xai eats a lot

chocolate lab – chocolate soufflé

Xai — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 07:07:52 +0000

february 2007 – it was going to be our first valentine, so i spent the week approaching the 14th planning on what i am going to do for shawn. i looked and looked for recipes, but during that time i wasn’t so familiar with kitchen yet. i was still trying to learn. i just learned how to cook rice in the rice cooker without it being too dry or soupy. i really wanted to do something special, but i didn’t want to venture on anything that would require too much work. basically, i didn’t want it to be too stressful. besides, i had to bring all of whatever it is i am making to sacramento. a good 45 minute drive from where i lived.

i found a recipe that looked so good, so pretty, so rich and sinful. but i am only judging of from its looks. it was a airy, dark and poof-y chocolate souffle. i have had a few souffles from restaurants, but obviously, i haven’t tried making it yet, since i just passed the rice cooking milestone of my cooking career.

i read the recipe and saw the last part of most recipes saying that it should be served as soon as it comes out of the oven. so, that was out of the question and to think i even bought heart-shaped ramekins. i got frustrated with my discovery, so i ended up buying all the food, even the dessert. then i started telling myself that it’s the thought that counts and it was still going to be a great first valentine.

i drove down to the safeway gas station next to the l&l hawaiian barbecue where shawn works during that time to fill up. as i closed the door of my car, i didn’t hear any jingling in my pocket and that only means one thing… i left my keys inside. i didn’t have a spare with me, so i had to call triple a to get my car unlocked. i was in a panic because shawn was gonna get off in a couple of hours and i didn’t know how long it was gonna take for the locksmith to get there.

the locksmith came about 45 minutes later and it was a good thing shawn’s house was only a couple miles away from where i was at. i drove down as fast as i can and picked up a few things at his house, lay out his clothes i wanted him to ware and wrote a small note telling him to walk to the park as i will be waiting for him there – good thing his roommates are home. i drove behind their house set up the table and asked one his roommates to pick shawn up from work. a few minutes after i lit up the candles,i saw shawn walking with a smile and i knew he was surprised. the food suddenly didn’t matter anymore. i just wanted to spend the cold valentine’s night with him at the park and just talk.

a few years later, i found out that shawn wasn’t into custard-y desserts, so it wouldn’t have been so fun if i did do that souffle that night. it wasn’t until now that i tried making souffle. i slightly overcooked it to get a different texture and shawn surprisingly liked it.

how was that for a first valentine? stressful, yes. how was yours?

chocolate souffle

ingredients:

3 tbsp butter + extra for greasing ramekins

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa + extra for dusting ramekins

3 oz bittersweet chocolate

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 egg yolks

2 egg whites

2 tbsp sugar

pinch of salt

pinch of cream of tartar

instructions:

1. preheat oven to 375 degrees F. butter two 8 oz ramekins and coat them with cocoa powder, tapping out the excess.

2. in a large bowl, melt chocolate and butter in a microwave in 30 second intervals stirring in between until melted and smooth.

3. add vanilla into the melted chocolate and whisk in yolks until smooth. set aside.

4. in another large bowl or in your stand mixer with the whisk attachment, whisk egg whited until foamy then add cream of tartar, salt and sugar. then continue whisking until egg whites are doubled in volume.

5. gently fold egg whites into the melted chocolate mixture 2 additions. do this carefully as to not deflate the whipped egg whites.

6. pour batter into ramekins and bake for 2o minutes (for custard-y texture and add another 5-7 for a firmer feel). serve immediately.

rich and creamy alfredo sauce

Xai — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 07:00:08 +0000

i am a red sauce guy. i love tomato based sauces and it’s kind of hard to make a shift from sweet and tangy to rich and creamy. i was not a big fan of anything doused in white sauce before. i think it’s because my first exposure was not a very good one. it was this linguini dish that my classmate brought to school during a potluck and the sauce was pooling at the bottom of the container and the pieces of ham spread throughout the dish was sparse and did not taste very good. i can’t remember what she called it, but it’s a good thing i don’t remember the name because it could’ve ruined my future experiences to dishes with a similar name.

