Battle of the Brownies!

^Vegetable Brownie

In an effort to get my sister to eat more types of vegetables, I told her that she'd have to eat one slice of eggplant from the casserole I made today before she could eat her brownie. She initially agreed, and we made brownies. My mum thwarted my plan, though, by giving in to my sister's crying/whining and telling her that she could just eat cabbage instead. I didn't take any pictures of the casserole because it wasn't particularly pretty. However, I did get pretty riled by the fact that my sister just plain refuses to try new foods.

In order to show her that vegetables CAN actually be delicious, I made two types of brownies today (with her help. I think that introducing people to cooking from scratch is great education). The first one was the generic, perfect, cliche chocolate brownie. The second one was a whole wheat flour, zucchini and cabbage brownie. You're probably retching at the thought, right? On the contrary, though, the zucchini and cabbage brownie didn't taste like vegetables at all! You couldn't even SEE the shredded zucchini (you could see some of the shredded cabbage because I got lazy with the grater).

The generic brownie was perfectly moist, dense, and chewy. It's the ubiquitous brownie you can get from a box, from the freezer, from scratch, or from a bake sale. It's not cakey, and it was kind of sweet because my sister added more sugar (since she wanted really sweet brownies). It was pretty fudgy. This is the kind of thing I would make for other people who aren't accustomed to my weird cooking style.

The recipe for the GENERIC BROWNIES is adapted from here, and I made only half the batch since my sister is the one who's going to be eating this one.

INGREDIENTS for a 200 cm^2 pan of thin brownies.

50 g oil

100 g caster sugar

1 egg

vanilla

25 g cocoa powder

50 g all-purpose white flour

0.25 tsp baking powder

METHOD

1. Mix oil, sugar, egg and vanilla.

2. Add in cocoa powder, flour, and baking powder, folding in a figure 8. The batter looks like this.

3. Bake at 177 degrees C/ 350 degrees F for 18-20 minutes on the bottom rack of an un-preheated oven. If you use the top rack, bake for 23 minutes.

*******

The vegetable brownie was not too sweet since I cut the sugar in half, not as oily, and definitely more cakey. I was actually pretty disappointed that I ended up with a cake rather than a brownie... it was more crumbly, but still pretty succulent. The cake is really dense and there is a slight grainy whole wheat flour texture to it, which I enjoy. Although I think it may be confirmation bias, there was a clean, vegetabl-y aftertaste which kind of reminds me of cucumber. The interesting thing about this vegetable cake/brownie is that the batter was the consistency of cookie dough, or super thick porridge. It also didn't rise much in the dish (Guess what?! I found a glass 20 cm square baking dish! Whoooo!!! My mum kept all the glassware in the top cabinet, above the stove...and now I'm putting it to good use!).

The recipe for the VEGETABLE CAKE is adapted from here. Incidentally, these are vegan. I aspire to make these brownie-like in the near future. Modifications for brownies include using less flour and using more oil...

INGREDIENTS for a 400 cm^2 pan of thick cake

50 g oil

110 g caster sugar (more if you'd like)

200 g grated vegetables (particularly zucchini, but I used a combination of zucchini and about 75 g of cabbage. Oh, right. Zucchini = Courgette)

pinch of salt

50 g cocoa powder

140 g whole wheat flour

30 g all-purpose white flour (I should've cut this out)

2 tsp baking soda

METHOD

1. Mix oil, sugar, and vegetables.

2. Add cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, and flour(s). Mix thoroughly. The batter will be extremely thick and sticky, sort of like moist cookie batter or thick corn grits. Or thick rice pudding.

3. Scoop batter into baking dish and spread it evenly.

4. Bake at 177 degree C/350 degrees F for 23 minutes on the bottom rack of an un-preheated oven. The shredded zucchini will miraculously disappear.

5. Somehow, half of the cake will disappear within a few well-chosen minutes.

Dolmades

We have a grape plant in the backyard near the garage, and there are a lot of leaves on it during the summer, obviously. I happened to be browsing recipes online (yet again), and I came across the idea of dolmades - stuffed grape leaves. Food trucks around Philadelphia seem to serve these a lot, too. I figured I should make some dolma/dolmades because I have free grape leaves!!! None of those preserved leaves in a jar! These are fresh, smell grapey, and taste a bit sour/fibrous/grapey. I wonder why I never thought about making these before, or making zong[4]zi[3] (粽子) with grape leaves...

