Remains of the Pudding

Eggs, cream, milk. What to do, what to do... Given my recent successes with pudding, I decided to use up the rest of our heavy cream in a luscious vanilla pudding--the same one that I made for the party a couple weeks back. Sinfully simple, this pudding must be loaded with fat calories, but considering that I rarely eat dairy products, must also supply me with my required intake of calcium.

I used the recipe from March's Gourmet without all the fuss with candied pecans or bourbon. Thankfully though, I do still have some Watkins Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract brought from the States. Along with nutmeg, vanilla is one of the ingredients that is impossible to find in any Asian grocery store. Their aromatic qualities would label them as medicine, as ginger, cinnamon, and cumin are all spices that Chinese laud for their homeopathic uses.

In addition to my puny bottle, I have a large bottle of vanilla extract given to us by our former colleagues and friends from last year--former colleagues, still friends. As you can see, I use both of them: the bourbon vanilla for when the vanilla flavor is prevalent, in puddings mostly; the other in things like cookies, where it plays a supporting role.


The pudding set in the fridge for a few hours before I grabbed a glass and a tiny spoon--because it is best enjoyed in small spoonfuls. Only once I had emptied the glass did I think of taking a picture. My apologies; you can only enjoy the remains of my pudding.

A Chili Day in China

March's lion decided to rear its ferocious head in April. We woke up this morning to thunder and lightening, a cold wind, and steady drizzle. But, you know what they say, April showers bring... Why is spring so full of cliches? I think we try to wax poetic about all the new life budding, bursting, blossoming, and blooming around us. Today brought a nice dose of moisture to brighten up the brown landscape. It also brought cold weather reminiscent of February. Cold weather makes me think of two things--wool sweaters and chili.

I paid visits to both our little school store for vegetables (and got ripped off) and Jusco for less common items (like Tide detergent and cheese). I used to make chili and spaghetti sauce from cans of stewed/diced/chopped/etc. tomatoes. In the US, you can get them just about any way now except upside down. I've seen cans that even purport to have all the spices needed for chili or spaghetti sauce. While easy in a pinch and cost effective when tomato prices skyrocket in the winter, in China, these cans are a high-priced commodity, shipped in from capitalist countries overseas. With tomatoes available fairly reasonably year-round, I've taken to making sauces from a bag of fresh tomatoes. It's really just one extra step, cutting up tomatoes instead of cutting open a can, and saves you from chemicals, preservatives, and that can that's been sitting on the supermarket shelf for two years.

While the tomatoes simmer in their own liquid, I brown and season ground beef with salt and chili powder. Dump that into the tomatoes, then sautee chopped onions, carrots, and green pepper in some oil, followed by diced garlic once the onions have softened. Though not traditionally a chili vegetable, I think the carrot adds a nice non-acidic sweetness and lends some brightness and vitamins. If you like chili that is simply beef, or beef and beans, my recipe is not for you. It's chock full of chunks of vegetables and tomatoes.

Just before the vegetables are done in the frying pan, grind some fresh cumin seeds and toss those with the vegetables along with a good dose (I mean a couple tablespoons) of chili powder and some salt. It's best to warm the cumin and chili powder in a frying pan to enhance their flavor and aromas before submerging the spices in the tomato sauce .

Now that everything is happily bubbling away in the tomato sauce, forget about the chili for awhile. When you remember, or catch a whiff of that fabulous goodness, give it a stir. Once it's been simmering for about 40 minutes, it's time to get out the secret ingredients. I learned this trick years ago from my Aunt Georgene actually. We had chili at her home and it was fantastic! Her secret, which I've adopted, is to add a tablespoon each of brown sugar and cocoa powder. It may sound strange, but it will take your chili to the next level or even out of this world, and also deepen the red of the tomatoes.

After an hour or so, add a can of beans (or two, depending on how much gas your significant other/family can handle), any kind you like, though I usually use red kidney beans or black beans. Let these cook in for about 20 minutes and you're done. Chili is so simple and soooo satisfying, especially on a blustery day.


Turner and I like to mix in grated cheese and cilantro and have tortillas alongside for dunking. My grandma used to make a classic Midwestern dish of chili mac, adding macaroni to the finished product and a good helping of cheese. I like chili just about any way but have yet to find someone who makes it better than me. I think my mom comes pretty close though.

Blossoms and Buddies

Qingdao is abloom. This is the peak weekend for cherry and peach blossoms as soon the trees will be green instead of pink and white. At Zhongshan Park, Cherry Blossom Lane is bursting with white flowers, but my favorite trees were in Chengyang at our old school. We met up with some former students and wandered the grounds.
For lunch, we went to Jack and Qiu Qiu's apartment, which is very near the campus. We have been friends with them since our first months in China, back in 2007. Unfortunately, we do not see much of them anymore since we moved downtown to Qingdao. It was great to see them, made even better because Jack cooked lunch. He makes some of the best Chinese food we've had here. It's delicious, pleasing to look at and eat! He is a chef at a local hotel, but we have the honor of eating his food in his and Qiu Qiu's home. The food is always excellent.


