Category: Recipes

Recipes

meyer lemon semifreddo

When I was preparing the menu to do my big dinner recently, I knew I wanted to do a lemon dessert. Originally I was going to make Lemon Tassies but the thought of making 24 little tarts in a mini muffin pans sounded completely exhausting to me. Instead, I kept looking for something unique to do… and something a little easier.

This recipe is … well, mostly easy. Except for the “constant 12-15 minutes of whisking over a pot of boiling water”, it is pretty easy!

We’re going to start about midway through the process for this one, since I forgot to take photos of making the base… I think I got some good arm exercises out of that one.

lemon-semifreddo-base

This is the Meyer Lemon base – is a very bright yellow, is it not? This is what you end up with after mixing egg yolks, lemon zest and juice, salt, and 1 cup of the sugar for 12 minutes. After you create the base, you let it cool completely. I actually let is cool overnight and finished this up the next morning.

whipping-cream

This part is easy, since you can just stick it into a mixing bowl and let it go. Unless you want the arm exercise. I had enough of that the day before.

This is just two cups of heavy whipping cream and 1/2 cup of sugar, mixed together until soft peaks form.

beaters

I just dug this photo of the whisk attachment. You can kind of see mini peaks!

fold-in-thirds

You fold in the whipped cream in thirds so you can lightly incorporate the whipped cream to make semifreddo. See how bright the batter still is?

second-addition

It really starts to lighten up in color when you add the next third line… again, gently folding it in.

final-whipped-cream-added

Until you’re left with this light yellow colored mixture.

into-bread-pan-to-freeze

Take a baking/bread pan and line it with plastic wrap and then scoop the semifreddo in. Let it set and freeze for at least 4 hours before serving.

semi-frozen-semifreddo

The plastic wrap makes it easier to lift the whole thing out for slicing. It doesn’t really freeze all of the way and get too hard – it’s sort of a cross between a mousse and a frozen yogurt. The tartness of this still shines through but the whipped cream helps to lighten it up and give it a very smooth texture.

plated-up-semifreddo

If I had really thought ahead, I’d probably have paired this with berries or something. Instead, I had the weird combination of chocolate brownie and meyer lemon. Ah well.

I hope you try this out sometime – it’s delicious and refreshing and a great way to use up a bunch of lemons! Recipe below: Continue reading “meyer lemon semifreddo”

Recipes, Products, Mary

supperking app to host and find local events / or, how i played chef for a night

SupperKing is a freshly minted app out on the marketplace that hopes to bring friends, neighborhoods and strangers alike together to share in a very important thing that happens every day: eating!

Whether you want to split and share expenses with friends, or simply play chef for a night and sell seats at your table for your home cooking, SupperKing hopes to fill a niche by allowing people to easily find events near them or to host events of their own.

The idea for the app came from various ideas and experiences: visiting a foreign country and seeing large groups of outdoor gathering, and wishing there was a way to easily experience the culture by joining in to try new foods and meet new people; a single person living in an apartment building and eating alone and wishing for a platform that would enable him to seek out and meet neighborhoods to share a meal; cooks who love to throw dinner parties but want/need to share the expenses with friends.

Now, I’m not really into the “dining with strangers” thing, but I am totally into throwing dinner parties and playing chef! I was recently invited to try the free app (current only available for iOS but coming soon to Android and the web) to host a dinner of my own and to take the app out for a test spin.

Here are my thoughts.

THE GOOD

– It’s super easy to use. You can easily set up a new event – it’s almost like just setting up something in your calendar but with additional options (like photos, location, and picking out what kind of menu you’ll be having at your event).
– The lowest price to set for an event is $1 and you control the costs of the event. All payments are currently through Paypal – in the works is the ability to use credit or debit cards without a Paypal account.
– Can easily search for events nearby that you may want to attend. Easily find other home cooks in your area and possibly share a meal.
– Great for starting weekly food clubs or dinners, holding events for pop-up chefs/restaurants, holding charity events or just trying to make a little extra money with home cooked meals and for making new friends.

supperking-hosting-screen

[my pretend puppy bowl party]

THE NOT AS GOOD

Since it’s a new app, there are some flaws with it that SupperKing hopes to address in the future:

– Currently, hosts cannot edit their events so I wasn’t able to add to my description or change anything about my event. But, I was assured this would be changing soon.
– One of my guests registered for my event, but then was removed. I never received her payment and she wasn’t notified that her payment didn’t go through. Definitely needs some kind of notification system so guests can be informed.
– No way to easily contact your guests (or host) from the app if there’s a change or update to the event.
– Currently no way to easily promote on social media if you’re a host, but there is an in-the-works feature that will allow hosts to do this.
– Additional tools would be nice to see, such as photo galleries, voting, and comments – currently no way to communicate with the host/guest to ask questions, or to inform about dietary restrictions or allergies.
– I also felt myself wishing it would automatically add the event to my calendar.

