Ripening Avocados at Home

I've been snatching up avocados whenever I see them for a good deal, even if they aren't quite ripe, yet. The trick is to also buy bananas or any other climacteric fruit and then store them in the same container to accelerate the ripening process. A brown paper bag works.

These avocados were a little on the firm side when I bought them yesterday evening and after a night with the bananas they ripened up really well. So much so that the remaining avocados are now quarantined in the fridge so they don't die on me by tomorrow.

By the way, this combination above- fresh avocado and fried egg on buttered toast sprinkled with salt and pepper... it's a divine breakfast that can be made in about five minutes.

Chocolate Raspberry + Lemon Prosecco Cakes

I found a cake recipe that I can improvise with! No fucking way! The traditional genoise sponge cake recipe only requires a minimum of three ingredients (eggs, flour, sugar), but once you get the technique down it's smooth sailing from there.

Here, I've made two cakes for Hai and Mark's birthday party. One a chocolate raspberry cake and the other a lemon prosecco cake. The chocolate raspberry is made with chocolate genoise soaked in maraschino liqueur, layered with raspberry preserves and slathered with whipped chocolate ganache.

The lemon prosecco cake is a traditional genoise soaked in prosecco layered with rich lemon curd and wrapped in lemon buttercream.

Good times for all!

Brat Bites and Mini Tacos

I'm blogging from my phone! Haven't updated in a while, but I'm wondering if this new Blogger app will have me posting more frequently. We'll see.

Here's a tasty picture of a brat bite I put together for my friend's Erin and Michael. They're getting married next month and I'm going to be catering the cocktail hour. A little scared but also ridiculously excited to get to cook for so many people.

Potsticker Wrappers From Scratch

Kavitha and I made the wrapper dough using 2 cups of AP flour and 3/4 cup hot water with a pinch of salt. Combine and then knead until smooth. Let rest and cool. Break into small pieces and then roll out.

I attempted the typical dumpling shape that is crimped into a crescent shape, but the dough was a tad too soft and elastic. Instead, I opted for crimping them into the round shape more typical of Shanghai soup dumplings.

It worked!

Fantastic.

The final product had a wrapper that was on the thicker side (about 1/8"), which was fine, but I'm curious to see what they would be like even thinner. The dough seemed pliable enough to be able to handle it. Next: Shanghai soup dumplings?

Scallion Pancakes

Chinese scallion pancakes are not your typical kind of pancake that comes from a viscous batter. It's more of a fried bread and starts with a simple hot water dough that is rolled flat, rolled up, then rolled into a spiral, and then rolled flat, again. It's what we call a laminated pastry, similar to puff pastry or even croissants. But it's pan-fried. It can be a breakfast food, but I think it's more of a street food type of snack than anything else. You can get a pile of them at a street cart in Flushing, Queens for something like a dollar.

Notice the flaky layers. I used a recipe from the always reliable Kenji Lopez-Alt on Serious Eats. His investigations and explanations are always a pleasure to read, so I'm not going to go into any of that, here. Read his.

The only thing I would add to his recipe is that you should use a cylindrical rolling pin, and not a tapered French pin (which I usually prefer). The reason is that the scallions embedded into the dough will do all sorts of crazy things as you're trying to roll the dough as thin as possible. A cylindrical rolling pin will ensure an evenly distributed pressure while you're flattening it out, and you won't have (as many) scallions poking out all over the place.