Since there are many variations of dolma (the Egyptian one interests me more just because I like Egypt, I guess), and I don't have any relatives who make dolmades from some family heirloom recipe, I know this isn't "authentic". Plus, I've never eaten stuffed grape leaves before, so I don't really know what I'm supposed to be comparing my version to. According to Wikipedia, possible ingredients include rice, pine nuts, cow, eggplant, raisins, and parsley/dill/mint. I sort of just used what we had at home. I also wasn't sure what online recipe would be good, but I ended up loosely following this one. By "loosely", I mean the way the rice stay in the grape leaves - quite loosely. Hah.

Ingredients for about... 38 dolmades (There are fewer than 38 pictured above because the rice either leaked out of the grape leaves for the bottom-of-the-stack dolmades)

Most ingredients are optional. Add what you want.

A. Flavouring

4 sprigs of fresh dill

A few leaves of fresh basil

Parsley flakes

Mint flakes

Liberal amount of coriander powder

Pinches of salt and pepper

75% of a lemon's juice

B. ~4 cups of Stuffing

2.5 cups white rice

0.5 cups Arborio rice (actually, whatever rice you want; 3 cups rice total)

0.75 cups pine nuts (boiled pine nuts are delicious!!!!)

A few tbsp chopped dried fruit

30% of a medium-sized onion

1.25 cups of ground turkey (for the rest of the family.)

1 cup of artichokes in oil

C. Misc

40+ grape leaves, and some to line the saucepan

25% of a lemon (possibly unnecessary)

0.25 cups of oil (possibly unnecessary)

A lot of water

Method

1. Mix all ingredients except turkey in Group A and B together in a big bowl. If you like turkey, you can put it in now, but if you're cooking for a vegetarian (a.k.a. me), you should add the turkey after using half the stuffing.

2. Put one tablespoon of stuffing onto a grape leaf.

3. Roll

4. Put into saucepan along circumference.

5. Stick in 25% of the lemon (possibly unnecessary) and however much oil you want, and also pour in a lot of water until all dolmades are covered.

6. Put a ceramic plate on top of the dolmades to weigh them down, cover pan, and boil water on high heat.

7. Simmer on LOW for about an hour.

Whoo!!!

Note: Unfortunately, the bottom layer of dolmades ended up quite overcooked, while the top two/three layers ended up perfectly chewy and gooey. To avoid having the grape leaves break and the rice and pine nuts floating around (well, the rice sinks, but the pine nuts float in the water/oil mixture since they're less dense due to the high fat content), I will use a smaller saucepan next time and just make two batches of two-layers instead of one batch of four-layers. This will:

1. Use less than half the amount of oil/water I used today

2. Require less heat energy because I will be reusing the water/oil, which would already be about 97 degrees C instead of 25 degrees C

3. Cook all the dolmades evenly.

4. Possibly require less than 1 hr of simmering.

Yummy!!

"Two-Ingredient" Brownie

Yay for college kids with "no food" and a microwave!!

This brownie recipe requires you to purchase two ingredients.

1. Chocolate. I used baking chocolate, which is bitter (no sugar), though you could just use a candy bar. It was about $0.125.

2. Flour/bran/potato flakes/crushed cereal/whatever.

Actually, let's say your co-worker gives you a candy bar. A Twix bar, for instance. In that case, you only need to purchase one ingredient, the flour/bran/whatever.

You probably have the other ingredients in your house, or you can probably pick them up at Wawa or at some restaurant.

1. One packet of mayonnaise.

2. A few packets of sugar. I used four, but I think I could've done well with three. Some people may want to put in 14. If you use a Twix bar, you could put in less sugar, of course.

Method

1. Melt chocolate in microwave in a ceramic bowl.

2. Add mayonnaise, sugar, and a few tablespoons of water.

3. Add in flour/bran/crushed cereal/etc. until you have something that looks like cake batter. If you want something super gooey (like the chocolate brownie in the picture above), make it the consistency of pancake batter.

4. Microwave for a minute. Add a few more seconds if you want.

5. The brownie firms up a little when it cools.

6. DELICIOUSLY GOOEY AND MOIST AND HOT AND CHOCOLATEY!!!

...so next time you have all those random mayonnaise/sugar/artificial sweetener packets, you know what to do!

