Lemon Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Spinach

Lemon Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Spinach - made November 17, 2013 adapted from The Recipe Crayon Box

I did my first mass harvest of my lemon tree a short time ago. I think it was easier not to notice how many lemons were on it when the lemons were all green and blended cunningly with the equally green leaves.  Now that a number of them are turning yellow, it's more obvious that my one little dwarf lemon tree has a lot of lemons on it. I mean, a lot.  As in I clipped over a dozen lemons for the first harvest and it looked like I hadn't touched the tree at all. Eeek. Prepare for a lot of lemon recipes appearing on my blog for the next month or so.

Starting with this one.  Given the plethora of lemons my little tree is poised to grace me with, I don't know if I can make them all into desserts so might as well go for a savory dish or two.  This one had the added advantage of using spinach which I also needed to use up before it wilts on me. I subbed out shrimp for the chicken in the original recipe but you can use either or both.  I also thought I should add the spinach to the sauce while it bubbled to cook it down a bit.  That turned out to be unnecessary and if I make this again, I'd probably cut up the spinach and only add it at the last minute.  Actually, I will probably make this again because it turned out pretty well and I liked it even better than the Lemon Chicken Pasta I posted earlier..  The sauce is a bit thin which is good because I didn't want a thick or heavy cream sauce but it was the lemon that made it really tasty. There's just something about using really fresh lemons that adds to the taste; the tartness of the lemon juice paired very well with the garlic and the creamy cheesiness of the sauce. This has the added bonus of being easy to prepare so it's a great option for a quick weeknight meal.

1/2 lb angel hair pasta (I used brown rice noodles)
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 cup or more of shrimp, peeled and deveined, raw or cooked
2 lemons, zested and juiced
3/4 cup half-and-half (I used 3/8 cup whole milk and 3/8 cup heavy cream)
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 cup Parmesan, grated (or shredded)
1 cup baby spinach, stems removed

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Salt the water well, and add pasta. 
2. Heat a large skillet over low heat. Add oil, garlic, and crushed red pepper. Cook until the oil sizzles and garlic is brown. Add lemon juice, half-and-half, and chicken broth to the garlic oil mixture. Raise the heat to med-low to med heat until the sauce begins to bubble.  If your shrimp is raw, you may add it now to cook while the sauce bubbles.
3. Drain pasta and add it, the zest, and 1/2 cup Parmesan to the cream sauce. Toss for a minute or two. Add shrimp if you haven't already and the spinach, and toss until well distributed. Top with remaining cheese.

Restaurant Review: Thaibodia

Thaibodia - lunch on November 15, 2013

Another new Thai restaurant to try with one of my coworkers.  In case you wonder as I go to these different restaurants for lunch with a coworker or two, it's not always with the same person.  I think I rotate through 3-5 coworkers to go out.  We usually end up talking about work so it's like a (more fun) meeting but with food.

Soup

With a name like Thaibodia, I expected the cuisine would be a fusion of Thai and Cambodian food but a perusal of the menu leads me to believe it's mostly just Thai food. It starts off with a clear soup and I really liked the broth, not too spicy but very flavorful.  They also served us a side salad as part of the lunch special but they had already added dressing to it so I left mine untouched.  I'll eat salad greens but don't like dressing.

Pad See Ew

For once I didn't order the pad thai although that was my first inclination. Instead I got the pad see ew with chicken.  Pad See Ew is made with wide rice noodles served in a soy-based sauce.  Thaibodia's also came with carrots and broccoli.  I don't mind carrots but I don't like broccoli so I requested that they exclude it.  As you can see from the picture, they got it wrong since my dish had broccoli but nary a carrot in sight.  No big deal, I just fished out the broccoli and set them on my unused salad plate.  When the waiter came to clear the salad plates, he remarked "oh, you don't like broccoli?" "Um, no, that's why I ordered it without broccoli." He apologized for the mistake but I waved it aside - again, not a big deal.  Although I did think it was funny because the waitress who took my order even repeated "no broccoli" to me when confirming my order.  Clearly something went wrong between her order pad and the kitchen.  Fortunately, broccoli is easy to pick out and set aside. The pad see ew was good but the only thing I didn't like about it is they had chunks of garlic strewn throughout.  I don't mind garlic for the flavor but would prefer not having big pieces of it in my noodles.  Next time I'm trying the pad thai instead.

