March 2010
22 posts
7 tags
Breakfast Bread Pudding with Strawberries
Sometimes, I’m just as excited about what to do with leftovers as the initial dish… is that weird? I love having leftover meat and rice so I can make toasty fried rice; salsa and tortillas for melty cheese-y quesadillas; challah bread for rich french toast… and this weekend, it was leftover brioche burger buns for a strawberry bread pudding!
That I ate for breakfast. What?
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5 tags
Nibby Buckwheat Butter Cookies
Holy nibs, these cookies are freaking good.
I was all about the buckwheat flour blend + high ratio of butter + sugar because, first, who doesn’t love a good butter cookie, and second, the addition of the nutty and earthy flavor of buckwheat flour in buttery cookie form just seemed right up my alley, what with my love for whole wheat and oatmeal and all. Because I was expecting to be...
6 tags
Braised Short Rib Dumplings with Spiced Orange...
Of course, as soon as I wax poetic about gorgeous spring-y weather, warm sunshine, bright flowers, and flip flops, cruel fate punishes me with dropping temperatures and downpour. On top of that, I have caught the quarterly seasonal-change-induced cold. At least our ceiling is no longer leaking.
I saw this article in the NY Times a month ago and could NOT get short rib dumplings from Café...
4 tags
Parsnip Fries
Dear Friends,
I would like to introduce you to a new tasty friend of mine, the parsnip.
Parsnips are root vegetables, most closely related to (as you can all probably guess) the carrot, but has a slightly different flavor. They are mild and slightly sweet like carrots, but there is also a very subtle hint of… almost a liquorice-y flavor, like fennel.
I’d never tasted a parsnip...
6 tags
Light Brioche Burger Buns and Turkey Burgers
Warm weather = barbecue.
Amazingly enough, I attended more barbecues in my first year living in Boston than in any of my years living in San Diego. Since you are never guaranteed two days of pleasant weather in a row in Boston (for example, yesterday it was awesomely almost 70-flip-flop-degrees, while today I pulled on one of my winter jackets and I’m not even sure we hit 50), the moment...
1 tag
First day of...
via emersonmade
yay!!!
5 tags
Blueberry Galette
Sometimes baking or cooking endeavors proceed without any major disasters, but more often than not, there are some whoops! or oh CRAP moment, especially in my kitchen. Sometimes it’s mis-measuring or forgetting to add an ingredient, failing to read the directions ahead of time and proceeding with the steps out of order, over or under cooking- the list really goes on and on.
This time,...
Springing Forward
I used to grumble about “losing” an hour of sleep when we spring forward with daylight savings. But yesterday, I reveled in the fact the sky was still filled with the last lingering light from the sun on my walk home. I can’t even remember the last time I walked home when there was any light left in the sky, and I would gladly give up another hour of sleep for extended...
4 tags
Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
Thankfully the sun is shining again here in Boston and it almost seems as if the whole soggy weekend never happened. Except that there is still plastic tarp, 5 gallon buckets, and residual drippage from the hole in the ceiling of our living room.
Oh, and this soup. It was warm and comforting when it was wet and cold outside, and yesterday, it was a bright and flavorful lunch. I’ve...
4 tags
Sugar-Crusted Popovers
It all started out innocently enough.
A light and well-behaved batter of just a few ingredients (eggs, milk, flour, a bit of butter and sugar), sitting quietly in a muffin tin on a Sunday morning.
I put them in the oven and anxiously waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time.. as soon as my oven timer went off, I peeked into the oven to find…
sha-BAM!!!!! POP-OVERS!!!!!
...
4 tags
Savory Baked Ricotta
The moment I saw this baked herbed ricotta here, I wanted to make it and share it with friends. This past rainy weekend was the perfect opportunity to stay inside and catch up on my guilty pleasure: the scandalous, over-dramatic lives of Real Housewives of New York. Luckily I have a few friends who are just as into bread and cheese as they are trashy reality TV, and so the perfect opportunity...
