Experience is the Best Teacher

This Fried Rice was successful.

I was pretty excited to try new recipe this morning: Banana-Date Tea Cake. All my bananas were ready to be baked and I had lots of dates in the fridge. This recipe is from Tartine by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson. This book is nicely organized and well explained. I have baked Lemon bars on Brown Butter Shortbread before, and it was fantastic. Though I used a half cup of almond flour instead of pine nuts (optional), the crust was amazingly tasty (Sadly, A.A.’s colleagues didn’t like it because of the lack of sweetness). But, as far as the recipe for this particular tea cake, the direction was different from the one I’m used to: blending eggs into banana & vanilla extract mixture. I usually add eggs one at the time to whipped butter cream with sugar; add banana mixture and dry ingredients. But, this recipe says to add the banana and egg mixture to whipped butter cream slowly and beat until incorporated. I was suspicious and interested in the method. So, I tried; as a result, the butter cream and this mixture actually got separated! Well, I didn’t want to throw away, so I just folded remaining ingredients and baked. I knew it was not going to look O.K. Result: sunken center, but tasted good. I loved the ingredients, so I will redo this tea cake soon.

Seeking New Recipes

Here are things that I made yesterday: fried rice with lettuce & black beans; chocolate macarons; sablée cookies. I’m so happy to try this cranberry cookies by Panipop-san. (Panipopo-san’s blog is right here) I actually baked this right after Christmas, but I was too tired to take pictures of them and I needed to find out the portion I liked. The recipe calls for 30-40 pieces, but I could make only 20 of them even though I doubled the original recipe. So, I tripled this time, and yes, I had 44 pieces!  Since I converted grams to ounces or cups, I also wanted to make sure the baking time. I know it all depends on the ovens and it took 17-18 minutes to have desired color and texture. After baking, I realized that I forgot to add lemon peel. Chocolate macorns’ recipe is adapted from “French Chocolate Macaron Recipe” by David Lebovitz. This mcaron was unsuccessful. I was careful about the size and filling: smaller size and different and more reliable cream frosting. The size looked almost perfect, but I didn’t think about the baking time, which was much shorter than I thought: It took only 6-7 minutes. I overbaked nearly 40 macarons and only a dozen survived (that was the last pan). I was so disappointed when I tasted those unsuccessful ones. The taste and texture will change next day or two (usually and hopefully), so I guess I will expect that. 

Trying new recipe is very exciting and fun, but I want to taste them, especially if I want to take them to someone. I know I don’t have to taste them, but I get so nervous if I don’t do it. So, this is my huge and critical issue as a dieter. This issue is not actually new; I felt same way a couple of years ago. At the time, I baked something almost every day and my pastries were sent to the freezer, because no one wanted to eat! A.A. is not a big fun of sweets (he loves candies, that’s about it.) and I was satisfied with just baking and didn’t want to eat much. Those pastries were frozen for a few months and sadly sent to the trash can. I don’t want to repeat such thing, so I have to find a solution.

Chocolate Macarons

I made macarons for the first time, and it was fun! Since three egg whites were still in the fridge after baking cookies, I had decided to try this French neat sweets. Result? I think it turned out pretty good. But, thing is that I have never eaten “real” macarons (“real” means by “store-bought,” in this case). So, I really don’t know how the texture or taste should be as a French macaron. It tasted good, though. I made almond butterscotch cream, but I didn’t have exact recipe for it. So, it took forever to become like “cream.” I guess I put too much heavy cream in it, or I was just inpatient to wait for cream to get thicker. I put cream on macarons and it was too soft. I made a mess not only kitchen but macaron itself. I wiped excess cream off after a little while and it looked O.K., but I need to remake sometime soon. I will probably make different cream, like cream cheese frosting, or something can be made quick.

A Happy New Year!

I would love to say, “Happy New Year” to everyone. My new year resolution: update my blog regularly. I just posted my journal that went back to six months ago at once. I think it’s kind of ruin the whole purpose of easy blog system if I update like this. So, here I am still trying to refresh my mind as new year started. Today’s weather was silly: raining in the morning and cloudy all day. This kind of weather gives me migraine and makes me feel very tired. I wanted to take Sophie & Misha for a walk, but somehow (?) I fell asleep and got up around 8 p.m. I felt so bad that they didn’t go anywhere today. Maybe because of the weather, they even didn’t want to play at the backyard; they slept pretty much all day today. I will take them to the park tomorrow. 

I believe that I made pasta casserole with garlic bread a couple of days ago and A.A. has been eating same meal since then. Well, it’s time to cook something. I have some ideas of what I want to cook, but I’m too lazy to go grocery shopping.. oh, I will tomorrow.  

Harusame Salad

I arranged Bacon & Egg Pastries recipe from Cuisine at home, Issue No. 68, pp. 32-33,  and baked Ham & Cheese Pastries. I loved the taste much better than the bacon & egg pastries: light and fluffy. Main vegetables were spinach, tomatoes, potatoes, and cheddar & mozzarella cheese. I boiled cubed potatoes at first and then stir-fried with other vegetables, so filling became creamy and soft.

Since I haven’t lost any weight last two weeks, I decided make salad for lunch: Harusame Salad. The original recipe is from Sake to Ryouri by かめきち. I arranged a little bit: I added tomatoes, seaweed, and less sugar and omitted carrots. When I tasted dressing, it reminded me “Hiyashi Chuka.” I have never made “hiyashi chuka” sauce, but I thought almost the same taste. If this tastes like the noodle dish, I needed Karashi! Well, I didn’t have it in the fridge, so next time I go grocery shopping, I have to buy one. Of course, I had a couple different mustard, but I didn’t use them, because I thought “karashi” would be the best to add to this particular salad. 

Homemade Lasagna

Here is my favorite lasagna: it’s relatively light and three different kind of cheese (ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan) and meat sauce are layered. I arranged the recipe from Frigo’s Classic Lasagna. I usually make béchamel, but this time used only cheese mixture with sour cream instead. It took less time and tasted lighter. Well, I even used fresh spinach lasagna pasta, so I think it helped flavor and texture.  

Green Bean Casserole

Here is one of my favorite side dishes, Green Bean Casserole. The recipe is originally from Cook’s Illustrated as I mentioned in my Kitchen Notes. I wanted to make it a little bit more creamy and less oily, so I added sour cream and used 1/3 of fried onions for topping. I have made this dish quite a lot and nothing happened before, but not this time. I went to Albertson’s to buy fresh green beans, but they were out. Instead, I found fresh cut & trimmed package for $4.99. Well, I had never tried, so I thought about this alternative a moment, because I really wanted to make this casserole tonight. O.K. I bought 2 bags. Result: I will never buy this package. When I opened the bag, some beans were already discolored like brown. I boiled and tasted them. It didn’t taste good, so I had to throw away $10! Obviously, I had to make this dish next day if I could find fresh ones at WinCo. Yes, I finally found a pound and a half there. I knew WinCo usually has fresh green beans, but I always shop groceries at Albertson’s and I didn’t want to go two stores on the same day.. that’s my excuse. Each supermarket has pro’s and con’s. Albertson’s has more choices of most products overall; WinCo has relatively fresher vegetables and most products are much cheaper than any other grocery stores. The thing is that I do not want to go to two grocery store on the same day..