The Cranberry Sauce Conundrum

I have a really bad habit of letting food go to waste. I know it's a terrible thing to do, and I feel guilty every single time I throw away uneaten food that has gone bad in the refrigerator. I'm trying very hard to mend my ways, but sometimes it just isn't easy.

The other night, I had half a can of whole-berry cranberry sauce in the fridge. I had tried to use half of it in a recipe that failed miserably (not the recipe's fault--we had an ingredient go bad and didn't realized until it was too late in the process. We ended up eating grilled cheese for dinner that night.). So, there sat half a can of cranberry sauce. To be completely honest, the jelled consistency of the stuff grosses me out. But, keeping in mind that I have been trying so hard not to throw food away, I started looking for a recipe to use it up.

There is a new-ish website out there called Eat Your Books. I signed up for a lifetime membership back in May. Basically, they index cookbooks. You create a bookshelf with the cookbooks you own, and viola--you have a searchable database of the recipes on your cookbook shelves. Right now, only about 50% of my cookbooks are indexed. That's still a lot of recipes to search from--according to the website, when I log in, exactly 22.465 recipes, to be exact.

I performed such a search and found the perfect recipe to use up the cranberry sauce. As a bonus, it would also use the juice of the orange that was sitting in fridge, divested of its zest. The recipe was for Orange Cranberry Muffins from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food.

So, I quickly mixed together the streusel topping, whipped up the muffin batter, scooped them out, sprinkled the topping on as well as I could (the muffin cups were over-full, so it was hard to make the streusel stick), and popped them in the oven in time to sit down and watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory on DVD. While I watched the hilarious antics of the ever-endearing nerds, my house started to smell ridiculously good. The kind of good that makes your stomach rumble and your mouth water, even though you just ate dinner an hour ago.

These muffins were a wonderful solution to my cranberry sauce problem. As a matter of fact, they were such a good solution that they have created their own problem. When I make them next, what will I do with the other half of the can of cranberry sauce? I guess that just remains to be seen. In the meantime, I would strongly urge you to make these muffins when you get the chance. They have the perfect fall/harvest taste. They are tender, and buttery, with a subtle crunch from the streusel topping. And, every now and then, if you are lucky, you bite into one of the whole cranberries, which gives you a joyful tart pop on the palate.

Orange Cranberry Muffins

adapted from I'm Just Here for More Food

The Streusel:

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup chopped almonds

3 Tbs butter

The Muffins:

8 Tbs unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp orange extract

1/2 cup plain yogurt

orange juice from 1 orange

3/4 cup canned whole-berry cranberry sauce

1. Mix streusel ingredients until cohesive, but still crumbly.

2. Preheat oven to 350, and grease a muffin tin.

3. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.

4. Cream together the butter and sugar.

5. Add the eggs and mix until combined.

6. Add remaining wet ingredients. Then dump all the wet ingredients into the dry. (I do this the other way around--dumping the dry into the wet, and I'm not sure it makes any difference. Alton would probably disagree, though.)

7. Scoop the batter into 12 muffin cups. The book says to fill them to the top. Mine crested over the top. They still turned out great.

8. Sprinkle with streusel topping.

9. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.

10. Allow muffins to cool before taking out of the tins.

Yield: 12 muffins

Cost: $0.36 per muffin

The Cranberry Sauce Conundrum

I have a really bad habit of letting food go to waste. I know it's a terrible thing to do, and I feel guilty every single time I throw away uneaten food that has gone bad in the refrigerator. I'm trying very hard to mend my ways, but sometimes it just isn't easy.

The other night, I had half a can of whole-berry cranberry sauce in the fridge. I had tried to use half of it in a recipe that failed miserably (not the recipe's fault--we had an ingredient go bad and didn't realized until it was too late in the process. We ended up eating grilled cheese for dinner that night.). So, there sat half a can of cranberry sauce. To be completely honest, the jelled consistency of the stuff grosses me out. But, keeping in mind that I have been trying so hard not to throw food away, I started looking for a recipe to use it up.