when i met shawn, his love for white sauce made it hard for me to douse my pasta dishes with red sauce. he loved this cheesy, rich, creamy and slightly salty sauce. he wanted it on all types of pasta dishes, no matter what the meat was. anyway, i got a little tired of the jarred ones so i have made a few different concoctions and arrived to this one. this was not too salty, rich, creamy, garlicky and perfect to take in other flavors like sauteed mushrooms or sun dried tomatoes. also, aside from using it as a sauce for pasta, there’s also the option to dip your breadsticks in it. so, are you ready to gather the ingredients and start making this? go!

alfredo sauce

ingredients:

1/2 stick butter (1/4 cup)

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp minced shallots

1 1/2 cup heavy cream

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

pepper

directions:

1. in a medium sized pot over medium heat, melt butter, add shallot and garlic and cook until soft, translucent but not brown.

2. pour heavy cream and let it come to a simmer, add grated parmesan cheese and pepper to taste. if you want to add salt, be wary because the cheese is already salty. easy, right?

egg salad

Xai — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:14:33 +0000

i think i was in 5th grade when we made egg salad in home economics class. i can remember clearly that we had to boil eggs without even timing it. we put dumped the eggs in boiling water and let it stay there until our teacher told us to take it out. i am pretty sure it was longer than necessary, because after peeling it the yolk smelled like fart and was gray. during that time i didn’t even think any of it because that was the only way i knew it looked, gray and sad.

i have been making my egg salad that way ever since, until i had a taste of starbucks’. it was so different from what i knew and i wanted my egg salad to be that way. it was bright yellow and thick, not like my normal thin, liquid-y, gray mess.

i searched the internet and realized what was wrong with the recipe my grade school teacher shared with our gullible class. the egg and mayo proportion was super off. there was so much mayo in the recipe i have been making all these years that whenever i put the two bread pieces together, you wouldn’t even know there’s something in between.

so recently i have tried a few different recipes and came up with this one that i think would have a permanent place in my repertoire. it was super good, creamy and satisfying. so for all of you egg fanatics out there, here’s the recipe.

egg salad

ingredients:

9 eggs

3 stalks celery, chopped finely

3 tbsp mayonaisse (best foods or hellman’s)

salt

pepper

generous pinch of yellow curry powder

chopped chives/green onions/parsley

directions:

1. place eggs on a single layer in a pot and fill it up with cold water, up until about an inch higher than the eggs.

2. turn your stove up to high and wait for it to boil.

3. once it boils, set your timer for 8 minutes.

4. after 8 minutes take out the eggs and out it in a large bowl with cold water and ice to stop the cooking process.

5. once the eggs are completely cool, peel them and chop them depending on how chunky you want your egg salad to be. i prefer mine chunky.

6. combine all the ingredients. adjust the salt and pepper levels to your taste. spread on your favorite bread and eat up until you feel like you can’t eat anymore.

mandarin orange juice

Xai — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:16:49 +0000

unlike you guys who grew up here in the states, or other first world countries for that matter, i did not grow up drinking fresh orange juice. i drank tang and it’s philippine version, eight o’ clock. i am not complaining about the powdered version because i still like them, but after being exposed to the fresh version of what i was used to, i kinda felt cheated by the orange juice gods. well, the fact is, oranges weren’t very cheap back home and oranges weren’t quite accessible.

it wasn’t until i moved here to the united states and met shawn when i finally had my first taste of fresh orange juice. i was quite skeptical about the idea of something fresh boxed in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. i thought that it would end up tasting the same and it was such a ripoff considering they just add water to the perfectly good powdered version.
after i had my first taste of the real thing, my mouth felt very happy. comparison between the real thing and the powdered one is like comparing apples and bananas. they were two totally different species. there was this one time when i went to a hotel and they had freshly squeezed orange juice on the lobby all the time. as embarrassing at it was to keep going back to the front desk just to get the juice, i did not care. i grabbed my juice, drank it and went back for more. i was pretty sure the people waiting in line to check in thought i was a little too weird and the people working there thought i was classless. but i didn’t care, i loved the juice.
when the grocery stores started stocking up with mandarin oranges, i thought, why not make juice out of it. it was pretty tedious squeezing the juice out of these little gems, but after tasting the finished results, it was all worth it. sticky fingers and all. the juice tasted like calamansi and lemonade together. it was awesome. i know that grocery stores still have these oranges, so you should go get yourself a bag of these cuties and squeeze away. tell me if you liked it, because i sure did.

mandarin orange juice

what you need:

1 cup freshly squeezed mandarin orange juice

2
cups sparkling water, you can use regular water, too. i used regular,
but i know that using sparkling water would make it more fun

juice of half a lemon

about 1/4 cup sugar. you can use less or more depending on how sweet you want it.

what to do:

mix all of the ingredients together and serve chilled or over ice.

strawberry pavlova

Xai — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:18:03 +0000

white, crisp, light, sweet, airy and chewy are words that perfectly describe this little nugget of heaven. pavlova, oh pavlova, how i love thee.

when i downloaded that december-january issue of the donna hay magazine for the ipad, i swiped my fingers from right to left and bottom to top to see what they had in store in this issue. then i saw these things – pavlovas, i read, and read some more, and i knew that i had to make it.

a paragraph about the magazine follows, you can skip through it. i’m serious, you really could. i won’t be mad.

it’s just the magazine’s second issue for the ipad, but i know that i am going to be downloading all future issues; i don’t even care if i have to pay (the first two are free). anyway, the magazine is filled with gorgeous photos and music that may seem cheesy and annoying at first, but it kinda grows on you. so what are you waiting for, download it now! i’ll assume that you have downloaded it already, so that i wouldn’t sound like a nut when i start talking about it. i am actually a little obsessed with the magazine. i ~~think~~ know it’s the gorgeous photos. sometimes i don’t even read through the recipes, i just drool over the photos and dream that one day i could take photos half as good as them.

enough about the magazine and let’s talk about pavlovas.

i have heard about pavlovas before, but i did not know they were very similar to meringue. it’s just egg whites and sugar plus cornstarch to make the inside soft, moist and chewy. i have only made meringue once before – not this, but the dry and crispy one that’s like a cookie. and from what i remembered during that time, making meringue requires patience, lots of it.

i guess, that’s why i didn’t make it again because of the time issue. you see, i hate waiting for food. my max time is 1 hour, and that is already way too long. so imagine the determination i had to muster up to make this. for chissakes, i had to bake it for an hour and let it cool in the oven for another hour, or so. that’s two hours not including prep. oh goodness, that magazine was really enticing.

after the grueling wait and the pavlovas were already crisp and dry; i immediately topped it with a super simple strawberry sauce, whipped cream and grated chocolate; hesitantly broke the perfectly white shell and took a bite. i then went to heaven.

strawberry pavlovas

adapted from donna hay magazine

what you need:

4 (150 ml) egg whites

1 cup granulated sugar, preferable the superfine type

pinch of cream of tartar or 1 tsp white vinegar

1 tbsp cornstarch

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

what to do:

1. preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

2. in the bowl of your stand mixer ( make sure it’s super clean), whip (with the whisk attachment) egg whites until foamy. if using cream of tartar, add it at this point and whip until soft peaks form.

3. add sugar one tablespoon at a time while beating the eggs whites on high speed. keep whipping until the egg whites are smooth and not gritty when you put the egg white in between your fingers. if it feels sandy, whip some more until smooth. add vanilla and whip until combined.

4. if using vinegar, add it after the eggs whites are smooth, sprinkle cornstarch and fold until everything is just mixed.

5. spoon out a mound of about two tablespoons of the whipped egg whites on a parchment lined baking sheet and put a dip in the middle of the mound. this is where the whipped cream and filling will go.

6. lower the temperature to 250 degrees F and bake the formed egg whites for 1 hour. after the hour has passed, do not oven the oven and let the pavlovas cool inside the oven, about another hour. this will ensure that it will not crack.

strawberry sauce

1 lb strawberries, hulled and quartered

1/4 cup sugar

zest of one lemon

pinch of salt

in a sauce pan, place all the ingredients and cook over medium high heat until it boils and then boil some more until it’s thick.

sweetened whipped cream

1 cup cold heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup sugar

whip and whip until thick.

pavlova assembly

add whipped cream on top of the pavlovas, then the cooled strawberry sauce and for added flavor grate some dark chocolate on top. enjoy!