Gyudon, Japanese Beef Bowl

Gyudon, my favorite one-pot wonder. It's sweet, savory, tasty, and did I mention a snap to make? It's thinly sliced beef and onions that were simmered in a broth of mirin, soy sauce, and dashi stock (a Japanese broth made with dried bonito fish flakes and konbu seaweed) and topped onto bowls of freshly steamed, hot white rice. The onions are just so sweet and softens as it soaks up all the flavors of the broth.

Even though I love food and dream of spending hours in the kitchen just baking and cooking, I can't afford to as a college student. Thank goodness I am on break now, but one thing that is very important to me while going to college is that I must make my own food (because NYC lunch prices scare me ... like $7 for a small tuna salad sandwich?) even if it sometimes means sloppily-put-together peanut butter and jam sandwiches for lunch or canned chicken noodle soup because I barely even have time to sleep! The food I make mustn't be fussy and come together quick like magic and has to taste good! And that's why I am in love with this recipe. It's everything I need. :)

Gyudon is eaten with white rice and I still prefer white rice actually and I say that because today I ate this with this new blend of grains I got from a Korean supermarket. It's very hearty and wholesome, with brown rice, sticky brown rice, black-eyed peas, kidney beans, glutinous black rice and adzuki beans. Very healthy, right? I love eating right and healthy but the flavors of the grains had a competition with the beef and onion, so white rice with gyudon from now on!

I should note that a common condiment for gyudon is benishoga, which is pickled ginger tinted red, found in most Asian supermarkets. I am not a fan of ginger, so I omitted this.

Gyudon (Japanese Beef Bowl)
Adapted from Japanese Food @ About.com
Yield: 4 Servings

For the soy sauce, I used a combination of light soy sauce and chicken soy sauce marinade, both found also in Asian supermarkets. The chicken marinade soy sauce is sweet and enhances the the broth wonderfully.

Ingredients
- 4 cups steamed hot white rice
- 1 pound thinly sliced beef
- 1 large onion, sliced thinly
- 1 1/3 cup dashi stock, or 1 1/3 cups water with 1/2 tsp dashi granules*
- 5 tbsp light soy sauce
- 3 tbsp mirin*
- 2 tbsps sugar
- 1 tsp sake, optional
- benishoga (red ginger) for topping, optional*
* = found in Asian supermarkets

In a pot, combine the dashi soup, soy sauce, sugar, mirin, sake and onion. Bring to a simmer, cooking the onion for a few minutes. Add the beef to the pot and simmer for a few minutes until cooked through and no longer pink and the onion softens, stirring once in a while. Distribute the beef and onion on top of bowls of hot steamed rice. Spoon sauce over the gyudon and garnish with benishoga if using and serve immediately.

Chinese Scallion Pancakes

There are many childhood favorites that I'm sure follows everyone like their shadow as they grow up, and for me, Chinese Scallion Pancakes are one of them. It's a kind of flatbread made with dough, minced scallions and oil. The dough is rolled out, brushed with oil and sprinkled with minced scallions, rolled up jelly-style, then coiled into a ball, and finally rolled out once again into a flat pancake and cooked in a pan.

You are sure to find them on just about any Shanghainese restaurant menu. You can also find them readily available in the refrigerated sections of Chinese supermarkets as pancakes and also as white steamed buns.

The Chinese translation for these pancakes is literally "Scallion Oil Pancake", but my mom can't consume a lot of fat, whether healthy or not, so I took it upon myself to make some homemade ones, and she sure did love it! My family likes to eat it with sweet teriyaki soy sauce, but I'm sure your favorite dipping sauce would be fine.

I found the perfect recipe at Love and Oil Olive and I wouldn't change a thing, so do give them a visit!

Almond Crescents

The powdered sugar dusted on top of these almond crescents remind me of the first falling of snow. When I was a child, my mom used to buy boxes of these off the supermarket shelves. They reminded me of crescent moons hung up on a night sky and were so powdery with the icing sugar that it seemed like snow on my fingers. So during the midst of a recent blizzard, I cracked open the front door at night to take a peek outside and suddenly I was reminded of almond crescents and wished for it!

