Let Them Eat Cake

Last Saturday was my 30th birthday.  If you know me, then you know that I absolutely love birthdays.  I make a huge deal out of other people's birthdays, and I love a celebration.

This year, in honor of the big 3-0, I spent 3 days making myself a birthday cake.  I had made this cake once before (I got the recipe from a Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appetit), so I knew it was no small undertaking.  I mean, it involves not only making the batter and frosting from scratch, but also making your own caramel from scratch.  (A process which I have documented below and prior to this recipe would never have considered attempting.)  But if you are ever going to spend your precious spare time making yourself (or someone you love) a cake this involved, I would say that a milestone birthday is probably the proper occasion.  Here are some highlights from the process:

I started out by buttering and flouring my cakepans to make sure the batter wouldn't stick:

The finished pumpkin spice cakes came out looking golden and delicious:

After letting the cakes cool overnight, I started on the frosting.  The first step is to make the caramel.  You start with 1/2 cup of powdered sugar in a pan over medium heat:

The sugar starts to melt:

And take on a golden brown color:

Once it has all melted, you continue to cook it until it turns amber:

At which point, you add 1/2 cup cream, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/4 tsp salt and the mixture begins to bubble like crazy:

 You'll want to stir the mixture until any grainy bits dissolve:

And then strain it:

Once the strained caramel has cooled to room temperature, you can add it to the cream cheese frosting:

Then after frosting the cake and letting it set overnight it will look something like this:

I ate this slice for breakfast (because one nice thing about being 30 is not having to wait until after you finish all of your dinner before you get to eat your cake):

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

After a few weeks where temperatures hit 107 here in San Diego, this past week something amazing happened. It rained for three days straight. Highs were in the 60s. Pumpkin beer showed up at the grocery store. And I realized that before I had even had the time to stop and notice, it had once again become not only my favorite season of the year (fall), but also my favorite month (October).

Now I realize that I might be the tiniest bit biased in making the previous statement (seeing as my birthday is in a week and all), but even for those of you out there who are not lucky enough to be Libras, what's not to love about fall? And of all of the many things that I love about this glorious season, I think my favorite part has to be the return of hearty comfort foods.

When I think of comfort food, one of the first things that I think of is soup. All week I have been having a serious craving for egg drop soup. If you come to this blog often, then you'll know that I tend towards Italian style dishes. It is extremely rare that I branch out into more exotic cuisines. But with the initiation of student loan repayments looming in less than a month (eek!) and a trip to Hawaii coming up in a few days for my birthday, I decided that grabbing take-out was not an option and so I decided to make some egg drop soup for myself.

I found a highly rated recipe on epicurious and was all set to copy it step by step, only to get home from work and realize that I lacked some of the most vital ingredients (no ginger? REALLY?) Since I am on a strict budget, going to the store for the lacking supplies was not an option, so I had to improvise. They say necessity is the mother of all invention, right?

Readers, in addition to the missing ingredients, I messed up this recipe in almost every way possible (I added too much of one ingredient, too little of another, etc.). I know that anyone who actually knows anything about Chinese cuisine will probably look at this recipe and shake their head at how wrong it is, but you know what? It actually turned out pretty darn tasty for a first attempt.

Although it's not traditional, the recipe I found suggested adding egg noodles to add some texture (this is just about the only part of the recipe that I got right). This package contained 4 "nests" of noodles - I used one nest in my soup:

Mish-Mashed Improvised Egg Drop Soup

5 cups low salt vegetable broth
1 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp cooking sherry
1 tsp dried allspice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 "nest" of dried egg noodles (or about 1/4 box)
2 eggs, beaten
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
1 tsp sesame oil

Combine broth, soy sauce, sherry, allspice, and garlic and bring to a boil over medium heat in a large pot. Add noodles and cook for the time listed on the package. Slowly pour beaten eggs into soup while stirring in a circular motion. Cook undisturbed until egg strands start to form (approx. 1 to 2 minutes). Remove from heat and stir in green onions and sesame oil. Serve immediately.