Eggplant

My coworker got the rice plate special with eggplant and we ordered the roti appetizer.  Although it was an appetizer, the roti actually came out last after we had already started on our entrees.  They give you a little more than at Banana Leaf but it wasn't flaky like Banana Leaf's and was more dense and chewy. I liked it and thought it was good but have to admit that Banana Leaf's roti was better because it was flaky and not as greasy.

Roti

Overall, Thaibodia is an okay place for lunch.  The portions are fairly generous - I ate only half of my pad see ew and took the rest home for dinner - and the prices are reasonable with most lunch specials at $10 or less.  They were really busy for a Friday and the poor waiters seemed rushed off their feet but I had no complaints about the service or wait time.

Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze - made November 16, 2013 from Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott

It's autumn and the days are finally getting a bit chilly. I actually wore a long-sleeved sweater to work recently - no coat but still, I live in sleeveless and short-sleeved blouses most of the time so you know there's got to be a nip in the air if I wear something that comes all the way down to my wrists. Regardless of the weather, fall still says apples to me and I was in the mood for an apple cake so I searched through my baking books to come up with this one.

This is similar to a carrot cake in that it's an oil-based cake.  Which means it'll probably be moist and a bit dense and so it was.  It was also delicious.  The batter is really thick, almost like cookie dough when I finished mixing, but don't worry, the apples add a lot of moisture in baking so it's not going to be dry. It was a bit dense so don't look for a fluffy texture but I liked both the texture and the taste.

However, where I had a baking fail is with the frosting.  I forgot this was the same book where I also had an epic fail with caramel frosting in making Gigi's Fabulous Caramel Cake. Give me points for consistency because I failed again.  The brown sugar caramel was fine and nicely liquid in the pan but once I took it off the stove and started pouring it over the warm cake, it hardened up into a concrete-like penuche consistency even before I finished emptying all of the frosting over the cake. Which made spreading it evenly and nicely an impossible task.  Ugh. Once it had cooled and I cut it, the "frosting" broke apart in slabs.  I kid you not.  I could even easily pluck it off in slabs from the top of the cake, leaving the cake naked, stripped bare and ugly. Talk about cake wreck. Fortunately the cake itself tasted fantastic and is worth making again.  Next time, I'm going to leave the frosting off completely (the cake doesn't need it) or sprinkle cinnamon sugar over it for a little crunch.  I'm staying away from caramel frostings until the trauma of baking failure passes.

3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups finely chopped apples (I used organic Fuji apples)

Brown Sugar Glaze (make at your own peril)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons heavy cream (you might want to add more and/or switch to whole milk for a more runny consistency)

1. Cake: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13" baking pan with foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt whisking light to mix everything together.
3. In a large bowl, mix the eggs with a mixer on low speed until pale yellow and foamy. Add the oil and vanilla and beat well.
4. Stir in the flour mixture and continue stirring the batter til the flour disappears. Add the apples and stir to mix them into the batter.
5. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Place the hot cake on a wire rack. 
7. Glaze: While the cake is still hot, prepare the glaze. Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture comes to a gentle boil, and cook for 3-5 minutes.
8. Spoon the hot glaze over the still hot-from-the-oven cake. Let the glazed cake cool completely before serving.

Baked in the USA

Last night, my blog passed a milestone.  After 4 years, 2 months and 6 days, I finally hit and passed half a million page views.  If you're reading this post or have read any of the others in the past, THANK YOU for helping me get to this point. I literally couldn't have done it without you, especially since I don't have blogger track my own page views so I can't add to the count, lol.  I know that might be paltry compared to more popular blogs but I prefer to compare myself to myself and it's pretty exciting to me, probably because this is something I only work on during nights and weekends, the odd vacation day and afternoon off here and there.  Even if it was 4+ years in the making, I made it. Although I go back and read some of my old posts and I cringe now and then at how inexperienced I was at blogging then but hopefully I've made some improvements since the beginning.

To commemorate the milestone, here's a slightly different post than I normally write. It's that time of year again with lots of holiday baking on the horizon so I wanted to squeeze another gift-giving for bakers type of post but with a made in the USA bent.

