Joe Tsao

Here’s how I remember what one needs to make a muffin:
You need:
Fetal Bovine Serum
Extra-Sensory Perception

Recipe:

Flour – 2 cups
Butter – 4TBs (half a stick)
Sugar – 1 cup

Egg – 1
Salt – about 1tbsp
Powder (baking) – 1TB

Sour cream – 5/4cup.

(Above taken from cook’s illustrated. Below taken out of ether)

Vanilla – 1 cap full (the tiny little cap that comes on the extract bottle)
Nutella – 1/4 cup or so
Peach jam – 1/4 cup or so
Coarsely Crushed Walnuts – 1/2 cup
Zest of one tangerine

Topping:
Finely obliterated-with-a-wooden-stick walnuts – 1/8 cup
White sugar –  1TB
Cinnamon – 1TB

Preheat oven 350. Combine flour and softened butter. Add sugar and salt. Add egg, sour cream. Add baking powder. I only had 3/4 cup of sour cream leftover, so I just added milk after that. It doesn’t give as rich and creamy a muffin, but it works. I added milk until batter had consistency of thick pudding. Blend the vanilla in/zest in. Lightly mix in nutella/peach jam/coarse walnuts. Sprinkle on topping. Put in oven. Pour batter into muffin trays. Watch TV until mom shouts “DID YOU BURN THE MUFFINS YET?” Go “Oh CRAP!”

p.s. – try to view my site from your iphone/android or whatever. Cool, huh?

Without an extensive cooking background, I remain jealous of those who just throw ingredients together and are able to make something absolutely delicious. Slowly, however, I am gathering recipes and advice, building a base that will help me out later on. I’m learning to work with InDesign, and am creating a recipe book for recipes that I’ve found/altered/created (currently, its mostly just found), and the science behind making good food. I hope to jot down my experiences with these recipes, and to rate and make further suggestions, updating as I act on these suggestions. Later on, I hope to pdf reference “cookbook” to anyone who wishes to read it.

Avocado Fries

It really can’t get much simpler than this. Use this recipe for shrimp, cucumbers, zucchini, just about anything (I assume. I actually haven’t tried this with anything else). Spend maybe 5 or ten minutes, make a huge mess, and you’ve got yourself a nice, satisfying, not-as-healthy version of a healthy food!  Now the numbers (1c flour, 2 large eggs) etc don’t really matter as long as you get something on the avocados. I did originally sprinkle some pepper on them, but found that it doesn’t seem to complement the avocado’s unique buttery taste that well. Let me know if you have suggestions, cause I’m definitely making this again sometime!

(not my creation. found it on the internet sourceless)

Link here

Pure genius

“What? What the heck is this on my plate!” I thought as the waiter as The Dogwood presented me with some mutated patch of white pebbles in an odd shell covered in caramel brown. This is all despite the fact that Grace and I had purposely ordered “Roasted heads of garlic” from the menu only because we haven’t tried it before. Apparently an hour of baking or so cuts down the sharp bite of Edward-repelling aromatic compounds, calming it down into a land of rich nutty buttery goodness.

My sources:

• Simply Recipes told me to cut a quarter inch off the head of each clove, peel off the outer skin and to leave the individual skins intact. It also instructs to put a couple TBs of olive oil on each head and roast in an over at 400 degrees for 30-35min.
• The Hungry Mouse gave me ways to use roasted garlic, including making roasted garlic compound butter and making garlic infused olive oil. I focused only on roasting garlic. It recommended 350 degrees at 30 to 45 min.
• Epicurious said 300 at 45 min to 1 hour. It also called for thyme and black peppercorns.
• My mom told me to go do my homework.

What I ended up doing:

• Cut 3 heads of garlic each at about a quarter inch from the top (of the bulb, not the stem)
• Cover each with 1-2TB of olive oil, let soak in. Pour a bit more olive oil on top.
• Put in baking pan and bake at 375F for an hour
• Watch Arrested Development

Didn’t turn out to be as caramel-colored as that of The Dogwood, but did turn out creamy and nutty. I say that letting it sit in the oven for another 15 min or until a little more brown would have made it better.

While shopping for groceries, my mom asked, “Do you want blueberries?” My answer to any “Do you want” is usually “Sure, why not?” After getting the blueberries, a few days passed and I was reminded that I should finish them (especially after finding mold in strawberries that throwing that out). Spending four bucks on a pack of blueberries that I could finish in a minute seemed inefficient in a money/enjoyment sense, so I thought, “what can I make with blueberries?” A blueberry milkshake!

Just kidding I made blueberry muffins. I referenced a couple recipes for this. I took a recipe directly out The New Best Recipe, and added the suggesting of creating a blueberry jam from Cook’s Illustrated online. First, put oven at 350.

• Add 1 cup (plus or minus some random error) blueberries to a small sauce pan
• Add some sugar to that
• Cook on medium heat, mashing up the blueberries incredibly inefficiently with a wooden spatula because I don’t have a muller

Now for the batter:

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (I used bleached)
• 1 TB baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg (calls for large. I don’t know what I used. it worked)
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 TB unsalted butter
• 5/4 cup sour cream
• Vanilla (my addition)

One of the best secrets I have learned over time in baking is sour cream. The soft, rich texture of the cream adds a delicate moistness to any baked good, while the sharp tart flavor is diminished into a background complement. Adding more butter and oil, although makes the baked good soft, they can easily make it too oily and do not add the light springiness desired. I’ll consider testing creme fraiche in the future if I can get my hand on some though (less sour). This is no different for muffins. Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet ingredients together. Mix both together and get the batter. Oh and remember… you’re adding baking power. For anything involving baking powder,  you want to get that thing into the oven soon after it touches water. The redox reaction that creates the nice airy bubbles starts right away upon exposure to water.

