Estia - Restaurant Week

Despite having lived in Philadelphia since 2010, as of the 15th of September, I still had not participated in Philly's Restaurant Week. Restaurant Week always seemed too expensive and time-consuming to be worth the food, and I was right.

However, that doesn't mean that dinner at Estia, a fancy but laid-back Greek restaurant, was not enjoyable. Quite the contrary! It was one of the best social events of my college life, shared with the group of friends who frequented my dorm's computer lab. Yes, apparently, solid friendships can form among strangers when we all spend 10+ hours a week in a computer lab for 2-3 years. Especially when they nonchalantly walk in on me passed out over my computer science notes.

The food was delicious, and the atmopshere and service were excellent. The walls were decorated with giant chunks of rock, and there were linen curtains at the booths and an open kitchen.

Appetizers included grilled octopus (fresh, fleshy, and slighty charred tasting), or salad. The grilled octopus also had some endive triangles, which was pleasant because it is not a leaf I commonly find at restaurants.

 The main choices were juicy (also slightly charred) lamb with a sauce I didn't like, an entire almost-deboned fish, or a vegetarian dish that the server did not recommend. 

Dessert was either honey semolina cake or baklava, with exactly 1 raspberry (although, possibly by accident, my friend got both a raspberry AND a blueberry). The honey cake was disappointingly dry and crumbly, and the gelato did not make up for it.

Restaurant Week meant that we could get a dinner meal for $35 (appetizer, main, dessert), which ultimately amounted to around $46. Yummy.

A Walk Down South (St)

The weather site stated that there would be a 100% chance of rain at 5pm.

There wasn't.

It didn't rain at all in Philadelphia the past week, even though rain was forecast for every single day of the week.

It doesn't interfere much with my life, though, because I've decided to start swimming more and running less, since my knees are kinda shot and I do want to be able to walk properly in another 60 years (hopefully!)

TJ and I walked from 41st all the way to Penn's Landing on South St. Of course, we stopped primarily at food stores and we did glance around some clothes stores but I'm not interested in clothes that much. One lady did comment on the skirt I was wearing, which is pretty funny (okay, digression: Some five years ago, my mum and I were walking to the bus stop after my

piano exam/practice in HK, and I saw a really small shop and they had a box of clothes outside for 20HKD; ~3USD. That's where I got this lovely skirt from...I wonder what else was in that box, because I don't remember anymore).

I forgot to bring my camera, which was extremely unfortunate because we went to Govinda's Vegetarian Restaurant, Phileo Froyo, and Wholefoods. The bright side is that I'm going to Govinda's again soon so I can actually write a real review of it. I probably won't go back to Phileo's just because I'm not a froyo fanatic.

I got the Pepper Steak Cheesesteak made with soy protein, green peppers, mozzarella cheese and oil, on a whole wheat bun. It was hot, umami, and the bread was nicely toasted. There was a LOT of filling, and the texture was phenomenal. Although more pricey than "real" steak cheesesteaks, it was still delicious, juicy, and worth the walk. I'll do a real review in a week or so, when I get to take pictures. In short, I'm probably going to Govinda's at least another 3 times in order to try the Chicken Cheesesteak, the Sloppy Joe, and the Kofka/meatball sub (not to mention the desserts!). Maybe Govinda's is my favourite restaurant now. Yeah, actually, I think I've decided that my favourite restaurant is Govinda's To Go.

Phileo Froyo: Philadelpia, Phila = love, "Fill-y-oh", "Philly-Yo"; it's an awesome shop name. I tried a sample of tart kiwi froyo, which was extremely delicious!! For actual froyo, I got the peach, the cookies and cream, and the lychee. I also tried a bit of TJ's coconut, which had actual shredded coconut pieces in it. The lychee flavour is simply the best; it tastes light and watery, just the way real lychees taste! The flavour is exact! (Okay, a bit creamier) The peach flavour was ... peachy. Mild. Cookies and Cream tasted more like ice cream than light froyo, and reminded me of this time I got chocolate gelato, which didn't taste as good as rose gelato... so, I suppose if I want to enjoy froyo for being "froyo", I should get the fruity flavours instead. Still, nice experience.

