Apple Rhubarb Cobbler

I'm on a roll cleaning up my refrigerator. Got a little under a pound of rhubarb - 8 Granny Smith apples and a LOT of Fuji apples. These Fuji apples.... They are probably the most delicious, sweetest, crunchiest kind of apple in the whole wide world. So I won't cook them. The other two I can't eat. Too sour. There were here to be baked! And I got HUGE delicious apple rhubarb cobbler for many many breakfasts to come...

I started of the recipe from Jamie Oliver's Happy Day with the Naked Chef cookbook. But I ended up making this up completely. I tossed the fruits with sugar instead of balsamic vinegar. I used less butter - less flour - no sugar at all in the batter. I added oatmeal - walnuts and baking soda. I also used fat-free plain yogurt instead of buttermilk and in larger portion.... Surprisingly, the cobbler came out pretty and delicious!



Ingredients

• About 3/4 pound of rhubarb - cut into 1-inch stalks


• 8 medium Granny Smith apples - pitted and cut*


• 1 1/4 cups sugar



• 1 cup all purpose flour


• 1 cup oeatmeal


• 1 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/2 stick butter - chilled


• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts


• 3/4 cup plain yogurt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.


2. In a large bowl, toss rhubarb, apples and sugar together.


3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, oatmeal, baking soda and salt. Cut butter into the mixture. Rub by hands until the mixture becomes consistently grainy.


4. Stir in walnuts. Stir in yogurt. Stir until everything is just wet.


5. Spoon sugared fruit into heat proof container about 13x9 in size. Drop the batter on top. Bake for 40 minutes or until the top looks pretty.


6. Let cool and serve with yogurt for breakfast or with ice cream for dessert.

* I didn't peel the apples because I was too lazy to peel 8 apples. And I heard that apple skin is healthy - full of fiber and all kinds of nutritional values!

Green Curry Fried Rice with Ground Turkey and Spinach

.... or how I used all things leftover in my refrigerator. Well, the ground turkey wasn't exactly a leftover. I picked it up on the way home from a supermarket. I was actually thinking about cooking red curry fried rice instead because it's more would have been prettier. You know - green spinach on red background. But I made that a bunch of times. I wanted to try something new.



Ingredients

• 5 cloves garlic - minced


• 2 inches fresh ginger - minced


• 1 onion - chopped


• 1/2 pound ground turkey


• 1/2 cup green curry paste


• 3 cups staled cooked rice


• 1 cup frozen mixed vegetable


• 1/2 pound spinach - very roughly chopped


• 2 tablespoon cooking oil


• Fish sauce

Directions

1. Heat a huge non-stock pan on medium high heat. Add oil. Stir in garlic. Add turkey. Stir vigorously for a few minutes. Add ginger and onion. Add green curry paste. Stir and stir and stir until turkey looks cooked.


2. Stir in rice. Stir some more. Let cook for a few minutes. Add frozen vegetable. When the vegetable becomes un-frozen, add spinach. Turn off the heat. Mix everything together one last time. Season with fish sauce if needed.

So - there - I used up my old ginger + onion + stale rice + all leftover spinach from the weekend + frozen vegetable. And I got yummy spicy fried rice for dinner and lunch!

Mission accomplished.

Spicy Spinach Salad

Was at the farmers market again today. I can't help it. Whenever I see a farmers market - I have to stop and buy something. This time I bought 4 pounds of Fuji apples and about 2 pounds of spinach - since I promised myself to eat more fruits and vegetables...

I came up with this recipe for the spinach from what I have in the refrigerator. It's based on Yum-Tua-Phoo but with spinach instead of Tua-Phoo, fresh shallots instead of deep fried and without chicken and peanuts. The salad came out delicious! Aroi mak mak. So delicious that I started to think I'm a genius.



Ingredients

• About 1/2 pound fresh spinach - thoroughly cleaned - roughly torn by hands


• 4 shallots - chopped


• Lime juice from 1 lime


• 2 tablespoons sugar


• 2 tablespoons Nam Prik Pao - roasted chili paste in soy bean oil


• 2 tablespoons fish sauce


• 1 tablespoon crushed dried chilies


• 2 hard boiled eggs - sliced

Directions

1. In a small bowl, mix lime juice, sugar, Nam prik pao and fish sauce until everything dissolves. Add more fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and/or dried chilies to taste.


