Posted in discojing.com

Chilled Chinese Noodle Salad (冷やし中華)

July’s Washoku Warriors challenge was to make one of two dishes: Hiyashi Chuka (Chilled Chinese Noodle Salad) or Somen (Thin Noodles on Ice). I chose to make the hiyashi chuka because it was very flexible and came together in just a few minutes.

The recipe had two different dressing recipes and I chose the one that required no prep time and had the least amount of ingredients. I added a little more sugar and a little less sesame oil for personal preference. Next time, I would add a splash of plum vinegar or citrus juice to brighten the dressing a tad. The original garnishes called for were red pickled ginger, tomato, cucumber, shitake mushrooms, egg, ham, and sesame seeds.

I wanted to keep with the color scheme, so replaced the tomato with red pepper and switched out sesame seeds with flax seeds and some black sesame seeds. I omitted the ‘shrooms since I don’t care for them, and replaced the red pickled ginger (beni shoga) with regular pickled ginger. I also don’t care for cucumbers so next time I’ll replace it with zucchini. I don’t really like sesame oil, so I was very worried about adding it into the dressing. In the end, I was surprised that the smell of sesame was so strong, but the taste was just right!

This dish came together so quickly, yet was satisfying and light–there will definitely be a “next time” for this.
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Nature’s Pride Bread

A few weeks ago my doorbell rang and I opened it to find a large box from San Francisco. I opened it to find three packages of Nature’s Pride Premium Harvest Hamburger Buns and Deli Rolls from the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program! Three packages of bread is a lot for us to eat, considering we’re a household of only two, but we tried our best! We ate sandwiches every day and grilled yummy Snappys on the weekend.

Unfortunately, we don’t like white bread, so the Country White buns didn’t really get eaten. I ate the Whole Wheat buns for lunches, and thought they were quite yummy. Many rolls we buy at the store for lunch sandwiches have too much bread and have a bad, chalky powder on the outside, leaving you with white-dusted lips. Not these! These were just the right amount of bread and I loved the dark, rich color.  I liked the fact that the buns were dense, but my boyfriend did not. I could see this bun standing up to a hamburger in strength, but it might stuff you until you were about to explode.

We like to think of buns and rolls as “treats” for a fancy sandwich, not for every day use. These would be great buns to buy for a grill-out, but my family is a potato-roll family! We can’t get away from that nice, orange-y color and mild, sweet after taste. I’m fine eating regular sandwich bread, or even sandwich “thins” since I like to taste my sandwich innards first, before the bread.

Sweet Charity 2010

Yelp (@yelpdc) had a contest recently via twitter to see who could think of the most inventive ways to use dessert in fashion. The prize was two tickets to the Sweet Charity event on June 21st!

I’ve been to events like this before — Washingtonian’s “Best of” party, and just the week before (via Yelp) Toast of the Town. This is by far the best event of this sort that I’ve been to. Maybe it’s because of my sweet tooth, but I loved every moment of it. Thankfully there were some savory stations–lest I go into a diabetic coma–but most of them were sweet. There were so many options that were so delicious that I didn’t have time to photograph everything.

My boyfriend (my +1) and I reached a consensus that Chef Geoff’s espresso brownie was the best dish of the night, followed by the dishes from the Ritz. Another great thing that set this event apart from others — the bar. This event was 100% open bar with beer, wine, and mixed drinks. The event was the whole bottom floor of the Mandarin Oriental, which contained many different rooms and hallways. Since it wasn’t just one big open space, there were a lot of different areas to explore and discover.

The end of the night was capped off with awards, a live auction, and a fashion show. The fashion show all had models wearing clothing that was a hybrid of chocolate, marzipan, and/or sugar and fabric. I think the theme was “movies” since there was a Cruella DeVil, “Birds”, Tinkerbell, and a few warriors.

All in all, the event had great people, great food, and it was for a great cause. I honestly would consider going again next year, on my own ticket!

Vegan Almond French Toast

A new Whole Foods opened near me recently. As part of their opening promotions, they invited Facebook users, Twitter-ers, and e-mail subscribers to take part in a “Rate the Recipe Challenge”. We were asked to visit their online Recipe section and pick a recipe that hadn’t been rated yet. After we submitted our recipes, we were given a $20 gift card to purchase ingredients and the promise of another $10 gift card as incentive to complete the challenge.

It was hard to decide on just one recipe to choose, but I ended up picking Almond French Toast. This recipe was french toast with a twist, it’s egg and dairy free! My review follows below.

