A little sewing

A little beading

A little Julia

I hope yours was lovely!

Whoa! Aaaahhhh! Whaaaatttt?!? No!!! Yesssss!!!!

So yeah, those were all the things that went through my head when my friend S. handed this box to me this morning. She’s just gotten back from Paris, and with her thoughtfulness brought me a box of the ultimate French treat. I was speechless. Especially because she put the box in my hands with the words, “These came from the bakery that made the pastries for that film Marie Antoinette.” *gasp!*

I took these photos in my office with my phone. I know posting all of them is a bit excessive, but I kind of felt like those geeks, you know? Those Apple fanpeople who love their Macs so much they post “unboxing” pictures? This is me being a food geek unboxing MY macs! (Heehee.)

Ladurée was established in 1862. It was the Parisian institution that brought the “salon de thé,” or tea salons, to life. These were places where women could gather freely as they grew more confident in roles in society.

I shared these morsels with friends, though I have to admit I ate three all by myself! I had a coconut one, a strawberry one and a vanilla one to cap off my trio of treats. Not all one after the other, though! I stretched those tastings over several hours, their intense sweetness lingering on my tongue long after the last delicious bite.

S. said the line at the Ladurée shop on Champs-Elysées was out the door, and the pastry chefs had to keep bringing in trays and trays of macarons to keep up with the demand. I want to be in that line someday!

And apparently, a Ladurée shop is where Carrie Bradshaw spent some time during her stay in the City of Lights during the last few episodes of SATC.

Aside from these legendary little cookies, they also make the prettiest pastries! *sigh.*

And they come in the loveliest boxes.

Someday, SOMEDAY, I will eat my way through Paris and have dessert at Ladurée. In the meantime, I will keep this box forever. I even asked for the crumpled-up shopping bag from S. Haha. Such a dork, I know.

Délicieux! May you dream in macaron sweetness tonight!

It was a weekend of firsts!

I tasted a Hostess Snoball for the first time in my life. (Cream-filled chocolate cake, covered with marshmallow and rolled in coconut. I liked it. A lot. Don’t judge me.)

Took a lovely drive along Pacific Coast Highway with friends to Malibu Seafood. We ate on a patio right across the shoreline, and it was a beautiful day. It was first time there, and my calamari and fries were so yummy I’m still dreaming about them.

Also, I tried working with circular knitting needles for the first time.

Which promptly became a knitting FAIL.

Haha. I need more practice! Maybe next weekend?

Hope yours was lovely!

What you see above is Chicken-Pork Adobo, stewing away in its fragrant marinade of soy sauce, vinegar, fresh-milled black pepper, garlic cloves and bay leaves. As I write this, I can smell its familiar peppery-garlic-tanginess wafting from the kitchen. It fights for my nose’s affection alongside the comforting fragrance of jasmine white rice steaming in a pot. All I can say is that it smells like heaven in here right now. Or, even better, it smells like home.

This is tonight’s dinner. I’ve been sick for the past week and a half, and whenever I’m tired and not feeling well, my body craves for classic Filipino comfort food like this. And not just any adobo—but my Lola’s adobo. I know that there are a million and one ways to prepare this dish, but the way my grandma made it is the one that fits my food memories like a glove. She was a purist about her adobo. Nothing was fancy about it, but its simple preparation and flavors always made the dish sing. I can’t wait to eat!

The thing I realized about Lola’s adobo was that it doesn’t ask for much. It’s the kind of dish that takes care of itself. You literally dump everything in a pot and trust that the chemistry between the ingredients works. And it does, every time. I think, in this way, my Lola’s adobo is “comfort food” in every sense: nonsense kitchen prep that frees you to sit back, relax and even write a blog post, and flavors that wrap you in a warm cloud of your childhood. Every mouthful is a kiss and a hug from Lola.

I hope this post finds you warm and comfy and loved.

I found these beautiful print-and-cut Valentine’ Day cards entirely by accident over at the Poets.org. (I love wasting online time on [legit] poetry sites.) I love these cards. I seriously want to do something with them, like tags for V Day treats or something. Aren’t they pretty? E. E. Cummings kills me.

Would you wipe your hands on this poetic Mr. Darcy proposal dishtowel? (I couldn’t. Maybe I’ll repurpose it into a pillow so I can stare at it longingly and lovingly hug it to sleep. If you’re creeped out by that visual, you OBVIOUSLY don’t know Mr. Darcy like I do. Kthanksbye.)

And wow, look! A heart-shaped cocotte from Staub. I love the black one even more! Le Creuset, I’m breaking up with you.

