Cocoa Cake, Gourmet February 2003

I hate it when I have to run to the grocery store to get that one special ingredient for a dish or dessert I want to make. I found this recipe on Epicurious.com for Everyday Cocoa Cake in Gourmet's February 2003 issue. My eyes ran down the list of ingredients. I had everything at home: cocoa, flour, butter, eggs, sugar, baking soda and vanilla. Perfect. I could make this cake for my husband's birthday.

My husband recently turned another year older. He isn't big on birthdays. But he did want potato-chorizo tacos for dinner.

I made the cake and decided to submit it to Gourmet, Unbound for their February roundup of recipes from the now-closed Gourmet magazine.

I'm better at baking cookies or custard desserts. The cake turned out like this:


But I knew I could fix the problem.

I shaved off the uneven dome of the cake with a bread knife.


Then I flipped over the cake and dusted it with powdered sugar. The unflattering dome is gone.

For the recipe, click here.

The cake tastes subtle. It was moist. It would be a good basic cake for you to slather some decadent frosting on top. I like cakes to be sweeter. But as the days went by, the taste grew on me.

Potato bacon soup

If I have bacon, I can make a meal.

I had a potato, leftover canned corn, bacon, garlic, celery and onion. My milk had spoiled, but I had heavy cream and homemade chicken stock.

I've been trying to make meals without having to run to the grocery store. It's Wednesday and I've been successful since Sunday. (I could not not go to the Beacon Farmers' Market on Sunday, but I only got $7 worth.) I've been eating a lot of leftover corn and black bean quesadillas. 

For the potato bacon soup, I used chicken stock I made over the weekend. It's the first time I made stock myself. It had so much more flavor than store-bought stock.

I used a recipe from Ratio by Michael Ruhlman because I had leftover bones from a roasted chicken. Click here to see the recipe for chicken stock.

Anyway, back to the soup.

Potato bacon soup
Ingredients:
1 potato, peeled and diced
4 or more slices of bacon, cut cross-wise into small strips
1 small onion, diced
1-2 stalks celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/3 cup or more of canned corn
4 cups chicken stock 
1/3 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste

Cook bacon in a saucepan until crispy. Drain bacon on paper towels. Drain off all but a tablespoon of the bacon fat. Add onion, celery and garlic. Saute onion and celery until softened. Sprinkle with flour. Add chicken stock.

When the soup begins to bubble, add the potatoes. Add corn and thyme. Cook until potatoes are soft. Then pour in heavy cream. Season soup with salt and pepper. Add the crispy bacon.

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Meatless meal: Corn and black bean quesadillas

Meatless meal

I ate chorizo-filled tacos along with corn and black bean quesadillas during Sunday's Jets vs. Colts game. But these quesadillas are a great choice for a meatless meal.

I adapted the recipe from America's Test Kitchen. The original recipe calls for Pepper Jack cheese. But since I didn't have any, I used cheddar cheese and sprinkled crushed red pepper over it. I also added minced jalapeno pepper.

What makes the quesadillas so flavorful is all the garlic in it.

Check out other Meatless Day recipes:
Jeroxie: Spiced congee with zucchini and egg
Tummy rumbles: Sweet corn fritters with roasted tomatoes and avocado

Corn and black bean quesadillas
Adapted from America's Test Kitchen
Note: The original recipe makes two quesadillas. I bumped up the portions to make quesadillas for more people.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients: 
1 2/3 cups canned corn
vegetable oil
1 2/3 cups minced red onion (about 1 large red onion)
5 teaspoons minced garlic
1 or 2 jalapenos, minced; added for taste (If necessary, remove seeds and ribs to minimize spiciness.)
1 2/3 cups canned black beans
10 teaspoons lime juice, or juice from a little less than 2 limes
kosher salt to taste
8-10 flour tortillas (9-inch), or you can use 8-inch tortillas
cheddar cheese, shredded
crushed red pepper to taste

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add a tablespoon of oil. Add red onion. When the onion has softened, add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add minced jalapeno pepper to taste. Cook for one minute. Add beans. Then mix in corn. Take off heat and add lime juice to taste. Season with salt.

