parppadelle with creamy almond basil pesto and a new pasta maker!

that's right, muthhas! i got a shiny red pasta maker, all for $10!!! from where you say? well, yesterday just happened to be a good day for thrift shopping. and yes, i was slightly skeptical myself. buuutt after carefully checking to see if there was anything wrong with it, it turns out it just needed a little cleaning. it was basically brand new, and it couldn't have come at a more perfect time because i was about to ask my parents for one for my birthday :)
it looks a lot like this one. snaaazzyy ;D

i used the school's pasta recipe and it wasn't really the same cuz i had to use AP flour instead of bread flour but it was still pretty good. ALTHOUGHH one thing that i should have considered first is that they might stick together after i rolled & cut them out so i had to deal with that mess too -__-

for the pesto i used raw almonds instead of pine nuts after i saw it on a recipe from foodwishes.com, plus i never buy pine nuts anyway cuz they're soo freakin' expensive for some reason. also, i used the basil from my mini herb/vegetable garden in the backyard. yay for home-grown and a sustainable supply! :D

all in all, it was a delicious & filling meal. aaannd, i had some leftover pesto for future use on mah lazier days.

coming up later this week, a job interview this thursday! last week i went around to a bunch of different bakeries around where i live, and since NONE of them were hiring, i finally stumbled upon this place. it's for a line cook position at a place in brea, so wish me luck on that :)

AnQi garlic noodles with beef

in my Dining Room Service class, we pooled all the tips we earned during the semester and on our last day we used that money to eat at AnQi, a Vietnamese/fusion bistro in South Coast Plaza. with the tips and money from the restaurant, we had a budget of $50 per person, and it should have been enough for an appetizer, entree, dessert, and service.

AnQi is supposed to be famous for their garlic noodles, and when we had them as our entrees, it was without a doubt, very tasty. but in my mind, it also seemed deceptively simple... soo, of course, i went browsing around the interwebz looking for a recipe, which i found almost immediately! yay internet! and yes, it was INCREDIBLY easy... the recipe only had 5 ingredients! FIIVE!!! (six if you count salt, but why would you?)

chewy, garlicky, and buttery noodles, topped with sauteed beef i marinated the night before and scallions. while i doubt this dish is Vietnamese AT ALL, at this point i really don't care because it tastes good, and that's all that matters :)

so let's look and compare the differences: the slices of beef i used were thinner, and i sliced the scallions in rounds instead of strips. i also probably marinated the beef differently because i was kinda winging it with that last night haha. it's crazy how much people will pay for something so simple! i guess i have to give AnQi props though; the interior is swanky and the tofu banana cheesecake tasted WAY better than it sounded. but now that i know i can make the dish they're famous for, i probably won't ever go there again (unless someone else is paying hahaha).

honey panna cotta with mixed berry coulis and a note on mother's day

for those of you who don't know, mother's day is the busiest day of the year in the restaurant industry. yep, even busier than valentine's day! and in an attempt to avoid all the crowds and long waiting periods just for a table at a restaurant, i wanted to cook a nice breakfast for my mom instead. this has been a long-running tradition for a few years now, although it's somewhat of a feat when my mom sets her alarm to 5:30 every morning :/ these are the challenges i encounter in life!

anyway, to make the breakfast a little more memorable (no Denny's specials here!), i wanted to end the meal with something light in texture with a good balance of sweetness, creaminess, and tartness. so, for dessert i decided to make a honey panna cotta topped with a blackberry and strawberry coulis. sooo good :p

i went to Goodwill and browsed around for some cute little glasses to show off the layers of the dessert, and i found these stemless red wine glasses and little dessert glasses for $1 each. pretty good bargain for something i intend to use for future food presentations :)

panna cotta is Italian for "cooked cream." the texture is like a custard, except i think most of the recipes don't use eggs. the honey definitely gave it such a good flavor. it kind of makes me sad to look at these pictures because i wish i had one right now...
all eight of them, looking super glossy and sexy ;) i garnished each one with a strawberry quarter, a couple of blackberries, and a mint leaf from the plant we have growing in the backyard.
and here's the rest of the breakfast table scape i prepared: scrambled eggs with cheese, peppers, and scallions, salsa, cubed watermelon and strawberries (which i originally planned to turn into a nice slushie, but after cutting it i realized it had a LOT of seeds in it -___-), and carnitas i made myself. the carnitas were BOMB. and they weren't that difficult to make, either! i pretty much just put everything in the slow cooker the night before, and the next morning when i woke up i could smell it, and it was awesome. we also had some corn tortillas to make tacos with. aimee was supposed to make maseca pancakes, but she didn't wake up early enough, and she just tends to be grumpy in the morning when you tell her to do stuff :/

