Recipe: Thomas Keller's Shortbread Cookies

I was hungry and I just got finished with a ridiculous AP Calculus test, so I decided to bake.

This is the recipe for vanilla shortbread cookies from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc cookbook

The Result: Extremely rich and smooth textured cookies. Coming right out of the oven, the cookies were the epitomy of soft chewy shortbread. The use of vanilla extract and vanilla paste was nice. Coating them with sugar added a textural element that elevated the flavor of the cookies.

INGREDIENTS:

14 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temp.

1/2 cup granulated sugar, extra for sprinkling

1 teaspoon vanilla paste or pure vanilla extract

2 cups flour

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a metal bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix the butter and sugar on low speed to combine, then increase to medium speed and beat for about 3 minutes until light and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix the vanilla. On the lowest speed, mix in the flour to combine, then increase the speed to medium and beat until the dough begins to cling to the paddle and no longer looks dry. Do not wait for it to form a solid mass. Honestly, if you don't have a mixer, just use your hands to mix and knead. Its the old fashion way. Just make sure they're very clean.

Transfer the dough to a board and use the heel of your hand or a pastry scraper to bring the dough together. Put dough on a large piece of plastic wrap and pat it into a rectangle 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.

Roll out dough between two pieces of parchment paper to about centimeter thick. Remove top sheet of marchment paper and reserve. Cut cookies into 2 inch squares.

Place cookies onto baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Make sure cookies are 1 inch apart.

Bake for about 12 minutes. Then rotate baking sheet 180 degrees and bake for additional 10 minutes until a light gold brown color. Remove from oven and rest for 3 minutes.

*The best time to eat these nom noms is fresh out of the oven. They're soft and delicious, and they go well with a nice cup of chamomile or earl grey tea. Leave them overnight, and they'll get hard. They'll taste good, but not even close to as good as when they're fresh out of the oven.

Restaurant Review: Hakubai

Hakubai is the Kitan's flagship restaurant, serving very traditional Japanese food in a very traditional Japanese restaurant setting. The restaurant is run by a chef, who worked at the famous Nadaman Restaurant chain in Japan, which is known for their Kaiseki style preparation of Japanese food.

Nice atmosphere. Truly transported me back to Japan and away from the hustle and bustle of NYC.

Yuba Tofu with sweet soy sauce topped with Sea Urchin and wasabi.

Beautiful flavor combination between the naturally sweet Sea Urchin with the silkiness of the yuba tofu. The two ingredients complimented each other very well. I might try this one at home!

Assorted Sushi set.

So I ordered sushi, since I've pretty much been craving it all week. It was really disappointing. The freshness of the fish was fine, and the fish was fresh, but the sushi rice really bothered me. Good sushi rice has a subtle sourness and sweetness from the use of sushi rice vinegar. Good rice should also be rested overnight to so-called "ferment" in order to gain more depth in flavor, giving the rice great texture, flavor, and sweetness. This sushi rice truly lacked any subtle sweetness or flavor, and it was disappointing.

Sashimi with Miso Soup

The sashimi was nothing special. The quality of the fish was below par. Pretty much something that I could have bought at my local Japanese food market. Really nothing to say here.

Renkon rice cake with dashi, momiji-oroshi, and crispy burdock root

Renkon is a type of Japanese root that is commonly stewed, steamed, or deepfried. In this case, the chef ground it with some rice flour, Japanese yams, etc. to make a rice cake, then fried it. I found the flavor combination to be a bit bland. The dashi was rather salty, and I felt no trace of depth to it.

Chilean Sea Bass with gohoku-mai rice.

Seabass was seasoned with sweet cooking sake, and soy. Pretty standard broiled fish. The Chilean Sea Bass was nice, but nothing special. Something I could have easily made at home. I eat gohoku-mai at my home anyway, so not a great dish here.

Japanese Yogurt Desert with Homemade Mango Ice Cream.

The ice cream was nice, with a big of tang, and the right amount of sweetness, letting the mango flavor truly shine. The yogurt was rather sour, and unfortunately, very unappetizing.

So what did I think of Hakubai? I've had some truly spectacular Japanese food throughout my life. Looking at the atmosphere, the menu, and the reviews of this restaurant, I was expecting something very special. My meal was nothing more pedestrian than your average Japanese restaurant down the street. Hakubai claims to have great Kaiseki style Japanese food, with a true commitment to quality. Unfortunately, i can't believe that. And the price. 30 bucks for a small plate of rather disappointing sushi, and 50 bucks for a small Kaiseki meal, which my parents ordered. I expected these prices, being in Manhattan, but not the quality of the food. Hakubai has to step it up to be called an elite Japanese restaurant in NYC.

Restaurant Review: Neptune Oyster

After a horrible experience at Legal Seafood, I was craving some better seafood. I came across Neptune Oyster, considered the BEST OYSTER BAR in Boston according to Yelp.

Neptune Oyster has a very nice atmosphere, with a clean marble bar along with several tables. It really seemed like a communal oyster bar, where the locals come.
Now, let the seafood feast begin.

Triton Plateau platter: Came with local raw oysters, raw littleneck clams, raw hamaguri clams, gigantic shrimp cocktail, steamed lobster with aeoli, lump crab, and steamed mussels. Starting off with the oysters, truly marvelous oysters, with a creamy finish and almost a slight cucumbery taste to them. Exquisite. The littleneck clams were spectacular as well; sweet, plump, and slightly salty. The hamaguri clams were incredible, having an enormous amount of natural sweetness similar to that of diver scallops. The shrimp cocktail was gigantic, almost being the size of small lobsters. Usually larger shrimp tend to lose their natural sweetness and texture. It wasn't the case here, as the shrimp had great texture and just the right amount of natural sweetness to counterbalance the cocktail sauce provided. The combination of succulent lobster and creamy aeoli was magnificent. The lump crab may have been the weakest part of the platter, as i felt that there was too much mayonnaise in the lump crab mixture; nevertheless, the crab had great texture and natural sweetness to it. The mussels were plump and delicious, much better than the ones from Legal Seafood last night.

Grilled calamari salad with market greens and olive tapenade. The squid was very fresh and plump, and by charring it on the grill, it brought out a smokiness that brought the dish to another level. Nice.

Tuna sandwich with fries. Nice, but there were better things on the menu. I don't really know why my dad ordered this. He regretted it, and would have rather ordered the Lobster Roll instead.

I wasn't quite full yet after the platter, so I decided to order a dozen more oysters. I had my waiter help me pick a random assortment of local oysters. Stupidly, I forgot to write down the names of the oysters, but let me tell you they were pretty much the best oysters I've had in my life. What truly set these oysters apart from the oysters I've been eating before are the different flavor profiles they had; many had cucumbery after tastes, some had a buttery finish, and some were extremely brinny. These oysters were delicious.

So what do I think of Neptune Oyster? I love it. Its truly what I look for whenever I travel and search for great restaurants: clean, communal, fresh, and local. I shared my experience at Legal Seafood with my waiter at Neptune, and he simply said that a chain as large as Legal Seafood truly cannot control the freshness level compared to the small, communal oyster bar like Neptune. I'll definitely be coming back to Neptune someday, hopefully in the near future!

Restaurant Review: Legal Seafood (Kendall Square)

So this is the first restaurant review that I am writing for the blog. Let me tell you a few things about what I do when I critic a restaurant.
I love eating out.
But I hate spending my money on bad food or food that I could have easily made in my own kitchen.
I get critical when it comes to bad service, dirty bathrooms, bad plating, and bad ingredients. If something doesn't taste good, I send it back to the kitchen for them to remake it. If it still doesn't taste good, I never come back to the restaurant.
If I don't really mention the service, bathrooms, plating, ingredients, it pretty much means that they were fine. Otherwise I felt just neutral about it and I didn't really care.

