Happy New Year!
I still have a huge backlog of pictures sitting on my hard drive and camera, waiting to be posted. I might just make the next few entries picture-only, with minimal text, just to get it all out.
But today, my friends, I give you a recipe!
To be quite honest with you, I was a bit afraid of making quiches. That is, before I realized how easy quiches are to make. The quiches pictured above are crust-less (I was too lazy to make a crust for these mini-quiches, but if you want a crust, you can make one yourself, or buy a premade crust and line ramekins or a pie dish and then do everything else the same).
Quiche-in-a-Cup
Ingredients:
- 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- mushrooms (I used oyster mushrooms– depending on your preferences, shiitake could also work)
- onions, diced
- 3/4 cups swiss or gruyere cheese, grated
- Japanese breadcrumbs (panko), to sprinkle
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 2 medium-sized ramekin (I used two teacups)
- Preheat the oven to 375 deg F.
- While the oven is preheating, saute the onions in a little butter or oil on medium-high heat until slightly browned. Add a little bit of salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat.
- Stir fry the mushrooms similarly, then add the onions back and mix.
- In the ramekins, put half the cheese.
- Split the mushroom-onion mixture evenly between the two ramekins.
- Top the two ramekins with the remaining cheese.
- In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and cream. Mix thoroughly and add the salt and pepper.
- Pour the egg and cream mixture over the cheese in each ramekin.
- Sprinkle some panko on top of each ramekin– this will create a slight crunch, adding to the texture when it comes out of the oven.
- Put the ramekins on a baking sheet (to catch possible overflow while it is baking), and place in the oven. Bake for approximately 30 minutes (a paring knife inserted in the middle of the quiche should come out clean).
Serves 2.
Variations:
- Non-vegetarian: Add cooked bacon or ham.
- Asian: I tried it with scallions and fish cakes (kamaboko), while removing the mushrooms. It had a very Asian flair, which was somewhat contradictory to the cheese in the quiche. But I liked it. It was interesting.
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**Note: I put this in the “Simple College Cooking 101″ category because if you have the materials, it is actually really simple to just mix everything together, and then toss it all in the oven. Technically speaking, you don’t necessarily need to pre-saute the ingredients. I prefer doing it when there are mushrooms involved so that I don’t lose the texture of the mushrooms in the quiche. It’s also a very easy template to begin with, and there are so many variations to the theme. Try them all! Let me know how it goes!
Filed under: Homemade, Recipes, Simple College Cooking 101, photography, vegetarian | Leave a Comment
Tags: cheese, cream, egg, Food, Homemade, mushroom, quiche, quiche in a cup, recipe, Simple College Cooking 101, vegetarian
A Traipse Through Wine Country
I love wine country, and when my friend offered to drive a few of us up to Napa and Sonoma because his girlfriend needed to pick up a few cases of wine, I eagerly accepted. Napa Valley! Sonoma!
We started off in Sonoma’s Hanzell Vineyards (we got a bit lost in the process), and ended at Joseph Phelps Vineyards. The picture you see above is one of Hanzell’s vineyards. Beautifully breathtaking.
I have been to Napa and Sonoma three times in my life now. The first time was for my cousin’s wedding in Sonoma, and the second time was last year with my friend, Delida. I’ve got to say– each time has been different, and I’ve learned something new. Part of it is going with different people, part of it is my palate developing and understanding the flavors I am experiencing, and part of it is just the different vineyards I am exploring. The first time, I was underage and traveling with my father, uncle, and cousins. I got a little sip of sparkling wine from Domaine Chandon, but I had no idea what I was tasting. Just that it was bubbly. And that there is a lot of chemistry behind creating wine– which was just fine for me. As a biochemist, I was highly interested. Unfortunately, our guide didn’t go too much into technical details.
The second time was after several years of occasional wine tasting with friends from high school, and with a slightly more developed palate. However, both Del and I were completely inexperienced when it came to wine tasting, and when we went, we weren’t sure what we were doing. Plus we got to Napa Valley so late we were only able to taste a few without much of the accompanying lectures and lessons that make wine tasting so interesting for novices like me. Also, we had no idea which wineries to go to. We ended up exploring Mumm and Peju.
This time, with my friends Jason, Janice, and Sara, I was in the company of some wine connoisseurs! Janice is a member of Hanzell and Joseph Phelps and regularly receives wines from their vineyards. She and her boyfriend, Jason, clearly know what they’re tasting. And Sara, as well. I was the one admitted noob in the car.