Satisfying a Craving from Halfway Around the World

It's Oktoberfest time and that has me thinking of the delicious food I consumed the last time I was in Munich. I have never been to Munich during Oktoberfest, but I did spend a good amount of time in Munich's beer halls. And while all of the beer halls were fun in their own right, there was one that had the tastiest food hands down - the Ratskeller. This restaurant is located in the bottom story of the Rathaus (which is the town hall) in the middle of the Marienplatz (which is the old town square). This building is amazing and if you ever go to Munich you should check it out (I would put up a photo, but the computer that my pictures from this trip were on got stolen - sigh).

At the Ratskeller, my favorite thing on the menu were the delicious German style potato pancakes. I have searched high and low and nothing has compared to these pancakes. The closest I have come stateside are the potato pancakes with smoked salmon at MacCool's in Salt Lake City, but seeing as I am now 600 miles away from Salt Lake that isn't really an option either. So I decided to do the next best thing to traveling halfway around the world in the pursuit of food - I decided to try and make them myself.

I started out with 2 pounds of russet potatoes, which I peeled:

I then put the grater attachment on my food processor:

And they came out looking like hash browns:

I placed the potatoes in a dish towel and attempted to wring out most of the moisture from them. Then, I mixed them with one egg, 1 Tbsp flour, and 1 tsp baking powder to bind the potatoes together and dropped them into hot vegetable oil on the stovetop, like so:

I cooked the pancakes for about 4 minutes (until they started to brown), and then flipped them over and cooked them for another 4 minutes on the other side:

Then I transferred them to a cookie sheet and baked them in the oven at 425 F for 3 minutes per side to get them extra crispy (if you prefer them less crispy, you could skip this step) and they came out looking like this:

I topped them with a dollop of sour cream, smoked salmon, and chopped fresh chives:

Serve these with your favorite Oktoberfest lager - prost!

Ladies Who Brunch

***REMINDER: If you haven't had a chance to yet, please hop on over to YouTube, log in/create an account (you have to have an account or your vote will not be registered), and "like" my video - I really want to win those cooking lessons! And of course, if you have already voted - thank you! I really appreciate the support.***

Wow, September 21st already. It's crazy how time flies.

I had another moment of the realization that time goes by while you are too busy to notice the other day when I had my friend Darlene over for brunch. Darlene is turning 30 this week. The fact that we are both turning 30 this year got me thinking about the fact that we have been friends since we were 10 years old. Which means (of course) that we have been friends for 20 years now. It's hard for me to wrap my head around all of the experiences we have shared in the 20 years that we have known one another, or how we suddenly got to this point without even realizing it. But most importantly, I feel so incredibly blessed to have a friend that I have shared 2/3 of my life with!

When I used to live in San Diego prior to graduate school, Darlene and I used to get together once a week and make dinner at one another's houses. Now that we are a older and have a bit more money, we tend to get together over drinks at happy hour or going out for dinner. But I thought it would be a nice change of pace to get together over a homemade meal and decided to switch it up by making brunch.

For our brunch, I decided to try making a frittata. I had never made one before, but it appealed to me because it's the type of dish where you can throw whatever you have on hand into it, pop it in the oven for 20 minutes, and come back to a complete meal. What's not to love about that? I kept my recipe very simple with only 4 ingredients, but as I say, the beauty of this recipe is that you can glam it up anyway you like by changing the type of cheese (a sharp cheddar or smoked gouda would be amazing) or adding more veggies (peppers or white onions come to mind).

I started my frittata by chopping up a bunch of green onions:


I added the chopped onions to 2 cups of hashbrowns in a skillet over medium-high heat:

Then I whisked together 8 eggs and seasoned them with salt and pepper:

After the hashrbown had crisped and started to brown (about 8 minutes later), I poured the eggs into the pan:

Then I crumbled a package of garlic and herb goat cheese:

And added it to the egg, potato, and green onion mixture:

And mixed everything together:

Then put it in the oven at 375 F for 20 minutes:

After 20 minutes, take the pan out of the oven, place a plate on top of it, and invert wearing oven mitts ON BOTH HANDS (this is key - I burnt the bejeezus out of myself when I held the plate without an oven mitt on). It came out looking like this (not perfect looking, but delicious tasting):


I served it with smoked salmon and Laughing Cow cheese on ciabatta toast.

