Last Minute Christmas Shopping and My New Camera Bag

I am so excited! I just received, in the mail, my new *emera camera tote. I ordered it last Thursday and it was shipped the same day. I can’t believe how quickly Nathiya was able to process the orders. She must be superhuman.

I would post a picture of the bag and how I plan on arranging my “equipment” but I am exhausted. I did speed shopping after work today. I work two blocks from Cherry Creek mall (I can see Macy’s and Sak’s from my office) but I still managed to procrastinate on the holiday shopping. Every single time I thought about shopping, I would get a panic attack and as a result of the panic attack, I would order something for myself.

Today, I forced myself to go to the mall (my intention was to go during the day but that didn’t happen) after work and buy for everyone on my list. I did it in less than two hours. I did wimp out and buy a few gift cards but a majority of the gifts were real gifts. I was a little frustrated because I wanted cute stuff for my friends' babies but most of the stores I went to either had no children’s section or a pathetic selection. I didn’t get the first or second choice items for the little ones but I still managed to get some cute stuff.

I’ll post more about my bag when I get a chance.


***Edit***

I finally took a picture of the bag and how I pack everything for traveling. I used the bag on my latest trip to San Diego and will likely use it on the snowboarding/skiing trip later this month and on the trip back to San Diego the following week for my friend's babyshower.

The camera goes in the compartment on the right. The middle compartments holds a wallet and a lens (in the round red bag). The compartments on the left holds cords, cards, adapters and a pack of Kleenex. The zipper holds an iphone and/or ipod.

There was still plenty of room so I tossed a small purse on top of everything.
The red satin bags are from last season's MAC holiday makeup brush kits. I bought two sets and never used the bags. Each set came with the small flat zipper pouch and a cylindrical zipper pouch. I use the flat ones for carrying small flat camera accessories such as SD cards and Memory Stick Duos. I use the cylindrical pouches for lenses.

Why do I love pretty bags so much? The bag is almost perfect. If I could ask for a design change, I would ask for a small pocket on the back to slip a small-ish laptop in. I love my current laptop bag but it is a bit much to carry both the camera tote and the laptop bag on an airplane. Below is the laptop bag that I always get compliments on when I travel. It is a Chinese silk brocade bag from Abbi New York. Everyone thinks it is a special designer bag. I got it on sale at TJMaxx. (Shh...it is my secret.) I didn't do a very good job taking pictures of it. Go to this site for better pictures and a nice review.

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Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Nut Cookies

I’ve been using the same recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies since the 90s. This recipe is found on the canister of Quaker oatmeal. It is my mom’s favorite cookie. I remember making it one year and sticking a clean penny in one of the cookies. The idea was the lucky winner would win a prize. The person almost broke a tooth. I was young and stupid.

Ingredients
½ cup (1 stick) plus 6 tablespoons butter, softened
¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
3 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
1 cup raisins
1 cup walnuts, chopped

1. Heat oven to 350°F. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed of electric mixer until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well. Add oats and raisins; mix well.

2. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

3. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered.

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Red Chile Pork Tamales

The bf starts to talk about his grandma’s tamales during this time of year. He is not going to visit his grandparents this Christmas so I decided to make some tamales for him. This is not his grandmother’s recipe. I told him to get her recipe while he was in Illinois last year. He ate the tamales and forgot about the recipe.

So I’m winging it. How hard can it be? A few days before making the tamales, we made a trip to Rancho Liborio Market and grabbed the ingredients. What do I need? Corn husks? Check. Masa? I bought the kind for tamales. They also had already fresh masa for tamales but I bought the dried stuff instead. Chiles? I have New Mexicos in my pantry but I wanted to use a different chile. I bought guajillos and anchos. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to use but ended up using the guajillos. Lard? I have some of the hydrogenated stuff at home but I wanted the fresh stuff. I wandered to the meat sections and found manteca fresca sold in clear plastic tubs. The lard was very liquid-y and was not exactly white in color.

I started cooking the pork on Saturday, while making the cranberry sauce and cream puffs that I was taking to a Hannukah party in the evening. I finished the tamales on Sunday. We are celebrating the holidays from around the world. Saturday was a Jewish Hannukah celebration and Sunday a Mexican tamale tradition. Too bad I won’t be around to help my friend do an Italian Seven Fishes Christmas Eve dinner. I will be in San Diego and we are having my family’s holiday tradition: Dungeness crab.