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Hanzell Vineyards
It was fun at Hanzell. They had a rack of all of their wines in order by year. To the left you can see me with the wine from my year. :D
Our tour guide said it was their way of making sure that younger visitors were all of legal drinking age. A smart way to check, if I may say so myself. I wonder how much it would cost for a good wine from the year I was born . . .
The wines we tried at Hanzell were mostly whites. I bought one, in the end, although by the end of the day I was regretting not having bought more wines from them. Next time, eh?
In the meantime, I’m still dreaming of how beautiful those fields are.
The Napa/Sonoma Crew (from L–>R): Jason, Janice, Sara, and me!
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Joseph Phelps Vineyard
Then we were off to Joseph Phelps Vineyard! I didn’t know this before we went, but apparently Joseph Phelps is a very high end (read: expensive) wine. And Janice is a member, which meant we got to have a complimentary wine tasting.
AND we got to mix our own Insignia (a line of special wines created by mixing different Joseph Phelps wines). It kind of reminded me of chemistry class in high school. We had six wines in front of us, plus an empty glass and a pipet. Haha! So we pipetted our own mixes and tasted them.
I have to admit, it was kind of fun. If only our classes in college were so fun . . .
After the Insignia-mixing session, our instructor took us outside to taste the actual Insignia from the past couple years. I wish I could say that it was mind blowingly awesome, but to be honest, my mouth was so puckered from the tannins in the wines that I could not truly taste anything properly, despite the large number of crackers I kept stuffing in my mouth.
I don’t have that many pictures from Joseph Phelps’. But it was beautiful, as this picture evidences.
The first picture of the Joseph Phelps series (with the wine glass and bottle), is from my tasting of Backus, which is supposedly an amazing wine that retails around $150-200 per bottle. Heh.
I really enjoyed that trip out to Napa Valley and Sonoma. I learned a lot about wines, and I think my appreciation for them has increased incredibly over the past year or so. As I sat in some lessons and the people were sniffing out very specific aromas (citrusy? flowers?) of the wine, I felt very lost. But I am confident that my wine-IQ will increase.
I didn’t buy anything at Joseph Phelps’ (unfortunately it is slightly out of range for this lowly law student’s budget), but I did come away with an increased appreciation for wine. And for the people whose passion for wine allows them to sip wine all day, every day.
We made a few other pit stops that day, including one for lunch at Bouchon Bakery, where I bought a lot of bread items. But that will be an entry for next time.
In the meantime, Happy Holidays, everyone!
Filed under: Travel, friends, law school, photography | 2 Comments
Tags: Food, friends, Hanzell Vineyard, Joseph Phelps, Napa Valley, photography, Sonoma, wine
Happy Holidays from the Air!
Isn’t this pretty? I took it on my airplane on flight from home back to SF in October this year.
I was planning to post about food, but I just wanted to write about my current [AWESOME] situation. Specifically–> the fact that I am sitting in a jet plane 35,280 feet in the air and 2190 miles from Washington, D.C., right now. And by right now, I mean, literally right now.
It’s kind of super awesome. Maybe I’m excited by little things, but having free access to the internet while traveling home is kind of fun. (It’s bad in the sense that I should be sleeping during this red eye, but great in that I am totally able to waste time surfing the web instead of writing my last term paper, which is due Friday.) In any case, Virgin America is pairing up with Google to provide its customers with free wifi on its flights from now until January 15. Cool? Definitely! Yay!
Anyway, I just endured a grueling period of second year law school finals. I have no idea how I did, (and, technically, I am not done yet because of that last paper for my Law and Bioscience class) but at this very moment, floating thousands of feet in the air, I feel free, free, FREE!
That being said, I should probably take a nap so I can get a head start on the day when I land in Virginia at 5:45 a.m.
And with that, I leave you all with a teaser of what my next entry will be about.
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Tags: airplane, free, IAD, photography, san francisco, SFO, washington dc, wifi
This semester has passed by at an enormous rate. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was running around the beaches of Southern California like a carefree bird? All of a sudden I found myself back in the brisk and breezy air of San Francisco, rushing from day to day to keep up with law school. It’s been a busy semester (the second year is always worst), made especially bad because of a multitude of activities I’ve seemed to overload myself with. Between performing all the duties that come with being the President of our school’s APALSA, futilely trying to study for the Patent Bar, looking for a job (seriously, it’s like a part-time job), and studying and reading for class, I’ve effectively become a hermit.
