butternut squash spread

My friends Melvin and Emily came to visit me before they headed off to see the fireworks. I had been straightening up in advance of the new year, so I took the opportunity to grab the butternut squash that had just been sitting around, and roasting it.

I coated it with oil, put it in a pan, and baked it at 400F until it got soft - took about an hour and a half.

The cool thing about butternut squash is that you can go savory or sweet with it. Since I didn't have much other food to offer, I decided to lay out a spread of toppings.



Melvin topped his with pistachios, Emily with nuts and honey, and mine was spiced pecans (from Trader Joe's), salted caramel sauce (from a previous post), and cacao nibs (also from Trader Joe's). As a side note, Emily is a huge fan of Trader Joe's and couldn't stop exclaiming at my spread :)



As they're both pursuing advanced degrees in psychotherapy, true to form we spent the evening discussing interpersonal relationships. So happy to have people on the same page.

Also glad not to have spent New Year's Eve alone. Happy New Year to you and yours!

chicken fingers & potato latkes

Feeling lazy today, so I peeked in the freezer and found some potato latkes and chicken fingers to bake. 400F oven, 10 minutes on each side.

This meal would've been pretty bland just by itself, so I decided to add some variety with different sauces. Sauces, especially when you have a couple, automatically make a meal funner to eat.

Pictured here (from left to right) is ranch + cayenne, barbecue, ketchup + sriracha, and greek yogurt + 21 seasoning salute + salt.

swedish tea rings

Amy took me home for the holidays, and as her heritage is partly Swedish, I got to experience the making of a holiday treat known as tea rings.

Her dad made the dough from scratch, but I think a Pillsbury type of pre-made dough would work. We rolled the dough out to 9" by 18". Took a lot of elbow grease and brought me back to my pastry days. It was also cute to have Amy's dad giving us suggestions the entire time. Just like all the nuances that my chef instructors would have us pay attention to, borne of their years of experience.



After rolling the dough out we spread a thin layer of soft butter on, then topped it with a combination of brown sugar, cinnamon, and raisins.



Then it got rolled up.



And pinched shut.



Depending on how cooperative the dough is you may have to re-pinch it to get it to stay shut.



We also rolled the dough to get it to be even, width-wise, before forming it into a circular ring-shape, with the seam-side down. The ring was placed on a sheet of aluminum foil, on top of a cookie sheet. Then we used a knife to cut slits in it. You'll want to cut the sides more than the top, and to make the cuts slightly diagonal.



Once cut, twist each slice diagonally to open it up.



Bake in a 400F oven for 20 minutes, until golden brown.



Rest until cool and then frost it - powdered sugar with milk make a good frosting (you can control the consistency of the frosting by adding more or less milk).



And there you have it! I ate it for breakfast with coffee, so good.

green bean salad

For the past couple of days I've been eating this green bean salad. Blanched green beans, caramelized onions, crispy bacon bits, and balsamic vinaigrette (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, cayenne).



I've also garnished it with cheese, alternating stealing from Jonah (feta) and Amy (Danish blue). Before Amy my appreciation of blue cheese was extremely limited - to cheese plates when paired with sweets such as honey, jams, dried fruits. However, I saw her putting it in salad, and I guess the sweetness of balsamic vinegar does take the edge off.

sweet potatoes

Sometimes I buy sweet potatoes and keep them around because they don't go bad quickly and they make a good meal when you're in a pinch.

One day I slept in and woke up in a lazy mood, so it was a perfect way to start the day. I washed them, poked holes all around them with a fork, and microwaved them - 5 to 6 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Jonah made his a sweet one, topped with honey and Greek yogurt and peanut butter (!). You could easily use caramel or maple cream, and add spices like cinnamon.



I made mine a savory one, topped with caramelized onions, feta, and pieces of steak. I sprinkled Balti seasoning on the steak and it literally transformed how it tasted. (I can't tell you how much I love Penzeys spices and their spice mixes.)



I made it again for breakfast a different day, this time with shredded Italian cheeses rather than feta. I think I might have liked the feta better, although I microwaved everything so the cheese would melt here, whereas the feta was added on afterward microwaving on the one before.



It wasn't until I ate one half and folded the sweet potato onto itself that I realized it's basically like a Philly cheesesteak, except instead of bread it's sweet potato. No carb cheesesteak!

we met Santa

At Philly Homebrew Outlet West's holiday party. That is all.



