3/16/10 Bouchon

3/16/10
Met up with friends at Bouchon Bakery today for lunch. I had the grilled cheese with tomato soup. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, but my lunch was quite good. The soup was light, while the sandwich was hot and crusty. I only wish that the Gruyere were slightly stronger and that the plate would be balanced with a small salad.

Dede and I shared profiteroles.The dark chocolate sauce with vanilla ice cream encased in choux pastry puffs. They came with the pitcher of chocolate sauce on the side so you could control how much chocolate goodness you wanted drizzled over the profiteroles.

that small pitcher of warm chocolate sauce … I drizzled a little for the picture, but you can be assured I didn't let the chocolate sauce go to waste =)

3/15/10 Big Booty Bread

3/15/10
This day marked the first food exploration of spring break. We met up with a high school friend of mine who requested cupcakes. I wanted to search for cupcakes outside of those few well-known, over-rated cupcake stores in NYC. I came upon a blog that recommended the red-velvet cupcakes from Big Booty Bread.

The cake part itself was just okay, slightly dry, but the cream cheese frosting was divine. I’m not usually a fan of frosting, I find it usually too sweet, but this frosting was just right. My friend and I agreed that the perfect red-velvet combination would be the frosting from Big Booty Bread and the cake from Bake My Cake. I even got a cup full of frosting to go! =D


We also had the guava booty bread at Big Booty Bread, had to try their booty bread which the bakery was named for. It was soft, pillow-y and sweet and reminded me of sweet Chinese buns.

Mt. Tom's Ice Cream 3/11/10

Hello all,
It's been a long time since I've posted, and I'm so behind in terms of posts, but here's one from way back.

3/11/10
My boyfriend and I made a trip to one of our favorite ice cream shops in the valley, Mt. Tom's, right before spring break.


Mt. Tom's





They have specialty flavors that change every week.




Their blackboard with all they have to offer =D



This week they had our favorite: Mexican Chocolate and a new flavor which my boyfriend fell in love with: Maple Bacon.




Mmmmmmm ... spicy creamy chocolate and salty bacon paired with maple sweetness and creamy coldness ... =D

Never fail pasta

The easiest dish I recreate over and over again. The base for it is simple and you can vary it any way you like. My fridge is full of ingredients I purchase from Costco, from the shredded cheese to the soup and tomato sauce to the marinated mozzarella balls. It's the cheapest and easiest dish.

Servings: 4
Prep time: 10-15 minutes (depends on the add-ins, using more left overs = less prep time)
Cook time: 25-35 minutes (depends on the type of pasta used)
Total time: 35-50 minutes

Ingredients:
- 1 jar of tomato sauce
- 6 oz of creamy tomato soup or red pepper soup (optional, you could just add in some fresh herbs or dried ones if you like)
- mixed shredded cheese of preference (I use the mexican mix from Costco)
- marinated mozzarella balls
- 1 box of preferred type of pasta
- throw in ingredients on hand such as mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, red peppers, broccoli, left over chicken, etc ...

*optional 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes

Directions:
Set the oven to broil. Set a pot of water on the stove to boil. Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the box, cooking until al dente. Meanwhile combine the soup and the sauce in a saucepan, mixing until blended together. Add the hot pepper flakes if you wish to use them so the heat bring the hot oils out into the sauce. Add two large handfuls of shredded cheese into the sauce to help it thicken.

If you are using raw vegetables, dice them and saute in oil or butter until lightly caramelized. If you are using leftover meat, also heat the meat up. If you are using roasted red peppers or sundried tomatoes, slice into strips. Halve the marinated mozzarella balls.

After the pasta is done cooking, drain and toss in the veggies, meat, or whatever add ins you have on hand. Mix the pasta with the sauce and pour into a baking pan. Top with the mozarella balls, evenly spacing out about one inch away from each other, and top with the shredded cheese in between the spaces. Broil on the middle rack for about 5 minutes or until a nice caramelization has formed on the cheese.

Please vote for my entries under Shlieka at Mixingbowl.com. This entry has been entered in the Supper Solutions challenge. Thanks!

Baked Brie Puffs

This is the second recipe I'm entering in an online food contest. It's really easy, and if you're ever throwing a party or a get together, this looks really nice and sophisticated. The challenge was Oscar night movie-bites and I debated whether or not to do pretzel bites with ale-mustard dip or baked brie-puffs. I think the brie-puffs won because they seem more in tune with the Oscar night theme.

