Welcome back and series of recipes

Hi folks,

It's been ages since I've written, which is sad. I've decided to embrace my final few months of freedom by actually turning this blog into what it is supposed to be - a regularly updated repository of all my cooking and eating adventures, interspersed with snippets from my lovely life in Berkeley. As many of you know, I am making yet another cross country move this summer to pursue my MBA at the University of Michigan. While I've been promised that Ann Arbor has a happening local food movement, something tells me blogging won't be on the top of my insane to-do list while I am in school. So as I wrap up these last few months in the Bay Area, and actually have time to cook, I thought it would be lovely to share my experiments with you. I just told my roommate that before I leave, I want to do the following:

- Make my own butter
- Bake bread
- Make pasta from scratch

I'm sure I'll add lots of other things to the list, but that's my start - I think the butter effort will be easy to accomplish and I already bought the cream, so stay tuned for a recap of that in the next few days. Perhaps I'll also be motivated to bake the bread to put it

In the meantime, I wanted to kick off the re-blogging effort by sharing a few recipes that I developed for my friend Natalia. Like many, Natalia loves food but has not quite conquered the challenges of the kitchen. After a long discussion about ways to incorporate more fresh foods in her diet (I call it a discussion, she may refer to at as a lecture...:) I decided to type up some of my favorite easy recipes and make a little recipe book for her for Christmas.

I plan to post one recipe each day for the next few days (the other secret motivation for this is to help me get into the habit of blogging regularly!)

I thought it only appropriate to start with breakfast, and what's better for breakfast than delicious french toast?! Here you go....enjoy!

World’s easiest French toast

4 slices of bread (Any bread will do but my personal favorites are baguettes and challah bread)
1 large egg
1/3 cup of milk (nut milks work great too)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Butter, for pan

Scramble egg, milk and vanilla together in a large bowl. Dip bread into mixture and hold for a few seconds, until bread has absorbed the egg mixture. Heat a frying pan on medium and melt a little butter. Place bread in pan, cook until browned on one side (about 4-5 minutes), flip and brown on other side. Serve with real maple syrup and/or powdered sugar.

Welcome fall

In my opinion, there is no better way to welcome fall then with a fall-themed potluck dinner! Bonnie and I were lucky enough to have some wonderful friends join us in celebration on Thursday night, and we enjoyed a pot of delicious sweet potato soup, curried cauliflower, kale and mushrooms, homemade hummus, Berkeley Bowl olives and some delicious Barbera wine. The night was capped off with an appropriately fall-themed apple cake. The cake was so popular that I decided to share the simple and accessibly recipe here for everyone to enjoy.

Now we all know I'm not a big baker, but thanks to my dear friend Jen Greer, I posses the world's easiest apple cake recipe (although I still managed to mess it up somewhat the first time I made it by not cutting the apples small enough....of course!) Anyhow, I have now perfected the recipe (which, unsurprisingly really just requires following the directions) and I have to admit that the cake came out deliciously! It's super easy to make and although the batter looks really dry and chunky when you put it into the pan (it has the consistency more of cookie dough than batter), the cake is super moist because of all of the apples in it. The prep literally took about 10 minutes, I highly recommend trying it out if you like apples. And cake. And really, who doesn't?! It's even better with a little vanilla ice cream:)

Jen's Apple Cake

1 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups sugar (I used a combo of brown and white, you can use either/both. I liked the earthiness the brown sugar imparts)
2 cups flour
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (I dumped in a little more because I love vanilla)
3 cups cubed apples, peeled (should be about 1 centimeter squared)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
cinnamon
nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl until well mixed. Batter will be very lumpy, more of a dough texture. Spray baking pan (I used a bundt) with oil and then sprinkle the inside of the pan with flour. For extra credit, dust the inside of the pan with cinnamon sugar for a crunchy crust. Bake for 1 hour, or until set all the way through. Once cooled, invert onto a plate and sprinkle the top with powdered sugar for decoration.

Back in the kitchen

Hello friends! It has been a while since I've attended to my blog, and I have missed it greatly. As they say, life got in the way of life, but I'm entering into a new phase now of focusing on things that are truly important to me, and this is one of them. So prepare yourself for much more regular posts, photos, recipes and adventures in the Bay Area!

So, without further ado, I'd like to present my most recently improvised recipe...tofu burgers!