Spoon filling on one-half of a tortilla. Add cheese. Then sprinkle crushed red pepper over the cheese. Fold over the other side of the tortilla. Repeat process until you run out of tortillas.

Heat pan until hot. Add a tablespoon of oil. Fry each side of a quesadilla until crispy. You can cook two quesadillas in a 12-inch pan. Cut each quesadilla into three triangles or cut in half. Serve on a plate.

Note: If you just want to make 2 quesadillas, you need 1/3 cup corn, 1/3 cup red onion and 1/3 cup blackbeans.

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Food in a pinch for the Jets vs. Colts game

My family wasn't into football. We played tennis and golf— the sports of choice for Asian-Americans. I didn't grow up with a tradition of watching the Super Bowl or the NFL playoffs.

But since I live in New York and the Jets were playing in the AFC Championship game, I thought I'd watch the game. Yeah, I was interested to know if the Jets or Indianapolis Colts would win. But I was more interested in having a couple of friends over and eating good food.

How much time did I devote to planning the get-together? Uh, I just texted a friend the night before. She lives down the road from us.

What did I have? I had some tasty leftovers and I had plenty of ingredients in my pantry. After the game was over, everyone was filled with tacos, quesadillas and beer.

Here's what I made:

I had leftover potato-chorizo tacos with avocado-tomatillo salsa from the day before. All I did was reheat the potato-chorizo filling and warm up some corn tortillas. My friend and her boyfriend brought over a bag of tortilla chips.

Tip: Anytime I make something with avocado, I always put the pit in the salsa, so the avocado doesn't turn brown. But adding lime juice or lemon juice to avocado also keeps it from turning brown.



While people watched the second half of the game, I made corn and black bean quesadillas. I had canned corn and canned beans in my pantry. I still had jalapeno peppers, cheddar cheese and a bag of flour tortillas in the fridge. (Recipe to come later.)


I love impromptu get-togethers.

Silver dollar pancakes for one

My husband had to go to work in the morning, but that didn't stop me from making silver dollar pancakes for one.

I recently bought Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman. I wanted to make pancakes from scratch using the ratio in the book. For years, I made pancakes from mixes. Now that I've got the code, I don't need to waste my money.

The pancakes I made were buttery, sweet and had a touch of vanilla. They were filled with way more imagination than those ready-made pancake mixes.

Pancake batter is 2 parts liquid to 1 part egg to 1/2 part butter to 2 parts flour.

NOTE: 1 large egg = roughly 2 ounces. You should think of these ratios in terms of ounces. 1 cup = 8 ounces of liquid. Ruhlman says it's best to use a scale. Even if you don't have a scale (like me), your pancakes will turn out fine.

I don't want to give everything away. (You should buy the book!) For a preview of the book, click here. Scroll down to the chapter that says "Quick Cakes" and you'll see the recipe for pancakes.

Rick Bayless' chicken enchiladas

My husband said to me, "I didn't know I had to marry a Korean to have Mexican food."

Ever since I bought Mexico One Plate at a Time by Rick Bayless, I've had the urge to make Mexican food a lot.

We had chicken enchiladas for dinner a couple days ago. I know the enchiladas look messy, but they're really good. I swear!

To get the recipe for chicken enchiladas, click here.

I decided to roast a chicken, instead of buying a rotisserie chicken to make the filling for the enchiladas. I'm not sure if I saved that much money, but I wanted to use the chicken to make fried rice and possibly use the bones for stock.

After finding a recipe in my America's Test Kitchen cookbook, I made a simple roast chicken by rubbing softened butter, salt and pepper underneath the skin and basting the chicken with melted butter.

Kom Tang- Korean oxtail soup

My mom used to make kom tang, or Korean oxtail soup, when I was a kid. I loved how the beef fell apart in my mouth. That was the best part, the softness of the meat. 

It's still one of my favorite Korean dishes. The cloudiness of the soup comes from boiling the oxtail for hours and hours.

Update: Some people have asked me this: You don't salt the soup because each person is supposed to season his or her own serving. That's what I like about the soup.

