have much meat on them.

As if this meal wasn’t rich enough, the next course was Peking Duck (argh! My arteries … are … blocked …). The crispy duck skin is served with sliced bread (Eka Ria style), sliced Chinese ham and sprigs of green onion with little bowls of special plum sauce.

The next dish, fried super jumbo shrimp is my favorite! I think they were steamed and then stir-fried in their house chili sauce. The super jumbo shrimps were so meaty and nicely tender (not overcooked, joy!).

It was then followed by winter melon soup (lower bowl in picture) that also contains beans, shredded meat (pork, I think?) and of course, winter melons. It was a perfectly mellow counterpoint to the spicy fried lobster. The upper bowl in the picture is the fish course of the night. I’m not sure what kind of fish it is but I know it was steamed in a mix of sesame oil, soy sauce and topped with green onions. Again, this matches very well with the winter melon soup, providing a salty contrast to the winter melon’s mild taste.

I didn’t take a picture of the other soup course we had, Eka Ria’s famed seafood shark’s fin soup. I was too busy devouring the succulent chunks of crab and fin. However, check out one of the cakes that we had for my mum’s birthday. It's a rich chocolate cake that had 3 layers. In between the layers were raspberries and raspberry jam. Pretty choco-licious!

Jakarta also has a growing Korean population and with it, an increase in Korean restaurants. I had a wonderful barbecue at a Korean restaurant in Jakarta named “22”. “22” was the only thing on its sign that I know, the rest was written in Korean. So anyway, like many Korean barbecue places, the meat or kalbi is cooked on the table, in front of you on a grill. The cool thing about “22” is that not only does the waitress do the cooking for us, the meat was cooked on a coal grill.

The kalbi was tender and delicious. Besides the meat, we also had the various Korean appetizers in small dishes. The appetizers include the customary kimchi, spicy mussels (or are they clams?), mini egg pancakes and steamed vegetables among others. We also ordered kimchi ji gae (kimchi soup with tofu) and chap jae. I must say that the chap jae was the best chap jae I’ve tasted and everything was authentic (after all the owner is Korean).

The spiciest meal I had was at a streetside restaurant that specializes in grilled fish. I forgot the name already but I think it might’ve been Batu Tulis and is located near Jakarta’s Chinatown. My parents were pretty regular customers here, so before we even sat, my mum did the ordering. Since, it has an outdoor kitchen, we had to walk by the kitchen before reaching the seating area. You can pick and choose your own fish and vegetables, which my mum did. Their specialty item is grilled fish, which we had. My mum also ordered some spicy clams and stir-fried kang kong (I don’t know what this vegetable is called in English. I think it might be … water spinach?).

BEFORE
AFTER

Being a fish retard (I can only identify salmon, tuna and bass by sight), again, I don’t know or recall what kind of fish it was but it sure tasted good. It was served with belacan, a shrimpy chili paste, of which we had the original belacan and a mango belacan. The original belacan has a deliciously overpowering spicy taste that is perfect with the mild, flaky grilled fish. The mangi belacan is less pungent and sweeter, also nice with the fish. The chili clams were also yummy. The clam shells were perfect to hold some of the spicy broth that they were cooked in so that when slurping down the clam, you’d also get a taste of the spicy broth.

The kang kong was also spicy and delicious. It wasn’t overly soft and it still retained a little bit of its crispiness. The kang kong leaves also absorbed a lot of the chili broth that it was cooked in.

Even after all that culinary debauchery in Jakarta, I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to eat in Singapore when I was just transiting for one night. I spent my early till late teens in Singapore and the one thing I missed the most was “yong tau foo”, a tofu noodle soup. I especially adored one hawker stall on the basement level of Takashimaya, a shopping mall in the heart of Orchard Road, Singapore’s main shopping district. I loved it because anyone could literally pick out the fillings he/she wanted to go into the soup and they offered such a huge variety of them, ranging from meatballs, shrimp balls, fried tofu, an assortment of vegetables, wontons, fish pastes and mushrooms, etc. You then hand over the bowl full of goodies to the person behind the counter, after which, he will cut the goodies in to small, bite-size pieces before plunging them all in hot boiling broth along with noodles of your choice (egg, rice or glass noodles). Additional toppings include green onion, fried shallot and the divine home-made chili sauce.
My favorite item of the “yong tau foo”, a special tofu flown in from Japan. It is pretty firm and is quite chewy with a slightly sweet taste to it.