Just kidding I lied. They had amazing latkes and mulled cider (with orange slices, lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, and all spice), plus these addictive cheese balls. And Santa wasn't creepy, which is always a plus.

taking cornbread to the next level

This was a box of Trader Joe's cornbread mix. I don't tend to buy mixes (since they tend to be more expensive and prevent you from customizing), but they didn't have cornmeal in the store, so I did.

It was an easy mix, which yielded a cornbread that was crumbly and gritty (in a good way). I wanted it to be more cake-like, but that's my own cornbread preference.

Since there was nothing special about this cornbread, I decided to take it to the next level by poking holes with a fork and drizzling honey + rubbing butter all over the top - when it just came out of the oven.



The little things make a difference, even with the boxed stuff.

gourmet hamburger helper

One time Amy went out of town and bequeathed me a ball of mozzarella, which I diced up and threw into my pasta. It made all of the difference. In fact, it reminded me of hamburger helper, even though I'm not sure if I've ever eaten that.

Since that incident was before this blog's time, I decided to remake it. Here are the ingredients:

- 1 bag/box pasta (I used Trader Joe's tricolor vegetable radiatore)
- olive oil
- 3/4 lb ground turkey
- spices such as garlic, Italian seasoning, roasted red pepper flakes, cayenne, salt, pepper, etc. (I also used Trader Joe's 21 seasoning salute)
- 1 jar pasta sauce
- 8 oz diced mozzarella

While pasta is boiling, sautee the ground turkey with spices. Pour in the pasta sauce and let simmer. When pasta is done, add it in along with the mozzarella.



This meltiness, more so than shredded cheese, is what makes the difference.



Feel free to bake with a crust (a la the earlier macaroni and cheese post) if desired. Otherwise eat at will.

As a side note, I get excited whenever something tastes like a more gussied-up version of something that's mass-produced and familiar. In this case it was hamburger helper, but it could be anything. Leave a note if you know a recipe that fits this!

christmas tree

The family that decorates a tree together, stays BFF forever.

At least, that's the hope. After spending a bunch of unfruitful time trying to figure out where to buy a baby Christmas tree in Philly (Christmas Village was disappointing), we pretty much drove down the block (to S 50th and Baltimore) and found a Christmas tree lot right on a traffic island. For $25 we brought it home.

Jonah and I bought a bunch of finger puppets from Christmas Village, which fit over the branches perfectly. Amy contributed chintzy string lights (with 8 light patterns!) from a wedding she had decorated.



What really rounded things out was two straight family craft nights, in which we painted plaster ornaments for the tree.

So now it's fully decorated, just in time for the holidays!



P.S. Jonah also made a modular origami ornament, and I colored two intricate mandalas for ornaments.

mac and cheese casserole

Today I decided to take boxed mac and cheese to the next level. This was definitely not the first time something like this has happened - the last time I added goat cheese and sour cream to a Trader Joe's boxed white cheddar mac and cheese shells.

This time I made it into an extra cheesy casserole. I started with two boxes - one of the white cheddar shells and another of the regular cheddar noodles. Once cooked, I put in the cheese sauce packets, some heavy cream, some salted butter, cayenne, black pepper, and a bunch of shredded Italian cheese.

I packed it into a buttered casserole dish, then sprinkled a layer of cheese on, then a layer of panko (because I didn't have breadcrumbs, and another layer of cheese.



I put it in the oven with the broiler on high. Be sure to watch it because mine started to burn before I pulled it out. The beauty though, is the solid layer of crust, and how it crunched when I cut it. As anticipated, it was fully cheesy underneath.



I ate it with some roasted broccoli, some roasted eggplant in tomato sauce (in a can from Trader Joe's), and some salsa + sriracha + greek yogurt (to make up for the fact that I didn't have sour cream). Delicious.

maple cream (+ salted caramel sauce)

Jonah wanted to make a DIY gift for his family - Philly Homebrew Outlet had us thinking about making soap, or cultured butter, but he found a maple cream recipe he wanted to try. I was game because it was something I have never made before.

Basically you heat maple syrup up to 235 F, then cool it to 100 F, then beat it until it lightens in color to resemble tahini. It takes a lot of arm strength if you do it by hand - which apparently Jonah is in no short supply of.



