Thanksgiving Eve

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and it will be strange! For the first time, I'm basically cooking an entire dinner myself :) so I'll have to get cracking early. I'm planning on getting up and enjoying a leisurely breakfast, getting started on prep work, and writing my paper, then meeting up with some people for a run, having lunch, and I guess cooking for the rest of the day. Finally, an excuse to cook for enough people to make something special!
By the way, it turned out that the Autumn Millet bake needed way more cooking time than the recipe said, so I'm going to serve that tomorrow night as well, although it does seem a little redundant.
Anyways, Breakfast:
Not to be boring, but we really did have to get rid of that banana bread, and with my dad's help, it is ALL GONE! I had two pieces with peanut butter and grapes, but no hot chocolate.
I did work and stuff in the morning, and really regretted not having done any exercise... I really didn't feel like running because I had that long run with friends the day before, so I did the unthinkable... I went swimming.
It felt so strange to be in the water again, and yet not strange at all! In fact, it was comforting to me, like the rhythm of the turns and arm motions brought back tons of my memories (both good and bad). The problem is that the pool downstairs is tiny and almost too shallow in the shallow end for flip turns, but it feels amazing to have the ENTIRE pool to yourself! I had so much room that I really felt myself moving forward in my fly!
I swam for about 45 minutes-- enough for a good workout, but not enough that I was no longer having fun (yes, this workout was really FUN). This wasn't even half a swim practice...
Warmup-- 10 laps (once again, no idea how long this pool was, but I was betting that the 10 laps were maybe 300-400 yds? not even, maybe)
Then I did the normal warmup we do for meets:
Fly-- kick down, swim back, drill down, swim back
Same thing for Back
Same thing for Breast
Same thing for Free
Only I did this cycle 4 times, with 10 seconds of rest between each lap, so it wasn't terrible.
This was actually pretty time consuming, considering each "cycle" is 8 laps.
After that, I decided to do a fast IM, going at a fast pace: a lap each of fly, back, breast, and then free.
Then I did another 10 laps cool down, and my dad came down to tell me he was going to a meeting. I got all excited about swimming and did a fast lap of fly for him. That's the thing-- sometimes I get in the water and I can't move and other times it's just so fun.
Lunch-- for some reason I've gotten addicted to wraps! Also, they're too messy to take to school, so I might as well enjoy them while I can.
This wrap was stuffed to the brim and really strange... basically, I'm just trying to clear out the fridge:
Pumpkin (already mixed with some cinnamon and maple syrup)
Red pepper hummus
Portobella mushroom
Leftover Chinese grilled green peppers (with a lot of vinegar)
Black beans
Baby spinach
Weird, huh? The pumpkin got a little weird at the end... it was definitely the odd one out, but it also worked.
I also had a carrot with some more hummus and a bowl of yogurt, cottage cheese, berries and some cereal. Of course, this bowl soon became bottomless. I refilled it, then refilled it again with milk, then promptly threw it away because the milk was so sour it was disgusting. Ugh. But I still wanted more so I got a new bowl and had some cereal with soymilk. THIS IS THE PROBLEM OF CEREAL. IT NEVER ENDS. That's why it seems like having two big pieces of banana bread is fattening, but really it isn't because you know exactly how much you're eating. Maybe I should make Thanksgiving resolutions instead of New Years ones... If so, mine would be COOL IT ON THE CEREAL/yogurt/cottage cheese.
After lunch, I met up with my friend Gauri for a heart-to-heart by school. I was originally going to see Twilight AGAIN, but plans didn't work out. After I left Gauri, I went to the bookstore and sat there for a while, browsing (mostly cookbooks...).
My dad picked me up and we went grocery shopping at Treasure Island. I HATE THIS PLACE. It's so badly organized, and everybody seemed to be moving so SLOWLY... you could hardly move without crashing into somebody. This is why we do most of our shopping downtown. Also, I needed buttermilk for the cornbread, and the only kind I could find was this really suspicious-looking stuff that had a long-ish ingredients list.
When I got home, I was kind of hungry, but didn't want to eat too much in anticipation of dinner... I also didn't want to overdo it on the hot chocolate, so I made carob instead-- skim milk with a spoonful of carob, brown sugar, cinnamon, and 2 mini marshmallows. If it weren't for the marshmallows I probably would have thought it was gross.
As for dinner, we got there an hour later but we were still among the earliest. The food spread wasn't that great or vegetarian-friendly, but I managed, and it was mainly the atmosphere that I liked. I love the grad students. One guy is awesome and was playing the banjo and harmonica at the same time... he also said that I should write a book on the history of Russian-French cuisine, since the Russian aristocracy all spoke French. A bunch of people also think that if I start eating meat, I should do a section on my blog that talks about the changes that I feel physically and mentally when I start again. He said, "I bet you'll be more aggressive."
The food:
-Turkey from Whole Foods (apparently this was really good)
-Our AMAZING cranberry sauce. This was probably the only thing I ate tonight that was really worth eating, and I ate more of it than I should, since it's not too good for the stomach. Basically, it has orange zest, walnuts, and blueberries in it. Truely gourmet.
-Stuffing that came with the turkey was vegetarian and had mushrooms and a lot of rosemary in it
-homemade stuffing with sausage, wild rice, and vegetables (I would really have liked to try this....)
-Stuffed tofu skins with sesame seeds, which I LOVE
-One of our foodie friends who is awesome and has a black belt in martial arts and is from Malaysia made brandade, which she said actually took 3 days! She got the salt cod at a little Italian place by Randolph.
-Brussel sprouts
-American-style greenbeans (I think came with the turkey)-- very bland
-Some generic Asian stir-fried vegetables. I thought they were homemade, given all the Asians, and took a lot, but they were actually gloopy and probably from Noodles.
-Mashed potatoes, which I took but didn't eat because I don't really like them.
-Shepherd's pie
-Duck from Chinatown
And then our Italian foodie friend Paola showed up with cauliflower croquettes and a loaf of homemade sourdough hot from the oven!!! Unfortunately I was full by this point, but we took the croquettes and the entire loaf home! Paola has also invited me to come make pizza with her Saturday, so I'm pretty excited.
I had seconds on stuffing and cranberry sauce.