Baked Brie Puffs with Raspberry sauce

- Pre-packaged puff pastry
- Small round of brie or wedge of brie
- ½ cup sliced almonds
- honey
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup raspberry jam
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 teaspoon lime juice
- Zest of one orange
- 1 egg yolk mixed with 1 tspn water
* depending on the size of the brie wedge or round, you may have left over puff pastry

Directions
1. Thaw your puff pastry and butter a cookie sheet. Preheat the oven to 400.
2. Cut the round of brie into one inch size pieces
3. Divide each pastry sheet into 9 squares

4. Wrap your Brie pieces in pastry squares,
folding the corners in and tucking the edges under.
Make sure to pinch and seal all the ends together tightly. Mold the tops to look more rounded.
5. Brush the puff pastry with the egg wash and bake for 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile mix honey with the almonds until thoroughly coated.

6. Drizzle the baked brie puffs with honey and top with the almond mixture. Stick it back in the oven at 375 for 3-5 minutes or until golden brown and caramelized. Serve with powdered sugar lightly dusted over.

7. Meanwhile, mix the jam, water, sugar, zest and limejuice in a saucepan and let simmer. Take off the heat when the mixture has thickened slightly. Drizzle over the brie puffs.
• since blood oranges happened to be in season when I made this recipe, I substituted blood orange juice for the water and lime juice


You may notice that the puffs when topped with the almonds don't appear to have been baked. This is because in testing out the recipe, I just drizzled the tops with honey and scattered raw almonds over them. The almonds toasted too quickly, and I realized that I should have brushed the puffs with egg wash first, and then stuck them back in the oven after having already baked for a while with a thoroughly incorporated almond and honey mixture.

Please help me out by voting for me, Baked Brie Puffs by Shlieka in the Movie night challenge on MixingBowl.com. Thanks!

3/5 -3/7/10 ECAASU weekend

This weekend my boyfriend and I made a trip down to UPenn for the ECAASU 2010 conference. The food at the conference was woefully disappointing. In our lunch break, we and some friends made our way to a korean restaurant. The portions were small and over-priced, although the owner was nice and gave us a few free dishes. My boyfriend ate most of my meal since I was hoping that maybe I'd have better luck with the green tea ice cream. Wrong. There was no green tea flavor, just an odd lemony-dish detergent sort of taste. We tried the fro-yo place next door, where once again we were disappointed. The milk chocolate flavor tasted like old cupboard, the birthday cake flavor tasted oddly of basil, and the berry-tart tasted of some Chinese fruit (the ones made into thin slices parents give to their kids in substitute of candy, or are often dried and rolled in salt) which I've never been fond of.

Unsatisfied, we decided to skip our second workshop to explore the city and hopped on a train towards the Reading Terminal Market. Upon entering, I fell in love. Because we were short on time, I didn't get to explore as much as I wanted to. We bought an espresso cupcake which was small and over-priced once again. It looked lovely, but upon biting into it, I discovered that the frosting was entirely unpleasant. I'm not too fond of buttercream frosting, but I had just bitten into mildly coffee flavored butter. My poor boyfriend ate the mouthful of butter on top while I ate the bottom of the cupcake. The cake part was delicious but there was so little of it and I had wanted really good frosting to go with it.

We saw chocolate hearts and lungs on our way out of the market which was fun for my boyfriend since he's studying to go into medicine.

It took us 5 minutes of being at the farewell reception to realize that once again the food would be disappointing. The lines for food were ridiculously long, and what little we did wait in line for was not very good. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how pasta with cream sauce, asparagus and bacon counted as Asian food unless you count Marco Polo bringing the concept of noodles back to Italy. I am a pescatarian who is slowly (and by slowly I mean progress is minute) making her way back to meat. The food at my boyfriend's college is absolutely dreadful and he was convinced that Philly cheesesteaks were vile, disgusting things (my boyfriend eats anything so if he won't eat something, you know it's that bad) until I made him try them at my college. Usually I'm not inspired to go back to meat at all, but since we drove 6 hours to go to this conference, we had to go try some cheesesteaks.

Instead of paying $20 per person to go to the after party, we hopped into a cab towards Geno's cheesesteaks. Since Geno's and Pat's are across the street from one another, we decided to try one of each. We had the American with 'wit' at Genos and the mushroom, pepper, American with 'wit' at Pat's. Finally, I was happy. I risked the comfort of my stomach to try these cheesesteaks and they were both good. We enjoyed the flavor and cut of the meat from Geno's as well as the peppers and hot sauce. We also liked the juiciness and the mushroom and peppers from Pat's. The only thing I would say is the the cheese was not prominent enough or melty enough in either. If we could create a perfect cheesesteak, it would have the flavoring and cut of meat from Geno's with the juiciness, mushrooms and peppers from Pat's with extra, gooey-melty American cheese on top. I think perhaps my boyfriend and I lean more towards Geno's for the hot peppers and hot sauce. We're both sucker's for spicy food and Geno's hot sauce added that kick that we both enjoy. All in all, going to the market and eating some cheesesteaks made the 12 hour trip (getting there and back) worth it.