A lot of Chinese cooking demands precise knife skills, which Jack deftly exemplifies in all his dishes. It's a pleasure to watch him cook. He also always has a smile on his face. For lunch we had a spicy cucumber salad, fried pork (which I love!), a dish with potatoes and peppers, stir fried eggplant, fruit salad, and pasta with meat sauce. This is the first time Jack served Western food, and I think it was a success. The sauce was fairly authentic except he included cinnamon sticks, which gave the sauce an extra aromatic jolt. I give him a lot of credit for even trying though, as many Chinese seem to be fascinated by Western cuisine.


We love seeing our friends and wish we could see each other more often.

What You Can Buy for $25

One of the things that I will miss about China is the price of food. I went grocery shopping the other day and spent 150 RMB, or about $25.


Here's what I came home with: one whole chicken, pack of sliced pork chops, a bunch of spinach, two lemons, four kiwis, six potatoes, two packs of snow peas, aluminum foil, parchment paper, two-pack of sponges, soy sauce, can of tomatoes, brown sugar, and a large jar of CoffeeMate.

Do Blonds Really Have More Fun?

While perusing the culinary blogosphere yesterday, I read about Use Real Butter's adaptation of Smitten Kitchen's Blondie recipe, taken from Mark Bittman's book How to Cook Everything (which I will certainly have to pick up when I am back in the States). The pictures and uncomplicatedness (did I just make up a word??) of the recipe made me eager to bake a batch. Plus, we were out of sweet stuff to eat. The only ingredient I was missing was an egg, so I hopped off like a spring bunny to the store and bought a bag of lovely brown eggs. I decided to add chopped milk chocolate, toasted walnuts, and some peanut butter, just to make them more sinfully delicious.

They bake for only 25 minutes and take half as much sugar and butter as cookies. In addition, I don't have to keep traipsing back to the kitchen to scoop and bake batch after batch of cookies. This is my new favorite!!

Out of the oven, they were warm and brown, so of course I couldn't resist cutting out the corner. The bite was chewy and toothsome with nuts and chocolate, and--get this--tasted like cookie dough! Like when you have a bowl of cookie dough and you can't resist scooping spoonfuls into your mouth but you have that guilty feeling because of the raw egg and depriving everyone of freshly baked cookies because you're eating all the dough... No more!

And, as if they couldn't get more salivating, they taste like Hello Dollies, those butter and sweetened condensed milk laden bar cookies that have like 8,000 calories per slice. I think the melted butter and brown sugar almost caramelize so they have a tang of butterscotch.

I'd have to agree that, in this case, blonds do have more fun, but I am sure that I will be back craving brownies in no time.

If I could eat dessert for dinner, I would. However, I bought a nice whole fryer chicken at the grocery store. This was the first time I saw a whole chicken that had some plump to her (though not like those Plump N Juicy chickens). As an extra bonus, she had already been decapitated, saving me that painful step. Most of the time, ducks and chickens are sold with their heads. I suppose so you can be sure you're getting a real fowl, since so many things in China are fake. I have to admit that I am not quite brave enough to take a cleaver to a chicken neck and Turner wasn't home to do the job.

Is a chicken butt joke really even necessary?

I did however take a cleaver to the breast bone to butterfly her because I didn't want to spend the extra time cooking her whole. Here comes the magic part ... I laid the two halves in a baking dish on top of a few slices of day old my homemade French bread. This served two purposes: one, preventing the chicken from sticking to the bottom of the pan; two, creating quasi-stuffing as it soaks all the juices and flavor from the roasting chicken. I also scattered the cloves from a head of garlic around the bird.


After about an hour in the oven, I threw some cherry tomatoes in to roast for about 20 more minutes. (This cooking time could have been shortened as the breast meat was a little dry.) The chicken came out golden with crispy skin and smelling divine.


Even though the chicken was tasty, the best part was the bread from underneath. One side was all crisp and brown and the other was soft. It was soaked with the chicken juices (a.k.a. fat) and the sage, thyme, oregano, and salt that I seasoned the chicken with.

It's Not Nice to Call Your Cakes Short

When I was growing up, I had a Strawberry Shortcake doll house. I can still picture it's bright red strawberry roof that my sister and I used to ride like a horse because of its saddle-like shape. This house was definitely cooler than a Barbie house. Barbies couldn't even fit inside, though I had my fair share of them. I also had a Strawberry Shortcake blanket that I think my aunt made. The thing is, I can never remember having a Strawberry Shortcake doll, so I don't know how I played with the doll house. I only remember how cool it was.

I have always loved strawberry shortcake. I can think of no better summertime dessert. Since the temperature reached almost 70 degrees in Qingdao today (eat that Duluth and Buffalo!), it was a perfect holiday (Qing Ming, a.k.a. Respect the Dead Day) for a berry-licious dessert.

We had two pints of strawberries that someone brought as a gift for the party that were slowly rotting out on our cooking porch (two bags of lychee fruits had to go in the trash due to mold) and leftover heavy cream from the party puddings. I salvaged more than enough strawberries for a few servings of dessert and made buttermilk biscuits late this afternoon.

