Cambozola & Apples

I am loving this recipe.  I've made this recently with brie and peaches.  With the changing of the season and great apples out there, this is a good one for an early afternoon happy hour.  It is so easy to make!  

Today, I served this for some friends for what I called High Tea.  We had sweets, little finger foods, and this cheese plate that I served with crackers.

1 wedge of Cambozola cheese
1 apple (I used Jonagold) cored, peeled, and cut in small pieces
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tsp of fresh thyme, plus a sprig to garnish
1 tablespoon of honey (I used this peach flavored one that I picked up in Colorado.  It's adding that salmon color on the plate.)

Heat over to 300 degrees
Put the cheese on a baking sheet and bake for about 5 minutes until soft but not melting and runny.
Put olive oil in a small frying pan over medium heat.
When hot, toss in the thyme and it will pop and fry.
Toss in apple pieces and let apples cook and caramelize.  Don't stir too much, let the apples get brown nicely.
Put warm cheese on a serving platter.
Top the cheese with the honey and spread evenly until cheese covered.
Spoon and top the cheese with the cooked apples.
Place a sprig of thyme on top and serve.

Apple Tarte Tatin

Apple Tarte Tatin is one of those classic French desserts that never go out of style.  When my friend Hamed and Pascale were opening their new French bistro, I was practicing this dessert for the menu.  

I tried various classic recipes, some using puff pastry, some using sable crust, some with gala apples, fuji apples, granny smith, some with butter in the caramel, some without.  I goofed it a bit the first time by not letting it sit for 5 min before flipping it over, some resting too much and the caramel getting too still.  It was a fun ride.

Here is the version I found best.  I tweaked it from an old Gourmet magazine recipe.

• Frozen puff pastry sheet
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 6 to 9 Granny Smith Apples (3 to 4 pounds), peeled, quartered lengthwise, and cored
• 10-inch oven proof skillet
• 
  

Preheat oven to 425°F.

-Roll pastry sheet into a ten 1/2-inch square on a floured work surface with a floured rolling pin. Brush off excess flour and cut out a 10-inch round with a sharp knife, using a plate as a guide. Transfer round to a baking sheet and chill.

-Melt butter in the skillet and pour sugar until melted and amber caramel 

-Arrange as many apples as will fit vertically on sugar, packing them tightly in concentric circles. Apples will stick up above rim of skillet.

-Cook apples over moderately high heat, undisturbed, until juices are deep golden and bubbling, 18 to 25 minutes. 

-Put skillet in middle of oven over a piece of foil to catch any drips. Bake 20 minutes (apples will settle slightly), then remove from oven and lay pastry round over apples.

-Bake tart until pastry is browned, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer skillet to a rack and cool at least 10 minutes.

-Just before serving, invert a platter with lip over skillet and, using potholders to hold skillet and plate tightly together, invert tart onto platter. 

-Brush any excess caramel from skillet over apples. Serve immediately.

It still needs some work and I need to revisit again. I want to modernize it by topping it with homemade salted caramel sauce and try to make it so that it can be prepared ahead of time and not serve it right away.  I've since tried it with pears and it's lovely. I also saw a recipe in Donna Hay's cookbook using Quinces.  It's truly one that people love and feel special when you serve it.

Odd Fellows Cafe

Odd Fellows Cafe is one of those nice neighborhood spots you can count on for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Food is very rustic and homemade, but in a very urban setting.  In addition, they have a full bar.  It reminds me of a cafe in West Village in NYC but it's in our very own, located in Seattle's Capitol Hill.  Odd Fellows Cafe Website

Here is a pic of the place from their website.

I was introduced to this place by my ex who lived in this neighborhood.  We used to go there to get coffee and pastry, then using their free wifi and work.  I've also been there for brunch with dear friends.  Breakfast and lunch is counter service but dinner is full service.  

Apple Coffee Cake and Bundt Cake

Soy Mocha

Potato Soup

What I love about this place vs. just a coffee or bakery shop is that you can get wonderful pastries but also something savory like a salad, soup, or sandwiches.  Here is one of those work days where I got coffee, a pastry, and soup.  It was a good day to spend time with a dear friend and catch up on work.  I have fond memories...

A Bet Payoff Steak Dinner

Okay...I'm not the best bowler.  My brother however is a super bowler.  He has own shoes and bowling ball.  A big nerd.  :)  For his birthday last May, I put together a celebration of his favorite things BBQ and Bowling.  