We are celebrating this weekend at this:

Granted, I realize stuffing my face in front of someone isn’t the most attractive/romantic thing to do, but LA’s most popular food  trucks are going to all be there. Even a GRILLED CHEESE TRUCK, c’mon now!

How are you celebrating Happy Hearts Day?

Look at a picture of today’s weather in Los Angeles:

Why don’t we replace it with this?

Yum! Did that make you smile? (Or hungry?)

I’m sitting here warming up with thoughts of the wonderful B4D (Breakfast For Dinner) Party we had with friends last weekend.

This kind of party is easy to put together and is a cinch to host. I thought maybe if I could think of breakfast fare that can all go into one oven and cook together, it would make hosting that much easier. So on the menu for the evening was: Spinach Cheese Frittata, Baked Chicken Sausages, Homemade Waffles and fresh fruit. And oh, Mimosas! Because who doesn’t like champagne + orange juice on a Saturday night?

The Baked Chicken Sausages were a healthier alternative to pork ones, picked up from Trader Joe’s. The dish was actually an experiment. I tossed some halved fingerling potatoes (no peeling, so easy!) with some sliced onions and green peppers with some olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder.

Laid those in a pan around the sausages that had little diagonal incisions on top. Baked at 375 degrees covered for 20 minutes (so the steam thoroughly cooks the sausages) and another 30 minutes or so uncovered (for browning). They came out full-flavored from the browning, with the peppers nice and soft, the onions caramelized and the potatoes thoroughly seasoned. I’ll be making this several times from now on.

As for the Spinach Cheese Frittata, would you like the recipe? Fancy a Frittata for your Friday? Here ‘tis!

Spinach Cheese Frittata
8 large eggs
4 large egg whites
2 cups spinach, fresh, baby leaves, chopped
4 Tbsp scallion(s), finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 cup shredded fat-free or lite cheddar cheese

Spray an 8×8 baking pan with cooking spray. In a large bowl, beat together eggs and egg whites; stir in spinach, scallion, salt and pepper. Pour mixture into pan, top with cheese. Bake at 375-degree oven. Mine took a while, maybe 30-40 minutes, because the eggs had to set and the cheese had to turn a golden brown. You can probably test at 20 minutes to see how “behaved” your egg mixture is. Let stand for a bit before cutting into wedges. The next time I make this I plan to throw in some red peppers and mushrooms, too! Another one for the recipe box.

The waffles were fun to make with this home-use, personalized waffle maker, the Presto Flipside (lots of great reviews on Amazon). You wait for it to heat up, pour in the waffle mix, flip it over to the other side and a beep goes off telling you your waffle is done.

Hello, Waffles. I believe it’s time you met my tummy!

We topped ours with peanut butter and real maple syrup. Yes, peanut butter. It’s an oddly awesome combination that E. introduced me to—he grew up with peanut butter + syrup on his pancakes and waffles. You should give it a try the next time you have these breakfast treats. It’s uncommonly yummy.

We finished the evening with more Mimosas and rounds of Super Mario Wii—which I’m bad at, but it’s ok. In the kitchen, I’m good. Avoiding poisonous mushrooms and snapping monster plants, not so much!

I hope you get to throw an omnommnomy B4D party of your own, too!

I woke up last Saturday morning thinking that I wanted, no needed, to make this:

I had made an Egg In The Basket before, but thought that with Valentine’s Day coming up I could give my idea of making this variation a go. Sometimes these are also called Toad In The Hole (beats me why), but I’ve nicknamed in this version the Heart In A Hole (at least it isn’t the other way around, huh?). I literally got up and zombiewalked to the kitchen in my pj’s to make this, because I had been thinking about it all the night before, wondering if it would work.

So, I took a slice of bread, which turned out to be multi-grain because there was nothing else in the house. This one is Milton’s multi-grain, which I have an unabashed affection for. I buttered both sides (the world would be a sad place indeed without butter!).

Used one of my heart cookie cutters from this mega collection that I’ve had for many years, and cut out a heart from the middle.

Put a little more butter in a pan (what? Julia Child LOVED butter!) and waited for it to melt.

Set the bread slice in the middle, and carefully broke an egg into the heart shape.

I covered the pan so the steam would allow the top of the eggs to set a little.

Flipped it over when I thought the yolk was sufficiently set and waited for that part to toast a little. I also toasted the cut-out heart itself in the same way.

The final outcome wasn’t as pretty as I wanted it to be, but I’m picky like that. I would have wanted the yolk a bit runny, so I’m probably going to take it out of the pan a little earlier than I did the next time I make it.

