March: Cooking

Looking at this month's photos the common theme I see is the use of ingredients from new suppliers I've found fairly recently with the noodles coming from a Korean grocery store I've seen for years but never visited before and the shrimp and chorizo coming from a new butcher/provision store that opened fairly recently.

My version of japchae with sweet potato noodles, green onions and Gulf shrimp. I've done a few versions of this recently since acquiring a large packet of the noodles. Really love the chewiness of the noodles. I've also found a regular source for Gulf shrimp so they're a weekly occurrence in one form or another. After some trial and error I've also mastered the art of slicing the shrimp sideways so they curl prettily when cooked.




Chorizo and mushroom stuffed green peppers topped with parmesan. I wish the chorizo was hotter but this was a tasty dish nevertheless. My first time cooking with parmesan purchased in a small end hunk.

Chocolate cake topped with yogurt, dried cherries and almonds. The cake is flavoured (not noticeably, unfortunately) with elderflower syrup. I bought a bottle after trying a lovely floral elderflower sparkling drink in New York, and have been trying to find new ways to use it other than adding it to sparkling water which is definitely on for summer.

I used the microwave potato chip recipe floating around the internet for these sweet potato chips. Amazingly they did become crispy and tasted just like potato chips. After all all those thousands of people on the internet could have been lying. No problem slicing the potato thin enough with just a regular knife. I'm torn about this recipe. It takes a really long time to make a tiny quantity (2.5 minutes on high for about 8 chips) but now that chips can be made at home, can I justify buying potato chips any more?

March: Eating Out

Birthday lunch and dessert at Amadeus Restaurant in Ann Arbor. Bigos topped with kielbasa, with salad and crusty French bread. The accompanying sour cream really enhanced the stew. Followed by a rich, dense hazelnut torte. I specifically selected this restaurant for their wide range of European style cakes and was very pleased with both the main and the cake. The atmospheric decorations and ambience were a nice bonus.

Sweet Snacks

A couple of sweet snacks for a cold week. No baking as I need to lose weight and am preparing for a big Chinese New Year blowout next week. First, a giant milk chocolate "H" from the Netherlands. Sweet and milky.

The other was plain yoghurt topped with matcha jelly and brown sugar.

NSW: Day 2

Breakfast: coffee, cheese and potato bread with hard boiled egg, grapefruit
Lunch: Grilled Viet-style chicken thighs with panang curry using my stockpile of cauliflower and edamame.
Dinner: Morningstar spicy black bean burger with cabbage and onions

Snacks: almond pudding from Istanbul, biscotti, fruit, nuts.

Weekend Cooking: Yellow curry and green tea agar

Maesri yellow curry with cauliflower, edamame, spinach and beef make an aromatic and tasty meal.

Not the most attractive of photos but this is surprisingly tasty, with a softer texture than my usual agar jellies. Strong grassy, slightly bitter flavour makes this a nice digestif.

Weekday Dinner: Curry and dessert

It's been a while since I've actually cooked due to the heat and my parents' recent visit.

This panang curry with orange roughy, green peppers, tomato and Chinese eggplant served with steamed jasmine rice was easy to make, and made a nice change from the usual noodles. The curry was just a packaged Mae Ploy paste. It was doctored with coconut milk, fish sauce and chilli powder but was strangely tasteless and unspicy, though fragrant. I've used other Mae Ploy pastes with great success but this is my first time with the panang paste, so this is rather disappointing. Sorry for the crappy photo but the steam fogged up my camera.

Dessert is plain yoghurt with peanuts and blueberries. I like the crunch of the nuts and the blend of sweet and salty. Looks good too!

Birthday meal

A quick birthday meal of chicken and mushroom dumplings, the first of spring asparagus and Sriracha sauce. Also black cherry ice-cream from the local university's dairy store. Lots of actual cherry pieces even though cherry season is still distant.