In the past, I've written up what to get for bakers on your holiday gift giving list, preparing baking gifts, sending care packages for the holidays, tips on marathon baking sessions, and hosting a dessert party.  This year's theme is Baked in the USA.  (Advance warning that this post is very US-centric.) I've been more conscious about supporting my local businesses, particularly the small business owners, and buying made in the USA products. I don't want to get political about it, just that I believe in supporting my local area and my home country as much as possible.  My bedroom set and my home office furniture are made by a furniture maker in Oregon; the daybed in my guest room, my dining set and my bookshelves are from various furniture makers (makers, not factories) in North Carolina.  I've even cut back drastically on my beloved Hallmark ornament collection, partly because they're made in China and, in recent years, not made very well in China either. Not everything I buy is made in the USA, largely because sometimes it simply isn't made here and there's no other alternative but I do what I can to stay local. Readers in other parts of the world probably feel the same way about supporting their country. 

With that stay-local mindset, my gift giving has leaned towards baked goods and service-oriented gifts like gift certificates to the local nail salon for a mani-pedi or restaurant gift cards, preferably to non-national-chain restaurants. Other similar-minded friends and acquaintances have also given me good ideas about gifts like auto-detailing from a local auto shop, pet care services from local pet care providers, fresh fruit arrangements, perfumed soaps and lotions made in the USA, and so on.  For more common types of gifts, if you've ever shopped at a typical department store like a Target, Kohls, K-Mart, Sears, JC Penney, and Wal-mart, you know how hard it is to find anything made in the USA (it's virtually impossible if you want to buy electronics). But here are some recent finds I wanted to share for any bakers on your gift list, mostly from amazon so you can also avoid shopping in overcrowded malls this holiday season:

Baking pans
I needed a new 9 x 13 pan recently and found this USA pan from amazon. It's made in Pittsburgh, PA and is pretty good quality.  I've been using it for over a month and it works just as well as my more expensive, made-in-China Calphalon pan. USA pans come in a variety of shapes and sizes so as I replenish my bakeware, I'm definitely buying their products from now on. King Arthur Flour also sells a line of R.A.F. pans that are made in the USA which look remarkably similar to the USA pans so I don't know if they're from the same company and just a different brand.

9 x 13 baking pan from USA pans

Ingredients
Now if you're in the US, you'd think most ingredients are local or US-made anyway and many of them are but not all of them.  My beloved Pernigotti cocoa is made in Italy and my Costco Kirkland brand parchment paper is made in France. But I did discover a new brand of vanilla extract I can wholeheartedly recommend and that's J.R. Watkins Vanilla Extract whose company headquarters are in Minnesota. One whiff of their extract and you're immediately seduced by vanilla goodness.

Nielsen-Massey is also another good choice for vanilla extract and they're headquartered in Waukegan, Illinois.

Buttermilk powder - I finally got tired of rushing to use up buttermilk every time I bought a pint or throwing out unused buttermilk when the expiration date arrived so I switched to using buttermilk powder. I found this one from Hoosier Hill Farms, headquartered in Indiana. For every cup of buttermilk you need, you add 4 tablespoons of buttermilk powder to 1 cup of water.  It's not as thick or creamy as fresh buttermilk but I haven't found any difference in the final output of whatever I bake it in.

Not pictured but dairy products are also easy to find from local farms. While giving milk or heavy cream is a too-weird gift, even for me, you can gift local cheeses and wines.  Easy for me since Napa Valley is a drive away or, more conveniently, their products are easily available in my local shops and we also have Harley Goat Farm within driving distance as well as cow dairy farms. Jars of locally made honey also make a nice gift (er, except for me since I don't like honey but you get my point). You don't have to live where I do to have access to locally made and produced goods.  A simple yelp search or trip to your local farmers' markets would probably yield some good results.

And if you do want to give baked goods as a gift but don't want to bake it yourself and/or your recipients are far away, here are just a few places you can order online that I've personally sampled and can recommend - all made in the USA. (Disclaimer: as with every other product in this post, I'm not affiliated with any of these businesses and I don't get paid for endorsing them.  I just like them.)

• Annie the Baker - wonderful, tasty cookies, especially for those who lean towards cookie dough as much as cookies
• Crumbs Bake Shop - I've had their cupcakes and they're delicious
• Baked NYC - awesome brownies and I love their baking books. You can also find their brownie and cake mixes at Williams Sonoma
• Gambino's Bakery - located in New Orleans, they're a little pricey to ship but their red velvet cake is delicious

There are many others out there and if anyone has any particular favorites, I'd love to hear about them.  I'm always looking for new, small businesses to order from online who ship.

