Soups and autumn. It goes together like peas and carrots. A couple of weeks ago I had lunch at Rhapsody and had to try the soup that was featured on our local news. It was as good as I had expected. Smooth, velvety and perfect for fall.

That inspired me to take my first crack at making a roasted squash soup. I didn’t really have a recipe and just winged it. I should’ve known it was going to produce alot of soup. Like, ALOT. But I didn’t and now I have enough soup to last me until next autumn.

I used my 5 quart stock pot and didn’t have room to add any more liquid to thin it out so it’s a bit on the thicker side. It still tastes great and I’ve separated it into different pots so it’ll be easier to thin out later.

Roasted Squash Soup

1. Preheat oven 400. Place squash sliced side down and roast for 45 minutes. Once cooked, scoop out the squash and set aside.

2. Melt butter in a stockpot. Cook onions, carrots, celery, ginger, and pear until soft. By the way, I know it sounds weird but a friend adds a banana into her soup for some natural sweetness. I didn’t have a banana but I had a pear that was on its last legs. It’s ok to omit.

3. Add chicken broth and the squash and bring to a boil. Use a hand blender and puree soup mixture.

4. If you have room in your stockpot, you may want to add more liquid to thin it out.

5. Add salt to taste

This is a good base to be creative. You can throw in some parmesan cheese, add a dollop of greek yogurt, and sprinkle some chopped sage. Or you could add a little curry powder and some roasted pepitas for a different take.

Beans baked very slowly for several hours develop a creamy texture, while the liquid they cook in, which thickens to a syrup, acquires a caramelized flavor. The kale practically melts in this casserole, going from bitter to sweet. I love using lima beans in this dish because they’re so big and their texture is so luxurious.”

– NY Times

2/1/2011

Are you drooling? I certainly did when I first came across the recipe last February so I knew I HAD to make it! Not only did it sound fantastic, it was good for you too!

Unfortunately it did not turn out the way I had expected. No creamy texture, no caramelized flavor. Nothing luxurious about it. Just a watery mess.

What a disappointment.

But the flavors were there so it was just a matter of tweaking how this is cooked. The results? Let’s just say this is a keeper!

“Slow Baked” Bean and Kale

1 bunch kale, stemmed and washed in two changes of water

Bowl of ice water

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, chopped

2 small carrots, chopped

2 rib celery, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 2/3 cups white beans (3/4 pound) or dried lima beans, picked over and soaked for at least four hours and drained

1 6-ounce can tomato paste, dissolved in 1 cup water

3 cups bean water

1 tsp thyme

2 tsp dry parsley

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon Herbes de Provence

2 tsp salt

1 tsp freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup bread crumbs

1. Place beans in a pot and add enough water so that it’s about 3-4 inches of water above the beans. Bring the water to a boil. Once it boils, turn the heat down so that it simmers. Cover and let it simmer until tender, about 1-1/2 hours.

2. Once tender, scoop out 2-1/2 cups of beans and set aside. Drain the rest of the beans, reserving the liquid.

3. In a large bowl, stir the tomato paste and 2 cups of the bean liquid together. Add the remaining beans (not the 2-1/2 cups you just set aside). Use a hand blender to puree the beans into the liquid. This should be a creamy consistency but if it’s still too thick, add another 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the bean liquid. Set aside.

4. Remove the bitterness from the kale by first bringing a large pot of water to a boil.  Tear the kale into bite size pieces and put it into the boiling water for two minutes. Drain and quickly put the kale into the bowl of ice water to prevent it from cooking any further. Squeeze out the water and set aside.

5. Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil over medium heat. You can use the same pot that you cooked the beans in. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and cook until the onion is tender. Add the garlic and stir for about a minute.

6. Preheat the oven to 225.

7. Pour the tomato paste/bean mixture into the pot with the veggies and bring to a simmer. Add the thyme, parsley, bay leaf, Herbes de Provence, salt, and pepper.