Dessert: I actually passed on dessert. I just didn't feel like I needed it. I did have bites and sips of various things.

Green tea/lemon sorbet-- this was really more like granita, and just like eating ice with a drizzle of green tea. It was palate-cleansing and made my stomach feel better.
There were also 2 sweet Korean drinks-- one was the cinnamon I like so much and one was with brown rice. I had a sip of each and decided they were way too sweet.
Other desserts: only 2 were homemade-- orange cake and pumpkin cheesecake. It doesn't like like it has pumpkin b/c it's yellow, but this student is SERIOUSLY talented. Last party she made tiramisu and it tasted just like it was from a bakery. She also manages to produce these bakery boxes and gilded stands for the cake, and decorates it perfectly. Koreans are known for being good bakers, but she hasn't even had any training... what??
I didn't have the cake, but I did have a bite of my dad's... it was amazing. It's hard to make cheesecake really delicious and not too heavy, but this was perfect. It had an oreo crust and was perfectly light and creamy.
All in all, I didn't eat that much, although most of what I ate I didn't have to. I think I am under a misapprehension that I don't get enough vegetables, so whenever I see them at a party I take way more than I should and I get full really fast. And next time pass on the cornstarch baby corn dishes... please.

Pasta Party

Before I blog about Sectionals and today, I'll go back to last night's pasta party, which was a lot of fun! After practice, we headed over to the party (practice was pretty easy-- just 6 100 yard sprint sets, warm up and cool down, and we were done!) .
It was different from my party by a lot, in that it was all Italian pasta. It was cute-- my friend Aimee's (who asked specifically to be put on the blog) parents put out vegetables, pita chips, pretzels, delicious hummus, and salsa out for us to munch.
I ate a LOT of veggies and hummus.

I really liked the way the pasta and sauces were set up-- very Flat Top-ish and clever!

