Blueberry Muffins- that taste just right

The only place that I've had blueberry muffins is at a buffet restaurant called Fresh Choice. I've loved them, but have always been wary of what kind of stuff is in them. As in, how much butter or sugar? Also, are the blueberries fresh? Not that I'm averse to frozen fruit, I just want to know what makes a honest blueberry muffin. When I came across this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, I was a little surprised as to how simply it all looked. I had to give this a try, and I ended up making in the night before I left home. A perfect ending to my spring break, I believe. Although this recipe yielded only 10 muffins, it was just right for our household because my family isn't big on sweets. What's more is that these muffins had the perfect balance of sugar and lemon zest. If you're looking for a muffin to satisfy your huge sweet tooth, this muffin is not it. As I ate the muffin, I tasted the light sweetness as well as the alternating slight zing from the lemon zest. About the lemon zest: I have never zested (verb spelling?) a lemon or orange before because I do not have a zester, and I thought that if I used a vegetable peeler, I would not get a thin enough peel and therefore end up getting the bitter white stuff that lies right below the surface of the peel. But I decided to try anyway because I thought it was about time I experimented with it. Applying real gentle pressure on the lemon, I proceeded to shave off the skin. To my delight, I had shaved off just the top layer of the skin! As a plus, I could smell the amazing lemon oils that were released as I kept peeling. I had to roughly chop up these peels because they would not be too appealing as huge chunks in the muffins. As I finished mixing the batter (I also used a full fat Greek yogurt- just phenomenal, but gotta try with sour cream next time!), I decided to taste it. Ahh what IS it with uncooked muffin batters tasting so amazing?! I was excited to see how they would turn out, so I quickly lined my trusty Wilton cupcake pan and used an ice cream scoop to dollop the batter into the cups. I was tempted to add brown sugar on top, but I decided the alteration could wait after I had tasted the original recipe. 22 minutes later, they muffins were all puffy and the perfect golden brown. I decided to take the out 3 minutes earlier than the advised 25 minute time because I think that my oven is very powerful and I wanted the cupcakes to retain a little moisture. I let them cool and I absolutely LOVED the blueberries that had burst in the batter and created a bloody purple smear on the side of the paper cups. So if you're going to make blueberry muffins, make these, you will NOT be disappointed! The recipe is on smittenkitchen.com

xoxo

New Obsession: Smitten Kitchen

I absolutely LOVEthis website: www.smittenkitchen.com

It's written by this adorable

lady named Deb, and she is my idol, I guess I could say. Her website is filled with amazing photos of her food, and great, witty entries. She's even coming out with a cookbook in 2012! Can't wait...I 'd love to buy one. In honor of Smitten Kitchen, I'd like to share one of her recipes that I recently tried out: Whole Wheat Apple Muffins! Okay, they weren't all whole wheat, let me rectify: Half whole wheat apple muffins. There was equal parts whole wheat and regular white flour. These are also healthy- only half a cup of butter for 17 muffins! The best part on these was the crust that the brown sugar formed on the top, and I was generous with it, as you can tell from the pictures! I used two large Fuji apples that were lying around the house, and they were really delicious in it, though I'm pretty sure you can use any kind of apple you have or prefer. This recipe called for one heaping tablespoon for cinnamon. Now this seems like a lot, and I feel like it is. But maybe with apple recipes you need that much? Surprisingly there was not any vanilla in the recipe, and I think that I'd like to really try adding some next time. Usually when I bake, I do add vanilla to practically everything. These muffins were so easy, and the only thing that took time was bringing the butter to room temperature!

Entertaining friends...too much time or totally worth it?

This past weekend I had guests over for the second time this quarter and I made (almost) an entire meal. I was lucky. I had my best friend over helping me. So that was good. The first challenge we both faced was whether we should even cook for 6 people. I know that my friends wanted me to make something, but also that they wouldn't be upset or anything if I didn't cook. We decided to cook because I personally love cooking for friends and family. The next obstacle were the ingredients. How much to buy, and what to buy. Planning the menu was a little tricky, we wanted to be as inexpensive as possible (yet still ended up spending a little over $50!!), but not cheap. I settled on pasta because I already had three boxes of it in my kitchen cabinet. I made the baked pasta dish (with a few variations because of ingredient reasons) that I've posted in this blog before for the main course. For the appetizer I put out a greek yogurt dip, absolutely refreshing and so creamy. The secret is using full fat greek yogurt and sour cream! I found this recipe online and it was my second time serving it. This was served with pita bread, which I cut and dressed with olive oil, then put into the oven right before my friends arrived so they could be slightly warm.

Dessert was something I decided to rely on the store for. Pillsbury reduced fat crescents (which I was scared about serving because of the reduced fat, but I didn't miss the extra fat!!) with a small piece of Hershey's chocolate rolled up inside of them. This was simply exquisite. The chocolate softened just slightly but didn't melt and ooze out and make a mess like I thought it would. This is one thing from a cardboard tube I wouldn't mind making again and again! My roommate Pallavi, gave me the idea of putting the chocolate in the croissants, and I am so grateful for it! I am excited to try this again, maybe with a few other fillings!