3/4/10 Complete Fail

Tonight I decided to attempt making hamentaschen out of ingredients I already had. However, I forgot to get butter for the cookie part. I tried substituting olive oil, and utter fail. I used organic vanilla bean cookie mix which I already had on hand, some left over raspberry jam, and fresh strawberries. When I say utter fail I mean, my boyfriend who has absolutely no baking experience, managed to make better looking hamentaschen than I. Not that that mattered because they all blended together in the pan to make one big cookie and jam fruit tart. I learned one very important thing from this as well: do not substitute olive oil into vanilla cookie dough, the olive oil tase is very strong. I’ve substituted olive oil into chocolate cake recipes before and they’ve come out fine. Vanilla on the other hand …

Here are some pictures of our cookie making activity and what the end result looks like.

My adorable boyfriend making hamentaschen. A close up down below.


The end result, I wish I had taken a picture of the cookies before I baked them. The messy blob like corners are most likely mine, and the ones that actually resemble triangles are most likely his.

3/4/10 about Shlieka

I’m a junior in a women’s college coming to terms with the reality of growing up. I attended an NYC private school from 2nd grade to 12th. Shlieka is a nickname a friend came up for me one day in middle school as we bumped into one another in the staircase. It’s stuck in my group of friends ever since. Keeping the name is an acknowledgement of how much of my identity has been shaped by my experience growing up with those wonderful people and tying the past to the present.
This is about having no idea about what I want to do when I graduate, but wanting to keep the things I love in my life. I love baking, ballroom, and fashion. I’m not trained in culinary by any means. Anything I’ve learned is from experimentation, cooking books and magazines as well as watching tv shows. My approach to cooking is more hands on, and mostly budget-conscious since I am but a poor college student on a budget. My food tester is usually my boyfriend, who tells me everything I make is delicious so obviously he’s a bit biased. The recipes I share on this blog may not be stellar, may not be the most sophisticated, but they taste good and they’re easy to make. When I write them, in mind I have my fellow college student friends who have no or limited cooking experience but are aware that soon they will be on their own, attempting to cook and survive on their own self-earned budget. I hope that they’re helpful.
My first recipe to share, I entered in two dessert contests online, my very first ever. There are two different versions of this recipe, one is from scratch, the second is made from Ghirardelli Brownie mix. I’m going to post the second here but if you wish to use the first version, you can find it here:
http://www.mixingbowl.com/message/recipe/view.castle?g=1570115&m=10434482
This dessert contains 3 key ingredients essential for a romantic dessert for two: chili powder, strawberries, and chocolate. All three of these are known natural aphrodisiacs. The sweet heat of this dessert is bound to put you in the right passionate mood for the night.

Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Brownie Mix

2 eggs

1/3 cup vegetable oil

½ teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup water

8 oz semisweet chocolate

1/3 cup cream

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon chile powder

Ready-made supermarket purchased whipped cream

*Powdered sugar for dusting

* Use individual ramekins or heart themed pans. The cute heart-themed cake molds I used are from Target.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter the ramekins or spray with cooking spray (Pam, etc …)

2. Heat 1/3 cup of the heavy cream in a heatproof bowl (double boiler method: bowl on top of a pot of boiling water) and stir in the cinnamon and chili powder.

3. Add the 8 oz of chocolate into the cream. Mix until thoroughly incorporated. Set the chocolate aside to thicken. You do not want the chocolate to be too liquid when you put it in the cake or you won’t be able to top it with cake batter.

4. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs; water, vegetable oil, baking powder and brownie mix together.

5. Divide batter evenly among prepared ramekins, layering as such: batter on the bottom, chili-chocolate mixture, and batter on top.

6. Bake just until tops of cakes no longer jiggle when pan is lightly shaken, about 8-10 min for a pan, and 10-12 for ramekins. Remove from oven and let stand 10 min.

7. Slice strawberries thinly.

Plating: Invert cake onto plate, dust with powdered sugar if you so wish. Serve with whipped cream on the side and thinly sliced strawberries to garnish.

* If you prefer raspberries, substitute them for the strawberries. Raspberries are also natural aphrodisiacs.