As you can imagine, after two weeks of being spoiled with delicious Indonesian food, I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms from it and I’m still squirting the Indonesian chili sauce (that I smuggled back) on everything. I really miss the food, but here’s the reason I miss it even more … ... only the cutest, most adorable, most huggable nephew in the whole wide world!

London adventure

2006-10-11T14:33:00.000-05:00

During my two-and-a-half week hiatus from school, besides going home to Indonesia, I had a mini 4-day long adventure with my little sis in London. She was there for the summer for an internship and I thought it would be a grrreat opportunity to explore London before going home. Hey, having a guide who knows where she's going doesn't hurt at all! So anyway, I was totally dreading the eating experience there because England is not exactly known for its wonderful cuisine. However, I found London to be such a melting pot of delicious restaurants!

I know that London's Indian food scene is pretty good, with the large amount of South Asian immigrants. One of the nights, my sis and I made our way to Brick Lane, also known as the city's Banglatown. It is a neighbourhood populated with many South Asians and a plethora of Indian restaurants. We could smell the curry and rich spices once we emerged from the underground station, making my mouth water. My sis brought me to a place she had been to before with her friends. I don't remember the name unfortunately. Our samosas were overly greasy and disappointing. However the chicken curry was superb and I loved the Indian bread, or roti, which was garlic-flavored. The curry was a bit too hot for my sis and we had to order some mango lassi to counter its spiciness.

There is so much competition among the Indian restaurants in Brick Lane that you cannot lose. The restaurants usually hire a person to stand in front of their establishment and "invite" customers. They can be rather aggressive but with competition at an all-time high, the customer always wins. This is one of the few places in London where you can get great-tasting food for very reasonable prices.

Besides the Indian food, I also love love, absolutely love the cafe scene in London. In particular, there's is this chain of French-based cafe, called "Paul" that serves very high-quality coffee and delicious, pretty pastries. It is in one of Paul cafes in Kensington that I had the best latte ever (yes, THE best)! Paul's croissants are perfectly flaky and buttery; the tarts were adequately fruity and creamy; and oh ... the macaroons were to-die-for! I looked up the company and found out that in Paris, Paul is like the French version of Au bon Pain in America.

Another cafe my sis brought me to is Cafe Deco, also in Kensington. It is a charming little coffee shop along Gloucester Road, a street that has many small cafes and charming shops. We decided to lunch at this place and had sandwiches for lunch with a dessert after that. Our respective sandwiches were quite delicious but not particularly memorable. In fact, I can't even remember what they were now. Our desserts were very beautiful. My sister had a chocolate mousse cake that is wrapped with a pretty sky-blue ribbon and I had a luscious-looking raspberry tart. Despite their wonderful presentation, they tasted pretty average. The highlight of my tart was the fresh fruit (raspberries); the crust was hard and tasteless, the custard was heavy and overly sweet. My sister's mousse cake also tasted pretty average.

So anyway, one can't visit England without having tea at least once, right? My sis wanted to bring me to Sotheby's for high tea. When we got there, the tea room was unfortunately being renovated and was thus, closed for the season. So we asked the very friendly receptionist for an alternative and she suggested Liberty, the ultra-exclusive London department store (yes, more exclusive than Harrod's). It was first opened in 1875 and it is known for the Tudor-style building that it occupies.

Liberty has two restaurants: the Tea Room and the Art Bar Cafe. We went to the latter and was pleasantly surprised. The cafe was decorated with tables and chairs that don't quite match, but don't clash. Most of the furniture is wood and I especially adored the intricate curtains. I loved the decor because it made me feel like I'm walking into a friend's home. High tea at Liberty is not exactly cheap. It starts at 10.75GBP per person. However, one of the "bigger" after tea "sets" would be perfect to share with a friend, which is what I did with my sister. We had the Liberty champagne tea, which cost us 19.50GBP. They were kind enough to let us share it and check out what consists of the set!

