This Saturday, I stopped by Costco to pick up basic food supplies for this weekend. Although I wouldn't be watching the televised Oscar ceremony this Sunday, I would be helping to cook for church on Sunday evening, and I knew that that we had to spruce up the church meal to make it Oscar-caliber. Into my cart, I threw a few refrigerated logs of goat cheese, an aged wedge of parmesan cheese, and a plastic mesh bag filled with purple onion bulbs. Those ingredients would later come together as a "baked chevre and onion tart," with golden-brown puff pastry strips laid over the top as a lattice crust.
But imagine my pleasant surprise when I stopped by the refrigerated foods aisle and saw a gigantic tub of creamy hummus. This was no ordinary hummus. The presentation was outstanding. Underneath the transparent plastic lid, the exposed surface of the hummus was generously bespeckled with a burgundy-colored paprika and topped with a tight cluster of pine nuts, strategically placed in the center.
I don't need to open an envelope to discover that Costco has won the award for best presentation and costume design of commercially-made hummus.
My friend just launched a new blog! Check out her inaugural post and come back to visit it for a regular dose of articulate prose to brighten your week. Don't forget to stop by her original blog too, for her poetic reflections.Also, this upcoming week, a guest will be blogging on Passionate Eater! There are many "passionate eaters" in this world, and I want to give every one of them a forum to share their views--on eating passionately of course!Till then, please feast your eyes on a savory red onion tart made with chevre (goat cheese), thinly-sliced circles of Mexican squash, crescent-shaped wedges of purple eggplant, and heaping handfuls of grated parmesan cheese. The tart was on its way into the oven when I snapped this photo. My beau and I made this tart for weekly small group, along with a simple salad made with mixed greens, thinly-cleaved segments of gala apples (that had been "treated" in acidulated water), grape tomatoes, and sliced button mushrooms, all which was gracefully bathed in a tart balsamic vinaigrette. The main dish that evening was baked salmon with dill.
I am trying out new Blogger Beta! I am so excited that you can assign labels to the posts! I also like that my Blogger account is now also my Google account. If I coud link my Yahoo!, Google, Flickr, and Blogger accounts all together, that would be ideal.
But I've found a few glitches with the Beta so far. Don't try to use the "Newer Posts" "Older Posts" links at the end of each post, as they have some narley bugs. (Too bad, I love that addition.) Plus, you can't code html into the template--they don't have an html coding option available yet, so you have to add in sidebar links one-by-one in a "user-unfriendly" program. Entering links one-at-a-time into preset text fields? I can cut and paste code faster! But I am confident the bugs were work themselves out.
Xanga, Typepad, WordPress, and users of other miscellaneous blogging programs, prepare to change to the superior blogging program!
Here are some pictures of a dinner made by Miss E. for small group last Friday! There are two types of baked penne pasta (one with olives, one without) and a luxurious salad with sliced beets, goat cheese, walnuts, and fennel.
Note: Whoops, I am going to revert back to the old blog template format for a bit! (I need my links for now.)
Wow, this past week has been really busy, but I'll get back into the posting groove soon. Let me just give you a quick glimpse of what is going on in my life: an acting lesson here, foreign language classes at the local adult school (and homework) there, and cooking weekly meals with church everywhere!
Cooking for church has been a lot more challenging than I originally anticipated. Get this, the budget is $50-$80 for 80-100 people! When I first heard the budget, I was floored into a stupor! I've been cooking for a few weeks now, and let me tell ya: I ain't very innovative. Fried rice and macaroni and Velveeta. But, I've made the budget twice, and cooked double the food than usual! And I'm proud of that!
I haven't taken many pictures of my cooking escapades, but here are some pictures of cheap potato dishes: curry potatoes and cheesy au gratin potatoes!
One of my fondest memories as a child, was when my parents would pack me sack lunches to bring to school. Opening up the plastic, Disney-themed lunch box and pouring the juice from my mini-thermos into the twist-on lid cup was enthralling, because it made me feel like an adult. Although my mother and father always provided me with their homemade sandwiches (and never the envied Lunchables that the "cool kids" got), I always enjoyed my sandwiches. I loved copying those classmates and peers who would stuff their lofty sandwiches with side-snacks, like potato chips and cheese crackers. Their sandwiches would be awe-inspiring, because they would have "double the filling" and they were "Dagwood-style." (You know, those ten-feet high sandwiches that are slathered with overflowing spoonfuls mayonnaise and mustard, and layered with zigzag cut petals of dill pickles, perfect squares of American cheese, and deli-thin sliced cold cuts?)
