You’ll Never Guess the Trick to Crispy Bacon

So my husband has always tried to convince me that his trick to crispy bacon is the best. Part of me still can’t get my head around it, but I’ve had to accept it does do a darn good job. The surprise is … The microwave!

So his not-so-secret-anymore method is..

1) Pan fry strips of streaky bacon until it’s starting to turn pink and curling up.
2) Put a couple layers of paper towel on a large microwaveable plate and place the bacon in a single layer. Place another couple paper towels on top. Microwave for 2 minutes.
3) Take it out and replace the paper towels. Wipe off any excess juices. Microwave for another 1 to 2 minutes until crispy.

You’ll be so surprised – I tell you! I was super spoiled today with my hubby making me a breakfast of super crispy bacon, caramelized onions, leftover steak, toast and fried sunny side up eggs. Yum! Hope you all had a lovely Sunday!

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ARTICLE: The Truth About Mexican Food

As a Californian born and bred, I obviously LOVE Mexican food. My husband likes to make fun of the fact that the majority of my cooking has either tomatoes and/or cilantro (coriander) in it – whether it’s Mexican, some other Latin dish, Vietnamese or Italian. But when you grow up eating the goooood stuff, you become addicted. I go through major withdrawals when I’m in the UK. It’s just not the same. But I spotted this CNN article and thought it was totally appropriate. There are hole in the wall Mexican ‘delis’ (like the one a small road surrounded by farms not far from my parents’ house) and there are gourmet Mexican restaurants like The Mission in Scottsdale (who had a stand at the BBQ Festival I went to last year). The hole in the wall is simple with its classic burritos done so well and SO economically. Then there’s The Mission with anything from Green Chile Duck Confit in a sultana serrano peanut mole to Duck Carnitas Empanada with duck, foie gras, orange, habanero, oregano, mushroom and queso oaxaca. But like any cuisine, there are times to experiment with the gourmet and there are times to treat yourself to some straight forward classics done well. This reminds me I’ve been dying to have a good tamale!

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Being a food tourist (UK Edition)

For the last couple of weeks, Chris and I have been showing my parents, aunt and uncle around the UK. As you’ll know from my blog, my family loves food. So it was only fitting that food was a central part of being a tourist with me!

We started in Birmingham for our 2nd wedding celebration with friends and family. We were blown away by our amazing caterers – Celebration Caterers– who fed us so well with the creamiest homemade pâté, incredible roast pork with the best crackling I’ve ever had, delicious vegetarian lasagna and much much more.

Homemade pâté with a clarified butter top

Served with rustic bread, mixed green salad and red onion chutney

Our next stop was to the Lake District to the family caravan. I couldn’t believe how lucky we got with weather! Loads of sunshine the first day and barely any drizzle the next. I promised the family that they were in for some of the best fish and chips and Cumberland sausages and they were not disappointed. You can’t really go too wrong with these classics!

Next stop – London!

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USING A WHOLE CHICKEN

While there are endless possibilities of how to use a whole chicken, here are a few different things I tried last month. They’re hardly sophisticated dishes but rather me using up a few items in my kitchen.  You can easily start off with poaching a whole chicken in a large pot of water, or you can carve the chicken while raw. So using one whole chicken I made: 

• Chicken & Mushroom Tortellini
• Potato Florentine Bake with Ground Chicken & Bacon
• Asian-style Chicken Stock
• Glass Noodle Soup with Shredded Chicken & Beef Meatballs

For the tortellini and the potato bake, I used the two large chicken breasts which I carved from the raw, whole chicken. The remaining carcass and leg meat was used to make the stock, and the leg meat was shredded for the noodle soup. All of these dishes were whipped up spontaneously and I haven’t had a chance to make them again. However, I do have a couple suggestions on how to improve them in case anyone wants to try them out! 

First up is chicken and mushroom tortellini. I had an afternoon free the day I made this, so I was playing around a bit. I had originally wanted to make ravioli which I remember watching Giada de Laurentiis (Food Network) do with wonton wrappers a long time ago. Of course, I ended up with way more filling than necessary so I made tortellini to maximize the use of my wonton wrappers. Giada’s recipe for turkey-cranberry ravioli sounds quite good and I kind of worked off that. My ingredients included: 

• Chicken breasts, ground up in a food processor
• White button mushrooms, finely chopped
• Eggs (1 for mix, 1 for egg wash)
• Breadcrumbs
• Garlic and onion, finely chopped
• Parmesan cheese
• Seasoning – salt, pepper, basil or thyme
• Wonton wrappers 

Now my method was to just combine all the above ingredients and fill each wonton wrapper. However, like many others, my wonton raviolis came out a little watery after boiling them. I was able to correct it by tossing them with some butter, a few more sliced mushrooms, white truffle oil and more parmesan for garnish. But as I’m writing this, I have another thought… 

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ARTICLE: To salt or not to salt

An article was published over the weekend on NYTimes.com regarding recent campaigns on salt – http://nyti.ms/a3NYva.