There were 4 different pasta shapes: corkscrew, spaghetti, rice noodles, and ravioli, and they were all served naked without sauce.
On the side there was vegetarian marinara sauce, non-vegetarian marinara, pesto, low-fat alfredo, mushrooms, chicken, tomatoes, grilled peppers, cheese, and olives, as well as a huge salad with romaine, feta, and tomatoes.
I loaded my first plate with half salad (no dressing was really needed), vegetables, pesto, marinara, and a little of each kind of pasta. The gigantic cheese ravioli hit the spot!
For my second plate, I just got refills on marinara (I could literally drink sauce... I'm weird that way), salad and vegetables :)
Despite dessert not even being the kind of dessert I usually eat, I thought I deserved it and ate it with relish.
There was store-bought angel food cake, homemade chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, strawberries, and Cool Whip.



I wanted a little of everything (except the Cool Whip) and took half a cookie, and small pieces of each cake, along with a glass of milk to wash it down.
After dinner we sang karaoke and made signs for the meet. I was so nervous! I went home and went STRAIGHT to bed, I was so exhausted.

Pasta Lessons

This might be a lengthy post.
The reason I still haven't written about Singapore is that 1) a lot of stuff has been happening here too and 2) probably the most "Singaporean" and interesting meal (hint hint: CHILI CRAB), I didn't attend. I still feel that it's worth blogging it, so I have to convince one of my parents to write a little description.
Anyways, these pasta lessons, that were given to me by Patrizia, were given in two parts, but I decided to put them together. The first time we made tagliatelle, which my mom and I then took home. The second lesson (yesterday) was much more complicated and enjoyable, because it also included cooking: we made spinach ricotta tortelloni and vegetarian lasagna, which our families then ate together.
This post will be like a tutorial. I'll start with the tagliatelle. First of all, let me just say that Patrizia grew up in Bologna, where everything was impeccably fresh (her parents still live in a little house in the mountains over there)-- in fact, she didn't have factory-made pasta (i.e. spaghetti) until she was in her TWENTIES!
My friend Bea was there for the tagliatelle, but not so much for the second cooking lesson.
1. Tagliatelle-- Making the dough was much simpler than I would have thought. All you need is flour (wheat, not semolina, which is too hard) and eggs. No water. That's it. You pour yourself a pile of flour (we just eyeballed it). Then you dig yourself a little hole in the center of your pile and push outwards to make it bigger. This can all be done on the kitchen counter. Then you crack three eggs into the center and start to beat them into the dough with a fork. You want to gradually start beating outwards so as to incorporate the eggs into the flour. When the flour-egg mixture is no longer running, you can start using your hands to knead it together, adding more flour if it's too sticky.
Now you begin the kneading motion. Use your right hand to fold the dough over towards you, then use the heel of your hand (is that a word in this context) to PUSH outwards. Now use the same part of your left hand and PUSH again. The dough should be elongated, facing you horizontally, like a baguette. Now turn it so that it's vertical, and use your right hand to fold it towards you again. Once you get into the motion, you start to use your whole body-- I don't think I ever got that far, but for Patrizia, this motion is as natural as brushing your teeth or toasting a piece of bread.
The dough will begin to harden, but it should still remain pretty soft. You should be able to tell when you don't need to knead it anymore. It should stay in a loaf-like shape, and should have a homogeneous texture.
The next step is to slice the loaf into about two-inch thick pieces (we used a Chinese meat cleaver), then dip the pieces in flour and flatten them. At this point we need to crank out the pasta machine, which is a very simple, hand operated, and attaches to the table. The only problem with the machine is that it doesn't attach very firmly, so you need someone to hold onto it while you turn the handle. What you do is this: pass the flattened pieces of dough through the machine, and turn the handle while gently pulling the dough out as it comes through in a much thinner piece. Each piece should go through the machine about three times, or at least until they have the thickness of two or three pieces of paper.
For tagliatelle, you gently fold each stretch of dough onto itself like an accordian, then use the cleaver to slice thin pieces LENGTHWISE (too thick and it becomes fettucine). After you've sliced the pieces, you can unfold them, and see your beautiful work!!!!
Tagliatelle needs to dry before boiling (you can keep it up to two weeks). Store it folded in a dry cloth.
We took it home to eat it, but sadly, we overcooked it so badly that it became inedible! It really only needs to cook for one or two minutes, but even so, when you taste it it seems much more al dente than dried pasta. Nevertheless, if you overcook it, you WILL be sorry.

