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. :)

Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day!

Xing nian kuai le! Gong xi fa cai. (i.e. Have a prosperous new year.) Oh yeah, and Valentine's Day. And President's Day! ...And happy Mardi Gras today. Goodness gracious it's a bunch of things to celebrate about recently!

Of course, that means there has been lots of baking/cooking and handing out of delicious goodies. There have been various dark chocolate truffles, Chinese almond cookies, and red bean nian gao (sticky rice cake)!

So February 14th was not only Valentine's Day, but it was also Chinese/Lunar New Years! It's now the year of the Tiger... it's my year! This meant only one thing: hot pot!

Photograph courtesy of Avi

What is 火鍋 (i.e. hot pot), you ask? Clearly, as you can see from the photograph, it is loads of fun. (And no, I wasn't the only girl there!) Click below to see more of what hot pot is and for Chinese Almond Cookies and Red Bean Nian Gao (stick rice cake)! :)

Peanut Soba Noodles

Here's a little bit of non-baked vegetarian food! I was to have lunch with a grad student who had worked on the safe water and hygiene project in the slums of Mumbai--in fact, she became the head project manager. She's been locked up in her little office on campus, and has vowed to have lunch outside every day. So we met up for lunch... she's been traveling non-stop for the previous 7-8 months in India and Asia for her research, so I haven't really talked to her for a while. She's vegetarian, so I decided to make a soba noodle salad/pasta with a slightly spicy peanut sauce.

Here are some of the ingredients!

Zucchini Turkey Lasagna

Hi all.

So it's been a few days, and there's a backlog of baking to write about, including that zucchini turkey lasagna I made. I haven't quite been in the mood to write much... the insane amount of cover letters going out and the few responses, much less callbacks for interviews (read: basically none) has been getting to me. Still, I feel like I owe it to my zucchini turkey lasagna to write about it! That, and my friend had introduced me to Matt Costa, who is currently rooting me on the write something. That, and my kitchen currently smells of baking bread and melting cheese, and is begging me to write about it, and I don't want to have to write a thesis worth of food blogging in a couple of days. :P

So last week I made a zucchini turkey lasagna, which can be easily transformed into a vegetarian zucchini lasagna. Honestly, I didn't follow any specific recipe... I kind of tossed together 4 or 5 various lasagna recipes together, and came up with this one. I didn't exactly take notes, but I plan to make it again (and make it better!), and I will let you guys know the recipe later. :)

But until then... look at the layers building up!



And look at the beautiful zucchini slices all lined up and pretty! ...It took a few tries to figure out how to properly slice the zucchini all nice and evenly (zucchini are not uniform in size, boo!)



The top looked pretty after baking!



Okay, so it was really hard taking pretty pictures... hot lasagna falls apart really easily! Especially when it's got giant layers of cheese in between the zucchini. Basically, a general ingredient list is:

* tomato/pasta sauce layer: tomato paste, diced tomatoes, ground turkey, onion, dahs of brown sugar, oregano, basil (I got to use my fresh basil from my sad little abused basil plant... yay!)
* cheese layer: ricotta cheese, egg, grated Parmesan, shredded mozzarella cheese
* zucchini layer: zucchini!

I wasn't completely happy with it... I'm not sure if it's because of the cheese to zucchini or tomato sauce, or if it's because I didn't think it was flavorful enough. I might try and add a little spicy kick to it, or add a starch to it... either brown rice or some quinoa (I bought a bag of quinoa... I'm still finding something awesome to make with it!).

That's about it for now... I did have a chance to bake some chocolate chocolate fudge cookies and some chewy oatmeal raisin cookies.





I have also had a chance to hang out with some of the old (and new!) Chinese dance girls! And, of course, it's not an FTD gathering unless we have food:



I made a casatiello and a batch of cinnamon buns. :)

So much home-made food, eating, and laughter. ^_^

Cinnamon Buns and a Humble Dinner

So apparently I was inspired enough to bake last night after all. I think part of it has to do with the fact that, since the only people that end up eating my baked goods are people at my roommate's office, I needed to get the baking out of me since he's not able to have any modes of transportation up here for basically the rest of the week.

First, I just wanted to show off a picture of my humble dinner, a simple pork soup.



This tends to be generally what I go for when I make dinner... often it's a nice pot of soup or stew, or the simplest stir-fry ever. I actually missed my simple home-cooked meals a lot during the mini road trip down south... I hadn't eaten out so much in such a short period of time in a while. Home-cooked meals are so nice, and can be so simple... not to mention healthier and cheaper, too! This soup is very simple. Beforehand, you get some pork ribs/bones from the market (in about 1-2" cubes) and parboil them to get rid of some of the excess blood, fat, and marrow, and then freeze that for a later date (or, just use right away). On the day you want to cook it, you boil a nice big pot of water with a slice of ginger. After it comes to a boil, you toss the pork in, let it come back to a boil, turn it down to a medium-low, and let the meat stew enough to make a tasty broth (use a ladle to scoop away the frothy bone marrow that floats to the top). Season with salt to taste. In the mean time, when it gets close, prepare your noodles. This time around I used... thick green bean noodles (also known as cellophane noodles, glass noodles... I think? I know the Chinese name...! English names are so confusing!) which I soaked in water first. Tossed the noodles in for a few minutes, tossed in (many) handfuls of spinach, and voila, it is done!

Meanwhile, there were tasty things on the rise...



Now it should start looking familiar...



Especially after being baked...



And finally, glazed!



Yes, if you can't tell already, those are cinnamon buns. :d

I used Peter Reinhart's recipe this time around. I used to use just a recipe I found on Allrecipes.com which was fun, but a lot messier. Comparing the two... honestly? I don't know if I can tell the difference. It's been over half a year since I made the other cinnamon buns, though, and I wasn't as good at baking with yeast back then either. In fact, cinnamon buns were the first yeast breads I made! I think, in the end, Peter Reinhart's dough recipe stood up to the test, though... just with regards to how it tasted after it cooled down and how well it stood together. Another big difference between this cinnamon bun and any others I've seen is that the filling isn't overwhelmed by butter. Most other ways I've seen it done is rubbing softened butter all over the insides before sprinkling it with cinnamon and sugar. Personally, I like this way better, but that might be because I don't like butter. It's definitely a lot less rich and a lot less gooey and sticky, but it tasted wonderful, especially still warm. I decided to use a simple white glaze, which hardened beautifully. I usually prefer a cream cheese frosting, but since these were going to be eaten a whole day later by people running around the office... I figured this would be a nice solution... and it was great! It hardens ever so slightly when cooled, making it less messy (even though working with it was kind of messy!).

I heard reception at my roommate's office was good. :D This shall be my new go-to cinnamon roll recipe. ...I want to make the sticky buns some day. :D

Does it look amazing? (And so cute! It's like a little snail shell...)



(order some now! :P)

Oh yeah! And I baked another banana bread again... low fat, again, as usual, with whole wheat flour (half white whole wheat, and half whole wheat), and this time, with sugar cut down and replaced with agave nectar. That stuff is interesting... I need to experiment more with it at some later point. I also added some extra spices, and I think that they added a nice touch without really being over-powering, or even discerning. Must play around with that more as well... I have another 3 bananas frozen in the freezer...

Also, I totally need to just bake during the day instead of at midnight... my pictures turn out so much prettier with natural lighting, sigh.

Pancakes and Chicken Giouvetsi

Hiiii! One thing that I've realized about keeping this blog updated is that it has required me to try and, you know, bake and cook new things. Often, I jump to my usual cupcakes or muffins or banana bread, but who wants to read and see pictures of the same food every day?? Not me.

That said, I have billions of different and new recipes to make, but I never get around to them because I keep on finding excuses not to do it--I don't have anyone to eat it, I don't have all the ingredients... you get the idea.

That said, I tried a new pancake recipe! Okay, I'm going to say right now, I don't really like pancakes. I don't even really like cupcakes or cookies--but I'll get back to that some other day. I don't really like pancakes, but I know that other people like pancakes and other such breakfast items. So, one of the things I love to do is make breakfast for people! I've made scones, home fries, french toast, blueberry syrup for said french toast... you name it! So this time around, I wanted to try these cinnamon apple whole wheat oatmeal pancakes! Doesn't it sound almost like it's healthy? I used Closet Cooking's Apple and Cinnamon Oatmeal Pancakes recipe, and it was a great hit! The only thing I did differently is that I didn't grind up the oats in a food processor since, well, I don't have one... I just used a knife and a cutting board to the oats, haha. That, and I added a bunch more cinnamon, because, well, it's cinnamon!!

On the frying pan...



And onto the plate.



Yes, those are hearts. You got a problem with that? No? Good. I didn't think so...

These pancakes were well-received, yay! They weren't your usual affair of buttermilk pancakes, but personally, I like them better that way. There were chunks of apple, and tasted of whole wheat and oatmeal goodness. :d Yum. I even liked them. Then again, it's got apples and oatmeal and cinnamon--hard to go wrong there! Hehehehe...

I've also had a chance to play around with his Chicken Giouvetsi, which apparently is a Greek dish. I've had a bag of whole wheat orzo sitting in my pantry for goodness knows how long, and I've been dying to find a good reason to use it. I've debated between making a Parmesan orzo dish, but I don't really like creamy things, or making some sort of orzo pasta salad... but nothing seemed to be that appealing. Finally, I've been staring at this Chicken Giouvetsi recipe and decided that I had to try it. I love tomato cooked things, and chicken is just awesome, so why not?

Pan-frying the onions with the pepper.



I used an Anaheim pepper because, for the life of me, I could not find a cubanelle pepper (even at Whole Foods and at Berkeley Bowl!!), and Google search told me that I could use it, so hah! I don't know how it is with the cubanelle pepper, but it was pretty fantastic with the Anaheim pepper that adds just a hint of a spicy bite to the dish.

After adding the chicken stock and the tomato puree, you transfer it all into a baking dish with the chicken pieces (I didn't have a whole chicken, so I just used two chicken drumsticks and two chicken breasts), and bake it until the liquid evaporates and the top turns gold brown.



Then you plate it, and then dig in! (Or, in my guest's case, just take a giant spoonful to the baking dish, tsktsk.)



My photo doesn't look as tasty as Kevin's, but needless to say, it was still awesome. It's a one-pan and then one-baking dish type of dish. It's fairly simple, and the part that took the longest was just waiting for it to bake (I had also added an extra cup or so of chicken broth since that was all that was left in a giant can of chicken broth). The two of us finished off half of the entire thing, and then proceeded to finish off the second half the next day. Still great out of the microwave!!

Anyhow, that's all for now. The next few days involve birthdays and parties and meeting new people, so I'm sure that there will be something cooked or baked or whatnot coming up in the next week!

I hope everyone's week is going well.