“The banquet is in the first bite”
March 19, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’ve always loved beginnings. There’s so much optimism when you think you’ve come up with the perfect blog title or when you’ve written out your New Year’s resolutions in a blank journal. This time, I’ll stick with it. This time, it’s for forever.
I’ve been through so many blogs and left so many journals abandoned that there’s no reason I should think this endeavor should be any different. But I already have a certain feeling that this time, I’ve found a keeper.
Jasmine & Bergamot. I wanted a title that reflected different aspects of myself, and funnily enough, I found it the other day in my sources of morning caffeine. I had a container each of jasmine and earl grey loose-leaf tea, both running low. I liked the idea that, as a child of two cultures, Chinese and American, my taste subconsciously had an equal appreciation for flavors from both East and West. I had grown up drinking jasmine tea with my family, and I had recently discovered Earl Grey, known for its strong bergamot notes, during a trip to London.
There’s also something about these ingredients that call out to the romantic in me, evoking images of late nights walking in a perfumed garden or hot, sunny days lying in a citrus grove. Plus, after my first semester in law school, I’d realized that one of the greatest pleasures in life was just curling up on the couch during a snowstorm with a good book and a giant pot of tea with honey. A final little tidbit: my first blog had been titled Cocoa Mademoiselle, a riff on my favorite perfume from Chanel. And as it turns out, jasmine and bergamot are both scents used in the fragrance. So in a strange way, things have come full circle, and I look forward to all the new adventures and discoveries, culinary or otherwise, that life decides to throw at me.
Food Rules
March 11, 2011 § Leave a comment
“Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.” – Food Rules by Michael Pollan.
Which means that, aside from these pumpkin muffins and given my cravings lately, parmesan crackers (a la Cheez-It), cheese twists, lemon bars, and cheesecake brownies are at the top of my “recipes to try” list.
Pumpkin muffins
Pumpkin Muffins (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pumpkin spice
1 cup sugar (1 1/4 cups if you like your muffins on the sweeter side)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350 F. Put 12 liners in the muffin cups.
Whisk together pumpin puree, oil, eggs, pumpkin spice, 1 cup sugar (or 1 1/4 if that’s how much you’re using), baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth. Then whisk in flour and baking powder.
Divide the batter among muffin cups, about 3/4 full. Bake until puffed and golden brown, about 30 minutes. A toothpick should come out clean when inserted into the center of a muffin.
Cool in a pan for 5 minutes and then transfer muffins from pan to rack. Cool to warm or room temperature.
Double Birthdays
July 13, 2010 § Leave a comment
With two birthdays one day apart, July is a busy month for our family. We have Jackie’s birthday on the 10th and Laura’s soon after on the 12th. And although sometimes we lump the birthdays together for one really big celebration, this year, we managed to have two nice dinners and two very different cakes.
On Jackie’s birthday, our family went to our Korean food mainstay, Keum Ho Jung. Here in Edison we’re actually blessed with a huge variety of different ethnic restaurants and people are always discovering new places to eat, but we’ve been going to Keum Ho Jung for so long that it would seem at least a little strange if we didn’t go there for our Korean food fix. We ordered our usual picks – seafood pancake, jab chae, kal bi – as well as one new item, the squid dolsot bibimbap which packed a little heat and turned out to be quite tasty.
And later in the evening, we celebrated Jackie’s birthday with a very unique mango mousse and sponge cake. A little too sweet and creamy for my taste, but the next morning before lunch, I caught the birthday girl taking giant spoonfuls right out of the cake itself…and her opinion was all that mattered anyway.
Two days later, we stayed in to celebrate Laura’s 17th but ate just as well. We grilled some juicy hamburgers and a favorite of my dad’s, lamb chops. The preparation for these babies is very simple but brings out the flavor of the meat in the best possible way. We bought a frenched rack of lamb, which I then cut into 9 single chops.
Mix extra virgin olive oil, sea salt (which is actually the only salt I use now), coarse black pepper, sliced garlic, and a teensy bit of Chinese five spice if you have it. Although the five spice flavor isn’t very pronounced in the end product, I do believe it adds a certain amount of depth. Don’t be scared to use liberal amounts of seasoning; the worst thing is bland meat. Marinate for 2-3 hours. Heat the grill pan to high and then sear chops, about 4 minutes on first side and 2 on the second depending on how you prefer them cooked. I always prefer medium-rare. Because of that initial sear on very high heat and the generous amount of seasoning, these lamb chops had a great caramelized crust on the outside but were still very tender on the inside.
A friend also brought a huge vat of delicious Sichuanese-style noodles with those infamous flower peppercorns in the sauce. They were so addicting that I kept eating bowlfuls until my mouth went numb, which wasn’t helped any by the Carvel ice cream cake we ended up eating later.
Keum Ho Jung
518 Old Post Road
Edison, NJ 08817
732.650.1588
Commencement and some good news!
May 24, 2010 § 1 Comment
Well, I am now officially a graduate of Georgetown University. Commencement was held on Saturday inside McDonough Arena after rain threatened our original plans to have the ceremony on the lawn. It was a bittersweet moment; I’d be leaving my 2011 classmates a year early, but it was good to know that the past three have been probably the most rewarding in my life.
Add to all the graduation hoopla an acceptance into Cornell Law School on Friday afternoon, and there was a lot of celebrating to be had this weekend. Our family went down to a Georgetown favorite, Farmers and Fishers on the waterfront, for a great lunch, where everything is locally sourced – rich Maryland crab dip and crispy calamari, luxurious and generously filled crab ravioli, tacos! – and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around M and Wisconsin one last time.
By the end of the day, I was so exhausted from all the standing and sitting and waiting that I passed out very early at a friend’s house in VA and the next day we drove our crowded van back to Jersey for the summer.
Notes on Food 