To prepare for the entire meal, I started prepping the night before, soaking the cucumber in salt for the dip for three hours, then mixing everything together in about 10 minutes. The peeling and mincing of the garlic took long, but maybe because my friend was a little slower than usual! The dish that cook the most time and effort was obviously the pasta, since all the vegetables had to be cut, seasoned, roasted. Then the pasta had to boil (only half way since the entire thing would be baked too) and we had to mix an alfredo and marinara sauce together. Once everything was mixed it was just a matter of putting it in the oven when we were about ready to eat. Oh, and how can I forget the soy chicken we put in it? We got this packet of buffalo wings with a spicy sauce packet. But we decided to cook and shred just the plain soy pieces and add them to the pasta to make it a little more meatier. I really liked it! Although I think the Italian style Smart Sausages I had in the fridge would have worked better, just because they are flavored and more meat-like.

All in all, I would say the experience was worth it, especially since I had a wonderful person helping me in the kitchen (and who also helpede pay for the groceries; I am ever thankful). I loved being able to ease my STARVING friends' hunger while enjoying their good company. Even though the entire process did take time and was on my mind for most of the weekend, I know that this is something I will do again in the future.

Pizza, an Art

This was a tough one. No matter how good the pictures look. First thing that I think I might have done wrong: missed the salt in the dough. I think my mind was somewhere else. It really made a difference even though it was only 1 teaspoon of salt in the entire thing. Second thing: I covered the pizza pan with foil on the bottom. My pan was filled with a lot of holes, so I didnt want to roll out the dough on the pan because then the dough would come out through the holes. I should have removed the foil before baking the pizza so the crust would have gotten a chance to become more crispy. Instead, I cut up the pizza to discover the crust was still pretty soft, so I had to pop it back in the oven for about ten more minutes, this time removing the foil.

The next day, I used the second batch of dough. And this time I baked it without the foil below the pan AND on the lower rack. The base of the pizza turned out super crispy (how my family LOVES it) and it was even more delicious than the first time I made it. Pizza making is really an art. I remember making pizza about 4 years ago. The pizza always turned out really watery because I would put a lot of fresh tomatoes as a part of the toppings. This time, I decided to leave those out and use something that releases less water, like zucchini! I also could never get the base of the pizza to be crunchy/firm. It always came out soft, no matter what I did. This time I spent more time looking up a good dough recipe and decided to bake the pizza closer to the heat rather than in the center. After I was sure the base was cooked and crunchy, I moved the pizza to the top of the oven to let the cheese melt more and brown evenly.

Pizza is one of those things that's pretty much all about the toppings. And me, being a vegetable lover, used all my favorite vegetables. I should have also added pineapples, they add such a wonderful sweetness to all the savory flavors on the pizza.

The next thing I'll make AGAIN: bread pudding. Stay tuned <3

Napa

So I was looking through some of my old stuff and found this phrase (bear with me, it's in Hindi): "khana banaye, parosiye pyaar." It means make food, serve love. I think it's such a cool phrase.

Anyway, I thought I could write about the espresso brownies I made just this past Friday (they were a hit amongst my sister and friends!) but something else I experienced changed my mind. This thing that changed my mind is a small, but sprawling resort in Napa Valley. It's called Auberge du Soleil, meaning sun hotel in french. I feel that this place made their food and served their love! Me and my special someone had researched places to eat in Napa and this was one of the places we found. It was bout 8:15pm our first night in Napa and we were hungry, so we whipped out our iphones and looked up the directions to this place. The hotel was nestled up on a hill in the middle of a valley. It was extremely dark as we drove up the hill, unsure of where we were really going. When we got to the restaurant we immediately knew that this was some place special and something like we (or I, at least) had never experienced. The people behind the counter and the waiters and waitresses were exceptionally friendly and very kind. We decided to dine from their bistro menu instead of the fine dining because you needed reservations for the fine dining (not to mention that it was $98 per person, although now I can safely say that it would probably have been worth it!). Dinner was impressive. The portions were just right and the food impeccable. We chose to split two dishes and the kitchen pre split each dish for us and brought it to the table, not just an extra plate. We decided on a portabello mushroom sandwich (sounds ordinary but wasn't, the mushroom was drenched in balsamic vinegar and was so flavorful, and the grilled vegetables on it added a great balance) and a summer vegetable pasta (perfectly cooking fusilli, or some other tightly wound pasta, with peas and the sweetest cherry tomatoes in an extremely light but rich cheese sauce). For dessert we decided on profiteroles, which are french cream puffs and are filled with ice cream with chocolate sauce over them. The pastry, also called Pâte à choux , was just perfect; mind blowingly light and airy. Our waitress was an elegant young lady who recommended we split the dishes and brought them in at a very comfortable pace as we ate. After dinner, we were convinced that we would try the brunch saturday morning because we were told the view was amazing in the morning.

