Look! A Fridge! With Food?!

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Home! Yay sleeping, yay parents, yay doing my homework before arriving! Also, yay real food, real appliances…real good. To kick start the Thanksgiving bake-a-thon 2012 (disclaimer: not a real tradition), I continued the use-up-all-old-ingredients theme and substituted the apricots in my Gourmet cook(ie)book’s “Apricot Chews” recipe for pomegranate-infused craisins. Yeah…definitely thought those were dried pomegranate seeds a couple weeks ago. Layer of cooked-ish craisins between layers of saturated fat and carbs (mostly butter, sugar, oats and flour). This dessert also called for some improv, as I did not have one pound of craisins, but I was successful once again.

Apricot Chews
p. 56, The Gourmet Cookie Book
**Makes three dozen squares
Directions:
Melt 3/4 cup butter, add 1 cup brown sugar, 1 1/2 cups each of flour and oatmeal, and 1 teaspoon baking soda.  Mix the ingredients thoroughly and press half the mixture into a greased baking pan about nine inches square.
In a saucepan, simmer 3/4 pound dried apricots with 1 cup water and 3/4 cup sugar for 30 minutes, or until the apricots are soft.  Add 1 tablespoon apricot liqueur after the mixture has been cooking for 20 minutes.  Spoon the apricots over the crumb mixture in the baking pan, sprinkle them with 1/4 cup grated coconut, if desired, and cover them with the rest of the crumbs.  Bake the mixture in a moderate oven (350°F) for 25 to 30 minutes, or until it is golden.  Cut the mixture into squares while it is still warm and turn out the chews from the pan when they are cold and set.
Recipe notes:
    •    For the best flavor and colour, use California dried apricots (or, like, any other dried fruit)
    •    Use apricot brandy (but lemonade is good, too)
    •    Puree the apricots in a food processor after cooking (even though there’s no shame in chunks)
    •    Grease the baking pan with butter, line it with two crisscrossed sheets of foil, and the butter the foil. (what?)
    •    Make 36 squares by cutting the bars into 6 rows each lengthwise and crosswise. (if you want fewer than 300 calories per serving, then definitely)

Gourmet cookie book of gourmet cookies for a gourmet cookie chef
“Simmer until soft”…or something
Potentially too much water
Had to halve the recipe; good thing too, these are fairly lethal
Ta-da! Chewy indeed

Dinner & A Cookie

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Last week I went to my uncle’s house to get my 13 month-old udon noodles properly cooked. When the only heatproof round container you have is an over-sized mug, it’s tough to make noodles that aren’t chewy. One of these days I’ll have a real-life sauce pan. Until then, there’s always the 15 minute commute. Homemade chicken broth and some fresh veggies were all they needed. Quite simple, really, yet truly refreshing. I brought along some cookie supplies to try to get rid of the foodstuffs from the apple donut affair. Without a base recipe, I attempted what I recalled from my chocolate chip cookie ratios, threw in some peanut butter, chocolate frosting (shh) and rolled the dough in sliced almonds. Sometimes we college kids have to get creative with the food we leave ourselves with…seemed to work out, though.

That kale, though…how appetizing
Yummish…not bad for no recipe, surely

Ithaca Dining Installment #1: CTB

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     Epicures of Ithaca can have a field day when it comes to eating out; there are more restaurants per capita here than New York City :O! If you want Italian, Korean, Thai, Mediterranean, Indian, Mexican food, or just a superb burger, you can find all that and more within the city limits. Saturday night, I introduced Danielle to the Ithacan classic Collegetown Bagels (CTB). If we don’t count Ithaca Bakery, there are a total of three CTBs in town. Ithaca College has their bagels in the dining halls (hooray), and CTB bakes their bagels fresh every day. CTB makes more than 20 varieties of bagels, including classics like cinnamon raisin and poppy, and “specialty options” such as apple walnut and sun-dried tomato. The kicker of this place for me is what one can put on their bagel of choice. They have 5-star breakfast bagels to satisfy any breakfast snob’s needs. There’s the California Sunrise, with scrambled eggs, avocado, red onions, and pepper jack cheese – melted, of course. Then there’s the nutella-banana combo on any bagel (preferably cinnamon raisin), or the plain and simple cinnamon-sugar & butter.
     If you’re not in the mood for a bagel, CTB also has soups, salads, sandwiches and wraps. They put anything you can think of on or between one or two pieces of bread-like substances, and it will be excellent.
   This time around I went with the Mexican bagel, with jalapeño cream cheese, fresh salsa and melted cheddar on each slice of a plain bagel, since they ran out of the jalapeño ones :P. Danielle got a Danby sandwich with turkey breast, avocado, tomato and homemade parsley-garlic dressing…fancy! I think she’ll be returning.

I finished with no stomach space to spare
Glad she liked it

Putting my money where my stomach is…in the best possible way

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Can we talk about the awesomeness of Wegmans for a minute? Coming from the coast of Connecticut, I had previously only heard of such a fantastical grocery store. Though I’m not sure we can really call Wegmans a grocery store. It definitely sells groceries, though it can’t quite compare to less exciting Stop&Shop and Shop Rite. But until recently, I couldn’t really put my finger on why I become so entranced by food and life upon arrival. Here’s the list I’ve come up with thus far:

