break

So I really enjoy these breaks. I realize this affection for time off from school glaringly marks the fact that I still go to school, but all the same, I love breaks. I do not even need to do anything fabulous or extravagant with this time off, I just appreciate that there exists time entirely protected from even the thought of studying, built into my every year. Ahh, to be young and responsibility free.

Confession: I have been watching a lot of Sex and the City. I was previously unaware that I even liked this show, but hey, breaks can open your eyes to all sorts of new ways to indulge. I stand to learn a few things from these women, like: we should lunch more, you know, get together for mid-day cocktails wearing our finest fashions; we should talk about our daily lives with each other more (one area I am really bad at….by choice); we should have those “go-to” people, with whom we feel comfortable and honest; we should just spend more time with friends in general.

My new year’s resolution follows such a trajectory, although please let me assure you it was not entirely born out of my new Sex and the City obsession. If I tell you what it is, maybe that will commit me to following it for longer than just these “break” days….ready….here goes: to spend more time with friends, doing nothing. Oh, not the revolutionary resolution you were expecting?

You see, quality time challenges me. I want to plan that fun thing we will do together to circumnavigate us sitting around instead (in case you do not see that as relaxing/fun/memorable). I could improve greatly in the act of just popping in for a minute, to see how your life goes, to hear how your day went. I want to feel comfortable just being. Just sitting. Just walking alongside you in your very own life. 2013 could teach me that friendships build on those moments of real unplanned, unorganized life. We shall see.

Happy New Year’s y’all. I would so love to hear some of your resolutions….

…except if they entail any sort of new diet fads. In fact, here is a fabulous dessert recipe to deter you from making any such bad decisions.

Caramel-Almond Custard Tart with Shortbread Crust

Shortbread Crust

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup powdered sugar

¼ teaspoons salt

10 tablespoons very cold butter, cut into small pieces

1 large egg yolk

Put the flour, powdered sugar, and salt in a food processor and pulse a couple of times until combined. Scatter the pieces of butter on top and pulse until the cutter is cut in coarsely (some pieces will still be the size of peas, and that is fine). Add in the egg yolk and process in long pulses—about 10 seconds each—until the dough starts to come together in clumps and the dry ingredients are incorporated in. Dump the dough into  a greased/Pam’d 9 inch tart pan and press it to fit (evenly on the bottom and up the sides of the pan).

Center a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat to 375 degrees. Press a greased/Pam’d piece of foil snugly against your crust and put pie weights on top (or dried beans or uncooked pasta if you don’t have pie weights). Bake for 25 minutes, then remove foil and bake for another 5 minutes. Allow to cool while you start on the custard.

Caramel Almond Custard

¾ cups sugar, divided

2 tablespoons water

2/3 cups heavy cream, room temp

2 large eggs

pinch of salt

¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk

3 ½ ounces sliced almonds (about 1 cup), lightly toasted

Center a rack in the oven and turn down your already preheated oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and place your semi-cooked shortbread crust on top.

To make the caramel, put ¼ cup of the sugar and the water in a medium sauce-pan and bring to a boil. If the sugar is coloring unevenly, swirl the mixture gently to even it out (otherwise, don’t touch it!). Watch this process very closely, and as soon as the sugar starts to bubble and turn a deep amber color, remove it from the heat and pour in the cream. Allow this mixture to meld together and feel free to coax it a little with an occasional stir with your wooden spoon.

In a mixer, whisk the eggs until they are foamy, then beat in the remaining ½ cup of sugar and the salt and whisk for another minute. Stir in the milk and then the caramel cream.

Scatter the toasted almonds over the bottom of the tart shell, then pour in the custard. Carefully slide the baking sheet into the oven and immediately reduce the temp to 300 degrees. Bake the tart for 40-45 minutes or until the filling is uniformly puffed (make sure the center is set). Transfer the tart to a cooling rack and let cool to room temp still in the pan.

Chocolate ganache

because everything should be coated in dark rich chocolate

1 cup fine quality dark chocolate (65-70%)

2 tablespoons heavy cream

Melt these two together and pour on top of the caramel custard (after it is baked). Spread with a knife, allow to cool for 30ish minutes before serving. Remove the sides of the tart pan and slice once the ganache is set.