Cinnamon Sugar Banana Lumpia

Cinnamon Sugar Banana Lumpia - made November 16, 2013 from Imperial Sugar

Want a super easy dessert recipe with caramelized bananas in a crispy wrapper topped with caramel and nutella?  Then read on, MacDuff.  This is reminiscent of turon, a Filipino dessert of bananas and sometimes langka (jackfruit) rolled into a lumpia wrapper and fried to crunchy goodness.  This is the healthier version since it involves baking rather than frying.  But it still has the same goodness of a "fried" banana.  I was only making this for myself so I halved the amount of brown sugar and cinnamon and only used 1 banana that I sliced and distributed between two lumpia wrappers. I still have leftover brown sugar-cinnamon but I'll use that for another dessert.

You can get lumpia wrappers at any Asian grocery store.  My mom gets them from 99 Ranch and I get them from shopping in her refrigerator since I rarely go to 99 Ranch myself and she always has them on hand for making lumpia :). This was super easy to make and they really did get crunchy except in the middle but that was okay.  The bananas caramelized in the baking and paired well with the brown sugar and cinnamon it was dredged in.  The only caution is when you roll them up in the lumpia wrapper, roll them tightly so that none of the melting insides leak out.  Otherwise they won't be as pretty.

Mine didn't come out as nice-looking as the ones on the Imperial Sugar site.  I could've wrapped the banana slices more tightly in the wrapper and made them more cylindrical instead of flat.  The original directions about how to roll them aren't very clear other than rolling into a cylinder but I like to wrap them completely, including the sides so I bring the bottom of the wrapper up over the bananas, fold over the two ends to almost meet in the middle (like an envelope) and roll the whole thing into the top, keeping the seam down during baking.  Regardless of their appearance, this was really good as the lumpia wrapper did get crispy in the oven and the baked banana caramelized beautifully.  Top with a little melted nutella and some drizzles of caramel?  Heaven in a bite.

3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
8 bananas, peeled and ends cut
8 lumpia wrappers*
confectioners' sugar for dusting, if desired
Salted caramel for drizzling 
Melted chocolate for drizzling

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon.
3. Working one at a time, dredge banana in cinnamon sugar mixture and place banana on lumpia wrapper. Bring bottom edge of wrap tightly over banana, rolling from bottom to top until the top of sheet is reached, being careful not to tear wrapper. Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling.
4. Place wrapped bananas onto prepared baking sheet and lightly coat with cooking spray. Place into oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown.
5. Serve immediately, garnished with confectioners sugar (optional) and drizzle with salted caramel and melted chocolate, if desired.

*If lumpia wrappers are not available, you can substitute egg roll/spring roll wrappers.

Carrot Cake - trying a new recipe

"Sinfully Delicious" Carrot Cake - made November 13, 2013 from Lou Lou Girls

in the light box, with flash

So, before I aborted the Whole 30 diet before the 30 days were up, I bought a huge pack of organic carrots at Costco.  Even eating one a day (and they were really sizable carrots), I wasn't going to be able to go through them all unless I transformed into a rabbit with an appetite on steroids.  I gave half of them to my parents but I still had too many to eat at my one-a-day pace.  So a new carrot cake recipe to try comes to the rescue.

I love carrot cake.  I don't make it often because carrots are a pain to grate and I grate them the old-fashioned way with my almost-falling-apart-but-not-enough-to-justify-buying-a-new-one grater (yeah, I'm cheap when I feel like it). Plus carrot cake isn't very healthy because of the oil in the batter and the cream cheese frosting.  Much as I don't care for cream cheese, carrot cake should only be eaten with cream cheese frosting.  It's an unwritten rule in baking. One which I adhere to so much that I had to make a special trip after work to Costco to buy a block of cream cheese. Okay, it wasn't so special since Costco is literally on my way home from work so I stopped by after I had run at the gym.  Only, you know how you go to Costco and remember 3 other things you need?  I was so intent on buying the other stuff "while I was there anyway" that, yep, I walked out of Costco, got home, put away what I'd bought and realized I'd forgotten to get the cream cheese. Oy. So I stopped off again the next night to buy it.

in the light box, without flash

Baking cakes on weeknights is tricky for me because I have to get whatever I make mixed, in the oven, baked, out, cooled and frosted in time for me to get to bed at a decent hour.  I rarely bake a cake when I work late, run errands, go out or when I workout after work unless I'm working out while it's in the oven. There just isn't enough time.  For this particular cake, I threw together the dry ingredients in a bowl before I left for work so that once I got home, it was an easy matter of peeling and grating the carrots and mixing all of the ingredients together while my oven preheated. The frosting is easy to make once the cake is out of the oven and cooling. I frosted it before I went to bed then cut it into squares before I left for work in the morning.  You never want to cut a cake or brownies until the last minute before serving or the cut edges will dry out.