  1. If we’re talking about the actual feeling of happiness one acquires when walking into Wegmans, which is real life, I’m gonna have to credit the color brown. It makes Stop&Shop’s white look like…maybe a hospital. Not sure what else to say…Wegmans’s color scheme is smart and effective. You’ll have to ask their team of designers and psychologists if you’re wondering why.
  2. You know what they say about going grocery shopping on an empty stomach: don’t do it. Unless, of course, you’re shopping at Wegmans. I don’t even think Whole Foods has such variety of lunch food. I had a fair Indian lunch today from the hot lunch bar. They also have dim sum, “Asian Wokery”, pizza, mac & cheese, etc. Cheap and satisfying.
  3. Don’t get me started on the corner o’ candy. Until today, I just thought it was a place to avoid at all times to keep my cavity-less mouth, where you could find every sweet thing – wrapped or otherwise. And I mean anything…including those unfortunate licorice all sorts, caramel cubes, chocolate covered potato chips and the too-damn-big jawbreakers. Though I may or may not have spent a solid 10 minutes going through the ingredient lists of their 20 assortments of gummies seeing which ones ended with “this product is kosher”. To my surprise and delight, they had real gummy bears and real gummy worms that were in fact “kosher”. Due to a dietary restriction of all things pig, I tend to refrain from sweets with gelatin. Though I must say the flavors of these gummy bears are fairly unconventional – all 12 of them. I’m pretty sure I came across a grapefruit, possibly a guava…definitely grape. But they taste normal and everything – I had to throw them from arm’s length just now to prevent finishing my half pound. Hipster confectionery, anyone?
  4. An international aisle is pretty awesome, but know what’s really awesome? Three. And when these aisles have Sprite, we’re talking waaaay awesome. You know, the soda? American soda’s fizzy and all, but try a coke from…really anywhere but the states, and you may perceive an unfamiliar sweetness to it. It definitely makes a difference. That’s because we love us some high fructose corn syrup! Unfortunately, I’m not one to drink the stuff. Luckily, everyone else had their thinking caps on straight when they were making their own formulas…all you’ll see in the ingredient list as a sweetener is…wait for it….sugar. Sweet.
  5. Their conveniently sized shopping carts. Can’t carry your flour and milk without your arm getting tired? Grab a cute-cart! Great for maneuvering around the daylight-hour crowds.

In conclusion: Wegmans rocks.

Some form of fried shrimp, scallop dim sum, lamb samosa, loaded basmati rice
It even looks classier
Ingredients:….sugar….
Ingredients:

Halloweekend (#1): DIY Dinner

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 A fine meal. Ghetto? Noo, resourceful…
Happy Halloween! Despite the diminutive “kitchen” in my dorm, and deficient collection of appropriate cooking tools, I am not always discouraged from making/helping make a meal for myself and friends. Really anything is better than cooked broccoli and soft beef tacos from the dining hall. This past weekend Rebecca, Tommy, Wei En and I got together at Shyla’s apartment to make dinner. Definitely on the top 10 list of potluck dinner-making events…if I had more than 10 occasions to rank. Rebecca started us off with tubed (tubed? already processed, perhaps) polenta. I’m still relatively unfamiliar with the dish as it was the first time that I know of that I had it. Rebecca put some balsamic vinegar on the pieces and finished them off with some goat cheese and craisins. She also made a salad with raspberries, homemade dressing and more of the craisin-cheese topping. Then Tommy made this baked brie dish thing covering a block of brie in a brandy and brown sugar glaze. Toasted some appropriately French bread to ingest with; what a concept. There was pasta…I was “cooking” it, though no one seemed to trust my see-if-the-pasta’s-soft-or-not skills…-_____- Red sauce and pesto were made for the pasta. The one thing they apparently did trust me in (and rightly so mwahaha!) was dessert. Dessert would definitely be my area of expertise…not that I can’t produce an exceptional pan-cooked lamb kebab dinner, either 😛 Aanyway…appreciating the season and preferring health over grease and simplicity over effort (or so I thought…oops), I made a satisfyingly sweet finale. I have to credit Tumblr for this brilliant idea of apple donuts which were legen-wait for it….dary! You slice apples horizontally and core them to cover them in peanut butter, and top them off with chocolate chips, raisins, dates, sliced almonds, or whatever your heart desires. So no, there were no real donuts involved. And of course you can use whatever spread as well, like NUTELLA! My budget did not make space for such luxuries, but next time…definitely next time…
Hard(er) at work
Rebecca & her polenta
This will be happening again…
Brie in the making
My masterpieces – don’t be fooled: harder than they look!

Munchies and Manhattan – First Post!

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French Roast Dinner

Hey there! Thought I’d kick-start my new food blog with Rebecca and my particularly extravagant weekend trip to NYC last week. Arriving in the Upper West Side Wednesday after long hours of commuting, we walked to the 24-hour French-inspired, you could say, restaurant French Roast for dinner. Deciding to save some money for the rest of our stay, we shared mac&cheese appetizer with an arugula, mango & goat cheese salad. Surprisingly filling! The goat cheese came in two lumps that I think were fried? The outside was crunchy and the inside was warm. Super tasty…though requiring a little more effort to integrate with the rest of the salad.

The Hummus Place!

Hummus Place’s Homemade Lemonade with Mint
Grabbing breakfast at Hot & Crusty, we spent Thursday (successfully!) shopping in SoHo and met Rebecca’s brother, Ben, at….wait for it….The Hummus Place! Lunch here consists of a plate of warm hummus with various toppings (boiled egg for me!) and a basket of pita bread. Unless, of course, you want to spite yourself and the restaurant you’re in with an eggplant sandwich.
After lupper, we headed to the show Fuerza Bruta by Union Square. Calling it different would be a gross understatement. Headed back to Café Lalo in the Upper West Side for dessert before going back to the apartment.
Apparently not all diners are greasy or covered in chrome. The City Diner was pretty fresh and swanky…as with most things in this neck of the woods. I don’t think I’ve been to a diner without getting pancakes…but it’s fine because they were darn good – I almost finished them and everything. Overall, solid food for a solid stay in the city.
Oreo Mousse and Chocolate Lava Cake @ Cafe Lalo
The City Diner