zucchini pancakes...

I got home last night at 2:30am and a busy day at lab meant I didn't have time to buy groceries. As everything I ate yesterday was deep-fried, I felt I needed some vegetables today. But what do you do when you just got home and it's already 8:30, you're very hungry, and you only have two shrively-looking zucchini in your drawer?

Make zucchini pancakes! It took five minutes to prepare and they're pretty healthy too! Look how easy:
1. Wash a medium zucchini or two small ones and cut into 2-in chunks. Put in food processor. Throw in half a small onion and pulse pulse pulse. Add some salt and pepper, crack in three eggs, and add in a couple tablespoons of a binder. I used Bisquick and flaxseed meal (gotta get those omegas!) but you could use flour or breadcrumbs.
2. Pulse pulse pulse. Drop like pancake batter onto a nonstick skillet greased with Pam or olive oil cooking spray. They won't bubble like pancakes but you can check the undersides after a few minutes to see how brown they are. Flip. Eat.

This was inspired by a korean egg pancake-like thing that's made with veggies, fish, and eggs. You could make these coin-sized and eat it that way - with rice and kimchee. Or you could make them pancake-sized and top them with shredded cheese and salsa, which is what I chose to do tonight. Yum!

Thankful...

One Diestel turkey: $25
Three pounds of cranberries: $5.50
Two bunches of celery: $1.20
Three large onions: $0.75
Two pounds of swiss chard: $6
Two pounds of butter: $5

Impressing your mother with your first solo Thanksgiving dinner effort and having your family all together in your first "grown-up" apartment:



Priceless!!

I know, several holidays have gone by since Thanksgiving, but what can I say, I'm waaay behind. The above concoction is a fennel and beet salad I put together as an appetizer for my Thanksgiving dinner. I tossed some fennel with a citrus vinaigrette a la Thomas Keller, and had my brother place overlapping slices of roasted beet on top. I gave him a cave-aged gorgonzola to crumble on top. Unwittingly, it turned out looking like the MasterCard logo.
As I am too lazy to post other pictures right now (and I have a lab presenation tomorrow, but have yet to start!) I will link you to my brother's blog where he has chronicled our dinner...

Cranberry Sauce Recipe

I know, there are millions of cranberry sauce recipes out there. This is my family's - we've tweaked it from the recipe on an old Martha Stewart video we checked out at the public library ages ago. This video is definitely old school - one of the recipes is for a turkey wrapped in puff pastry, and another recipe calls for a gallon of clarified butter (I exaggerate only slightly.) The original recipe called for whole fruit diced into 1/4" cubes - but this made the sauce a little bitter.

Kim Family Cranberry Sauce
serves 10 to 12

2 ½ cups sugar

½ cups water

Zest and juice of one orange and one lime

1 cup raisins (I like golden. This is optional.)

2 3-inch cinnamon sticks

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped out. (This is definitely not optional. Throw the whole thing in.)

3 12-ounce bags of fresh cranberries


Put the sugar and water in a pan and caramelize until golden brown. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 10 minutes. Let cool, and refrigerate until ready to use.


My favorite way to eat this....

Today in the mail...

...I got the most awesome package! From Jenn of I Got Two Shoes. This was part of Blogging by Mail 3 hosted over at my little kitchen. Check it out - there are lots of interesting packages flying around all over the world.

As for mine...I was very excited when I saw the mailing label. My parcel came all the way from South Korea! And look at all the fun stuff inside:


Mmm...I'll never be tired of instant noodles. This cup is very considerate in letting me know in very large letters that I am only consuming 130 kcal.

Oooh...now I can make rice balls. There's even a packet of "health rice" to make them with - and a packet of rice flavoring. Which flavor? Cheese!


