Sweet Potato Noodle Buns

Sweet Potato Noodle Buns - made July 15, 2017 from Cake Spy

One of the recipes that contributed to my impulse to buy a spiralizer was this one for sweet potato noodle buns. Click on the post title to see the original blog post and see what I mean when you view the pictures. Looks good, right?

Mine didn’t turn out quite so beautifully. I tried. This time around, I used a regular orange sweet potato instead of the white ones and I spiralized regular-size noodles instead of angel hair. I thought I would have enough swoodles by only using half a sweet potato but after I had pan-fried the first half, the swoodles had cooked down and I was plagued by a bout of insecurity that there wouldn’t be enough for 2 buns. So I spiralized the other half of the sweet potato and ended up with more swoodles.

I used two shallow, round ramekins to form the “buns”. Although the original directions didn’t say to, I lined the ramekins with plastic wrap with enough overhang that when I patted the swoodles into each ramekins, I could cover with the overhanging plastic wrap and smooth the tops. Then the swoodles were protected when I further pressed them down with canned goods. Lastly, once they had been pressed down for 30 minutes, I just undid the plastic wrap and lifted out the round swoodle buns with the plastic wrap and could up-end them directly into the heated frying pan, keeping their bun shape intact.

Key learning when making swoodle buns: make sure you cook the swoodles well enough before pressing into the ramekins. The pan-frying once they’re shaped into buns should only be to cook the egg binding them together and crisp up the outside but you want the insides soft and cooked. There’s nothing I dislike more than uncooked sweet potatoes.

Second key learning: plan to flip these only once. Since they’re literally noodles of sweet potato, you don’t want to handle them a lot or they might fall apart. Mine were great at first but since I hadn’t cooked all of the swoodles well enough, I pan-fried them a little longer and also turned them over a few times. They survived the first couple of flips then started to show their displeasure at my (over)handling by loosening up a few swoodles from the pack to taunt me. Little buggers.

Third key learning: you actually don’t want to make the buns too thick or use too many swoodles. It makes for an unwieldly thick burger if you do.

Despite my amateur hour with the buns, this turned out pretty well. I liked the contrast between the savory burger and the sweetness of the swoodle buns. And, in line with my prior experience with spiralizing sweet potatoes, they’re quite filling so once again, I ended up eating less because the whole thing was too much in one sitting.

1 medium to large sweet potato, peeled and ends cut flat
2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
1 large egg
pinch of kosher salt
pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Two 3/4 cup ramekins, lightly sprayed with nonstick cooking spray and/or lined with parchment paper

1. Using a spiralizer, cut the sweet potato into thin strands.
2. In a large skillet, heat 1/2 teaspoon olive oil over medium heat. Add sweet potato and cook, stirring, for 5 to 7 minutes or until softened. Let cool to room temperature, about 15 minutes.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk egg. Stir in sweet potato, salt and pepper. Divide between prepared ramekins, filling each about halfway, and pressing the sweet potato down into the ramekins. Cover with plastic wrap and place a heavy can or jar on top of the wrap to weight down the sweet potato. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. Lightly coat a skillet with the remaining oil and beat over medium high heat. Remove plastic wrap and invert ramekins to slide noodle buns onto skillet. Cook, turning once, for 3 to 5 minutes per side, or until golden brown on both sides and hot in the center.

Hamburger patties
1 pound lean ground beef
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon prime rib rub
1 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 large egg

1. Combine ingredients together and pat into 4 round patties. Wrap individually in foil and freeze until ready to fry.
2. If frying immediately, lightly spray a frying pan with nonstick cooking spray and heat over medium high heat. Fry burgers until desired doneness.