Being the competitive Yi's we are, no matter how terrible we might be at something, we still accept a challenge.  This is what we did with bowling.  We broke up the up team into 2 groups and unfortunately, I was on the losing team.  The bet was a Steak Dinner.  They said, no Costco steak either.  So I picked up some steaks at a A & J Meat and Seafood in Queen Ann, some very dry aged rib eye.

Here was the dinner.

Nibbler

We started off with some cheese and crackers platter with duck pate.

Steak

The meat cooked with simple salt, pepper, with olive oil rub.  

It was served with an herb butter disk.

Salad

These meat eating winners don't like veggies.  Even Bia, won't eat anything green, so I made the focus of a salad on apples since they are lovely in the fall season.  They sliced super thin, simply dressed in some citrus vinaigrette, and then stacked.  Sprinkle some bleu cheese, toasted pecans, and micro green.  Looks so pretty right, well the flavors weren't there.  Perhaps it was the dressing but didn't taste that great.

Sides

Roasted Paprika Potatoes were a hit!  My friend Ken prepared this great Marsala Mushrooms.

Dessert

Again, with fall upon on us (at the time of dinner), I tried to use seasonal ingredients and decided to make individual Pear Crisps, a vegan version since my sis the vegan.  I used Nature Balance in place of butter to make my topping.  

Here are the winning shmucks!  

The losing shmucks.  Will get them next time and make them cook us a veggie dinner.

Momofuku Noodle Bar and Milk Bar

Last night, we had dinner at the Momofuku Noodle Bar and grabbed some desserts from the Milkbar.

I've been waiting since 2007 to try this place.  I've been dying to try the Crack Pie that Anderson Cooper has been raving about.


Well....


Expectations set too high?  I don't know...was good but not great and did not meet the expectations. 


Some things were good, but maybe it's because I am Korean and know the authentic Korean flavors and know my mom's food's flavors.  It wasn't so exotic for me and the flavors were not new.  I don't know but... David, you didn't meet the hype.  Definititly not in the baked goods department which is my love.  






Noodle Bar


They had more vegetarian dishes than I had anticipated. 


Steamed Buns
We had the veggie version with the shitake mushrooms.  The pork version is the one he made famous.  The mushrooms were too salty. There was some cool sweet pickled cucumbers but not sweet enough.


Beet Salad with Cream
This was a hit. It was roasted beets with blood orange, nori nibs, some buttermilk cream sauce.  This was good and beautifully food.  Or as Lucas said...fancy food.

Roasted Cauliflower
This was mediocure at the best for me. Soung seem to like.  Had brown butter, some raisins and pine nuts.


Jar of Kim Chee
This was surprisingly good but didn't have enough cabbage.  It was full of the chili pepper case. I like the jar it came in. 

Ginger Noodle
This is what Soung and I had.  It was more like a noodle salad.  Had some same shitake mushrooms in the steam buns, some greens, seaweed, ginger, and some oil.  Too salty and not that great.  The noodle texture was good though.

Momofuku Noodle
This is the classic pork ramen  with eggs and seaweed.  Lucus and Heather had this and seemed to like it.  I wish they had some veggie version of this.  I wanted a warm bowl of soup like this.  

The wait for the Noodle Bar was about an hour so we decided to hike over to the Milk Bar first and get some sweets.  Here we are after getting our goodies, sitting outside of Milk Bar and just eating desserts before our dinner.  My way of eating!  :)

Milk Bar
I'm not kidding when I said that Anderson Cooper loves this Crack Pie.  He was guest hosting Regis and Kelly and was talking non stop about this.  So, I was expecting something really salty, creamy, but really, it was some condensed milk thin cold pie.   We also got the Compost Cookie which was suppose to be like a cookie with everything but the kitchen sink but it wasn't.  Just some simple choc chip like cookie, very thin.  Not impressive.  We also got this Birthday Cake Truffles, which was good but flat on flavor.  Perhaps I'm being tough but I just expected a lot, prob too much.    The best thing was probaby the Apple Pie Cake that Lucus got but I didn't get to try. 


Crack Pie

Apple Pie Cake

Momfuku has some great concepts and I wanted to love the food but it wasn't.  The place has some good environment but food was flat for me.  Perhaps this is because I'm veggie and you need to have the meat dishes.   I am a dessert lover so did expect to love Milk Bar but it wasn't for me.    I got some great insprirations. 


I do love that he uses many organic ingredients and most are local.  He lists where he sources his vendors as well.


I'm going to make my own version of "crack" pie.  A pie that is so addictive but will be nothing like this gooie buttery stuff.  Mine will have salt, chocolate, and much more!

