white chocolate raspberry cookies

Sometimes you read a recipe, and are a little incredulous when you read the amounts of sugar or butter... but then it turns out great. Then, sometimes you read a recipe, are incredulous, and are rightly so because it turns out just as you'd expect.

I googled "White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies" and decided to go with this recipe on the carnation.co.uk website. I found out that caster sugar is extra fine granulated sugar. I found out that 170 g of condensed milk is probably equivalent to 6 oz of it. And I used frozen raspberries.

The result? Flat saucers! Delicious flat saucers!


Also, take care that raspberries are not on the bottom of the cookie. This possibly results in a weak cookie that breaks or leaves its middle behind on the pan...


In the future I'll add more flour and less sugar. This is what I intend to do:


White chocolate raspberry cookies

Preheat oven to 350 F.

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
3 tsp baking soda
2 sticks butter (8 oz), room temperature
6 oz condensed milk
6 oz or 3/4 cup ultrafine sugar (maybe regular sugar'd be ok)
1 baking bar of Ghirardelli white chocolate, chopped... or about 4-6 oz of white chocolate.
1/2 a bag of frozen raspberries, thawed and drained-- the less extraneous liquid, the better!

1. Cream butter and sugar until pale in a large mixing bowl.
2. Add condensed milk and mix until consistent.
3. Whisk together flour, salt, baking soda in a small mixing bowl. Sift into the butter and sugar mix. Mix until soft and dough like, or add more flour until it's not super sticky.
4. Mix in the white chocolate.
5. Roll small balls of dough, flatten, add 2 largeish raspberries or 3 small ones, and bring the edges of the cookie completely over the raspberries... like some kind of dumpling.
6. Bake for 13-18 minutes until edges are golden brown and middle is pale. Let set on cookie sheet. Take off to cool!

Lobster Mac and Cheese

For my friend's birthday potluck, I wanted to make her something special. I remembered she loved lobster mac and cheese (ala Purple Resaurant), and wanted to make it for her. However, never having had lobster mac or visited Purple, I didn't know where to begin. So I began with the internet.

And found this recipe (in a roundabout way-- I was searching for images!): Macaroni and Cheese with Lobster, from The Passionate Cook (blog).

I also found a Classic Macaroni and Cheese recipe on America's Test Kitchen website (they make you pay the price of membership to see it).

Originally, I used the same proportions as on the Test Kitchen recipe (8 people) and came out with enough to fill a 8x12 baking dish and a ~8x8 shallow casserole dish. I bought it to 2 parties! I think the recipe was relatively successful, especially the 2nd time, for which I made extra cheese sauce and dumped it on top of the bread.

I merged the two together and came up with this (thank goodness for electronic scales).


Lobster Macaroni and Cheese, with or without lobster (Swiss/Parmesan varietal)
For 4-6 people.

Ingredients
2 lobster tails (though honestly, the more the better. It's cost prohibitive)
50 g (1.76 oz, or 0.11 lbs) emmental cheese (grated)
50 g gruyère (grated)
50 g parmesan (grated)
3 tbsp butter
1-2 tbsp flour
~1 cup milk
Small onion finely diced
2-3 cloves minced garlic (no recipe called for it, but I like it)
A few shakes of cayenne
Pasta of choice for 4-6 people
Bread crumbs or croutons (I used 1 inch cubes of bread. Sourdough sounds good)

Recipe

1. Boil pasta until done.
2. If you want lobster, shell and rinse. Boil for 15 minutes or until done. Keep it warm.
   
3. In medium pot on medium high, melt the butter and saute the onions and garlic until caramelized. It will eventually start bubbling. Add your flour to make roux and whisk to get the clumps out. Add some cayenne if you want. Slowly add the milk and whisk to prevent clumps. Whisk frequently until boiling (careful not to burn; should be like thick cream). Take it off the heat and slowly whisk in the grated cheese. Taste and season to your likings (salt?).
   
4. Combine pasta and cheese sauce. Put into baking dish. Top with pieces of lobster. Top with bread crumbs or croutons. Bake or broil to brown the crumbs and serve.
5. If your bread didn't turn out, you can make more cheese sauce and pour it on top of everything. That always helps. Decorate as you want! Cayenne looks nice on white sauce, and I think it adds an interesting/fun kick to otherwise normal mac and cheese. Other people garnish with green onion or parsley.
   
   

I can imagine using barbeque or honey glazed chicken on this dish, too.

I hope I get to enjoy this again, soon.

Japanese Curry

It's been a long time since I've posted. If it's knitting, it's because I haven't wanted to dress up to take a picture of my knitted object. If it's gardening, it's because it's been dead most of the year. If it's food, then there's no excuse.

Here comes a string of updates!

Here's beef curry that I made with a friend one day:

Basic vegetables to cut up: potatoes, carrots, onion (not pictured), and garlic.


Ingredients we bought at Uwajimaya and an Indian grocery store: garam masala, beef bouillon. We found "instant" Indian curry and cardamom for cheap at the grocery store, too (at normal grocery stores, cardamom sells for like $14 for a small bottle!).