At Wholefoods, TJ and I each got a sample of Fage Greek Yoghurt with honey, because they were having a sale of $1/150g container - BUT ONLY THE 0% fat honey, 2.5% fat honey, 2.5% fat cherry, 2.5% fat strawberry, and 2.5% blueberry. No plain flavour :(. No 0% fat cherry :( WHY!! I love 0% fat [real] cherry yoghurt.

I ended up buying a box of twelve 0% fat honey because

0. I enjoy eating yoghurt, especially Greek yoghurt.

1. $10.80 vs. $21.48

2. 12 days of high-protein/calcium breakfast covered! 13 g protein! 0g fat!

3. Now I have something sweet for dipping my 100% unsweetened baking chocolate.

Rold Gold White Dipped Honey Braided Twists

Rolo Gold. For the past four years, that's what I thought "Rold Gold" was. I thought it said Rolo. I'm not the only one; googling "Rolo Gold" actually yield pretzel results too. It's funny, because Rold Gold makes so much more sense as a brand name ["Rolled" Gold, it rhymes, it sounds swanky...]. In fact, I've been eating the Honey Braided Twists since November-ish, and I never noticed it said Rold on the package.

I decided to buy these white covered ones [note that there is no mention of "white chocolate" covered twists, since there is no actual chocolate inside it. In fact, I was going to buy the milk chocolate version, but that one had PHOs and probably didn't contain much chocolate either.

I'm not really into pretzels. I like them, but I'm not super obsessed. The Honey Braided Twists are pretty good, especially if the edges are a tad burnt. Actually, the pretzels that I enjoy the most [solely because of the flavouring, so I might as well buy the flavouring in bulk, right?] are the honey mustard and onion ones from Snyder's of Hanover.

These pretzels are basically the honey braided twists that are covered in fatty sugar. The coating is super saturated and sore-throat-inducingly sweet. However, it also tastes creamy and smooth, which is a really nice change and contrasts with the malty crunch of the pretzel. There was a bit of waxiness directly after consumption...but it's not too noticeable.

The pretzels are difficult to snap into halves, and it can't fit into my mouth at once, and the white coating melted quickly, so I suppose it's an annoying snack to eat while typing.

Overall, it was a typical snack with no real nutritional value. Should've bought noodles...

What?! Cheesecake?!

Yes! Cheesecake! With tofu! The recipe is at the bottom of this post! [I haven't posted a recipe in a LONG time... a whole semester, right?]

I had a problem. I wanted to make cheesecake because BV likes cheesecake. However, I have never used sour cream or heavy cream or whipped cream or dairy products like that in my cooking before, so... I felt scared using them. Okay, I've used whipped cream before, but that was at least 5 or 6 years ago, and that was whipped cream used as... whipped cream.

On the other hand, I squeezed a piece of tofu. [haha. weak joke...]...I mean, on the other hand, I know very well how tofu works. I can make food with tofu.

BV hates tofu but I used it anyway...

The first cheesecake turned out tasting like tofu, because I had used approximately 20 ounces of tofu in it... along with some cranberry juice, because, why not? I also threw in some corn starch to keep it from falling apart, although I'm not sure whether it's necessary.

It looks like cheesecake, right?

Or, it looks like stained bacteria cultures...

I personally like frozen cheesecake, and I think this is due to the fact that the first few times we bought cheesecake in HK [33HKD for a plain Sara Lee cheesecake - that's what I remember], we never followed the "leave cheesecake at room temperature for 20 minutes before eating" instruction. Honestly, frozen cheesecake, with the hard, ice-blockish texture, tastes better than creamy, room temperature cheesecake.

I used Grape-Nuts for the crust, because ever since I found out that every graham cracker at Shoprite has PHO, I've decided to dislike them [yes, I'm biased!! But so are you!]. Maybe Trader Joe's has nicer graham crackers?

I've also decided to dislike Keebler because everything they make [that I know of] is grossly full of HFCS and/or PHO.

So, in my second batch, I gave some leftover batter to my sister who ended up decorating them with candy and sprinkles. It is utterly overkill.