Yum...chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, chocolate-dipped cracker sticks, and several flavors of chocolate. I love when korean food packages have english writing on them. Here's what the packages say:
"Jeju Orange Chocolate is made with world-level prodution technollogy and the most up-to-date German and Italian machines using 100% natrual jeju tangerine grown in the blessed island, jeju. jeju chocolate contains all the ingredients of natural tangential, including Vitamin-C & Fiber, which gives it a taste unique from others chocolate and is also healthy." Nice. Healthy chocolate.
"Green tea chocolate has the freshness of the first flush leaf with sweet. It is a neo-concept chocolate that spreads the freshness with not too sweet in your mouth."
"Jeju Cactus Chocolate is made with cactus powder through vacuum lyophilization of Jeju Cactus. It adds nutritive substance to deep and tender chocolate taste."
Even though this chocolate is healthy, Jenn has included a box of "smart herb tea" (I hope it helps me through my qualifying exams) and some T-smile gum so that I don't get cavities. :)

Thank you so much Jenn for your very generous package! My parents will be in Korea this year for Christmas, and my brother and I won't be able to go with them. We'll definitely make some rice balls and eat some health chocolate so we can feel like we're with them this year...

My kitchen...

As part of this round of Blogging by Mail, we've been asked to include a photograph of our kitchen. I don't have any prints, so I thought I'd post them up here...



Do you see that dead basil plant on the corner of the table? Shame on me. I'm a bad plant mommy. See our spice cabinet? When I first opened it I knew that I would love living here...
And just for kicks, here's a peek inside our fridge...

Well, only the top shelf, which is my shelf. As you can see, I heart Trader Joe's.

We may need a bigger freezer...

Not even a chocolate thing from Arizmendi...

...can lift me out of this gray cloud today. You know you're in trouble when a chocolate-filled brioche can't cheer you up. Yowza.

In other non-food news, how in the world has this existed for a whole week without me knowing???

Nickel Creek covering Britney Spears' "Toxic"

Another food rut...

Well, I guess not so much of a rut as a black hole? School/work has been crazy and will continue to be crazy until the middle of November, so that means late late nights. And weekends. Which means I have no energy whatsoever to get home and cook something. Hell, last night it took all the energy I had to stick a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Yes, kettle corn was my dinner last night.
If I don't get a PhD, I fully blame Netflix. Why can't I attack my research with the same focus that somehow appears when a new DVD appears in the mail? TV shows on DVD will be the death of me. First I tackled all of Sex and the City. Then it was West Wing. I just finished Arrested Development, Six Feet Under, and Sports Night. Now it's the entire first season of Scrubs. Gah. Usually I grumble when companies are mean and only put three or four episodes on one disc. But the first disc I got for Scrubs had eight episodes on it. Eight! It's a wonder I was able to restrain myself from watching all eight in one sitting. Because I would.
Ooh, I did have a yummy meal last Friday - a high school friend was in town so a whole bunch of us ate dinner at Home. I may have to attempt to recreate their banana bread pudding and pumpkin cheesecake at home.
Whew. Back to the microtome. Gotta slice up some slides before I take my rats to their MRI.

Thanksgiving help!

In my first attempt to be more grown-up, I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my family this year. I'm not just driving over to Lafayette the night before to help out, I'm planning the menu and cooking everything and serving it in my apartment in San Francisco. Yowza. I'm only slightly nervous. My mom sounded bewildered when I first brought up the idea.

Me: Mom, are you doing anything for Thanksgiving this year?
Mom: I don't know...why?
Me: I'm thinking of cooking this year at my house.
Mom: Why would you do that?? No! Just come home! Don't be crazy!!
Me: Mom! You wouldn't have to do anything! I thought it would be nice if you all came over and had a relaxing Thanksgiving this year!

So I just gave up at that point, since my mom is pretty stubborn, and is convinced that by cooking Thanksgiving dinner I won't have time to "study." I think her idea of grad school is slightly different from mine.

The next day, I get a call.

Mom: You know Jungjoo, I was thinking about it some more, and I think it's a very nice idea to have Thanksgiving dinner at your house.
Me: See? It wasn't a crazy idea!
Mom: And don't try to do everything yourself. I can make something and bring it. Like pumpkin soup. Or the turkey! I'll bring the turkey!
Me: Mom!!

