"Healthy" Cupcakes

This is the first dessert I made from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast by Martha Stewart. FI asked for carrot cupcakes. They were easy to make but a little more time-intensive because you have to grate the carrots, which I did by hand (I guess it would have been easier if I had used a food processor).

I also doubled this recipe since we were taking this as a dish to FI's family's Chinese New Year dinner and we wanted to make sure there was enough for everyone.

Here is the batter with everything mixed in. I actually didn't include walnuts because several of FI's nieces and nephews are allergic. I love the bright orangey color of the batter - it's so happy looking!


The batter poured into cups. We made a ton of cupcakes with the recipe doubled. Something like 20 regular cupcakes and 30 mini cupcakes.


Cupcakes baking in the oven. I only needed to fill the cups halfway and the rising of the batter did the rest.


Finished cupcakes cooling in our apartment!


I don't have a photo of the icing and the cupcakes iced, but the cream cheese recipe that came along with the carrot cupcake recipe was really easy. You didn't need a mixer, you could do everything by hand. You just have to let the cream cheese soften at room temperature for a little while and then pour confectioner's sugar over it and stir to blend. I didn't even use as much sugar as the recipe called for, I just poured in a little at a time and mixed until it was a creamy consistency. Then I iced the cakes.

The cupcakes were delicious! The carrots were a great texturizer, the allspice and orange juice added a real kick to the flavors, and the icing balanced the sweetness really well.

From the book: Pork Chops with Apples & Shallots

We made another recipe for dinner from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast again. This time we did a pork dish - Pork chops with apples and shallots.

We first seasoned the pork chops with salt and pepper and broiled them so they were nice and tender and crispy on the outside.


For the sauce I cut up shallots and apples and cooked them with butter and white wine. It's funny, usually I have no problems cutting up onions but shallots and scallions always make me cry and then I have to leave the kitchen for a while to get the smell and sting out before I can finish. FI laughs at me for pronouncing "shallots" like "shall-LOTs". I realized I did that because of Anne of Green Gables. In the wonderful movie adaption, there is a whole scene where Anne recreates the poem "The Lady of Shalott" and I just remember the way she says "shalott" and so that's what I call them now.


We also made spinach with butter and nutmeg.


The dinner plated. The sauce was delicious! The sweetness and tartiness of the apples contrasted nicely with the sweetness and crunchiness of the shallots. They add such great flavor to the white meat of the pork chops. Broiling the chops made the bone meat (right next to the bone) even tastier.

From the book: Turkey Burgers

One of the first recipes we tried from the Everyday Food: Great Food Fast cookbook by Martha Stewart was Favorite Turkey Burgers. FI loves, loves burgers and requested this dish.

Here are all the ingredients for turkey patties in a bowl before we mixed it up. We actually didn't use guyere cheese (FI couldn't find it in the store) and instead used blue cheese (which FI did find).


The finished patties, ready for grilling. They were really big! Based on our experiences with making hamburgers, we smooshed these out really flat and large so when they grilled up, they wouldn't be so thick.


We cooked them on FI's George Foreman Grill. While turkey meat is pretty lean, a good amount of fat still was cooked off.


The finished patties with beautiful grill marks.


We also swapped out the burger buns for English muffins. The burgers were really good. The blue cheese was pretty strong so we didn't add as much. All in all a tasty and lean dinner!

My new favorite cookbook!

Earlier this year, FI, FSIL, and I headed out to Seattle to visit FI's brother's family (more on that trip later). While there we got to eat my FSIL's delicious cooking. One of the cookbooks she referred to for several dishes is "Everyday Living: Great Food Fast" by Martha Stewart.

This book is great! There are tons of recipes organized by season, so you can buy fresh ingredients. The recipes are easy to understand and simple to make. None are super complicated or take a long time to complete.

After we came home from Seattle, we kept raving about the book. FSIL then saw it on sale and bought the last 2 copies, one for her and one for me.