Share. With those friends worth spending time with. 

you know, its just christmas

Phew, we survived Christmas. I must apologize for forgetting to snap a few pictures of our Christmas day feast, as I know it would have incited jealousy amongst you. Prepare yourselves for the mouthwatering description at least:

birthday cake. from walmart. (good thing my mother shares a birthday with baby Jesus)

fritos. with cheese. (well some sort of orange liquid product, which was actually less than 2% cheese according to the label)

Let me explain. We spent this christmas holiday out at my Aunt Susie's new lake house in Livingston. The heavily wooded area offered great retreat from our daily life in the big city and the sloping lawn down to the lake provided plenty of wide open space for football, sprinting dogs (7 in total), and nice scenery when eyes looked up from a good book. Along comes Christmas day, with its wind and showers, to knock the power right out. The turkey in the oven did not stand a chance. In lieu of getting real creative with the raw bird (turkey sushi? turkey ceviche?), we opted to dig straight into mom's birthday cake, purchased locally (from the  booming Walmart), with a side of Fritos and "cheese" dip. Needless to say, we all chose not to overindulge this Christmas. My little brother texted me a picture of the hot pocket and Gardettos he picked up at a gas station on his way home with the caption "Christmas lunch."

I felt a bit unfazed by this minor blooper to be honest. I am fairly certain that while fun and oh-so-tasty, we just made up this whole stuff-your-face type tradition in the first place. I doubt Mary and Joseph even had a convenient store nearby to go pick up some Slim Jims that first Christmas.  Truth is, our family was together, content, and in celebration of many a blessing regardless of the circumstances. That is about all the Christmas I need. 

With that said, I certainly plan to overindulge this New Years. A dinner fit to feed 10, that only husBen and I + one other couple will be eating, promises a fine way to move into 2013. I hardly ever make New Year's Resolutions (and certainly never ones involving food restrictions), but for those looking to start the year off healthy, I thought I should offer up a recipe for my favorite salad...with pictures/recipes of much richer food to come shortly thereafter!

if you are going to eat a salad...

2 garlic cloves, minced

8 green onions, chopped

2 large avocados, diced

2/3 cu grapeseed oil

1/3 cu Riesling Vinegar (if I'm out I just use white wine vinegar)

1 T Dijon Mustard

2 t salt

1 t pepper

1/4 cu grated Parmesan cheese

2 T grated Romano cheese (if I'm out I just use extra Parmesan)

2 heads Romaine lettuce, torn and dried

Combine garlic, green onions and avocados in a large bowl and mix well.  Combine grape seed oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, Parmesan and Romano in a small separate bowl and whisk well.  Add dressing to the green onion mixture and toss.  Place the Romaine on top (do not mix!).  Chill covered for 6-8 hours.  Toss just before serving. I usually garnish with homemade ciabatta croutons...because if you are going to eat a salad, you deserve those.

its (nearly) christmas!

With Christmas only 2 days away, my mouth has already begun to water and my stomach preemptively feels full. Bring on the overindulgence. Bring on the concentrated family time. Bring on the warm moments. Bring it all on. 

Christmas fuels itself on our anticipation. This is both good and bad, sometimes too misdirected to make  Christmas feel anything but hyped up. But truly, think of the quality of anticipation we should be feeling: this season is pregnant with our very salvation!! Imagine how excited a new mother is just days before she gives birth, full of hope for her future most consuming little love. Sure, she is probably a bit anxious, but in the truest and most humbled way, with the very neural electricity of her desires coursing through her whole body, enough to make her just jittery at the very thought of the impending event. Right here, right now, we are on the brink of commemorating such a birth. I want my Christmas to buzz with that anticipation, of gratitude and joy over Christ's birthday. This is a big deal people. 

I feel excited. For the break most tangibly, but for the idea of Christmas too. I want to keep proper perspective of this gift of Christ, a baby, the insanity of God's love for us most poignantly on my mind over the next few days and see how that shapes my Christmas. I hope the food coma will not dampen this intentionality. We shall see....

Brussels Sprouts

1 ½ pounds Brussels sprouts

3 tablespoons good olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon kosher salt, + more to serve

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

6 pieces of bacon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Trim the Brussels sprouts: cut off the ends and pull off any yellow outer leaves. Toss them in a bowl with the olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar. Transfer to a cookie sheet and roast for 30 to 40 minutes, until crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Shake the pan from time to time to brown the sprouts evenly.