Not only is there an endless pot of wonderful Earl Grey, they also served a flute of champagne. On top is a delicious gigantic scone studded with raisins.

It was served with clotted cream, organic gooseberry, rose petal and strawberry preserves. A biteful of scone with a dollop of clotted cream was simply marvellous: rich, crumbly and comforting. The preserves were all delicious: not to sweet, not too sour. My absolute favorite was the rose petal preserve. Not only was it unique, it was very fragrant and tasty. It was so good that I just had to ask the waiter if it was for sale! Unfortunately, it wasn't because the chef makes it fresh, from scratch in his kitchen. Oh well, I tried!

Other sweet stuff we had with the tea were a slice of chocolate cake, a macaroon and a strawberry tartlet. The chocolate cake was rich and delicious. The macaroon was snappy and crisp. The strawberry tartlet was simply perfect! The fruits were fresh, the custard was creamy and smooth, and the crust was buttery and melt-in-your-mouth type of crumbly. As if there's not sufficient decadence, we were also served a few types of yummy-licous sandwiches. They include cucumber, smoked salmon and ham'n'cheese. How English!

Besides afternoon tea, the cafe at Liberty also serves breakfast and lunch. You can find an eclectic selection of breakfast items ranging from Welsh rarebit and toasted crumpets to eggs bendict and smoked salmon. The lunch menu is also equally cool. Offerings include wild Scottish salmon served with Thai asparagus and hollandaise, chicken liver and brandy parfait, roast artichoke and ricotta ravioli, and poached lobster. We didn't try any of these items, but judging from the homemade baked goods and sandwiches we had with tea, I'm sure the breakfast and lunch dishes is delicious too! Good bakers are almost always good cooks!

Anyway, being in London, of course we just had to visit Harrod's! The department store exuded wealth and exclusivity. But I felt right at home in their famous food hall. Harrod's food hall is simply awesome! Its tea section alone is astounding (so are the prices!). Being a bit of a tea fanatic, I just had to buy a tin of their Earl Grey. Situated adjacent to the tea and coffee area is the chocolate and candy area, which is also equally, if not more magnificent. Chocolate offerings include the high-end Valrhona, the (relatively) mainstream Godiva and other brands I've never heard of. Naturally, they also have a section dedicated to Middle Eastern goodies such as mahmouls and baklava. My sis and I tried some of their Turkish delights and boy, oh boy, were they delightful! Our favorite was the nutty pistachio Turkish delight!

Harrod's food hall also sells groceries, such as fruits and vegetables and meats (at an exclusive price, of course). It is said that the royal family's groceries are from Harrod's! *Ooooooooh* *Aaaaaaah* My sis and I decided to share a two-scoop sundae of sorts at Harrod's gelato bar, Morrelli's Gelato:one scoop hazelnut (I luuuuuuurve Nuttela) and white chocolate rose (my sis' choice, very sweet!). The hazelnut ice cream was nutty, the way I like it, and the white chocolate rose had nice white chocolate chunks and a flowery fragrance of rose syrup. It reminded me a lot of an Indonesian drink called Bandung, which is a creamy rose syrup drink. We also loved that the sundae came with these cute Harrod's bears wafers!

Aren't they just the cutest? They had a mild nutty flavor and a crisp bite and yet a tender texture. Being a big fan of cute food stuff, I just had to ask (again) whether they sold these biscuits. Of course, second time unlucky, they weren't for sale. In fact, our server told us that the wafers were exclusively made for Harrod's in Italy. Our server was sweet enough to give us a few more of these adorable wafers without our asking! Talk about superb service!

