Madeleine Muffins!

If anyone of you are a fan of French pastries, you will know of Madeleine cakes. They are more of a cookie than a cake, but it's debatable. Some people also call French butter cakes or French lemon butter cookies. Madeleines are shell/scallop shaped cookie with a crispy outside a soft inside, like most French cookies. These little cookies are a French tradition, a French favorites. They are like the chocolate chips cookies of America, the tea and crumpet of England. A batch of Madeleines and a cup of tea. There's really nothing better.


I have been wanting these since I was reminded of them during the movie Transporter - Great movie btw. Then, I got the cravings. I needed those soft buttery cookies with a hint of lemony taste. There were a few obstacles in my way. Money's a little tight lately. Milk, butter, and eggs were of sort supply. Also, there was the fact that I needed to work my head off. Rent and bills do not pay themselves. My cravings just grew and grew.

In a desperate attempt, I tried to find an eggless recipe. I have butter and I can always subsitute milk for tea. Tea gives the Madeleines a better fragrance anyway.

When I was scrounging around for recipes and ingredients, Peter proposed to go grocery shopping since he had extra money. No one could tell how ecstatic I was. An hour and a few bags of groceries later, there were salmon steaming in the oven and Madeleines on a plate.

My last obstacle was the mold. I did not have the shell shaped mold. But, my cravings got the better of me. Therefore, I took all the ingredients that make a Madeleine a Madeleine, tweaked it to make it into a muffin. Here is the result.

They have the crusty outside, the soft inside, the lemony and buttery taste. The only thing missing was that it wasn't sweet enough. Consider this though, Madeleine usually are dust with sugar. I thought maybe next time I will make a little sugary glazed to brush on top. Or just add a little more sugar.

Madeleine Muffins

1 c all purpose flour
1/8 c sugar
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 c milk
1/4 cup tea
4 tbs butter
1 tsp vanilla


Preheat oven to 400F
Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together.
Melt butter.
Mix well butter, milk, tea, vanilla, and egg into the flour mixture
Use a whisk to whisk the batter into a good consistency
Pour into muffin pan and bake for 15 - 22 mins

Food - The Best Medicine (Ultimate Tomato Soup - Recipe)

Food is the best cure for most illnesses. I say most because there are so many illnesses caused by the toxic we create in our society today. Food, no matter how good it good, even nutrition wise, cannot save a man from a sickness created by synthetic chemicals.

Still, for the most part good, nutritious food will be able to cure most ailments.

Michael hadn't been feeling so great the last couple days. He slept and ate in inconsistent schedules in addition to working and stressing excessively. So, he woke up not feeling too good.

Food to the rescue.

I would normally make him some sort of noodle soup. I would have loved to make him "Pho", the vietnamese equivalent of chicken noodle soup. Only to the Vietnamese, they are more of a treat and we calculate our wealth according to how many bowls of Pho we can buy with our salary. But I didn't have all the ingredients for it, most importantly, the ingredient with curing abilities. Also, I've been making a lot of noodle soup dishes, and so he requested that I make non noodle soup...soup.

Here's a great curing soup. Tasty too.

Ultimate Tomato Soup

carrots
celery
tomatoes
garlic
onions
can tomato paste/soup
1 can of chicken broth

preheat oven to 425 degrees
cut tomatoes in fourths
season with garlic, dry basil, and salt
place on baking tray drizzle with a olive oil
bake for about 12-15 mins

saute garlic and rings of onions in butter on high heat
add carrots
when carrots is a little tender
add celery
let it cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 mins
turn heat half way down
add chicken soup
wait til boil
add tomato paste/soup
add baked tomatoes
stir and let simmer for about 10 - 20 mins

If you would like you can add little meatballs as it simmers.

Porky's Favorite Meatballs

Pork
finely chopped onion
1 egg
salt and pepper

combine all ingredients and rolls into balls
add to soup

My meatball had a little too much eggs in it. So, it spread out to the soup, but it only enhances the taste. I really liked it.

Michael and Peter ( and I, too) devoured this soup.

Ever since we moved in together, Peter had had mostly Asian dishes: curry, bo kho (Vietnamese beef stew), bo luc lac (shaken beef), ramen, udon soup, assorted Japanese bread, etc. But, I think I will be making more of either Italian dishes or Spanish dishes. My little baking binge is almost over I think. At least for now.

Happy Eating!

End of the Universe Melon bread!!! (a recipe)

So, I've told you about my cooking/baking adventures. In a couple hours, I will go to the store, to get ingredients, and attempt to make curry bread...that's right curry bread. As much as I do not like japanese people, their food is something, especially their pastries. Granted most of them are just their own versions of other people's, but you have to give them props even though all they do is stuff things or cover things with stuff.

Anyway, Melon bread got me, because it's a cookie covered bread. I think it's really neat. To make it truer to its name, I add a melon filling within the bread. It started out with Michael watching Yakitate Japan! There was an episode where they had to make melon bread. In the show, Kazuma, the hero of the story, made melon bread in a new way. He baked the cookie and the bread seperately and then paste them together with a melon paste.

But in the end, Michael told me to just make the melon bread the right way. So that's what I did, sort of. Anyway, it turned out really good, well, decent any way. I used all purpose flour. One because that's all I had at the time, and I think it help the cooking time with both of these. The cookie was a little soft and crunchy. The bread was soft and melts with the filling. I liked it and so does Michael and Peter.

Here's my own recipe. Enjoy!!!

