homemade tofu…courtesy of sensei at Hitachiya who shared the tradition of making tofu from soy beans.

kelly makes some kimchi at home

preserved lemons a la moroccan style…use sparingly in braised meats, great with pan-seared butterfish

Flour + Water + Yeast = Crackly, rustic bread

Depending on what kind of a bread you want to make and how much patience you have for the dough to rise on its own, you make mods to the recipe, adding more yeast, letting it rise longer etc.  And it’s bit of a surprise too sometimes as your rising depends on the weather and your kitchen temperature.  Rises faster during summer, slower during winter, you get the picture.

After disappointments of downing some lifeless pizza at California Pizza Kitchen (whom I used to depend on for consistent and quality margarita pizza), I set out to make my own.  And it was so good! Crackly thin crust, right amount of chewiness, it was perfect!  And it was so satisfying to have demystified what seemed quite the daunting task.  Best part?!?  It was easy.  (Which perhaps I shouldn’t share since //M thinks I spent hours in the kitchen).  So – I’m here to share hoping that you’d take a stab too!

(Get your dough ready ~9pm the night before and it’ll be ready to be baked by dinner next day).

Homemade Pizza Dough (inspired by My Bread and tweaked by me):

Ingredients:

bread flour – 450g (~3 cups – if you can invest in a kitchen scale – weighing your dry ingredients is a full-proof way of ensuring consistent recipe)

whole wheat flour – 50g (~3/4 cup – my healthful spin to Jim’s recipe)

active dry yeast – 7g (~2tsp) (I like the Red Star brand – 3 pack – use a whole pack, no measure needed)

salt – 3/4 tsp (I like to use sea salt because it tastes better to me)

sugar – 3/4 tsp

water (room temp) – 1 1/3 cup

Topping ideas:

fresh mozzarella, basil, sauteed mushrooms, grilled onions, tomatoes, proscuitto, the list goes on…

Dough-Ready:

1) Mix dry ingredients (flours, yeast, salt and sugar) in a medium size bowl.

2) Slowly stir in the water and mix in the dry ingredients until it all comes together.  It will look bit dry.  That’s ok. The yeast will start eating the sugar from the flour and the sugar and lovely crusty bubbles will rise from the dough.

3) Cover bowl with saran wrap and place a heavy plate on top just so that air doesn’t flow in readily.  Let it rest overnight until the next lunch or evening when you’re ready to bake.  In total ~ 18 hrs of rising.

4) Dough should be bubbly and fluffy.  Cut dough in half, need half for one baking sheet size pizza (serves ~4).

Bake:

1) Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees – yes 500.  Very hot!

2) Generously drizzle olive oil across the baking sheet.

3) Using your fingers, pull the dough across the entire baking sheet, flatting it out as thin as possible.  It may feel spongy like it wants to retract to the middle.  It’s ok to continue pulling it toward the edge of the baking sheet and if you end up tearing it, just mend it together with your hands.  Great activity for kids!

4) Toppings – choose your toppings, sprinkling it around the dough until it’s fully covered. I topped my pizza with combo of sauteed onion/mushrooms, mozzarella and pancetta.

5) Bake in the oven for ~15-20 min until it starts to brown and cheese blisters.

Mamma Mia!  Bon Appetito~

-ck

I bought a whole box of roasted hatch chili last week from Bristol Farms, put Mike to work and with two of us, spent a few hours painstakingly taking off all the skins before vacuuming packing and freezing it to enjoy throughout the year. Ping me if you want some!  I’m will to share the wealth.

A quick and easy meatless Wednesday meal – a hatch chili eggplant caponata-esk lasagna minus the cheese.  With fresh summer vegetables with exponential taste, you really need a little else to make it pop.

What’s in it:

1 Italian eggplant (peel skin, sliced thick ~1/2 inch, tossed with salt and olive oil)

6 small sweet peppers sliced lengthwise (these have NO heat and they’re so awesome with all their beautiful colors.  And you know that you’re doing your body good by eating all these colorful vegetables) and again tossed in salt/olive oil

1 small onion (sliced thinly)

1 pint cherry tomatoes (drizzle heavy with olive oil, oregano and basil – roast at 325 for 1 1/2 hours – great to just have around in the fridge and make vinaigrette, pasta sauces etc)

about 7-10 roasted hatch chili (de-seeds)

1 bunch tuscan kale (leaves torn off – no ribs please).  Steamed for 3 min until the green color pops

What to do:

1) Grill eggplant, sweet peppers and onion over high heat (I used our gas bbq grill and a vegetable basket to prevent peppers/onion from losing them down the grate) until starts to blister/skin turns brown.

2) In a 9×9 casserole pan, layer them as you’d lasagna.  I put eggplant at the bottom followed by sweet pepper/onion mix, hatch chili, layer of kale and REPEAT until you run out of ingredients.

3) Drizzle the roasted tomatoes at top including all the olive oil leftover, roast at 350 in the oven for 1 hr and let it do its magic.