Spaghetti with Swoodles

Spaghetti with Swoodles - made July 10, 2017

I have a new gadget. Total impulse purchase which I don’t usually do. Normally I waffle, dither and dink around before I buy myself something. I used to be a shopper and shopped myself to quite a number of acquisitions. Then, after I purged half my stuff, there was a period where I went the opposite direction and hardly bought myself anything at all. That was my “sackcloth and ashes” martyrdom period. Most recently, I’ve managed to (mostly) strike a balance between not overindulging myself and not being a martyr. If I wanted something, was going to use it and it didn’t cost half an arm or a quarter of a leg, I usually would buy it after an extended thinking-about-it period.

I blame my friend Donna for this. She posted a mouthwatering picture of what looked like honest-to-goodness noodles stir fried with chicken and some kind of green stuff (spinach? Basil?). It looked great and was healthy. Turns out those noodles weren’t pasta noodles but instead were made out of white sweet potatoes (Japanese sweet potatoes, my favorite) that had been spiralized. But they looked so real as noodles.

I don’t have a gluten intolerance or anything and I like pasta just fine. But I also love sweet potatoes and was intrigued by this whole spiralizing concept. I looked up recipes on pinterest, I read foodie blogs that showcased fantastic-looking dishes and, like a hapless person staring into the glittery eyes of a cobra, mesmerized by its depths, my trigger finger clicked, depositing the item into my online shopping cart. A few days later, I had a spiralizer sitting on my counter.

At first I circled it like it was a cobra itself, there for a purpose but tentative to approach in case it bit me. It had blades and weird cutouts in those blades that promised different sizes of “noodles”. There were instructions on what to do with root vegetables to get to that spiral noodle stage. Remember that I don’t really cook often or well. This wasn’t a baking gadget per se. It involved cooking. But I can read and the instructions were simple so this turned out to be a pretty straightforward endeavor.

Peel the sweet potato, cut off ends, cut in half, anchor one half on the pointy-wheel thingie, clamp the handle so the sweet potato kisses the blade and start turning. By trial and error, I was able to make angel hair “noodles” or “swoodles” – sweet potato noodles. It was pretty easy and didn’t require as much muscle power as some of the blogs had led me to believe. All that working out with weights paid off.

While, after half a sweet potato, I could spiralize with the best of them, I was a little more inept when it came to actually cooking the swoodles. At first I tried pan-frying them with a little olive oil. That worked decently well but it’s not that easy to pan fry swoodles and not have some of them burn while the others weren’t cooked through. Ask me how I know. For the swoodles made from the second half of the sweet potato (I cooked it in two batches as I had a pretty big sweet potato to start with), I boiled them instead. That sort of worked but you can’t over-boil them or you’ll end up with mashed swoodles, aka mashed sweet potatoes.

To uphold the swoodle look, I made a spaghetti sauce so I could lend verisimilitude to the whole noodle concept. Overall, it turned out okay. If you like a little more flavor or spice, add some additional pepper to the sauce or top the noodles with your favorite sauce. This was pretty healthy, more so than my usual fare. It helped that the swoodles turned out to be more filling than pasta noodles so I was able to eat a smaller portion and still feel satisfied.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound ground turkey
1/2 sweet onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
1 15.5-ounce can kidney beans, drained
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons dried basil
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 large Japanese white sweet potato, spiralized then sauteed until soft

1. Heat olive oil in large skillet and saute onions until soft. Add garlic and saute until lightly browned. Add ground turkey and stir until browned. Add diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, kidney beans spices and sugar.
2. Simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Top swoodles with sauce and serve warm.

Peanut Butter Chunker Cookies

Peanut Butter Chunker Cookies - made dough July 1, 2017 modified from from Tastes of Lizzy T

If you go by the dates of when I’ve baked desserts in the past month or two, you’ll notice I’ve cut back a lot. That’s mostly because it’s been hot where I live and I can’t bear to turn the oven on as often as I used to. I’m cheap enough to hate running the air conditioner while I have the oven on. Seems expensively counter-intuitive and wasteful to do both. I prefer the air conditioner since I can’t stand the heat so I keep the oven off.

The good thing about cookies though is you can make the dough ahead of time and only bake off as much or as little as you want at any given time. Since it’s been hot, I had the oven on only long enough to bake a cookie sheet of these for work then called it a day.

