Category: food commentary

R☆ and I made Bailey’s Irish Cream-flavored ice cream last night (this recipe [with some extra added vanilla] from Ice Cream Ireland). It’s a custard-style ice cream with eggs that needed tempering and such. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m hoping for goodness.

This ice cream recipe intrigues me. R☆ doesn’t think it sounds good. We bought a quart of cream, though, we’ll have to do something with it. Ooh, I should find something to do with my amazing Michigan dried cherries! Maybe something like this. Cherries, rum, and pepper… oh man, that sounds REALLY good. Oh yes, before I forget, J or Barbara May, can one of you send me your cayenne chocolate ice cream recipe?

(Not sure why I’m so gung-ho on ice cream when it’s the coldest it’s ever been in northern California.)

Zed and I went to Ramen Halu on Saturday night. It has gotten some really good reviews on places like Yelp and Chowhound and is touted as having the best ramen in the south bay. I was not impressed. The broth was highly uninteresting. We both agreed that we prefer Maru Ichi in Mountain View. I should give Ryowa another try. I liked the ramen at their Berkeley location, but the MV one was meh.

I bought a very cute party dress on Sunday. It is entirely too cute.

I learned something new over the holidays.

Electric woks make the world’s best popcorn.

My dad made a batch and it was indescribable. So as soon as I got home I hopped over to the craigslist and found someone near me selling one for cheap. I’m going to try it out tonight. Hopefully I can make it as well as he did.

Has anyone seen Ronzoni Oven Ready Lasagna no-boil noodles lately? I’m trying to find them before Sunday. I’ve been to Albertson’s, Safeway, PW Market, and Whole Foods and NO PLACE HAS THEM. It’s super-frustrating. I really like the taste and texture of those noodles! I’ll try Nob Hill tomorrow, and if they don’t have them, I give up. I’ll use… I don’t know, some other brand.

So my lasagna on Sunday may have a subpar texture. But it will have awesome ricotta. I went to Whole Foods and got some of their fresh stuff- it is incredibly tasty. I had no idea that simple ricotta could taste so good!

I’m high-temp roasting some cauliflower right now. I was at Kumud Grocery yesterday and the heads were selling for 99 cents apiece. I couldn’t resist. Instead of separating it into florets, I cut it into wedges. We’ll see if that’s better or worse.

R☆ and I made ice cream Saturday night. Just plain vanilla. It’s pretty decent. I think it’s too fatty, personally- it made my teeth squeak against each other, plus I found the occasional small globule of fat. My roommates think I’m crazy, of course. I am interested in trying it with half-and-half instead of heavy cream.

Behold, the Master List! This is what I spent the rest of Saturday doing. Barbara May , would it be possible to put that link in the sidebar? I think we can delete About Me/Links… if I haven’t done anything with those in three years, I probably won’t ever.

Well, it’s about that time again (for those of us in the U.S.). Thanksgiving. What are you making?

I am in charge of the terrible, lovely, death-inducing broccoli, rolls, and a chipotle-maple sweet potato gratin that I haven’t really worked all the kinks out of yet. This is the base recipe up on Food Network’s website. It is wrong. My mom had this dish at Bobby Flay’s restaurant in Las Vegas, and it’s rather different than the one here. For starters, there’s no maple syrup in it. Secondly (and this is the big problem), there’s too much liquid in it. It won’t hold its shape.

A couple weeks ago, my parents and I embarked on a journey to fix this. We tried six different methods.

1) bake the sweet potato slices first (the best attempt, although still not right)
2) use evaporated milk instead of cream (this was terrible)
3) use sour cream instead of cream (curdled)
4) use ricotta instead of cream (bad texture)
5) add an egg to thicken the cream (nope)
6) salt the sweet potato slices first to get them to dry out a bit and absorb more cream (nope)

Last December, I tried making it using a bechamel sauce, but it broke in the oven. It was tasty, though- once you poured off the inch of fat floating on top.

Anyone have any ideas on how to make this work? I’ve still got a week to experiment.

Grr. You know what makes me mad? Er, one of the things? Establishments that overcharge on single-serving sodas. I went to Izzy’s Brooklyn Bagels today for lunch because I really like their egg salad (no celery, hooray!). An egg salad bagel is $3.25 (including tax). I decided to eat there and grabbed a Diet Coke. The total came to $5.42. I was all “Huh?” at the cashier, because dude, $2.19 for a twelve ounce can of soda is INSANE. Apparently that was right, though. So I went without soda.

The end. Good story, Sarah.

I made a cake this weekend. It’s based on the legendary Chocolate Blackout Cake from Ebinger’s Bakery in Brooklyn. It was pretty decent. Cakes are not really my strong suit, but I keep trying! I’ll post the recipe later today.

I have got to start bringing my lunch to work again. I’m spending too much money and eating too much crap. Starting Monday! I promise! It probably won’t be anything interesting for a while, but it should get me back in the game. I haven’t been doing any cooking or baking (you’ve probably noticed). Thankfully, I’m having a get-together next weekend that should, at the very least, require cookies.