The only expensive meal my sis and I had was at Jamie Oliver's restaurant, called fifteen. It is so named because in the beginning, Jamie Oliver gave an opportunity to 15 disadvantaged youngsters who are interested in the restaurant business to work in this place. It is located in north London in Westland Place. It occupies an old loft which looks like a former factory. The decor is modern and minimalist. the menu changes daily, which is pretty cool. It means that the team cares about the freshness of the ingredient. Service was friendly but rather uninformed. We asked for the waiter's opinion about the dishes and he just gave us a generic answer of "Oh, I like everything. Everything here's good".

We started out with an appetizer of prosciutto with melon. The melon was soft, sweet and ripe, and it was perfectly accompanied by the saltiness and smokiness of our prosciutto. My sis and I then shared two entrees: lamb with roasted bell peppers and creamy mushroom rissotto with a dash of truffle oil. The lamb with the roasted peppers partnered beautifully. The light sweetness of the roasted peppers gave a counterpoint to the lamb's richness.

The rissotto was wonderfully rich and creamy. The rice was cooked perfectly: not too soft, not too hard, and I loved the mushrooms with a whiff of truffle.

My sis ended the meal with a chocolate fondue-like cake and I chose the cheese platter. The chocolate cake was too soft (think liquid-y) but its presentation was adorable. It was basically baked in a tea cup and it rose a little bit like a fondue. It is topped with whipped cream (I think?). My cheese platter consisted of a raisin-studded baguette and two unpasteurized cheeses: one is a Cheddar and the second is the famed French brie de meaux. I didn't like the Cheddar so much: its texture is too hard and it is overly pungent. But ohhhh, the brie de meaux was heaven in my mouth. Touted as French cheese's king of kings, it is rich and creamy with deliciously nutty undertones. Even with a 45% fat content, it was 100% worth it! Now, if only the American government will loosen its regulations on unpasteurized cheese. Sigh~

Another great (but cheap) meal we had was a chicken meal in Cambridge, at a Portuguese fast food chicken place called Nando's, introduced to us by our cousin Jessy. Unlike the typical grease-drenched fast food, Nando's chicken is flame-grilled and doused with their special peri-peri chili sauce. You can also add the different heat-levels of peri-peri sauce to your own liking. Portuguese explorers were introduced by the African Mozambiques to the African Bird's eye chili, which they called pili-pili. Unable to pronounce it properly, the Portuguese called it peri-peri and subsequently experimented cooking with it. Not only does Nando's have peri-peri chicken combinations, they also offer burgers and vegetarian options. Sides include coleslaw, corn and spicy rice. One thing I regret not trying is their peri-peri but appetizer. Yummm...

Besides all the debauchery, we actually did a considerable amount of sightseeing. But London in 4 days is just not enough. I loved the hustle and bustle of London. It is not like New York in that it felt less hostile somehow. Not that Londoners are the friendliest people in the world, but I felt very comfortable there despite a heightened state of alert due to terrorism. Terrorism is such a concern that trash cans are not to be found anywhere in underground train or railway stations for fear that someone could drop a bomb into one of these trash cans. Still, there are many friendly Londoners we encountered, such as the smiley Sainsbury grocery store security guard and a very helpful stranger who helped me with my luggage at the airport underground station. Besides the excitement of trying new things at new places, it is the opportunity to encounter kindness and compassion in strangers that keeps me travelling! enjoy the pics!

Been around the world... well, England and Indonesia anyway.

2006-09-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

Phew, it's just been a few days after retuning from my trip home to Jakarta, Indonesia, and I'm homesick already. Boohoo~ Back to the real world as a lab rat. Anyway, for the past 3 weeks or so, I have travelled to England (to visit my little sis) and Indonesia. Travelling always inspires me to create whether it's in the kitchen or with my knitting needles, etc. It also makes me appreciative of the slot Life has given me, being able to do what I enjoy, being able to travel and encounter other cultures and peoples, being blessed with a loving family and being fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who care. I know, I know. Sappy, right?

The 3 weeks spent away from reality was a much-needed break. My day-to-day life doesn't suck that much because I'm actually enjoying what I do as a grad student and I'm not plagued with anxieties about not having a roof over my head or food on the plate. However, a lot of times, I'm stuck in a routine of only seeing the negatives in life, knowing that there are bad people out there who have nothing better to do than make life difficult for others.