We tackled browning the beef, sauteing the vegetables, and making the sauce in separate steps. Here's everything in one pot.


Pretty amazing beef curry! Tasted awesome, too.


We combined these recipes together (somehow) to make the curry above:
http://japanesefood.about.com/od/curry/r/curryroux.htm
http://www.grouprecipes.com/2942/japanese-curry.html


It might have looked something like this (no guarantees):

Japanese Beef Curry

Ingredients:
1-1.5 lbs beef chuck roast (or something similar)
4 medium sized red or yellow potatoes
3-4 carrots
1 onion
3-4 cloves of garlic (you can't have enough, IMO)
3-4 tsp grated ginger

Roux:
4 cups water + 2 beef bouillon cubes (although consider 2.5 or 3; need a stronger flavor when all the ingredients and rice are added)
4-6 tbsp butter
1/4 cup flour (might need more than that)
4-8 tbsp curry powder (like S&B)
1 tsp garam masala
Chili powder to taste
Ground ginger to taste

1. Brown/cook the beef until it is mostly cooked, then set aside.
2. Add some oil and saute the onion and garlic until the onion is somewhat translucent. Add the carrots and potatoes, saute until 1/2 cooked. Add the water and the bouillon, and simmer for 15-20 minutes (I wasn't counting).
   
3. Roux: This part is tricky, because you don't know how it'll taste until you combine it with the broth from the previous step.
   
   Put the butter in another pot, and when it's "boiling," add the flour and blend. Keep stirring. Add the curry powder, mix well. Add a shake or two of chili powder (this is the "kick" and it starts adding up fast, so be conservative. You can always add more later), mix well. Add some ground ginger if you want. The roux will look crummy and dry.
   
   Take the vegetable pot off the burner. Take some broth from the vegetable pot and put it in the roux, and combine until the curry sauce emerges. I think eventually, you want most of the broth from the vegetable pot in the roux. You'll see how thick it is and how strongly it tastes. Add salt if needed.
   
4. Optional step (the mistake step): Make another roux and add the amount of flour, curry powder, chili powder, etc. you need to thicken the curry and/or add flavor. Consider making more concentrated bouillon broth if you want stronger "medium" flavors. Add some of the curry to the roux, then add it back to the curry pot when it's a similar texture, little by little, to avoid unintentional "dumplings" from unmixed flour :p Add the garam masala.
   
5. Add the curry to the vegetables and beef and simmer for another 20-30 minutes, stirring intermittently. When the things are cooked and it tastes the way you want, you're done. Serve hot on rice.
   

July Doings

First of all, I made vegetable lentil soup today. Recipe courtesy of Leila.
I added a bay leaf, generous shakes of basil, a good amount of thyme, a few shakes of oregano, and some cumin. In retrospect, it was well spiced but could have been even stronger, especially with oregano. I don't like the strong smell of it while it is in the bottle, which kept me from adding more to the soup-- mistake. I added smoked ham, which went nicely, and did add some red russian kale from the garden.
Next time, because I am not vegan, I would definitely add some chicken broth.

I finished the lace ribbon scarf and also the bainbridge scarf-- I'll have to post pictures. I finished them during a family vacation to San Diego, in which I did not have to drive. Thus, the hands were free to knit. It was a good trip. Still love Balboa Park.

During a recent sidewalk sale at an outdoor mall, I bought a decorative ceramic milk bottle with flecks of paint that ran down the bottle in vertical lines. I became so attached to it that I bought it. What a random thing to get. Among my friends, I am the most likely to buy random bottles because I get aesthetically hooked. I think it represented to me hope and a vision for a clean bedroom. Ironic that I bought something to go inside that room-- that is, adding to the clutter instead of bringing the cleanliness it symbolizes.

On the queue:
--Sew a tunic or sundress using a Japanese pattern.
--Replant arugula and chard sprouts. I need 1) to weed myself more plot space, 2) floating row cover. There was a point this year where I didn't think I needed floating row cover, but I actually do. P.S. copper really does prevent slugs from entering the garden plot. It works amazingly well. No slug problems since putting copper rod on the perimeter of my plot and removing slugs inside the plot.
--Knit the Coachella tank top. This pattern was only appealing to me because I saw the mods that Roko made to it-- darling. I also saw a different project modification where length was added to the body, and it made a super cute dress. I'm thinking about doing both those things. (I love that Roko called her project "Coachella for shy scapulas"-- the use of the word "scapula" brings out the anatomy geek in me). I also like that Coachella is the name of a music festival in California.
--Continue cleaning my room. I made significant desk progress recently, but still need to clear up the room environs (e.g. file folders, academic materials, dresser). I bought some organizers, which should help.

Lentil Soup

I bought lentil soup from the school cafeteria today, and brought it back to my office to eat. However, when I stirred my soup around, I found white crescent shaped things in the soup! There were so many. Worried that they were worms, I examined them. The first time, I couldn't be sure-- they were not all uniform, and I couldn't make out any segmentation-- seeming to say that they were not worms. However, for one or two of the white things I examined, I found a slight black spot near the top of the crescent. A head?!