This is the cheesecake I gave BV. I probably shouldn't've told him that there was tofu in it... but I guess he couldn't taste it [except for the "weird texture"] because he didn't say that it tasted tofu-y.

This is the 3rd cheesecake [from the second batch] that I gave to JM, and I decorated it using the leftover icing sugar from the cookies.

Recipe for cheesecake!!!!

Filling:

1. 8 oz cream cheese, cut into chunks [one package. GET FULL-FAT. DON'T GET LOW FAT!!! This isn't because full-fat cream cheese is healthy or anything; it's just because I'm not sure how fat-free cream cheese melts/reacts with my other ingredients...so I suppose you could get fat-free cream cheese if you want.]

2. 10 oz squeezed firm tofu [or 20 oz if you want the tofu taste to be prevalent. By "squeezed", I mean, try get rid of as much of the water as possible. I did this by literally squeezing the tofu, which incidentally mashed the tofu so it was easier to blend.]

3. Blueberry, or 2 tbsp cocoa powder, or whatever flavouring.

4. At least half a cup of orange juice. [Or lemon juice. An acidic juice. The orange juice actually left a tiny bit of orangey taste... although that could've just been my imagination]

5. Around 4 tsp of corn starch [add more if you feel like it. I'm not quite sure how much I had, since I initially had 2 tsp, then during the blending, I added more.

6. 1 cup of confectioner's sugar! [YES!! More if you feel like it.]

Healthy Crust!

1. 2 cups of Grape-Nuts

2. Honey or sugar water [However much you want; if you want a crunchy-tooth-breaking crust, don't use that much water, but if you want a soft crust, add more water until it looks damp!]

Stuff to do!

1. Pulse and shake cereal and sugar/honey/water mixture until you get fine pieces.

2. Press into a 11-inch pan if you want the crust to just fill the bottom. Alternatively, press into a 9-inch pan if you want crust on the sides. I used a 7.5-inch pan and had a lot of crust leftover [hence the mini cheesecakes that my sister studded with sprinkles...]

3. Bake at 350F for 5 minutes. You do NOT need to preheat your oven. That is a waste of heat.

4. Stick everything in the Filling list in a blender, and blend! After a few minutes on Low, you should have something that is uniformly blended and has the consistency of American pudding. If not, make it more pudding-ish, by adding corn starch and/or orange juice. I know "consistency of American pudding" is really hard to define, but it shouldn't be like cookie dough. It also shouldn't be like cake batter. It's more... elegant and poofy than those. Actually, it's sort of gelatinous.

5. Taste it. If it tastes good, cool. If it doesn't taste sour enough, add more orange juice!

6. Pour onto crust and smooth it out.

7. Stick that cheesecake into the oven at 350F for 25 minutes. Leave it in there for another 25 minutes; why not? Use up the remaining heat!!

8. In the meantime, eat the cheesecake filling remaining in the blender. No eggs! No 90% fat! Yay!

9. Take cheesecake out, and let it cool. There really shouldn't be any browning...a tiny bit on the edges is okay, though.

10. When cheesecake is COLD COLD COLD, put it in the fridge/freezer/outside - whatever you prefer.

11. In 12 hours, take out the cheesecake and wipe off the condensation at the top, using a paper towel. Do not use a tissue. I'm not sure why the cheesecakes condensed... I think it's due to the tofu, actually, or perhaps the blueberries [high water content!]. Either way, although it makes the cheesecakes look a bit weird, it's just water after all.

12. These cheesecakes taste good for at least 3-4 days. In the freezer, they last much longer [well...duh.]

13. The cheesecake is actually relatively healthy...

Quinoa Porridge [Sort Of]!

I think I'm going crazy. I am obsessed with grainy porridges. E.g. rice pudding, oat bran porridge, oatmeal, etc. The list goes on. Anything with carbs, really.

Today I decided to make quinoa porridge, which is quite a deviation from the norm since quinoa isn't really used in making sweet dishes [I think?]; it's usually used for salads or stir fries or soups or something savoury. Now I know why quinoa isn't used for porridge. It doesn't soften or get mushy or gluey, so it doesn't make a very gooey porridge.

