Lime Lays Potato Chips

One of the intriguing things that I asked my uncle to buy for me in China was lime flavoured potato chips. I don't understand why Lays doesn't sell these in the U.S.

They tasted like the "Hint of Lime" Tostitos, except that instead of a corn chip, we have a starchy potato chip. It's slightly sweet, has a neat clean lime taste that I would associate with really sweet limeade (but NOT anything creamy like key lime pie). I definitely prefer this flavour over the Original/salt flavoured potato chip (why are those so popular?! If there's a market for salt flavoured chips in the U.S., why isn't there a market for lime flavoured chips?!??!?)

My brother agreed with the package; he said, with a modicum of sarcasm, that they were "Cool & Refreshing". I would like to consume this flavour frequently. I suppose this is the upside to microwaving potato chips (I'll get to that tomorrow).

Cute translation, by the way. "Lays" got translated into 乐事 (le4shi4) which means "joyful things/events" in Chinese. My parents briefly called me 乐乐 when I was a baby. Obviously, it's not a suitable name for me.

Marinade

Since I'm pretty much doing half the cooking in the family now (to give my mum less housework and more rest time), I figured I should learn how to cook animals. So, I've been browsing through the Costco cookbook since I figured, hey, let's just get the gist of cooking animals, right? I personally find cookbooks more useful than the internet when I'm a complete neophyte at cooking something (in this case, animal flesh). They're not for me to follow, though. They're just kinda... there. As a guideline. Something for me to manipulate.

I've never made any marinades before. Today, however, I made dinner and I made some sort of stove-top grilled tofu with this sweet and sour fruity marinade. To appease the rest of the family, I also made stove-top grilled pig flesh (pork chops) with the same marinade. Apparently, 1 cm-thick pork chops cook pretty quickly, and I overcooked the first three chunks (I mean, how was I supposed to know whether they were cooked or not? I can't taste test them...), but they were still edible. The rest of the chops turned out fine, though.

My mum and brother definitely liked the marinade. Although my brother didn't comment much (he did say they were "juicy" though, and he couldn't figure out what sort of marinade it was), I felt really pleased because his fork kept transporting chunks of pork chop to his bowl. My sister responded to this new dish by saying "Eww", which is the norm. The only comment from my dad was that it needed more salt. Meh. I wonder how it's like when I'm not at home. *Here comes the bitter snide comment* I wonder if my dad would cook dinner if I hadn't been home today. My mum had to take my sister to a party today, and didn't get back until 8 pm (which is literally when I finished stir frying the bak choi - I started making dinner around 7), and my dad was just watching TV, and he'd been home for half an hour. I mean, would everyone wait until 9 for dinner?

Anyway. To get the general gist of a marinade, I read the recipe from page 105 of Favorite Recipes The Costco Way 2007. It's a recipe by Paula Deen called "Pork Chops with Ragout" which isn't that great of a title in my opinion because in translation it's "Pork Chops in Sauce". My marinade is extremely loosely based off of Paula Deen's recipe, there is no butter in it. At all. Funny, huh?

INGREDIENTS

A.

Small clove of garlic

60 g onion

100 g (~1.5 stalks) of celery

4 leaves fresh basil!

B.

1 tbsp oregano

1 tbsp coriander

5 cut dried juniper berries

1 tsp nutmeg

Salt

Pepper

C.

150 ml apple juice

70 ml balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp vinegar

2-3 tbsp olive oil

Juice of one lime

D.

1 kg marinade-able objects (in this case, half tofu and half boneless pork chops in two separate containers)

E.

1 tbsp all purpose flour

METHOD

1. Finely chop stuff in Group A.

2. Mix stuff in Group A, B, and C together, in a container with a lid. It will be liquidy.

3. Cut marinade-able objects into pieces that are about 1 cm thick. For tofu, a thickness of 0.5 cm is better. Stick objects into marinade.

4. Leave container in a fridge for at least 4 hours.

5. FOR TOFU: Cook marinaded tofu in a frying pan on medium heat, uncovered, for 3-4 minutes on each side. If you like crunchy, burned exteriors, 5 minutes on each side is pretty nice too.

FOR PORK: Plop pieces onto the frying pan on medium heat, and cover for 1-2 minutes. Flip. Cover for 2-4 minutes. Keep uncovered and check frequently for doneness. This is quite difficult if one doesn't actually eat pork...

Remember: Sizzling is good.

6. Promptly remove marinated objects from frying pan, and scrape all the leftover marinade into the frying pan.

7. Stir (with the same spatula you've been using) on medium heat. When the marinade starts to bubble, add in E. (1 tbsp flour). Continue stirring until you end up with a thick sauce.

8. Pour sauce onto marinated objects and eat!!

I didn't take a picture of the pork chops but if I would say that they had neat grilled-ish exteriors and were squishy. They looked pretty fantastic on the inside too.

The marinated tofu tasted pretty good...it wasn't sweet enough for my liking, though. Still, I had leftover marinade so I marinated more tofu! :)

bLIMEy...

Although I was fully aware that milk curdles when an acid is introduced, I still thought that it was a good idea to mix 250 ml of milk with 100 ml of freshly squeezed lime juice and its zest. I told myself that I was going to make lime pie filling. No, not key lime pie filling, because I don't have key limes, but just lime pie filling... the delicious, gooey, jammy-pudding filling.

Since I've never made lime pie filling/lime curd before, I thought it'd be an absolutely greatly stupid idea to use artificial sweetener instead of sugar for the lime pie filling. My mum bought a huge pack of artificial sweetener because she thought that it was sucrose :( So now I'm stuck with a lot of artificial sweetener and I'm not sure I want to use it, since it is obviously less superior than sucrose. :(

So, I don't really want to explain how I messed up making lime pie filling, but I basically mixed fresh lime juice (2 limes) with zest, milk and an egg. Then, while the milk was curdling, I added in artificial sweetener. After baking at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, and seeing that everything was still liquidy (and smelled nice), I figured I should just freeze the thin liquid product and make crushed ice.

It then smelled weird and tasted terrible. Oh gosh. b-LIME-y. It was. Atrocious. The texture was gritty, thanks to the milk. There was a millisecond of sweetness and limey-ness. And then, for the next 4 minutes, there was a putrid artificial aftertaste.

Bleh.

So. I mixed liquid with brown sugar, added stuff, and ended up with lime muffin-gluteny-somethings. They're not cookies or cakes or muffins... the texture is slightly rubbery and gluteny. They're not crumbly but there is a neat whole-wheatish-lime flavour and they're really moist... It actually is like a steamed cake! So if anyone wants to try these weird muffin things...

Ingredients

250 g whole wheat flour

250 ml milk

100 g brown sugar

24 packets of artificial sweetener (ew.) OR 200 g caster sugar

Juice of two limes

Zest of two limes

1 egg

1 cup shredded zucchini

2 tsp baking powder

Method

1. Mix all ingredients.

2. Bake at 190 degrees C/380 degrees F for 15 minutes.

Jammin' Through the Sieve.

See what I did there?

I put jam through a sieve today.

(terrible pun.)

Because our berry plants don't have any berries this year (perhaps due to the fact that we neglect them), I couldn't complete my yearly berry-jam-making ritual. Okay, not ritual, but tradition. It's only been a two-year tradition, though. Since there are no berries, I decided to make grape jam. Actually, to be more specific and gourmet-sounding, I made organic garden-fresh-but-from-the-wild-part-of-the-garden spherical green grape jam with a hint of mint and lime.

The problem with grape jam is that it looks a bit like pickle juice and I lack the machinery to separate the seeds from the jam/pulp. Therefore, I now have four jars of chunky, perfect textured jam-with-seeds and one jar of thin sifted-jam-without-seeds.

I also realised that I ought to measure everything using metric units because it just makes so much more sense. I did grow up with metric, but I only started cooking a lot when I moved to the U.S., so cooking measurements for me have been the whole cups-tbps-tsp thing instead of grams. Grams are better though, especially since I do have a food scale.

Ingredients for about 1.5 L of jam (5 jars)

12 cups/1560 g green grapes that are spherical and extremely sour (from the grape plant outside)

3 cups/540 g granulated sugar (or more. This one was on the sour side because I like sour jam)

7 mint candies

A few shakes of mint flakes

A spoonful of maltose (just because my mum happened to have some from cooking something; completely optional)

Some lime zest (pectin, optional)

Ingredients for a 300 ml jar of jam

310 g green grapes

110 g granulated sugar, or more, to taste

2 mint candies

Some mint flakes

Some lime zest

Method

1. The night before, stick everything in a pot. I didn't do this, but the osmosis should help reduce cooking time the next day.

2. Turn heat on high and stir. Don't be afraid of scorching any grapes.

3. 20 minutes later, there should be liquid at the bottom of the pot and the grapes should still be sort of hard, but some will be mushy. Keep stirring and wait for the water to boil. The grapes will turn from bright green to... olive-coloured.

4. Turn heat onto medium-low and let it simmer for about 2 hours, stirring every 10 minutes or so. All the grapes should be mushy now! The jam will look ugly. You can check the gooeyness of the jam by dropping some jam onto a plate, letting it cool, and seeing if it is the consistency you want. You can also adjust the sweetness at any point in the 2 hours.

5. If you really want to, sift jam into jar. I tried to do this for the first jar, but it didn't work because I don't have a sieve that everything except the seeds flow through. I also wanted the grape skins (basically, everything except for the seeds). I suppose this is the negative side of making grape jam with non-GMO grapes.

6. Wait for jar of jam to cool, then stick it in the fridge. I know you're supposed to do stuff with the jars with the water bath in order to sterilise the jars, but since we're sticking the jam in a fridge and consuming the jams (yeah... all 5 jars...) within a few months, I don't think that this is necessary. In addition, there is a lot of acid in this specific batch of jam. The grapes were really sour.

So now I know why you don't see green grape jam at the grocery store. It doesn't look that appetising. Seriously, though, this jam is way better than the store-bought flavourless and textureless jam!!

Spring Fling 2011!

Spring Fling 2011. The yearly event that everyone loves, because of the blatant alcoholism and horde of people wavering around drunk. The event in which alcohol is in every bottle and cup. The event in which wearing neon is purely acceptable, and wearing those huge sunglasses and no pants is classy snazzy.

Despite missing the Fling concert, my friends and I did have a lot of fun with a lightsaber fight with glowsticks, and walking around, eating food, and watching movies. We went to the Burger Fling, an event right before the Fling concert. It was advertised as a huge barbecue, but it was nothing of the sort; all we did was stand in line indoors, get a plate of food, and disperse. Because I asked for a veggie burger, I had to wait an extra 11 minutes for them to cook it :( but it was pretty good, and I got an extra slice of cheese with it. I also got a pretty fresh and yeasty pretzel. It wasn't bland, airy, and untextured.

Tonight, I present you with the carnival! The carnival was supposed to be on College Green, but since It's been raining for the past 12 hours, it was moved into Houston Hall. Somehow, they managed to stick in a whole bunch of food samples, a jumping castle, two mechanical bulls, and over the fire-hazard-limit number of people&umbrellas onto two floors, and everyone actually seemed happy about it!! I had arrived a bit early, and there were already lines forming. I got some key lime water ice, and the best part was that it was a full container of it! It was delicious, although I think that the cookies and cream flavour was way better (I tried some of CC's. He actually preferred the fruity ones since mixing cream and water didn't seem to be his thing).

I also got some Chipotle, but they didn't really offer what I wanted; it was just a flour tortilla with cheese, tomato, and lettuce. Dude. Where're the beans? The guacamole? The salsa? Where are all the things that make a Chipotle burrito a Chipotle burrito? Yes, I understand that they had to feed some 1000 or so of us with a limited budget, but this gave TJ a bad impression of Chiptole. As I am already biased towards Chipotle, I don't really mind but now TJ will value Qdoba over Chipotle :(

Actually, I did try some Qdoba tortilla chip dip. It was pretty good-cheesy, spicy, drinkable like soup, so I ended up chugging most of it since we ran out of chips. My friend took a picture of me drinking it, and that's the closest picture I have to the cliche plastic-red-cup-filled-with-vodka image. Haha.

Boxes of...

Costco churros! This is the second (?) Costco churro of my life, and although it tasted rather stale and dry, the inside was quite delicious and spongy!

Samosas from...someone, filled with potato and peas and spicy stuff- Amazing! (still vegetarian although it looks like there's cow mince in there)

...And the grand finale...THE MAGIC CARPET MEATBALL PITA! Delicious mustardy cheesy something light kinda sauce (Not sure what it is), seedy nutty delicious falafelish smooshed non-meat meatballs with crunchy lettuce and a crusty pita - AMAZING! I really have to advertise Magic Carpet now! Next year... Gonna buy from this food truck!

Convocation...2014

There's going to be a lot of jumping around for the next few days, because I have to post about New Student Orientation [NSO] for UPenn, and that's going to take a while to talk about because it included a lot of food. However, before I backtrack about all that stuff, I'm just going to mention the convocation dessert, which happened an hour ago.

Apparently, this "sumptuous dessert" thing is a huge deal; the upperclasspeople talk about it a lot and claim that people actually bring containers to put the dessert in, for later. I thought they were kidding.

They were not. I saw at least seven people sticking chucks of cake and mousse into plastic containers. Seriously. But, who am I to judge? I would do the same thing if I didn't have a meal plan... and I would totally take all the desserts just because they taste good.

Chocolate mousse with hazelnut wafer crumbs on the bottom, with sponge cake. I'll get to that.

This tricked me into thinking that it was key lime pie. Don't like wavy lines make the otherwise homely cheesecake look just like key lime pie!? The unfortunate thing was that this cheesecake wasn't even sour. It was way too sweet [and a tad too warm - I like frozen cheesecake] to be flavourful cheesecake.

Charlottes. I didn't take one.

Mousse; get to it later.

Chocolate cake, and carrot cake. These disappeared immediately...

For some reason, there were orange custard cakes. Penn's colours are dark red and blue. Princeton's colours, so blatantly shown during the dessert reception, still confuzzles me. After all, Princeton is apparently our rival school, what with the Puck Frinceton thing.

Cookie pile, along with plates and smooshed cakes that inconsiderate people just left lying around.

Mounds of cookies.

I consumed two pieces of dessert, the cheesecake and this mousse. The mousse actually had a bunch of layers; starting from the top:

1. Hazelnut

2. Whipped cream

3. Chocolate icing layer

4. Weak chocolate mousse layer - shallow airy flavour, very sweet, not really what I consider dense chocolate mousse...

5. Hazelnut wafer layer - crunchy

6. Sponge cake. Eh. Plain.

7. Thin chocolate coating.

I think that I'm starting to [I know that no one can believe this] get sick of eating dessert. Seriously, I don't even feel like eating...I think it's because I'm nervous for class tomorrow.