There is a new-ish website out there called Eat Your Books. I signed up for a lifetime membership back in May. Basically, they index cookbooks. You create a bookshelf with the cookbooks you own, and viola--you have a searchable database of the recipes on your cookbook shelves. Right now, only about 50% of my cookbooks are indexed. That's still a lot of recipes to search from--according to the website, when I log in, exactly 22.465 recipes, to be exact.

I performed such a search and found the perfect recipe to use up the cranberry sauce. As a bonus, it would also use the juice of the orange that was sitting in fridge, divested of its zest. The recipe was for Orange Cranberry Muffins from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food.

So, I quickly mixed together the streusel topping, whipped up the muffin batter, scooped them out, sprinkled the topping on as well as I could (the muffin cups were over-full, so it was hard to make the streusel stick), and popped them in the oven in time to sit down and watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory on DVD. While I watched the hilarious antics of the ever-endearing nerds, my house started to smell ridiculously good. The kind of good that makes your stomach rumble and your mouth water, even though you just ate dinner an hour ago.

These muffins were a wonderful solution to my cranberry sauce problem. As a matter of fact, they were such a good solution that they have created their own problem. When I make them next, what will I do with the other half of the can of cranberry sauce? I guess that just remains to be seen. In the meantime, I would strongly urge you to make these muffins when you get the chance. They have the perfect fall/harvest taste. They are tender, and buttery, with a subtle crunch from the streusel topping. And, every now and then, if you are lucky, you bite into one of the whole cranberries, which gives you a joyful tart pop on the palate.

Orange Cranberry Muffins

adapted from I'm Just Here for More Food

The Streusel:

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup chopped almonds

3 Tbs butter

The Muffins:

8 Tbs unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp orange extract

1/2 cup plain yogurt

orange juice from 1 orange

3/4 cup canned whole-berry cranberry sauce

1. Mix streusel ingredients until cohesive, but still crumbly.

2. Preheat oven to 350, and grease a muffin tin.

3. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.

4. Cream together the butter and sugar.

5. Add the eggs and mix until combined.

6. Add remaining wet ingredients. Then dump all the wet ingredients into the dry. (I do this the other way around--dumping the dry into the wet, and I'm not sure it makes any difference. Alton would probably disagree, though.)

7. Scoop the batter into 12 muffin cups. The book says to fill them to the top. Mine crested over the top. They still turned out great.

8. Sprinkle with streusel topping.

9. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.

10. Allow muffins to cool before taking out of the tins.

Yield: 12 muffins

Cost: $0.36 per muffin

Travel Food Blog: Philippines

Like most travelers, visiting famous landmarks is almost mandatory for me when exploring new places. Aside from that, I really associate food with travel. For me, food says a lot about a place's history and culture; there are reasons behind classic dishes as to why they are cured, pickled, shaped in a certain way or served in a certain way. It's not just about the taste; although taste is important to enjoy any feast! When I travel, I do make a little research of what traditional food there is or what food is a must try on the area I'll be in, and I make a little list of must eats! Food is definitely just as important as the beautiful sites, sceneries and activities there is when traveling. Plus, who doesn't like yummy authentic food!

Food, food, food...

I recently visited my homeland, Philippines, and one thing's definite - I've indulged myself with some good old Filipino food! For some reason, Filipino food hasn't been able to make it's name globally unlike Thai, Chinese, Japanese or Indian cuisine. But one thing's for sure, Filipino food is really really delicious; it's prone to get anyone to over eat. Philippine eating culture involves varieties of meat and vegetable dishes that we call ulam, and these could not be well complimented other than RICE... and lots of it! 

Unfortunately, I'm not an avid shutterbug, so most of the time I've forgotten to take pictures of the food especially when I'm so engrossed in devouring the feast set before my eyes. Actually, I was just able to manage to take pictures on one occasion because I saw one of my friends do it first... 