I Need Your Support!

Dear Blog Readers,

I hate to be a pest, but I need a favor from you. My apartment complex is holding a competition called A Taste of Archstone. The resident with the cooking video that gets the most "thumbs ups" will win a trip to Napa to take cooking classes at the Culinary Institute of America. I really, really, REALLY want to win! But I can't do it without your support!

Here is what I need you to do:

1. Log into or create a YouTube account.

2. Click on my video and give it a Thumbs Up - you can do this once per day now through Sep. 25th.

Thank you so much friends - you know that it would mean the world to me to get the chance to learn some new cooking skills. And I promise I will share all of the fabulous recipes and new techniques I learn with all of you if I win!

Thanks for your support and for continuing to read my blog - I love you all!

For the Love of Pasta

If you frequent this blog then you have probably noticed a trend around here - pasta. I really do love pasta in all iterations - fresh, dried, stuffed, it really does not matter to me.

Please allow me to go off on a bit of tangent about running for a moment (I promise that it will all make sense later if you are patient enough to bear with me). The other day I had this crazy idea to register for a half marathon. I say this is crazy because I have not run in almost 3 years. At all.

I used to be a fairly avid runner. I ran The Other Half Marathon in Moab, UT two years in a row back in 2005 and 2006. (As a side note, if you happen to be looking for a half marathon to run, I highly recommend this one. It is a mostly flat course interspersed with just a few gently rolling hills and it winds its way along the Colorado river through red rock country. Absolutely beautiful and truly the perfect weather in October.)

In training for this race for the third year in 2007, I broke my foot. It was one of those super lame bone breakages where you can still kind of limp around but your foot is swollen and in mild (but not excruciating) pain. It actually took me a month to go in and get an x ray because I was convinced (and naively hopeful) that I just had a bad strain. Not so. I had broken the middle bone in my foot, just below the toe. I was not so comfortingly informed by the student health nurses that a cast will not help such a bone heal, and so I was relegated to wearing a mini-boot and put on crutches for 3 months - not so fun when you have a hyper little 2 month old puppy running around.

In the years that followed I swam for exercise and avoided running like the plague. But recently I started to get the itch to run again. It's like a bad addiction creeping up for a relapse. At first you think about it once or twice and then shrug it off, but the more you try to push it out of your mind, the more it tends to creep back in slowly. Maybe it was watching my sister get so excited for her race. Maybe it was all the years that my runner friends in Utah and I talked about running the Big Sur Half Marathon but never followed through with it. Perhaps it was driven by the fact that I am turning 30 in a little over a month (gasp) and feel like I couldn't run to the mailbox if I needed to. Or maybe it was a combination of all of the above. Whatever the impetus, dear readers, the itch to run came back and it came on strong.

So I took the plunge. I registered for the Big Sur Half Marathon. It is 10 weeks away. I am pretty sure that I may be insane. But damn it, I'm going to do it anyway!

I got off to a great start by skipping my first scheduled run (it was on Labor Day and I was on a road trip - excuses, excuses, I know). But yesterday I drug myself out of bed and I ran 3 miles. And while this is really no big accomplishment for any seasoned runner, the fact that I can still walk today (although I am a little sore) after not having run in 3 years feels like a victory in and of itself to me. And to be perfectly honest, it really wasn't all that bad (see, I told you - I am officially going crazy).

But now back to the pasta. Sweet, delicious pasta. As I was looking over my training guide, I came across this little gem of a statement, "Carbohydrates provide the fuel runners need. During half marathon training, 65% of your total calories should come from carbohydrates." HALLE-freakin'-LLUJAH my friends! I just got a license to make 65% of my diet be composed of carbs (not that I really needed an excuse, but hey, they gave me one). Don't mind if I do! And while the following recipe is probably not what that running guide had in mind, I decided to take a few liberties because I just ran 3 miles and I wanted to celebrate with some cheesy cheese-filled pasta (and really, is there any other way to celebrate such a victory?).