I also added way too much honey [two teaspoons for about 3 cups of quinoa seemed pretty reasonable, but I guess I was wrong]. Actually, I think that the extra raisins also made the porridge super sweet. I doubt there will be a "next time", but if there were, I would definitely just cut out adding honey, since the raisins suffice in rendering the porridge to taste like some sort of textured candy.

Coffee Ice [or...Granita?]

I'm technically not supposed to have much caffeinated stuff anymore due to the fact that it apparently interferes with methimazole efficacy, but this was made with decaf coffee [so, it has 2% of the caffeine it otherwise would have] which means that it probably has the same caffeine power [if not less] as some chocolate. I started off with coffee, fat free milk, some honey, and some saccharin. I froze it for an hour, and it looked like the image above.

An hour later, a layer of ice had formed on the inside sides of the plastic container, but the centre was still liquidy [or, slushy, after I mixed it]. The whole point of making this is to chop up the ice crystals every hour or so. I actually should've used a shallow container, since it was more difficult to reach the bottom parts which were frozen.

In total, six hours later, this is what I ended up with. Granules of frozen coffee and milk! The volume had [evidently, due to not only the lattice structure of ice, but also to the air between each crystal] increased to... about 157% its original liquidy volume.

I'm not sure whether this is "Italian Ice", "ice" or "granita". When I was younger, my brother and I used to make watermelon granita, which I recall included 150g of caster sugar dissolved in water, a lot of watermelon juice, and lemon juice. It was made in the same way as this, and did NOT taste like artificial watermelon flavour. It used to be such a big deal! Today, I felt like making this since it's too humid to drink hot coffee [even though it was pouring with rain all afternoon] and I felt like this would be yummy. Before freezing, the slurry tasted like normal sweet coffee with way too much milk [I tend to like coffee without milk]. After freezing, I feel as though it tastes even more watery than originally... which means that next time, I have to brew super-strong coffee. This is saying something, since I generally make really strong coffee. However, it isn't super sweet, which is great. I'm just worried that it's going to freeze into one huge mass by tomorrow morning, since I probably didn't add enough sweeteners to keep the ice not-that-frozen, since adding sweeteners means that the freezing point of the solution increases, which means that, in theory, the granita would freeze at a higher temperature [because the sweetener molecules prevent the water molecules from bonding to each other as efficiently].

Sesame Chocolate Cookies!

In the book Chocolate by Nick Malgieri, I found a recipe for almond chocolate cookies on page 179. Actually, they're called "Sicilian Easter Hearts", although after my tweaking, they are official not such an object. I also didn't bake the cookies. I just microwaved them.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups of flour and cocoa powder. Use whatever ratio you want.

1 cup of ground sesame - We happen to have ground sesame [a.k.a. sesame flour?] at home. You may have ground almonds.

Ginger powder

0.5 cups of honey

0.5 tbsp baking soda

Some sugar and/or instant coffee powder. Just 'cuz.

Water

So, you just mix everything except the water. Then, add water at about a tablespoon at a time until you get something that resembles dough. This dough must be really dry, but it also has to be malleable. In other words, you can roll balls of it in your hands without it crumbling. If it gets too sticky, too bad, you're out of luck :P.

I stuck mine in the fridge for easy slicing. Then, I sliced three of them [small pieces] and microwaved it for 30 seconds. Seeing that it was still a tad gooey, I microwaved it again for 20 seconds. This time, two of the cookies turned out fantastic, but the third one was a bit too hard in the middle. Either way, this is way more efficient than actually baking the cookies. I'm not sure how many these yield, since I have the rest of the log in the fridge, but the book says that it "makes about 15 large cookies".

Although eating this raw had the same texture as... say, almond paste, I think I prefer it cooked. I prefer it cookied. Haha. It's a bit too dry. So, after microwaving, I prodded them, and they were really poofy and looked like mini pastries, even though they were technically "low fat" [technically, there is a ton of fat in sesame and cocoa powder. However, the fat in those substances pales in comparison to the % of fat in oil or butter or cream cheese, which is basically 100%]. They even tasted like some sorta cakey-cookie thing! The cookie above was really moist in the middle, as you can see. I couldn't really taste much cocoa powder, due to the fact that there was three times as much ground sesame as there was cocoa powder... so I think this leans towards the more "exotic" and "non-traditional" flavourings of cookies, which is cool. I couldn't taste much ginger spice though :(, which is a bit of a letdown. Guess I'll add more next time. I think I'm going to experiment with the microwave a lot more now... since I have proven that it does NOT produce inferior cookies. I mean, the past few years, the microwave has yielded disasters concerning cookies... but this was a nice change.

Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzels!

At one of the Animal Alliance meetings at school in 2007, I was introduced to something called "Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzels". Actually, they were probably called "Nibblers", because that's what they're currently called. Anyway... I had never had honey mustard in my life, before, and I remember asking, "Are these vegetarian?".
The first bite? They tasted tangy, with a hint of bacon. I honestly thought that they tasted like bacon. That's evidently not the case anymore, since now they just taste onion-y and honey-y with a hint of spice. Anyway, that was the first time I had ever encountered Nibblers. In all honesty, I've never been a huge pretzel fan; I've always preferred other forms of carbs, and pretzels are usually covered in coarse chunks of NaCl. However, these Nibblers are the zesty exception [harhar].
A month or so ago, I bought two packs of Snyder's of Hanover Honey Mustard and Onion Nibblers, and I fell in obsession with them again... [aka I went on a thorough binge]. In the first bag, everything was "standard" shaped. The second bag had two mutants, which I think is pretty cool :) Damn sexy flavour. :P

Bread'n'Backerr.

Hey. I'm back. From AP exams and mental instability [studying]. I had 5 AP exams. which was utterly terrible. Especially as I've been obsessed with the Harry Potter series in the past few months... I wish that I could get a memory charm on all my Harry Potter memories... so that I wouldn't CRAVE magic. I think I've read each book at least 7 times. haha.... 7 is such a special number...

Anyway, I was done yesterday, so I went to Shoprite for the first time in ages and I got some Greek Yoghurt, and cocoa powder, among other stuff that I will consume in the future. After dinner, I made some gingerbread with my sister, using this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Gingerbread-Biscotti/Detail.aspx This has to be my favourite recipe site because you can narrow stuff down to ingredients you want/don't want, there are reviews, and there are PICTURES!! [So I suppose you've realised that I don't care for cooks.com]. Anyway, I gingerly tweaked it a bit...

You shall require:
0.25 cup oil. I used olive oil.
0.5 cup sugar. White sugar.
0.4 cup honey. My honey happened to separate into the liquidy part and the solidy-liquidy part. I used the solidy-liquidy part at the bottom, because it looked more treacly.
3 eggs.
2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. I dunno why, it just seems to work in whatever I bake.
3.2 cups of flour. I think. It could've been 2.2 cups, which would explain why my dough wasn't stiff.
leftover baking powder. I don't know how much I used.
2 big tablespoons of ginger powder. I think I should've added one more, but at the moment it tastes gingery enough.
tiny bit of salt.

What to do:
1. Mix oil, sugar, honey, egg, vinegar.
2. Mix flour, salt, baking powder, ginger.
3.Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, and set aside to cool.
4. Mix dry stuff into wet stuff 3 large tbsp at a time. Use figure 8s.
5. Spread into two slabs of approximately equal length and width and height [aka volume] and decorate with whatever you want [my sister wanted pixie stix and chocolate].
6. Bake for 17 minutes at 375F on the near-bottom rack [I hate it when recipes don't tell me what rack I'm supposed to use]. Then, get all nervous and add another 3 minutes.
7. Leave pan in the oven [which is off] for 5 minutes.
8. Stick a fork in the middle off the slab. If it comes out clean'n shiny, you're done. Get those mitts on. The edges, by now, are probably dark brown, but the middle is yellowy gold.
9. Cut into whatever shapes you wanna. Biscotti shape kinda killed it for me so I just did squares.
10. Eat. I didn't stick these on the cooling rack and they were fine.

If I had baked it for a little more, it would've been biscotti-ish. I don't like biscotti, but my mum loves it... It's weird coloured because my sister insisted on putting coloured sugar over it.

So much for them being the same volume...

The dough was the most delicious raw cookie dough I have ever had. Ever.