The original recipe had a bunch of add-ins. I substituted a chopped up bar of Cadbury milk chocolate with caramel and peanuts that I’d bought at Heathrow when I had a connection on my way to Milan. Heathrow Duty Free and I are friends. I always walk out with slabs of chocolate to bring back home, distribute to my family and reserve some for baking.

This spread a little more than I thought it would and I don’t know if that’s because it was so hot when I made the dough and my butter was more soft than I would’ve liked. I did freeze the dough balls before baking but that doesn’t help as much if the cookie dough starts out soft because the overly soft butter made the dough more liquid before it could be frozen. But this was still a good cookie, especially if you like the peanut butter chocolate combination.

1 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup smooth peanut butter
2 cups dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks
1/2 cup milk chocolate chunks
1/2 cup toffee bits

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and peanut butter until smooth. Add in dark brown sugar and beat until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add in eggs, one at a time, beating until just combined and add vanilla. Beat until combined.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, oats, baking soda, cornstarch, cinnamon and salt. Add in two additions to butter mixture, beating on low speed after each addition until just combined. 
3. Fold in chocolate chunks and toffee bits. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze several hours or overnight.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space frozen dough balls on baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven, transfer cookies to wire rack and let cool completely.

Cinnamon Roll Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cinnamon Roll Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting - made July 9, 2017 from Tastes Better From Scratch

I’ve had this cake on my pinterest board for awhile and it looked really good so I finally made it. Except mine didn’t turn out looking as well as the original blog I got the recipe from. Yeah, that happens more often than I care to admit.

I also (re)discovered that my swirling skills aren’t very good. I’m too tentative and don’t go bold with swirling because I get too paranoid that I’ll over-swirl and the two batters I’m trying to swirl will end up being too mixed in and incorporated with each other instead of standing out as separate-but-swirled equals. Bah.

Subsequently, this ended up being partial vanilla cake with pockets of melted cinnamon rather than vanilla cake with subtle “swirls” of cinnamon goodness. Trust me, there’s a difference. Still, I liked the cake itself. But I should’ve cut back on the frosting. I tried to get creative with it and add cinnamon to make it a cinnamon cream cheese frosting (cuz you know I don’t like cream cheese). But I cut too large of a hole in my Ziploc bag that I was using to pipe the frosting onto the cake so instead of dainty lines of frosting artistically criss crossing over the cake, I ended up with wide, flat lines like I was about to do a basketweave design. It wasn’t pretty. 

Rather than present it that (really lame) way, I decided to cover my frosting sins by just smoothing all the lines into a thin layer of frosting. Um, bad idea. Turns out I didn’t like the taste of the frosting itself; too tangy and not sweet enough. It might’ve been fine if I really had executed thin lines of it sparingly over the cinnamon vanilla cake so the sweetness of the cake could offset the tanginess of the frosting. But covering the whole thing with a layer of frosting; a no-no. I’d say this cake was okay but definitely not my finest baking hour.  

Cake
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup butter, melted

Cinnamon Swirl
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese
1-2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x 8" baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, egg and vanilla. Stir in melted butter. Pour mixture into prepared pan and smooth into an even layer.
3. Cinnamon Swirl: cream butter, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon until smooth.
4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture evenly over the cake batter. Use a knife to swirl through the cake and disperse the mixture throughout the cake batter.
5. Bake 32-37 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 
6. While cake is baking, make frosting: cream butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, milk, vanilla and cinnamon together until smooth and of desired consistency. Drizzle over warm cake; serve warm.

Soft Batch Double Chocolate Cookies

Soft Batch Double Chocolate Cookies - made dough May 28, 2017 from Baker by Nature

Back to the recipes!

Do you have a chocolate tooth? Do you like soft, chewy, fudgy, rich cookies you can just sink your teeth into and have your eyes roll to the back of your head? Break out the good chocolate then and try this recipe.