Overall, I thought this cake had a great texture (soft and fluffy) and the flavor was good but what kept it from being great is I could taste the oil.  At first I worried that my oil might've gone rancid as that's usually when I can taste oil.  But I checked the bottle and nope, it's still good for another eight months.  Then I thought maybe this recipe uses more oil than typical but I compared it against my favorite carrot cake recipe and they both use 1 cup of oil, albeit the other ingredients are in different proportions. So I'm not quite sure what it is.  The cake is still good but it doesn't depose Jim Fobel's recipe as my favorite.  I still have a few more carrots left so I think I will keep experimenting with new carrot cake recipes a couple more times.

my camera isn't good enough to take great pictures without natural light

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
4 eggs
1 cup oil
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups carrots, grated (I used 1 large and 1 medium carrot)

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour the pans that you will be using.
2. In a bowl, combine eggs, oil, butter, sugars, and vanilla until light and fluffy.
3. Mix together in a bowl, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix for about 2 minutes.
5. Add the grated carrots. You can add nuts and raisins if you want.
6. Pour the batter into the cake pans and bake 45 to 50 minutes. To check to see if its done, insert toothpick and if it comes out clean, its done.
7. Cool completely before you frost the cake. 

Frosting1 stick of butter (4 ounces)
1 package of cream cheese (8 ounces)
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar

1. In a bowl, beat together cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until creamy. Add powder sugar and beat until fluffy. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat a little longer.

Restaurant Review: Lillie Mae's House of Soul Food

Lillie Mae's House of Soul Food - lunch November 14, 2013

A friend recommended Lillie Mae's House of Soul Food saying she'd heard good things about it.  That's usually all I need to try out a place so when a coworker and I met for lunch, I suggested we try out this place.  It's in a bit of a weird location, kitty corner from a Costco and right near the airport.  I'd been to that Costco before but had never noticed the restaurant.

It's got a bit of a "dive" vibe but that only made me more hopeful because you know those types of places can have really good food.  The menu was also right up my alley with ribs, chicken, and beef, all offered in bbq sauce or, in the case of the chicken, you can also get it fried.  There was also a good selection of sides, including my favorite sweet potato fries.

Depending on your choice, you can choose a lunch of under $10 or pay a few dollars more for a combo for $12-$15.  Since I wanted to try a little variety, I opted for the combo of BBQ pork ribs and chicken with sweet potato fries.  My coworker got the brisket with sweet potato fries and sweet tea.

BBQ Pork Ribs, BBQ Chicken and sweet potato fries

The good: the sweet potato fries were excellent, crisp on the outside and mealy inside and not greasy.  The sauce for the BBQ was also quite good, not too sweet and just really good flavor. For the price, they give you a generous helping so if you like barbecue, you're getting your money's worth.

The less good: the chicken was tender but the pork ribs were not.  I think I'm spoiled with my mom's bbq ribs that just fall off the bone and you could cut with a fork.  These ribs were much more hefty and chewy.  Alas, they only offered butter knives so cutting through it was even harder.  Two generous ribs were also covering the chicken underneath and they all had to share the same plate as the sweet potato fries and two halves of a slice of whole wheat bread.  So eating was rather awkward.

Beef brisket and sweet potato fries

My coworker's choice of the brisket was more manageable on her plate and I had a taste.  They seemed to use the same barbecue sauce so it was good although still not as tender as I've had in other places. Her sweet tea, according to her, was also really sweet.  Similar reviews on yelp suggest that you may want to dilute the sweet tea with some water.  I don't know if the restaurant was having an off day or I just ordered the wrong thing.  I hate to give a bad or even lukewarm review based on just one visit but unfortunately, I can't say I had anything that I would be dying to come back for. If anyone else would want to go, I'd certainly go along and try something else to give it another chance.