Roasted garlic = A Taste of Perfection

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 ...

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

Birthday weekend

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!

Cheddar jalapeno bread

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.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful!

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!).

New Year, New Adventures

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!