Recipe: Spaghetti alla Carbonara

I love pasta. And I need to add pasta recipes to this blog. So why not start off with one of my favorites, Spaghetti alla Carbonara.

The word Carbonara is derived from the italian word for charcoal. Some believe that the dish was first made as a hearty meal for Italian charcoal workers. The theory gave rise to the term "coal miner's spaghetti," Others say that it was originally made over charcoal grills, giving it the color of carbon. Another rumor of the origin of the name suggests that the way abundant black pepper was added to the dish, made the black pepper among the sauce look like charcoal.

All recipes for Carbonara vary, though many agree that Pecorino Romano, Egg, black pepper, and cured fatty pork is used among the sauce. Traditionally Guanciale, cured pork cheek, is used for carbonara, but I will be using panchetta, as I could not find any guanciale in my local super market. I used half an onion as well, just because I felt like it.

For cheese, Italians have argued the use of Parmigiano-Reggiano in Carbonara, arguing that Pecorino Romano should be the only cheese used in Carbonara. I think a mixture of the two is best. Pecorino Romano is a rather sharp cheese made from goat milk, and the combination of the naturally sweeter Parmigiano Reggiano with the sharpness of the Pecorino Romano adds more depth to the dish.

When making this dish, you must use free range eggs. They taste way better with this dish. Seriously.

The Result: A rich and extremely smooth pasta. The abundant black pepper gives a strong kick to the eggy creamy pasta, bringing a nice contrast in flavor. The saltiness of the panchetta with the rather sweet onion compliments the sauce.

*The recipe is very much adjustable. No measurements were used when making this dish.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Ingredients:

70 grams of Spaghetti

40-60 grams of Panchetta or Guanciale

Half an onion, preferably Maui Onion

Half cup of grated Pecorino Romano

Half cup of grated Parmigiano Reggiano

Alot of Black Pepper

Good quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Directions:

Bring large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta and cook for 8-10 minutes or until tender, yet firm (al dente).

Dice panchetta in 1/2 centimeter pieces. Fine dice the maui onion.

Heat olive oil in a deep skillet, or medium sized pan, over medium flame. Add a good amount of black pepper to olive oil. Add maui onion and saute about 3 minutes. Add panchetta and saute for about 3 minutes, until bacon is crisp and the fat is rendered.

Beat egg and add equal parts Parmesean and Pecorino to egg. Add about small handful of both cheeses. Beat together. Add generous amount of black pepper.

When pasta is ready, add 1/2 cup of pasta water to panchetta mixture. Drain pasta well, and add to panchetta mixture and toss for 2 minutes. Remove pan from the heat and pour egg/cheese mixture into the pasta, whisking quickly until eggs chicken but do not scramble. If desired, thin out sauce with a bit more of pasta water, until sauce reaches desired consistency.

Season Carbonara with several more turns of black pepper and taste for salt.

Add MORE CHEESE!!!

Recipe: Thomas Keller's Chocolate Bouchons

Today was my friend's birthday, so I decided to try something new.

Thomas Keller is famous for his restaurant Bouchon, serving food that is strictly French Bistro fare. Bouchon also has a bakery thats famous for their famous Chocolate Bouchons, which looks like a dark chocolate brownie in the shape of a cork.

The result: Decadent and extremely rich. Coming right out of the oven, I think they came out a little too soft. Flavor wise, everything was spot on. The texture was like a crossbreed between a chocolate souffle and a brownie, in the sense that it had the fluffiness/moistness and strong dark chocolate flavor of a souffle, while having an outer crust similar to that of the crust of a brownie. This recipe is a keeper.

Thomas Keller's Chocolate Bouchons

Ingredients:

5 tablespoons (75 g) of unsalted butter, at room temperature

3 oz (90 g) bittersweet chocolate

1/3 cup all purpose flour

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoons salt

2/3 cup sugar

1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Confectioners' sugar for serving

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Set Silicone baking mold on a baking sheet. Grease each well of the mold with shortening or with cooking oil spray

Melting the chocolate in a double boiler is a pain in the ass. I did it, but its easier to just use the microwave. So put the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl and microwave until melted, about 1 1/2 minutes, and stir immediately. You may alternatively, in a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the butter and chocolate and heat, stirring occasionally, until melted. Let cool for 10 minutes.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt until combined.

In another bowl, whisk together sugar, whole egg, egg yolk, and vanilla until well combined. Add chocolate/butter mixture and whisk until incorporated. Whisk in the flour mixture little by little, slowly and gently, until combined.

Scoop about 2 tablespoons of batter into each well of the mold. Transfer mold, still on the baking sheet, to the oven and bake until tops of the chocolate corks are shiny and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, taking about 20-22 minutes.

Transfer the mold to a wire rack and let cool for 15 minutes. Carefully invert the mold to remove the chocolate corks and turn them right side up on rack. Let cool on the rack for at least 30 minutes before serving. Dust with confectioners' sugar. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Food for Thought.

Food has been an integral part of my entire life. And honestly I spend most of my hours thinking about what im gonna cook for dinner or what I'll have for lunch.

People always ask me: why do you love food so much.

I actually had to think about it for a while, and eventually I wrote my college essay on being a foodie.

I couldn't find the final copy version, so please excuse my grammatical errors

Hope y'all enjoy.

Life of a 17 year old Foodie

The gourmet grocery store, to me, is quite possibly the equivalent that Disneyland is to a five year old. So what makes this emporium of foods so exciting to me? Simply put, I am a foodie.

I first heard the term “foodie” from a family friend in Napa Valley my freshman year. Grocery shopping with this man was a delight. He would compare different cheeses in the market, observing the color, sniffing it, and joyfully sampling creamy rich cheeses while gazing at it reverently. In the meat section of the market, he’d paw through the beef until he found the most perfectly marbled steak of the bunch. (“Not too lean, you need a little fat to give it flavor,” he’d say.) He would hold the package as if cradling a newborn baby and declare it “gorgeous.” After spending a day with him, I became so engrossed in the food culture that food was all I could think about during my leisure time. After several months, friends and family recognized me as the “foodie” in the family.

One experience, however, changed my perspective and my views on food.

I traveled to rural Japan in during the summer break of my sophomore year to visit my grandparents. In Japan, summer is harvesting season for many fruits and vegetables in Japan, such as bamboo shoots, onions, lettuce, and peas. One morning my grandmother asked me to help her dig some vegetables out of the ground, consisting mostly of eggplant and potatoes. Digging up these vegetables was a long and arduous task, as the heat and humidity made the task even harder. That afternoon, my grandmother used the vegetables we dug up and prepared a dish of stewed eggplant and steamed potatoes for lunch. I remember the subtle sweetness of the eggplant and the silky smoothness of the potatoes tasting so good that I asked for seconds and thirds. My grandmother then said, “I planted these crops with my heart and soul, and I hope you enjoyed the food.”

This is the beauty of being a foodie.

To be a foodie, food should evoke memories. My experience with my grandmother taught me that being a foodie doesn’t have so much to do with one’s ability to cook or one’s penchant for fancy gourmet food, but rather your openness to all food experiences and your willingness to partake in the great banquet of life by surrounding yourself with people and sharing food you love. It’s about balance, too. A foodie enjoys a once-a-year Big Mac or the occasional jelly donut just as much as the foodie enjoys the osso bucco, foie gras, or tuna tartare the foodie eats at a trendy eatery. And finally, the foodie will always love the comfort food he grew up on (like hot chicken soup) because it evokes beautiful memories of cold winter days spent underneath bed sheets listening to Grandpa’s jazz music while looking at the beautifully decorated Christmas tree.

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.