Last week, I decided it was time to do something with the half a block of tofu on the verge of going bad in the fridge. After scrolling through tofu recipes on epicurious, I decided I was in the mood for something hearty and nutty. I found one recipe for toasted almond tofu burgers, which I used as a loose guideline for my creation, which I will hereby name "Toasty Pecan Tofu Burgers." Here is how I went about creating them, which worked well for me. I encourage you to experiment with other ingredients though, I think this is a perfect recipe to make when you have a few random items in the pantry/fridge and you're trying to figure out a way to bring them all together.

Toasty Pecan Tofu Burgers

First, I sliced up the tofu into thin slices, patted it dry and wrapped it in paper towels. The goal here is to squeeze as much moisture out of the tofu as you can (FYI I was using extra firm). I placed the tofu between two plates and stuck a few cans of food on top for pressure and let it sit for 30-60 minutes. If the paper towels seem drenched, either squeeze them out and re-wrap or just use fresh ones.

As the tofu drained, I made prepped the other ingredients. I shredded up a large carrot and finely chopped an small onion and a few cloves of garlic. I sauteed these for about 8 minutes, until soft and set them aside to cool. I then toasted up a few pieces of old bread and about 1/3 cup of pecans until browned. After letting them cool, I pulsed each in the food processor, turning the bread into breadcrumbs and the chopping the nuts up finely.

With all the ingredients now ready, I gave the tofu a final squeeze and then crumbled in into a mixing bowl. I tossed in the breadcrumbs (about 1/2 a cup, for those who like to measure), the pecans and the carrot/onion mixture together with the tofu, and then mixed in a lightly beaten egg white (to hold the mixture together). I also tossed in a splash of soy sauce, some sesame seeds, garlic power, salt, pepper and a little ginger for flavoring. I mashed it all together with my hands and made little patties, about the size of my palm.

I heated up some olive oil in a large skillet, and dropped the patties in, cooking until brown and then flipping over. They stayed in one piece pretty well, but I was gentle with them, having totally botched previous attempts to make tofu burgers due to the crumbly texture of tofu.

When browned nicely on both sides, I removed from the heat and served them with a simple salad of romaine hearts, avocado, heirloom tomatoes and a homemade vinaigrette of balsamic, olive oil and course grain mustard. I have to admit - it was pretty and delicious! I failed to take a photo, but you can take my word for it.

If you try this recipe, let me know how it comes out. I think you put a lot of different ingredients into it to change up the flavor, but the key to the texture success seems to have been the egg white and the bread crumbs, so I recommend continuing to use those.

I am sure I will have more tofu adventures to share soon, as I bookmarked about 10 difference recipes on epicurious in my search for the perfect tofu burger. So stay tuned and get your soy on!:)

Baking and the art of discipline

I am not, by nature, a baker. Reading recipes and following them to a T is not my strong suit in cooking. I'm more of the creative, improvisational cook - a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and voila! Sadly, that approach really does not work in baking. Memorable experiences proving this fact include the time I added 2 tablespoons of salt instead of sugar to a pancake mixture (I was like 8 years old, but still). Or the more recent attempt to make lemon cupcakes "healthy" by using whole wheat flour instead of white flour. I think we can all agree that was not a good choice.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when a recent attempt at baking actually turned out to be incredibly delicious! Last winter, I came across a recipe in the NYTimes food section, by Melissa Clark who writes a column called "A Good Appetite." I love her recipes, as they are usually creative and delicious but not too difficult. And, there is something appealing about hearing the recipe author's story about how and why they came up with that recipe - it adds a layer to the experience that is missing in a lot of traditional cookbooks, I think. Anyhow, this one article, "Secrets of the Cake Stand", had a recipe for Blood Orange Olive Oil cake. It immediately sounded like something up my alley, so I cut it out and filed it away.

Flash forward to last weekend. I had been yearning to make this recipe for months, and had even tried a few times to source out some blood oranges, to no avail. So when they appeared at Berkeley Bowl, I knew that my time had finally come.