2. In a big bowl, toss spinach, shallots, eggs and the sauce together. Make about 4 servings.

Rhubarb Muffins

Rhubarb... What are these stalks? Raw - they are very very tart with slight buttery flavor. They look like celery but with red tint. I've seen the name in pies, jams, and fruit clobbers. I have seen them in farmers markets in the summer. I'm making muffins from them...

I found this website dedicated to rhubarb: rhubarbinfo.com. It's got all kinds of recipes and things you can do with rhubarb. I picked rhubarb buttermilk muffin recipe for my muffins - with a few changes.



Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar


• 1 egg


• 1/4 cup canola oil


• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1 cup buttermilk


• 1 1/2 cups finely chopped rhubarb


• 1/2 cup chopped pecans


• 1 cup wholewheat flour


• 1 cup all purpose flour


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• 1 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• Light brown sugar and ground cinnamon to sprinkle on top of muffins

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line muffin pan with liners.


2. Beat sugar, egg, oil and vanilla until smooth. Beat in buttermilk. Stir in rhubarb and pecan.


3. In a separate bowl, combine wholewheat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to the wet ingredients. Mix until just wet.


4. Drop by tablespoonful into prepared pan. Sprinkle light brown sugar and ground cinnamon on top of the muffins. Bake for 18 minutes. Make 12 muffins.

These muffins are good but not great. Rhubarb sinks to the bottom of the muffins. Next time if I'm making this again - I'll try butter instead of oil and walnuts instead of pecans, since I can't really taste the pecans, increase rhubarb to 2 cups, and fold rhubarb and nuts at the end instead of at the beginning.

Apple Walnut Muffins

These muffins are really good. They are simple - full of apple every bite and sweet without using a lot of sugar. I don't know what kind of apple I used. They are the kind that were $2 for a bag of 4 pounds. They were very sweet but not crisp at all. Kind of like over ripe apples but they didn't look overripe. They were perfect for muffins.

I used Jumbo Fluffy Walnut Muffin recipe from AllRecipes.com with some modification. I used only 1/2 cup of sugar, substitute 1 cup of wholewheat flour for all purpose flour, used butter milk instead of milk and skip the topping.



Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter - room temperature


• 1/2 cup sugar


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 2 eggs


• 1 cup wholewheat flour


• 3/4 cup all purpose flour


• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon


• 2 teaspoon baking powder


• 1/2 cup buttermilk


• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts


• 2 cups thinly sliced apple (I didn't peel) - about 4 apples


• Brown sugar and more ground cinnamon for muffin tops

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line muffin pan with liners.


2. With electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add vanilla.


3. In a separate bowl, combine wholewheat flour, all purpose flour, cinnamon and baking powder.


4. Stir in half of the flour mixture and buttermilk into the wet ingredients. Stir until just blended.


5. Fold in apples and walnuts. Drop by tablespoonful into prepared baking pan. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon over the batter. Bake for 20 minutes. Make 12 muffins.

Yum-Neur (Thai Beef Salad)

London Broil cut was on sale. Buy one package and get one free! So I bought about 3 pounds of the meat. Ate the first half and froze the rest. Sorry meat. I didn't know when I would cook again....

Five days later... I used it for a beef salad.

This is a variation of Labb recipe. Instead of ground meat, I used pan-cooked beef - sliced thinly. I also wanted to use peppermint in the salad but couldn't find any in the supermarket in the neighborhood. So exactly the same ingredients as Labb will do.



I ate this over iceberg lettuce -- no rice!!! I was feeling very healthy.

Fig and Date Muffins

I bought dried figs and dates a while back to make this anise fig and date cookies but I don't have anise. Never got a chance to buy it. ... Actually I lied. I saw anise a few times in stores but I thought what would I do with the spice other than these cookies.... And I never bought it.