While those are roasting, fry the bacon in the biggest heavy skillet you own. Remove from grease and chop roughly. When Brussels sprouts are done roasting, reheat up your bacon grease til it popping hot, then dump in your sprouts and flash fry, adding back in your chopped bacon as well. Stir gently so that all of the sprouts will be evenly crisped (this flash fry should only take a few minutes since your grease should be very hot!). Sprinkle a bit of Kosher salt over your finished sprouts and serve warm.

pizza

I recently discovered that huBen has the Justin Bieber Christmas album on his iTunes....so I decided to start using it as his wake up call, you know, start the day off in the Christmas spirit. I think he is ready for this study season to end!

Here's a little recipe for a pizza I made a few weeks ago...because this week, we are relying more on the neighborhood pizza delivery boy.

homemade pizza

1 cup warm water


1 tablespoon honey


I heaping tablespoon dry yeast


2.5 cups of flour


1 teaspoon salt


4 tablespoons of olive oil


2 tablespoons of corn meal for sprinkling on the stone/baking tray

Mix water, honey and yeast in a bowl
 and let it do its thing for 5-10 minutes.  Add flour, salt and oil
 and work the dough together with a big wooden spoon. Transfer to a big oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise in a draft-free place at room temperature for 1 hour. Punch down the risen dough and allow to rise for 1 more hour.

Preheat oven with pizza stone inside to 500 degrees. Remove from oven once heated, promptly sprinkle with corn meal, and turn out dough onto hot stone, working it flat with your fingers to reach the corners of the stone (might help if you stretch the dough a bit in your hands before you plop it onto the searing hot stone).

Quickly top with sauce, cheese and toppings of your choice. Place stone back in the oven (for about 10 minutes or until your cheese is nicely melted. Enjoy!

I used:

Sauce (I mixed canned san marzano tomatoes and barbeque sauce in a 1:1 ratio)

Mozzarella cheese and cheddar cheese

Caramelized shallots

Cherry tomatoes

Meat pulled from 8 ribs, chopped up

the uniform of december

One of my favorite things about December is how much time Ben and I spend simultaneously in our sweat pants...our home uniform if you will. This season of our lives (okay, our entire lives thus far) has presented us Decembers full of exams and the real need to spend entire days in our sweatpants. This tradition seems so much sweeter to me now, with a husband and good dog at my side, although we still have to occassionally test our sanity by joining in the real world (sometimes this means me going to my surgery rotation, and sometimes it means us breathing outside air one time a day to go throw the football in the street). Ahhhh, December.

Ben has two more finals, Monday and Wednesday next week, and I have my surgery exam next Friday. Needless to say, we are in lockdown mode over here....which unfortunately also means we are wasting plenty of time perusing facebook, espn, and just about any other site on the world wide web that begs to distract us. In the search for some perfect gifts I plan to give in a week or so (the sweat of each December), I found these gems, that you must just please indulge me in sharing: 

acres of land on Mars for you to own...and settle?

personalized stuffed dolls...just scary really

a gallon jug of Tobasco, because
that wouldn't hurt at all

BEAR COAT FROM WORKAHOLICS...
OKAY WAIT, I WOULD ACTUALLY BUY THIS

1700 too many eye shadows colors

no comment. this is just weird and gross
and raises too many questions about
how we have all been using our towels all along

Ben and I opted to do "stockings" this year as our gift to each other. We set a price limit that mandated some creativity. Hopefully not as much creativity as evidenced above, but I am excited to see how this goes! 

And finally I must admit: I do appreciate Christmas for the family, the food, and most importantly the remembrance of Jesus' birth. But more of this sincere gratitude later, as this night of studying gift searching has worn me out...

overindulge, yes please

Well let the indulgences begin…

December always feels like this to me: overstuffed, oversaturated, and overrated. I must apologize in advance for that last modifier, but you see, Christmas is just not my favorite holiday. I seem to get anxiety every single year, without fail, for reasons I want to believe are simply intrinsic to my nature (surely not everyone feels like this, or we would have communally toned down on this holiday already).  My neutrality is not even well founded—I simply obsess over finding the perfect gift that will warm my loved ones right to the soul… so my angst and efforts towards this desired effect are most certainly thwarted by the mere fact that there probably is no perfect gift, and heck, that is not even what Christmas is about in the first place!

