Home-cured salmon

Wild Salmon was on sale at our nearest grocery store, so Mike bought some and cured it. The result is similar to lox, except less smokey and a lot more salmon-tasting. It’s delicious for breakfast on toast and egg. It’s even better on a bagel with cream cheese. Yum!!

(also, can we talk about how much better my pictures turn out during the day? I think it’s time for me to get a new lens, considering all I use this camera for is taking pictures of food…)

Recipe after jump.

Circuit cake

I’m not much of a baker. I don’t really like sweets, most of the time. And I absolutely detest frosting, especially ones with food coloring. That’s why the cake above pretty much goes against everything I believe in in life…except that it was made as a retirement present for a really great professor, who teaches the Joy of Electronics course at Harvard. Unfortunately, I am the opposite of artistic, so this circuit cake is unfortunately the best I could do. There are tons of better ones out there..

For reference, the resistors are made of Mike and Ike’s, cut up and stuck together. The capacitors were made of Rolo’s and IC’s of Kit Kat bars. I also tried to make a MOSFET (see pic below) with a Kit Kat bar. I suggest freezing all of your candy before you try a project like this.

In the end, the cake was well-received. The professor seemed to like it, and I’m glad that we had a little celebration of his last lecture. I think we all had fun with the idea of it. And you silly Americans will eat just about anything that’s sweet! Even though when I looked around the room, I realized everyone’s lips and tongues were stained green.

A picture of the overall cake after the jump.

Mozzarella

If you follow me on twitter, you may have had to endure my multiple tweets, complaining about my cheese-making failures. For a casual side project in school I decided to study how the mechanical properties of mozzarella change with different pH and longer stretching times. Unfortunately, it took me almost 4 gallons to milk before I could even make a control group of normal mozzarella. The results were fantastic, even though I forgot to add salt. If you’re ever interested in making mozzarella, I highly suggest Ricki’s Mozzarella Kit. I also have some helpful hints for you

Katsu-don

Katsu-don has become one of my and Mike’s favorite dishes. But wait! you may protest. Isn’t Katsu-don usually ladled with tender, sweet, and fragrant onions with a layer of soft, poached eggs to tie it all together? The picture above doesn’t have any of the delicious parts!

Yeah, that’s because the picture makes the whole dish look seriously unappetizing. You don’t wanna see it. Just trust me that this is friggen amazing. The crunch of the deep-fried pork cutlet works perfectly with the tenderness of the onions and egg. The rice then soaks up the excess juices. Mm mm good!

Recipe after the jump. Oh and ALL RIGHT, I’ll show you the picture at the end too. But don’t tell me I didn’t warn you…

Beef bowl

Derious and simple. Also, the beef (I used top round) was on sale for only $2.50 and I made enough for two meals. Or my meal and my two roommates crowding around the pan in the kitchen sneaking bites until it’s all gone. Recipe from here

Dinner tonight

I really haven’t had the time to update this blog. So trust me when I say that tonight’s meal was delicious enough for me blow away the cobwebs on this site and post the pictures. I also don’t think anyone is reading this blog for recipes, so I’ll just give a detailed description of the dish, a la style of restaurants.

Appetizer: Ciabetta, pan-toasted in butter with crisped basil, and thin slice of Romano cheese, and crisped proscuitto.

Pasta: Deliciously fun curly pasta with a simple tomato sauce of simmered canned tomatoes, capers, fried proscuitto, and a dash of red pepper flakes. Topped with grated Romano cheese and basil.

Side: Blanched white asparagus (what a funny/gross looking vegetable!) tossed with red onions sauteed in beurre blanc (butter and white wine).

Iron Chef MIT, Episode 1

Kitchen Stadium: Random Hall, Destiny (and Foo) lounge/kitchens.

Master Chefs in competition: Shanying, Mike, Nick, and Patrick.

Secret ingredients: Ginger and Potato

I would say the cook-off was a great success! The judges announced the “secret” ingredients 2 days in advance, and the chefs planned 3 (or in Mike’s case, 5) dishes.  Since I unfortunately did not bring a camera, I have no mouth-watering, enticing pictures to share. I can assure you however that the dinner feast was spectacular. The judges never ended up announcing a winner, though it’s rather safe to say that Mike stole the show with his scallops with ginger-miso-grapefruit and hand-made ginger ice cream. I was overly ambitious and tried to make dumplings with potato wrappers, but I got really tired about two hours before the judging, and before I had started my other two dishes. Plus, after Mike and I moved from our apartment (it’s too small to host a dinner competition involving 4 chefs and 5 judges) to Random Hall, I became really disoriented and out of my element. The change in scenery totally screwed me over, so I lost all patience for cooking, stopped following the recipes and randomly added ingredients while pouting. I ended up with overcooked soba that lacked flavor because I forgot to add chili sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and scallions (you know, the stuff that would make the dish taste like something other than soy sauce), braised pork-belly that wasn’t tender enough, and dumplings without dipping sauce.

