These are Dangerously Delicious

I feel like I dropped off the face of the planet for the past couple months. So many people have come up to me and asked "Do you still blog about your cooking?" And I have to sadly respond with the truth, "No, I just haven't had time." Both JC and I have been so tied up with school, we rarely have time to cook, and if we do, we make one of our tried and true recipes that we can whip up quickly.

We did have a few weeks off for the holidays so we managed to make a trip over to LA to visit some of my family. We definitely made the most of our time there, eating at all of our favorite places and even went to see The Getty. JC and I took note of the huge crowd in front of Van Gogh's Irises and had much more appreciation for Monet's Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning. We had our fair share of saba from Sakae Sushi, got my fill of manju from Sakura-ya, had paradise cake from King's Hawaiian, chinese dinner at Seafood Port, ramen from Santouka, poke from Marukai and Uncle Clinton, dim sum in San Gabriel, fried chicken from The Loft, chinese chicken salad from Rascals, and had Pinkberry multiple times. We added a few new places to our list of must-visit like the Boiling Crab in Garden Grove, Mochi Cream in Mitsuwa, Shin-shen-gumi ramen in J-town, and 85 degrees bakery at Diamond Jamboree. You can obviously tell we love to enjoy good food.

I'm currently at the end of my Intersession block aka I have a bit of free time. Free time = time to bake. For Christmas, I got a cake pop baking pan, so I wanted to try and experiment with the cake ball trend. At one of our holiday parties, my baking queen aunt made some incredibly adorable red velvet cake balls coated in chocolate. I had been eying a recipe for chocolate peanut butter cake balls and figured I'd give them a shot. I wanted to try the traditional cake mix plus frosting approach before I started experimenting with the cake pop pans, so anyone can make this recipe without any special equipment.

This is seriously one of the easiest recipes ever, but the results look so fancy. I made one slight mistake in that I forgot to chill my cake balls before dipping them in the chocolate. I think this step would have made them turn out much nicer with a thinner chocolate shell. Regardless, they still look, and taste, amazing. I found it a little difficult to get a good technique for dipping. I first tried using forks and then switched to using two toothpicks. I still don't have a great way to make them look super nice, but I'll keep experimenting. I also decided to sprinkle a bit of crushed butterfinger on top to give a little crunch and contrast to the chocolate shell. You can easily substitute any cake flavor and frosting, just use the same basic steps. Enjoy!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cake Balls
adapted from Starting to Simmer

• Box Chocolate Cake, prepare according to box and allow to cool
• Chocolate frosting
• Chocolate morsels for melting
• Crushed Butterfinger bar
• *Ingredients for peanut butter filling (see below)

Break cooled chocolate cake in a large mixing bowl and crumble with hands. Add the chocolate frosting and mix until the mixture is a consistency in which you can form 1-inch balls. If the mixture is too crumbly, add more frosting. Make a ball of cake and make an indent in the center. Add a pinch of the peanut butter filling and wrap the chocolate cake around to form a ball. Place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Once you have made a pan-full of balls, place in the fridge for about 10 minutes to let them harden up. In the meantime, place the chocolate morsels in a microwave safe container and microwave for about a minute, stirring half way through, until all of the morsels are melted. Remove the cake balls from the fridge and carefully dip each in the melted chocolate and then place back on the wax paper. Before the chocolate hardens, sprinkle a bit of the crushed Butterfinger on top. Once all the cake balls are coated in chocolate, lace the tray back in the fridge to harden the chocolate. 

*Peanut Butter Filling

• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon butter at room temp
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 - 1 cup powdered sugar

Place the peanut butter, butter and salt in a microwaveable bowl. Heat for about 1 minute, stirring every 20 seconds until warm and soft, but not hot. Stir in the vanilla extract and powdered sugar and mix until it has reached the consistency of cookie dough, adding more sugar if necessary.