So now I'm cooking dinner. And I don't know what to do! I had all these ideas swirling in my head, like warm frisee salad with poached eggs and pancetta, or swiss chard gratin, or gorgonzola potato tart. And maybe I'll brine the turkey. The ideas started getting out of hand, and in about two minutes I had planned a 10-dish offering, where most everything involved bacon fat, cheese, heavy cream, or copious amounts of butter. Heart attack central. So I'm asking for ideas - what Thanksgiving dishes do y'all make that don't involve a truckload of saturated fat? Specifcally, vegetable offerings. And where would you buy a good turkey in San Francisco? Keep in mind, my budget doesn't allow me to get one of those fresh $130 heritage turkeys, but I'm willing to splurge on something that wasn't frozen a year ago. And how do you brine with little fridge space? I heard somewhere about brining in a cooler, but I'm afraid I'll wake up thanksgiving morning with rotten turkey and fodder for a year's worth of brotherly insults.

My brother...

...never ceases to amaze me. While I may have been the straight-A overachiever during high school, he has grown up to be the creative genius. I am in awe of his self-taught cooking and guitar-playing skills. And tonight he has made me burst with pride. He just called with his MCAT score - 36. Thirty-six!! I know, I know, it's totally obnoxious of me to brag about my baby brother, but dammit, I'm proud! I'm so excited for him. I know he'll be an amazing doctor. Or whatever he decides he wants to do. For all the insults he may throw my way, he is one of the sweetest and most caring little brothers anybody could ask for.
Congratulations Hyunjoon! I'll be sure to drink a Guinness in your honor when I'm done with this crazy 200-mile relay this weekend!

Pearl, part two...

On Sunday I trekked out to Berkeley to hear the amazing Takacs Quartet, and there was no way I was driving back to the city without eating some spicy smoky fries. Yes, I went back to Pearl. Yes, I loved it as much as I did the first time.

We started with the fall salad, which was a tangy jumble of frisee topped with raspberries, figs, and pistachio pecorino. Then we dug into the crispy squid with thai slaw, which if you go to Pearl and you don't order, you have wasted a trip. On my last trip I loved the bruschetta and this time they offered a version with figs. Although I love figs, I passed on this so we could try the moroccan fish cakes - and we were not at all disappointed. They looked like falafel balls - and they had the same crunchy outsides, but full of moist fish and zucchini inside, served on top of a yummy yogurt sauce with housemade harissa. And then there were the fries. Mmmmm...

We washed it all down with a huge bottle of belgian farmhouse ale. I was pretty full. But then we looked at the dessert menu, and had to order the hot fudge sundae. Yergh. Chocolate-hazelnut, triple espresso, and vanilla bean gelato. Valrhona and El Rey chocolate sauces. Banana. Whipped cream. Did we have to restrain ourselves from licking the inside of the martini glass it was served in? Yes.

Goood Frikin' Chicken

I kid you not, that's the name of the restaurant. Just look at this picture:



Mmmm...a whole chicken, salad, crispy pita, and a side (we chose the basmati pilaf, you can also get hummus, baked beans, potatoes, or mac and cheese) fed one 6' 3" boy who is a bottomless pit and one ravenous girl for only $16. It doesn't get much better than that.

Goood Frikin' Chicken
29th St @ Mission
San Francisco

Happy belated birthday...

...to my dear friend Roger, who on Saturday turned very old. ;) He is the man who first took me to the restaurant that started my love affair with ethiopean food, introduced me to the joys of eating a chicken cutlet grinder (plain for me, with blue cheese dressing for him) at 11pm, and eventually (although he doesn't know it) led me to appreciate stinky cheese. I hope you had a wonderful birthday weekend!

Oh, and his blog has mysteriously morphed into a food blog. :)

Snack foods that will be the death of me #1

Gah. I think I just ate 20 of these without thinking. Then I made the mistake of peeking at the nutrition label. I've just consumed enough saturated fat to take ten years off my life. :(

Ugh, food mistakes...

Whenever I'm at the Metreon and I'm eating at the food court, I usually end up at the Long Life Noodle place. I have no idea why I keep doing that to myself. Every single time I've been very unhappy. Buddha's Bliss? Blech. Yin-Yang Delight? Yuck. Enchanted Heat? Ew. And last night, Curry Imperial. Ha. Curry sauce my a$$. It was a bowl of yellow noodles in a yellow sauce that I had to douse with soy sauce to get it to taste like anything. God, I'm never going to that place again.