Tamales take a lot of work but they are not that difficult. My version is a little more time intensive than the bf's grandmother's version. I think the wrapping is what takes the most time consuming part. My version is pretty darn good. The chicken green chile version is next on the list.

Red Chile Pork Tamales
Yield: 3 dozen (I made double but posting the halved recipe.)

Day 1:

Cook the Pork:

1 tablespoon oil or lard
4 pounds pork shoulder
3 cloves garlic
salt
2 bay leaves
black pepper
water, to cover

1. Cut the pork shoulder into 3-4 pieces. Heat a large sauté pan or dutch oven, add oil and when oil is hot, add pork and sear all sides.
2. Add the garlic, salt, bay leaves, peppercorns and water and bring to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer and cover. Cook three hours or until meat falls off bones. Strain and reserve cooking liquid.
3. Shred pork and set aside.
(I actually cooked the pork, left it in the cooking liquid and refrigerated it. The next day, I slightly heated it until it de-gelatinized.)

Make Red Chile Sauce for the Filling (I made mine on the second day but it can be made on the first. I ran out of time because I was making cream puffs and had to leave the house to help a friend fry latkes.)

1 1/2 oz whole dried chiles, stems and seeds removed
1 tablespoon lard
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
boiling water to cover chiles
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
½ tablet Ibarra Mexican chocolate
salt
pepper

1. Toast chiles in oven about 1- 2 minutes. Don’t let chiles burn.
2. Heat a large sauté pan, add lard and then add onion and garlic. Saute until onions are translucent.
3. Add toasted chiles and cover with water.
4. Bring to a boil, lower heat to a simmer, cover and simmer about 15 minutes or until chiles are soft.
5. Blend the chiles with onions, garlic and simmering liquid until liquefied.
6. Return to sauté pan, add shredded pork and chocolate and season with cumin, Mexican oregano, salt and pepper. Cook until liquid is absorbed.

Day 2:
Start by soaking the cornhusks in hot water and weighing them down with something heavy. The lid from a cast iron dutch oven works well.

Masa:
1 cup lard
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ancho chile powder
4 cups masa
3-4 cups warm pork broth

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whip lard with baking powder, salt, and ancho chile powder.
2. Add masa, one cup at a time, mixing after each addition.
3. Continue to mix while slowly, adding broth until you reach the consistency of soft cookie dough. Mix for another ten minutes. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Assemble Tamales:

1. Drain and pat dry the rehydrated husks.
2. Clear off a workspace and gather your husks, masa and filling.
3. Spread a thin layer of masa on husk.
4. Spoon some filling down the middle.
5. Wrap and fold the husk.
6. Steam about one hour.

Tamales waiting to be steamed:

And the finished tamales...and the empty wrappers

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Cream Puffs (Pate a Choux and Creme Patisserie)

The first time I worked with choux pastry was at Johnson & Wales. I wasn’t a pastry major but part of the entire culinary arts program included a rudimentary pastry class. I remember hating the piping part so now I take a shortcut and use the scoop and drop method. This method works really well for me. The key is to have a bowl of water next to the baking sheet and after dropping the balls of dough on the baking sheet, dip your fingers in the water and smooth out the rough edges.

Tonight is the second night of Hanukkah and we were invited to a celebration at a friend’s house. There were several adults and a dozen little ones. My friend asked me to make my cranberry sauce and I decided to make cream puffs for dessert. I usually do profiteroles filled with gelato and drizzled with a warm Kahlua chocolate sauce but since this year was not an intimate sit down occasion, I decided to do cream puffs instead of profiteroles.

Make the pastry cream several hours or the night before making the puffs.

Pastry Cream:

2 cups half and half
½ cup sugar
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon cake flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1. Mise en place.
2. Place 1 ½ cups of the half and half , half the granulated sugar and the salt in a pot; bring to a oil.
3. Place the cornstarch, the remaining sugar, and flour ina bowl; slowly add the remaining milk, and whisk together well.
4. Add the egg s to the cornstarch mixture; combine well.
5. Temper the cornstarch mixture, and add to the boiling milk.
6. Bring the mixture back to a boil, stirring constantly; cook for 3 minutes.
7. Remove from heat; stir in the vanilla and butter.
8. Whisk well.
9. Cover and refrigerate.
GLOSSARY
Temper: to equalize products with two extreme temperatures or textures.

