Miso Cod

(yes that is duck on our breakfast platter)

We followed a Nobu inspired miso black cod recipe the other night. The instructions seemed simple enough - marinate a pound of cod in:

1/4 cup sake

1/4 cup mirin
4 tablespoons white miso paste (our miso paste may or may not be white)
3 tablespoons sugar (we only added 1 tsp of turbinado sugar)


Lightly grill then bake for another 10-15 minutes.

I'd say we were only about 60% successful though. One could eat it, and the mirin and and miso flavors were definitely there but it came out way too salty, and this was only after 2 hours of marinate time instead of the instructed 24! Also, I think pouring the marinate directly on the fillets before baking was a bad idea. (my bad)

But I definitely see the potential in the dish and we'll try it again soon. We'll just have to adjust some things here and there.

That night we also put together a zucchini cake that was a 100% success. J had the foresight to drastically cut the amount of sugar and chocolate that the original recipe asked for (ironically, from a diabetes prevention cookbook) and the final product came out moist, chocolaty and delicious.


Chocolate-Zucchini Snack Cakes (with our changes)

1.75 cups Whole wheat pastry flour
1.5 tsp Baking powder
 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
 1/4 tsp Salt
 2 Eggs
 1/2 cup Sugar - changed to 1/8 turbinado sugar (75% reduction in sugar)
 1/2 cup Low-fat vanilla yogurt
 1/3 cup Canola Oil
 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
 1.5 cups Shredded Zucchini
 3 cups Semisweet chocolate chips  - changed to 10 oz dark chocolate chips (~70% reduction in sugar) 

Before picture - looks like pudding or barf!

After

A Sunday for doing healthy, active things like eating.

Last Sunday...

We finally made up our minds to try bikram yoga.  Yes, even in this 100 weather.  I was browsing the internet for food deals last week, as usual, and came cross a yoga deal.  They were offering a free intro class at Bikram Yoga LES.  To my dismay, the class starts at 1pm so we had to scrap our much anticipated dim sum plans in Flushing.  We headed to Chinatown early that day and went to Vanessa's Dumpling House for some Beijing street food.  The chives and pork dumplings were pretty good but the skin was too thick for my liking  (8 for $2.5).  The wontons soup ($1.25) had the smoothest wontons I've ever had and was quite delicious!  The noodles with sauce is just what it is: noodles with sauce ($3).  It was steaming when it came out and was too hot to eat on a hot hot day.  I imagine it would be yummy in the Winter months.

After filling our bellies with carbs, we went to Bikram Yoga.  I'll keep this short.  I'm never going to bikram anything ever again!  The yoga studio is nice tho.  I would recommend it to anyone who likes to exercise in stifling heat.

From LES, we walked to Chinatown central and ate at the recently renovated Nom Wah Tea Parlor.  The nephew of the owner refreshed the decor while keeping old school.  Here're are some drool-worthy pictures.

RECAP of last Sunday:

Vanessa's Dumpling House

Bikram Yoga LES

Konditori

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

Malaysian Beef Jerky

Yuca bread is delicious....

... but, alas, is really hard to make!

Two weekends ago, my mom and I tried to make yucca bread. We followed a recipe from food network and made a slight alteration of adding egg yolk instead of just egg whites.  As you can see below, the results were yucca pancakes instead!  They were still tasty.  A happy mistake, I say!

Food Network's Version

our version: before

our version: after

I had a hankering for yucca bread after having them at Calle Ocho, a cuban restaurante at UWS.  I think I single-handedly (single-mouthedly?) had a dozen yucca buns.  It's the spongiest bread with the crispiest shell I have ever had.  We'll try again soon, and hopefully it'll stay in its cute, roundish shape then!

In other Jenbo news, my pepper plant is almost all red!  Picture from two weeks ago.  By now, all but 1 pepper are red and there are still new ones coming in! Yay!

Week 1 July 3rd - July 4th (part 1 of 4)

Despite eating a lot we don't cook very often. That is to say, never. Eating out was a pretty fun activity for a while but you can only have so many burgers or bowls of ramen before it all starts tasting the same - not to mention it was getting a little too costly for a couple of people who are, essentially, jobless.

So to feed ourselves without going broke and disenchanted we've decided to start cooking; and as long as we're at it, why not keep a running journal to track our progress? So.... let's get started.

July 3rd and 4th

As first steps into any projects usually go, this first weekend was pretty ambitious for two people with almost no cooking experience.

- Scallion pancakes

- Roast chicken and potatoes

- Sauteed snow pea greens

- cheese cake

Let me make this post about the scallion pancakes:

The general idea behind scallion pancakes can't get any simpler: Flour, water, scallions and a hot pan. In practice, things got a little ..... stickier (pun intended!)

We found a recipe on the Serious Eats blog but it called for adding boiling water to the flour. (1 cup of water to 2 cups of flour if I recall.) If you're not careful about adding the water slowly, as I wasn't, you'll end up with a sticky paste that'll stick to nothing else but your hands rather than a pliable dough ball.

We fixed this by adding more flour - teaspoon by teaspoon - to the goopy mess then massaging it until it started to look like dough again.

The rest went sorta as instructed except that they didn't come out as light and flaky as we would have liked. Some parts of some cakes were, but it was not consistent through out the cakes. My guess? 1) Not enough oil when folding the dough over on itself (not unlike the layers of butter folded into dough to form a croissant) and 2) I need to work on my hand stretching technique.

- M

After M made the yummy scallion pancakes, we whipped up a cheesecake.  Because of our concern for the health issues white sugar can cause, we decided to substitute the cup of sugar the recipe asked for with agave nectar.  Agave nectar is not lower in sugar content, but it is healthier because the body absorbs it slowly. White sugar and honey, on the other hand, will spike our blood glucose level.  We only added half a cup of agave nectar (recipe called for 1 cup of sugar) and it came out perfectly!  I was concerned the higher liquid content and lower sugar level of the agave nectar will cause the final product to flop.  Turns out cheesecake is incredibly easy to make and allows lots of room for error.  Some recipes call for 2 eggs and some call for 5.  Some call for 2 packs of cream cheese and some call for 4.  It depends on how you like your cheesecake. It's a perfect beginner's dessert to make. (I added some blueberries for effect.)

-J

We eat...

too much. :(