FI and I have already made a bunch of dishes from the book and all of them have been delicious. We even fudge some of the ingredients and cooking times and they still come out great!

I highly recommend this book as a great starter cookbook. The beautiful food pictures are also a great touch as it's much easier to leaf through and decide what new recipes you'd want to try.

Cans of Art

Last fall, there was a really cool exhibit at the World Financial Center. It's a competition, Canstruction, where students build sculptures out of food cans. There were some really cool sculptures ENTIRELY made out of cans. It was some pretty cool work. Not only did the competitors have to figure out what types of cans (size, height) to use, they also had to figure out how to incorporate the colors of the cans into their work.

This is of the China Central Television Headquarters.


Here's a description of the sculpture. The "3000" is how many cans it took to make it.


Here's another one of a giant swan.


This one took 14,568 cans.


Here's a funny one about the "Bridge to Nowhere" (as a pun). There's a little Sarah Palin doll next to the bridge and an igloo on the other side.


This one took 3,888 cans.


This was my absolute favorite sculpture. What was cool was that it was so easily identifiable compared to some of the other structures. And it was so cute! I loved walking by it everyday to get coffee.


This one took 5,527 cans.


I was really impressed with those sculptures that used the colors of the can labels to really create an identifiable subject. It was so cool to see the thing from far away and then as you walked closer, see all the cans that made up the work.

Winter dinner at Sentosa

After FI picked me up from JFK after a trip home this winter, we stopped off at dinner at Sentosa in Flushing.


First we had Roti Canai (crispy style pancake w/ curry chicken & potato dipping sauce). This pancake was not only crispy but puffy as well and really light to eat.


Then we had Hainanese Chicken (steamed chicken w/ chef's special soy sauce). We had seen this dish on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations on an episode where he went to Singapore and had wanted to try ever since. This chicken was delicious. It was super tender and light and the sauces were super tasty.


For our veggies we had snow pea shoots (dou miao) stirfried with garlic. FI loved these. Now when we go to Chinatown for groceries, we always try to pick some up.


For our other meat dish we had Spare Ribs Volcano (deep fried spare ribs served in chef's special, sesame seed & wrapped in silver foil). It looked really cool when they brought it to the table and it was all on fire.


The spare ribs themselves were okay. We both thought they were a little too sweet and sticky and the sauce was too much.


Overall Sentosa is a great value and the dishes were all pretty tasty. When we go back, we'll definitely have the roti and the steamed chicken again.

Using other parts of the cow

In January, FI and I were down in Chinatown for lunch and then went shopping for groceries. We wandered into one of the crazy grocery stores with a huge meat section and were intrigued by the frozen ox-tails. We bought a pack and debated on whether we should make a Chinese or American version of an oxtail soup.

We decided on American and picked up a bunch of veggies as well. Then we spent a leisurely evening stewing the oxtail.

Here are the unfrozen ox-tails, ready for cooking.


We chopped up celery, carrots, and red potatoes. I purposely chopped everything up really small so they would cook faster.


We first browned some onions for flavor.


Then threw in the oxtail so it would sear and have a nice crust.


Then we threw in a couple of cans of tomatoes.


Then added all of the vegetables and let it stew.


For bread, I sliced up wheat "man to" (Chinese buns).


Then fried them so they would be hot and crispy. My mom used to deep fry them when we were little, but the panfry would be a little healthier. This batch was a little burnt.


Crispy wheat manto toast!


We tried the stew at the 1:30 mark and while the veggies were deliciously soft and cooked, the oxtail was still tough. So we first had a bowl of just veggie stew and let the oxtail continue cooking. Around the 3:30 mark, everything was finally done, so we sat down to eat.


My version of bruschetta - oxtail soup veggies on top of a fried wheat manto toast.


The soup came out so well. We didn't use any salt or spices and all the flavors just came from the vegetables we stewed with the stew. There was plenty of leftovers so we were able to have it for dinner the next day and I had enough for 2 lunches the next week.

Stews are really easy. It just takes a long time to make. And you really just need lots and lots of good veggies.