It was a hearty (oh puns, I love you so) dish that was as much fun to eat as it was fun to make! I hope you get to eggsperiment on your own, too!

In a perfect world, I would have the chance to cook (and eat) every imaginable pasta shape out there. I’ve been thinking about pasta a lot recently, and this may be because I’m trying not to eat too much of it. Last night, in fact, I dreamt about making rigatoni with sausage and peppers. With homemade marinara sauce from ripe, plump Roma tomatoes, made bold with healthy servings of garlic, fresh basil and thyme, finished off with a hunk of warm, crusty bread.

In my hankering for all things pasta, I’ve unearthed these photos from one of the more memorable pasta meals I’ve made. It’s a no-holds-barred Chicken Alfredo (modified from this recipe), the kind you only make once every two years or so for fear that you’ll keel over after the last bite. The kind of pasta dish you hold in your memory—for the joy in making it as much as the joy in eating it!

I remember making this after discovering the pasta Shapes Library (yes, there is such a thing) over at the National Pasta Association website. I was looking through all the shapes and realized I’d never worked with Cavatappi before, so I promptly set about to remedy the situation by declaring dinner as an excuse to test-run this particular pasta shape.

There’s so much more out there to try! How about these interesting-looking ones for your next meal? I think learning to pair which pasta shape to what sauce is an unexplored culinary art form, and I’m hoping to get several chances this year to uhm, “enrich my studies” (read: Cook and eat more of these things!). Look, there’s even a pasta shape for a curlyhead like me!

If YOU dreamt of pasta, what kind of dish would it be?

Today is a good day to blog about these sunshine-y cupcakes. Because it’s been raining in Los Angeles. A LOT.

We need a little reminder of the (almost) perennial Southern California sunshine around here. The weather is getting people all depressed! I personally love all this rain, but the fact that most Angelenos are mopey and boo-hooing this strange weather is the perfect opportunity to write about these yummy, summery cupcakes.

I made them for my friend Sara’s birthday. We were all going to have dinner at Loteria Grill, a Mexican restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard (awesome food!) I wanted to bring dessert that would pair well with all the enchiladas and tacos we’d eat with wild abandon, and at first I thought I’d make a Mojito Birthday Cake. The lime and mint in it, typical Mexican flavors, would do just the trick. And oh, yes, the rhum!

But as a lot of restaurants in the city, Loteria was going to charge me a (stupid) cake-cutting fee. Simply said, if you bring a cake into a restaurant that observes this policy, they’ll charge you for cutting and plating your dessert. Why would I or my friends have to pay to eat something I baked? Ridiculous! I called up the restaurant and countered, “Well, if I brought in some cupcakes, they won’t need cutting…would you charge me for those?” The person over the phone admitted no, they wouldn’t charge me if I chose to bring in cupcakes. Ha! HA!

These cupcakes were so much fun to make. I first set about making cupcakes with my favorite vanilla cupcake recipe (out of the Magnolia Bakery cookbook).

I used these really pretty cupcake liners from Bake It Pretty.

I then modified the rhum syrup from this recipe. This was the sweet, alcoholic kick that really elevated these from sweet, innocent vanilla cupcakes that they were to the sinful indulges that they became. I mean sugar + alchohol? Come on now, that’s debauchery in a cupcake right there!

After poking holes into the cupcakes and spooning the syrup on top, I waited a bit to make sure the syrup was throughly absorbed, infusing each little cupcake with the bright flavors that inspired the popular cocktail.

With a little help from Nonna, my little grater girl, I made a cream-cheese frosting with lime zest mixed right in.

After garnishing the tops with lime slices and sprigs of mint, I decided the cupcakes still kind of looked naked. Ayayay.

I realized I had some green sanding sugar in my decorating “toolboox,” and sprinkling those on completed my sweet, little sinful things!

¡Salud!

I hope it’s bright and sunshine-y where you are, and that you’re enjoying a mojito in the sun and thinking about me.

 Long overdue, I know! But in the shuffle of turkey, mashed potato and stuffing, I misplaced my camera and couldn’t post these until today.

 For my family, I made this toot-my-own-horn-good Pumpkin Cheesecake. The crust was made from crushed gingersnaps—a season-appropriate spiced twist from the traditional graham-cracker one. I piped whipped cream (yes, made from scratch, thank you) blobs on top (Bake It Pretty’s Round Giant Pastry Tip was perfect for this!) , and sprinkled some toffee brickle on them. The chocolate pieces you see were made from a chocolate “mat.” I melted some chocolate chips, dipped a fork in the mixture and whipped it back and forth over some wax paper so it made some sort of cross-hatched pattern. Those pieces you see on the cheesecake were simply broken-off “shards” from the mat. More crushed gingersnaps in the middle completed the dessert. (I’m very proud of it!) I think I’ll be making this cheesecake for Thanksgiving from now on.

