Holiday

----What is holiday?

Food

(Celery with Almond butter and Dried Cranberries)

(Apple Cider Brined Pork(cubed) with Apple, Pearl Onion Plum Sauce)

Gift

(Mastering the art of French Cooking by Julia Child)

Santa

(A letter from Santa)

This is my holiday( of couse, there were many other kinds of wonderful food), how about yours?

Celery with Almond butter and Dried Cranberries:

Celery: peeled, put into the boiling water( when boiling , add some oil into water,and the vegetable will be shiny afterwards) , take them out when the water is about to boil again

Almond Sauce: almond butter, white/black pepper(prefer to white), salt, sesame oil, stir as well as adding hot water to adjust the thickness

Serving:  mix celery , chop dried cranberries and almond sauce

Apple Cider Brined Pork(cubed) with Apple, Pearl Onion Plum Sauce( Chinese Version):

Brined the pork tenderloin, sliced them , then using hammer ( or the back of knife) to make cubed pork steak, pan fried.

Sauce: Instead of using Dijon mustard,using Chinese plum sauce and oyster sauce

Have you written to Santa yet..?--Orange and Banana Crepe

I am so surprised that kids believe there exists Santa, besides happy for them , I am jealous~~ I wish I had such a magical memory from childhood too.

Kids: Why did you not have Santa when you were kids?

Grown-ups: Well... you know, we can fly back to China , so can Santa..but before Santa didn't have a plane. But  now Santa can visit boys and girls in China too.

Kids: Ooooooohhhh...

Cooking for kids, it's SWEET ^_^

This orange and banana crepe was so welcome. The secrete is to make a orange syrup and soak the crepe in the syrup ,also brown the banana and orange, mix cinnammon into toasted pecan.

Orange syrup: butter, sugar , orange juice, boil to reduce

I refered to the recipe from Epicurious

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Banana-Orange-Crepes-109044

 Did you write to Santa ?  Have your wish come true?

Again ,warmest wishes for you, my friends

Hello Seattle--avocado/basil rice topped with seared scallop with orange blenc

 

I’ve been listening to this for a while, but just realize it’s time for me to say hi to her, ‘Hello Seattle! ‘.

I don’t know why I was not very excited about my trip, even you are all more nervous than me, you, reminded me to pack earlier, you, asked to not to stay up late before fight, and you , you and you all wished me a good trip very excitedly. But me… I was so confused to be waken up by the alarm this morning, then after 10 seconds, I figured it out I had fight this morning. o_O

In Boston, I’m almost able to tell who is local, who is a visitor, make a guess about where he is heading to, what she is going to do. But airport is a place full of question marks for me, I like to watch people in the airport, are they visitors and this is their destination, or they are just passages for connection, or they are local and heading to somewhere else??? If by any chance I get to know the answers, I will put labels on them and all the sudden, those strangers with the same labels have a connection between each other in my eyes. How do I look like in other people’ eyes? Will they put a fromBoston label on me?
（ps: I am not from H U though~~)

Time for landing, I remember I used to look at the outside trying to find the place you live, or even to catch the car you are driving on the highway, and then enjoyed the moment of the strong bump, a real feeling, which could physically confirm with me the fact ‘I’m home!’. Unfortunately, not for this destination.

Anyway I want to be a happy visitor for the Christmas, let me uplift myself first, one of my mission is to bring them more delicious food!

This is an avocado/basil rice topped with seared scallop with orange blenc
avocado/basil rice is to make avocado and basil ‘guacamole’ first, then mix it into hot rice.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/claire-robinson/green-goddess-rice-recipe/index.html
ps: I catched it from tv and borrowed it to go with my scallop and orange blenc .  although  the review is not very good for this ‘guacamole’,  I still think it works well here

Snow Panda and something others--Maple Apple-cider brined pork tenderloin and polenta

(immature photographer’s bad day)

I am leaving Boston again, every time when you were complaining about Boston’s winter, I just couldn’t get you, now I realize that I actually haven’t spent the holiday time in Boston so far, I always get away. So I hope during I am away, you will stay happy, stay warm, with your family, stay with friends, stay with hope,with peace, with love...but not with loneliness. It snowed, unbelievable coincidently around the same time as last year, the same weekend, the exactly day before I was about to leave. It was just the very first snow for the last year, and my snowman was staying there lonely. But this year, my snow panda was luckily enough to have some audience.

lonely snowman in 2008

 

Muddy Snow Panda 2009( I am not pretty, but I got a little bit applaud

This weekend was very productive, especially on the cooking side. I made brined pork tenderloin and am very satisfactory with it this time.