Seasoning the soup is totally up to you. You can add as much or as little salt as you want. Then you sprinkle scallions over your soup.

My husband has eaten the soup before. But after I put a bowl in front of him Sunday night, he took a sip and grimaced.

"How is it?" I asked.

"Have you tasted this?" he said.

"You're supposed to add salt," I said.

Once he added salt, he ate all of his soup and got a second serving.

This was the first time I made the soup. My mom's version tastes much better, but that's probably because she boils the oxtail for 10 hours and I only did it for five and a half.


Oxtail

Kom tang- Korean oxtail soup
Serves 2
Ingredients:
1 pound or so of oxtail
water
2 scallions, chopped
sea salt

Cover oxtail in water in an 8-quart pot. Bring to a boil. Discard water. Rinse oxtail to remove scum. Put oxtail back in the pot and fill it halfway with water. Turn heat to medium. Boil for another 2 hours. By this time, the soup will have reduced quite a bit. Add as much water as you want. Boil for another 3-8 hours (or all day). The longer you boil the oxtail, the soup will become the color white- that's what you're looking for.

Leave small bowls of sea salt and chopped scallions at the table for people to season their own soup.


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Meatless Day: Roasted eggplant sandwich with caramelized onions

For another Meatless Day, I made a roasted eggplant sandwich with caramelized onions and mozzarella cheese.

I bought these rolls from my local farmers' market in Upstate New York.



Since I had gone to the Beacon Farmers' Market later in the afternoon on Sunday, the vendor had put aside day-old bread bags for $2 each even though some of the bread was actually made that day. She had so much bread that she just wanted to sell them off quickly. I was ready to help her out!

I had been thinking about this sandwich for a while. I love the texture of roasted eggplant, how it feels so soft on your tongue. I like the mushiness of it. When I caramelized the onions, I poured a generous helping of white wine.

I slathered the sandwich with ajvar, or roasted red pepper relish. The relish is naturally sweet from the roasted red peppers. It went really well with the roasted eggplant. But I'm sure tomato sauce would work, too.



I assembled the sandwich and then put it back in the oven to melt the cheese. But it's better to melt the cheese on the eggplant slices that are already roasting the oven. The recipe reflects that.

Here are other awesome bloggers who are doing "Meatless Day" challenges:

Penny of Jeroxie: Tofu salad with peanut sauce
Injera of blah blog blah: New routines
Divina of Sense & Serendipity: Lentil stew

Roasted eggplant sandwich with caramelized onions

Serves 1-2
Ingredients:
1 eggplant, sliced length-wise
olive oil
salt
1 onion, sliced
white wine
tomato sauce or ajvar, roasted red pepper relish
mozzarella cheese, sliced
dinner rolls or hoagies

Directions:
Caramelizing the onions is going to take longer than roasting the eggplant.

Slice the onion. Add a tablespoon of oil to a pan heated at medium high. Then add the onions. Stir occasionally to prevent onions from getting burnt. After 15 or 20 minutes, deglaze the onions with a generous splash of white wine. The onions will turn brown and taste sweet. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

While keeping an eye on the onions, slice eggplant length-wise. Cover two baking sheet pans in tin foil. Brush with olive oil before you lay eggplant slices on the pans. Brush eggplant slices with olive oil. Season with salt. Roast for 15 minutes in the oven. During the last minute or two, place slices of mozzarella cheese on top of each eggplant slice. When the cheese has melted, take the pans out of the oven.

Cut each roll or hoagie length-wise and toast each roll in a heated pan on the stove.

Place an eggplant slice inside a roll. Slather tomato sauce or roasted red pepper relish on top of the melted cheese. Place caramelized onions on top. Make another layer of eggplant, cheese, sauce and onion if you want. Serve sandwiches and don't be afraid to be messy.

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Print recipe for roasted red pepper relish

Bacon spinach pasta

It takes me 30 minutes to drive home. I'm already hungry when I get in the car and I get hungrier as I'm driving. Sometimes I stop somewhere and buy something to eat. But this one night, I refused to do that. I was going to save money and I just wanted to get home.

