Overcoming fear: French Macarons

Why hello again. So during my baking streak last week, I also decided to make macarons. I had a ton of egg whites left over from making the meyer lemon tartlets (is it tartlet or tartelette??) and I told myself that this time around, I was going to make macarons. I said this last time making... something or another. Yeah, that never happened, oops.

French macarons are another one of those things that I've been overly paranoid about baking. I'd say irrationally, but I've read about and seen many pictures of failed macarons. Also, there are billions of long-winded explanations of how to make them for a reason--they're a bit tricky to get everything right.

But look! But look! Mine came out with feet and everything!

Isn't it purtiful? They're macarons with strawberry cream cheese sandwiched in between. Not too shabby for a first time, I'd say. The shell wasn't the smoothest, and only one of three batches came out (I think because the other two batches I used baking pans with sides (like a 9x13 pan) instead of a cookie sheet, because I only had one)... and I think the "good" macarons were a little hollow inside, but uh, oh well? I've only had one macaron once in SF, but I'd say mine's not too shabby at all, not at all. Click below for more macaronage. :)

Meyer Lemon Tartlets

So not only was I obsessed with making all sorts of buns last week, but I also had so many lemons sitting on my dining table... I had gotten a giant bag of lemons and a giant box of meyer lemons (yay Costco), and they had been sitting there for, well, forever, and some of the meyer lemons looked like they were on their way out. So, as much as I love the idea of making lemon-y things, it's actually hard to find lots of good recipes that require a lot of lemon juice. Most things require just the lemon zest, or just a tablespoon or two of lemon juice, and I didn't feel like making lemon curd. For some odd reason, I liked being able to bake the lemon-y innards... maybe because it makes it easier to deliver to other people? Who knows.

Anyhow, I finally after going through so many food blogs and so many pages on Google, I came across this recipe for a meyer lemon tart on the New York Times online, and figured that I'd give it a go. It was adapted from Alan Tangren's recipe, who was a co-pastry chef at Chez Panisse (well known high-end restaurant here in the East Bay). Sounds credible, and most importantly, used 5 or so lemons!

The result? Full of deliciousness... tasty shortbread crust that didn't shrink too much, and a delicious lemon-curd-like filling that was baked with the tart. It requires so many eggs and so much butter, but, well, it's worth it.

This is such a yellow dish. Yellow is such a bright and happy color...! All the ingredients and the final product are full of yellow. I don't usually like yellow, but for some reason, yellow food always looks so deliciously happy.

Yes, it uses a ridiculous amount of egg yolks, but also so much lemon!

Sheng Jian Bao (Pan-Fried Pork-Filled Buns)

Hi all! So while looking up various bao (bun) recipes, I found out that the dough for sheng jian bao (and cha shau bao/char siu bao depending on Mandarin vs. Cantonese) used pretty much the same dough, a yeast dough (as opposed to shao long bao, or potstickers, etc.). So, of course, I had to make sure of my new awesome discovery of fluffy white bun dough, and didn't feel like going to the Chinese market for cha shao meat, so I settled for making sheng jian bao! Sheng jian bao translated basically means pan-fried buns. The "fun" part of eating these is supposed to be the crispy bottom that is created from pan-frying the bun, as such.

Crispy bottom aside, these are delicious. :d They require some random ingredients more commonly found in a Chinese pantry, but, as silly as this is, I'm getting happy that my cabinets are more filled with Chinese condiments/ingredients such as Sriracha, rice wine vinegar, and Shaoxing cooking wine. I get a little smile from opening my cabinets.

Anyhow, the dough is fairly easy, and aside from draining the cabbage, it's actually a pretty simple recipe. The only majorly annoying part is (a) making sure you have all the ingredients, and (b) figuring out the best way to quickly pleat the buns so they come out pretty and the first ones aren't overly-risen by the time you finish making the last one. Anyhow, recipe behind the cut. :)

Dou Sha Bao (Red Bean Buns)

So last week I had a hankering for delicious Chinese buns. The dough for steamed buns are so delectably fluffy, especially when steaming hot. I had been searching for a good recipe for Chinese bread doughs in general. There are many variations out there, many calling for low gluten flour, some calling for bread flour, and some just using the bag of "bao mix" that you can buy at the Asian supermarket. Finally, I came across one that seemed to have good results: a nice chewy skin from steaming, and a light, white, fluffy inside.

This dough can actually be used to make all sorts of steamed buns... filled with sweet fillings such as lotus seed paste, red bean paste, black sesame paste, or even rolled into a more savory scallion bun, or stuffed with pork filling to make sheng jian bao (pan-fried buns) or BBQ pork to make tsa sao bao (also known as char shiu bao). It can even be made into plain rolls. Yummy. For the first go-around, I decided to fill it with sweet red bean paste. :) I even went and got myself a bamboo steamer! :D It was awesomely exciting. Click for the recipe!

Cioppino (seafood stew)... kind of

So I had been craving lots of seafood for the past... well, long time. I love seafood. Especially shrimp. And clams. And crabs. And scallops. And, oh yeah, shrimp. Shrimp is tasty. Okay, yes, I think you get the fact that I love seafood. Anyhow, because I love seafood and because seafood is so much more (relatively) expensive compared to other things (read: chicken salad or giant burrito), I've laid off the seafood thing for a while. I kept on coming up with excuses like it's too expensive, I don't really know how to pick out fresh seafood from a market, I don't trust most frozen seafood, especially shellfish, it's really expensive, I don't know how to handle/cook it properly, I've never really had that dish before so I wouldn't know how to make it... oh yeah, "I'm too tired to cook anything fancy" was a commonly-used one as well ...but then I ran across a cooking blog where the writer said that that Trader Joe's frozen shrimp collection wasn't half bad. So, after weeks of procrastinating and excuse-making, I finally decided last weekend that I was going to make a cioppino-esque dish.

Oh! Random, but I love the colors of bright green fresh parsley against the deep red of fresh tomatoes.

Cioppino is a dish that originated from the Italian fishermen in San Francisco that would make a tomato-based stew with all the left-over seafood from the day's catch usually featuring crabs, clams, squid, mussels, shrimps, scallops, and fish in a tomato-wine sauce. While visiting Monterey Bay about two years ago, we stopped by an amazing seafood restaurant (I must remember which restaurant that is some day...), and as great as my dish was, I couldn't stop looking over to the table next to ours... some guy had this amazing-looking seafood stew with pasta. Apparently it was cioppino. So I've been obsessed with cioppino ever since.

I made a very lazy-person's and poor(ish)-man's cioppino. I used frozen seafood and canned clams. It wasn't bad, but maybe when I make it for company, I can use some fresh seafood. :) It was a very tasty soup. Unfortunately, as I predicted, it was a bit salty due to the ingredients that I had in my cupboard. Anyhow, like many soups and stews, these measurements are all approximate and have a lot of give and take, depending on how heavily tomato-based you want your soup, how hearty you want your stew, and what types of seafood you want in your stew. Click below for a recipe. :)