But you know what? Once we sat down and I stopped sulking and started hanging out with people, I had a great time again. It didn’t matter that there were flaws with my dish. People were hungry and we were all just having fun together. After dinner, everyone took complimenting chefs and offering some constructive feedback. Then we all ate ice cream, drank some ginger-lemonade-vodka spritzer and shared inappropriate stories. While I don’t miss the kitchens in undergraduate dorms, I do miss living with and hanging out with a bunch of your friends. So at the end of the day, it was a great event, and I look forward to episode 2.

If anyone else is interested in hosting a similar competition, there are only two things I would change. First I would suggest having two teams of chefs instead of individual chefs competing. It would greatly bring down the stress level. Secondly, I would suggest eating each chef’s menu on its own. We had 12 different dishes on the table that we all tried to pile onto our plates. Flavors overlapped, and the lighter more subtle dishes were overpowered by the strong, bold ones. Having only two teams instead of four chefs will also help with that part. Aside from that, just keep in mind it’s all in good fun!

Yogurt

I’ve been awake for more than 2 hours now, but I can’t get myself out of bed to go to work because my legs are so sore from doing 12 squats and like 5 lunges yesterday.  …Oh, come on, give me a break. I hadn’t been in the gym for almost a year now!

So I’m passing the time in bed blogging excessively instead. And eating yogurt. Which is why I’m going to now write a post about yogurt.

Favoritest Yogurt of the Moment:

aka. What inspired this post to begin with. It’s thick, it’s creamy, it’s everything you could ever hope for.

Favorite Yogurt of All Time:

Sadly, the Shaw’s across the street from my apartment doesn’t sell it. But trust me, it is spectacular. Why aren’t there more maple-flavored things in the world? Like maple-flavored chapstick. Or lotion. mmmmm

Best Greek Yogurt:

It’s thick but eating a large amount doesn’t make me feel sick. Witchcraft, I say! Fage is by far the best brand I have ever tried. Chobani, on the other hand, stinks. Not literally. But you know what I mean.

Worst Yogurt Ever:

The aftertaste feels like a desert in my mouth. Seriously. This shit is nasty. I hate it so much, I’m not even going to dignify it with a unpixilated picture.

I’m proud of having wasted 20 minutes Googling for pictures of yogurt. Maybe I can now use my legs to– ahHH, nevermind, back to bed.

Sausage potato skins

Mike claims that potato skins tend to be rather mediocre at restaurants. If you’ve experienced something similar, you might be interested to know that we’ve discovered a much better and much unhealthier alternative. Sausage (not bacon) stuffed potatoes with a mayo-mustard dressing. The result was heavenly.

This recipe is courtesy of smittenkitchen, my favoritest food blog of all time. If you follow the link, you’ll see mouthwatering pictures that entice you to put down whatever you are doing and make these potatoes RIGHT NOW. The best part of the recipe is that you can use the mayo-mustard sauce as a salad dressing as well. The mashed potatoes on the side were from all the potato insides we scooped out.

A quick note: the recipe calls for breakfast sausages, but I used Shaw’s Italian sweet sausages for no other reason than (surprise) “it was on sale.” In hindsight, that was a poor choice. Shaw’s brand is always terrible and ought to be avoided. There was way too much oil. Italian sausages also had too much flavoring and overpowered the sauce.

Recipe after the jump…

Thanksgiving, 2009

I. Am. So. Full. I will never eat again. BLUUGHGHGHHHHHHH.

Mike and I, with the indispensable help of Ben, Zach, and Bryan, essentially made all of the Thanksgiving dishes in the last and final issue of Gourmet. Of course we also can’t forget Sarah and Stephen, who were endlessly cleaning up and organizing: the worst part of being in the kitchen, but also the most important part. Thanks everyone!!

I’m too tired to post the recipes, but let me enlighten you with our menu (and a few pictures):

1. Cranberry relish with orange
2. Rye bread stuffing
3. Sausage jambalaya
4. Onion pie
5. Pan fried kale with walnuts
6. Potato au gratin
7. Carrots with shallots, sage, and thyme
8. Sauerkraut and apples
9. Cider-glazed turkey
10. Pumpkin pie (courtesy of Hannah-Rose)
11. Old-fashioned pecan pies (yeah, there were TWO)
12. Pear cranberry cake with glaze
13. Pumpkin cheesecake (courtesy of Zach)

Sausage jambalaya

Kale with walnuts (ended up being the blandest dish, actually...)

Carrots -- perfectly seasoned!

Onion pie -- highlight of the meal

Rye bread stuffing

Anne, looking fabulous while glazing a pear-cranberry cake

Hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!