I can say this because I've been there more than twice. I know you really should give a place a couple of tries before you write it off, but sometimes you have to follow your gut (literally and figuratively.) I should have written off Red Lobster after the very first time I went. That's right, I'll be the first to admit it - I've been to Red Lobster. Twice. In my defense, my boyfriend at the time claimed it was very good, and that it was the "nice" restaurant to go to in his hometown.* It sucked. Yet, somehow, we forgot this and went again. Yup. Shame on us.

*He's no longer my boyfriend. Coincidence? Hmmm.

Pizza My Heart

When I've had a little more to drink than I can handle (which means two beers instead of one, yeesh) I get a hankering for a nice slice of pizza. Post-drinking pizza is not to be confused with meal pizza. The two do have some overlap but most pizzas definitely belong in one category and not both.

Pizza Orgasmica is my post-drinking pizza of choice. But the price is a little steep, and sometimes you have to wait in line a long time. I don't know about you, but after my two beers, I get a little impatient. Especially if there's pizza involved. So the other night Rich and I decided to try out Pizza My Heart.

You may have noticed people walking around with t-shirts that say "Pizza My Heart" on them. Apparently you get them for free if you order a whole pizza. Don't. Don't even be seduced by the $5 deal where you get a slice and a t-shirt. The pizza is horrible. Look at this picture:

Yes, there's a lot of stuff on there and it looks like it has the potential to taste good, but somehow they managed to concoct the most tasteless slice of cardboard imaginable. Look at the crust. Anemic! Plus it needs a tan. And it didn't taste like anything. See that onion? Didn't taste like anything. The cheese? I'm not even sure they put cheese on there - there wasn't even a hint of saltiness. Sheesh. Blech blech blech.

Here is Rich making a sad face because his pizza is floppy. Yup, nothing worse than flaccid pizza - in taste and texture. So I'm warning you - don't even think about going here. Even if you're drunk and desperate. Better to go home and eat a frozen pizza. Seriously!

Amazing snack foods #2

Grape and blue cheese truffles:



Take seedless grapes, cover in a blue cheese/cream cheese/white wine concoction, then roll in ground pistachios.



Labor-intensive, but oh-so-yummy.

Amazing snack foods #1

Oaty. Wheat-free. Cute. So delicious. Made by Barbara's Bakery, purveyors of my precious Puffins.

Sigh...

A very mean person not worthy of any thought just came to my office to yell at me and made me cry. It wasn't worth crying over - this guy is very unreasonable and a little delusional, but I'm pretty stressed out about work so I probably would have cried at the drop of a hat today. What makes me mad is that he did this in front of all of my labmates. And I started doubting myself - did I do something wrong? Why would he come over here to attack me? Luckily my labmates were able to comfort me - I know I didn't do anything wrong, this guy just has a lot of problems.
What was nice is that Dan, the newest member of our lab, came back a little while later with one of my favorite cookies. It was really sweet, and will definitely make my day a little easier to get through. I have tons of work to pile through, then I have to go home and somehow do laundry and clean up and pack, because tomorrow I'm off to....New York!

I just have to say, that thanks to all you food bloggers out there, I don't have to ask the question "hmmm, where to eat?" Unfortunately, there are about 15 places I want to visit, but only about 6-7 meal slots free. Yergh.

Pearl

In celebration of my little brother taking the MCAT we went to Pearl. Wow. Amazing food. My brother's description sums up my feelings, so here I will give you some pictures.


Spicy Smoky Fries with Aioli ($6)



Two-of-each oyster plate ($27) - I was well into my glass of wine so I've forgotten one of the selections. We had Eld Inlet, Hama Hama, Fanny Bay, Hog Island, Kumamoto, and one variety that looked like a clam.



Tartare Trio ($10?)



Bruschetta ($10) - that's grilled peach, goat cheese, carmelized red onions, and hazelnuts. My favorite dish of the evening.