By the second pasta lesson I felt like I had started to get the hang of the dough, so it was time for some more time-consuming (and more rewarding) tasks. Although we were making about three different things at the same time, I'm going to separate them so that it's easier to understand. We'll start with the tortelloni.
Begin by boiling the spinach (she used frozen, but obviously fresh, especially pre-washed to save you time, would be better).
Combine a tub of ricotta (we had to use what was available to use here in Beijing, bought at the Western supermarket Jenny Lou's), two eggs, some parsley, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a decent-sized pile of parmesan in a bowl and combine. When the spinach-water is boiling, drain the spinach, roll it into logs, slice it, and add it to the filling.
As for the pasta itself, it's exactly the same as the tagliatelle up until the very last step-- instead of folding the sheets, use one of those ridged ravioli cutters to cut them into squares. We were making tortelloni, so they were on the large side, but tortellini are about 1/4 of the size of tortelloni.
use a knife or spoon to put a dollop of filling IN THE CENTER of each square (this part is a lot like making Chinese dumplings). Fold the square in half so that it forms a triangle, taking care to seal the edges well. Now this is the tricky part, which took a while to get the hang of. Put the triangle so that one corner loops over your thumb. Use your thumb and index finger to squeeze the corner that's further away from you, then do the same to the corner on your thumb. Now take the corner that's further away from you and loop it downwards around your thumb and bring the two corners together, pressing them so that they stay. And voila! Your first tortelloni!

I was so proud when I finally got it right.
It was right before we were about to eat when we realized that we didn't have a sauce to serve with it-- sage butter is a classic accompaniment, but we didn't have any sage (and the thought of melted butter still makes me shudder a little, neurotically), so we decided to make a simple tomato sauce with garlic and canned tomatoes.

Lasagna: Begin by slicing your eggplants (we used four of the skinny, Asian variety), then salt them in a colander to get rid of some of the excess liquid.
When you can see the water droplets on the surface of the eggplant, rinse and dry them (obviously, while the eggplants were sitting there, we were preparing other things-- this isn't an instant process).
The next step is to fry the eggplants-- since eggplant has a reputation of being disgustingly oily (I had a stirfried eggplant the day before yesterday that made me feel nauseous, because by the time I got to the bottom of the bowl, it was just a giant puddle of oil), we tried to use a minimal amount of corn oil and olive oil (at home I would use canola and olive), since using just olive oil would be too strong a taste.
Frying them is pretty self-explanatory... wait until you see golden skillet marks, then put them on a plate between paper towels to drain (We didn't need to cook them TOO well, since we were going to bake them anyway).
The pasta-- again, the same process up until the last step.
Cut the pasta sheets with the tortellini-cutter, only this time you can be much less precise about the shapes, as long as they're slightly longer. This is because even after you've already cut them, you can continue to do so so that they fit the casserole dish you're using, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. BOIL them before you layer them in the dish!!
For the tomatoes, we just used canned tomatoes-- don't even bother making a sauce. We put a thin layer of tomatoes on the bottom of the dish so that the lasagna wouldn't stick. Next, put a layer of pasta, then a layer of eggplant, then mozzarella, taking care to space them far apart, since we knew they were going to melt all over the place. Continue layering like this until you get to the top, then bake (sorry! forgot the temperature, and either way it was in celsius) for 45 minutes.