COOKING TECHNIQUE
Tempering: Whisk the eggs vigorously while ladling hot liquid into them.


Pate a Choux:

1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
5 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Bring milk, butter and salt to boil in heavy medium saucepan. Remove from heat.
3. Stir in flour. Cook over medium heat about 1 ½ minutes, until the mixture is smooth and forms a ball.
4. Remove from heat. Transfer dough to the bowl of mixer. Using the paddle attachment, mix dough on low speed until it cools slightly but is still very warm. Beat in eggs, one at a time on medium speed, making sure the egg is fully incorporated after each addition.

5. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment or silpat. Drop walnut-size pieces of dough onto sheets. Smooth out dough using wet fingers.
6. Bake until puffed and beginning to brown, about 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees; continue baking until puffs are brown and very crisp, about 10 minutes.

Make sure you fully bake them or they will deflate. This was my first batch and I forgot about this very important detail.

To Assemble:

After puffs have cooled and pastry cream is chilled, slice the puffs, fill with pastry cream and drizzle with (or dip in) melted chocolate.

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Cranberry Chicken

It was very cold and snowy yesterday so I decided to channel 1950s-era cooking and try out a recipe I found on the Kraft website. This type of cooking is often referred to as “dump cooking” and the recipes as “dump recipes.” These recipes are easy and require almost no measuring. They are perfect for those busy weeknights.

The cranberry relish is not leftover from Thanksgiving. I made another batch on Saturday, using the remaining cranberries that served as frogs for my floral arrangement.

I made a few minor changes to the original recipe. Instead of breasts, I decided on drumsticks. Instead of canned cranberry sauce, I used homemade cranberry relish. I also decided to pan-sear the drumsticks before baking them with the sauce. Many people just dump everything into a slow cooker and press the button.

3 pounds chicken drumsticks
salt
pepper
2 cups cranberry relish (or 1 can cranberry sauce)
½ bottle Kraft Catalina dressing
½ package onion soup mix

1. Mix together relish, dressing and onion soup mix in a bowl and allow to sit. Wash chicken and pat dry. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat a cast iron skillet on medium heat. When skillet is hot, sear chicken until golden. Transfer chicken to a large baking dish. (I would have use the cast iron skillet but the chicken was too crowded. If your skillet is large enough, you can skip the transferring step.)




2. Pour sauce over chicken. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Let the chicken soak up the sauce while the oven preheats.

3. When oven is preheated, bake chicken until it reaches 165 degrees, turning chicken once or twice during cooking.

That is it. Now serve it with some canned green beans and crescent rolls.

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Roasted Lemongrass Chicken

Growing up, we always hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 50 to 100 people over the course of an entire day. We had turkey for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snack. Earlier in the day, we usually cooked the turkey Asian style and serve the slices of turkey in lettuce wraps with vermicelli noodles, chili-lime dipping sauce and crushed peanuts. In the evening, we usually had a traditional turkey meal with the sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and cranberry relish. Somewhere in between we would dig into the Chinese barbecue turkey.

The day before Thanksgiving, one of my many "cousins" would drop off the turkey at the Chinese barbecue restaurant and have the turkey roasted in the restaurant’s duck roaster. This turkey was usually picked up some time around mid-morning and usually became the second style of turkey for the day.

Unfortunately, over the years, many of my family and friends have moved to other states. Gone are the days where we would move from one house to the next and Thanksgiving was a day long affair. Gone are the days where we would cook four turkeys to feed the “family.”

This is still one of my favorite ways to cook turkey but I don't get to make it very often because I now have Thanksgiving with my gringo friends and they expect a standard roasted turkey without exotic flavors. (The drippings don't make a very tasty gravy either.) When I’m in the mood and do not feel like cooking a whole turkey, I will make it using bone-in turkey breast, Cornish game hens or in this case, a smallish chicken. The lemongrass paste is also very good as a filling for pork roulades.

2 stalks lemongrass, cut into 3 inch pieces
4 kaffir lime leaves
8 green onions
2 inch piece ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch cilantro
handful Thai basil
5 Thai chilies or 2 jalapenos
salt
MSG
Black pepper
1 chicken
1 piece galanga root

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Put all ingredients except chicken and galanga into a food processor and process to medium coarse paste. Alternatively, you can do this in a large mortar with a pestle.


Clean and drain chicken. Season inside and out with salt, MSG and black pepper. Break galanga root into small pieces and mix with the lemongrass paste. Stuff chicken cavity and under chicken skin with paste mixture.


Roast chicken at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, lower temperature to 350 degrees and continue to cook until chicken reaches internal temp of 155 degrees. Take chicken out of oven and allow chicken to reach 165 degrees.

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Raw Cranberry Relish

I used to cook my cranberry sauce on the stove top but last year I decided to make a raw version. I found that I preferred the raw version over the cooked. This year I made the relish the night before Thanksgiving and kept it refrigerated until dinner.

The pictures are not from Thanksgiving. I forgot to take pictures so I remade the relish today. It looks exactly the same as the one I made for Thanksgiving. Now I need to figure out a way to use almost a quart of cranberry relish.

Raw Cranberry Relish

1 12 ounce bag fresh cranberries, washed and drained
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
1 cup apple juice (I like to use Odwalla)
1 teaspoon orange zest
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup sugar

Put all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Transfer to a container and refrigerate until ready to use.
Yield: Just under 1 quart

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Baked Sweet Potato Fries

I bought a case of sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving. I only needed five pounds of it so I spent the week before Thanksgiving eating baked sweet potatoes for dessert. I think the case were of the beauregard or the garnet variety. I typically do not like this type because most of the time they are cooked in syrup and topped with marshmallows. They are also very watery. I prefer the white or light yellow-fleshed varieties such as boniato, satsuma-ino, or the puple-fleshed varieties such as Okinawan.

We were having turkey burgers for dinner one day so I decided to baked some sweet potato fries.

- Two sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch by 1 1/2 to 2 inches long (this is called the batonnet cut if you are brushing up on your knife skills)
- canola oil (I'm using Enova)
- sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Prep sweet potatoes and coat with oil and salt.
2. Spread sweet potatoes on a foil-lined baking sheet. (This is where the silpat doesn't work too well so stick with aluminum foil.)
3. Bake in preheated oven for about 15 minutes and then flip and cook another 15 minutes. Continue to flip until golden brown.

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Asparagus Stir-Fry

I had a bunch of asparagus leftover from Thanksgiving so I decided to do a simple stir-fry. I also found a red bell pepper in the crisper. Stir-fries are really simple and you can use pretty much any meat and vegetable combination on hand. I used chicken breast because I love chicken but I've made this in the past with seitan, tofu, pork and beef.


1 chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Thai chili, chopped
MSG, to taste
Salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 2 inch pieces
1 red bell pepper, cut into bite-sized pieces
fish sauce, to taste (about 1 tablespoon)
maggi sauce, to taste (about 1 tablespoon)

1. Mix chicken breast, garlic, chili, msg, salt, pepper and sugar in a small bowl and allow to marinate while prepping the veggies. Cut the asparagus into 2 inch pieces. (I am using thin asparagus so I do a straight cut. When I used the thicker asparagus, I usually cut on a bias.)
2. Heat a wok or sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add oil. When oil is hot, add chicken mixture and sauté until chicken is cooked through and slightly browned.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients, toss everything together and cover with a lid. Cook about a minute or two until asparagus is cooked. Do not overcook the asparagus.

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Happy Belated Thanksgiving

As I was doing dishes last night, I realized that I forgot to take pictures of all the Thanksgiving dishes. We kept Thanksgiving simple this year. We had: turkey, spiral ham, green bean casserole, sweet potato puree, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, raw cranberry relish, turkey gravy and pan de sal dinner rolls. For dessert we had: pumpkin pies, apple pies and a chocolate fudge pie. I made a few apps. I made little ginger marinated shrimp and snow pea on bamboo picks, pan-fried lop cheong bites and pigs in a blanket.

This sweet potato puree is lip-smacking good. Even those who do not like sweet potatoes had seconds.I don't eat green bean casserole so I made a different vegetable for myself.

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