Now... onto the review...

So right now I'm in Boston, checking out a college that I got accepted in. We flew in at 3:30, and my entire family was pretty much starving once we arrived in the hotel at 4:30, so we ate dinner at the local Legal Seafood restaurant.

Legal Seafood is a Boston based restaurant chain that is famous for having fresh seafood. It has the usual American seafood classics: shrimp cocktail, oysters on the half-shell, steamed lobster, crabcakes, etc.

Legal Seafood is known for having exceptional oysters, so we ordered a dozen oysters, three of each variety:

Cape Cod Oysters: Very full bodied/meaty oysters, with a clean finish and a brininess that didn't overpower my palate. Nice.

Kumamotos Oysters: Kumamotos are typically grown in the west coast, them being the smallest variety of the oyster in the dozen we got. Nice clean flavor, but drastically having a more briny flavor compared to the Cape Cods. These were not the best Kumamotos I have had, and they were rather disappointing.

New Jersey Oysters: Similar to the Cape Cod Oysters, with that classic oyster flavor. Nothing more to be said here.

Five Star Oysters from Canada: Good clean flavor, and a nice after taste. Brininess was at a perfect level.

There was cocktail sauce and mignonette. The cocktail sauce overpowers the brininess of the oysters, and the mignonette simply tasted bad; it had no kick from the raw oysters and was rather bland. The oysters were eaten with just a squeeze of lemon.


Steamed lobster, with steamed mussels, little-neck clams, corn, and chorizo, accompanied with melted butter and clam stock.

The lobster was nice, especially the claws, having the classic lobster flavor: a natural sweetness in the meat, with a unparalleled texture in the claws that is truly unique to lobster meat. I felt the lobster was steamed a little too long, however, as the tail meat seemed unusually tough.

Before ordering this, I understood that because it is an odd season for shellfish right now, with alot of them mating during the spring, shellfish tend to accumulate sand in its flesh. The clams and mussels, in this dish, had an overwhelming amount of sand in the flesh, to the extent where they were inedible. Pretty disgusting. I had to complain to my waiter, and we were able to get another batch of steamed little neck clams, which were better, but still had a significant amount of sand in them. They were left largely untouched.

So what do I think of Legal Seafood? Its an average, maybe even below average seafood restaurant. Legal Seafood claims to always have the freshest and most flavorful seafood around, but I still can't get over the Kumamotos, and steamed mussels and clams. Now I understand that getting the sand out of the clams is impossible, and my incident with the shellfish may be inevitable, but I believe that Legal Seafood has to be more responsible for what they bring out to their customers. Legal Seafood claims to have the freshest and most flavorful seafood in the area, but I highly doubt that.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll venture into a better seafood restaurant.

Recipe: Chicken and Slow Poached Egg Rice Bowl; New Style "Oyakodon"

So the salad was delicious, but it wasn't filling enough for dinner. I had one more slow poached egg, so I thought about making a savory dish. I had a package of free range boneless chicken thighs inside my fridge. Then I thought Chicken and egg, Oyako Donburi!!!

Oyako Donburi (literally means "parent and child donburi"in Japanese), is a rice bowl dish in which chicken, egg and other ingredients are simmered together in a sauce and then served on top of a large bowl or rice. The name of the dish, "parent and child donburi," is a poetic reflection of the fact that both chicken and egg are used in the dish.

I made a modern version of the dish, with a similar sauce to Oyako Don, consisting of soy sauce, sake, and Mirin (sweet cooking sake), but instead of scrambled eggs, I used the unconventional slow poached egg.

Cook chicken thighs; first by browning the skin, then flipping the chicken and adding sake, sweet cooking sake, and soy sauce. Everything smells delicious.

The second Onsen Tamago came out perfect, with a soft silky white and a creamy yolk.

Just get a bowl of rice and add chicken pieces with egg in the center, and voila! A simple, yet delicious dob-buri!

