And so yes, I went on a panic buy. Just for a few extra things after I heard that our county in the Bay Area was one of the six announcing “shelter in place” that would begin 1201am Tuesday. I learnt of the news just after lunch on Monday (the schools had announced closure the Friday before) and immediately the husband went to Trader Joe’s to grab milk, more fruits, bread. When he returned, I popped into our closest Asian supermarket for noodles, some frozen bao, fresh vegetables. I was hoping to also get some tofu and chicken but none was to be found. I was worried about the lines getting longer – and also staying out too long with possible COVID-19 carriers – so I didn’t want to wait at the seafood or fresh meat counter.

Anyway, we do have supplies at home like rice, flour and other staples. It’s more like the fresh produce that may require a trip to the supermarket next week. But for now we are doing ok. Hope you are too.

But with four people at home for all meals plus snacks, I am thankful that my kids are the kind who are happy to have sandwiches for lunch several days in a row!

Here are some of the meals I’ve made over the lockdown week so far:

 

 

Noodles with chicken, bean sprouts, prawns and enoki mushrooms.

 

 

 

Pizza with asparagus and bacon

 

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Over the weekend, I’m thinking of making a baked Mac and cheese to freeze. Maybe make some more pizza dough to pop into the freezer. I don’t have any tortillas at the moment, but I was thinking of making some freezer burritos, either breakfast style with scrambled eggs, bacon and potatoes, or regular with black beans, rice, and cheese.

Another thought I had was to make some wonton or dumplings to freeze.

What meals do you make ahead to freeze? I always make extra bolognese sauce to freeze, and whenever I make waffles at home, I always triple the batch to have extra to freeze. I also like to have homemade pizza rolls in the freezer which are a quick school lunch idea. And when I make bread, I tend to make two loaves at a time, and stick one in the freezer. Otherwise, I’m not quite sure that the Chinese-style food that we cook is all that freezer-friendly.

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs

It’s Christmas cookie making season again!

I’ve gone a slightly different route this year. I’m still making gingerbread cookies as I do with the kids each year (we make the recipe from King Arthur Flour – so delicious!)

But I wanted to try out some different recipes as well. Last year I made Meyer lemon biscotti  and vanilla biscotti. 

So here are some new-to-me recipes that I’ve been trying out!

Matcha Shortbread cookies (recipe from Wild Wild Whisk)

I love the green tea flavour of this one. And the colour is great for Christmas trees!

Sesame Sea Salt cookies (original recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Dorie’s Cookies)

These cookies are almost savoury. I really like the flavour of this one. And hopefully others will too. They are really nice and buttery and there is some almond flour in them.

Citrus shortbread cookies (original recipe from the NY Times)

I have to thank Beth for this one! I first saw the link from her Weekend Cooking post. And because I had some (sadly unused) cookie stamps, I knew I had to make this!

I adapted the recipe slightly to use only our homegrown Meyer lemons, instead of the orange and lemon combination. The dough balls have to rather heavily floured before using the stamps, which tend to be hard to remove dough from! So it took quite a bit of time to make.

The cookies are glazed with more citrus! I loved the very lemony flavour in both the glaze and biscuit. They are also quite delicate so I decided not to put these in the shipment to the husband’s mentor.

What are your favourite Christmas cookies?

 

 

Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs

The weekend before Thanksgiving we took a road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping the first night in the lovely seaside town of Cambria and then in Ventura in Southern California.

Here are some foodie highlights!

The main reason for this road trip was to try it out in our EV! We’ve driven down Highway 1 to Big Sur before, but not further than that. Usually we take the I-5 down to LA and beyond but it is one hell of a boring straight road. So it is so much more delightful to take the curvy winding roads of the 1, with the sea on your right and lots of vista points to stop and take photos at.

We arrived in Big Sur before 11, too early for lunch at the Big Sur Bakery, and the guy there, while friendly with the kids seemed to suggest that we would find more kid-friendly fare back down the road, “if you want scrambled eggs and things”. Um, not really, but I can take a hint. Instead, we kept going further down south to Ventana Inn, and ate at The Sur House (also, supercharger).

The food at The Sur House is nothing impressive, at least at lunch time, but you can’t beat that view!

I had a Gulf Shrimp sandwich which was tasty. The kids burger was well, a good enough burger, and the husband’s fried chicken sandwich had a nice hint of Thai spiciness and herbs.

But that view!

We kept heading down that beautiful highway to Cambria, our first stop for the the weekend.

We stayed at Pelican Inn, right across the road from Moonstone Beach which has a nice boardwalk and some tide pools to check out. After spending some time at the beach, it was time for an early dinner (also it was getting dark).

So just down the street from the inn is Moonstone Beach Bar and Grill. And there was already a short line of people outside the restaurant at 5pm, when it opens. We joined the queue and were given a nice window-side table, which of course would be more useful if anything were visible outside. It’s a touristy place so I wasn’t really eating there with high expectations, but I liked that the kids’ menu had fried clams on it. And the 8yo was extremely excited to have clams (strangely my kids like mussels and clams, something I wasn’t expecting. And don’t get me started on my 6yo who would eat all the smoked salmon and salmon sashimi if he could). The 6yo went with spaghetti. And I had the seafood pasta, the husband picked vongole. The service here was really great, efficient, friendly but not too much. And they even gave out little toys to the kids (who also got ice-cream).

