yummy granola bars

The most yummy thing that we've made in Food & Fitness class to date has been these granola bars. I made them at home with the recipe modified to my liking.

First, the wet mixture: 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup honey, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.



Then the dry mixture: 2 cups puffed wheat cereal, 2 cups rolled oats, 1 cup dried apricot (chopped), 1/2 cup salted almonds, 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips.



Combine the two mixtures and drop into a greased 9 x 13 pan. To press the mixture down without getting your hands all sticky, use a greased piece of parchment paper.



Bake in a 350F oven for 20 minutes or until golden. Then let cool for at least an hour before attempting to cut it. Mine didn't cut very well but you might be able to avoid that problem with either a little more honey, or a little more hardcore cooling (in the fridge or freezer).

Feel free to substitute with your own favorite puffed cereal, dried fruits, nuts/seeds, etc!

thai red curry paste

In Sauces class we deviated from the classic cream/butter sauces to do something herb/spicy (the other mode of getting flavor). Specifically, Thai red curry paste!

I've only made Thai curry a handful of times, and always with packaged pastes. So making this from scratch was really exciting.

I started out with the dried spices - 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, 2 cardamom pods, 1/2 tsp black peppercorns, 1/2 tsp salt.



Ground all of that with the mortar & pestle until it was powder.



Next were some ingredients I haven't worked with before: galangal (similar to ginger), lemongrass, what is supposed to be kaffir lime (but was actually just regular lime), and what is supposed to be coriander/cilantro root (actually just the stems and leaves). Even in culinary school we have to do Americanized substitutions, haha.



We did get authentic shrimp paste though. This stuff is potent.



The recipe called for 10 dried chilies and 10 fresh chilies (I assume red bird's eye chili), but we made do with what we had. From left to right, I used 10 dried guajillos, 1 fresh fresno and 3 green bird's eye chilies.



Then there was a lot of mincing of the fresh ingredients. Clockwise from the top: 2 teaspoons lemongrass (lower portion), 1 teaspoon lime peel, fresh green chili, fresh red chili, 3 tablespoons shallots, 3 tablespoons garlic, 1 teaspoon galangal, 1 tablespoon cilantro stem, and 1 teaspoon shrimp paste in the middle.



Everything went in the mortar and pestle and was ground up. The dried chilies had to be soaked in water, de-seeded and pureed before it could go in though. All in all the yield was about 5 tablespoons.



For each tablespoon, you sautee it with some oil, add 1/2 cup coconut milk, then a dash of palm (or brown) sugar and fish sauce. We cooked chicken with red bell pepper, basil and kaffir lime leaves. It was delicious.

marzipan figures

As part of the sculpture I'm working on at my internship, we needed little people figures. Chef ordered a whole box of modeling marzipan expressly for this purpose.

My first task was to make a bunch of different marzipan colors. There were some colors left over from last year that had dried out, but became workable once heated (in the microwave for ten or so seconds) and incorporated with new marzipan.

I portioned out the same amount for each color.



Used food coloring and kneaded the marzipan to get the right color and consistency.



After repeating this process a dozen times (and getting my hands dyed different colors), I had a whole "crayon box" full of colors.



For the figures, I made torsos, legs, hats and shoes. In all the colors.



The faces got eyes, noses and ears.



And then I made marzipan Oprah. (Chef was doing a bunch of celebrities.)



And then we needed monsters, so I shaped whatever my fingers felt like. Didn't know I had that much imagination! (They became Oprah's new friends.)

portion control

Maybe because of Food & Fitness class and in general being ever more conscious of what I eat, I have been changing what/how I eat. Not dieting or avoiding foods, but by 1) eating smaller meals and 2) eating more often. This and lots of dance/exercise means fast metabolism and healthier being.

I think portion control and exercise is a much less stressful way to go than dieting. And portion control doesn't have to involve much of saying no - part of it is switching things around and tricking your eyes.

An example here is how I eat lunch at my internship, where everything is plentiful and self-serve. I take a plate and fill it with salad, then I take a bowl and fill that with starch and meat. It's a reversal from how things usually go, where the plate is starch and meat, and the bowl would be salad. (Which reminds me of the video we watched in Food & Fitness - it talked about Americans planning entrees around meat with starch and vegetables as sides instead of the other way around.)



Also, once I'm full I don't eat any more. Which is hard because I was brought up to eat everything in front of me, to never waste food. So I try to gauge my hunger level and only get enough food that I can finish. (I no longer feel bad about throwing away junk food though. In my mind since it's devoid of nutrients, it's not waste.)

So if you're contemplating healthy changes in diet or lifestyle, I would recommend portion control, and exercise. You don't have to say no to yourself to look good and feel better!

jazzing up ramen

My friend Jenn came over for dinner one evening and I had no idea what to make. She said she liked ramen but I only had the instant kind! She didn't care. But I didn't want to not live up to my culinary student-ness, so I jazzed it up with some sides.

Turkey bacon (because I was curious), caramelized onion, diced tomatoes, Momofuku kimchi (made with the SF Food Adventure Club).



As for the broth, I used regular chicken broth. (Still need to get around to making dashi.) But what was exciting was making my first soft-boiled eggs. Just cracked them right into simmering (small bubbles on the side, not yet boiling) water and watched the whites coagulate in front of my eyes, no sous-viding necessary.



Topped everything with some cut-up nori strips. Not too shabby!