One of my favorite foods of all time is french toast, and the best part is the spongy, eggy taste of the center paired with the crisp and sweet outside. This recipe came together very quickly and really delivered on the “french toast” experience. The protein and texture of the eggs are replaced with the almond butter and tofu, and the milk is replaced with almond milk. The batter for the last few slices in the batch had a more paste-like texture that sticks to the bread , but if you’re not afraid of getting your hands dirty, just wipe the bread down a bit between your fingers and this problem is solved. The bread is also a little dry because there is less liquid in this batter so it would pair great with some yogurt or extra syrup.

The best part of this dish was definitely the toasted almonds. I thought that topping the french toast with almonds wouldn’t taste good, but toasting them beforehand gives a wonderful crunch and brings out the natural sweetness of the nuts while providing a strong textural contrast.

The main ingredient in all french toast dishes is the bread, so this recipe can go all sorts of different ways depending on the type of bread you use. I made one batch using some whole grain bread and another batch using challah bread. I liked the challah bread better because it had a crispier outside and the lighter center of the bread soaked up the mixture better, but it really comes down to personal preference (and if you’re making an egg-free recipe, you should probably use an egg-free bread). The egg-free, whole wheat batch was served with some bananas drizzled with brown sugar syrup on the side while the challah batch was served with a smear of chocolate-hazelnut spread between slices.

This is a great recipe for those that love french toast, but can’t have it the traditional way due to dietary restrictions. This could be seen as a bit expensive to make if you didn’t have any of the ingredients, but most people have at least some of them. Also, this would be a great opportunity to utilize the “make your own nut butter” and bulk food sections at Whole Foods since this recipe only calls for a little of each ingredient.

Mango & Tomato Menu

Olga of Mango & Tomato is is hosting a recipe contest for her 2 year blog-iversary that requires the use of mangoes and tomatoes in a dish. We were only required to make one item, but I couldn’t calm my imagination and decided on three different dishes.

Mango Bloody Mary
spicy tomato puree with mango juice, absolut peppar, mint and mango garnish

Spicy & Sweet Fish Fajitas
grilled red chile tortilla topped with tomato and mango fried rice, grilled mahi mahi, and mango & black bean salsa

Tomato Petit Fours with Mango Glaze
tomato cakes with a touch of cocoa powder drizzled with a sweet mango glaze and kinako-cinnamon

Most of these things were basically just assembled versions of the descriptions. The most successful were the fajitas and the petit fours. I took this opportunity to try a bloody mary for the first time (and use up some absolut peppar) and I did not like it. 2 parts tomato mixture, 1 part mango juice, 1 part absolut, and the drink was still too tomato-y! Some people like drinking tomato juice but I cannot stand it.

The fajitas were juicy, crispy, and acidic. The rice used some tomato soup, diced tomato, and diced mango. I crisped up the bottom before combining all the ingredients, which was a great textural contrast. I’m sure everyone has their own fried rice and salsa recipes, so I’ll leave that up to you. Mango salsa is one of my favorite things to eat, but I thought it was a predictable use of the ingredients so I tried to make a dessert. I was thinking about making a granita or sorbet duo using the mango and tomato, or even a tomato macaron with mango filling, but my laziness got the best of me and I chose to do a cake. I’ve heard of a tomato-soup cake before, so I adapted a recipe for donuts to be used for cake and subbed the milk for tomato soup. The result was spicy, savory, and paired well with sweet, sticky glaze I drizzled over the mini-cakes. The glaze came together easily and is an adaptation of a glaze I make when whipping up traditional petit fours.

Tomato Petit Fours with Mango Glaze

  • 1¼ cups cake flour, sifted
  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • 1¼ tsp. baking powder
  • 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg and/or cinnamon
  • dash salt
  • ½ cup tomato soup
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 1½ tbsp. butter, melted
  • ½ c. powdered sugar
  • 3-6 tbsp. mango juice
  • 1-2 drops vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 425°F. Sift together flour, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt. Add egg and butter, stir until combined. Measure out soup, whisk in baking powder until frothy. Fold into mixture. Cook 2tbsp portions of batter, either in squares or circles (you can do this in liners or pans, whatever you have laying around. I used a brownie bites pan). Bake around 8 minutes or until the tops spring back when touched. Let cool for 4–5 minutes.

While the cakes are cooling, combine the mango juice and sugar. Add a little at a time until you get the consistency you want, it should be thin enough to be drizzled or poured. When you’ve reached the desired consistency, add a dash of vanilla and stir.

Assemble the cakes, drizzle glaze, and sprinkle with cocoa powder and/or kinako-cinnamon mixture. Top with diced mango and tomato and mint leaf.

p.s. look at the snazzy header I designed for mango & tomato! Olga was nice enough to come to my apartment and teach a friend and me a knife skills class in April, so we worked on a mini-face lift for her site~