Gift to Dad: The Leaning Tower of Cream Puffs - 4/20/2011

Badabadum~! Badabadum~! (It may not be exactly correct but I am trying to hum the Indiana Jones theme song to build up some suspense...) I hereby christen this croquembouche the "Leaning Tower of Cream Puffs". *Proceeds to crack it open with a big ass kitchen knife.* Joking. I know that proper croquembouche christening involves a champagne bottle.

My favorite dad (still a favorite even if he's my only dad) is turning a lovely age this year. Taking mom's aging calender, the fact that she doesn't want to be married to an older man, and that everyone knows mom and dad are born in the same year. HAPPY 48th BIRTHDAY, DAD!!!

(As promised, this cake made from your favorite dessert will be recreated for you when I visit.)

A French Movie Night

I have been taking French lessons for a few months now. It's going not well. My "R" sounds are still very German. I am also hopeless in remembering the different verb tenses. Buggers. My quirky friends and I from French class decided to plan a French movie night to improve our learning and appreciation for the language. With a copy of "Bon Cop Bad Cop" in hand, let the evening start!

For the evening, the hosts (Mr. L and I) have also came up with a delicious dinner plan for our guests. Unfortunately, one of the hosts (slowly rising my hand while no one is looking) forgot to inform one of the guests that the evening included dinner along with the movie. Nevertheless, I think everyone had a good time.

We had some goose rillette on crackers, French "chinoise" fondue with wine, followed by creme caramel with a side of meringues and fresh fruits. Taking traditions to heart, we all ate the fondue under the penalty of doing the dishes if we dropped a piece in the pot. We all survived the penalty (the dishwasher got the bitter end of the stick), though most of us did some "fishing" once in a while. Especially for those pesky but delicious mushrooms that slid off the forks. I don't remember much of the evening's conversation other than the boiled peanuts from the south (southern US not Canada). After dinner, we watched the movie (well half the movie as we took our time with dinner) while chewing on some colourful Twizzlers from one of those variety packs! There were also bowls of m&ms and chips being passed around. It was a fantastic evening! Another evening just like this is on the horizon complete with a wine an cheese theme and a Disney movie in French.

Taste from Grandma Chien's Kitchen

Sometimes simpler is better. When I need some simplicity and comfort, I make my grandma's pork and eggs dish. It's a humbling looking dish but immensely delicious. It's one of her most loved by the family. It's always one of the first dishes to go at the dinner table during any family gatherings. Grandma spoke Ningpo-nese which is a dialect in China. She called this dish niogodei. For years, I have associated the name to the dish as anyone would associate the word tree to the tall brown thing with branches and leaves. As it turned out niogodei is how you say "肉跟蛋" in Ningpo-nese which means "meat and eggs". It's quite a literal description of the dish as it's made only with ground pork and eggs.

Sunday Morning Afternoon Brunch

Earlier this month my bf and I thought it would be a great idea to compile a list of recipes to try and work through them systematically. And that's what we did. Close to a 100 recipes are listed in an Excel workbook by categories. They are divided into appetizer, soup, main course, quiche, breakfast, dessert, cake, sweet, cookie, and bread. Most are self explanatory other than some subdivisions of the sweet stuff. He looked at it and said "Isn't this a bit much?" to me in the nicest possible way. I through him a glance and reminded him that he's pretty much only operating in the appetizer, soup, and main course section. The first Saturday of November rolled around and I thought, hey why don't we try a breakfast recipe and make it a Sunday morning brunch? We settled on a baked eggs recipe and went to bed.