For E.’s family (who are self-confessed chocoholics!), I made this autumn-themed Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting. I baked it in a disposable sheet pan, just like these. They’re handy because they come with their own cover and there are no worries about a forgotten cake pan wherever the baked treat is sent. The leaves are made from marzipan that I tinted, rolled out and cut out with autumn mini cookie cutters. I used the back of a knife (a Martha Stewart trick so that you don’t cut all the way through the marzipan) to score veins on the leaves and marks on the acorns. 

The holidays are always an excuse for me to cook and craft even more, so may the Kitchen and Craft Gods be with me in the next few weeks as Christmas draws near. Hope to keep you posted of all my adventures in thread and flour!

Someday, I’d like to be able to say I’ve cooked the world.

I imagine a curiosity about world cuisine is common for a lot of people who love to cook. For me, though, it’s a deep-seated fascination simply because it’s an ingredient in my very own immigrant experience. Living in Los Angeles has exposed me to a rich tapestry of different cultures—something I didn’t grow up with in the 25 years I lived in the Philippines.

When I first came out here, one of the ways I knew to explore my new life was to acquaint myself with the food my new friends grew up with. I would talk about my Lola’s adobo, and they would have me taste the Lubia Polo (a Persian rice dish with ground beef and green beans) their nanny had made for them for years. Nothing was more delicious than exchanging memories about food. All this started my now ever-growing love affair with world cuisine. I guess I felt that I could somehow distill part of my often-crazy immigrant experience…in a pot.

This was what prompted me to take a two-hour Moroccan Cooking class at Surfa’s in Culver City. Surfas is a restaurant/culinary supply warehouse and is, in itself, a sort of mecca for me. It’s where I bought my first honest-to-goodness bottle of (pricey) vanilla extract with my first paycheck. I go back to it time to time each year to explore, wide-eyed, its wondrous shelves and shelves of food things: from European butter, to cake decorating thingamajigs…

…and pots and pans and pastas.

And don’t get me started about their tubs of chocolate. TUBS. Valhrona, help me.

Now, back to Morocco. I’d always thought that if I were to take a cooking class, it would be for something I’d never done before. I’ve had many chances to try my hand at Italian and American food, and was on the lookout for something more exotic (exotic for me, at least). I found Chef Amanda Cushman’s cooking class by patient online sleuthing, and when I discovered it was in Surfa’s (very near my house), I signed up without so much as a blink.

I didn’t know what to expect, because I’d never taken a cooking class before. And frankly, I’m a very solitary cook, just like my grandma. I was worried other people in the class would annoy me, but I actually loved every minute of it. There were two girlfriends, one of who was a new transplant from Australia, a married couple (the husband cooked the meals in their home, and the wife made dessert!), two mothers and myself. Chef Amanda had us all chip in doing parts of all the dishes we prepared over the course of two hours.

Our mindblowingly delicious menu:
- Chicken Tagine With Prunes
- Stuffed Flatbread with Mint and Feta
- Couscous Pilaf with Roasted Vegetables
- Phyllo Bundles with Fig, Apricot and Almonds, served with hand-whipped cream

We each had our own chopping board and apron, and ironically, one of the tasks I was assigned to do was chop the cilantro, which I have a categorical hatred for!

I tried to snap as many pictures as I could, when my hands were free.

After two hours of happily chopping, and stirring and roasting, we sat down to our feast. If you’re familiar with couscous, we used Israeli couscous in the pilaf below, hence the larger grains—a first for me!

Nom…

…nom…

…nom!

How do you say, “I’m hungry” in Moroccan?

All yummy noises aside, I had an inspiring, awesome time at my class (so much that I forgot all about the cilantro!) I was heady with giddy cookinghappiness when I came out of it. I’m excited to recreate this meal at home, hoping to someday do it in a traditional tagine (we made ours with a regular pot—it came out extremely juicy and mouthwatering nonetheless).

And yes, I hope to see many more days of learning to cook the world, one strange, exotic, delicious dish at a time.

Saturday found us, at the ungodly hour of 7:30 in the morning, northbound on the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner train, up the California coast headed toward Santa Barbara. We spent a full, fun day there. My favorite souvenir of our small adventure is this hardbound Pride & Prejudice comic book by Marvel discovered in a random comic book shop. I love it even more for the fact that the shop was totally unexpected. It was this tiny store stocked to the gills with geekery off of the main street that goes through town, and we sort of half stumbled into it, sloth-like from a delicious brunch, cupping hot drinks in our hands.