I rooted around the kitchen. In the fridge, there was bacon and leftover spinach. In the pantry, there was some cavatappi pasta.

That lead to bacon, spinach pasta.

Here's what I remember I threw together.

Bacon spinach pasta
Serves 1-2 people
Ingredients:
4 slices bacon, cut cross-wise
1/2 pound spinach
1/2 pound cavatappi pasta or any pasta of your choice
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
parmesan or pecorino romano cheese

Boil pasta in salted water for 8 minutes or so until al dente. Drain pasta.

Meanwhile, cook bacon in a pan until crispy. Drain off all but one tablespoon of bacon fat. Set aside bacon. Saute spinach in the pan. Season with salt and pepper. When the spinach wilts, set aside.

Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil to the pan. Add the garlic. When the garlic is fragrant, add the pasta, bacon and spinach. Cook until heated through. Season with salt and pepper as needed. Grate parmesan or pecorino romano cheese on top of each serving of pasta.

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Meatless Day: Southwestern Hash and Eggs

After seeing Jeroxie challenge herself to go meatless, I decided to have Meatless Day posts, too. She made an awesome summer curry.

Most of the time, this blog is all about pork, beef and chicken. Since I have family and friends who are vegetarian, I'd like to cook more meatless dishes.

I bought Ellie Krieger's "The Food You Crave" some time ago. I found a recipe for breakfast: Southwestern Hash and Eggs.

The dish was hearty, filled with potatoes, black beans, tomatoes, onions and seasoned with cumin, garlic and cilantro.

We both liked the hash and ate it all day. But it seemed to be missing something though. Matt thought I should put a chipotle pepper doused in adobo sauce in the dish next time.

I like Krieger's technique of boiling potatoes in the skillet you're preparing the hash in. Usually, I'd boil potatoes in a separate pot.



Southwestern Hash and Eggs
Click here to see the recipe posted on FoodNetwork.com.
I used a red bell pepper, instead of a green pepper.

Note: I know I previously posted the recipe here. Since a photo of mine was used on another person's blog without permission, I've become more conscious of copyrights. If I can link to a recipe, I will.

My husband knows...

Photo taken by Karl Rabe

 

My husband knows if I had to choose between him and food, he would lose.

My mother-in-law's cranberry relish

I never tasted cranberry relish until I ate my mother-in-law's. I love it. It's sweet. It's tart. It has cranberries, apples and oranges in it. After I came home from visiting my in-laws, I made the relish and have been eating it like a snack. It has a lot of sugar in it, but I still think I'm eating something healthy.

Cranberry relish
Adapted from my mother-in-law's recipe

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh cranberries
1 Macoun or Granny Smith apple
1 orange
1 cup sugar

Pour cranberries in a food processor. Add sugar. Zest an orange over the cranberries. Then cut off the skin of the orange, making sure you cut off the pith. Quarter the orange and drop it in the food processor. Core the apple, cut it into chunks and drop them in the processor. Pulse the mixture until it reaches the consistency you want.

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Rick Bayless' potato chorizo tacos with avocado salsa

Tacos de papas chorizo y salsa de aguacate

Mexican chorizo sausage is crumbly. It's spicy and sensual. It's deliciously fatty. You don't remember taking the first bite. You just keep eating and eating and eating.

I made potato-chorizo tacos for our New Year's Day meal. Matt couldn't wait to eat them and he got short with me as I finished making the avocado salsa. We ate in silence, grunting occasionally as we chomped on each taco. When we finally looked up, we sighed in mutual happiness.

I think I could survive on Rick Bayless recipes every day of my life.



Potato-chorizo tacos with avocado salsa
Adapted from Mexico One Plate at a Time by Rick Bayless
Makes 12 tacos
2-3 (about 12 ounces total) medium red-skin or smallish Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 2 cups)
12-15 ounces Mexican chorizo sausage, store-bought (casing removed if there is one) or homemade
1 small white onion, finely chopped
4 ounces (2-3 medium) tomatillos, husked, rinsed and cut into quarters
1 garlic clove, peeled
2 serranos or 1 jalapeno
1 large ripe avocado
12 warm, fresh corn tortillas

For the filling: In a medium saucepan, bring about 1 quart of water to a boil. Add cubed potatoes and salt the water (about 2 teaspoons). Simmer until the potatoes are fully tender, about 10 minutes. Drain.