The broth that the pastas came in was delicious and seafoody.

 

We continued our drive down south, stopping in the cute Danish town of Solvang. It’s very touristy of course, lots of shops selling random knickknacks, a horse-drawn trolley, lots of Scandinavian-style buildings, although it was too warm to feel like we were in Denmark. The best part of our little stop there was finding Mortensen’s Bakery and buying some treats for teatime.

 

This pistachio square was delicious!

 

And I hadn’t seen a Sarah Bernhardt cookie before and it was yummy. It’s mocha buttercream sandwiched between two almond meringue cookies.

 

We finally reached our stop for the night in Ventura, the Ventura Beach Marriott, a newly refurbished hotel, and I loved how the room looked. Also a plus for the sliding barn bathroom door!

For dinner, I found an Italian restaurant, Spasso, not too far from the hotel. The service was a bit slow (there was one waiter and one manager) in this small restaurant (the elderly couple at the table next to us came with books, making me wonder if they were regulars and expecting it to be a leisurely meal). But the food was really good.

We started off with an antipasti platter and I had a Campari martini, which was delightfully refreshing (and very strong).

The husband’s vongole (yes again!) was the “proper” kind, he said, not sitting in a pool of broth (which, while delicious, isn’t the vongole he was used to). And also, had a liberal sprinkling of chill flakes which made for a great spicy meal.

I had the carbonara. I love carbonara but most places make it with cream and it becomes too rich and just overkill. I make it at home sometimes but my kids don’t like it much (they’re very much bolognese fans). And so I was looking forward to this one, and it was just right!

The kids had lasagne and salami pizza.

That was a delightful dinner. We don’t have fantastic Italian food in our city (have to drive across to Mountain View or Palo Alto or the city for that), so I’m always happy to eat good Italian food.

Our road trip was coming to an end and we were due to head back north the next day. But first, a stop down to LA to meet friends for lunch.

They decided to take us to Porto’s which is apparently an LA institution. It’s a Cuban bakery and cafe and it’s expanded to several branches.

It was impossible to find parking though and we later found out why as the lines inside are insane (and stretched out the door). And this was on a Monday!

The cakes and pastries looked amazing but I didn’t want think cakes would survive the long drive back to the Bay Area. So we bought some cheese rolls (surprisingly, not a savoury thing but sweet – the cheese being more like a cream cheese), potato balls (papa rellenas), chicken empanadas, meat pies (pastel de carne). You also can order cooked food there so we had a ham and cheese croissant sandwich for the kids, a Cubano, and a steak plate. The eating area was so crowded! But the food was great.

The pastries were eaten on the drive back and the kids really liked the potato balls. The empanadas were good but I thought that the meat pies didn’t have enough filling in the puff pastry.

And that was a very delicious road trip!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs

I was so thrilled to see Jasmine Guillory’s Royal Holiday while browsing the ‘new arrivals’ shelves at the library and quickly snapped it up before anyone else could. Of course there was no one else near said shelves except a rather elderly man but who knows, maybe he too was a fan of Jasmine Guillory. Her books are such a fun escape after all. Maybe he too enjoys the light romance and those ‘could it be? really?’ moments. Or those oh, hello, it’s you, type things. Or maybe it’s all that food she mentions in her books. Like burgers. Tacos. Doughnuts. More doughnuts.

And so here we are with scones.

Because it’s a book set in England! And opening in Sandringham Castle (where the Royal Family holidays at Christmas) in Norfolk no less! For Vivian Forest’s daughter is dressing a member of the Royal Family, and Vivian gets to tag along for a holiday. And it’s in Sandringham Castle that she meets Malcolm, who is the Queen’s private secretary. And sparks fly and all that. Also, lots of scones are consumed.

So I just had to make some!

I’ve been making scones for a while but it was only in recent years that I found the best scone recipe ever. It’s from The Bread Bible by Ruth Levy Bernanbaum.

Maybe it’s all the letter folds that she calls for, that is, where you fold the rolled out dough in thirds like a letter, one third on top of the other, giving you three layers of dough. Previously none of the scone recipes I tried ever asked for that, it was more of a roll out the dough and cut it kind of recipe. After one letter fold, the dough is turned 90 degrees and folded again. And one more time after that.

Does that make a difference? I like to think it does. That’s after all how puff pastry is made. All those letter folds.

Whether it is a result of letter folds or the ingredients used, this makes for a beautiful, buttery scone. Which can even be eaten on its own. It is that good. No need to slather in anything to disguise any dryness!

I love scones and since I live in suburban USA, there aren’t many to be found.

 

 

 

(All this was from one high tea set, for three people)

 

 

When I make my annual visit back home to Singapore, one thing I always do is hit a high tea. Singapore has many wonderful places, usually hotel cafes, that serve gorgeous high teas. Some places offer lavish buffets, others have lovely multi-tiered high tea trays serving up delicate treats. Sometimes scones are in the mix. And sadly, while most of the rest of the food is great, often the scones are not. So I’m just happy to have found this amazing recipe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs