Ambitious Delicious(ness)

Historically, this dessert was called pound cake becaue it contained one pound of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour, making it easy for people to remember, especially since they couldn’t read. But this cake is a bit lighter than that.

This delicious pound cake recipe comes from Deb of Smitten Kitchen. She has the most beautiful photos and great content! Go check it out. She did warn us that this recipe required sifting the flour three(!) times and said it would be well-worth the effort. Boy, am I glad I listened to her!

Featuring T’s pretty plates! Can you see the tiny orange zest pieces?

The recipe called for lemon zest that I didn’t have. But what I did have was a moldy lime and a juicy orange. So the choice was obvious. I chose the latter and continue about my baking.

There were little bits of citrus surprise with every other bite, adding a new element of unexpected tartness, to play off the sweetness of the cake. I really enjoyed this cake and would totally make it again!

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I spent the last couple of days cranking out a bunch of Korean dishes for a special dinner. You see, back in June, I had the privilege to go to Haiti for 10 days. In order to raise funds, our team held a silent auction. I offered a Korean meal for two and D&T won! So I planned the menu around classic Korean dishes, and everything turned out well (for the most part).

Our dinner consisted of seasoned cucumber salad, dry squid moochim, spicy fishcakes, spinach moochim, shittake mushroom bokkeum, Kimchi, crab and scallion jeon, tofu jjorim, dwen jang jjigae, pork bulgogi, pumpkin galbi jjim, ddukbokki and pound cake with fresh whipped cream for dessert.

I forgot to take photos of the entire thing. Thanks again for your support, D&T!

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This is a quick and easy recipe that I created while exploring some ban chan (side dish) ideas. I am a huge fan of shiitake mushrooms (stems and all) and wanted to lightly season it so that it can complement other dishes when served as a part of a meal.

At the last minute, I decided that this dish needed some more color. I quickly grabbed a piece of carrot. I washed and peeled it but the thought of julienning carrots was unappealing to me at the moment(lazy, I know). So I used a cheese grate to make little carrot pieces. Voila! Efficiency win!

And honestly, I would totally mix this in rice, sesame oil and some gochugaru, for a 5-minute meal when I’m by myself.

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Despite the abundance of Korean dishes that grace this blog, I, for the life of me, cannot make a good pot of classic, Asian rice.

Yes, even with a rice cooker.

For the longest time, I would end up with a soupy goo. Then I would over comepensate by not adding enough water and end up with nasty, brick like grains. It wasn’t until years later that my sister told me that I was using the wrong part of the hand to measure the rice:water.

So when you have a big pot of dry rice, you roll with it and make fried rice. Since I didn’t have any other ingredients on hand, I went with eggplant, which turned out to be a good combination.

What can I say, we can’t be good at everything.  Have any of you experienced a similar frustration in the kitchen?

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Soon Du Bu (aka Soon Doo Boo) is a spicy anchovy based stew with chunks of super soft tofu and other vegetables. Most Soon Du Bu specialty restaurants will give you a bunch of options. You can choose to get white (no spicy seasonings), mild, medium, hot, or a bean paste based soup, similar to miso. They even give you the option to add mushrooms, seafood, pork, beef, Kimchi, or a combination of the aforementioned ingredients. I threw in whatever I had on hand for this particular recipe.

This stone bowl keep the soup nice and hot so that it doesn’t get cold as you eat. As you can see, it totally fogged up my camera lens, and continued to bubble for a good 10 minutes.

When it’s cold outside, there is nothing more comforting than eating soups! This is one of my favorite soups and I have a feeling I will be eating a lot of it this winter! Won’t you join me in this endeavor of eating delicious Soon Du Bu at home? Feel free to add ground beef, or ground pork, or your favorite seafood to this recipe. Also, check out my other recipes for Korean Soups.

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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

First order of business: it’s a somber Friday here in NYC, as we remember the families and the lives that were lost today, 8 years ago. Our thoughts are with you all.

Now, back to the recipe. At first, I was going to make quiche. But since I didn’t have enough ingredients for a pie crust, I took the easy way out and skipped it altogether.

Got a couple of yummy shallots and zucchini from my CSA share, along with bunches of parsley and basil. I was really happy to use incorporate all of those ingredients for this one dish.

This was a part of brunch served with some fruit salad, maple bacon, muffins from my last post and coffee. This was a scrumptious fritatta, and I would totally make it again. Next time, I’ll double this recipe and make two pans of it and save some for later!

A few friends were over, so I was distracted by good conversation and by Ava, the adorable baby that was giggling next to me! Forgive me for not getting a good final photo.

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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

If you’ve been reading about seasonal vegetables, I’m sure you’ve heard that zucchini is in season. This is great, except that I had no idea what to do with so much zucchini! I’ve been getting at least 2 zucchini pieces from my CSA share every single week! So after some deliberation, I thought I’d turn them into muffins.

My favorite part to eat are the muffin tops, as they are often softer and more chewy than the rest. I do find it strange that people refer to their excess stomachs as muffin tops because well, that’s just gross, no?

Speaking of which, this recipe is a bit more waist-friendly. I used half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat flour, used less butter and used honey with brown sugar for sweetness. Since zucchini is not a sweet vegetable by nature, I needed to make sure there was enough sugar. I thought they came out really good!

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What to do and what not to do when following this green curry recipe:

Do buy Maesari canned brand of green curry. It is cheap and you only need a small can to make a whole batch!

Do not dump the entire 12 oz. can of bamboo shoots into the pot even though the recipe doesn’t call for any of it. (Even more points if you don’t rinse out the acidic juice that is in the can.)

Do pat yourself on the back for finding a way to incorporate not one, but two of your CSA ingredients (potatoes and eggplant) into a dish.

Do not add Yukon gold potatoes to your curry. Why? What does this remind you of?

It has a striking resemblance to mangoes. D’oh.

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Thank you for all of your comments on the previous post! As promised, here is the recipe for the double vanilla cupcakes.

These cupcakes are called double vanilla because real vanilla beans are used in both the cake and the frosting. Using vanilla can be annoying, especially when you’re trying to take a picture at the same time. However, it is more than well worth the effort! If you look closely, you can see the little specks of vanilla. I’ve been thinking about using vanilla in a non-dessert way, so if you have any ideas, please do let me know!

With dark chocolate shavings

With sprinkles

With dried coconut flakes

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