I had seen Volume 1 months ago in another comic book shop in Los Angeles, but the one above is the complete series, collected. I haven’t taken the shrink wrap off of it yet. I’m happy to just look at it for now. Below are some of the covers. I love the alliterative, irreverent modern blurbs!

If you want peeks of the stuff inside, Comic Book Resources has some pretty good pages.

And don’t laugh, but I also took home Vols. 1-3 of the “Archie Gets Married” Series. Haha.

On Saturday, I also got to smell Julia Child. Actually, I got the chance to smell the beautiful variety of yellow rose that was named after her. Ms. Julia smelled quite lovely.

This was during our tour of the Rose Garden on wondrous Lotus Land, a 37-acre private estate that was turned into a nonprofit. It used to be owned by an eccentric, extremely rich opera singer who dedicated her life to building this botanical masterpiece. It has 16 beautifully maintained gardens and is a must-see if you ever make your way to Santa Barbara.

So, Saturday may not have been as crafty as my usual Saturdays go, but it was still full of my favorite things. Flowers named after great chefs, Mr. Darcy and oh yes, taffy! (Pumpkin and Candy Corn are two flavors I love that are now in season.)

How was your weekend, world?

The attempts at chocolate-molded skulls that you see above never made it to the public eye. And yet, here I am blogging about them! I do this because not everything that comes out of my kitchen is fit for public consumption, but in the past, I never even thought about showing them because I’m a crazy perfectionist. To a fault! And maybe it’s my age, you know, or the countless hours in the kitchen making stuff, but I’ve learned to be gentler with myself and be OK with my fumblings in flour. I’ve come to realize that the attempt at a project is sometimes more rewarding than the final outcome itself.

These awesome Day Of The Dead molds jumped out at me over at Bake It Pretty about a month ago. That site has claimed HOURS of my time online because of all their whimsical, cute baking supplies, from cool cupcake liners to retro-inspired packaging. When I saw this, I HAD to have it. Otherwise it would give me nightmares. Yes, I’m kind of obsessive about baking stuff like that.

When I saw that the site had these Clasen colored wafers as well, I put those in my cart, too. See, you can get a lot of melting chocolate elsewhere that’s brown, but never black. And their red ones were really vibrant, blood/Halloween red. I couldn’t wait for them to come in the mail!

I had the best-laid plans you know, I really did. I wanted to painstakingly paint the features on the molds, coloring different parts with different colors. Which I started to do, very early in the day. The plan was that I would make 24 of these things, and set them on top of some Pumpkin Cupcakes with Chocolote Cream Cheese Frosting. The cupcakes were going to be…LEGENDARY! (I’m channeling Barney Stinson for all you How I Met Your Mother fans.)

But then I realized, if I wanted these to turn out EXACTLY the way I wanted them, I would have to spend an average of 40 minutes (with cooling time in the fridge for the chocolate color to set up) on each piece. I mean, isn’t this gorgeous? It IS, but I think would have been 57 years old by the time I was done with all of them.

And this is where I think my kitchen attitudes have changed. In the past, I WOULD spend 57 years getting everything JUST EXACTLY RIGHT. No kidding. You see these cupcakes? They’re Dark Chocolate with Ganache and were for a friend’s birthday last year; I started making them at 8 pm and they took till 3 am, and I didn’t flinch. I was a zombie the next day, sure, but I didn’t back down.

But these days, I will make the best of what’s in front of me. I’m learning to DEAL. If it doesn’t work, I try not to cry into my dough and just move on. SUCH a big step for me.

So, I decided to chuck the whole chocolate-skull thing and make the just the cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. And sprinkles.

And you know what? They were good. REALLY good. Light and fluffy, yet moist and full of that spice flavor so associated with fall. I got the recipe from HERE, and it’s different from all the other pumpkin cupcakes I’ve made in the past (maybe because it calls for cake flour instead of all-purpose?). Not dense, but airy and yummy and perfect with the creamy-sweet frosting.

So, that was my big Halloween boo-boo (oh, I think that was a pun, wasn’t it?).

I made those little things, stored them in the fridge for the next day’s trip to work and called it a day. I may not have had the chance to make exactly what I wanted, but at least I still came away with something. And from what the officemates told me, chocolate skulls or not, they were STILL legendary.

And you know, there’s always NEXT Halloween!