As you may have noticed over the past few years, there has been lots of buzz over “newly discovered” super foods. Coincidentally, availability of these super foods has dramatically increased. Of course there are foods that were already available like blueberries, but now things like acai and goji berries are more widely known. It’s not just the occasional infomercial selling them either. They’re in smoothies (ex: Jamba Juice) or Starbucks stores or trail mixes and of course health shops (ex: GNC).

Alternatively, there’s also been news on what’s harmful to us as well. Trans fats have become enemy #1 to the extent that many US cities now ban all use of trans fat. This especially hit the fast food industry although I’m not sure what the financial impact has been. Another public enemy has become salt which studies have linked to high blood pressure. Of course the expectation is that there would be pressure on food producers and restaurants to reduce their use of salt. But it’s not as simple as, for example, reducing sugar usage by replacing it with artificial sweeteners. The article discusses this point in more detail, but what I find interesting is the difference between countries regarding food campaigns such as this.

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NY TRIP (PART 1) : SUPERMARKET ENVY

Sunset on the Hudson with Adi

This past week or so, I made a much-anticipated return trip to New York to meet up with my boyfriend, many of my old friends from school and work, and even my good friend Bryce who drove down from Boston. Now because it’s me – all of my friends knew to prepare for a little drinking, a little dancing but most importantly a schedule organized entirely around where, when and with whom I would be eating. 🙂 

Over seven days, I walked all over NY, ate, drank and had great conversation with great friends. I don’t know how I’m really going to capture how wonderful (and long overdue) this trip was, but I’ll get there slowly. 

First up – supermarket envy. 

The first two days of my trip I spent with my dear friend Adi whom I’ve known now for almost 15 years (believe it or not). Adi is currently living in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn where I stayed with her the first two days of my trip. I’m embarrassed to say that in the year I lived in Manhattan (from ’06 to ’07), I only ventured into Brooklyn once and it wasn’t a memorable trip.  But this time I couldn’t believe what I saw – Park Slope is absolutely gorgeous! Of course, it didn’t hurt that the day I landed was the first day of great weather NY has had in awhile. I have to say, if I ever move back to NY, I might have to live in Park Slope! 

So – back to the point – Adi and I had a foodie-filled two days and one night from Park Slope to Chelsea to West Village. I’ll get to the eating bits in the next post. I wanted to start off with something Adi said only I would have – supermarket envy.

First stop – Union Market in Park Slope.   

The minute I walked into this place I gasped at the gorgeous display of fresh fruits ranging from the usual bananas and oranges to mini pineapple and plantains. I literally just turned my head to the left and another gasp came out when I saw that they sold heirloom tomatoes – big, giant ones. This was the first time I had ever seen them being sold before which probably doesn’t say very much about the super markets I go to. But nonetheless I was very impressed by their size and the variety of colors. There seemed to be a lot of mini-sized vegetables which I am always thrilled about (such as cauliflower and artichoke). 

   

 

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Why I Love To Cook

“In what art or science could improvements be made that would more powerfully contribute to increase the comforts and enjoyments of mankind?” – Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (In a 1974 essay on the Art of Cookery)

Cooking can be described as many things – necessity, art, science or even a waste of time.

I know for some it’s an odd career transition that I’ve made – corporate finance/accounting to culinary school/food management? What does that even mean? While I currently have it in my mind that food development is what I want to do, I am aware that the education I am about to embark on will invariably change what I now think I know about food and the industry. But for now the transition just comes naturally to me.

You see.. The science aspect of cooking appeals to my need for everything to have a right answer. Despite the obvious flexibility of food, there are certain things that are just fact. For example, the temperature at which chicken is cooked, the amount of yeast needed to make bread rise, the success of growing certain vegetables during certain times of the year or the fact that egg whites when whipped becomes white and fluffy…

Similarly there are excel formulas, macros, SOX (not talking sports for non-finance folks) and US GAAP. And let’s face it numbers never lie. Well, what I mean is 1 + 1 will always be 2. And I have to sadly confess balancing a general ledger, making a pretty spreadsheet or teaching someone a new excel trick is still fulfilling in some twisted way. However, I still adamantly disagree with my family that I was “meant to be an accountant” (probably partly due to the fact that I’m quite stubborn and independent). But I also know this because despite being able to geek out on excel for hours, there has always been some part of me dying to be creative, free-spirited, spontaneous or even a little irresponsible. I also really enjoy making others happy which accountants don’t exactly do. In fact, to offset my guilt, I occasionally brought home-cooked food or even jelly beans into the office as peace offerings when asking someone to explain some accounting concept or other.

 

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