pseudo-guest-post no. 2: PIE.

Last time there was a delicious stir-fry. What could beat that? How about…

… fruit–strawberries, no less–in pie form is always promising! And what David ended up with was:

Strawberry glace pie! Recipe here; used cream cheese instead of the Tofutti.

And the money shot, is, of course, the mandatory close-up. Apologies for poor lighting and further apologies because I am eating (sneaking a slice of ) this pie now and you are not.

REALLY delicious.

 

first bread-making adventure

I am a bread-loving person. One of my all-time favorite foods is 饅頭; my taste for dense, plain breads and rolls extends to muffuletta (mmm) and–I admit this guiltily–the interiors of baguettes and challah. (Side note: Don’t get me wrong, I won’t go on a mining expedition when eating with friends or hosting a dinner. But since Mom is a fan of flaky and flavorful bread crusts, I have been known to dig portions of bread and leave the outer shell behind… I digress.) With this breadly history and! inspired by this awesome “braiding a six-strand challah” video recently posted on Craftster, I decided to (finally!) make a loaf of my own.

The recipe I used is from Chai Time (same author as the aforementioned video); link here. And my humble attempt follows:

After leaving the ball of dough alone for a couple of hours while I went shopping for groceries and mystery sales at Target I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I hadn’t messed anything up so far. So some punching and three botched braidings later I had this:

Cutting the dough was pretty difficult, for one. And then there was the funny business of always ending up with one really short strand, for some reason. But finally! On to the second rising and baking…

Voila! Somehow, during the second rising the loaf took on an about-to-explode quality. The Secret of Challah (via Wikipedia) suggests skipping an official second rising and just putting the loaf in when the oven is preheating instead; maybe this will make my bread less bloated. Despite appearances, though, grab a handful and deliciousness overwhelms :)

Quite successful, I think! And very delicious with this apple-spice spread that was on sale at the grocery store. The famous no-knead bread is next on my list, I think.

 

stir-fried beef and peppers (a guest post, sort of)

Awesome? Oh yeah.

And the results are:

 

Totoro!

His eyes are really huge and therefore a little un-Totoro-like, but other than that this turned out pretty well. Re-igniting my love of making cute things: success.

 

new foods!

Here are some things I tried for the first time on Sunday:

Five Guys. Finally! Even though there are now two of these in York and one a couple of miles down 193, I still hadn’t been until now. No burger picture since I inhaled it a second after unwrapping the foil (the patties are top-notch, in my opinion), but the fries lose against Checkers’. Still: impressive in both portion and starchiness.

Bee pollen was definitely new and unheard-of for me. Even though Hannah explained that we were supposed to just swallow a spoonful with water, I chewed anyway… tasted like dried berries.

This is apple-flavored vinegar. When mixed with water it still smelled heavily of vinegar but tasted like apple juice, yum.

And then there were these little pink mini-Hershey’s kisses that turned out to be hamster food… surprisingly delicious hamster food. Please don’t judge me based on that last statement.

The day ended with not-new-but-still-awesome kimchi and rice. A good stomach day, I think!

 

dinner

I really love pancakes. Fortunately for me, IHOP’s free pancake day tends to fall near my birthday; unfortunately, I’ve tried to make pancakes with pancake mix twice so far and have failed miserably both times. So today was my first attempt at pancakes from scratch from this recipe. And…?

Success! Or so it would appear. After accidentally burning the first pancake (note to self: no oil necessary; only use medium and not medium-high heat) the rest started looking pretty good with the right color and fluffiness. As expected, adding raspberries definitely worked well. Taste, however, was a bit lacking… these were way too salty. (Did I use a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon?) That pretty much overwhelmed any of the other expected flavors, so I’ll have to modify things next time for a better gauge. The comments accompanying the above recipe suggest adding vanilla (mmm) and less salt (definitely). Will try again soon!

 

“when come back bring pie!” – w & b.

Having made the delicious chocolate pear cake last October I knew that there could be nothing wrong with making this gloriously rich chocolate pear tart from Chocolate and Zucchini. After all, I had a leftover pie crust waiting to be used (by the way: is a pie really only different from a tart because a pie has sloped sides?) and some leftover chocolate from previous baking experiments; here are the results.

Modifications include using a pre-made pie crust (though the chocolate crust described in the recipe does sound amazing) and mixing semi-sweet and unsweetened chocolate for the ganache. For me, the ganache by itself was too bitter but was perfect with the pears; the saltiness of the crust was also a good contribution to the taste.

Close(r)-ups:

Basically, chocolate + pear in any form = delicious. Fondue, even, would be a good setting. Try the aforementioned cake recipe or this one!

 

spoils from spring break

This week was split between York, Philadelphia, New York, and DC–lots of fantastic events in very good company… but not so many pictures. Some day I will remember to bring my camera to shows and outings! I do, however, have a couple of yarn pictures:

The Ben Franklin’s in York was either moving or closing completely; everything from craft supplies to store shelves was being sold or auctioned off. Unfortunately I only caught the tail end of the massive clearance, but I did emerge from the shopping frenzy with 2 skeins of the Atacama and 6 of the Lion Cashmere Blend… at 60% off! Judging from the shelf tags and the leftover skeins in the store, I probably would’ve gotten my hands on some Debbie Bliss DK Cashmerino had I been there a bit earlier… sigh. Still, two skeins of handpainted alpaca at less than the price of one? Awesome.

Thursday was a day of art gallerying in DC and dinner at the fantastic Sushi Taro in Dupont (Emily: I’m officially a fan)–really should have taken pictures at both Freer/Sackler (where allowed) and the restaurant, but instead I present to you a page from a book of cakes that look like rear ends. Are my priorities straight? Not really. But at least I kept things food related… this is from the book Xtra Naughty Cakes: Step-By-Step Recipes for 19 Cheeky, Fun Cakes; not sure if I’d make any of these for myself (tastiness being high on my list and probably not so high with these recipes) but the book was a good flip-through.

Next post: food!

 

things that should have been photographed

• ratatouille (the Smitten Kitchen version)
• omelettes from the leftover ratatouille produce–good with Tabasco
• new mandoline and food processor
• pecan pie on pi day!

Fortunately for this blog (and for anyone who happens to be around my apartment?) I will definitely make the ratatouille again plus tweak the pecan pie so that nobody dies from a sugar overdose. In the mean time I have a ton of stuff in the recipe queue (challah! and… MORE PIE) so hopefully Saturday and Sunday will be big food days.

 

pie overload

Apparently Emily and I cause kitchens to explode in a frenzy of tiny pies:

Filled with either blueberries or peach and rum. Some day I will learn to do a proper egg wash.

Chicken pot pies in miniature! All credit to Emily for these.

I feel like the current trend will be more foody and less yarny for at least a little while. We’ll see how that works out. Stay tuned!