So I'm using the dried fruit for muffins instead. Problem was that I couldn't find a recipe. The closest one I found was this fig and date bread. I'm baking this recipe in muffin pan.



Ingredients

• 1 cup chopped dates


• 1 cup chopped dried figs


• 1/4 cup butter


• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• 1 cup boiling water


• 2 eggs - lightly beaten


• 1/2 cup sugar


• 3/4 cup all purpose flour


• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder


• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line muffin pan with liners.


2. In a medium bowl, mix dates, figs, and butter in hot water. Stir until butter melted. Add baking soda. Stir gently. Let sit for 15 minutes.


3. Mix all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder and walnuts in a separate bowl. Stir in eggs.


4. Add the dry mixture into figs and dates mixture. Stir until just combined. Spoon into prepared muffin pan and bake for 30 minutes

These muffins are way up there in my favorite muffin recipe list. Very easy to make. No need for any fancy tools.

Seeds from figs gave the muffins interesting texture. Dates gave this burnt sugary smell. Half a cup of walnuts gave just the right crunch. They actually taste like very very good fruit cake.

Guinness Chocolate Cake

I had to bring a cake to a birthday party - a very intimate one - with only 5 girls. The party was at this Japaneses restaurant called K on West Broadway and Watts. The place was great. It's BYOB and we ended up finishing all 3 bottles of wine, a bottle of champagne and a medium size bottle of vodka. I was drunk.... Anyway, I wanted some thing chocolate-y and not too big to bring. I found this recipe at Little Bouffe. It's perfect. The cake is only one layer so it won't be too big. It's a chocolate cake. I've never tried this recipe before. And it's got Guinness! I modified the recipe a little bit - especially the amount of sugar in both the cake and the frosting - since the girls don't really like sweet things.



Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons butter


• 1 cup Guinness Stout


• 4 oz. (4 cubes) semisweet chocolate


• 1 1/2 cups sugar


• 3/4 cup sour cream


• 2 eggs


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 2 cups all purpose flour


• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda



• 1 cup confectioner sugar


• 1/2 cup heavy cream


• 1 package cream cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat 9 inch springform pan with non-stick spary.


2. In a sauce pan over medium low heat, melt chocolate and butter in Guinness. Be very gentle when pouring the Stout and when stirring.


3. When everything melted, turn off the heat and add sugar. Stir until well combined.


4. Whisk all purpose flour and baking soda together in a medium bowl.


5. Whisk sour cream, eggs and vanilla in a small bowl. Add this to Guinness mixture. Whisk gently until combined. Pour over flour and stir until we get a batter.


6. Bake in the prepared pan for 50 minutes. Let the cake cool.


7. Prepare the frosting by beating sugar and heavy cream with electric mixer. Add cream cheese. Beat until light and fluffy. Frost. Sprinkle shaved chocolate to decorate over the frosting.

People at the party said the cake was great but I think they were being nice. The texture was a little dense and it's not chocolate-y enough. Maybe it's because I used semi sweet chocolate instead of unsweetened. I might use 5oz. of chocolate the next time I bake this. I wonder if I beat the butter and sugar and eggs then add other ingredients - the cake will come out fluffier. I'm going to try it the next time I have a birthday party...

Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies

There's a bottle of tahini in my cabinet. Heard it's good in hummus. Problem is that I don't really eat hummus by myself watching TV. So I was delighted to see this recipe on Cookie Madness. Finally! I'm going to use it for something!



I followed every word in the recipe. Problem is that that batter was so dry it was difficult to ball the dough. Pieces of chocolate chip, oatmeal, walnut kept falling out of the ball. So I just mushed everything together hoping for miracle in the oven.

But there's no miracle....


Fall out cookies.

I had one of the cookies. Although they are not pretty, they don't taste half bad. Just the right amount of crunch - a little salty - and chocolate chip level sweet. Tahini added interesting aroma. I would maybe use less chocolate the next time. I try to make the batter less dry with milk or something.

Update:
I made these cookies again. These time I followed the recipe from EatingWell.com. I just reduced sugar to 1/3 cup and skipped the brown sugar all together because I thought the sweetness from chocolate chips was enough. The cookies came out delicious!