What I've making this past month

Wow! It's been more than 2 months since I last post. I've started a couple of post but never finished them. The restaurant has been taking up most of my time these days. Been posting to the restaurant's FB and blog mostly. Trying to keep the restaurant's readers interested.

I'm trying to keeping my hands busy with some simple knitting, bread making and jam-craziness. Weekend are to fill the dessert case. Been wanting to test a few recipes. Here's a few pictures of what I've been cooking.

Chi chi dango

One of my favorite food blog, JustJenn, just posted a recipe for chi chi dango. I was trying to make this for Girl's day but lost steam after my trip to the market to get a few supplies (they changed the aisles around). For those who haven't had this, it's a japanese rice flour sweet, chewy like mochi. So I guess I got my second wind and made a batch, tinted pink for girl's day. Only one day late, not that bad. It was delicious but it make so much gave most of it away.

From one obsession to another

Now that my quince obsession has been quenched (sort of), it has move on to another, making jam. It has all the fitting of something I would obsess about--something old-fashion, long and somewhat complicated process, handmade and can be experimental. So now I'm a bit jam crazy.

The funny thing is I don't usually eat jam or jelly, too sweet. But I like using it in cookies or recently have been using it as filling for my cakes and cupcakes. I've been envisioning what groupings I can make with cake flavors and jams.

My jam list is beginning to grow. So far I have: quince [done--need to wait for next year], raspberry[done last weekend for holiday gifts], blackberries were a good deal @ costco and some kind of citrus fruit [I have grapefruit in refrig and I just bought meyer lemons] marmalade.

Test Baking

UPDATE: I found the where I got the pear tat recipe. Here's the link: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/409177. And made a second one for the restaurant, pears not as ripe. Would have been better if I waited a couple days. My suggestions is to wait to the pears are really ripe, like "juice run down your arm if you bite into" ripe. It will totally be worth it.

Been testing a few things past few months when I can fit things into restaurant baking schedule. A few needs more testing, one winner on first try. I'm sure the people at work are happy with me testing as many recipes as I can. Got a few pictures to share.

Pear Tart [looks more like a cake]

Been wanting to try out this recipe for ages. Simple, with the minimum of ingredients and I had the perfectly ripen pears for it. The problem is I can't remember where I got this recipe. I'm trying my best to find because it was such a hit at work.

It's has 3 very ripe anjou pears cut into 8ths then smushed into this buttery batter. It takes a long time to bake (about an hour) and in the beginning I thought it was a disaster. Batter looked so soupy from all the juice of the pears, the batter wasn't rising and it wasn't browning. But then about 1/2 way into the baking time, the batter start enveloping the pears and the browning begins. The finish result is a cake-like tart with creamy, custardy, chucky pear center. So delicious.

Cooking measurements

Just in case, you ever never to convert measurements, I just found this site to help me figure out approx. how much sugar was in my sweet potato pie per slice. Cool.

http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/conversion_tables.htm

My Quince Obsession

UPDATE: I just realized I never said what it tasted like. When it was cooking up, the smell was very wine-y and intense. The taste is very hard to describe--sweet, wine, port, prunes are few words that come to my mind when I taste it. But the taste isn't intense like what the smell when it was cooking up. Texture is a little chunky. I can see how it would go well with some cheese as the Spanish would do.

has been quiet, in the background of my ever crazy mind since I heard the story on npr [Reading up on it, find bath products scented with it, never in the stores, never getting to the farmers' market to see if they have any]. I recently spotted a lonely scrubby quince tree near my route to the restaurant and have been plotting how I could pick me some [on private property, no where to park without getting noticed]. So when someone at work told me she got some from our office fruit/veggie people, I jumped at the chance to buy some.

If you never heard or seen a quince, it looks like a bumpy pear/apple in a yellow green color as you can see above. It's scent is incredible when it is ripe, can be almost too sweet of a scent. It can't be eaten raw, tastes horrible. But has lots of pectin in it, to make it perfect for jams and jellies. Now I have  2 lbs in my hands and I will cook up some jam this weekend to add to vanilla cake or maybe some Earl Grey Tea cake with vanilla buttercream.

Baking Powder

I thought I'd share this link about baking powder from David Lebovitz blog since it is baking season. It's from one of my favorite food blogs--delicious looking food and things about Paris. How can you go wrong.

My morning walk

One of the road in my neighborhood has been close for about a week, meaning all the traffic (crazy commuter traffic) is being diverted up and around to my street. So instead of torturing my carpool mate (with the crazy commuter drivers) I decided to walk up to bus station to meet her. 

Just a quick 10 minute walk, past a river and a wooded area, I decided to take a pic of the fall colors on the side of the road, partially to distract me from the crazy lunatics drive up the hill trying to get to the bus station. I hope I distracted the lunatics enough to slow down for a second.

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