Maple Apple cider brined pork tenderloin
Apple, Fennel, Orange peopper salad with apple cider reduction vinaigrette dressing
Acorn squash polenta
( Camera was run out of battery—immature photographer’s bad day!)

Leftover meal:
Polenta cake topped with pork and salad

I will memorize these by ...---Seared Scallop with Vanilla Spicy Dressing

This semester is done. It is an.................................interesting one. That doesn't mean I am so good at them, but I think I had *fun*. And this should be my last semester with taking classes in school, ( next year, I only have project left).Wow, no more exams, no more classes( I don't think I want to study for the third engineering master). I think when I look back  I will miss the feeling of being in a class for sure , maybe I will also  be so weird to miss the feeling of being stressful by exams, no matter how I am sick with it now.  Glad that there is one way that can help me bear those in mind--Relient K's Christmas record. It has been accompanying me to get through all of those in this December. The sweet part is, whenever I saw the decorative lights flashing on the tree at night,  there must be some Christmas song singing in my ears :)  and it warmed my heart by making me have some sense of being part of something, but not a miserable student that was touched by school in this holiday season.

Yes, this is the way that I memorize it. Some day in the future when  I listen to this record again, it will remind me the days I was fighting in this chilly winter as well as the happiness of seeing lights on the tree coincodently with christmas songs singing in my ears. Does it work for you too? When you hear some old song,  does it just remind you the feeling you were listening to it  and those sweet days, heart-broken days, glorious days, bad days... ?  No matter what, I guess there must be a smile that already appears in your face.

Dec 7th, Monday, it snowed, not a good one for snowbuddy, I didn't have time to do it though, it was deadline for an assignment

                                                     

Dec. 9th, wednesday Super windy with rain, I almost lost my clear umbrella on the train, luciky I found it

                                                     

 Dec. 12th, Saturday, Sunny, it got cold, I managed to go to libary studying

                                                      

 Dec. 13th,  Sunday, rainy, I drew this to remind myself to hold the umbrella well not lose it again

Dec. 14. Monday, I thought I should have drawn it down since such a sweet thing happened to me everyday and my submarine should have helped to celebrate the holiday season too.

 

Dec. 16th,  wednesday , the eve  of Data Mining exam

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Another pleasant thing, my new gear starts to cooperate!

This is a seared scallop salad wtih vanilla spicy dressing ( borrowed from steamy kitchen), interesting ?!

The dressing:

sweet chili sauce( i used chili sauce and sugar): ketchup=1:1

lime juice

seasame oil

spicy oil

vanilla extract

I didn't remember I have vanilla oil ( it's super spicy) after I mixed the spicy oil into it,  so it kinda doubled the heat.But it gives it the vanilla aroma. I will only use vanilla oil next time.

Oh, there is one thing I just got to know: Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Boston is  0.6miles away from my home on thorndike!! I should stop by , I will, for sure

                               

Researrrrrrrrrch, Maple Apple-Cider Brined Pork Chop with White-Bean Parsnip Puree, Butter Browned Apple Pearl Onion

It has been almost half years, and I can really see my growing. At least, I get familiar with the basic good matching of different ingredients and use substitute when something is not available, I am able to know the doneness of steak by touching it, I am able to make some basic source, dressing and some classic way to cook… But there are still a lot that I do not know, a lot that I am not very skilled at. So it is a must to review and practice all kinds of basic cooking methods, try more new ingredients, I believe creativity comes from the solid  knowledge and basic skills. Of course, I am still a pastry idiot, I am keep postponing this part~~ . Anyway, keep this on, and I think by keep blogging it, I can take it more serious and  be more persistent.