Frantic, I googled "lentil soup white worm" and came up with a couple comments on blog posts reporting the same problem. Relieved that I was not alone in this, I read on. It seems that there is a small controversy among readers about whether these are indeed worms or if they're just sprouts.

The entries I looked at:
Red Lentil Soup Recipe at Dove's Eye View
Living the Life: Lentil Soup

Most readers seemed to think they were sprouts. Only one wrote a strongly worded comment saying it could possibly be worms, but she detailed her findings as "segmented crescents"-- which was not my case.

Upon further examination, some of these white crescents were attached-- seemed a part of-- a piece of lentil skin. This was quite often the case. Other crescents seemed to have a fibrous ending. I did not find any white crescents with segments. So, I have come to the conclusion that these are indeed lentil sprouts, and I am now eating my lentil soup in decided peace.

I intend to make lentil soup later this season and add kale from my garden for extra nutrition :)

May gardening

I only got started with this summer's garden at the end of April.

Today, I planted some beans! I haven't weeded the actual garden plot enough yet, so I decided to get started in little containers. I also inoculated them, which is supposed to make them healthier and yield more beans. I bought a small package of inoculant at Wells-Medina Nursery. It consists of a couple kinds of rhizobial bacteria. Hopefully my beans will have some good symbiosis going on! Two way relationships are good for everything and everyone... Makes for healthy beings all around. Even beans :)

I have three types of beans this year: Sugar snap, "Renegade" bush beans, and "Burpee Stringless Green Pod" bush beans. I had the sugar snaps from last year, I bought the "Renegade" bush beans this year, and one of our caregivers gave us a package of the Burpee kind.

Yesterday I went to the Seattle Tilth plant sale at their Good Shepherd Demonstration Garden in Wallingford. I was supposed to go to the "1-2-3 grow a garden" class, but traffic was SO BAD yesterday, especially in the UDistrict, that I was only able to show up for the last 15 minutes of a 1 hour class :/ I walked around the demonstration garden and took notes about the plants and the informational signs they had around, so although I felt really frustrated for missing most of the class, I did come away feeling like I'd gotten something from my visit.

I bought some plants at the plant sale: 2 lavender plants (hopefully they will help attract pollinators to my garden!), a lemon thyme plant, a "crookneck squash" plant, a "Sweet Million" cherry tomato plant, and another cherry tomato plant that is supposedly a relative of "Sungold," the tomato I liked the best from last year.

Here's a picture of the "Crookneck" summer squash seedlings-- apparently native to this area. I'm excited for it!

I bought some strawberry plants at Home Depot a couple weeks ago. Hopefully their yield will be bigger and better than last year's. I can't put much energy into getting a couple dinky strawberries again... :p

Here's one of the salad planters I've got going. I bought the mesclun mix from Wells-Medina nusery. I hope to be grazing all summer long :) You're supposed to be able to cut leaves off a maturing plant, and keep coming back as the plant grows more leaves.

Finally-- problem of the season. I reused pots and some soil from last year. I didn't see any slugs, but I think I potted my plants with sluglings!! They're eating some of my plants. This is a ruby red chard plant, but they're a little leany because I think a slug has been chewing around the stem. I intend to go out tonight and see if I can find those nasty things. If I do, it is their END! >:( This is annoying because I planted many of these specifically in pots to reduce the predator load. I may actually go out and buy me some beer. This slug business is not acceptable!!

One thing I'm going to try this year include building a "cloche" -- kind of like a portable greenhouse you can set over the top of a garden plot to ward off animals and also raise the temperature of the ground and air inside. I'm also going to try to get "floating row covers" -- looks like a gigantic dryer sheet-- to try and keep bugs away from my plants while still allowing them air, sun and water.

spring gardening

It's April-- now more over than it was begun, and I hadn't even begun planting anything yet!

Today I went out and bought a crazy crapload of stuff and I spent that much money, too.

• Garden inoculant for me beans and peas
• Broccoli ("Thompson") seeds
• Bush beans ("Renegade") seeds
• Kale ("Improved Dwarf Siberian") seeds
• Swiss chard ("Fordhook Giant") seeds
• Basil ("Sweet Basil") seeds
• Ruby Red Swiss chard seedlings
• Rosemary ("Tuscan Blue") starter
• A salad mesclun mix from Langley
• 4 strawberry plants
• Roma tomato plant
• Zucchini ("Black beauty") starter
  
• 2 window box planters
• 2 plastic planting bowls and dishes
• 2 bags of potting soil
• 1 bag of compost
• A roll of burlap

It's crazy! I have my work cut out for me this week. I planted the salad mix in the planter boxes and I transplanted the chard seedlings, but I am never quite sure if they'll survive or not. Hopefully, or that is a $5 waste.

I still need to weed the plots :/ That's the most time consuming task of all!