Last but not least: the simplest but most delicious apple cake.
At first, Patrizia told me she was making an apple pie, and my mind skipped to my mom's Thanksgiving apple pie: using the food processor to grind up the butter, flour and shortening, refridgerating the dough overnight, rolling it out over plastic wrap, making the filling, making an egg glaze, etc. etc. etc. How could we possibly have enough time to make an apple pie? Then I thought maybe she meant an apple tart, so we would only have to make one crust... then it turned out that we weren't even making anything as complicated as that-- just an apple cake.
Because I have no (good) baking experience and Patrizia wasn't even using a recipe, I must admit I was skeptical at first. But then it turned out to be the most wonderful, light, moist (I HATE THAT WORD but it applies here) cake ever.
ADDED: RECIPE, gotten directly from Patrizia:

Apple cake

about 200 gr flour

about 150 gr white sugar

about 50 gr butter

1 table spoon red sugar (brown sugar, but this is too cute so I have to keep it)

1 tea spoon vanilla concentrate

1 tea spoon baking soda powder

1 lemmon zest (thanks Lida, I learned this new word)

2-3 apples (depending on size)

powder instant yeast (the dose for 500 gr of flour, usually one packaging is the dose for 1, Kg.) so use 1/2 package, my favorite brand is Pan degli Angeli (Angel's Bread) no wonder it's so good

put all the ingrediants in one bowl, liquify the butter in advance, keep a table spoon of butter to grease the baking pan

peel the apples and make cubes

bake about 30 min at 200 degrees Celsius (you make the conversion)

I'm not sure of the weight, but proportions are right.

love

patrizia

In fact, I barely got any photos of the process because it seemed so simple. She combined equal parts flour and sugar in a bowl, added two eggs, a little brown sugar, vanilla, a packet of yeast, and the zest of a lemon, at the same time as melting half a stick of butter over the stove and cutting two apples into chunks. She threw everything together, mixed it, put it in the oven (didn't even preheat it!) for about 30 minutes, and it was done.

THE MEAL: We decided to eat Chinese-style, which I prefer: i.e. rather than eating in courses, we just put EVERYTHING out on the table so everyone could help themselves. This was good, because lasagna and tortelloni aren't traditionally even supposed to be served at the same meal, and I thought eating them one after the other would mean that I wouldn't be able to stomach whichever one we ate second.
Because the dads of both families are Chinese, we had some xiao chi ("little eats:" appetizers/hors d'oeuvres): spicy cabbage with vinegar, bamboo shoots, and liang fen (solid blocks of mung bean starch, what glass noodles are made of). We also had a simple salad with a balsamic vinaigrette.
My mom had bought them a bottle of red wine. I had a tiny amount to go with the fabulous dinner.
Everything was wonderful: the tortelloni really did bring back childhood memories-- they were a little bit too chewy, but perfect for me. the filling was perfect: a little sandy from the ricotta, but pungent from the parmesan. The spinach added more color than taste, but it was so hard to believe that I had made these!
But what was really the best was the lasagna, although I would have been happy to just eat the eggplant, which was meltingly tender and not too oily at all, on its own. Maybe next time I'll make eggplant parmesan.
The only problem was, after eating not even that much (maybe four tortelloni and a little bit of lasagne), I got one of my terrible stomache-aches! I actually get stomache-aches daily, and sometimes acid-medicine doesn't help. It usually feels like flames are erupting in my stomach (above my belly-button), and people say they think it's acid, but my mom wants to get me tested for allergies. Please don't let me be allergic to anything I love! I don't think it can be lactose-intolerance, since I drink a lot of milk and eat cottage cheese and yogurt (although lactose-intolerant people can eat yogurt)....
I sampled the cake but wasn't feeling up to having a piece for myself. It really wasn't an apple cake-- while the apples added texture, it was the lemon that overwhelmed it (in a good way). It reminded me of a lemon honey cake, although there was no honey in it.
After dinner, they cracked out the aperatifs, and for some reason, I really wanted to try some. I had tiny sips of amaretto (way too sweet... definitely prefer it in gelato) and limoncello.
It was a great dinner-- for once, I felt like we actually had family friends, something we don't have much of in Chicago. Cooking with Patricia was such a fun experience: she kept muttering in Italian the entire time, and I found I could understand most of it, it being a Romance language (except now I know that adesso means "now").