The cookie I wanted was buttery and crunchy, with the toasty-ness and the warm comfort of earthy nuts and essence of almonds. After some searching, I found a promising recipe that offered elbow room for experimenting and imagination to dress it up. I wasn't about to head out into the blizzard outside to buy almonds since I only had a handful left, so I also used pecans. The result? Buttery, nutty and lightly sweet, and it just melts in the mouth. Keeper recipe in my book.

Almonds Crescents
Adapted from Southern Food

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
2/3 cup sifted powdered sugar, plus more for dusting
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup coarsely chopped nuts (preferably almonds, pecans and walnuts)
2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, cream the butter and powdered sugar until fluffy with an electric mixer. Beat in the extracts, then stir in the nuts. Add the flour and beat or use your hands to knead the dough until well combined.

With your hands, scoop a golf ball-sized amount of dough and form it into a ball. Roll it into a 2 inch cylinder and shape it into a crescent. Place it on the prepared baking sheet, with cookies 1 inch apart, and repeat with the rest of the dough.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool completely on a wire rack and then dust it with powdered sugar by putting it in a sieve and tapping it lightly over the cookies.

Cranberry and Orange Soda Bread

It's late but Happy New Year! Wishing you all a great year of good food and happiness with your loved ones!

So, about the bread here ... I was watching Barefoot Contessa on Food Network and Ina was making her Irish Soda Bread. She used traditional black currants and added a teaspoon or so of orange zest, which was her own personal take on it. She said if you were Irish you could omit the orange zest. Well, I didn't have black currants so I used dried cranberries instead, and with the addition of orange zest, I don't think I have the right to call it an Irish Soda Bread at all now. But I do love the flavor combination of cranberries and oranges. It's very festive, no?

It's a piece of cake putting this together ... but the dough was very wet. Ina did warn it'd be quite wet, but I had reason to worry because whenever I scored an X on top of the bread, it just disappeared. So back into the mixing bowl. After a few handfuls of flour kneaded into the dough, I suddenly felt scared it'd be too dry, but it was not. It was very moist and absolutely gorgeous too! And the crust is so crunchy and toasty.

Cranberry and Orange Soda Bread
Adapted from Ina Garten

Ingredients
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 3/4 cups cold buttermilk**
1 extra-large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1 cup dried cranberries, mixed and coated well with 1 tbsp flour

** = I had no buttermilk on hand, so I substituted it with 1 3/4 cups of milk mixed with 1 1/2 tbsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice and left it to stand for 5 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the butter and mix on low speed until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

In a measuring cup, lightly beat together the buttermilk, egg, and orange zest with a fork. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture. It will be very wet.

Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead it a few times into a round loaf. Add more flour if necessary. Transfer the bread to the prepared baking sheet and lightly score an X on top of the bread with a serrated knife. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes or until a skewer poked into the center of the bread comes out clean. When you tap the loaf, it should have a hollow sound.

Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature with butter, jam or by itself.

Sunny Mango Pudding

I miss my grandma, a lot. I miss her cackly laugh, her sparkling eyes, the way she walked with her cane, and oh, can't forget the super juicy kisses on the cheek that made my cousins and I look for a tissue afterwards. Miss her lots. I used to frequent a Chinese vegetarian house with my family to have tea with her every weekend. For dessert, my sister and I always got the petite servings of milky, subtly sweet mango puddings while grandma got coconut pudding.

Unfortunately the restaurant changed owners, and so did the mango pudding. It now tastes artificial and not at all milky, so I was so happy when I found a mango pudding recipe in Sherry Yard's cookbook, "Desserts by the Yard". It is not as milky like the one I loved at the vegatarian house, but this comes close and the mango flavor is a sunburst when brightened with the fresh lemon and orange juice added in.

Mango Pudding
Adapted from Sherry Yard, "Desserts by the Yard"

I omitted the 2 tbsp crystallized ginger for a pure mango flavor, but sprinkle on top of the puddings before serving if desired.