after going to church, the fambam and i went over to my cousin's house because they had a little lunch/dinner shindig going on (for which i made potato salad and my sis made rice crispy treats) and we pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon into nighttime over there. i spent some of that time in awe of my cousin's garden in their backyard, and also got to watch their rabbit just sit there and do nothing particularly cute... my rabbit can beat up that rabbit, good! >:D

speaking of gardens, mine is a work in progress! since we can't technically plant anything in the ground, i'm planning on having a small raised garden bed, and i already bought some plants from my school's horticulture sale last week (woot for $1 plants!). so far i have a cherry tomato plant, heirloom tomato plant, a strawberry plant, thyme, basil, parsley, sage, and mint. hopefully they'll all still be alive once the actual garden is built!

things i need to save up for:

-a good camera

-a large bag that will actually fit all the things i need plus a change of clothes

-new flats because my last pair were ruined in the rain :(

-tart pans with removable bottoms

-gel food coloring

-circle cookie cutter set

-new spatula that WON'T melt

-Wii fit

-bikini for summahtime

-school

-the future

p.s. guess who got a 25% tip at the restaurant today? YO.
aaand for dinner tonight i made chicken in a brandy and mushroom cream sauce, saffron rice pilaf, and an orange, radish, and mint salad :p

somehow managing...

...to be productive this winter break. so far i've sewn one sweater top, one skirt, and today (or tomorrow) i will attempt to make a dress. as for cooking/baking, a couple days ago i made mini scones with whipped cream and a blackberry brandy sauce. awesomenessss. today i am attempting to make miso braised pork for lunch, which i'm hoping turns out okay (it's simmering away at this very moment). pictures of the stuff i've sewn are to come later, and hopefully the camera won't make them look so crappy.

as for my personal life, winter break so far has been kind of bittersweet. it's awesome that grace could come over, even though we didn't end up getting tattoos (hahaha), but there's been a lot of other stuff going on that's been keeping me from being happy/normal/myself. family troubles. relationship problems. i need to find a way to work these things out, or at the very least, make them a little better.

school starts in a couple of weeks, and i hope that the rest of my winter break doesn't continue in this same manner :/

for a second i wanted to be a vegetarian.

actually, more like 45 minutes, or an hour, or however long the chef's demonstration took last night. he tore away at the huge section of cow carcass laying on the counter as he so gently described how male cows are castrated so that they can grow even bigger than nature would allow them. this section alone weighed about 90 pounds he said, and i thought about my friends that were close to the same weight. no wonder why i didn't see the vegan guy anywhere around that day. an entire semester on the cutting, fabricating, and manipulation of animals, and who could blame him for being absent?
as the chef described different parts of the cow, all i could think of is how i would achieve vegetarianism (is that a word?). at first people would think i was crazy, but i would convince them that i wasn't with the horrifying facts about meat. i can't even describe how i felt as he literally sawed through bones that were at least 2 inches in diameter. i never understood what a bone duster was for until then. i tried to tell myself this was just like anatomy class in high school, but i realized that even being in front of those cadavers did not make me as uneasy as this hunk of cow did. "this is where the cows head would be if he had one... MOOOO!!!" i held a sad expression on my face as the chef pretended there were some imaginary cow head attached to the carcass.

some time during the semester we will be working with veal. i have never eaten veal before, not because of choice, but just because the opportunity never presented itself to me. during the lecture the chef only said two or three sentences about veal, but just the idea of it and i started to get sad. a baby cow kept in captivity just for the sake of a tender steak?

what the hell was wrong with me? this is my job, or at least, it will be. i began to think about the dilemma i had before i decided to go into this industry. did i really want a job based entirely on gluttony? one of the seven deadly sins? when we began to cook though, it all came together. nothing seemed as bad as it did before, and even though this piece of meat was once a living being, it seems as if it does more as food than it would just grazing in the grass lazily. i continued to make my beef stew, enough to serve 5 or 6 people. now that we were rid of the carcass i could easily convince myself of the greatness that is meat.

no, i would not be vegetarian... meat tastes too good. for now, though, i'll probably still stay away from veal...