While he was doing his thing, I decided to make salted caramel sauce, which I had learned to do in my internship days at the SF Westin Hotel pastry department. I edited the recipe down to home cook-sized batches, which starts with 1/3 cup of sugar, caramelized (pour the sugar into a pan and watch it while it heats to brown). Another pan should have 1 cup of heavy cream, simmering (not boiling) with 1/4 tsp of vanilla. When the sugar has been caramelized, the heavy cream should be streamed into the caramel as you're whisking. Once that step is done, you whisk an egg yolk with some pinches of fancy salt, stream part of the caramel/cream mixture into that while continuing to whisk, then return the egg mixture to the caramel/cream mixture and heat everything up to 185 F.

It made a little more than a cup, which is why I had some left over in this jar. I suggested making whipped cream in the same bowl that Jonah had hand-beaten maple cream, which of course he took to mean hand-whisking. Regardless, the whipped cream made it into the same jar as the leftover salted caramel sauce. Pictured in the background is the Kitchenaid that was never used.



It's been a day and already I've found many uses for both maple cream and salted caramel sauce. The first was at breakfast, on a waffle. It was heavenly. (Pictured also is leftover chicken from our new favorite brunch place, Aksum Cafe, and a kale and tomato salad.)



The second was with granny smith apple slices. We added crushed peanuts (like deconstructed caramel apples) and some cinnamon. Incredible.

puff pastry twists

We didn't all make this one together, but it was so good I felt like I had to share. Maybe this opens us up to things Amy and Jonah have made on their own too :)

For the Thanksgiving holiday I was welcomed into my friend Vanessa's home. Just as last year, I wanted to make her family something to show my appreciation. This year it was some puff pastry twists I had dreamt up. It's so simple that I feel like Tastemade or some other social media food video outlet would totally pick it up.

First, the flavor combinations: balsamic caramelized onion jam, goat cheese, and candied pecans. Any other combination of tart, savory, and sweet would work. I laid out the puff pastry dough and sprinkled the ingredients on.



Then, using a pizza cutter, I sliced the puff pastry into strips. Then I twisted each strip away at a 45 degree angle to form rod shapes that had all of the topping inside. The rod-twists were then laid on a buttered pan, covered in egg wash, and put into a 400 degree oven.



As soon as they browned I took them out. The bottoms were slightly burnt, but the result was a sweet savory tangy and crunchy snack.

fried rice, so nice

Twas the night before Thanksgiving holiday, when all through the fridge, we had leftovers to get rid of... so I made fried rice.

Amy snacked and helped, and Jonah made his own daily stew (which is a whole other post for another time).

Here were the ingredients that went into the fried rice:
2-3 cups cooked rice*
2 eggs
Caramelized onions*
Sauteed mushrooms*
Sauteed Italian sausage*
Blanched kale*
Soy sauce
Sriracha
Lemon juice
Pepper

* I have started this new eating method where I cook a bunch of ingredients, each by themselves, and store them in separate containers. Then whenever I make a dish, I use different combinations of those cooked ingredients - this way I'm not eating the same thing all the time. In any case, these were the ingredients I had leftover, which means you could use anything that you have.

The eggs and rice were mixed together, so the grains were all coated in egg and could be stir-fried to come out separate and chewy, instead of an integrated mush. It's also important to have a well-oiled (in this case, bacon-greased) pan, with enough space to accommodate everything you're putting in it, for optimal stir-frying.

Not only did I get to use up all of my leftovers, I made something good enough that Amy kept scavenging bites (always a good sign) and Jonah even ventured a taste (?!).

Here I am eating it for lunch the next day.



Happy Thanksgiving all!

family dinner

All of us were home on a Sunday evening, with various things we'd wanted to make. Jonah wanted to try out an onion tart he was going to make for his family for Thanksgiving. I had broccoli and potatoes from the grocery store, and a pork chop from my friend Ysaye who bartered with me for some flour. Amy wanted to chat and munch on my xxtra hot cheetos. It became a family dinner.

First, the pork chop I decided to bread in the xxtra hot cheetos. First I floured it, dunked it in egg wash, then put it in a ziplock bag with the cheetos (crushed by a rolling pin). Then it went into a pan hot with bacon grease. I almost burned it, whoops. But the crust was good and crispy. And not as spicy as I expected, I think most of the spice ended up sticking to the ziplock bag.

The broccoli I chopped up and tossed with olive oil, Italian seasoning, crushed red pepper, salt, and regular pepper. Also threw in some halved grape tomatoes that were sitting around. Broiled those until little bits of the broccoli started getting burnt (mmm, cancerrr). Once they came out of the oven I squeezed lemon over it.