So, dear Lord baby Jesus, please be my focus and satisfy me entirely this Christmas…

On a lighter note, we seem to be eating pretty well already, per usual for December. We had the second best meal of our entire lives (the Herb Farm in Seattle, WA coming in 1^st) this past week at the Pass, a new restaurant with a fixed 5 or 8 course menu and the promise of a good experience in every capacity.

Feel free to salivate over the menu:

SNACKS: salmon/foie gras ‘ol fashioned/ Nasturtium Soup

TRUFFLES: Kaeshi Egg

RAW: Nori Bucatini/Tofu/ Pickled vegetables

BEEF: tar tar/ yolk/ marrow brioche

BREAD: French (onion soup) Toast/ onion variations

SHORT RIB: beef shortribs/au poivre/purslane/bone marrow vinaigrette

VEGETABLES: squash cake/ white chocolate/Dippin’ Dots

CHEESE: macarons

PETITE FOURS

  

These were just the courses listed on the menu. The owners—men also very involved in the cooking/plating/serving of the dishes—came up with a few extras to really wow our palate. I was no less than blown away. I only captured a few of the courses with my iPhone, as somewhere in between the cocktail pairing that Ben ordered, and the wine pairing that our dinner companions ordered, I was too wrapped up in the experience of the evening to remember to document along the way. 

The Pass also has a restaurant within its very same walls called Provisions that serves a more approachable menu if you are not ready to make the commitment to a four hour dinner and major dent in your wallet. I also highly recommend this half of the experience, as the food and ambiance are again laudable! 

http://passandprovisions.com/

gingersnap chocolate chip cookies

Myra and Tay (aka mom and dada) came to visit us on Sunday as a special treat. They harbor a considerable amount more energy than Ben and I, so these little visits always find us experiencing our very own city a little more widely. After church, we found the Phoenician Market downtown, a lunch destination which called for us to sprint across a parade (seemingly commemorating a Mayan holiday of some sort). Phoenician market offers a “Whole Foods” type set-up with prepared foods and other menu items, all of Greek/Mediterranean flair. I must say I loved it! My ideal type of meal is one full of tasters, of small plates that we can all share, all stick our forks into for just one or two little bites (obviously best shared with family or very close friends whose germs do not scare you).

spanokopita, greek salad, dolmitas,
homemade string cheese, zaatar sandwiches,
tabouli, tzatziki, etc...you know, just the basics

With the men still lingering in conversation after lunch, my mom and I quickly slipped away to peruse the grocery store part of Phoenicia market, full of imported meats, cheeses, and a million other un-name-ables.  She picked up honeys and jams and I picked up blocks of feta and spices. I somehow ended up with some “Date Molasses,” in quotes because these were truly the only English words on the otherwise Lebanese (?) import. I have been wanting to make some gingersnaps because it is, after all, December, so this molasses stepped right up to meet my needs.

These gingersnaps fit my craving exactly: chewy, chocolaty, and full of spice! HusBen seemed thrown off with the chocolate (he apparently prefers the traditional gingersnap), but hey! It's 80 degrees outside! What is traditional about this December!?

study snack of the highest caliber...i am on #5 for the day

Gingersnap chocolate chip cookies

For the Cookies:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 large egg

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup unsulphered molasses

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1 ¼ cup dark chocolate chunks (or you can use semi sweet chocolate chips or whatever kind of chocolate you like)

For the Cinnamon-Sugar Coating for Rolling:

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, blend together melted butter and sugars. Add egg, molasses, oil, and vanilla and beat to combine. In another large bowl, add all dry ingredients (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, salt, cornstarch, baking soda, and flour) and whisk to combine. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and beat only until combined (don’t overdo it!). Fold in the chocolate. Cover the mixing bowl tightly with saran wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350F, line two baking trays with non-stick baking mats or parchment paper, or just use cooking spray. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and mix well.

Form small handfuls of dough and roll each ball through the sugar mixture before placing on the baking tray. Bake for 8 minutes then remove from the oven (and remove off the hot tray!). Allow 5 minutes to cool before chowing down.

Adapted from http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2012/11/molasses-triple-chocolate-cookies.html