In fact, I started to prepare for this meal 3 days ago, when the idea was come up with . It feel like a long time, after all was done, I made this graph and got the sense of achievement :^^

I referred to a paper found online, I was amazed by their dedication and seriousness and realize the importance of preciseness in cooking.

http://www.cooksillustrated.com/images/document/otherdoc/ND01_ISBriningbasics.pdf,

It somehow reminds me 'good eats', where Altonh has been  teaching us a lot. I start to imagine the theory classes in a culinary school, is there also going to be tons of reading assignments? Is there going to be a lot of chemical formulas, data that we are required to remember? Not sure it will be fun or pain.

Brine water: water, apple cider, maple syrup, cinnamon stick,ginger, sage

White bean parsnip puree: white bean, parsnip, garlic(alot) , lemon juice, oliver oil

The Butter Browned Apple and Peal onion is something I created based on my 'Apple Project':

Butter, Apple, pearl onion, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard(HIT)

Confession: A little bit mis-calculate the ratio of salt and water( *PRECISENESS*), and next time I will use completely apple cider instead of water.
BTW: I am still not comfortable with the new gear, I even start to miss my GX100. But I know this new friend will let me love it eventually!

Cooking in San Diego( a Cantonese kitchen )

The original mission for the SD trip is to meet gaogao, but I couldn’t make it. I got to know gaogao is getting old (only 17 years old) and he is a little weak ,not good for him to go out to meet people, so the supers stars in the zoon are the second generation, gaogao’ daughter(su lin) ans son (zhen zhen)and the newborn baby yunzi is a most pleasant news in the zoo. It was disappointing, but anyway, it was a fun trip. As I was told, he would have liked to see me too.

We stayed in a friend’s apartment and it is a classical Cantonese kitchen, no herbs on hand. But I still cooked there, with something I could grab from the WFs, in a very fusion way.

• T-Bone steak(coffee , galanga ginger, Chinese five spices rubbed) with sundried tomato blanc:
• Three-cups of octopus(oyster sauce, sesame oil, rice wine) with polenta cake( jalapeño, sweet corn, cheddar, celery)
• Baked apple with dates and maple walnut stuffing.
• Roasted red pepper, mushroom and orange cauliflowers.( I so wished I had thyme and truffle oil!)

It is so weird, after I travelled so many places, I still love Boston , love Cambridge most. I have been loving the words from ‘the little prince’:

If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...

I guess it must be that I was captivated by a flower, a leaf , a coffee shop or a street corner or.. ,then every glance at the city is so joyful. But right now I even can’t remember what it exactly is. Recently, I have been instinctively feeling that I will eventually leave this city, it was always sad when it got to me. After I move away, this place will not be called as 'Thorndike Kitchen' any more, I should have knew it when I created it. ‘Thorndike’, it sounded so weird when I first heard it, but now it is such a sweet name for me. I am just a passenger…

                           

Taste vs. Original(Iron Chef won?!) --Beef Stroganoff

It was Battle Almond. I didn't watch the beginning ,not sure if Chef  Phan is from China, but from the ingredients he used and the way he cooked, I guess it was about Chinese cuisine. Very excited, it is not usual to see Chef playing with wok in 'Iron Chef America', I felt proud. When chefs presented their dishes, apparenly, judgers liked the Chef Phan's food more, But to my surprise, Chef Cora won. In face , in the taste aspect, Chef Phan was 6 points more, but he lost a lot in the original aspect, which leaded him lose the challenge.

Food is for eat after all,  the taste is the most important over all the other aspects, isn't it? 

I kinda think the competition is not very fair, it is unfair to assign each aspect equally 10 points, taste should account for more weights ( See, I am taking 'Data Mining' class right now :)

Yes, the classic Chinese cuisine is a little boring, it has been there thousands of years. But it comes from several centuries to today, but still mostly keep the orignal way, it means it is the BEST way to do it, it's not people don't want to be creative, but they can't find a better way to make replacement.

( My aha moments came....)

