the.yellow.page

Jack-o-lantern on a front stoop in Beacon Hill. Awesome, right?

You know how there are those people out there, who just LOVE Halloween? Like, have the PERFECT intricate, well-thought-out and clever costume picked out (or hand made), and have outfitted their apartment/house/living space with spooky, creepy decor? Maybe I’m talking about you, and if I am, that’s OK, I’m actually a bit envious of your creativity and your self-confidence to design and wear that “stimulus package” costume (yes, use your imagination), or the hot tub time machine, or double rainbow (complete with the drugged out dude filming)! But I am just not that person; I never even really cared about trick or treating (my parents would never let us have all the candy we collected anyway, and the candy we were allowed to keep was rationed out to us over the following YEAR- which averaged to about one piece every week and a half which was kind of hard to get excited about), and I especially did not care about dressing up. For a self-conscious, shy, and above all, indecisive youth like I was, Halloween is kind of the WORST holiday. More often than not, I ended up wearing some form of a pervious year’s dance recital costume last minute, because I just could not think of something else I REALLY wanted to be, and just felt totally embarrassed by my lack of creativity. It only got worse as I got older, as the selection for costumes seemed to narrow to two options: “sexy __(insert random profession here)___” or “unattractive boring other option,” and I was never excited with EITHER. 

This year I got a GREAT idea from my super-creative brother- a costume that actually had special significance to me in two ways: something I love to eat, and a nod to where I am from. After about $26 worth of arts and craft supplies (colored foam sheets, upholstery foam, tissue paper, and glue), I left the apartment for a fun Halloween party next door, feeling pretty confident and excited about my costume as…

A CALIFORNIA ROLL!!!!!!

Hope you all had a great Halloween, with tasty treats, and fun costumes!

While we’re on the subject of off-season produce and baked goodness, let me tell you about this strawberry rhubarb pecan loaf so that you can mentally tuck away some of next year’s strawberry and rhubarb bounty for this gem of a quickbread.

This year was the first year I baked with rhubarb and I was SO excited that I bought some extra, chopped it up, and froze it for that day in the dead of winter when seasonal affected disorder has taken its toll. I thought that being able to bake something spring/summer-y would bring a bit of sunshine and be just the thing to snap me out of the inevitable winter funk. 

Except that I baked my little stash of rhubarb two weeks ago.

Before the leaves even really started to turn to brilliant reds and yellows. Before the first frost-worthy temperatures of last weekend. The temperature will be dropping another 30 degrees (at LEAST) before the next rhubarb season! And I am without rhubarb! How am I going to make it through the winter now?!

But this would have really been theperfect-with-a-hot-mug-of-coffee/tea/hot-chocolate treat to whip together on a dark and bitterly cold day in order to perk up one’s mood. The cake itself is light and moist, and made with whole-wheat flour and brown sugar to bring it back down to earth. The strawberry and rhubarb chunks bake down into sweet and tart jammy pockets, while the pecans provide that crunchy textural contrast that I’m such a fan of. There is also an optional streusel-y topping (yum) that I didn’t really miss, but that I’m SURE would only enhance this sweet little cake.

It is abundantly clear that next year, I will have to freeze a whole lot more rhubarb.

Read More →

Now that I can no longer be in denial about the arrival of fall, especially after the last 2 days of frost-warning-worthy weather, I feel like I have been racing to snatch up the last of the summer produce in attempt to get some last-minute summer baking in before I give in to apples, pumpkins, and pears!

Now I know that local farms haven’t picked a plum or peach in months here on the East coast, so the plums and peaches I have been buying are most likely from my native California. I know it’s not very green of me, but to be completely honest, sometimes the stomach wants what the stomach wants, and I am not one to argue with my stomach (because I KNOW I will lose)!

This recipe is so simple and so lovely… perfectly rustic. Just a few everyday ingredients and my out-of-season plums produced a tart that puffed up deliciously around each wedge of juicy plum tartness, and tasted like it had twice the amount of butter than it actually did (win!). What took me by surprise was the amazing texture of the tart: it was cakey and soft in the center and satisfyingly crunchy at the edges. I attribute the cool texture to the method in which cool (not cold) butter is cut into the dry ingredients until it resembles wet sand. Once baked, these pockets of air remain, resulting in a lightness that I just didn’t expect. And that I loved. And that I very much want to eat again. Except I think that I will have to wait until next year, when plums are back in season!

