Things have been pretty quiet around here on the blog as food shoots for the year have picked up. I wish I could say I was better at maintaining a blog schedule and a stylist freelance schedule after all of these years, but the truth is, you just never know when photo shoots are going to be busy and
Tuna mornay. Where would uni students be without it? Every share house I lived in had it on regular rotation. It had everything a student needed; it was cheap, easy to cook, had no vegetables (we were living out of home, why would we eat vegetables?) and was carbohydrate-heavy enough to fill the tummy before a big night out. Looking back, my tuna mornay was pretty ordinary, I hadn’t really nailed the white sauce and I recall it being a bit dry. This was the recipe I wish I had when I was at uni. Large chunks of flaked tuna are bound by a creamy sauce, enriched with bitey tasty cheese. All topped with crunchy breadcrumbs and parmesan and baked until golden and bubbly. There’s little wonder it graces tables across Australia and America (where it’s called tuna casserole). Serve with a salad and it has all the food groups! And did I mention the word budget? - Alison Adams, Food Writer and Recipe Tester
Leafy bland western salad VS pungent, fresh, filling Thai salad= no competition. This dish shows why I love Thai salads so much. They're incredibly healthy (yes lean beef is healthy) they punch weig…
I've been looking forward to making this sticky, sweet braised pork dish for a while now and it did not disappoint. Moo Hong belongs to a family of similar Chinese influenced, dark coloured stews that also includes khao kha moo (stewed pork leg) and moo paloe (pork braised with eggs). They all share some common ingredients: soy sauce, star anise, long cooking time and fatty cuts of pork but it's down to the consistency and what they're served with that makes for some subtle differences. Moo Hong uses large chunks of belly pork and is cooked down until you're left with a rich, peppery, sweet and sticky sauce and meat that is soft and unctuous. Although it needs just over an hour to cook it's very easy to make. For two large portions use: 400g of pork belly, rind removed and cut into inch square pieces. Try to find a piece that is fairly even in thickness and has a good meat/fat ratio half a bulb garlic, peeled a dessert spoon of black peppercorns a small handful of coriander roots or stalks (roots seem impossible to find in the UK) a golf ball size chunk of palm (or light brown) sugar 3 star anise a big splash of oyster sauce a big splash of light soy sauce a big splash of dark sweet soy sauce (I use Indonesian kecap manis) 2-3 cups of water (you may need a bit more) small splash of oil for frying Make a well blended paste by bashing the black pepper, palm sugar, garlic and coriander in a mortar; by adding the harder ingredients first and adding the softer ones last you should end up with a fairly smooth paste. Heat a splash of vegetable oil in a deep pan until medium hot. Carefully add in the cubed pork belly and fry for 3-4 minutes until some of the fat has rendered out and the pork is lightly browned. Pour off the excess fat from the pan (there'll be plenty in the dish as the pork cooks down). Pop in the spice paste and stir well for a moment or two; the sugar in the paste will make the pork sticky but be careful not to let it sit and burn. Pour hot water over to just cover the pork then add in the rest of the ingredients (sauces and star anise). The sauce will be dark but very thin. Pop on a lid and lower the heat to a gentle simmer, let the pork reduce and cook down for around 75-90 minutes. Check it and stir gently every now and again, making sure there's still enough liquid; top up with a little water if need be. The final sauce should be thick and sticky (of a honey- like consistency). Serve with freshly cooked rice and some extra coriander.
Vegan Custard Tarts When I started cutting out dairy, one of the many things I stopped eating was custard, and it’s one of the many things I really missed! I had no idea how easy it was so make my own, homemade dairy-free version. It’s ridiculously easy! AND it tastes just like ‘normal’ custard. How I wish I tried this recipe months and months ago! I missed out on so much custard goodness! I just realised this paragraph is full of exclamation marks!! Moving on… These vegan custard tarts taste like the ‘real thing’ and the custard part definitely tastes like the custard I remember and love. Sweet, thick and…vanillary? OK I think I just made that word up but […]
With red cabbage, grapefruit, avocados and black beans, this colorful jicama salad is so fresh and crisp. It’s filling enough to be an entrée salad, but it also makes a fantastic side dish especially with Mexican and Southeast Asian flavors.
This tasty meat sauce for a vegan spaghetti is super easy to make, is one pot, and loaded with protein from walnuts and mushrooms versus typical lentils.
These healthy protein balls are packed with fiber, protein, iron, and omega 3s, but they taste like oatmeal cookie dough with tangy cranberries!
As I mentioned above, adapt the recipe to your liking. Any number of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, etc. will work. Also, wheat flakes, oat flakes, etc. can be added. If you haven't made the muesli mix, just use 1/2 cup oats and a pinch of any nuts, seeds, dried fruit, etc. you have on hand. Before I discovered date pellets, I would just chop up a date — one date per serving/person. To simplify: Sometimes I just soak the muesli in milk for about 15 minutes — no apple, no yogurt. For me, I'll soak 1/2 cup of muesli with 1/2 cup of milk for at least 15 minutes. Sometimes I add more milk if it has gotten too thick. It is delicious on its own just like that, though the apple provides a nice sweetness and the yogurt, a nice creaminess.
When Clay and I got married, I had lived and worked on my own for a year. For the sake of his stomach I am so thankful for that year! I mastered the basics of preparing meals for myself during that year and had a small but useful repertoire. After the wedding, I was working
A spicy roast eggplant shakshuka, with cumin, fresh herbs and served with crusty ciabatta bread.I have also added cooked chickpeas (or a drained can) to this recipe which works well.
Have you ever had a pancake and thought, I wish there was more cucumber? Now you will after trying this Indian recipe
Do you wish you could cook homemade meals for your family? You just need a few basic cooking skills and you can make many nutritious and tasty dishes.
This recipe was A-MAZ-ING!! I’ve been looking for a tandoori recipe, and have tried a few, but this comes closest to what you get at an Indian restaurant. Now I just wish I had a tandoor ov…
‘People who are three years younger than me have a completely different experience because it is not anonymous any more,’ Sophie Cook tells Maya Oppenheim
I think that this may be the first time ever that I’ve been away from my mom on Mother’s Day. It’s certainly the first time I’ve been over two thousand miles away. Feels wei…
Last week I was talking with a new friend (hi Sara!) and she mentioned how much she loves overnight, no-cook oatmeal. I am familiar with this (also known as muesli) but the new thing here was that she said that she especially likes making it with steel-cut oats. Really? I said. They’re so… chewy. Steel-cut oats without any cooking at all?Why yes! And they are delicious. This has got to be the simplest way to make steel-cut oats (and all of us here at The Kitchn love steel cut oats).
Wellllll, since my last post, where I was going on about how I was longing for fall weather to arrive, I got what I wished for. Boy did I ever get what I wished for. It basically rained nonstop for th
Whirley Pop Popcorn is a quick and fun snack you can make in just 5 minutes. With just a few ingredients, you can enjoy fluffy, homemade popcorn that so Perfect for movie nights.
This will make things EASIER...our family's favorite gluten-free products to help you start the process of going gluten free!
This single, soft, matcha green tea flavored cookie cooks in 50 seconds and takes less than 5 minutes to make!
Sending this toYeastspotting.Click here for my blog index.After weeks of driving, moving, and settling down, I've finally gotten my new kitchen more or less in order and ready to start baking/bloging again. Loving everything about Seattle so far, the active lifestyle, the urban living environment in downtown, the seafood, the "green" mentality -- I even like the grey weather! It's good for making laminated dough... :PNow back to bread, this is a very Asian bread, I don't think I have seen anything similar in a western bakery. It's essentially the love child of Danish and Asian Style Soft Sandwich bread, inheriting the best qualities of both parties: nice and crispy on the outside, soft inside, and full of buttery goodness. While still a laminated dough, in order to rise high in the sandwich tin, it differes from croissants(tips here) and traditional danishs in following ways:1. For croissants and danishs, we usually keep the dough fairly dry to ensure crisp and clean layers. While more kneading would make layers seperate more, resulting in a better crumb, we usually don't knead the dough to fully developement for the ease of rolling out. However, Asian style soft sandwich breads need to be kneaded very well to pass a very thin and strong windowpane test, otherwise the bread volume would suffer, and the texture won't be shreaddably soft (see details here). For this bread, we do knead the dough well (similar to other Asian style soft sandwich breads). In the mean time, the dough is kept pretty wet to have more extensibility, which make it possible to roll out.2. Since the dough is fairly wet, and shaping procedure is different from traditional croissants, we don't expect as many honeycomb-like holes in the crumb, instead, crumb just need to be fairly even and open. In the mean time, the final dough doesn't need to be rolled out very thin (15mm instead of 4mm for croissants). For those reasons, the amount of roll-in butter is considerably less than croissants.3. While for this particular batch in the first photo, I did one 4-fold, and two 3-folds, but this bread usually requires less folding than croissants. The most common method is one 4-fold, and one 3-fold, which I tried in another batch with good result.In summary, since the dough requires less folds, and doesn't need to be rolled out very thin, it's an easier laminated dough than croissants and danishes. However, it does have different challenges: the intensive kneading to full developement, the final shaping which requires concise cutting and weighing, as well as braiding.Laminated Sandwich Loaf (Adapted from many different sources)Note: for details and tips on making croissants, please see this postNote: for tips on kneading soft sandich loaves see this postNote: this recipe makes about 930g of dough, less or more depending on how much you trim off the edges etc.-levainstarter (100%), 44gwater, 75gbread flour, 134g1. mix and leave at room temp for 12 hours. -final doughbread flour, 361gmilk, 145gegg, 77gsugar, 60gsalt, 10ginstant yeast, 7gbutter, 41g, softenedlevain, allroll-in butter, 245g1. Mix everything other than butter, knead until gluten starts to form. Add in butter, mix until fully developed. see this post for details. 2. Round, press flat, put in fridge immediately for 2 hours.3. Make butter block, put in fridge for at least one hour before using. Take out the dough, roll out, and enclose butter. (see this post for details)4. Roll out to 20X60CM, fold one 4-fold as in the following pictures. Put in fridge for one hour5. Roll out again and do one 3-fold, put in fridge for one hour. (see this post for details)6. Repeat 5. (optional)7. Roll out dough to 1.5CM-2CM thickness. Length of the dough piece would depend on the tin you use. Since we are braiding them, you will need the length to be about 2X length of the tin. 8. Cut the dough into thin pieces. This is where experience becomes important. We are braiding 3 pieces into one group, each group need to have a certain weight. Do note that if a tin requires more than one group of dough, each group should weigh the same, otherwise bread would appear uneven at the end. In another word, for each tin, select a weight for each dough group (less for flat top, more for round top), then stick to that weight for each group of dough.a) For my bigger Chinese pullman tin (pictured on the left), I need 2 groups, each group has 3 pieces, and each group (all 3 pieces together) weigh 225-250g (225g if cover of the tin is used to make a flat top shape, more if cover is not used to make round top as in the picture).b) For my small Chinese pullman tin, I only need one group of 3 pieces, each group (all 3 pieces together) weigh 150g (if cover of the tin is used to make top flat).c) For 8X4 US loaf tin, I suggest to use 2 groups, each group has 3 pieces, and each group (all 3 pieces together) weigh 250-270g.d) For KAF 13X4X4 pullman pan, I would suggest to use 4 groups, each group has 3 pieces, and each group (all 3 pieces together) weigh 195-215g.9. For each group of 3 pieces of dough, braid them. Make sure the cut surface is facing up, to expose the layers. Fold ends under, put into tin. 10. Proof at around 27C until 80-90% full, about 4-5 hours in my case. Egg wash if you are not using the pullman pan cover. 11: Bake at 425F for 10min, lowered to 375F and bake until done. The bigger Chinese tin which took 450g - 500g of dough, needed about 40-45min of TOTAL baking time. The smaller tin which took 150g of dough, needed 30min in total. If colors too much, cover with foil. If the gluten network is fully developed, the bread should be proud and tall, with clear layers visible. If the pan cover is used, the dough amount needs to be fairly accurate for the pan, other wise it's each too short (not reaching the top), or bursting out (the cover can literally be blown open). This neat rectangle shape is nicknamed "golden sticks".The crumb soft but open with honeycomb structor. In general, I feel it's easier than croissants, since you can fold less and doesn't have to roll out as thin. However, the success does depend on proper kneading and careful piecing and shaping.
Fudgy Peanut Butter lentil blondies packed with oats and plenty of chocolate chips. These vegan and gluten free bars have 5g protein per serving!
As Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, releases her tenth cookbook, “Cooking for Jeffrey,” I admit I am jealous of Jeffrey Garten.
dreaming of figs, and so you should be. i was about to post something completely different tonight, but then a little bird told me it was @vanessavorbach's birthday, so i changed my plans to post this fig cheezecake i made the other day instead! so this is for you my friend, cause sending you a virtual cake is the best i can do from here. happy birthday Vanessa, i'm wishing you the best for this new year! and hoping our path will cross one day!