I think that the key to my successful Blood Orange loaf was in fact discipline. As “creative type”, I am used to not following directions, preferring to make things up as I go, embellish with my own flair, experiment and create. But via my previous failed baking experiences, I came to realize that in order to be a successful baker, I needed to discipline myself to follow directions, to stay committed to the task at hand, and realize that the end result will likely be more delicious even if I don’t add my own personalized feature to it. As I am writing this, I am wondering if my lack of discipline in baking is somewhat representative of my lifelong struggles with being independent, not liking to be told “What to do” and greatly enjoying the sensation of being right and doing things on my own. Perhaps I’m reading too far into this, but it’s been a theme I have been thinking a lot about recently, and somehow I feel warmed by the thought that my successful cake has something to do with a deeper level of personal progress!

Anyhow – enough introspection, back to the cake. It was every bit as delicious as I had imagined! As I mixed it together, I thought it looked really liquidy, but it ended up being perfectly moist and flavorful. The blood oranges definitely added some depth of color, but I think it would have been just as delicious with regular oranges (I’d go for a smaller juicier variety, as opposed to something like a navel orange). I’ll certainly be experimenting with the recipe using regular oranges, because it was too good to hold out until blood oranges are around again. One thing to note – I baked it in a pyrex loaf pan, and it took a bit longer than the recipe said – maybe an additional 10-15 minutes, I can’t exactly remember. I just checked it every 5 minutes or so after the first 50, and when the cake tested was clean I took it out. For serving, I made the blood orange honey compote that the author mentions, and it was extra delicious.

So – whether you are looking for an exercise in discipline, or just a delicious treat (or both!), I highly recommend trying this!

Musings from the West

Hello all!

I realized it has been almost 2 months since my last post - my, how time does fly! I am celebrating today because my internet connection was finally set up at home - thus making blogging about food, fun and life on the West Coast much easier. I have missed keeping track of my creations and also my delicious meals out (which I have had a number of since moving out to the San Francisco Bay Area in November). So this will be somewhat of an eclectic entry, part a catch-up entry, part reflection, and all enough to make my stomach growl audibly, as it is right now!


Fresh Food Delights

You all know my love for farmer's markets, so it's no surprise that I have sought out a few in my time here already. I work about 3 blocks from the Ferry Building (a foodie mecca on the SF bay, outfit with dozens of gourmet restaurants and food shops that you can afford only if you promise them your first born child...) As you can imagine, walking through the Ferry Building is a certain kind of heaven for me (especially as a break in the middle of a busy day), but the best part is that on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturday's they have a beautiful farmer's market outside.

It's interesting to me how much of an institution farmer's markets have become, especially in San Francisco. When I first started going to farmer's markets (the small summer market in Norwood MA and the fantastic fall market in Poughkeepsie on the Vassar campus), the markets felt more like a hidden gem than a way of life. Here, the market almost takes on the form of open air markets in Europe - they happen with such regularity and offer so much (right now the persimmons are in season and in abundance!) that you can easily plan your whole week's shopping around the market (or shop a few times a week for the freshest ingredients.) I love that shift in lifestyle, and also the fact that it's December and I am still shopping at fully stocked and luscious markets that seem interminable, in a great way. I also had the pleasure of visiting the Berkeley farmer's market last Saturday (which was a beautiful fall day). In the spirit of the season I invested in a number of root vegetables, with the intention of roasting them. I still have to make the time for that - maybe today! At any rate, I am loving the idea of making farmer's markets even more a part of my year round life and shopping here in Berkeley/SF.


Gourmet Delights

Eating out has been a central part of my experience here so far. I've felt this pull between wanting to shop for local food and cook it in my new beautiful kitchen, and also indulge in all of the amazing restaurants around here. So far it's been a pretty good compromise of the two, although perhaps weighted a little towards eating out, as you'll see in my long list of experiences below!

I have not had a bad meal yet in California. I've been discussing with my friends whether that is in fact even possible - with the wealth of amazing restaurants in this area, how could one survive if they served subpar food? It boggles my mind. In the interest of time, I'll list out many the places I've eaten out since I have been here (I have been wanting to keep track, so here goes- I left off a few that were either take out, or slightly less memorable, although by no means not delicious)