The price of chocolate is now the price of that flavour of cake! Whoo!

Mayonnaise is basically eggs and oil, which give the cake the fatty taste and the rise (eggs). No baking soda/powder needed!

As a side note, I found a super-widely-followed-blog (that I won't name, because I'm not impressed by it anymore) that gave out recipes listing the exact cost of the ingredients and the price per small serving. Everyone, including me initially, is so damn intrigued by it because it shows that a serving of pound cake is some 0.46 cents, or whatever, and that a batch of cookies is $5.21 or whatever. Right, if I follow the recipes on this blog, I'll make delicious cheap food.

What I realised after reading some of the recipes, though, is that the recipes are normal. They're the kind you can find ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET. ANY blog could stick out its ingredients with the prices. ANY person can buy and make food using cheap ingredients from Walmart. My mum does. She just doesn't blog about it. I don't get why this particular blog gets so much fanfare; if I make a batch of cookies using someone else's recipe, it's probably going to cost around $5.00 as well. Only, the blog won't tell me it's $5.00 (my grocery receipt will, though). I mean, this blog says, oh, make cookies using flour ($x), eggs ($x), sugar ($x), butter ($x), chocolate ($x). $x per serving.

My blog says, oh, make cookies using flour, eggs, sugar, butter, chocolate. Eat them.

So, after I thought of this, I realised that that blog wasn't a big deal after all. And I also got turned off with the shopping at Walmart part. Meh. Haters gonna hate. I'm gonna hate, haha.

Macaroni and Cheese...on a Pizza.

The world is changing. There used to be a time where pizza, macaroni, and cheese were discrete. We then had pizza with cheese and macaroni and cheese.

And now I have encountered the sum of all parts. A macaroni and cheese pizza.

Yes, it's in a bowl because I had eaten cereal beforehand. The macaroni and cheese was ridiculously buttery, which was kind of a deterrent because it tasted more like buttery oily pasta on pizza dough. In other words, it didn't really taste cheesy or umami :(. Recently, I've realised that a lot of the dough at Commons is some mix of whole wheat and white flour, which makes the dough extremely... elasticky. It almost has a plastic sheen to it. I'd say it's the high gluten content that whole wheat flours tend to have [due to less refinement? If you look at nutrition labels, the 100% whole wheat flour-made breads usually have 5-6g protein per 120 Cal, wheras white bread... doesn't have many. 1-2g? 3? Anyway, this was at Hill... and it was most definitely white flour.

International Dinner!

My dorm house holds an International Dinner each year, which isn't super international, but is chill nevertheless. There was Chinese, French, Spanish, Mediterranean, and Swiss food. I stayed far far away from Chinese food...because I don't like commercial Chinese food in the U.S. The "French" food was baguette with fondue, although technically speaking [according to my Swiss friend, who's an exchange student], fondue is actually Swiss. He made some swiss potato cheese thing which I didn't get to try :(. Also, he said that you're supposed to make the fondue first, and THEN stick it in the fondue warmer thing, to keep it liquidy. I'm not going to comment any further, because, when found by the Penn Internet Police [hey, they probably exist], I'm going to get suspended for criticising a professor's personality [or, my grade's going to go down].

Anyway, the cheese cubes basically sat in wine in the fondue-maker, because that's not how you make fondue.

This is some Spanish omelette, some corn or flour fried tortilla thing [It. Was. Drenched. In. Oil]. Soooo delicious though!

Mediterranean rice with pita. This pita was the thinnest pita I've never seen in my life... it was wafer thin. Interesthin'. Haha.

I'm not sure what ethnicity this cake was supposed to represent, but the chocolate truffle was extremely soft and ganachey, so I'm guessing it's French. It seemed to be really fresh, actually...Nothing hard and oily, like lower-grade truffles. This cake is definitely not American because it was a small slice by American standards [Think, 1/3 of the size of an American "slice of cake"]. It was extremely moist and gooey, and very dense. It didn't taste like bitter cocoa chocolate, but it wasn't overwhelmingly sweet either. It was almost pudding-like, and most definitely not a brownie. I would say there were plenty of eggs in this cake.