Through the years, somehow sack lunches lost their appeal and childhood mystique. Now, I find the flat, tasteless white bread sandwiches bland and uninteresting. As a full-grown adult, I now delight in another "all-in-one" sandwich, a sandwich akin to those child-assembled lunch sandwiches: the sloppy yet delicious pulled pork sandwich. Luckily, I had occasion to further reminisce this week, when my beau and I made large quantities of pulled pork sandwiches for a weekly study group gathering.
As a kid, I found sloppy joe or chipped barbequed beef sandwiches abhorrent. The spiced tomato sauce would always end up on my best school clothes, and I'd inevitably get a stern lecturing from my parents. Although pulled pork sandwiches are a close cousin to the sloppy joe or chipped barbeque sandwich, there is something "refined" about them that reminds me that I am an adult, but that simultaneously brings forth images of my favorite childhood summers. Maybe the adult feeling stems from the fact that there is cabbage inside the sandwich. Unlike potato salad, coleslaw always has always been a non-kid friendly picnic side dish.
I think what makes me feel most like a kid again, is the preparation of pulled pork sandwiches. When I tear apart the barbequed pork meat into wispy tendrils with my two forks, I am taken back to the playground sandbox, because I feel like a beeping yellow construction bulldozer shoveling and moving piles of shredded meat across the surface of the pork roast.
Furthermore, I find assembling the colorful shreds of carrots and red cabbage similar to my responsibilities in my childhood art class. To me, the final image of coleslaw is a colorful picture worthy being posted on the refrigerator with the kitchen magnets.
And don't you dare forget the two essential sides for pulled pork: creamy mashed potatoes (which you can playfully sculpt into gravy volcanoes on your plate) and corn-on-the-cob (nature's ultimate finger[s] food).
Thank you for sharing a moment with me that helps me to relive a part of my childhood, but still permits me to relish in my adult tastes.
This weekend, my beau and I were invited to lunch with his supervisor, who is of Indian descent. His supervisor and his supervisor's wife made us a traditional Indian meal, with a few amusing and enjoyable "non-traditional" elements.
My favorite part of the meal were the savory and moist cakes made with rice flour and stone-ground lentils. The cakes were steamed until soft and puffy in a rice-cooker fitted with an elaborate steaming rack. The cakes were filled with thousands of tiny air pockets, almost reminiscent of that of a carbonated beverage. The fluffy and airy consistency of the savory cakes was a cross between the chocolate cake within a Hostess Snowball (the ones coated in a neon pink coconut "snow") and spongy steamed dim sum char siu buns (that are filled with red barbequed pork).
We also sampled homemade paneer cheese, which had been cooked in a thickened curry-like gravy. As we dined, our hosts provided us with a step-by-step explanation on how to make authentic paneer. First, one must begin with two gallons of whole milk and a plastic container of plain yogurt. Then, the dairy combination is boiled until the curds and liquid whey separate. The curds are then strained in triple layers of cheesecloth, and the bundle of curds are balled up and hung from the metal faucet in a sink until the cheese solidifies into the deliciousness known as paneer.
Our main course was an Americanized cheesy vegetable casserole that had been baked until golden brown, yet molten hot and bubbly. Additionally, we enjoyed stewed and curried carrots and peas cooked in an ornately-decorated Indian pot, and deep-fried nests of shredded zucchini flavored with pungent spices that provided an almost Southwestern-like flair.
After our spicy lunch, we rushed over to church to help out with cooking. This week, we were to help out with making borscht. By the time we arrived, the other volunteers had already completed the "chopping" stage. Our duties? To stir the bubbling purplish-red soup contents in the behemoth vat. The soup contents included hot strands of stringy and limp red cabbage, tender cubes of beets, and softened red bell peppers that had been sautéed in olive oil. The liquid in the borscht was stock made from ham bones, whole cloves of garlic, cubed yellow onions, and black peppercorns. As we stirred the soup, it was hard not to cackle and pretend that we were witches, vigilantly adding vials of powdered ingredients into a blackened cauldron.
After the vegetables in the borscht had cooked through sufficiently, we took the soup off the heat and readied ourselves to blend the contents into a thickened purée. We couldn't find a long-handled metal ladle, so we used bowls with stumpy glass handles (handles that were not nearly long enough to keep the hot, sloppy, and sloshing soup contents at bay from inflicting our skin with stinging burn wounds) to scoop the soup into the narrow opening of the glass blender.
The molten melange burst through the volcanic hole at the top of the blender, and the steam from the boiling fluid prevented the rubber lips of the blender lid from forming a tight seal with the glass circumference of the glass pitcher component of the blender. The blender acted like a steaming geyser spewing forth hot magma. Our hands and faces were reddened with anger and chapped from being repeatedly scalded by the hot soup.