8. Stir in kale so that it’s mixed in evenly and thoroughly.

9. Carefully stir in the 2-1/2 cups of beans you had set aside earlier and bring to a simmer. Taste and add more salt if needed. Be careful in over salting now because some liquid will evaporate in the oven later.

10. In a small bowl, mix the bread crumbs and 1 tbsp olive oil together. Set aside.

11. Pour mixture into an oven-proof bowl. Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the beans and bake for 30-60 minutes, until the bread crumbs are lightly browned.

Serves 8-10 one-cup servings.

Last week a friend surprised me with a gift in the mail. Among the items in the care package was a Nikkor 35mm F1.8 lens.

Oh. My. God. How did I ever live without this lens?

At the risk of sounding like a bigger geek than I am, a faster lens means that I’m able to take sharper indoor pictures in low natural light. Where I live, it sometimes feels like there are more cloudy days than sunny ones. I can’t remember the last time we had a streak of sunny days.

So when there isn’t enough light, the camera’s shutter has to open long enough to capture the image. You don’t want the shutter to be open too long because, if you’re holding the camera by hand as I do, your pictures can come out blurry.

There are some solutions. A flash is the easiest solution but some pictures don’t turn out well with flash. Food never looks good under its harsh light. You could bump up the ISO but then your pictures will look grainy. A tripod is a great solution. Unfortunately it’s not always ideal because it gets cumbersome and isn’t always practical.

And that’s why I absolutely love my new lens. At F1.8, it has a larger aperture (hole) than my F3.5-F5.6. That means I’m able to get more light at a faster shutter speed. Fewer blurry pictures! Plus since it’s a prime lens, as opposed to zoom, there are fewer moving parts. This should mean that the pictures will be sharper.

Here are a few of my favorites I’ve taken so far:

It was getting pretty dark outside but I love how the lens buys me that extra time to take pictures.

A faster lens also means I can take faster and better pictures of Junior, especially since he tends to squirm around alot.

Compared to the kit lens in this picture. Perhaps Mr. Squirrel would have been sharper if I had the new lens.

I love the richness of the colors in this one but don’t know if it’s really due to the lens or not. I should do a comparison next time.

I like how the 35mm forces me to think about composition.For example there are a few things I’m not quite sure about in this picture, like if I should’ve taken it with the full picture frame or how the bookshelf ledge cuts off the bottom left corner.

I love bokeh (the aesthetic blur in pictures) but I’m finding that this lens is bo-crazy. When your shutter is open as wide at F1.8, I tend to get alot of bokeh. A little can go a long way so I’m learning how to manage the fast shutter speed with the right amount of bokeh.

btw I was chopping bamboo to make sticky rice. Yum!

All in all, I loooooove this new lens. Thank you Nikon Fairy!

Since it might be awhile before I can go to LA again, I took full advantage of every meal. Neither a calorie nor a bite could be wasted on mediocre food.

One of the things I miss about LA is the fresh produce. Even with all the fancy restaurants and my favorite dives, I try to make it to Souplantation a few times while I’m out there. I know, I know…it’s a salad buffet. The pizza and pasta there is pretty weak but I really love their salads. Produce really does taste better in California!

These are typical things you’d find in a Taiwanese breakfast. This was ALOT of food  to have all at once and we didn’t eat it all in one sitting. But it was just good to have a little taste of everything.

From the strawberries going clockwise, little steamed dumplings filled with Chinese chives. Next to it is part of a Chinese cruller, an eggy donut without any sugar. You can dip the cruller into the hot sweetened soy milk for a decadent treat. To the left of the soy milk is a fan twan, a Chinese cruller wrapped in steamed sticky rice. Sometimes you’ll find other fillings in it like dried shredded pork, salted cabbage, and/or a chopped soy sauce egg. To the left is a plate of sticky rice, which is something I hadn’t seen as a breakfast item. Next to that is part of a green onion pancake. I actually prefer mine because it’s less greasy.

I’m not Korean but over the last year or so, I’ve been obsessed with Korean food especially since the places in Chicago doesn’t compare to the places in LA.

