Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: My tiny kitchen

A mixed green salad with chanterelle and shitake mushrooms, jumbo scallops and pistachios.

I love mushrooms. From the ordinary everyday button mushroom to the fancy and insanely expensive black or white truffle, I cannot think of a kind that I don’t like. My favourite way to prepare them is to make them into a ragout, which is just a fancy term for sauteing the mushrooms with garlic, shallots, a small amount of stock or wine and cook until all the liquid has been reduced. Most mushrooms have a lot of flavour; the reduction simply intensifies and enhances the great flavour. Sometimes I serve the ragout as a side-dish to compliment a piece of perfectly seared steak, other times I put them on a patty to make a juicy mushroom hamburger. When ET and I want to have a light meal (yes, sometimes we do too!), I would mix up a plate of greens with the ragout. I’m not much of a salad eater, but when the salad has mushrooms, I can easily finish a plate

This recipe serves 2 people.

- 10 medium-sized shitake mushrooms
- 10 medium-sized chanterelle mushrooms (or hedgehog if chanterelle is not in season)
- 30 pistachios, ready-to-eat, shells removed
- 4 jumbo scallops
- Mixed greens (as much as you like)
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- balsamic vinegar
- extra virgin olive oil
- sherry

1. Rinse the mushrooms. Remove the stalk of the shitake. Cut off the tip of the chanterelle stalks. Cut the mushrooms into pieces. You don’t need to cut them too small because they will shrink after they are cooked.

2. Heat a pan with 1 tbsp of olive oil. Saute the garlic. Put in the mushrooms. Put in 1/2 tsp of salt, black pepper and 3 tbsp of sherry. Let the mushroom cooked until all liquid has been reduced.

3. Using a paring knife, score criss-cross marks on the top and bottom of each scallop. Season the scallops with salt and pepper. Coat them with cornstarch, dust off excess. In a pan, put in 1 tbsp of butter. Once the butter has melted, place the scallops into the pan. Let the scallops seared over high heat for one minute for each side. After both sides have been seared to golden brown, cover the pan for 1.5 minutes and lower the heat to medium. The trick to have perfectly seared scallops is to not to move them too much during searing. The time noted here cooks the scallops to medium-well. If you want to cook the scallops fully, let them sit in the covered pan for 1 minute longer.

4. In a large bowl, put in 1/2 tsp of mustard. Put in 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar. Using a whisk, whisk in 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil. Once the olive oil has been completely incorporated with the vinegar, whisk in another 1 tbsp of olive oil. When the oil has been incorporated, whisk in another 1 tbsp. In the end, you will get a dressing that is an emulsion of olive oil and vinegar. Whisking the olive oil one tablespoonful at the time ensures the success. If you have more greens, you can make more dressing by using more vinegar and olive oil, as long as you follow the ration of 1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil.

5. Toss the greens in the dressing.

6. To assemble: place the greens on a plate. Add the mushroom ragout on top of the greens. Place the scallops on the salad and sprinkle pistachios all over it.

Location: My tiny kitchen

Some people believe that there is only one true love in life. I believe there is one special cookie for everyone. Your special cookie might be the first cookie you had, or the cookie that you always had when you were a kid. Ultimately, the special cookie is the cookie that you want to have when you had a bad morning, a bad day at work or even a bad date. You might also want to bite into this cookie when you missed a flight, a hard deadline or the season’s premier episode of Lost. It is the cookie that could save you from kicking yourself (or other people’s behinds) in heated moments. If you are still looking for your special cookie, check if you utter a “Mmmmm” sound next time you have a cookie. If you do, then that cookie might just be the one for you.

My special cookie is a shortbread cookie made from an easy recipe created by Anna Olson. I have tried other people’s shortbread recipe but Olson’s remains my favourite. The right proportion of butter, sugar and flour listed in her recipe makes this cookie tastes rich and yet not overly buttery. To turn this shortbread cookie into my special cookie, I make them in different shapes – hearts, duckies and gingerbread men.

This recipe makes 36 cookies if you are using a small ice cream scoop. Based on the experience of making many batches, I’ve made a few modifications to the recipe. The ingredients are the same as Olson’s but the steps are slightly different.

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature, soften
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp icing sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 310F.

2. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter with icing sugar until butter is fluffy. First beat at low speed until the sugar and butter are combined, then turn to high speed and beat for 10 minutes. This step is important because fluffy butter makes fluffy cookies. Beat the butter until it is almost white in colour. In the end, beat in the vanilla extract at medium speed.
3. Using a spatula, fold in the flour, cornstarch and salt.
4. Using a small ice cream scoop, drop the cookie dough onto an cookie sheet, leaving 2 inches between cookies.
5. Bake for 15 minutes or until bottoms are slightly brown. Let cool and enjoy.

Those are the steps to make the shortbread cookies. There are a few more steps involved to turn the cookies into hearts, gingerbread men or duckies. You will need cookie cutters (in shapes that you preferred), wax paper and a rolling pin.

1. On a very long piece of wax paper, put the dough on one side of the paper. Cover the dough by folding the paper in half. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out to 1/4 of an inch thick. Place the dough covered with the wax paper on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer until it hardens, which takes about 20 minutes.

2. Once the dough has harden, let it warm up in room temperature for 5 minutes or until is is soft enough to cut through using a cookie cutter. Flour a cookie cutter and use it to cut the dough into individual cookies. If the dough becomes soft and start to stick to the cookie cutter, put the dough back in the freezer for 5 minutes. Flour the cookie cutter as often as needed.
3. Repeat step 2 for the remaining dough.

Once the cookies have been cut, they must be baked right away or must be stored in the freezer. Put the cookies on a cookie sheet and let them harden in the freezer. Once they are harden, stack them up in a container and keep them in the freezer until you are ready to bake them.

Besides cookies, I believe for everyone there is also a special chocolate bar, cupcake, ice cream sundae, fried chicken, mac & cheese… the list just never ends. But I feel that when someone had a bad day, the special cookie can always make that person feel, well, a little special.

Location: My tiny kitchen

While strolling through the meat section at a local grocery store this weekend, a nicely packaged piece of pork tenderloin caught my attention. ET was walking right beside me and when he saw me checking out the pork, he complained like a kid and said, “I don’t like pork tenderloins. They are always tough and chewy. I had some at a bistro in Paris and even the French couldn’t make it taste good”. Already lost in my thoughts of good pork tenderloin recipes, I was too busy to acknowledge him. Continue ignoring him, I realized the tenderloin was on sale for buy one get one free. Fantastic! I know I can use the discount to convince ET for buying the pork ET might be picky with his pork, but he rarely refuses a good deal.

On our drive home, I remembered a pork tenderloin recipe that I read about earlier from the Fine Cooking magazine. I had wanted to try that recipe and now is the perfect chance. ET is right; pork tenderloin is a lean piece of meat and therefore it could be dry and tough. To make the meat tender, I modify the recipe slightly by quickly pounding the pork before marinating it. The pounding turned out to be a good step – the pork wasn’t tough and ET devoured ten pieces in no time.

This recipe serves two people who really like pork, or 4 people if served as an appetizer.

You will need:
- 20 pieces of pork tenderloin, sliced 1/4 inch thick each
- 1 cup of Japanese bread crumb (Panko is the brand that I used)
- Oil for frying

For marinate you will need:
- 1 tbsp of grain mustard
- 2 tbsp of onion powder
- 1 tsp of kosher salt
- Freshly ground pepper

1. Using the back of the knife, chop each pork slice. Turn the slice by 90 degrees, and chop the slice again.
2. Add the marinate to the pork. Fridge for a few hours up to overnight.

3. Drench each pork slice in bread crumbs. Gently dust off any excess.
4. Heat oil in a quart pan. Make sure the oil is not higher than 1/2 the height of the pan. When the oil reaches 350 F, put in a few pork slices. I always clip a thermometer by the side of the pan. The thermometer tells me exactly how hot the oil is and by adjusting the heat, I’m able to fry at the optimal temperature.
5. Fry the pork slices for 1.5 minute. Place the pork on paper towel and let it cool.

6. To serve, put a dollop of plain yogurt and a bit of Dijon mustard on each slice.

Writing this recipe reminds me of a pork tenderloin roast that my friend prepared one time he invited us over for dinner. His pork roast was juicy and tender. It was the best-tasting pork tenderloin I had. This recipe cannot beat his but it’s a quick fix for my pork tenderloin craving for now