I kinda got to understand why SK likes the most orignal ways about food, becasue it is classic and nothing can be wrong with it. Although the world is rapidly changing every second, the definition about good taste still stay almost the same, I guess. ( I am not talking about the healthy issues here)

So maybe I should practice more on how to make perfect KongBao Chicken, instead of trying to start some adventure about Kongbao Chicken Lasagna.

Beef Stroganoff can be counted as a traditional dish from Russia . I checked several recipes and decided to make the roxy version. I browned the beef in the way borrowed from Chinese cuisine (medium heat ,wash with starch water ahead)and it turns out super tender! Also I like the idea of using dill to match the sour cream/ yogurt

Sauce
Basic roux plus yogurt and Dijon mustard brandy ( confession: I forgot nutmeg)

Beef
Rubbed with salt pepper Ginger powder brown sugar oregano. Washed with starch water before cooking under medium heat with ENOUGH oil, cooked it until 80% done.

Saute mushroom and onion .dill about 10mins, add beef,  add sauce.
One more declaration, it's not I wasn't cooking, I did make some interesting things but only for testing and of course my weekly squash soup, I have made four kinds so far:

1. Squash sage nutmeg maple syrup with white bean
2. Squash carrot Ginger
3. Squash curry
4. Squash apple cinnamon allspice white bean

I think I like No1 and No2 most.  And this beef stroganoff was a failure last weekend, so I made it again. Although I still took good pictures for it, I don't think I could post them, they were not good eats, it's a food blog but not a photograph blog.

Compromise Vs. 30min running rule--Tofu meatball makeover, 2 ways

I made myself a rule yesterday, I should run everyday, only 30mins, but not 1hr. Since an one-hour running plan is always intimating and I tend to postpone it and everything else that  looks like with higher priority jumps into the queue. So I thought what if I did  it only 30min each time, it  would be easy to keep it on and I would still have energy to run the next day , so  the rule is : No more than 30min!

But the reality is I was super cold, tired and hungry after school, then you can guess, I didn't go...

It is frustrating anyway.  I can easily break my rules without any guilty, how horrible it is! How about my dream about being a real chef? Will it also be compromised? Will it be able to survive from various complicated  factors in real life?

I do other art things as fun and I enjoy it, because I know I will never feed myself by art. But when things become serious, it also brings in more pressure. Is my dream realistic? Am I really talented enough?

Is it too late?

Maybe I should just stop worrying but keep this blog on.

It is kinda boring only have poached tofu meatball, so I worked on them a little bit and made them over in two ways- pan-fried and deep-fried(panko version), the dipping is hoisin sauce. And it is a nice match, I think.

Say Happy Bday in 'person'--Poached Tofu/shrimp meatball

Today (11/10) is XiaoDandan's birthday. I noticed that in facebook , then I decided to give her a call instead of writing the several words in facebook. And I did, she sounded very happy to hear that from me. We are close friends, we should TALK. Do you agree?

I also remember, the other day, my another friend's birthday, I pinged him to say happy B-day, he was so surprised that I knew his birthday , which I did appreciate facebook. And I am sure he was happier to get the wishes on IM. It was a communication between friends, which means an 'asking' will be followed by an 'answer'.

So if you can , make a call or an email,  at least an IM to your friends on their Bday. I guess your wishes will stand out, because it's specially from you in person

I know Xiaodandan likes steak, not sure she is also a fan of tofu, but should be, ( Chinese girls love Tofu~~)
But I am sure Cindy will like it, ' Hello,Cindy, how are you?'

This is something I learned from '天天饮食‘, very healthy but delicous.

I mixed 'meatball' with what I had by hand: parsley, minced garlic, shrimp, sausage, water chestnut, tofu (medium firm one, pre-processing: boil it so that it will get rid of some water, but still not recommend to use firm tofu)

Use blender to mix them, add a little bit starch, egg( which I think is optional), if too dry, add unsweetened soymilk(or milk or chicken broth)----don't worry , it won't get apart, adding water into meatball is the sercret to make it juicy, season it with white pepper, salt.

Prepare a bowl of startch water, while heating a pot of water or chicken broth.

