Happy Valentine's Day! I hope everyone got to spend time with your loved ones and family. It was our first valentine's in our new house and it was so lovely. My husband and I celebrated a day early with a meal with ingredients from Whole Foods. Whole Foods has amazing fruits, vegetables, seafood and meat sections, but the prices are high so it's not a place to frequent. We had ribeyes, fillet mignons, huge sweet cocktail shrimps, a fresh mexican avacado salsa and a dessert which I will elaborate further on. My husband is a man of the grill and for those who have tried it, they're nothing less than big, juicy and melt in your mouth sensations.
My small group sisters and I also really enjoyed a special surprise from the brothers. A home cooked meal! There is nothing more heartwarming to come into a room of guys who have gone out of their way to make the day special for us. Menu?
A crab cake salad that had a heart shaped crab cake filled with a lot of crab, under it was a round slice of apple with a heart carved it in, all on avacado accompanied by a spring mix. Second course was creole and lime zested mahi mahi with sofrito rice and steamed broccoli. They were served by the guys with papertowels draped over their forearms, with a "tantalizing" description of what was being served to us. Truly an impressive and well thought-out presentation.
Dinner tonight will be eftover Mahi Mahi with the fish taco toppings leftover from last week. In a few entries back, we went to the Cheesecake Factory to sample fish tacos to taste a professional way to make them and after Bobby Flay's restaurant on tuesday, the inspiration came to try one of his fish taco recipes. It was like many other fish recipes except for the tomato salsa topping that included jalepenos, serrano peppers, ancho chili powder, chipotle sauce that gave it a good kick. It was served warm over a mix of cold veggies.
FOODIE NOTE: a good way to make a dish more appetizing is to have a variety of textures. Bobby Flay used the hot and cold contrast on top of the characteristic of tender Mahi Mahi against the crunchy cabbage that make it appealing.
This run of fish tacos turned out well which is a relief. I overcooked Mahi Mahi on the first run and during dinner, it was an angry fish in our mouths, but this time, happy. Oh, the art of practice.
VALENTINES DAY TREATS
So back to the topic of Valentines day, we brought the party to my husband's office on Saturday made WHOOPIE PIES! Traditional Whoopie Pies are chocolate cakes with white icing in the middle, but to make it a Valentine's day theme, they were made into Mini Red Velvet hearts, filled with cream cheese frosting and with a little red crystal sprinkles on top. I got it off a website recipe and made them just a tad smaller than it called for, but if you want to give it a run, here's the recipe.
Whoopie Pies
Red Velvet Whoopie Pies
Ingredients:
For the cookies:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 oz. red food coloring
For the frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2½ cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375˚ F. Using a heart template cut out from card stock, trace evenly spaced hearts onto pieces of parchment paper sized to fit two cookie sheets. Place the parchment on the cookie sheets so that the side you have drawn on is facing down; set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and brown sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the egg until incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Blend in the vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, beat in about a third of the dry ingredients, followed by half of the buttermilk, beating each addition just until incorporated. Repeat so that all the buttermilk has been added and then mix in the final third of dry ingredients. Do not overbeat. Blend in the food coloring.
Transfer the batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large plain round tip. Pipe the batter onto the parchment paper using the heart tracings as a guide. Bake 7-9 minutes or until the tops are set, rotating the baking sheets halfway through. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets at least 10 minutes, until they can be easily transferred to a cooling rack. Repeat with any remaining batter. Allow cookies to cool completely before proceeding.
To make the cream cheese frosting, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment beat the cream cheese and butter on medium-high speed until well combined and smooth, about 2-3 minutes. Mix in the vanilla extract. Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar until totally incorporated, increase the speed and then beat until smooth.
Transfer the frosting to a clean pastry bag fitted with a plain, round tip. Pair the cookies up by shape and size. Flip one cookie of each pair over so that the flat side is facing up. Pipe frosting onto the flat-sided cookie of each pair, leaving the edges clear. Sandwich the cookies together so the flat sides are facing each other and press gently to help the filling reach the edges. To store, refrigerate in an airtight container.
Foodie Note: The recipe says to pipe the batter through a bag with a tip, but no worries. You don't need to have the tips to do this. You can use a ziplock bag, fill it with the mix, cut off a little of the tip at a time to adjust to how much you want it to come out and start piping. Also, feel free to add some kind of sprinkle some red colored crystals on top to give it more color. I took two off the top of the batch for some dear friends. :)
And for our Valentine's dinner dessert... a mini cake! This cake is better kind of plain or ugly on the outside. I used both. Breakdown, 10% plain with 90% ugly. I used processed red velvet cookie parts from the Whoopie Pies into tiny crumbs, used the icing from the whoopie pies and whipped up some scratch white cake for the rest. So what does an 10% plain with 90% ugly cake look like?
But it sets up the surprise for the inside. Don't judge a book by it's cover also applies to cakes.
Cool Culinary Success.
SOMETHING COOL
On the topic of COOL, I practiced a dish that is out of season this weekend, but I am practicing naeng myun for a future purpose. For the most part, preparing it is not too hard, but getting the flavor right for the soup in mool naeng myun is the most challenging. Bibim naengmyun is a little more straightforward. For a first run... not bad, but there is always room enough to soup something up, of course. It'll take a few more times to get it up to a "secret recipe" level. So if you would like to learn, here is one link that shows a way to make it. It's the mangchi lady that my friend Jess told me about. She's a Korean version of a cooking show. She really pulls out a mangchi (hammer) in this segment. It momentarily terrifies you, but the feeling is instantly calmed when you see what she uses it for.
http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/cold_buckwheat_noodles_naeng_myun
So the soup was made, but our refrigerator was currently full, a large part taken residence by a kimchi tong . Problem is that this pot of broth needed to be chilled. First, I scooped some of the soup into ice cube trays for later use. The use of broth ice cubes during serving allows the broth to be very chilled and an undiluted taste. So that was about 2 scoops of broth, but there was still a whole pot left of this soup. Problem and in need of solution.... Hmm...It's cold outside and the soup needs to be cold. How do we fuse the weather into the broth? ..." Good ole fashioned resourcefulness.
Bon Appetite!
FY