Now mix in the blueberries. I found the blueberries to be hard to stir and to take up a lot of space in the batter. The recipe calls for 3/2 cups, but I probably used just a little over a half.

After placing the resulting mixture in a greased muffin pan, I then added a spoonful of jam onto the top of each muffin and swirled. I may have mixed a little too much just on top. (Follow what Cook’s Illustrated says and poke a deep crater into each muffin and only swirl a little bit if you want to get something better looking that what I had. ) Bake for 25 minutes or until testing with a toothpick indicates that it is done.

I’m used to eating muffins from Costco so the comparison isn’t exactly fair, but I felt the muffins were delicious. The vanilla and sour cream added just the right amount of flavor and richness to elevate this from just OK to something more. It had the consistency of a nice, moist cake, although the pockets of air weren’t as big as I expected them to be. Maybe this was because the baking powder is slightly older. Anyways, I highly recommend trying this or some variant of it. Its easy to make, and turned out to be a pretty well

Rate: 4.5/5

p.s. About my ratings. They’re probably all a little high just because when I fully expect anything I work on to come out tasting like crap, its a taste-elevating surprise to find out that it actually tastes like food. Another thing to know about me – there is almost nothing [edible] in the world that I don’t like to eat.

Snowpacalypse!
Referencing Accuweather – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpxiCxO5k0g

The irony – the guy says something to the extent of, “Never mind crab cakes! I wish I were having Jambalaya right now!”
Oh weather man, how I could fulfill your dreams.

Quite an experience at the supermarket. And by experience, I mean waiting in line at the speed of stagnant water acting as a fertile breeding ground for malaria-carrying Anopheles gambiae. Highlight of the supermaket experience – finding clam juice. What the heck is clam juice?

Juice from a clam.
Duh.

So after foolishly following directions telling me to food-process the vegetables, a process that processed the greens and reds and whites into anything but the finely chopped wonders I was promised, and uhh… a long series of steps involving chicken, sausage, shrimp, and clam juice… this what what the Jambalaya ended up looking like.

And this is what it looked like in a plate…

And this is what it looked like with Besho drinking a beer and pointing at it.

I say it was pretty successful. Although next time I’m tempted to dump a whole bottle of sriracha into it. Mmm… rooster sauce – the sugar and chili delight.

Lessons learned:
1. Needs more hot sauce
2.  Probably should’ve put Steffi’s turkey back in the fridge after she left for the entire weekend leaving it out to defrost.
mmm… Salmonella

OH WAIT I”M NOT DONE
It ummm snowed, so I dug myself onto the roof and took pictures. Heres one.

And heres a picture from the ski trip of Tom hugging a “warning you must be advanced to go down this halfpipe sign.”

mmmm halfpipe warning sign.

Done.

Ingredients that can bring anything to perfection:
1. Old Bay
2. Red pepper flakes
3. Lemon zest
4. Almond extract
5. Almond extract
6. Almond extract

I may be biased here, growing up eating “almond tofu” and drinking “almond drink,” but the Italians sure know their stuff when they bake. Only thing missing is Disaronno.

Ta da! Biscotti made with butter “should be eaten within a day.” That wasn’t much of a problem.
Recipe from New Best Recipe book.

Tastiness: 4/5
Difficulty: A sprinkle above cookies.

Olive the other extra virgin oil is great for cooking
Olive the other reindeer, however, is a dog.

Again cooking from New Best Recipe:

Start with these ingredients

Toast 1/4 cup almonds, toast 3 cloves garlic
Combine lots of basil, some parsley, and bruise or mortar to release aroma
Add to  7/16 cup olive oil, almonds, 1/2 tsp salt, and garlic in food processor
Mix in a bunch of Parmesan cheese (1/4 cup)

Combine with a pound of pasta and get

Simple, fast, delicious
Looking forward to using this sauce for pizza somehow!

Taste: 4/5
Difficulty: Really easy

As Chicken-licken was going one day to the wood, whack! An acorn fell from a tree onto his head. But it wasn’t the acorn, it was the sky!

From New Best Recipe – the Simplest Roast Chicken. Recipe is chicken, butter, salt, pepper.

Lessons learned
1. Butter is what browns the skin, and helps it be more delicious
2. More pepper! Add lemon!
3. Brine regular chicken, but not Kosher ones, which are already brined.
4. Roast at 375 for 15 min on each side to evenly cook the meat, then breast up and 450 to crispen! Breast should be at 160. Thighs 165-170.
5. Take out fire alarm before cooking at 450, or something in the oven will burn.

Need to learn: how to smoke the chicken to give the meat more flavor.

Turned out to be quite juicy, even the breast.

What happened to the leg was that I got over-excited and ate it before I took a picture.

Taste: 3/5 (Juicy, but a little bland)
Difficult: relatively easy. Butter-salt-pepper-bake!