The dough is easy to make and I advise my usual method of portioning into cookie dough balls then freezing for several hours or overnight before baking. These don’t spread much and you want to keep it that way.

The trickiest thing about chocolate chocolate cookies is not making the dough or chilling it. It’s about the baking. You can’t go by the usual check of “bake until edges are golden brown”. Hello, chocolate chocolate cookie. There are no “golden brown edges”, just chocolate edges. You can always use a timer but even then, ovens are different and baking time is a guideline, not an absolute, depending on your particular oven.

I go by how they look. This is the rare cookie where I do look for the tops to be “dry” and have some cracks BUT you want to take the cookies out just when they’ve achieved that look, not when they’ve been sporting it for minutes on end, baking and baking in the oven. I peer intently at the middles and take out the cookies right when the middles don’t look raw anymore. Remember that chocolate “sets” once it’s cooled and that’s how you get that fudgy texture. If you overbake these, they’ll be cakey and dry rather than fudgy and chewy.

I baked a cookie in a mini skillet and topped with ice cream

Milk drinkers will probably want to make sure there’s a big glass ready when they take a bite. Make sure you let these cool completely. Yes, I know, waiting sucks but I like the soft, rich, fudgy texture of these when they’re completely cool. If they’re even lukewarm, they tend to be a little too soft and mushy for me. You can also taste the richness of the chocolate once it’s completely cool so please make sure you use the high quality chocolate. I used Valrhona but you can also use Tcho or Scharffenberger.

Mini pizzookie

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup + 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup milk chocolate chips

1. Place semisweet chocolate chips and butter in the top half of a double boiler set over hot water. Heat, whisking until melted and smooth; set aside.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt; set aside.
3. In a separate medium-sized bowl, whisk together the sugars, eggs, milk and vanilla. 
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir to combine; do not overmix.
5. Fold in the chocolate-butter mixture and the milk chocolate chips into the batter, stirring until just combined. Dough will be soft. Cover and chill for 10-15 minutes.
6. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
7. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space frozen dough balls, reduce heat to 300 degrees and bake for 18-20 minutes. Cool cookies completely before serving.

Restaurant Review: Montesacro Pinseria and Hamilton

Montesacro Pinseria - dinner on July 21, 2017

More than seven months ago, I was one of those people who was online in a virtual waiting room, waiting for my turn to purchase tickets to the musical, Hamilton, which was coming to the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. Tickets went on sale starting at 10 am. Before 10 am, you could log on and join the virtual waiting room. At 10 am, everyone who was in the waiting room was randomly assigned a place in “line” to purchase tickets. My random number was in the 45000s. Yes, there were more than 45,000 people ahead of me to purchase tickets. Each person could only purchase up to 6 tickets. During the 5 hours and 46 minutes that I waited in line/online, I looked up how many seats were in the theater, calculated how many performances there would be multiplied by how many seats divided by 6 tickets per person to figure out if being #45xxx would be good enough to still have tickets available by the time it was my turn. What? I’m a numbers nerd and it helped kill 5 minutes.

Fortunately, being number 45,000-something was good enough to still get tickets. Although by the time I got in and was able to scan the available dates and the seats that were left, I had to book a date almost at the end of their SF run and could only get 4 seats together in the mezzanine and 2 in the orchestra, not 6 seated together. No problem. I invited 3 other friends for the cost of the tickets and sold the 2 orchestra seats to another friend. We were going to Hamilton.

But first, on show night, we went to dinner….of course. My friend Jenny was the most familiar with San Francisco since she’d lived there for years so we went with her recommendation of Montesacro Pinseria-Enoteca, which was near the Orpheum Theater. Pinseria, as I found out later, isn’t pizza but is a Mediterranean flatbread with toppings just like a pizza. Most people probably wouldn’t make the distinction.

What I cared about was that it be good and it was. As our server explained to us, Montesacro focuses on healthy ingredients. As an aside, they don’t serve sodas since it doesn’t fit with their healthy eating vision or their focus on using ingredients that are organic and sustainable. That was okay by me because I was focused on the pinseria.