8 tags
Moqueca- Brazilian Fish Stew
It’s raining here. Like, really raining. Like, raining so hard that you constantly hear it, beating down on the roof, against the windows, as a steady hum in the background of the tv or itunes. The type of rain that makes a mockery of your umbrella, turning it inside-out one minute, then inside-in (or outside-out?) the next, rendering it completely useless. The rain has transformed each...
3 tags
A Funfetti Wedding Cake: Testing... testing...
My good friend Jamie is getting married in June (yay!)! Jamie and her husband-to-be Brad have enlisted a few of their large circle of friends to help out and participate in their wedding, from the photography to officiating the ceremony to the music during the ceremony. My friend Kate and I offered our help with the wedding cake.
Brad and Jamie knew EXACTLY what kind of wedding cake they...
3 tags
Peach Ice Cream
One of the first things I noticed about Boston when I first moved here was the abundance of ice cream shops. They are about as omnipresent as Starbucks, and can be found in every square from Davis to Kenmore. Even more surprising the shops are just as busy whether it is freakishly frigid or swelteringly sweaty outside; not even the winter temperatures can keep Bostonians away from their ice...
1 tag
Things I learned at Trivia last night...
My friend Mark hosted trivia last night, and besides reinforcing how much he loves video games, sports, and 80s actresses/pop stars, I also learned a few things:
Research In Motion (RIM) makes the Blackberry. I thought the name of the company that makes the Blackberry WAS Blackberry.
Andreas thinks that any late 80s song with male vocals is sung by Michael Bolton.
A 20 second clip of the song...
6 tags
Whole Wheat Apple Muffins
Don’t worry, I haven’t gotten all health-conscious on you, by trying to incorporate whole grains where they may not be wanted. These muffins may have whole wheat in them, but there is also a WHOLE STICK OF BUTTER! (ok, so the stick of butter IS divided among 12 servings, so unless you eat half a dozen muffins for breakfast- I won’t judge you- these muffins really are not that...
3 tags
Braised Pork (Carnitas) Tacos and Tomatillo Salsa
This weekend the temperature in Boston hit the 50s. 50s, people! I vaguely remember a time, while living in sunny southern California, where 50 degrees was a cold winter day requiring a jacket and even a decorative scarf. Now, after a few years of Northeast winter where the months of unbearably freezing temperatures can stretch on and on and on, the day that the temperature hits 50 is the day...
3 tags
Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats
When I was young, I remember being SO excited to make rice krispy treats with my mom. She didn’t bake often, mostly blueberry muffins (from the box), cookies (from frozen dough), and krispy treats, but I was always eager to be in the kitchen with her, to just observe, and once in awhile, when I was lucky, to help. I loved seeing individual ingredients coming together by some sort of magic,...
1 tag
I wish the vending machines in my building had fresh fruit in it. Like in “The Office” when Dwight replaces all the junk food with fresh fruit when the branch competed in a weight loss competition. I bet if we were in Japan, we’d have a vending machine with fruit in it.
9 tags
A Birthday Dinner: Cauliflower and Caramelized...
Let’s start with this tart, shall we? The day I spied it on Smitten Kitchen, I almost drooled on my computer. And for those of you that know me, you KNOW that drool happens.
To be honest, I wasn’t the biggest fan of cauliflower when I was growing up (I know, first tiramisu, now cauliflower, I was one strange kid). I mean, it looks like brains. Having had it boiled or steamed never...
5 tags
Tiramisu
This weekend was a special somone’s birthday.
I hope he doesn’t kill me for posting this picture for the 5 people that read this blog to see, but I just couldn’t resist… I mean, omg, how freaking cute was he??!!!
Though he’s not into big birthday hoopla, I wanted to cook him a nice dinner (to be posted shortly) and for dessert, we enjoyed this tiramisu.
I...