Being away from my normal every-day life allows me to see the beautiful (and delicious) side of life. I encountered kindness from total strangers in a foreign land, whether it's in the form of a simple smile or help with my heavy luggage down a long flight of stairs. I was exposed to the various interesting tidbits of English culture such as the succulent Indian food in London, the different accents and slangs ("biscuits" as opposed to cookies, "dodgy" as opposed to shady or sketchy, "queue" as opposed to line up), and their obsession with tea. Being away from my routine has also re-instilled in me appreciation for my routine, actually. I even enjoy washing my dishes (though I don't think this will last too long, hah!).

I have come back re-energized and ready to do anything and everything. Here's to a better world and I can't wait to set off on my next adventure!

An All-American Palate

2006-08-09T11:01:00.001-05:00

Hullo friends!

I've been having a good week so far and I hope the same goes for you too! Anywayz, my culinary adventure this past seven days has been limited to the confines of my apartment, which is fine by me coz I love to cook. Originally, I had planned on visiting the beautiful Chicago Botanical Garden in the far north suburb but my companion got sick *boohoo* and we had to cancel. What was even more disappointing is that we were planning to get lunch at an Ethiopian place before we make our way to the garden. Sigh~ Such is the story of my life.

As for my homely culinary feats, they have been mostly very all-American. The best meal I made recently consisted of meatloaf with a tangy pineapple/ketchup/brown sugar glaze, garlicky green beans and the blue box mac'n'cheese. I don't know if a meal can get any more American. So here's a picture of dinner prior to assembly:

And here's my pathetic attempt at haute cuisine plating:

Here's a more standard plating style:

While mulling around at home with not much to do (which is one of my favorite ways to spend a day), I was inspired to bake a batch of raisin oatmeal cookies. I haven't baked cookies recently because I'm trying to lose weight (so I can eat more in Indonesia later this month *harhar*) and be fit. Hmmm... note the prioritizing... Anyway, I baked a batch of cookies with the Quaker oats recipe that they always give on the jar cap inside. I haven't been able to bake the kind of cookies that bakeries make, i.e. large, thin cookies with crisp outsides and chewy/soft insides. I thought that this might be achieved by underbaking the cookies slightly. which I did (I baked them for 9 minutes, the recommended baking time is 10-12 minutes, big difference, I know). Right out of the oven, the cookies were delicious and crisp while maintaining the softness inside. However, the next day, they became totally soft and chewy. Sigh~ Maybe the bakery cookies are always that way because they're always fresh? I dunno.

Cookie Monster atack!!! Man, that bite sure is big!

Oatmeal raisin cookies in the TWILIGHT ZOOONE!!! Doodoodooodoodoodoodoodoo *Twilight Zone theme song* ... What a geek.

We've been eating relatively mild stuff the past few days due to J's cold/cough. Lotsa chicken and chicken soup, other soups, salads and (drum rolls) grilled cheese! Yep, good ol' Americana! Anywayz, for the grilled cheese, I've been using this block of Mousehouse Jack that J bought from Wisconsin. By itself the Jack cheese is super creamy and smooth. In the grilled cheese sandwich, it's even better. The warm, ooey-gooey, melted cheese is perfectly sandwiched by two buttered, grilled white bread.

Now tell me that's not the most beautiful grilled cheese sandwich ever!?!?

Okie dokie, that's all for now. I'm being dragged to Indianapolis tonight for a long weekend. Yep, gaming convention. Don't look at me that way! It's J's brilliant idea! Of course, I'm going to try scouting out good restaurants around Indie! Have a great weekend and eat well!

Yummy yummy yummy I got fun in my tummy of a weekend!