For the mashed potatoes, they were small potatoes that were halved and boiled until fork-tender. Then I put it in the kitchen aid with the paddle attachment, and beat them while adding half and half, butter, sour cream, chives, salt and pepper.

.

Jonah's onion tartlets involved caramelized onion with thyme in one pan, and another with shiitake mushrooms, scallions, and a bunch of spices. The tartlet cups were pre-baked, then the vegetables went in with goat cheese on top.



And then we ate and talked about how it's still going to be like this in another fifty years.

egg tartlets

One blessed weekend day, Jonah woke up wanting to make breakfast/brunch. We had eggs, but I didn't want to do the 'ole boring scramble. So - baked eggs it was!

First of all, sautee whatever ingredients you want to put in. We did mushrooms, scallion, thyme, salt and pepper. Amy made me some bacon that I wanted to put in, but Jonah's a vegetarian, so we decided to make two kinds.

His actually turned into more of a quiche, because he used his infamous pie crust (again!) as the base, which was pre-baked. Then the sauteed vegetables went in, after which I poured in the beaten egg mixture (8 eggs, a dash of half-and-half, and goat cheese).

My version was a bunch of torn up spinach leaves, the beaten egg mixture, and bacon crumbles on top. Make sure to oil the pan well before you put anything in! We made that mistake with Jonah's quiche-tarlets, thinking that the crust would save us from any stickage (it didn't). Mine were oiled with bacon grease :)



Bake until a knife inserted into the tartlets comes out clean.



I ate mine with greek yogurt, sriracha, and extra bacon :) :)



We made enough that it was my breakfast for the week. Here I am eating it one morning with pickles and salsa. You do you.

avocado aloe oatmeal face masks

So, after a hellish time sweating my ass off in Haiti, getting bitten by mosquitoes all over (through my clothing even!) and scratching the hell out of myself, Jonah decided some aloe vera gel would help. He got this kind, which is apparently as close to the actual aloe plant as you can get in a bottle.

One thing the product came with is a PDF of recipes. I was intrigued by the avocado aloe oatmeal face masks, which were indeed just those three ingredients:

1/8 avocado
1 TB aloe vera
1 tsp oatmeal

A word to the wise - flakes of oatmeal don't actually stick to the face. I was smart enough to food processor the oatmeal into flour, though not smart enough to run that flour through a sieve in order to get the finest particles. And the finest particles are what you want. Because otherwise the mask is still really lumpy.

I jazzed it up with some freshly sliced cucumbers however. Which, enabled by this mask, do actually stick to the face.



And this is the first time that the three of us appear together! We have been living together post-Naudain House. Amy came to us from Craigslist, just as I came to Jonah from Craigslist. Oh the magic of strangers who become BFFs.

why don't you welcome me back... s'more

After a week in Haiti, including a 16-hour journey back home, the last thing I wanted was to make myself any food. Jonah greeted me with this handmade s'more tartlet. His signature pie crust, pre-baked as tartlet shells, with chocolate chips and marshmallow inside, melted into delicious gooeyness by the oven.



I don't have the recipe for this delight. Maybe Jonah will share it. Maybe.

P.S. For those of you who have noticed that the picture quality has gotten a lot higher, it's because we stopped relying on Jonah's phone. My phone is so much better.

marshmallow granola goodbye

Some of you who used to read my debut food blog, culinaryme, may recognize that this blog is a play on that one. Similar design, layout, and even the name. I wanted to build on what I'd done previously, and bring more people along the way. Hence, culinarywe.

I mention this because Jonah and I built upon a recipe that I had already covered once before, for granola bars. Except this time we randomized the ingredients based on what we had in our pantries. (Like we've been doing all along, haha.)

Instead of butter, it was peanut butter (and then some butter because the mixture was too dry). Instead of sugar, it was honey and sweetened condensed milk. Instead of dried apricots, it was dried cranberries and dried dates (chopped up). But I think the best addition was some marshmallows - just because the sticky stretchy marshmallow bits in the granola "bars" (really chunks) ended up being the most fun to eat.



While you can certainly eat it when it's fresh out of the oven, we cooled it in the fridge overnight, which is what made it even possible to cut bar/chunks out of them. Otherwise it would've just crumpled into granola mix. Which is fine too, for eating as a cereal or as a topping.