This is amazing... from the Mediterranean table: an almond stuffed into a fig! Amazing!

Not in photos: I had some potato [really nice spices] and dulce de leche [not to my liking] from the Spanish table, and I also didn't try the gazpacho :( since I didn't bring a cup. It's BYOUtensils/vessels!

Dinner at China Chalet a.k.a. 天府 [Tian Fu]

My dad's birthday is around this time of year so we went out to eat dinner to celebrate it since I'm now a college kid and I can't come home much. Actually, I could if I had the money or the time. The truth is that college kids are poor. Well, most college kids are poor. There has to be some millionaires at Penn...

Anyway, my dad likes Chinese food [what a surprise! Not.] so we went to Tian Fu [天府] because that's where we used to go when we used to live in Florham Park in 2006. All I can say is, at least Niffy didn't yell out, "The food here isn't that good" because that's what she apparently said when my family went to the Greek restaurant a few weeks ago [without me, unfortunately]...

She nearly got hit by a car though, so I guess that's how karma works. It was a black SUV and it stopped for my brother and I as we were crossing the road. Then, it started to go again, and my sister decided to RUN across the road...

Then she proceeded to blame us for not warning her about the car. It was really crazy and confusing. It was like the time she was on the metro platform and I was on the metro and I was trying to keep the doors half open so that she could GET ON to the metro, and then the train started MOVING. Anyway, I keep digressing.

This was cow pieces with peanuts, water chestnuts, pepper, chilies, and oil.

Fish pieces with peppery batter and snow peas and oil. I am not condoning these acts of massacring animals. My mum did tell me that she apparently has had high cholesterol [ish] for the past 7 years, and she's finally decided to eat fewer animals now, instead of having to take meds [sigh. The U.S. and its pharmaddiction], which I support.

Three different animal pieces [chicken, pig and shrimp] with vegetables and, oh, yeah, oil. This one actually was supposed to have crunchy rice with it but there were only three chunks of crunchy rice, which I don't think counts as it being "crunchy rice with meat". It should be "meat with vegetables and a tiny side of crunchy rice". Whatever, it benefits them for advertising...

And there was rice vermicelli with vegetables and oil. Seriously. Why. Do. Chinese. Restaurants. Use. So. Much. Oil. Needless to say, I got pretty much zero protein but I did get all the unsaturated fat I need for the week.

Vegan Whoopie Pie!

So at one of those late night events there was a Vegetarian society meeting thingy and there were these cakes and stuff and a "make-your-own" whoopie pie table. I have never had a legitimate whoopie pie before. Honestly... is the stuff inside supposed to be marshmallow fluff? Cream? Whipped cream? PHOs? Meringue?...

These cupcakes were amazing though... especially as they were vegan.

This is a vat of peanut butter whoopie pie filling. It was actually tasty. Notice the marker nearby... just for size comparison. It was a HUGE vat of... sugary fat.

The pillow-sized vats of plain whoopie pie filling and cookies and cream [and I didn't think that more cream was possible] whoopie pie filling. Huge vat of gooey creamy white stuff... ring a bell? Get this in a bank? [Okay, that was a terrible joke. Or, reference. So, I'm not going to underline it.]

Since I am a neophyte at making whoopie pies, I put way too much creamy stuff on the chocolate cookie-cake thingy [which was really dry and bland. And baking-soda-y. I didn't like it.] It was way too oily. The cupcake below, on the other hand, was ridiculously moist and delicious. I didn't consume any of the other stuff [pumpkin, and vanilla, I believe.] since I, for once, didn't feel hungry.

Penn Frosh Dinner!"

Today at 6:30pm, the UPenn alumni club made a Class of 2014 picnic thing. During the picnic, we all introduced ourselves and said "one interesting thing" about ourselves. I totally could've said that I'm a runner... I like pie... I'm a vegetarian... I like stale cornflakes?

Instead, I said that I blog about food, which is why I was waving my phone around, taking pictures of my food [I honestly felt awkward doing it this time]... although the quality is compromised, my phone camera is the most useful function on my phone [oh the irony.] and it deserves a ton of credit.