So we made reservations and looked forward to it. We thought dinner was delicious, but come lunch we would find out that this place served the softest and melt in your mouth gnocchi and warm and deliciously fluffy scones. Brunch was a four part affair, starting with a drink and fresh (when I mean fresh, I mean the baker brings it to your table from the oven) bread and scones, a light plate of an appetizer of some sort, then the "sustenance" as it said on the menu, and then finally dessert. We started off with a drink called Strawberry Sun, a mixture of strawberry juice, orange juice, and apply juiced combined with coconut milk and ice. It was tangy and sweet, but smooth from the coconut milk. Our bread basket consisted of a pumpkin bread and some sort of a white rustic bread as well as warm berry scones. The scones were light and flaky, and nothing short of perfection. Even the butters they brought with the breads are worth talking about. There was the regular butter which tasted so fresh as well as a lemon buttery concoction. It was almost like a butter mouse flavored with lemon. Tasted delicious on the bread.

Our first course was a gnocchi with wild mushrooms. I've had gnocchi a few times but nothing compares to what I had that day. It was soft. Soft like velvet, like your softest sheets, like cream, basically so soft that you could feed it to a toothless baby and he would be able to eat it. There was foam surrounding our dish and as my special someone said it, it tasted of the entire essence of the dish. The sauce was thin and creamy and it was all topped with freshly shaved parmesan. The wild mushrooms were perfectly cooked and absolutely refreshing from the usual portabello and button mushrooms you have. The second course was an omelet stuffed with ricotta cheese and sauteed onions served with a firm, juicy, and sweet tomato that was topped with bread crumbs and baked, as well as potatoes. The omelet tasted slightly sweet, and I'm guessing either the eggs were from the farm or they had added a sweet cream to the eggs because the omelet was extremely fluffy. As for the tomato, I was scared to eat it because I thought it would fall apart into mush if I took a piece of it. But it was so firm!! the entire tomato retained its shape as I kept cutting pieces off with my knife. The bread crumbs were garlic-y and buttery, and this saltiness went perfectly with the sweetness of the tomato. The potatoes were your normal breakfast potatoes, either fried or baked (I want to say baked because there wasn't any oil). These three entire things on the plate worked very well together.

The dessert is really something to talk about. My partner in food crime ordered the best thing on the menu, apparently! Filo wrapped Belgium chocolate with tarragon ice cream and alveoli oil. The oil didn't really do it for us, but boy, the ice cream and chocolate really did!!! The chocolate was extremely dark and rich and it was enveloped by the crunchy and light filo. The tarragon ice cream looked like regular vanilla bean ice cream but it had an herby milky taste to it that I really enjoyed. My dessert was a white chocolate mousse which was fluffed up to perfection. It was served with a Sake sorbet (pure alcohol sorbet!) and strawberries. A mouth watering combination, even though the sorbet was a little over powering. It was a perfect way to end our brunch, which by the way, took an hour and a half to complete.

Let's talk about the view and the service. Our table was overlooking a vast area of vineyards, and we could see the surrounding hills and mountains. It was breathtaking, and we were so glad to come back in the morning because we hadn't seen this view the night before. It was the silver lining on the entire meal! The weather was perfect in the morning and it didn't get too warm until later. As for the service...just spectacular. You might think that the waiters and cheesecake factory or olive garden have good manners and are nice. But these people were so warm and so welcoming. We felt like kings and queens. I could tell from their eyes and actions that they treated each guest with the most respect and a smile, no matter what kind of guest happened to come to their hotel. We were glad to have dined at Auberge du Soleil and will most definitely go back there. I encourage you to go there if you go to Napa and happen to have a moderate budget (don't go there if you're on a tight budget, just a warning!) and want to try a meal that will add a whole lotta happiness to your trip!! :)

Food for Thought

Good painting is like good cooking: it can be tasted, but not explained.
-Maurice de Vlaminck

Fusilli with eggplant, cherry tomatoes and basil pesto

This recipe is supposed to use trenette, another kind of short pasta, but I couldn't find that at Trader Joe's so I used what I really like, Fusilli, because I think it has more personality then penne and is easier to eat than linguine.

I made pesto at home for the first time, and it was pretty exciting (besides the technical difficulties with the blender...). The recipe called for two packed cups of basil leaves, and boy, did I pack those two cups! I was really uncertain after I was done making the pesto, because it looked so less for the one pound of pasta I was boiling. And so I added a little bit more oil, something I shouldn't do next time because the eggplant already has oil and the sauce thins out since you get to add some pasta water at the end (tip for you!) The addition of cherry tomatoes was my idea, and I thought they worked great because they cut through the creaminess of the pesto and eggplant. Plus they add such lovely color. The pesto is your truly basic pesto, with basil leaves, pine nuts (SO pricy btw, $8 for 8oz!), garlic, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese, and oh of course, EVOO. I think it's something I'd like to make again, even though using the packet of dry pesto powder is so much easier. The flavor you get from this is so much more fresh (obviously) and so I'd think its worth it.

Something that I think I'd want to do next time: roast the eggplant instead of cooking it on the stove. I think that roasting it would help cook it better without the eggplant having to absorb so much oil. It's something that I'd definitely want to try if I make this again!

Hope you guys enjoy the pictures :)