Oh, I forgot! The reason why we made this was due to my upcoming Haiti trip, and us predicting that there might be time where I would have little to eat. Our prediction was right - one night I just had granola and cinnamon tea for dinner. Which reminds me, cinnamon tea is a thing, and it's amazing. Just steep cinnamon sticks in hot water, and sweeten with sugar or honey.

more balls (matzo, don't worry)

So, a long-standing joke is that I'm more Jewish than Jonah. The first hint that we have of this, was when I decided to make matzo balls, and roped Jonah into participating (you know, for legitimacy's sake, so I couldn't be accused of appropriation lol).

Matzo balls were one of those alien things that I never understood, having only heard of their existence in adulthood. From the name alone I assumed they were like mozzarella balls, only more glutinous. (Which reminds me, I want to make matzo balls with mozzarella balls inside. I may get famous for this. You heard it here first.)

Anyway, when I finally did get to eat a matzo ball, I realized they were much different than I had imagined, but no less miraculous. Pillowy soft, warm and hearty, replete with the broth of the soup soaked in.... Maybe I haven't had the harder version, so for now I'm a fan of the softer kind.

I found this recipe, and decided to use it because it's called Kosher Perfect Matzo Balls. Who can argue when perfect is in the title?!

Oh and the catalyst for all this was because I had a bunch of stale matzo crackers in the pantry, left over from the last roommate whose spot I took in the house. I didn't want to just throw it out, so I thought I could ground it down to matzo meal and then use it to make matzo balls. Genius right?!?!

Here's me, the genius:



The first intrepid little matzo ball baby:



After making a whole bunch, I froze them and kept them on hand for whenever I was making broth/soup. The good news is that I got the texture right. The bad news is that it still tasted like stale matzo crackers. So maybe I'm not so genius after all.

cauliflower... pizza?!

I once went to a potluck where someone made what I thought was pizza, and I ate it, and it was delicious, and then they told me the crust was made out of cauliflower and my eyes just about popped out of my head.

So, the first chance I got, I tried to recreate this with Jonah. So the first thing is that the recipe requires riced cauliflower, or basically cauliflower put through a ricer. We did not have a ricer. Trader Joe's conveniently sells bags of riced cauliflower, but we did not encounter it in the store, because it wasn't in stock. So I think we chopped it up and food-processed it. Which might have been our first mistake.

Regardless, this is the recipe we followed - except with less cheese and more panko in the crust, changed the toppings to include sliced mozzarella on top, substituted kumato tomatoes for grape tomatoes, and omitted garlic and added other spices to the sauce. Here are the ingredients all assembled:



Naturally, since we were already having mozzarella and tomatoes, my natural inclination was to add basil and make it a caprese pizza. Our only mistake was to add the basil leaves pre-bake, and they wilted in the heat to become this unappetizing green.



So, the interesting part was that the pizza crust tasted like polenta. The not-so-great part was that it didn't taste like pizza crust, likely because it was spread too thick. Maybe we have to use a pizza stone, or pre-bake the crust. One thing I do know though, is that we'll be trying this again!

tarts, balls, and wedges

Once upon a time, Jonah and I lived in what was known as the Naudain House. As I was new to Philadelphia and needed friends, and as Jonah... needed friends, we became friends. One of the activities we liked to do together was cooking projects.

One of our first was making this mushroom, goat cheese, and caramelized onion tart. We utilized Jonah's superior pie dough making skills (a good recipe here) and the food processor I made him buy, and based our tart on this onion tart recipe. We ended up adding the mushrooms and goat cheese, and omitting the crème fraîche and milk.



This being me, I had to overdo it and make ten thousand other things at the same time. So we got ourselves some rice balls and spinach balls in the background.

The rice balls came from this recipe, although we substituted caramelized onion for shallot, substituted brown rice for arborio, omitted most of the water, substituted mozzarella for gruyere/parmesan, omitted the herbs, used full eggs, and added red pepper flakes and Trader Joe's 21 salute seasoning.

The spinach balls came from this recipe, although we halved the recipe, substituted panko for breadcrumbs, and added cumin, cayenne, and a pinch of cloves. (Jonah likes to spice things up, secretly.)

I also had an avocado on hand, so I decided to make avocado fries - WHAAAT?! Yeah, this recipe. Except I halved the recipe, substituted whole wheat flour for tapioca/xantham, omitted the milk, substituted panko for tortilla chips, and substituted 21 salute seasoning for cumin/cayenne/paprika - I got lazy with the spices - who would've thought?!



It's interesting how many things you can make with this three-step breading process.



Here's how they came out. A lot of work... for warm avocado coated in panko. Save yourself the trouble and just eat avocados raw. You're welcome.