Read More →

I never had the opportunity to hate brussel sprouts from a young age because the Chinese culture has enough of its’ own kid-unfriendly-foods and my youth was spent being trained to hate those: bittermelon, thousand-year-old-egg, and, my personal most-hated dish, a certain stinky seaweed soup. My grandma cooked this soup a couple times a year, and every time I would smell the putrid odors of the seaweed bubbling away (a smell that falls somewhere between sweaty feet and vomit), I would shut the door of my room in hopes of keeping the odors OUT (never succeeding) and feign some sort of illness that would excuse me from eating the pre-dinner soup! Of course, getting excused from the soup would also excuse me from eating the main dishes of dinner too, but the smell of that soup so horrid, that I gladly sacrificed a tasty dinner meal just to avoid having to drink that soup. 

But if I HAD eaten brussel sprouts cooked this way when I was growing up, I would have been eagerly requesting it and earned myself a reputation as THE model child eater! Hmm.. that doesn’t sound right… 

Anyway, these roasted brussel sprouts are very tasty. I know what you’re thinking- duh, everyone knows that adding bacon increases the tasty-taste factor exponentially. Maybe I’m just approaching that age when you really appreciate your vegetables (that’s 30, right?), but I really believe you could roast these babies without the bacon and STILL be thinking about how good they were days later. It’s all about the browning of the sprouts and the shallots during the roasting process that results in the sweet caramelization that nicely complements the intrinsic bitterness of the sprouts. 

Because sprouts are quite dense in vegetable-ness, I wanted serve meat that would pack enough flavor to stand alongside the brussel sprouts. Enter this spice-crusted grilled pork tenderloin, brought to you by those crazy food-loving people from America’s Test Kitchen. The tenderloin ended up just as advertised, spicy and crusty. The preparation of the tenderloin required first coating the meat with cornstarch before a dip in whisked egg whites to create a sticky base layer for the complex spice mixture (cracked peppercorns, coriander seeds, and mustard seeds plus demerara sugar, salt, and cornmeal) to adhere to. After grilling, the spice crust is extra toasted and flavorful, and the meat remains moist and… well, tender.

Both dishes are very flavorful and the prep is simple enough for a weeknight meal, which makes them both immediate additions to my recipe repertoire!

Read More →

I have been in denial about the arrival of Fall for the last month. I have nothing against Fall itself, in fact, since moving out here to the Northeast and witnessing the dynamic kaleidoscope of color in the trees, it’s arguably the best season out here. I love the crisp coolness in the air (usually very welcome after months of the sweltering summer humidity) and the fashion accessories that come with it: scarves, hats, boots, and jackets. Every year, I eagerly await pumpkin-spiced lattes, pumpkin scones, and pumpkin ale; I look forward to the arrival of varieties of squash and apples and their associated recipes of soups and pies. The only part of Fall that I DON’T look forward to is what inevitably follows Fall…the season that shall not be named (but rhymes with splinter and starts with a ‘w’). But now that we’ve already turned on the heater a few nights this past week and I’ve come down with my annual summer-to-fall-season-change bug, I can no longer deny that Fall is HERE.

As a corollary to my denial, I have not yet allowed myself to start baking with fall produce. Instead, I’ve been scrambling to bake with the last of summer’s fantastic bounty (peaches, berries, and plums) before they disappear until next year. 

Enter this delightfully summery lemon-infused berry olive oil cake. Lemon zest is rubbed into the sugar, to release the essential oils, and when combined with fruity olive oil creates a mild, yet elegantly flavored cake. I put in some beautiful blackberries that I spotted at Whole Foods, and am so glad that I did because I haven’t seen them around since!

The cake is moist and rich, perfumed with lemon and olive oil. The lemon flavoring reminds me of this fantastic lemon confection because both cakes merely suggests the essence of lemon rather than smacks you in the face with lip-puckering acidity. But this cake is heart healthy in comparison, with less than half the amount of butter and egg yolks. I baked two of these beauties in one week (another testimony to the recipe’s greatness- an everyday cake that can be baked on a weekday!); after tasting the first, it didn’t survive to see outside of our apartment so I had to bake a second to share with others!

Read More →

It was the summer of panna cottas; after having made my first a little over 2 months ago (and becoming instantly smitten with its creamy, dairy goodness), I suddenly seemed to find panna cottas everywhere I turned- on every restaurant dessert menu and prevalent in the food blogosphere. It’s like when I finally learned what siRNAs were (light-years after my biological-science-inclined peers), and suddenly, they were the answer to 90% of every quiz question in our paper-reading class my first year of graduate school. Panna cotta is the answer to my dessert cravings!

This panna cotta seems quite decadent, being richer and sweeter than my first, due to a healthy dose of Nutella and chocolate, but thankfully it is not OVERLY sweet and you don’t feel like you have to run 10 miles or restrict yourself to salads for a week after eating this. This recipe requires less gelatin, which results in a softer, more pudding-like consistency, but next time I would increase the gelatin a bit. Also, I highly recommend sprinkling toasted hazelnuts on top for a nice crunch with the creamy panna cotta.

Read More →