When water is lukewarm, wash meatball with startch water , then put it into the pot. When the water just starts to boil, turn the heat down to medium , let it simmer.

when meatball are floating in the pot, they are done.
I like the cruching surprise from water chestnuts  : P

Brighten your day by doing outdoor workout --Slow Cooked Salmon with Creamy Broccoli Sauce(soup)

Yesterday, I talked with a friend, he told me he started  a weigh loss plan, including  a swimming in the morning and the change in diet. I can see he is very serious, since he did a lot of research in the mechanism  about weight loss and  food nutrition. I like seeing people working on their the weight loss plan in a scientific way, it means they are serious and determined , which predicts success. He said it felt so good to drive to the pool in the early morning, I said ' then your whole day is brightened, you feel proud of yourself from the most beginning of the day' 'yeah, exactly' he was so excited.  It was his excitement that reminded me the  amazing pleasure from running outside, and I confessed that I had been cheating myself by playing in gym and I knew I didn't enjoy it very much.

So... I ran, today!  And it felt unbelievably  wonderful. I guess it is so impressive that will drive me miss the feeling so much , thus I will run more often .It is not winter yet, it is fall, the most beautiful season in Boston, go out and enjoy it as much as you can...

I learned this slow cooked salmon from steamy kitchen and the sauce is created by myself. Slow cooked salmon is to bake salmon at 200F about 25min, and it will be as pink as before it is put into the oven, but it is cooked and warm. And you will never overcook it unless you leave it in the oven for several days. I guess smoke salmon is made in the similar way. I love it to the death, seriously.

The sauce is from a soup I created, it is a no-dairy creamy broccoli soup, ( dairy is kinda banned in my diet , it is such a pain!) I used Tofu and unsweetened soymilk instead of milk and a LOT of cheese. It comes out  very good, HAPPY. Use starch to adjust the thickness.

Slow cook salmon:

Rubbed salmon with brown sugar, garlic powder, salt, lay the ginger slice on top, about 30min

( you will find out how wonderful it is when brown sugar meets ginger..)

200F  baked about 30 min, test it using a folk.

Tofu Creamy broccoli soup

Garlic

Broccoli

Silken tofu

Unsweetened soymilk

chicken bouillon paste

Starch water

Parmesan(optional)

 Saute garlic , add broccoli,  then add siken tofu, soymilk, chicken bouillon paste, boil until broccoli is tender.

Use starch water to adjust the thickness

Use blender to make a soup, melt a small piece of butter at the end~~

A close look at the silky salmon

Try to do a real project--Honey, Ginger,Pear, Lemon tea

'There is no undo in real life,we have heard it hundreds of times,but I wouldn't understand it so much without playing with my new toy.

My new toy is a set of buckyballs, which are all magnet, so that they can be attached together to make different shapes. It is so fun , as well as a good stress reliever. But it is also annoying , since the magnet is so strong, it is easy to make them jammed together and all my work is destroyed.

Once, when my delicate 'flower' jammed together, and became a mess, to my surprise,  the first thought came to my mind was 'I want to undo'. Then I suddenly realized that there was no 'undo' button here. Yeah,  maybe I spent too much time with computer and I so enjoyed working with those virtual projects, where I can always regret for my choices and make new decisions.

Well, in real life, there is no 'UNDO' button , we all know that, but I still suggest you to try to do some real projects. I am not indoctrinating you how cruel the real life is, the point is even though we screw up and it moves into another direction, it will still have unexpected surprise. We never know, never can make a comparision:

 'Life is weird'

This is the beauty of life, I guess...

Honey, Pear, Ginger,Lemon Tea

A kind of light color tea: green tea or jasmine tea or mate;

Asian Pear

Lemon

Ginger

Honey

It is a wonderful stuff that can warm you in the cold season.

Legend of Fall Series II (Squash)-- Green day meets Special K

Super Super Super Happy, eventually finished the whole project , and I am so surprised that 'green day' pumpkin can stay longer than I thought to meet Special K . Congratualtion ,  You made it!

Inspiration:

I think when green day meets Special K,  somehting magical must happen. So some imags came to my mind: red grenade jumps out the guitar and the guitar is about to fly!

------Under constructon ------

  

------Finish it up------

------The guard of my house------

------"Hello ,World !" ------

  

------When Green Day meets Special K...