My January issue of Gourmet had a tip for making biscuits ala Francais that involved folding into a rectangle of dough thin slices of frozen butter to give them extra lift in the oven and extra flakiness once cooked. Well, my dough turned out too wet (thanks to a lack of measuring cups), but I did the butter trick anyway. I think it would work beautifully with correctly proportioned ingredients.

After dinner, Turner whipped up some cream with sugar and vanilla and we dug into our shortcake like it was the last day of summer. Thankfully it is merely the beginning of a season that should offer plenty more strawberry goodness.

Success!

Well, it has been 24 hours since the party, but I have just had time (and an internet connection) to post about its great success. I cooked all day Friday, quite literally, and had some help from Latte and Wendy around 4 in the afternoon. Although I burnt the tomatoes for the bruschetta and had to toss them, I had more than enough food for our eight guests.

The day began with the brownies, since they would have to cool awhile before being frosted and cut. They were also the easiest because I know the recipe almost by heart. Surprisingly, it is hard to find good, cheap chocolate in China. Most major stores only carry chocolate meant for eating directly, Dove, Hershey, etc. I don't want to spend over 5 US dollars on chocolate that is going to be melted and put into brownie batter. RT-Mart, a Korean Walmart-like store, is the only place I can find suitable chocolate, and it's only 50 cents a bar.

The other day my mom said that she made brownies from my recipe and they turned out dry and dense. I think she jinxed me because this time the brownies took 10 extra minutes and I could tell from the toothpick test that they were going to be dense. Usually, the brownies are very fudge-like, but these had the consistency of a flourless chocolate cake. At least they were moist.

After the brownies were out, I decided to continue baking and make the Cheese Straws next. The dough is insanely simple and I will tell you know that the result is fantastic. It's basically a pie dough, flour, salt, butter, milk, plus a few cups of grated cheddar cheese and a good dose of cayenne. Roll out the dough into rectangles and cut into strips.


I experimented with the first couple batches, twisting and braiding the strips, but I gave up because the straws weren't coming out as crispy as I would have liked.


I decided to go straight and skinny. They sizzle wonderfully in the oven. If you like the crispy edges macaroni and cheese or the provolone browned onto the side of a bowl of French onion soup, then you will love these. And especially if you are a Cheetos fanatic (mom!) these are the next best thing and there is no fake coloring or chemicals. I ate the rest of them for a morning snack.


By this time, noon had come and gone and I had only made two items from today's to-do list. It was time to turn up the heat. In the form of a frying pan! While the tomatoes cooked down (they had yet to scorch) I started frying batches of meatballs for the meatball sliders. No fancy recipe, just beef, pork, egg, breadcrumbs, milk, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper.


I smashed them down a bit as they browned because they would be sitting on my garlic buns like mini hamburgers and meatballs have a tendency to roll. These went in the tomato sauce to finish cooking while I labored over the hard-boiled eggs to get them read for deviling.

It's no fun removing the shell from one egg, but twelve is downright tortuous. I've never actually made deviled eggs myself, but I have watched them being made and have thoroughly enjoyed them on the buffet table. I now have enormous respect for any maker of deviled eggs. The itty-bitty pieces of shell stuck to the white. The chunks taken out by my nails. The off-center yolks. The slippery bodies sliding around the plate. I could have thrown them at the windows (oh what a splat they would have made). I didn't though and managed to successfully recreate deviled eggs.

By the time Latte and Wendy showed up, I had finished everything except the Zucchini Patties and the Tuna and White Bean dip. We shredded the zucchini and let it sit with some salt to draw out the extra water, then I put Latte to work shredding potatoes and Wendy frosting the brownies. Some egg, flour, green onion salt and pepper got mixed in with the potatoes and zucchini to form a wet batter that we then fried in batches. The patties turned out wonderfully once we got the oil hot enough, all golden brown and crispy on the outside and soft like a pancake inside. Meanwhile, Wendy moved on to mixing together the tuna dip, which I have posted about before. Simple really, just some cans of tun and beans plus lemon, olive oil, and green pepper.

As party time got closer, we assembled the Meatball Sliders. Latte thought they looked like little farmers with their hats. Wendy smeared the ketchup on the bun, I placed the lettuce and meatball, and Latte secured the top with a toothpick. They made perfect buffet food!


All the food was set out on the tables and we waited for more guests to arrive. And we waited. And then we gave up waiting and started to eat!

Latte, the birthday girl!

Once everyone had arrived and eaten, I went to put together the pudding dessert. I filled each cup about half full with the vanilla pudding layered with thinly sliced bananas. Then I sprinkled some chopped candied walnuts on top of that. Next came the chocolate pudding and a whole walnut to top the entire dessert. They were sinfully delicious and smooth. I never knew that pudding was so easy to make from scratch. So long Jello.

Everyone really enjoyed the puddings, and some didn't have any room left for the ganache brownie. But we stuck a candle in one and sang "Happy Birthday" anyway.

The guests: (from left) Susie, Juan, Vivian, Latte, Sara, Wendy, Clement; (in foreground) Auda and Cherry