Marsala in a Minute

JC and I haven't had much time to cook recently. Both of us have been exhausted beyond belief, so I thought it would be nice to finally have a home cooked meal. One of my favorite dishes is Chicken Marsala. I love the sweet hint the wine gives to the flavor of the sauce, and the mushrooms just add to the yumminess. I like to serve it over a bed of plain linguine sprinkled with some chopped parsley, it makes it look really fancy. This dish is so so so easy. You just need some chicken and a few other ingredients to make a dish that looks and tastes like it took hours. Also, don't buy that cheap stuff they call "Marsala" in the cooking wine aisle by the vinegars and oils. Just go to the alcohol section and get a real bottle of Marsala. It will only cost you about five bucks and will make the dish taste so much better.

As our veggie side, I decided to try and easy recipe for roasted cauliflower. Cauliflower is a big face in this household, and this is an incredibly simple and easy way to prepare it. You can season it with whatever you like. We did a curry powder and it was delicious. It is so easy to prepare, takes just about 20 minutes to bake, and you have a scrumptious (an healthy) vegetable side.

 
Chicken Marsala
from Houseboat Eats

• 8 chicken cutlets (or about 1½ pounds of chicken breasts)
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• ¼ cup unbleached all purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
• ½ small onion, chopped fine
• 8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• ¾ cup Marsala wine
• ½ cup low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp fresh parsley, minced

To make chicken cutlets, just pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts between two pieces of plastic wrap using a meat pounder, an empty wine bottle, or the bottom of a heavy saucepan or skillet. You want them between ¼ and ½ inch thick.

Pat the cutlets dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Dredge the cutlets in the flour to coat and shake to remove excess. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large nonstick skillet over high heat until just smoking. Add half of the cutlets and cook until golden brown, 2 to 2½ minutes on each side. Transfer to a large plate and tent with foil. Repeat with the remaining oil and cutlets.

Reduce the heat to medium high and melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in the now-empty skillet. Cook the onion and mushrooms until browned, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Transfer the mushroom mixture to a medium bowl and tent with foil.

Add the Marsala and broth to the empty skillet, bring to a boil over high heat, and cook until reduced to ⅓ to ½ cup, about 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, return the chicken and their juices to the skillet, and turn the chicken to heat through, about 1 minute. Transfer the chicken to a serving platter. Turn off the heat, whisk in the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, lemon juice, parsley, and mushroom mixture. Pour the sauce over the chicken. Serve over a bed of linguine tossed in olive oil and chopped parsley.


Roasted Cauliflower

• One head of cauliflower, cut into florets
• 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, or just enough to coat the cauliflower
• Any spices your heart desires--we did a couple teaspoons of curry powder

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Toss the cauliflower, oilve oil, and spices in a large bowl. Dump onto a baking sheet lined with tin foil. Bake for 15-20 minutes, stirring half way through, or until the little guys are browned and crispy. 

Restaurant Review

Hello World! Long time no see. I've definitely been busy here on this end. I've spend the past five weeks at The University of Arizona Medical Center--South Campus (aka UPH Kino) on the psych units. It has been fabulous. I spent my first few weeks on Senior Care working with wonderful geriatric patients. There I saw my fair share of mood disorders and dementia. Now I am on a non-senior care unit so I'm seeing a lot more schizophrenia, SA, and personality disorders. I can't divulge details, but it has been fascinating. I love talking to my patients and am having lots of fun on this rotation.

My rotation has been keeping me plenty busy. Unfortunately, that means JC and I are eating out more often than we would like to. We have become regulars at a new restaurant in town called Impress Hot Pot. This place is the real deal. If you want to feel like you're walking into a restaurant in China, go to this place. It is owned by a UA business student who couldn't find his favorite foods from home here is Tucson. Obvious solution: open you're own restaurant! If you've never heard of hot pot, it is similar to fondue/shabu shabu (depending on what language you want to speak). You have a piping hot bowl of soup on a hot plate in the middle of the table. You're served a variety of raw dishes including thinly sliced meats, vegetables, meatballs, and noodles to dip in the soup and enjoy. They have a wonderful "make-your-own-sauce" station with a mix of different condiments like garlic, ginger, satay sauce, cilantro, cilantro, sesame oil, chili oil, and even peanut butter. They serve two kinds of broth: spicy and house soup. Spicy is an understatement. It should be called boiling, bubbling broth of lava from the deepest parts of hell--yeah, it's that spicy. When it comes to your table, you can see the hot broth loaded with chili oil and little floating bits of spices to add flavor and more heat. The other soup broth is a non-spicy savory broth that I personally enjoy more. It's still delicious and you're not in pain while trying to enjoy your dinner.