• Chaya (Asian Fusion restaurant/bar on the bay in downtown SF - went there on my 2nd day of work for a happy hour with my coworkers - beautiful scenery, pretty good sushi roll)
• Salt House (Amazing gourmet restaurant with a southern flair - took a client there on my second week of work, and had a delicious meal that included perfectly cook halibut, and an amazing Canadian delight called Poutin - basically french fries with cheese and gravy - soooo good!)
• Jupiter (fun pizza and salad place in downtown Berkeley - good pizza, great beer selection (microbrewery) and fun atmosphere - lots of outdoor tables, just make sure you find one with a heat lamp! Best enjoyed with a group of good friends)
• Cheeseboard Collective (a Berkeley institution, this place's reputation certainly preceded it, as it was recommended to me by virtually everyone I know who knows Berkeley dining. Each day, they have one pizza and one salad - it's all vegetarian and all made with fresh, local ingredients. Seriously delicious and crave-able)
• The Slanted Door (One of the few sit down restaurants in the Ferry Building, this Vietnamese place definitely has one of the best views in the city - and amazing food of course. It's a huge restaurant with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Bay Bridge. We got tofu, mushrooms, jumbo prawns, the works - the most memorably was the lemon cake for dessert and the elderflower spritzer I had with dinner)
  
• Gregoire (Gourmet French take out restaurant in North Berkeley, founded on the premise that gourmet French food should be affordable and enjoyable on a regular basis. Known for their potato puffs above all else (which are little crispy bites of heaven), and the menu changes monthly to reflect seasonable dishes and foods. Bonnie and I love Gregoire and it will definitely be a regular indulgence. Mmmmm - getting hungry just thinking about the potato puffs!)
• Poleng (Asian fusion restaurant in the NOPA/Western Addition neighborhood of SF. Went for dinner last Saturday night - everything was delicious but the most memorable was their tea selection. They have amazing tea blends, and they give you a little box with samples of each so you can smell them all before choosing. It was like doing a tea paring with our food!)
• Delica (One of the Ferry Building standards, this is a Japanese take out place that has all kinds of interesting salads - I got a bento box with rice, tofu and two really interesting salads - one had lotus root and something called "mountain potato" and the other had black shiny seaweed and edamame. Both were delicious)

Wow - I could actually go on and on with this list, but in the interest of time and the fact that writing about all of these meals has made my stomach growl audibly, I think I will leave my reviews to a later date. To summarize, it must be quite obvious that I am thrilled about the food life out here- it has all been delicious. But most importantly (and I think thankfully, given that I have only been here a month), I feel like each meal I listed above and the others that I didn't even have time to write about were shared with wonderful, interesting and dear people, from all stages of my life, and that is what has really made them memorable. (I have been blessed with a few visitors from home, wonderful existing friends who live here, and some new ones that I can't believe I've only known for a month- or less!)

I think one of the things that makes San Francisco such a special place is that not only is the food delicious but that the people who live here are grateful for it, and are also so excited to share it together. I've been talking to a lot of people - friends and new acquaintances alike, about what makes San Francisco and the Bay Area such a unique place to live. The conclusion that I have come to so far is that most people who live here have in some way chosen to be here for a common reason - everyone is looking for a place where people are welcoming, open minded and eager to be themselves and let others thrive as well. That ethos penetrates everything in the city and makes it a place that is so easy to fall in love with and feel like home in. As you can probably tell - I'm thrilled to be here.

And of course, to eat the food.

More soon.....

My love of produce...

Readers! I apologize for going MIA for a few weeks. I have exciting news - I am moving to the foodie mecca of the country - the Bay Area! I am so thrilled to be getting out there and have a life adventure - I hope to live in North Berkeley near the Gourmet Ghetto - so there will be endless blog fodder. Anyhow - my life has been turned upside down by the impending move (I arrive in sunny CA on November 8) and my cooking plans between now and then include coming up with the most creative ways to eat all of the food I have in the pantry and freezer without resorting to dinners of frozen berries, fake chicken nuggets and mayo (which might not be too far away at this rate....!)

Anyhow - that is my excuse for being a bad blogger over the past few weeks. But I am back and here to share that news and more - I just got word that my love of produce has resulted in some online exposure! A photo I took at the Portland, OR Farmer's Market in June 2009 has been published in an online guide to Portland, called the Schmap Portland Guide. It's a photo of lettuce and berries, and it can be viewed when you put the cursor over the "Northwest" area link.

Having this picture discovered on Flickr and published in this guide is very cool - and it's an ironically timed event, as I have been thinking recently about how much I love fresh produce. I know, it's kind of a weird thing to be obsessed about. But for some reason, it just makes me really happy to be surrounded by plants - fruits, veggies - even house plants (btw I am starting to have separation anxiety about leaving my house plants behind in Boston...) But I had this realization the other day, when I was at the new Whole Foods at Legacy Place in Dedham, MA. I was running errands for my parents and decided to stop into Whole Foods - I had heard the new store (which opened very recently) was beautiful - I could spend hours in Whole Foods as it is, and the appeal of a brand new store, coupled with the fact that I just left the very overwhelming and aesthetically unbecoming Costco down the street, was too much to resist. Oh, and the fact that it was snowing/sleeting/raining in the middle of October also added to my desire to escape reality and retreat into foodie paradise, aka Whole Foods.

I was browsing around the produce section, and went to pick out some rainbow swiss chard (on sale for $2/bunch - yay!) As I was grabbing a bunch, a young woman and her boyfriend/husband were standing there trying to figure out the difference in the various colors of swiss chard (they had white, red and yellow varieties for sale). She saw me pick out a bunch and asked if I could offer any insight onto the differences between the varieties. I gave her my two cents - explained a little about the vegetable and said that I like the red the best because I think it's a little more tender than the white, and it makes a really pretty color when you cook it with the stems. It was a brief and simple conversation and she thanked me and said it looked like I knew what I was talking about - but I walked away with a grin on my face - again, I know it's cheesy, but there is something that is so heart warming about connecting with other people over food that is fresh, beautiful and nutritious. There are seemingly endless varieties of fruits and vegetables out there and industrial agriculture and commercial grocery stores only provide access to such a small amount of it - even at a place like Whole Foods. I guess it made me happy to know that even though I think there is a long way to go to make our food system sustainable and to provide wide access to diverse crops, that maybe it's ok to start with one bunch of swiss chard at a time.

As I walked out of Whole Foods, I saw on the ground someone's shopping list. It had two columns - one said "Farm" and the other said "WF". I smiled again - I just can't imagine how big my food grin will be once I get to Berkeley!

Off to eat lunch - whole wheat pasta, fresh pesto, and red swiss chard. Yum....

Matzo Brei

For any of you who have read Ruth Reichl's books, you know that one of her favorite comfort foods is matzo brei - a food that she describes with such warmth in her books that even though I have never had it, I regularly crave it. I keep meaning to try her recipe for it, but I haven't remembered to pick up matzo (the fact that we are as far from Passover as you can get doesn't help my case either!)

Well, this morning I woke up against my will at 5am again - a funny little trick my body has been playing on my the past two weeks. As I lay there in bed, willing myself to fall back asleep even for an hour, I decided (in my partially awake mind) that I wanted matzo brei for breakfast. I had to have it. Why, I don't know. But I did.

Now, despite where you may think this is going, I did not take advantage of the 24 hour Shaw's to get matzo. When I finally got up around 7, I decided to find her recipe on epicurious.com and just make it with what I had - water crackers!

I had no idea what it would come out like - I ended up following some of the comments on her recipe and amending it to fit the ingredients I had on hand.

Here is how I did it - I have to say, I was very skeptical at how it would taste when it was done, because it looked kind of dry. I packaged it up and brought it into the office (I always eat my breakfast at work), and I was pleasantly surprised at how yummy it was! So in case you ever wake up at 5am and decide you want matzo brei - know that you're not alone, and here's a recipe you can follow (I presume it would really work with any kind of mild flavored cracker....perhaps not a really crumbly/buttery kind, but any dry one)

Hack Matzo Brei, minus the Matzo:

8 water crackers (we had sesame flavor ones, and they were yummy)
2 eggs
splash of milk (enough to moisten the crackers)
small handful (approx. 2 tablespoons) of finely chopped onion
chives or other herbs, for flavor
butter (be as courageous as you want here - I used a little more than was enough to coat the pan, but as you can see on her recipe, Ruth calls for like 1/2 a stick!!)
Salt and Pepper, to taste

Break up the crackers into small pieces, and place them in a bowl with the milk. Let them sit for about 3-4 minutes, until moist but not too soggy. Pour out most of the milk (you can keep a little in to make the mixture fluffier if you'd like.

Add the two eggs to the same bowl, and scramble them together with the matzo. Add the onions and chives/herbs and a dash of salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, heat the butter in a skillet on the stove until melted and hot.

Pour the mixture into the pan and cook - I think that it would be best to make it like an omelet - cook for 2 minutes or so then flip, cook the other side and try to keep the inside moist.

When it's nicely browned on both sides, remove from the pan and serve!!

Enjoy.....