In a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat, combine the chorizo and onion. Break up the clumbs of sausage. Stir regularly, until the onion is soft and the sausage cooked through, about 10 minutes. If the sausage has rendered more than a light coating of fat over the bottom of the skillet, pour out the excess or sop it up with a paper towel.

Add the potatoes to the skillet and continue to cook over medium heat. Stir often until the potatoes begin to brown, about 8 minutes. As the mixture cooks, mash everything together a little with the back of a spoon or a spatula. Scrape up any crusty bits of potato, so that it roughly holds together (it'll look like hash). Cover and keep warm over the lowest heat.

For the salsa: As the filling finishes cooking, make the salsa. In a food processor, combine the tomatillos, garlic and chiles. Pulse in the machine until everything is finely chopped. Peel and pit the avocado, add the flesh to the processor and pulse until everything is well blended. Scrape the salsa into a serving bowl, taste and season with salt, about 1/2 teaspoon.

Scrape the warm chorizo filling into a serving bowl and set on the table along with the salsa and warmed up tortillas.

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Step-by-step photos:

Chop onion. Peel and cut potatoes into cubes. I put potatoes in cold water to prevent them from turning brown.


In a medium (3-4 quart saucepan), bring about 1 quart water to a boil. Add cubed potatoes and heavily salt the water (about 2 teaspoons). Simmer until the potatoes are fully tender, about 10 minutes. Drain.


This is packaged Mexican chorizo sausage. Don't get Salvadorean or Spanish chorizo.


Cut open each sausage. Then place the sausage in a pan.


In a large (12-inch) nonstick skillet or griddle set over medium heat, combine the chorizo and onion; stir regularly, breaking up the clumps of sausage, until the onion is soft and the sausage cooked through, about 10 minutes. If the sausage has rendered more than a light coating of fat over the bottom of the skillet, pour out the excess or sop it up with a paper towel.

Add the potatoes to the skillet and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until the potatoes begin to brown, about 8 minutes. As the mixture cooks, mash everything together a little with the back of a spoon or a spatula, scraping up any crusty bits of potato, so that it roughly holds together (it'll look like hash). Cover and keep warm over the lowest heat.


Husk tomatillos and quarter. 


The salsa. As the filling finishes cooking, make the salsa: In a food processor, combine the tomatillos, garlic and chiles. Pulse in the machine until everything is finely chopped. Peel and pit the avocado, add the flesh to the processor and pulse until everything is well blended. Scrape the salsa into a serving bowl, taste and season with salt, about 1/2 teaspoon.

Scrape the warm chorizo filling into a serving bowl and set on the table along with the salsa and a basket of steaming tortillas.

Sarcasm: Just the right present

I thought I'd share with you guys one of the Christmas presents my husband got. The T-shirt reads: "Sarcasm; one of my many talents."

He is prone to sarcasm, so it was the perfect gift from his mother.

My parents are Korean immigrants, so they take everything literally. I inherited that trait from them. My husband makes fun of me if I take him at his word when he was really joking. All sarcasm I learned I absorbed from him.



My mother-in-law gave me a new apron. She said a 90-something-year-old woman sewed the apron to sell for the benefit of the local YMCA. I thought that was pretty cool.

New Year's Eve: Watching the ball drop in Times Square

The ball began to drop. People around us counted out loud, "10, 9, 8, 7, 6 ..." As the ball hit the end of its run, fireworks went off in Times Square. I turned to Matt and kissed him. I'd never done that before— kiss someone at midnight on New Year's Eve.

Matt and I watched the ball drop for the first time in New York City. We were inside a building in Times Square.  We looked through the window and the ball was right there. It was so much better than watching it on TV.


The smoke from the fireworks left the 2010 sign in a haze.


Looking down at the crowds below us, I was glad I was out of the cold.


The ball glowed like at an orb, changing into different colors and geometric shapes.


Matt, me and the orb.


Doesn't the ball look cool?