We brought some of our "white friends" here last week and basically asked for white person spicy level. This was perfect. The chef went easy on the spices and it was great. We ordered a mix of pork, beef, lamb, napa, asian mushrooms, vermicelli noodles, shrimp meatballs, and fish meatballs. When you add all of these wonderful flavors, you make a tasty soup and it's perfect for dipping in your homemade sauce.

One of my other favorite things at Impress are the cold dishes. My absolute favorite is the spicy beef tongue. Now, before you judge me, you need to try this dish. I know there are a lot of skeptics out there that will jump to conclusions about the taste and texture of beef tongue, but seriously, it is delicious. I have a firm belief that I will try anything once before I jump to conclusions. Scratch that, almost anything. The one thing I couldn't stomach was blood from the neck of a freshly slaughtered goat in Kenya. That crossed the line. Otherwise, I've had the opportunity to have palm weevil larvae in Ecuador and chicken feet, tripe, tendon, and fish eyes are all staples out of my grandmother's kitchen. Back to Impress. This dish is a mix of beef tongue, tripe, cilantro, and a spicy oily sauce. It is the perfect combination. Also, they use a special pepper called ma la from the Sichuan province in China. It's unique in that rather than the spicy burning your mouth, it makes your mouth feel numb and alter the flavor of other things. For instance, eat a few bites of this dish, and your plain water will taste like someone threw rotten lemons in it. Have I convinced you yet? I should be a restaurant critic.

Now that everyone is familiar with one of my favorite restaurants, I'll talk about the wonderful, cute cupcake I made this week. One of my favorite flavor combinations is strawberry and nutella. It is the inspiration for a mouth-watering crepe filling and so I thought I would adapt it into cupcake form. I did a little searching and found the strawberry cupcake recipe from Sprinkles' Cupcakes. The texture and moistness of the cake was just perfect, but the strawberry flavor was lacking and they turned out this terrible grey color. Next time, I think I will puree the strawberries and then reduce it on the stove for a bit. That will pull out the water, giving the mix a brighter color and stronger flavor. The real star of these treats was the frosting. I could not have asked for a better product. The frosting firmed up just perfectly and had a rich hazelnut flavor. This recipe could easily be adapted by using any other sort of spread with the same consistency as nutella. Enjoy these little cuties!

Strawberry Mini Cupcakes
adapted for mini cupcakes from Martha Stewart

• 2/3 cup whole fresh or frozen strawberries, thawed
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1/4 cup whole milk, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg, room temperature
• 2 large egg whites, room temperature 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a four 12-cup mini muffin tin with cupcake liners; set aside.
2. Place strawberries in a small food processor; process until pureed. You should have about 1/3 cup of puree, add a few more strawberries if necessary or save any extra puree for frosting; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a small bowl, mix together milk, vanilla, and strawberry puree; set aside.
4. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until well combined and fluffy. Reduce the mixer speed to medium and slowly add egg and egg whites until just blended.
5. With the mixer on low, slowly add half the flour mixture; mix until just blended. Add the milk mixture; mix until just blended. Slowly add remaining flour mixture, scraping down sides of the bowl with a spatula, as necessary, until just blended.
6. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Transfer muffin tin to oven and bake until tops are just dry to the touch, 10-15 minutes. Transfer muffin tin to a wire rack and let cupcakes cool completely in tin before icing.

Nutella Frosting
from Crepes of Wrath

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup Nutella
• 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 2-4 tablespoons milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1. Combine the butter, Nutella, powdered sugar, vanilla, and 1 tablespoon of milk. Mix well with electric mixer, adding more milk as needed to make a fluffy spreadable frosting.
2. Makes enough to pipe frosting onto over 48 mini cupcakes. If you want to just spread the frosting on, I’d half or even third the recipe.The extra frosting can be kept in the fridge in an airtight container.

Labor Day Hike in Rose Canyon