But you knew that already.
So what am I really talking about? The fact that I am almost half-way done with law school. The last day of the semester is this coming Tuesday, and finals start right after Thanksgiving. Once I survive this round of finals, I’m halfway there! Or so I tell myself. I’d still have to pass the bar, but that is one hurdle I’m not going to contemplate until I reach it.
[[Speaking of which-- Congratulations to all the recent takers of the California Bar Exam who passed! Congratulations-- it's quite an achievement. This entry is (in part) dedicated to you! ]]
But the rest of the entry I must dedicate to those of you who, like me, are suffering through finals. You can do it! Fight through! 1Ls– study hard! 2Ls– study harder! 3Ls — stop studying (so I can have an easier curve)! Just kidding about that last one. Sort of.
Anyway, I’m posting a recipe that I had been wanting to try for the past two years but never had a chance to because I was afraid. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was afraid because this has got to be one of the easiest bread recipes I’ve ever tried to date. Probably the easiest in the world. It certainly doesn’t require much effort or physical prowess, that’s for sure. Just time. And the reason why I’m posting this now is because, even though it takes time to make this bread, it also takes so little effort that it actually saves time. You just start it one day and by the next you have a fresh, hot loaf of crusty, delicious bread!
The only caveat is that you need a dutch oven. I got one as a birthday gift from my parents. The one I use can hold up to 2 3/4 quarts.
And it’s really not that messy at all. Here’s the recipe (as appropriated from the New York Times; the original can be found here):
No-Knead Bread
Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
- ¼ teaspoon instant yeast **I used Active-Dry, which is all I have in my apartment– I just let it sit longer than instant yeast.
- 1¼ teaspoons salt
- Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed. **I didn’t have either– I just used regular flour.
Directions:
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. **I usually try to go for a longer rather than shorter time to allow the gluten to fully develop.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
*Note: Don’t try to eat the bread right away. It will be extremely hot.
Now you know this, you can make it every day (it’s that simple), or you can make it for an easy bread for Thanksgiving or Christmas, etc.
And to all my fellow student sufferers who are studying and cramming at this very momeny — good luck on finals!
Filed under: Homemade, Recipes, bread, law school, photography, vegetarian | 1 Comment
Tags: baked, bread, Christmas, Food, Homemade, law school, new york times, no-knead bread, photography, Thanksgiving
Banananananana! Na! Na!
You know how sometimes there are just those mornings when all you want is a pancake?
I had one of those mornings last week. So I made pancakes.
I just happened to have flour (ok, so that’s not surprising– I always have flour), eggs, sugar, etc. Actually what I did have that I don’t always have was milk.
Milk. This is important, people. My lecture of the day.
DRINK MILK.
My doctor told me that women are much more susceptible to osteoporosis (the loss of calcium from the bones) than men because of our monthly gift from nature (oh joy). And then he went on to tell me that Asian women– especially ones of the smaller, more petite variety– are even more susceptible than usual. So on my very first appointment with him, he recommended that if I wasn’t drinking milk regularly to go out and buy calcium tablets and eat them twice a day.
Yessir, I see your call and raise!
I one-upped him.
How? I started drinking milk again. I hated drinking milk as a kid, and the only reason I drank it every day for breakfast was because my mother forced me. I developed a technique of chugging the entire glass within ten seconds while holding my breath so I wouldn’t have to taste it. Childish, I know.
Then, when I ran off to college, I stopped drinking milk altogether. I disliked American soy milk, and regular milk was just too gross by my standards. So for half a decade I avoided drinking milk like the plague.
But when the doctor orders more calcium in my diet, I heed his call. And so now I drink milk again.
And my doctor was quite proud of me. The next time I saw him, it was really great to see him break out in such a huge smile and say, “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard anyone say!”
I feel proud.
SO DRINK YOUR MILK, PEOPLE!
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That being said, if you’re interested in making these pancakes, I’ve made them before, and the recipe is here: Banana Pancaker. I made this batch with a little bit of rice flour added in, but I don’t think there was enough to make a difference.
Enjoy!
Filed under: Homemade, Recipes, photography, vegetarian | 5 Comments
Tags: banana, breakfast, Food, Homemade, milk, pancake, photography, recipe, vegetarian
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