Baked Tortellini (Adapted from a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis)

2 cups store bought marinara sauce
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese
1 pound cheese tortellini (you can also substitute penne or rigatoni if you think the tortellini make the dish too heavy)
2.5 ounces grated smoked gouda
1/2 cup grated mozzarella
1/4 cup grated parmesan

Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray a 2 quart round pyrex baking dish with non-stick cooking spray (if you lack a round pyrex, a brownie pan will also work). Mix sauce and mascarpone in a large bowl. Cook tortellini in large pot of boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and add tortellini to sauce, stirring to coat evenly. Transfer to baking dish and top with grated gouda, mozzarella, and parmesan. Cover with foil and bake for about 30 minutes, or until cheese melts.

The deliciously cheesy pasta mixture prior to baking.

The finished product - served with garlic bread to ensure complete carb overload.

Running, Ravioli, and Gelato

The runner, complete with finisher's medal (and ice pack).

This past weekend my sister Anne ran her very first half marathon - and rocked it's socks off for that matter, by finishing in a mere 2 hour 2 minutes and 29 seconds! To celebrate her efforts, I decided to treat her to a glutinous dinner (what better way to celebrate getting up at 3 a.m. to run 13.1 miles?).

Anne's favorite food on the planet is ravioli. It doesn't matter what type of ravioli it is, she loves them all. Although I have tried to make homemade pasta once or twice before, I have always been too afraid to try making ravioli. But in honor of her effort at trying something new, I decided to get over my fears and try something new too.

The first step in making homemade pasta is making the dough. This starts with 4 whole eggs:

which you whisk together with 1 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and 1 Tbsp of salt. Place 3 cups of all purpose flour in a food processor and add egg-oil-salt mixture. Pulse a few times to combine, then stir for about a minute. When you are finished, the dough will not be smooth and will look something like this (I think it looks like couscous):


Remove dough from food processor and form into a ball on a lightly floured surface:

Cover with saran wrap and let the dough "rest" for 30 minutes. After the dough is done resting, roll it into sheets using a pasta maker to your desired thickness. There are all sorts of fancy pasta makers out there, but I own an old fashioned hand operated one:

Once you have finished rolling out all of your pasta sheets, let them rest for 10 minutes on a cutting board:


After the dough has rested and started to dry somewhat, cut the sheets into the desired width of your ravioli and spread your filling on the sheets. The filling I used for these ravioli consisted of 1 small package of goat cheese (4 ounces), 1/3 cup of grated parmesan cheese, and 1/4 cup of mascarpone cheese mixed together with 1 tsp dried basil and 1 tsp dried oregano, pictured here:


Then I used a ravioli attachment to my pasta maker to roll out the ravioli. (If you don't have a ravioli attachment, never fear - you can cut your dough into squares by hand and pinch the dges together with a fork to seal them.)

Once I had rolled out all of the ravioli, I laid them out to dry on a drying rack for another 10 minutes:

Then I got to work on the following sauce (which, by the way, was so delicious that I wanted to eat it alone as a soup):

Brown Butter Walnut Sauce

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp dried rosemary

Melt butter over medium-high heat. Add walnuts and saute until golden - about 2 minutes:


Add garlic - saute for another 30 seconds. Add wine and simmer until mixture reduces by about half. Add both herbs and simmer for another minute. Toss with ravioli and serve:

It looked so perfect that I almost didn't want to eat it. Then I smelled it and I got over that really fast. :)

And because no glutinous feast would be complete without dessert, we also had homemade nutella gelato. I use Giada's recipe for this gelato, which is fantastic, although I do recommend that you strain it twice - once after you make the custard (as she says) and once after you let the custard and nutella mixture cool overnight in the fridge, because it comes out looking super clumpy and unappetizing like this:

So I put a strainer over my ice cream maker and pour it through, like so:

Then it enters the ice cream maker looking like chocolate milk:

And you'll know it's done once it starts to thicken up, like this:

Scoop it into bowls and eat it fast - it melts really quickly since it has no preservatives! Or you can freeze it for up to a week (but I highly doubt that you'll be able to resist eating it for that long).

Mmmm - gelato.