One of my favorites is a big bowl of bibimbap. It’s mostly veggies with a bit of meat over a bed of rice. The best part really is the rice. It’s served in a hot stoneware where the egg gets cooked and the rice gets all nice and brown and toasty and crispy at the bottom. Nom nom nom!

Tofu is meh but I looooove soondubu, a tofu stew. Now my Korean friends laugh at me because as much as I love soondubu, I can’t eat foods that are too spicy. So mine is white when the broth is normally red. Sometimes an angry red.

You crack an egg into the stew and the bubbling hot broth will cook the egg. You can stir the stew and break up the egg or just leave it there for it to poach. It’s really up to you. My favorite way to eat it is to take a spoonful of rice and dip it into the broth with a little bit of tofu and its toppings. Nom nom nom!

Ok, my favorite part of Korean food is the banchan, or side dishes. Talk about a little foodie paradise for my ADD! And if you ever run out, you can simply ask for more. How cool is that? I also love the little croaker they have at some places. Crispy and salty goodness. Nom nom nom!

At this one Korean BBQ place, they gave us 12 banchans. Twelve! OMG, there was so much to choose from, where could I even start? And the Korean BBQ? I’m not a huge BBQ fan but I really could eat this all day. My favorite has to be kalbi, or Korean shortribs. Nom nom nom!

After a fantastic meal, the hardest part is remembering to leave room for dessert. I didn’t have dessert often but managed to get this on my last night in LA. Shaved ice is a popular Asian dessert and we went to a dessert cafe called Mochilato where they serve Japanese (mochi) and Italian (gelato) sweets. The ice was powdery soft under the sweetest chopped strawberries, kiwi, bananas, and mangoes. It was topped with pieces of mochi and a dollop of azuki beans. Oh and the surprise was that this was all over a scoop of gelato. Nom nom nom!

Also near and dear to my heart is Ethiopian food. Loooooove Ethiopian! My friend from college first introduced me to it 15 years ago and I don’t have it as often as I like. It’s better to have alot of people so you can have more variety but it’s hard to find people who are open to having it. So whenever I see him, we always have Ethiopian!

That night we ordered 3 things: vegetarian (all the veggies and bean stews on the perimeter), lamb (closer to the camera) and beef (away). It’s served on injera, a spongy flatbread that tastes tangy. Sounds funky, I know but I swear it’s really good!

The restaurant gives you a bunch of injera on the side. You tear off a piece of the injera and use it to scoop up lentils, beef, whatever. The best part is at the end of the meal, all the juices from all the fillings have soaked into the big injera. Unfortunately we were too stuffed to even have it.

Nom nom nom!

Ok, seeing these pictures is making me hungry again.

As much as I love to bake, yeast has always scared me. The process just sounded unappealing. Add yeast to warm water, stir in sugar, and wait 5-10 minutes for it to froth and foamy. Up till now, the only thing that was living and growing in my refrigerator was the mold on my strawberries.

It all changed when a pizza place near me celebrated their grand opening by giving away a free pizza and a salad, a $20 value. There was a line out the door but why not? I had just worked out and a pizza would hit the spot. The line wasn’t that long so might as well wait.

Oh. My God. Forty-five minutes later in 50-degree weather, I managed to thaw out long enough for them to hook the bagged pizza onto one of my frozen blue fingers. Before I left they told me I still need to bake it. What?!? You mean I just waited in line for a pizza that I still have to bake?

And then the geeky side of me kicked in. What kind of business model is this? If I’m going to pay $20, I might as well go to Giordano’s. If I have to bake it myself, I’m getting a frozen pizza from the store. Besides, how hard could making pizza dough be?

Turns out that it’s not hard at all and I used the pizza dough recipe here found that doubling the salt and the olive oil produced better flavor. As for toppings, I try keep it simple and healthy. Sliced tomatoes. Slivers of white onions. Homemade Italian sausage. Artichoke hearts. Even shrimp. I don’t need the calories from mozzarella so a little parmesan cheese goes a long way. And when it comes out of the oven, I throw on some fresh chopped basil and all is right with the world.