We also had crispy local squid with thai slaw ($10) and crabcakes ($11) - the squid was excellent but I'd pass on the crabcakes and order more oysters...or try one of the salads if you are experiencing seafood overload. All the salads that passed by our table looked great.

Pearl
5634 College Ave.
Oakland, CA 94618

Why I'll gladly pay $1.50 for one of these...

Disclaimer: sorry if the formatting is off. I'm still getting used to my lovely new Mac Mini...

You have no idea how much I'm kicking myself for not eating any macarons when I went to Bordeaux. To be honest, they looked like they would be dry, bland, and not at all interesting. Argh. I tried one a few months ago and fell in love - how could I have callously rejected these little bits of cookie heaven? Gah.

Okay, enough with beating myself up. The only thing that prevents me from going out and buying one every day is the $1.50 price tag. Yeesh. Seems like a lot for a cookie that is about an inch and a half in diameter. As I flipped through my Bouchon cookbook (which gets a whole post on how much I love it, but I'll spare you) last week, I found a recipe for vanilla macarons. Yeah! On Saturday I brought various ingredients and supplies to my parents' home in Lafayette (to take advantage of the KitchenAid stand mixer) and set to work.

First off, acquiring the ingredients put a dent in my wallet. The cookie part calls for 5 cups of almond flour and seeds from 2 vanilla beans. Since I only had 3 cups of almond flour and I was pressed for time, I caved and went to the local (expensive) grocery store to buy blanched almonds and vanilla beans. I also needed a dozen eggs and a pound of butter, since my parents were low. Oh, and then I needed to buy pastry bag tips.

I mixed together the 5 cups of almond flour and 5.75 cups of powdered sugar and was rather alarmed by the amount of dry ingredients:

Hrm. Even more alarming - this whole bowl of dry stuff needed to somehow fit into this much smaller bowl of 8 whipped egg whites:

Okay, okay, the scale is off, but lets just say that as a scientist, I was pretty sure that if it happened I would have defied many basic laws of physics.


I added the dry ingredients little by little and to my utter amazement, it all fit! Look!
Pretty spiffy, no? My arms aching, I started the difficult task of piping the very stiff and sticky batter into circles of the exact same size. This was frustrating. Plus, I had a star tip instead of a plain tip so they didn't come out as round circles. Thomas Keller says to draw out the circles before you start. I didn't do this, so I was pretty cranky by the time I drew out all the cicles on the parchment paper. This took a while. Then, after piping out all the batter, you have to let the circles dry at room temp so they form a nice skin. I did this for about an hour, and they definitely felt dry, but I can't figure out if this was too much time or too little time, because some of the baked circles had a puffy skin that was crunchy but also was very thin and fell off. Here are the cookies, taking over the family room table:

If you're ever crazy enough to bake these yourself at home, remember to put lots of space between your traced circles. The batter will spread a little, and if it touches other circles while baking it's a b*tch to separate. The cookies are pretty sticky in the middle. Plus, make sure you have lots of cookie sheets. I didn't have enough, and I used one of those cushionair sheets, which meant most of that batch was ruined because the bottoms didn't bake enough and we couldn't peel them off the parchment without totally mauling them. My mom happily ate those with a little buttercream.

Speaking of buttercream, I made that too. Damn, butter and sugar are good together. Except my mom doesn't have any granulated sugar at home, just some organic less-refined stuff from Trader Joe's I had bought when we made creme brulee. We stupidly attempted to make the sugar syrup with this and it was a mess. I ended up dumping a couple tablespoons of powdered sugar into the mix and I think it came out okay. I had to stop my mom from eating spoonfuls of it.

At this point, my brother had come home from taking the MCAT and we went out to dinner, which you can read about here. I'll post pictures later, but my brother's description pretty much sums up my feelings as well.

Well fed and slightly tipsy, my brother and I tackled the macaron assembly, where we had to restrain ourselves from eating each one after we assembled. We managed to restrain ourselves and ended up with about 25:

So basically, considering all the money and time that went into the process, I no longer have any qualms forking over the six quarters for this precious treat. Not that the homemade ones weren't delicious - they were amazing and by successfully making them I consider myself a pastry goddess (ha!) - but those five hours would be better spent elsewhere.