2006-07-31T14:45:00.000-05:00

I was inspired to splurge on fresh produce this weekend so I went to the Green City Farmers' Market in Lincoln Park this past Saturday. Usually, I only buy whatever produce are cheap or are on sale at the grocery store because that's the only way I can afford fresh ingredients on my meagre graduate student stipend. (Those damn university slave drivers!!!) So anyway, I got up at about 6.30am (a miracle by my standards) and trudged my way up north on the bus. The bus took its own sweet time to arrive so I reached the farmers' market only at 8am.

The farmers' market basically consists of various tents under which farmers showcase their fresh fruits and vegetables. There were also a number of bakers and cooks selling their stuff. I started out by scouting out all the stands at least once to get an idea of what everyone was selling. As you may already know, it's the peak of summer and most of the berries and peaches are ripe and luscious right now. I was delighted to find out that most of the farmers do not use herbicides or pesticides to grow their crops because I'm starting to get a tad paranoid due to recent media reports on their harms. Naturally, due to my zombie-like state in the A.M. hours, I forgot to bring along my camera *sob* and thus, I can't share the wonderful sights of the market. But anyway, the vivid colors and sweet smell of the berries induced me to buy a pint of strawberries and raspberries each. Their scent was so tantalizing that I popped a few into my mouth as soon as I paid up. I couldn't taste much difference between the organic raspberry and a normal one. However, the organic strawberry just simply burst with flavor! Although the organic strawberry is much smaller than the normal one, its color is much deeper and its flavor richer and sweeter!

I also bought a blueberry-peach crepe for 2nd breakfast (yes, 2nd because I already had some cereal at home prior to my departure for this trip). The blueberries and peaches were of course purchased from the farmers in the market and were so fresh I could have cried. Unfortunately one drawback with the crepe is that there just wasn't enough fruit in it for $6. Near the crepe stand was a bakery tent selling home-baked goods. Some of the items include fruit or savory galettes and organic cookies. I was sooo very tempted to buy a beautiful plum galette but decided against it because I wanted to try baking my own. Being the very far-sighted person I am, I had to plan for lunch! So I purchased a fresh baguette, some tomatoes and a bunch of basil. I cannot believe that the big bunch of basil I bought was only $2! Two dollars would've only gotten me a few sprigs at the grocery store. So anyway, back to lunch. Unfortunately, none of the farmers sold mozzarella so I had to stop by a grocer for my mozzarella.

As you might've guessed, I wanted to make a sandwich with basil, mozzarella and sliced tomatoes. Really, can a sandwich be any more Italian? Check out the food porn ;) *harhar*

I tried toasting it for the ooey-gooey mozzarella texture but it only made the mozzarella release some liquid and burnt the basil a bit. Never toast green leaves!!! Anyway, it still turned out delicious. I drizzled some olive oil over the cheese and sprinkled some salt and black pepper for flavor. Yum~ Must do it again.

As if that's not enough, I decided to make creme brulee. Yes! I recently bought a creme brulee set including 4 ramekins, a butane torch and a recipe book on eBay (luuurve eBay). I decided to try the "light'n'breezy" recipe that uses half the cream and replaces the other half with 2% evaporated milk. The custard part of the creme brulee turned out creamy and smooth although I had to be more careful to not overbake it in the future. The torch was slightly problematic because it would extinguish itself every few seconds, which, as you can imagine, is very irritating! However, I managed to caramelize the layer of sugar on the creme perfectly *joy*

Virgin post alert!

2006-07-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

Hello friends!

Welcome to my brand spankin' new blog! So anyway, I'm a graduate student (my official title is resident lab rat) in Chicago studying molecular metabolism, specifically diabetes and obesity. Having been raised in a big Chinese-Indonesian family, I love food! That translates to huuuge family reunions with delicious home-made dishes and tons of virulent gossip! I've been surfing the web a lot in between experiments and have been inspired by the tons of food bloggers and food pornographers (*harhar* I just love that term). Hence, this blog ;) I hope to share with you my daily (or at least weekly) culinary adventures outside and inside my home!

Besides food, I'll be writing (or ranting) about some other topics that are important to me, such as nutrition, exercise, music and knitting (what a housewife I am). Last but not least, come back again and eat chocolate!