Ingredients
1/2 cup cold water
2 1/4 tsp powdered gelatin (one package)
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
2 cups mango puree, freshly prepared (2 large mangoes, peeled, diced, and pureed) or store-bought
2 tbsp fresh orange juice
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
pinch of salt

Pour the cold water into a bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Let sit for 2 minutes to soften.

Meanwhile, combine 1/2 cup of the heavy cream and the sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add the gelatin mixture, whisking together until the gelatin dissolves. Add in the condensed milk, mango puree, orange juice, lemon juice and salt and whisk until smooth and combined. Strain the mixture through a sieve into six 6-ounce glasses or bowls. Chill until set, about an hour.

Whip the remaining 1/2 cup heavy cream to soft or medium peaks as desired. Serve puddings with whipped cream on the side.

Pudding Chocolate Chunk Cookies

There was cookie trauma the day I made these. When it was time to rotate the cookie sheets in the oven, I turned one of them so fast that the parchment paper and all the cookies on it slid right off. Some cookies were smacked onto the oven door and slid down into a mountain of goop at the bottom of the oven and left a trail of chocolate sadness on the oven window. And the rest --



-- came out like that.

But that's okay. Appearance doesn't matter! A good cookie is still a good cookie.

I've made these once and have been hooked since. It is SO versatile. If you take a good look at the reviews on the original Kraft site, you will see people are experimental with pudding mix flavors -- yes this uses pudding mix, and that's the magic here -- I always pick French Vanilla pudding mix and up the vanilla extract and throw in a pinch of coarse sea salt. Result? A chocolate chip cookie with a crunch of sea salt that fills the mouth with the aroma of pure vanilla.

Pudding Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Adapted from {kraftfoods}

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 pkg. (4-serving size) instant pudding mix, any flavor (do NOT prepare)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
12 oz chocolate chips, chunks or coarsely chopped chocolate
1/2 teaspoon sea salt optional

Preheat oven to 375°F. Beat butter, sugars, the pudding mix and vanilla in a large bowl on medium speed until well incorporated. Beat in eggs until just combined. Gradually beat in flour and baking soda until just combined. Stir in chocolate chunks. Dough should be stiff.

Drop tablepoonfuls of dough, 2 inches apart, onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from baking sheets and cool completely on wire racks.

Makes about 36 cookies (tablespoonfuls of dough)

Shortbread Tartlets with Lemon Cream

These. Are. Amazing. A small, thick shortbread shell cups a pillow of tangy lemon cream and is crowned with berries and crushed nuts. I love these! I go nuts over them. They crumble in the mouth and just melts. You will want seconds, and then thirds, fourths ...

This are amazing just shortbread and cream, but even more stunning and beautiful garnished with berries, crushed nuts, and icing sugar.

Shortbread Tartlets
Adapted from Joy of Baking

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch or rice flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tsp grated lemon zest
Lemon Cream (recipe follows)

Grease 36 miniature muffin tins (approximately 2 inch (5 cm) in diameter). Set aside. Preheat oven to 325F degrees and place rack in the center of the oven.

Cream the butter and sugar together for 2 minutes. Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest. Add the flour, cornstarch and salt and mix just until incorporated.

Divide the dough into 36 even pieces and place one ball of dough in the center of each muffin tin. Using your fingers, press the dough up the sides of the cup, creating an indentation in the center. Repeat with the remaining dough and cups. Place the muffin tin in the freezer for about 10 minutes for the shortbread to become firm and prevent puffing while it bakes.

Transfer the muffin tin with the unbaked shells into the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes until lightly browned, lightly pricking the bottom of each shortbread halfway through the baking time. Check again after another five minutes and prick again if needed. This is to deflate and prevent the puffing. Once fully baked, remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. When completely cooled, remove the tarts from the pan.

Fill or pipe in the tart shells with the cream cheese filling. Garnish with desired toppings. Chill until ready to serve.

Lemon Cream
Ingredients
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup prepared or store-bought lemon curd
2 tbsp sugar and more as needed

Beat cream cheese and sugar until blended well. Beat in the lemon curd until smooth. Taste and adjust if the filling is too tangy, beating in 1 tbsp sugar at a time until it is to your liking. Chill until ready to use.