MELON BREAD

Melon custard

1 cup sugar
1 tbsp of flour
pureed melon
2 tbsp butter

melts butter in sauce pan
combine sugar and flour
cook over medium heat
gradually add pureed melon
cooks until it thickens
set aside


Bread

200g (1/2 cp) all purpose flour
2 tsp dry yeast
10 g (1 tbsp) sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1 egg

mix all the ingredients
knead dough for 15 mins or until your arms get tired
let rise for 40 - 60 mins (while it rise, make the cookie dough

after the dough rose, punch it down
knead a little bit if neccessary, I like it
divide into little balls, it should make 9,
flatten each ball of dough and add filling
pinched and set aside
and let it rest of 15 mins

Cookie

200g all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
60 g butter
50 g sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp sugar

cream butter and sugar
beat eggs, combine with the butter and sugar mixture
add flour and baking powder
refridgerate

when the bread dough is done
take a pinch of the cookie dough
flatten it and cover the bread dough
spread even, add a little more if neccessary
place them in baking trays or cookie sheet
let rise of 30 mins
preheat over at 375 degrees
bake for 15 - 20 mins when bread becomes golden brown


If you're brave enough to try this recipe, tell me how it went. I'm pretty satisfy with it, but as an artist told me, things can always be better. So, I will try more melon pan and see what works and what doesn't to improve my own.

Happy Baking...and Eating, of course!

Binging is bad...?

I've been on a cooking binge lately. I've cooked up a few batches of an pan, rice cakes-mochi to be exact, miso ramen, udon, and more recently, melon pan(bread). And yes, I've been in a japanese mood, too. I got Michael a japanese cookbook for Christmas. He likes japanese food. I think he has a japanese complex, but that's beside the point.

I TOTALLY failed at making mochi. Instead of the yummy and gooey rice cake that I love, it came out very dough-ey...powdery almost. I tried a bunch of different recipes and a few improvised ways. It still sucked.

I am very sad at this.

Peter and Michael loved my an pan. Well, this is more of a custard pan than an pan. I didn't have red bean paste or red bean so I made custard instead. Although my custard pan was well received, I am still not happy with them. They weren't at fluffy as I want them to be. But I think my next try will be better.

My miso ramen and udon was good. I really like them and so does my two judges, Michael and Peter. But, I want to improve them more. That really just mean me eating more ramen and udon. There really isn't many ramen nor udon houses, but I'll be in California for New Year so I will con people into taking me then.



My melon bread turned out really good. I was pleasantly surprised. Usually, my first batches of anything, even first batches of things I've made before into perfection a while ago, never turned out just the way I intend it to. The only thing that went wrong was that I didn't take the filling into account so there wasn't enough cookie dough, and some of the bread was breaking because of the bread dough rising. Still, the bread itself is quite tasty. I just need to double up the cookie dough ingredients.



I will post the recipe tomorrow. Until then, Happy Eating!

My Quest for Sweet Rice---Flour! (and a recipe)

I LOVE sweet rice!

It's sweet! It's sticky! It's just awesome!

Being asian, I get to eat so many yummy sweets, made from sweet rice or sweet rice flour, that my friends are just now getting into, like rice cakes or sticky rice cakes. The anime geeks will know them as mochi.

I love a Viet dessert/breakfast called xoi. Xoi is just steamed sweet rice in coconut milk. Usually it is made with red or black beans and toppped with crushed peanuts mixed with sugar and then topped again with sliced coconut. I really like it. They're also served with mung beans.



I haven't had xoi in a while. Living in Denver and at least 20 minutes away from the small Vietnamese district isn't exactly conducive to getting anything Viet.

Now that I finally got my rice flour. I can make yummy rice flour treats. I have never made anything with sweet rice so I'm going to experiment with different recipes and ways to make them. Soon, I'll share a recipe.

Now, for something completely unrelated. Here's a really good savory biscuit recipe. I like to eat it with curry. Yum.

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 pkg cream cheese (about 32oz or so)
1/4 tbsp butter
2/3 cups milk (tea)

green onion, basil, and/or garlic

1. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt well.
2. Cut in (mix) the cream cheese and butter with the flour mixture
3. Add garlic and either basil or green onion and/or other herbs and spices that you want
4. Make a little well or indent in the middle and then pour in the milk ( I like to use tea because it gives off a nice little fragance and it's not too dairy).
5. Mix and knead
6. Pull out little clumps of dough and then bake for 12-15 minutes.
7. Enjoy =)

Confession of a Food-a-holic Fat Girl

Well, I'm not really fat...I'm not. I just really like food. I know that doesn't sound too convincing, but I really only like food, good food. I like food from all over the world France, Italy, Chinese, Mexican, India, etc. All of it. I don't just eat. I like to make food, too.

It wasn't until recently that I discovered that I really like to cook. I am Vietnamese, and I was raised in a very traditional Vietnamese manner. That meant that being a good housewife was part of my upbringing, and a good housewife had to, of course, know how to cook. Being forced to learn how to cook wasn't fun, but it did teach me the basic of cooking.

Now that I don't have to cook, I spend all my time researching and looking for new things to cook. When I'm not cooking or don't feel like cooking, I try to eat new food. I'm always on the look out for restaurants or cafes that no one knows about or in some hole in the wall.

One day a thought hit me, since I spend all my time looking for new and amusing places to eat, I might as well share it with the world. Maybe some unexpected stranger will happen by my little corner of the internet and find himself a cheap but delicious place to eat.

Then, my job here will be complete.

Happy Eating!