Quick dessert

No photos as it turned out rather unphotogenic, but I recently made my one and only dessert recipe: agar agar. I admit it's shocking to have this as my one and only dessert, but I don't have a really sweet tooth, and enjoy agar for its ability to create interesting, light and easy desserts. Sadly it is also my usual contribution to office potlucks. This time I made a two-layer jelly with the bottom consisting of sweetened soy milk (Yeo's brand so the bean flavour was pretty strong) and a top layer of grapefruit juice squeezed by my own fair hands. This was tasty, with the slight bitterness and acidity of the grapefruit countering the creamy soy.

Other variations I've made in the past:
- sweetened coconut milk with fresh mango cubes
- sweetened coconut milk with canned pineapple chunks
- slightly sweetened jasmine or Earl Grey tea
- double layer of coconut milk and sweetened plain agar
- double layer of coconut milk and sweetened guava juice

In general for combinations I aim for something acid and/or sour mixed with something creamy and/or sweet. Other possibilities are hoon kuey with agar (ie coconut milk with corn), something with coffee and something with more exotic juices.

Seattle: bakeries

Le Panier

Pain au raisin: one of my favourite basic French pastries which is so hard to find in the U.S. This was a staple of our French bakery purchases back home in Auckland. This version was very flakey though not as buttery as I would prefer. Still excellent, especially when eaten sitting on a bench at Victor Steinbrueck Park watching the ferries coming and going on Elliott Bay.

Croissant au fromboise: very flaky as croissants should be, but intensely messy as the jam squirted everywhere.

Sandwiche avec pate de campagne was pleasantly reminiscent of the sandwiches found everywhere in Paris.

Chocolate macaron: my first taste of a macaron, this was pleasantly, not overly, sweet. The outer shell was soft and cakey and the ganache very chocolately. A good first experience.



A Piece of Cake

A hot dog bun, from this bakery in the International District was breakfast twice. With soft and slightly sweet bread in the Chinese style, this was a very good rendition of this classic.

Three Girls Bakery

A raspberry scone had a good texture and good balance of richness from the scone and tarness from the raspberry. The amount of flakes covering my clothing after I have eaten a croissant are pretty much how I judge croissants. This almond croissant was not messy enough by this measure.

Chocolate drop: a rich chocolate ganache on top of a shortbread-like base, this looked so beautiful, but was a little too sweet and rich for my tastes.








Dahlia Bakery

Coconut pie bite: this is an amazing pastry - creamy, not too sweet though not much coconut flavor, with an excellent contrast between the creamy filling and the shards of chocolate/coconut. As you can see it is also beautiful.





Meringue tart: the very rich, slightly sweetened caramelized meringue was a great contrast to the tart very lemony curd underneath. The caramelization added extra flavors and sweetness and is so beautiful. It's hard to tell from the photo but the meringue was about 2 inches high. I ended up deconstructing the meringue, and only eating about half of it as it was just too rich. Declicious when eaten alone the next morning.

The Crumpet Shop

A toasted crumpet with manchego is not the most traditional of toppings but was very good. The crumpet was a little denser than expected, but as my only previous experience of crumpets are grocery store crumpets back in New Zealand which are much lighter and fluffier, this may be normal. This is a very pleasant store with the crumpet baker and baking clearly visible from the dining area. It also sells all kinds of tea, honey and British goods such as Marmite.

Gelatiamo

Not a bakery but as I sampled the tiramisu from here rather than their gelato, I'll write about it here. This was my belated birthday cake and so I was a little disappointed. While it looked very pretty, the cake was a tad dry. My fault probably for buying it at 6pm.

Chocolate strawberries

A Sunday night experiment which I didn't really expect to work but did. Just shave and melt chocolate in microwave, dip the strawberries and chill in refridgerator. I used Trader Joe's Sao Tome 70% cacao, as it isn't really my favourite eating chocolate. The chocolate hardened really quickly and formed a nice thick and fairly glossy coating. Easy and pretty impressive, though only in small quantities as shaving the chocolate is fairly tedious.