Although the process was miserable, the outcome of the soup was rather tasty. After the soup was puréed, it darkened into a deep, thick, and creamy magenta. The soup had powerful overtones of spicy peppercorns, and released the sweetness of the red cabbage and red bell peppers throughout the purée. After sampling the borscht, my tastebuds helped to make my raw and blistered hands feel much better.
It was a hot and spicy Sunday, that's for sure. But it was still a success, in terms of delighting in deliciously fiery foods, and also learning to make a boiling hot borscht (for the first time).
I've been really busy these last two weeks, but finally am catching a brief break! I missed everyone!
Lots of events happened that I'd like to share about: I had a wonderful holiday dinner with my friends and their family, helped make a massive Easter dinner for hundreds (or at least 50+) of people, flew down to Southern California, and got a debilitating case of food poisoning--all in the process of two weekends! Doesn't sound like much when it is written out, but I am still exhausted!First up, is a photo summary of the great dinner with my Southern California friends. My friends came up to spend the holidays with their family in the Bay Area, and generously invited me to join their entire family (and close family friends who earned the titles of "aunties" and "uncles") in a pre-Easter feast. My friends and I had a great time sharing and listening to stories, looking at (new) wedding pictures, catching up with one another, playing old skool Dr. Mario and Mario Cart on the Nintendo 64, and eating a sensational meal. The meal was even more delicious because of the great company (as my friend's mother wisely said). 
We dined on stir-fried greens cooked to perfection with pan-toasted garlic and a judicious amount of salt and pepper; and salmon steaks stewed in a Southeast Asian-style curry, which was thickened with coconut milk and flavored with tongue-penetratingly pungent lemongrass.
In addition to those items, my friend's mother had made gyoza (potstickers). The thin, chewy potsticker wrappers were seared crisp in a sizzling and oiled pan, filled with delectably seasoned ground meat and shredded cabbage, and served with an assortment of traditional sauces bespeckled with chili flakes and bold spices.
We also dined on sauteed kale, which had been wilted in a heated and oiled pan with liberal amounts of chopped garlic.
My personal favorite of the evening was the chicken, which was made with soy sauce, sesame oil, chopped scallions, and cilantro. The chicken was bursting with juices, and was tender to the bite. It wasn't overcooked to the point of being "fall-off-the-bone," was perfectly done--thus it still had a tiny bit of resistance as you tugged the meat off the bone with your clamped teeth. The scallion ringlets and the chopped cilantro leaves had melted their flavors into the chewy skin of the chicken, and the sesame oil permeated and infused the air and the meat with sweetness. That dish, more than any that night, gave me a warm and welcomed feeling in my stomach and in my heart. That dish reminded me of home.After dinner on Saturday, on Sunday, it was off to help out with Easter dinner!
When I arrived, the industrial kitchen was bustling with face-less hands, spoons, and knifes in a constant state of chopping, stirring, washing, mixing, whisking, peeling, and pouring. I got right to work.
It was fun to help out with seasoning the roasts, plating (if you call what I did "plating") the sliced ham, and chopping the vegetables (including piles of yellow onions, bunches of rubberband-wrapped scallions, garlic heads from several mesh bags, several pounds of potatoes, and a box full of cabbage heads). My beau got to stir the soupy and boiling spinach and cream mixture in the three-foot-high pot for 2+ hours!
The final Easter menu included: 1) creamy mashed potatoes made with sour cream, cream cheese, smoked salmon, and scallions; 2) penne pasta with a sauce of pureed sun-dried tomatoes and chopped parsley; 3) coleslaw made with chopped cabbage, corn, vinegar, and mayonnaise; 4) creamed spinach; 5) marinated beef roasts served with a red wine and rosemary reduction; 6) baked ham with a brown sugar glaze, 7) peach cobbler, and 8) chocolate brownies dusted with powdered sugar.
Hope that gave you a tiny peek of what has been going on in my life these last two weekends. Essentially, I've been having great time being a passionate eater with my friends and family!
This Saturday, I stopped by Costco to pick up basic food supplies for this weekend. Although I wouldn't be watching the televised Oscar ceremony this Sunday, I would be helping to cook for church on Sunday evening, and I knew that that we had to spruce up the church meal to make it Oscar-caliber. Into my cart, I threw a few refrigerated logs of goat cheese, an aged wedge of parmesan cheese, and a plastic mesh bag filled with purple onion bulbs. Those ingredients would later come together as a "baked chevre and onion tart," with golden-brown puff pastry strips laid over the top as a lattice crust.
After our spicy lunch, we 
It was a hot and spicy Sunday, that's for sure. But it was still a success, in terms of delighting in deliciously fiery foods, and also learning to make a boiling hot borscht (for the first time).