Crispy pata - deep fried pork leg usually served with vinegar, soy sauce, chili, and garlic dipping sauce; very similar to German pork knuckle

Chicharon Bulaklak - deep fried pork intestines

Bopis - pork lungs and heart (sometimes liver) sauteed in garlic, onions, chilies, and bell pepper then seasoned with vinegar

Bicol Express - spicy stew dish made with coconut milk, chilies and shrimp paste

Kare-kare - stew made with peanut sauce that may have oxtail, beef, tripe, large intestines and different vegetables; always served with shrimp paste

Sisig - pig's head and liver sauteed in garlic, onion and chili, then seasoned with vinegar

Turon served with ube ice cream - banana jack fruit spring rolls served with purple yam ice cream

Polvoron with pinipig - made with toasted flour, powdered milk, sugar and melted butter then flavoured with pinipig (immature rice that has been pounded to look like flakes); I brought this snack back to Korea intending to eat it sparingly... finished in 2 days!

Of course going back home won't be complete without paying homage to my Chinese roots by devouring a succulent Chinese feast (courtesy of my friend's wedding reception)! Lack of photos... blame my hungry tummy... 

Suckling Pig and Assorted Cold Cuts; I spy century egg, yumm!

 Steamed Garlic Prawns

 Winter melon Stuffed with Scallops

Seafood Noodles

Steamed Garlic Crabs

Almond Jelly with Mango Puree

Lastly, disregarding authentic and traditional food, food is food, and I love delicious food. So for some miscellaneous food from different cuisines...

Sirloin steak grilled at our backyard; after eating this, I understood what it meant when they say the steak melts in your mouth!

Keftedes; was on a beach, and I was just craving for a nice Greek food to accompany the sea breeze

Oddly, there was a deli by the beach. And since I love my cheese and my H loves his cured meats, we gave in to a sandwich lunch. Prosciutto Gruyere cheese sandwich for me, and salami Milano Edam cheese

sandwich for my H.

Cocktails by the beach... what more can I say? Not exactly food, but food and drink does go together, yeah? Piña colada and margarita.

Coconut Seafood Pasta

Baked Ribs, sooo tender!

Pizza margherita - my absolute favourite pizza!

Well, enough of food blogging... it's making me so hungry! Good thing it's dinner time; perfect timing!

Bisou bisou,

Charlotte

Scone

My H has been persistently asking me to make scones like forever! So I have finally gave in. I made a plain scone though because I'm not so much a fan of scones with dried fruits.

Scone is quick bread of Scottish origin, but is now synonymous with the whole of Britain. It is usually eaten at breakfast or afternoon teas served with clotted cream and jam. The shapes of scones may vary from round, square, triangle or diamond. Originally, scones were made with oats and cooked on a griddle, but nowadays it's made with flour and baked in an oven.

For my scones, I used the recipe from joyofbaking. It came out really really good. I just used half of the recipe and I was able to produce four scones.

Now what is scone without clotted cream? I know finding clotted cream here in Korea is impossible, so I didn't even try looking for one. Instead, I decided to make my own. Although, I'm not sure of the quality of Korean creams, I still gave it a go. There's not much variety or shall I say no variety at all of creams in Korea, or at least in the city I live in. They only have whipping cream, and I pretty much use that cream whenever a recipe calls for any sorts of cream. This is when I do miss England where there are single cream, double cream, half and half and the list goes on. Anyway, my clotted cream didn't turn out the way it should have. The color was immensely pale and anemic, and the taste was so sweet. I ended up discarding the clotted cream, and had to settle for butter. 

 my uber pale and sweet clotted cream :(

Despite the mishap, my H and I really enjoyed our scones with a nice cup of tea. Just remember to eat the scones fresh out of the oven! If not, you can always throw the scones back in the oven for like 3 minutes to warm it up, and it would go back to it's soft yummy state!

 my scone with 'clotted cream' and raspberry jam

scone from The Orangery at Kensington Palace with really silky scrumptious clotted cream and blackberry preserves; had this at my bridal afternoon tea last year

Bisou bisou,

Charlotte

Papaya Margarita

It all starts here, with Glynnis wielding a knife to pare the papayas that are fresh and ready for use. She takes her time to skin them, remove the seeds and mix them in the blender. She needs enough of these exotic fruits to serve the many people who have gotten word of our delicious refreshments.
Next she bottles up the nectar into service containers and let them cool in the fridge, waiting for their first customer.

Then the order comes in, and Glynnis starts the mixing process, tequila a couple of ounces of lemonade, and of course the wonderful taste of papaya. Better take advantage of this soon before it passes it's season, and order a side of nachos to add to the fun!

Salad St. Miguel

At age eight, St. Miguel was miraculously protected from being mauled by a wild bull. In 1863, at age nine, his parents enrolled him in a school run by the Christian Brothers, an Order which had only recently come to Ecuador. He later joined the Brothers on 24 March 1868 at age 13. He became a teacher at El Cebollar School, Quito, a position he held for 32 years. A gentle, dedicated, and enthusiastic teacher, he wrote his own textbooks, the first at age 17; some were odes, hymns, discourses on teaching methods, plays, inspirational works, and retreat manuals.

He was known for saying the following: "The heart is rich when it is content...", and at Santiagos, we offer that experience with the Salad St. Miguel. Crisp lettuce, black beans, Oaxcan cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions topped with grilled chicken and served with ancho chili dressing. (Mix a little salsa with the dressing, for an extra treat!)

Mooncake...Not!

This is a delayed posting because I was on my holiday visiting family and friends in Philippines. I wanted to bake something for my family because I do miss having my family appreciating/criticizing my work! Baking in Korea is different; I only have my H to taste my baking.  At first, I thought of making a fondant cake, but I have hesitations if it would travel well. Should I or shouldn't I go for fondant cake...?

Well, I didn't. Since Mooncake festival was coming up, why not make mooncake?! This is not your ordinary mooncake; it's an apple pie mini mooncake!

Mooncake festival also known as Mid-Autumn festival is celebrated every fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar in China, and basically all Chinese community around the globe. It is believed that this time of the year is when the moon shines at its brightess. Legend has it that in the thirteenth century, Chinese used mooncakes as a medium to hide messages to spread the plan of revolt against the Mongolian rulers. There's actually other legends behind the Mooncake festival, but I won't go into it anymore.

molded mooncakes before baking

my cookie stamp mold

Mooncakes are pastries that are as big as a human palm that is filled with sweet dense fillings. Traditional fillings are lotus seed paste with salted yolk on the center, sweet black bean paste, and mixture of pickled melon and nuts. There's also another version of mooncake, which is called snow-skin mooncake. This was created around the 1980's. The snow-skin mooncake has a soft outer cover that is made from glutinous rice. There are now loads of modern versions of mooncakes from durian filled to ice cream filled, basically more choices now to choose from especially in countries like Singapore and Indonesia.

Back to my version, I used pate brisee for my pastry and apple walnut cinnamon for the filling. I don't think the pastry was the right choice though, because it didn't hold the engraving from my cookie stamp. Yes, I used cookie stamp instead of a traditional mooncake mold. I was actually optimistic to find a wooden mooncake mold here in Korea because they have a similar dessert that uses a similar mold. Indeed I found a wooden mooncake mold, but the price made my heart drop! About $90 for a wooden mold! I wasn't prepared to pay that, so I improvised with a $10 cookie stamp instead, and I was lucky to find a stamp that has the Chinese character for lucky engraved on it.  It actually worked really well, for my apple pie mini mooncake project!

filling and molding the mooncakes

I'm really happy how this project turned out. Next Mid-Autumn festival I'll try to use the traditional pastry for a mooncake, and try to hunt down a reasonable priced wooden mold!

Bisou bisou,

Charlotte