The Result: Wow, what a flavor combination! The combination of the sweet and savory soy-flavored chicken with the silky smooth egg was an amalgamation of great flavors. The addition of Sriracha to the rice bowl added a new dimension to the food, as the spiciness and sweetness of Sriracha matched perfectly with the flavor combination in the rice bowl.

Recipe: Chicken and Slow Poached Egg Rice Bowl; New Style "Oyakodon"

Cooking Time: About 25 minutes

Ingredients:

- 6 pieces of chicken thighs (NOT BREAST) cut in about 1 inch pieces.

- equal parts soy sauce, mirin, and sake

- Slow poached egg (See recipe)

- White or brown rice

- Sriracha Chile Sauce

Cook chicken at medium high heat with skin side down to crisp skin. Flip when skin is golden brown and crispy. After flipping, add sake, mirin, then soy sauce, (in that order) into frying pan. *WHEN ADDING LIQUIDS TO PAN, BE SURE NOT TO POUR LIQUIDS DIRECTLY OVER THE CHICKEN, AS THE LIQUIDS WOULD BE ABSORBED BY THE CHICKEN SKIN AND THE SKIN WOULD NOT CRISP.

Taste test the sauce; if too salty, add sake, add mirin to add sweetness to sauce.

Prepare one bowl of either Japanese white rice or brown rice. Put chicken on top of the rice.

Crack soft poached egg one at a time into a small saucer. The thin white will not and should not be firm or solid. Tip the dish to pour off and discard the loosest part of the white, then slide the egg in the middle of the rice bowl.

Pour soy based sauce over the chicken and egg. Use Sriracha if needed.

Recipe: Slow Poached Egg Salad with Assorted Mushrooms

So I came back from school today, hungry and tired, as always, and realized that I had 3 magical Onsen Tamagos waiting for me in the fridge. I decided to explore what was in my fridge and see what creations I could make with these eggs. I found a huge bag of baby arugula and a box of mushrooms, so I thought about creating a salad with my slow poached egg.

To me, a good salad is extremely satisfying. A good salad has two characteristics: fresh ingredients, and good seasoning, meaning that the salad is not over-dressed.

I started sauteing some baby Portobellos and Crimini Brown Mushrooms on high heat with a tad of butter and garlic.

Arugula is a great choice of greens for salad. It has a crispness and an aromatic punch that is great for salads with strong dressings. Make sure to dry the Arugula thoroughly after washing, as wet arugula gets soggy and not very crisp.

The salad dressing consists of Dijon Mustard, Balsamic Vinegar, and Canola Oil. Using Extra Virgin Olive Oil is not preferred, as Extra Virgin Olive Oil is too strong and aromatic for the salad. Using a common oil like grapeseed oil or canola oil is good.

When mixing the salad, put the greens inside a large container or pot. Add a couple dollops of the dressing and mix with the tongs to evenly distribute the dressing. Be sure not to add too much dressing. When removing salad from the pot/bowl, there should be no remaining salad dressing at the bottom of the container.

The sauteed mushrooms go on top of the salad.

Wow what an egg! the Onsen Tamago came out perfectly, soft, creamy, and silky smooth.

Just added some goat cheese, and there you go.

The Result: A great salad. Truly spectacular, as the mustard dressing was a great compliment to the crisp arugula. The addition of mushrooms brought a depth and earthiness to the dish. Lastly the Slow Poached Egg truly put the "cherry on the sundae." When mixing the egg with the entire salad, the amalgamation of the earthy mushrooms, the sharp arugula, and the rich mellow Dijon Mustard dressing was truly incredible. If there was one flaw, it was the goat cheese. The cheese was not a bad addition, but neither was it a good addition. Chunks of goat cheese occasionally overpowered my palate with the delicate egg and mushrooms. Maybe next time, adding garlic croutons instead of cheese would be better for this salad.

*NOTE: I was experimenting on this recipe, and the recipe is not really accurate, so when I redo this recipe in the near future, I will update this recipe with precise measurements.

