chewy Tag

THIN AND CHEWY DATES AND RUM COOKIES

DENSE AND CHEWY AND BORDERLINE STICKY

Sometimes, I feel, if a recipe could talk… it wouldn’t be thanking me for lovingly bringing it into this world, nor telling me how it did at school today over a cup of hot cocoa, nor about its hopes and dreams as we laugh and cry together in the kitchen at the end of a sun-drenched afternoon… Sometimes, I feel, if a recipe could talk, first and foremost, it would probably just gently lean into my ears, and the three little words it whispers with steady breath would sound something like… Just. Shut up.

See, it’s not that my recipes are mean, because I assure you that I raised them all with decent manners. But sometimes I have to admit that they’ve got a point. Let’s take this instance as an example, shall we? Cookies. Very fast, very easy, zero electronic machinery needed. Tinted with ground allspice and cardamon, and filled with minced rum-soaked dates. If you like crispy-on-the-bottom-and-edges, but dense-and-chewy-and-borderline-sticky kind of cookies, I don’t know what else the recipe would want me to say except… make it now.

So. Make it now.

March 9, 2015

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets, updated recipe

MOCHI DONUTS

” YOUR SKINNY JEANS
WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN 30 MIN.

THIS MESSAGE WON’T. “

THIS, may come as a surprise to hear. Or not… judging from how you rationalize things. Well, let’s just say based on the look of things on this blog, this will come either as a gasping surprise, or, as the most obvious conclusion to any. But what I’m trying to tell you, and this is a true story, is that every night before I go to sleep, the ever-last thought that I’m either saying or thinking before drifting into oblivion is alway this…

#$#$^@#!! I swear I’m gonna go on a fucking diet.

It’s true. You see the thing is, I’m a side-sleeper. And side-sleepers feel things. Things that, with all due respect, back-sleepers wouldn’t necessarily feel so bluntly and graphically and that is, the horror upon realizing that my gut can move freely in 180 degree angle, and rest soundly on the mattress like a soft pouch of cottage cheese. Did you know this about my gut? Why am I always the last to know…

I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I am not beyond reasons. I’m aware of the normal shape of things for a humanoid, and I have acknowledgement of the ancient nutritional pyramid built by aliens to assist mankind, I swear. There was a lemon-olive-oil-pasta-thingy that was supposed to be here today to demonstrate that I’m well-balanced and eat vegetables. I don’t know what happened to that.. maybe because, purely guessing, that it didn’t taste as good as this donut.

Right, this is a baaad donut. A very gooood, bad donut. I had a sun-dress that just arrived in mail and I got very angry at it, if you know what I mean. And you would believe me when I say that I would not surrender my prospect into a spaghetti-strap sun-dress this summer, just over any donut, wouldn’t you?

No, no I won’t, because this is not just any donut.

June 13, 2014

133

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Snacks, Vegatables

CHEWY LAYERED ROTI + KICKASS DIP

” …WHOPPING 90% HYDRATION…
SPRUNG LIBERATED OUT OF THE FOUNTAIN OF SECRET DOUGHS “

ALTHOUGH extremely rare, there are recipes that seem theoretically impossible at first, but somehow just come smooth-sailing under the first trial. They make recipe-developers feel invincible even just temporarily, like the lighthouse of success glowing just over the foreseeable shore. Handshakes with Batali and cold beers with Tony Bourdain, book-signing with fan-blown hair and the next dinner party, Ina Garten is bringing her cake. These occasions embolden even the blindest of self-confidence. But then, then there’s the opposite of such.

I call them, the kitchen nemesis… or for times, my baby kitchen unicorns. It’s a tormented, twisted love-and-hate relationship, with an adored food-item that hides a secret so beyond your grasps that failures of making it has been haunting you for years… even decades. The recipe of which you have ventured high and low for – with or without the luck of finding any at all – that in the very end, all greatly disappointed, again, and again. A lover, who’s not completely yours.

For the past 2 decades, my nemesis… my baby unicorn… has been but one thing.READ MORE

May 21, 2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

MONDAY BLUE-BERRY OATMEAL COOKIE

DOES IT SOUND LIKE A GOOD TIME TO FLUFF IT?

I have been told multiple times, by a number of highly credible professionals other than real doctors, that I present troubling signs of minor depression.

Do I?

I sleep. I sleep for a staggering number of hours each day and struggle every ~~morning~~ day for reasons not to add a couple more. But I wonder, perhaps even argue if a real depressed individual would be emotionally capable of the kind of trust and intimacy I share with my dog-hair-embroidered blanket? I also distract myself from my wild discontent in life with the soothing and gentle comfort… of e-commerce. It levels, if only momentarily, my spiritual black hole with mostly delusional clothing that are always one size too small… or one feet too tall. There’s an out-of-place installation in my closet of sequin dresses, and jeans that squeezes my lower half like an outbursting Italian sausage, sounding a silent warning of my concerning mental status.

April 23, 2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

teardrop, tart-hearted coco donut

I wish I could tell you – after an exhausting trip in the quest for the only MRI machine for animals in China – that the kids are all right. That we are all right.

August 13, 2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Sweets

Mochi Brownie

I chose this to be one of the away-from-home-super-short-post collection for a reason – I don’t feel like explaining it. You either know and share a great passion, or even obsession in some cases for what this “mochi” is, or you don’t. No words I can say will convert you from one side to the other.

March 2, 2013