I’m happy my local pizza place has gotten me over my fear of yeast and I’m excited to try new things with it. In fact as I’m typing this, I’m baking my first loaf of bread and my place smells divine.

Earlier this year I was visiting some friends out in New York. While making plans, we thought it would be fun to take a cooking class at Viking, the same company that manufactures appliances. The only class that coincided with my trip was a sushi making class for $100.

Seriously? Sushi class for $100?!? 1) I already know how to make sushi and 2) Really? $100? Are they on crack? You don’t even cook sushi!

That’s when I offered to teach my friends how to make sushi: where to find the freshest fish, proper way to make sushi rice, even how to roll it. On the menu was miso soup made from homemade stock, green beans with sesame dressing, salad, gyoza, and of course, sushi. Oh and mochi ice cream for dessert.

The table and buffet table was loaded with food.

When it comes to fillings, you can put in pretty much anything you want. We could’ve had a whole table just for all the stuff we had to make our sushi: tuna, a spicy tuna mixture, salmon, yellow tail, shrimp, eel, ikura (salmon roe), masago (flying fish roe), Japanese pickles, sliced English cucumbers, and the humble cocktail sausages.

Here’s my friend’s husband topping his spicy tuna roll with masago.

Looks professional!

Here’s my friend’s roll. Let’s call it, um, rustic. LOL!

It was such a fun evening, full of laughter and one that we’ll remember for a long time.

I’m already looking forward to our next get together. Wonder what we’ll make?

Now that I think about it, mom doesn’t even like carrots. Why is this even her signature dessert?

Lucky for her, I took after her father and love to bake. The only difference between me and ah-gong (Taiwanese for grandpa) is that he would skimp on ingredients. If the recipe called for two eggs, he’d put one. One cup of sugar? Let’s do 1/2 cup. So it was no surprise that the food didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to and ah-ma would yell it him for wasting ingredients.

I’ve had a craving for carrot cake over the last couple of months, the real kind. And since I love all things mini — I don’t know, things always taste better when they’re bite sized and sometimes you just want a taste. Anyway, this is my new fave and I’ve made these mini carrot cakes many times these last few months.

Oh, you might be wondering about the cups. I got the cups when I was in LA last summer from Smart N Final. If your’e outside of LA, you should be able to get them in any restaurant supply shop. They’re called souffle cups but some people might call them nut cups.

They’re pretty to look at but honestly, a pain to eat out of. They don’t peel off easily like cupcake cups so before you serve to guests, you should tell them that the easiest way to eat is to firmly pull the pleats apart. The first time I served these to friends, they looked at me like I was crazy for giving them instructions.

The recipe is from Cooking Light and what I love about it is that it has less oil than its fattier counterparts. I’ve seen some recipes that require a cup of oil. Really? Is that really necessary? Anyway, here’s the link to the recipe with my mods below:

• I only made half the recipe, which would yield 16-18 mini cupcakes
• I replaced the coconut with 1/2 cup of dried currants soaked in hot water for 15 minutes. Drain before combining with batter.
• Chopped toasted walnuts instead of pecans.
• Added 1/4 tsp nutmeg (use 1/2 tsp for full recipe)
• Finely chopped carrots instead of grated
• Fill cups about 2/3-3/4 full. Line the baking sheet with foil because they may explode in the oven.
• Try baking for ~20 minutes but start checking at 18. My oven runs hot so I tend to bake at 340 and can never get the times right.
• For half the recipe, I started off with 1/4 cup of powdered sugar for the cream cheese frosting and would add 1 tbsp at a time to get to the desired sweetness. The amount they called for seemed like it would be insanely sweet
• Let the cupcakes cool before frosting, about 20 minutes.
• For garnish, sprinkle with cinnamon and maybe even raw sugar for extra crunch. When you’re sprinkling, a tip is to gently sprinkle from up high. That way it lands on the frosting more evenly and you won’t get blotchy clumps of cinnamon.