Pietralata - Grated Pecorino/Parmagiano, Mozzarella, Guanciale, Egg, Cracked Black Pepper

I ordered the Maranella which was flatbread with spicy sausage, broccolini, and burrata. I know, why broccolini, given my aversion to vegetables? Ah, but you’re talking to the champion picky eater who can pick anything I don’t want out of my food. Of course, later I realized I could’ve just asked them to omit the broccolini entirely but our wait person was so earnest about how they use fresh, healthy ingredients locally sourced as much as possible that it didn’t occur to me to counter her spiel with “I’ll take the Maranella without the fresh, organic, locally sourced broccolini.” I might have even eaten a spear or two in an attempt to add some healthy to my bites. As my friends bluntly told me, “it won’t kill you.” Humph. So they say.

Maranella - Mozzarella, Broccolini, Spicy Pork Sausage & Stracciatella di Burrata

The flatbread was really good as was the whole pinseria. It’s best eaten right away while it’s still warm as it did have a tendency to get a little chewy at the ends as it cooled and it also got a bit soggy in the middle. I couldn’t finish the whole thing (had to leave room for dessert, ‘kay?) as it was a generous serving but I liked what I had, especially using the uber-cool all-metal pizza cutter that came with each of our pinserias. 

Corviale - Buffalo Mozzarella, Porcini Mushroom, Lardo & Parsley

As I was wont to do, I had checked out the menu online so I already knew what I wanted for dessert. The menu called it a small pinseria stuffed with pistachio Nutella. I had a vision of a mini-calzone with Nutella lava spilling out sprinkled with toasted chopped pistachios. The real thing was not quite close to my vision. The pistachio showed up as some form of green paste that was mixed in with the Nutella. It wasn’t “stuffed” so much as “spread on the inside” like peanut butter or jelly. It was lukewarm when it arrived and for texture purposes, I would’ve preferred it served just a bit warmer as the flatbread was best when it was warm to hot.

Pinsa con Nutella al Pistacchi di Bronte: small pinsa stuffed with Sicilian Pistachio Nutella

The actual pistachio-nutella “paste” wasn’t that appetizing to look at. There’s something off-putting about green paste. Which was unfortunate as the taste itself was pretty good. I don’t know if that was due to the pistachio paste but it really drew out the flavor of Nutella. If I had to tweak this dessert, I would make it more like my vision of a thin Calzone stuffed with Nutella and garnished with pistachios. And I say “thin” because I was already feeling kinda bread-y full from the pinseria.

Budino - chocolate chili mousse

The other dessert we shared was the chocolate chili mousse. I’m not a believer in spiking my chocolate with spices or fruit. I had a tiny, tiny taste of the mousse and the chili wasn’t very prevalent. That means I couldn’t really taste it from the tiny tip-of-the-spoon-ful I had. A light, airy mousse is probably a better topper to a pinseria but I’m glad I tried the pistachio-Nutella pinseria, even if it wouldn’t make my top 10 list of dessert beauty contestants.

After dinner, of course, it was showtime. I won’t go into raptures about Hamilton here….no, wait, that’s a lie. The show was excellent. It was pretty hyped up so I was afraid my expectations would be too high and I’d be disappointed but that wasn’t the case. I had actually read the 800-page+tome by Ron Chernow (yes, I’m a girl-nerd) so I had a good idea of Hamilton’s life story and could follow the musical pretty well. 

I expected great voices and I got them. I was particularly expressed by the purity and beauty of the cast’s voices, especially by the female leads (Eliza Hamilton!!). I expected an edgy musical score and I got that too. Hamilton, the birth of our nation and rap? Not your usual combination. It was brilliant. King George was an unexpected riot (cue much hysterical laughing). Props to Lin-Manuel Miranda for his vision and creativity in conceiving and executing such a score and such a show. For me, it was worth the 7+ month wait.

5 minutes before showtime