4) You can serve it cold or warm, doesn’t matter.  It’s that good!

happy summer~~

Nine months ago, I found you through Yelp and after few slurps of your unforgettable homemade udon noodles that taste like love – I was hooked and since then have been religiously attending almost every week.  Partially regretting my review on Yelp, telling all my friends about you and now this post and hoping that not too many people find about your place because the wait for a table may even be longer. And when I crave that dough-y yet fluffy udon and an umami broth, I want it NOW!  Your egg flower chicken is bliss, shrimp and mochi tempura is divine, curry udon for the cold weather and the starter warm tofu’s just the right amount of comfort to get you seated.

With my quick and not-so-timely introduction today for an interview with the Udon Master (um…how timely to have left my wallet in my gym bag – but you pardoned me with a smile, “next time” as you see that I AM a regular here. sorry and arigato~),  I’d love to capture and keep alive the traditions of few artisans who still make food the old-fashioned way, with fresh ingredients, from scratch and with love. I love the fact that it’s a primary women-run place and that the udon master is a kick-ass japanese woman too!

Would love to learn about how you’ve mastered it and the painstaking craft, artisanal udon making…  let’s do this!

After several long deep breaths, I realize that you just have to make time for the things that are important, to you, and take what you can and know that while you can’t have it all, you can kick and scream and kick ass as much as you sanely and happily can, to soak it all in, whatever that keeps you going or makes you happy.  And catch the unexpected, as in these beautiful trees in late winter Chicago.

I’ve missed my time away writing away about food.  It’s not that I don’t cook, just “been busy” as everyone else is.  Some memorable foods as of late are; White Bear dumplings in Flushing, NY – with props to LauHound who seem quite the dumpling connoisseur (a total hole in the wall place with handmade dumplings with skins that flutter like delicate rose petals), baby butter lettuce I found at local Nijiya Market that Mike describes as butterfly wings drizzled with smoked olive oil, lemon juice and coarse sea salt, sous vide filet mignon, sous vide eggs – both made by me:) – and all the beautiful new spring vegetables popping up in the market.  Bright red ripe strawberries with its perfume, sugary snap peas, fresh rhubarbs and the incredible kumquats that keeps pumping out strands of orange jewels that we’ve adding to our backyard.

Kumquats will eventually mean…kumquat preserves/jam with goat cheese, sliced thinly over a fatty salad, as a marinade on pork or chicken, maybe even as a sorbet or ice cream?  That would be like creamsicle, hmmm?  And what about kumquat infused vodka?  I think I may be unto something here…

And along with new fruit trees planted (pomegrante, avocado, lemon, lime, orange and nectarines), hunting down the very special Pink Cloud Sakura/Cherry Tree has been incredible!  We named him Linus (van Pelt a la Snoopy) and he stands tall and beautiful right in the smack middle of our backyard.  Can’t wait for him to grow old with us…

For all the lovely things in your life that makes you happy…happy living~

-ck

Factoids/cooking tips/fancy terms:

- A perfect sausage ratio is 60/40; that is 60% meat, 40% fat.  That also happens to be the flesh to fat ratio on a whole pig.  Pretty neat, huh?

- Vegetable blanching: green vegetables are always greener after blanching (as long as it’s not overdone).  And I have to correct the chef here, who said, “the oxygen inside the vegetable goes to the surface making it more green”.  What actually happens is (according to some research I did, thanks Hank from Cuisinology), the green chlorophyll of the veggie is surrounded by microscopic air pockets (i’m picturing bubble wrap used for shipping things) and when it’s heated, the pockets basically “pop” revealing the…tada!  greener broccoli, green beans etc.  Of course, too much and you go completely to the other side of nasty looking mushy vegetables.

- Roasting beets – add water.  Beets come out super juicy and easy to peel when you fill 1/3 of a roasting pan with water along with rosemary, drizzled olive oil, salt and cover with aluminum foil.  Luscious!

There are a lot of fancy words that kitchen use that I had to learn:

1) garde manger - the no-cook cold station chef (and probably the lowest of the totem pole in the kitchen making salads and cold appetizers) has literal French translation of “to guard/watch food” loosely translating to a cool well-ventilated pantry area or refrigerator.  Basically, a chef that doesn’t really cook with heat.  Almost everyone starts here and pays their dues.

2) amuse bouche – my fav, literal translation, to amuse/tease the mouth.  A (usually) complimentary little taste of something at chef’s selection brought to your table.  A “here’s a little something from the chef”…changes almost every day.

3) quenelle – refers to an oval football shape, usually serving ice cream, mousse etc at a restaurant.  Apparently takes a lot of practice with one hand quenelle-ing being the most impressive.  The pastry chef Amy said, “someone decided that the shape was a lot more palatable than, say, a round ice cream scoop” so everyone does it now.  I’m indifferent.  I guess it’s more special as not everyone can “quenelle”.

4) can you “brunois” this onion?  um…what?  ”bru-nuah”?  yes – that would be one of the basic knife skills where the thing is first julienned, turned a quarter and then diced so that each cube is 3mm or less (that would be 1/8 of an inch), one of the smallest cuts creating a “pleasant presentation”.  For my duties, it was used to make pate and sausage.  I ended up making the smallest cuts as possible but it was not a cube 3mm x 3mm.

I understand fancy food but outside of all that – know that food.  should.  taste.  good.

I can’t say with whom I’ve been staging for fear of not being able to stage anymore, or being questioned by my daytime job/career for my dedication other than to say that I’ve been hanging out in this 4-star restaurant’s professional kitchen for about a month now.  After bugging the cool, collected and oh-so-damn-wise renown chef for ~6 months, I was finally able to gain his acceptance by what food knowledge I had and of course, my beaming smile and charming personality;)

Chef asked me my first day – what do you want to get out of your stage?  The dorky voice that sing-songs from what I realize is me says, “I just want to be immersed in and be exposed to all-things-food” – and so, here I am.

Lessons from stage #1:

1) A professional kitchen is like High School all over again.

Where else in a grown-up work environment do you spend the next 6-8, sometimes 12 hours with your co-workers in a confined space under massive heat, perspiration and all the yelling back and forth, each in their designated stations where naturally you can’t help but form special bonds and “cliques”?  Working as a team to bring together all the components into a single dish but always competing against each other, as each strives to move up, from garde manger to chefs that make sides and sauces to those making core proteins, sous chefs before leaving to become your own executive chef.

- You feel as though you don’t belong there.  You feel a bit like “Black Swan”.  You must prove yourself before you’re the new kid on the block.  Will you take orders but also have a brain to think on your own?  Are you cool enough to be hanging out with the rest of the kitchen team?  Maybe it takes three whole containers of peeling roasted beets before breaking you down.  Maybe you just keeping looking at them and thinking, how beautiful they are.  Doesn’t matter that you’re there just for the night and that you’re working for free.  You still are a “Black Swan”.

2) Whoa.  There’s a lot that happens that goes on before it gets to your plate. Every garnish, every side dishes and proteins that must be prepared, cooked, heated and just so not to mention sauces for each side and protein, seared perfectly, garnished with utmost precision – it brings a new appreciation for how a plate comes to land on your table.

3) I’d love me some backup cleaning crew: Prep person who comes during early morning breaks down all the raw ingredients washing them, cutting them and prepping them so that you’re ready to rock and roll, dishwashing crew that magically appears and takes away all your dirty pots/pans so that you can focus on cooking.  That ain’t happening in our house…ever.

4) The highs of immaculate plating for $300/person special wine dinner times 60 is unforgettable.  Each dish going out must be hot, spotless and on time.  Seeing chef doling out perfectly measured amuse bouche of soup with flick of his hand while others are wiping, moving them into a line, servers whisking them away to patrons anxiously waiting to have that first bite, it’s like symphony.

5) When in doubt – make more than you think you’ll need. Serving 60 – running out of Wagyu beef and then suggesting to take few pieces from other plates to make additional plates just isn’t going to cut it.  You’ll be in the shithouse and the customers will wait but your plate will be hot, spotless and perfect.

6) You only have one chance to make an impression. Famous food writers, reporters and executives will “drop by” ready to pounce with their criticism and hopefully praise.  You’ll even have a Stevie Nicks who supposed stopped by but then changed her mind.

7) Just cuz you work at a restaurant doesn’t mean you eat well. In fact, I didn’t get to eat at all that night, came home hungry and ate some toast before going to bed.  But there are some nights when Chef uses his creativity to conjure up perfectly toasted paninis with leftover rolls and those one or two pieces of wagyu, sweet bread or macaroons sampled that seem to taste so much sweeter than if you were handed a plate.

Will have to tell you all about its features after I brew my first cup tomorrow~

Isn’t she a BEAUTY?  sexy, huh?

Perhaps it’s the midwest, perhaps because Wisconsin is the “cheesehead” country or maybe it’s because it gets so freakin’ cold that folks have invented fatty goodness to keep you warm through the winter but man, I’ve been missing out on these little critters called cheese curds!  Fried golden brown with dozen different dipping sauces from smoked paprika to Tiger Blue dip – they are warm, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside and oh-so-addictive as you pop them down with a flight of beer:)

But the reason why I haven’t been exposed to them is that they are a by-product of cheese making and since they must be eaten fresh with a very short shelf-life, they’re only available where there’s a lot of cheese being made~ ah!  I feel better now…

Good thing we don’t have them readily available nearby.  Otherwise – I’d be stuffing myself with cheese curds all the time and given the shape some of the folks were in (ah-hmm), I think I’ll leave it to the occasional cheese curd/beer binge.  Cheddar cheese and apple pie?  really?  not-so-much.  Must be an acquired taste… And poutine?  fries, cheese curds and gravy?  Wow – but at least once, right?

And how about those off-the-menu Animal fries from In-N-Out?  I’ll stick with just the double double and regular fries please…