I wasn't too fond of the pasta, which was very oily, although I liked the olives and sun-dried tomatoes, and the fact that there was no salami pieces or anything inside. In fact, I was surprised at the lack of animal pieces in this picnic/dinner. There were platters of wraps, including tuna, cow, and pig pieces wraps... and there was also plain vegetable wraps! In fact, they were really good wraps; the eggplant in it was nicely grilled, with some balsamic marinade which didn't taste too strong [I don't really like strong balsamic flavoured stuff] and the green flatbread was quite textured [and also toasted]. It lacked the empty-carby-taste that comes with so many white breads and it was definitely not stale.The salad was basically lettuce with some sharp cheese and croutons, which were nicely toasted although quite oily.

We also had these mini waxy chocolate candies that were basically dots of waxy [read: not chocolate, but chocolate FLAVOURED] candy coated in some crunchy candy shell. For some reason, I could taste a peanutty flavour, but that could totally be my imagination. Note the colour choices in this whole picnic/dinner.

A chocolate chip cookie.

And... that's a wrap for today :P

Do Twinkies Really Need More Embellishment?

Oh look. Tiramisu. I mean, Twinkie-misu. I mean, crap on fat. Actually, I'm not even sure what it's supposed to be. And... there's an ingredient and method list. Which is longer than this post. How difficult is it to unwrap a Twinkie and slosh it into a bowl of cream?

And... for those who want to marry Twinkies; this is the perfect wedding cake. It's even pre-cut! And, you don't have to buy Thank You gifts, since all your guests are going to die of heart attacks from Twinkie-immersed-in-sugar-and-butter-and-food-colouring!

Please tell me that this book is just a hallucination. I don't actually see a "cookbook" for this thing called a "Twinkie" right? SAY IT ISN'T SO!... This is plain absurd.

Okay, I've never consumed a Twinkie before, so, perhaps they are the most delicious little pieces of gold ever. Truthfully, though, judging by the ingredients and the fact that I like chocolate cake with mousse more than "flavoured sponge filled with oily cream", I probably won't have a predilection for it, anyway.

Also, since April, Costoc has been stocking Veggie Crunchers, which I talked about way back, when my mum bought the exact thing from Kamman. Though, this version is marketed for the U.S. crowd, I'm guessing, and the wrapper is a tad different. The ingredients are the same, though. I was pretty surprised when I saw these at Costco.

And I suppose you've all noticed that my blog has recently been quite devoid of actual items that I've cooked... I've just been really occupied... There are four placement tests [Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, and French] that I need to study for, for college. I also recently have had some time consuming circumstances concerning a certain someone [It's a good thing.] Sorry guys, though, for now.

Grand Shanghai (大上海)- Edison

I am exhausted. We went to the beach yesterday with another family, and we ended up going to Grand Shanghai, which is in Edison, for dinner. As the name states, the restaurant specialises in Shanghainese Chinese-American food. I say "American" because the food wasn't exactly authentic. I mean, super-sweet orange fish doesn't really exist in legitimate Chinese cuisine. For example, the fish was way too sweet, my brother told me. I decided to try some of the sauce, and he was indeed correct. "Fish with orange sauce" may exist, but "fish with a cup of sugar in the orange sauce" does NOT, in fact, sell itself in China.

Anyway, the parents ordered this planned-out meal, which included appetisers, a seafood soup, a bunch of dishes, and orange wedges with maraschino cherries [ew] at the end. Apparently, the two pots of tea were separate, which sort of defeats the idea of an "all-included" meal plan. We ordered Pu Er tea [the red tea, below] and Chrysanthemum tea [which I dislike, in general].
The appetisers included a lot of cold cuts of animal pieces, but there were two non-animal ones too. One was diced dry tofu, with cilantro/Chinese celery. Personally, I don't like the flavour of cilantro but this wasn't too terrible, since I was honestly really hungry.
The second appetiser was this spongey tofu with a spicy peanut sauce. In all honesty, I was reminded of spicy Thai peanut noodle sauce. It was great.
There were veggies and stuff as well, and at the end there was the nian gao, or, "year cake", which is basically pieces of flat dough made from rice flour. I usually love this stuff the way my mum makes it, but Grand Shanghai's method wasn't bad either... I mean, anything smothered in oil and seasonings tastes... "good".Of course, I have to ruin the intellectual atmosphere by posting the above image. Check out A17, the "Sampler [PU-PU Platter]! Hahaha!!