Slow Poached Egg Salad with Assorted Mushrooms:

Cooking Time: 15-25 minutes

Ingredients:

- 3 stuffing-size Portobello Mushrooms

- about 6 Crimini Mushrooms

- 1 clove of garlic

- a big handful of Arugula

- 1 slow poached egg (see previous recipe)

- 1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard

- equal parts canola oil and Balsamic Vinegar

- goat cheese (Chevre from Trader Joes)

Sautee Criminis and Portobello mushrooms on a hot frying pan with canola oil and garlic. Other assortment of mushrooms would work as well, such as Shiitakes, Chanterelles, Eringis, Hen of the Wood, etc. Add salt and pepper. Cook until mushrooms become tender.

Add dijon mustard with oil and vinegar. Whisk. Taste test. If dressing requires more sweetness, add more balsamic vinegar. The color of the dressing should be similar to that of smooth peanut butter.

Put a handful of washed and paper-towel-dried arugula inside a big pot. Add about 4-6 dollops of dressing to the arugula. Mix salad with either hands or with tongs. Taste test. If there is too much dressing on arugula, add more arugula. Add more dressing if needed.

*NOTE: when transferring arugula from pot to plate, there should be no remaining excess dressing at the bottom of the pot. If there is, add more arugula to pot.

Plate the arugula. Add mushrooms on top of the arugula.

Crack open the slow poached egg inside a small bowl. Remove uncooked runny egg white and add poached egg on top of the salad.

Add crumbled goat cheese (which was a mistake so don't do it, instead add some garlic croutons or something with texture. That would be better!)

Recipe: Slow Poached Eggs: (Onsen Tamago)

Its a typical Thursday afternoon, and I have no homework, no studying, nothing. My mom just bought a carton of cage free large eggs, so what better way to eat them by poaching eggs, or even better, slow poaching eggs...

To me, slow poached eggs, or Onsen Tamago in Japanese, are one of my favorite methods of cooking eggs. I can't tell you how many people ooh and ahh when I crack a cooked egg out of what looks like an uncooked intact eggshell.

In fact when I first saw the Onsen Tamago in Japan, I thought the Japanese had altered the egg with technology, or something crazy like that. But legend has it that old ladies would bring baskets of eggs with them to the natural hot springs that are all around Japan (hot springs and public baths are important national pastimes), and while they were there, the hot spring water cooked the eggs at a constant temperature of around 60 degrees C, or about 141 degrees F. The technique produces eggs that, because they are slowly coaxed into cookedness, are creamier and more unctuous than regular poached eggs.

No pictures today, but I'll put these eggs in the fridge after I cook them, and use them tomorrow in something. Hopefully they turn out yummy...

Slow Poached Eggs (Onsen Tamago):

Cooking Time: About 45 minutes

- Eggs

Directions:

Fill your biggest, deepest pot with water and put it on the stove over the lowest possible heat.

Use something to keep the eggs from sitting on the bottom of the pot, where the temperature will be highest. If you have a cake rack or a steamer rack, use it. If not, improvise: a few chopsticks scattered helter skelter across the bottom of the pan will do the trick.

Use an instant-read thermometer to monitor the temperature in the pot, if its too hot, add cold water or ice cubes. Once the water is between 140-145 degrees Fahrenheit, add the eggs to the pot. Let them bathe for 40 to 45 minutes, checking the temperature regularly with the thermometer or by sticking your finger in the water (it should be the temperature of a very hot bath), and moderating it as needed.

Use eggs immediately or store them in the fridge for up to 24 hours. If you plan on storing them, chill them until cold in an ice water bath. If you refrigerate eggs, warm them under hot tap water for about a minute before using.

To serve the eggs, crack them one at a time into a small saucer. The thin white will not and should not be firm or solid. Tip the dish to pour off and discard the loosest part of the white, then slide the egg on the dish it's destined for.