Rhubarb Apple Bread

Drearily Sundays in Seattle are the perfect days to do some baking.  Last Sunday, I spent the day baking one of my favorite things...the apple bread.  I received some rhubarb from my friend Chia-Hui.  She grows them in her garden so I decided to add them to the apples.  During the holidays, I make this bread with cranberries so I thought the rhubarb would work nicely.
This recipe is from the Pasta & co. cookbook.  It's their Santori Apple Cake recipe.  I vary it up by using pears, cranberries, and other fruits.  I like this recipe because it's so moist and a bit gooey because of the oil and lot of fruit in the recipe. The recipe doesn't quite follow my dry/wet combining because it uses the flour last as a coating.  Enjoy!


Dry
3 cups of Sugar
1 Tbs Baking Soda
1 1/2 Tsp Ground cinnamon
1 1/4 Tsp Salt
Wet
3 Eggs
3/4 cup of Oil
1 1/2 Tsp Vanilla
Other
3 cups of diced Rhubarb
3 cups of peeled and sliced Apples
1 1/2 cups of chopped Walnuts
3 cups of all purpose flour


Heat oven to 325.  Combine the dry, then the wet, then mix in the dry and wet ingredients together.  Add the fruit and nuts to the bowl and stir until everything is nicely coated with the wet mixture.  Add flour 1 cup at a time until "just" combined.  Spoon into a prepared pan of your choice.  Bake for 1 hour and 20 min or until toothpick comes out clean.


Below are step by step pictures...

Dinner at My Chef Friend's

Today, I had lunch with my chef friend Hamed.  He is the one that is classically trained from FCI, the school in NYC that I had checked out and wanted to go for so bad but couldn't get the timing right.


We had lunch at Matt's at the Market.  Great place with really flavorful food. I was bummed they didn't have the Grilled Cheese Sandwich nor the Tomato Soup, but they reminded me they cook seasonally so they don't have it on the menu, and that it may comeback in the fall.   It makes sense and why they are so good.  I had a Grilled Halibut Sandwich and Hamed had a sandwich of the day which I think was some kind of grilled meat.  We then went to Le Panier for the best Eclairs ever.  The espresso ones are the best.  He told me just the day before, him and his wife Pascale got 16 of them and ate them all.  Crazy!


Anyways, it reminded me a fabulous dinner that they had me and some other friends over for a couple months ago.  His food seem simple but the flavors are amazing and all technically correct.  Everything is always cooked perfectly and presented so well.  Here are some pics below.

Hamed the Chef

These are little Tartines he served first with wine.  This one was carmalized onions and some sort of cheese.

These were made with salted zucchinis and goat cheese and were not cooked at all.  There is a lot of curing vs. cooking these days in the food world.  All the pickling popularity from David Chang's stuff.  This one was delish!

First course was a Red Lentil Soup.  He made this one vegetarian and with water because of me and my sis but it was so good, I couldn't believe he didn't use sort of stock.

Main course was Black Cod flavored with lemon and some spices.  Simple but so good.

The sides were some Glazed Carrots and Boiled Potatoes.  Again, so good!  Carrots weren't too sugary like many glazed carrots and simple boiling of potatoes had that nice "puffy" texture.  

Now, this was Hamed specialty.  It was a Peanut Sauce made with peanut butter, onions, and some spice. It was very spicy.  I've never tasted anything like this.  We ate it like a condiment for the fish and sides.   I need to get the recipe for this and post here.  He really should bottle this stuff.

Update: Hamed gave me the recipe. Yay.  So I had it wrong, this is not the Peanut Sauce.  This is the Onion Peanut Butter Salad.  He did serve the peanut sauce at another time and that looked more like a jar of mustard.  I know, it sounds strange but it's not.  Here are recipes. He didn't give me portions.  :)  But I'm going to take the recipe I can get.  I'll give it a try and take down measurements and repost later.

Onion Peanut Butter Salad

Onions

Peanut Butter

Lemon

Olive Oil

Salt

You slice the onion and let it for a few hours in a salted water, take all the access water out.

Mix with peanut butter, lemon, little olive oil and season.

Peanut Sauce

Hot Green Chili

Peanut Butter

Tomatoes

Garlic

Lemon Juice

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper,

Blend everything together and there you have it.  :)

This is what it looked like on our plates.

I made desserts of an Apple Spice Cake and Lemon Tart.

Here is the dinner gang.  Soung, Pascale, Marisela, Hamed, Dan, and me.  Good times!