supperking-event

[how the event looks in my “past events”]

SupperKing still has some work ahead of them to create a really robust and great app – but the starting point and idea is a great one! I hope to see the app build up and gain some more events, hosts and followers and that improvements will make this very easy for everyone to use. I could see myself using the app to host future events and play chef again (and hopefully share costs), or to maybe have a charity dinner to raise money for our annual bake sale (who knows!). I probably still won’t want to invite strangers over for dinner, but maybe that’s just me and my anti-social ways…

Now… let’s check out my dinner! I set my price point fairly low ($1) since I was just taking this thing out for a test drive.

dining-table-scape

I did my best to make this look like a restaurant with the table runners, low lights and candles glowing. If I was going to play “chef” for a night, I was going to do it right.

menu-tablescape

I even made menus, yo. I’m so hardcore.

homemade-bread-loaves

[course one: loaves of homemade bread]

When coming up with the menu for this dinner, I wanted to make foods that I loved. One of the things I love, love, love is bread. Seemed like a prime opportunity to break out and use my recipe for No Knead Bread again. This bread is so easy to make and it’s really delicious – all win win! You just gotta prep in advance.

sliced-homemade-bread

[all sliced up]

I baked this bread off that morning and when my guests arrived that evening, I popped the bread in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes to crisp it back up. I put a little water on top for “extra crispness”. I forgot to take photos of the accompaniments for the bread, namely a white bean dip made with cannellini beans, onions, garlic, and spices plus little saucers of blood orange olive oil and balsamic glaze.

One of my goals for this year? Bake more of my own homemade bread! I’ll branch eventually (maybe).

crispy-polenta-with-mushrooms

[course two: crispy polenta squares with a three mushroom medley]

Course two involved mushrooms (with thick sliced bacon!) since mushrooms are one of my most favorite things ever.

The mushrooms joining the party were baby bellas, oyster mushrooms and simple little white button mushrooms. They were cooked in butter and more of that blood orange olive oil (new favorite thing!!) along with some bacon, garlic, red pepper flakes, and a touch of fresh rosemary and oregano then topped off with freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese.

polenta-sans-mushrooms

[crispy polenta squares, sans mushrooms]

For the non-mushroom lovers (pfft), they got simple squares of polenta. The polenta was prepped earlier that morning and is simply a concoction of garlic, red pepper flakes, rosemary, salt and pepper, homemade chicken stock, half & half, and milk with yellow cornmeal. And of course, more Parmesan Reggiano. God, I love that stuff.

This course had a bit of heat that snuck up on you as you ate it. The first few bites didn’t seem spicy at all, but as you went along… bam! Spices!

mini-bao-sandwiches

[course three: bao buns, two ways]

I went all “Asian” for the third course! These were originally supposed to just be pork belly bao buns… but they didn’t have any pork belly at Whole Foods when Jake and I went! I had to compromise and decided we’d do it two ways: one with some really lovely skirt steak we got at Whole Foods and another way with some of the marinated pork belly from H Mart. Continue reading “supperking app to host and find local events / or, how i played chef for a night”

Mary, Recipes

lemon “tea” cookies (with actual tea)

Our lemon tree is seriously overflowing with lemons right now. I keep thinking “I need to make lemon stuff!” and this was just one way to get it done. I pulled 5 lemons off the tree for this recipe – but I really probably only needed 4. They’re kind of extra lemon-y, but since they’re Meyer lemons, they’ve still got a hint of sweetness to them.

pretty-lemon-tea-cookies

I brought in little baggies of cookies for my co-workers with a little note on them:

cookies-with-note

My co-worker, Lauren said, “It’s like a tasty little window of hope in my day” when she tried one of the cookies. Is that a shining  endorsement or what!?

gevalia-lemon-berry-tea

These lemon tea cookies aren’t just a clever title either. You can eat them with tea, but they have actual tea in them, too. I used some Lemon Berry Breeze tea from Gevalia – which is a Lemon Raspberry Tea.

lemon-berry-breeze-bits

The tea comes in tea bags and this is what it looks like poured out of the bag. Many little flecks of tea!

cookie-log

I didn’t do the step-by-step (oooh, baby) photos this time, but here’s the cookie log.

cookie-dough-tea-bits

You can see the specks of the Lemon Berry Breeze tea in the dough! The recipe I used said to chill the dough and then roll it out and cut out cookies. Pfftt. I hate rolling out cookies. I just sliced off pieces from the log – way quicker! You just have to be careful to make them all about the same thickness otherwise you could get a couple of “well baked” ones (yes, I burned a couple of too thin ones. They became dog biscuits).

powdered-sugar-vitamix

I also discovered I had no powdered sugar in the house. Which was weird, since I usually buy powdered sugar when I don’t even need it anymore. I wondered how easy it would be to make my own, and a quick Google search told me that I could make powdered sugar in the Vitamix in about 60 seconds. Using only sugar!

I was disbelieving until I actually tried it – and no joke, it takes about a minute! You just pour 1 cup of sugar into the Vitamix and put the variable to “1” and switch it on – and slowly turn the variable up to “10”. You can then switch it on high for a few seconds but I found that at this point it was already totally powdery. I was instantly in awe and vowed to never buy powdered sugar again.

iced-lemon-tea-cookies

With my homemade powdered sugar in hand, I made a quick glaze with lemon juice and lemon peel. I love how bright the peel is! I started spooning the glaze onto the cookies until I figured out dipping was quicker and more efficient (and results in less glaze all over the damn place).

lemony-tea-cookies-plate

These cookies are crispy, buttery, and chock full of lemon flavor. Next time, I might try emphasizing both flavors in the tea – the lemon and the raspberry – with maybe a raspberry glaze on the cookie. I couldn’t taste the tea all of that much, but all of my co-workers seemed to be able to detect it (though, my sinuses and taste buds were still kind of jacked up from this killer-never-ending virus/cold thing I’ve got going on). I would maybe up the tea a little, too, by adding in any extra bag for extra “oomph”.

Recipe below! Continue reading “lemon “tea” cookies (with actual tea)”

Mary, Recipes, Cheap Eats, Products

pork belly sliders on steamed buns

This is really kind of the “lazy girl’s” method to do pork belly sliders with steamed buns since I didn’t actually make any of the ingredients – I just cooked them! The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes to do, if that. I’ve been playing around with ideas for a dinner for this Saturday and one item I wanted to make was something akin to the bao sandwiches we had in Vegas last summer.

pork-belly-bao

This is the easy, cheap way to make these little sandwiches. Read on!

I was going to head down to 99 Ranch in search of the buns until I remembered – hey, we have H Mart!

steamed-buns-package-1

At H Mart they had two different sized buns and I had no idea which would be better for my needs. There was this larger variety with 6 buns for about $2.29. There were also whole wheat version and an oat version of these buns. No instructions on this package.

steamed-rolls-package

There is also this smaller steamed “rolls” version. It has 15 rolls and sells for $1.99. There are instructions on the back of this package!

bread-in-steamer

You barely need instructions, but it was still nice to have since I’ve never used these before. I steamed one larger bun and three of the smaller rolls. I like how the rolls have a little pattern on them – so cute! I steamed these for about 15 minutes. The package for the smaller buns says to steam them for 15-20 minutes – probably on the longer side if they’re straight out of the freezer.

marinated-pork-belly

This turned out to the be perfect opportunity to finally try some of the marinated meats they have in the back corner of H Mart. There’s a young lady who sort of hangs around by the price labeling machine to help assist you with your meats. Some people just go right by and bypass her to get their own meat, while other people (like me!) who wait and just have her do it. She looked kind of sad that other people were forsaking her. They have marinated beef, chicken and pork all ranging in different prices and cuts. I choose the marinated pork belly. This was 3 slices of pork belly. Continue reading “pork belly sliders on steamed buns”

Mary, Recipes

peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread

Sometimes you get lonely, over ripened, sad bananas. But they’re not sad! They’re happy! Because they can be transformed from their sad, mushy state into something wonderful, like banana bread. Even people who don’t like bananas (*ahem*, me) like banana bread so you can’t go wrong here.

very-ripe-bananas

Sometimes you’ll start thinking about things you never think about, like Elvis (because someone in your house was recently watching an Elvis movie marathon) and then you’ll make the magical connection of peanut butter and bananas and wonder if it would taste good as a bread.

And then you’ll do it.

And then you’ll discover that maybe Elvis was onto something here.

But you still won’t eat a peanut butter banana sandwich since you still don’t like bananas.

And then you’ll write a blog post about it.

And then you’ll think, “Maybe I should just get on with it then.”

And you will.

Also – pardon the iPhone photos. I was too lazy to go upstairs to get my real camera. *sigh*

peanut-butter-chocolate-banana-bread

This bread has chocolate chips in it. And peanut butter chips! And a good hefty amount of peanut butters. And of course, those mashed bananas.

slice-closeup

When warm, the chips are kinda melty… and the peanut butter chips give that extra “oomph” of peanut butter goodness. Most of the sweetness here comes from the natural sugars in the bananas, too, so you don’t have to add a ton of sugar to this recipe. Continue reading “peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread”