Babka (Part 1)

Dan's mission this weekend was to carry on a cherished Polish dish passed down by his great grandma Mima. Soo, I decided to help and made sure to take a lot of pictures!

Dan you look confused. Maybe a little overwhelmed by the fact we have no idea how to make any type of bread!?

First step- getting the yeast ready. Mix 2 packets with a teaspoon of water. Let it sit for ~10min.Preparing the flour mixture. Milk with a stick of melted butter is poured in bowl.

Flour, eggs, butter, milk, salt and yeast all mixed together.

Cover and let rise.
Flour the table. Time to get the hands dirty!!

Knead it for a good 8 min! (Raisins were added at this time.)

Put it in a bowl and cover with aluminum foil. Let it rise for ~1 and 1/2 hours.

We put it on the floor near the heater. A little heat will make it rise faster.
It should double in size by now. Take it out and knead. Try to get the air out. I have no idea how that works, but we just punched and folded the dough.

We can now split it up into loaves, muffin pans and maybe even into pretzels.


Dan and his pretzel making skills. How sexy!?

After you portion it off - you gotta let it rise again. Another 1 and 1/2 hours or so. Then you will glaze with egg yolk before you can finally bake the damn thing.

It's finally ready to be baked. Into the oven you go!!!

How did the Babka turn out? To be continued...

Best SQUASH ever!!

It's so simple to make too! All you need is a little salt and ground pepper for seasoning, a couple garlic cloves and some sundried tomatoes. You then sautee in olive oil until slightly golden/crisp. Voila! You now have a delicious, but yet very healthy dish. Who needs a steak now!? ** Special thanks to Chef House. You're pretty good at making squash.

Valentine's <3

Pretty, huh? It tasted even better than it looked. I got this yummy delight at Sole Mio, an Italian restaurant. My waiter informed me that the love banner on the cake wasn't edible. I thanked him for the heads up, even though I knew. It did make me wonder about the people that didn't know. Is the banner that tasty looking??

Trend Eaters

For the past few years pomegranate was the "it" fruit. They were everywhere! From POM juice to face cream (I spent $30 dollars on a 1oz. face sunblock infused with pomegranate). Talk about an over rated fruit. Now pomegranates are sooo last year and it's now all about the acai berries. I see acai everywhere. It's almost agitating.

I won't lie, I too am a trend eater. I love to try exotic fruits. But the eagerness to spend ridiculous amounts on fruit drinks and moistourizers must stop. Why are we soo ready to go out and infuse everything with acai just because Oprah said it's on her top ten superfood list. We musn't let this hype overshadow the original fruit, praised for it's overabundance of antioxidants - GRAPEFRUIT.

I had grapefruit everyday last week. It was so refreshing. Way better than acai!


*NOTE: The tone of urgency is not a dramatization.

Superbowl Sunday

While everyone else was gathering around their TV's watching the most testosterone packed event of the year, Dan and I watched a french chick flick and cooked. We made green and red stuffed peppers. It turned out extremely good! We used sundried tomatoes, ground beef, 2 big peppers (one red and one green), onion, garlic, salt and pepper. It was shocking how amazing that turned out. What would be more amazing is whether we can recreate this dish.

The Making of Flan

I never had a bite of flan. The image of the silky dessert in my cookbook is quite breathtaking. These photographers sure are good. Somehow they managed to capture tranquility, in a piece of partially eaten flan. These images stir up emotions and leave strong impressions. I am left with an urge to be more, to be better, regardless of my cooking skills. I want to make flan!

One problem that brings the whole flan operation to a stand still is the lack of an oven. How can a house not have an oven? I ask my mother this every time I have the urge to bake. When my parents remodeled the kitchen a while back they opted not to have an oven. They don't use it, except to store pots and pans. Hmm? you may be wondering how do they bake cookies and other sweet delights?! Oh that's easy! They just don't. Vietnamese cuisine does not have as many baked goods as the western side of the world. My family in particular does not make many sweet desserts let alone anything that involves an oven. Yea, it sucks for an eager cooking connoisseur, such as myself.

Well, maybe I will try this at my sister's house (she has an oven, but like mom does not use it except for storing pots and pans) or maybe Dan's place (a white boy- very familiar with the oven). But my mother insists that I don't need an oven to make flan. No oven?!? The recipe says oven (and coconut milk and a few other ingredients)! My mother born and raised in Southern Vietnam said that she use to make flan all the time back in the day. She never used any oven, just a steamer. I was very skeptical, but showed my respect by demanding her to prove me wrong. So she's in the kitchen mixing this and that - totally abadoned the recipe I showed her. Where's the coconut milk? I thought that was one of the main ingredients. Why is there coffee? Condensed milk?!?

I can't keep up. I was put in charge of making the caramel syrup. I burned it - just a little! heh?

Making of the custard. Mom is adding condensed milk. ugh.

Put your custard cups in a steamer - not an oven. Pour a thin layer of the caramel syrup in your custard cups. In our case the caramel coffee syrup. Then pour 3/4 of the cup with the custard.

I don't know about you, but it looked mighty unappetizing on this end. I understand that it's been a while for my mom. She probably needs a few practice runs before she can nail it. But it was gross. It tasted like steamed egg custard.

Jazzy Night

Dan bought us tickets to Mark Turner playing at the Jazz Standard located at the Blue Smoke. My first taste of live jazz. I was soo excited.

On our way to the Blue Smoke, I was yapping about the wonderful Anthony Bourdain and how I really wanted to go to his restaurant, Les Halles. As I look up to check the street sign, I was overcomed by intense giddiness. I wave excitedly in the air and said "Dan look Les Halles! Les Halles!" I can't begin to explain how I excited I was. We had to eat there. The thought that I would be in the same place as Anthony was too much for me to handle. Dan humored me and we walked towards Les Halles. It was really lovely. I made Dan promise me to not eat anything at the Blue Smoke, so we could go to Les Halles after the show.

Well, I guess we couldn't resist. We got to Blue Smoke pretty early. The show which is located downstairs at the Jazz standard doesn't start letting people in until 6:30. We had an hour to kill and decided to share an appetizer to calm our roaring tummys. The place was nice. I love the over pillowed bench I was sitting on. The waitress greeted us and told us about a house special - braised beef short ribs in red wine. It wasn't even on the menu. I have to confess that I somewhat kinda dislike barbecue. Wrong place for me to eat. Something about that dark sweet thick sauce bothers me. After staring at the menu and going through all the possibilities we decided to go for the special and share it. It didn't matter to me, since it wasn't my thing.

I admit it was pretty good. If I ever had to eat anything remotely barbecue like, it would have to be this. I preferred the mash potatoes and greens the most. Dan practically drooled on himmself. He ate every gooey morsel of glistening fat that was on the plate.

*Note: The meat was very tender. My knife pierced through it like soft butter. The bones just simply slid off. A meat lover's dream.

It didn't look like we were going to Les Halles. Oh well, I thought. We would save it for another weekend. When we got downstairs to the Jazz Standard, we didn't think we needed any more food. We got a couple of drinks and tried not to think about all the yummy dishes people ordered around us. It took us about 35 min to realize that temptation is stronger than we can ever be. As a waiter passes by, we ask for a menu. We ended up ordering Chipotle chicken wings and a cheeseburger. We were both very dissapointed. What a waste of tummy space?! We should've of known better after years of professional eating.

At least the show was absolutely wonderful!!!~ I truly enjoyed.