Nomad Kitcheneer

Don't worry, scallion pancake has no resemblance to the fluffy buttermilk pancake that shows up on your breakfast platter. It's a savory side dish, popular in mostly northern Chinese regions (where wheat is the predominant grain of choice). For southerners like me (hardcore rice consumer), it's one of the first wheat dishes that we liked enough (lie, we loved it) and accepted into our rice-centric diet. It's this flat pancake like disc, usually pan fried (or "tandoori'ed") to create a laminated dough and scallion heaven. Even for scallion non-eater (i.e. yours truly), it's delicious and worth making an exception for. It's also very quick to make with ingredients readily available in most western supermarkets. So for stranded (used to) international students  living in the heart of westerners' communities, it's one of those few items that we can recreate that authentic taste without making any sacrifice nor going out of our way to purve...

We've all heard of stories of some famous beauties including milk in their beauty routine (e.g. Cleopatra, royalties, celebrities). For the longest time, I've been intrigued by milk soap. In my imagination, I'd have these flawless snow white delicate bars of soap to lather up. Then comes the reality... Lactose (in Milk) + Heat (from Soaping) --> Caramel Color + Weird Odor As usual, I consulted Google and Youtube and pored over tons of articles/videos. Most "successful" authors tell you to make milk ice and dissolve lye (sodium hydroxide, NaOH) slowly and carefully dissolve it over a ice bath. Full disclaimer, from the videos, it works. I'm just lazy, i.e. I don't like to bust out additional bowls and invest in precious freezer space to make this happen. Fast forward to my half-hearted first attempt with milk ice + NaOH, but without ice bath. The mixture still had a hint of yellow in it (even though it didn't warm up too much during the pr...

Have you ever made your own soap? Maybe it's time for you to give it a try. I developed skin allergy for surfactant (aka hand soap, detergent, dish soap, you name it) over the years, that I had to wear rubber gloves to do basically any chore in the house. Recently, I started trying to make my own soap to eliminate contact to allergen. I stumbled across this "house chore soap" concept from Chinese/Taiwanese websites, and they are AMAZING! These days, these house chore soaps are the only ones we use to do dishes, clean kitchen, stove etc. They work even better than the commercial ones! S always exclaimed, why would these soaps not be more popular? We don't know...but I hope you'd give it a try. The basic soap making procedure can be found pretty much everywhere on YouTube. The key is to ensure safety and have quality ingredients (not that you need organic certified etc, but more importantly, they need to be free of impurities). When it comes to chemical ...

If you asked me 10 years ago, I'd never believe that I'd be baking bread, let alone sourdough bread. I always thought baking bread is hard, it lacked the "rigorous" measurement that pastry baking provides, especially when it comes to giving predictable results every single time (blindly following recipes).  Yet here I am, standing in front of my sourdough baby, Sauerteig Bob, staring at it and examining it every day, wondering how he's doing... I started Sauerteig Bob more than 6 months ago, I'm happy to report that it has given me my first best tasting bread ever. I'm now hooked!

It's Fall. The leaves here in Germany are turning color. I'm frantically baking/cooking to finish as much of my pantry items as possible. Yes, you read it right, I'm moving again. It's time for me to pack up and move across the ocean back to California. I'm only here in Germany for 18 months, I still cannot speak fluent German (I claim to be just restaurant proficient =p) Back in the summer, I baked this French Apple Cake from David Lebovitz. The flavor is surprisingly clean, if you're used to the American classic combo of apple + cinnamon. I later baked it couple more times, bringing it to dinner party etc. We had it on its own, had it with vanilla ice cream, had it warm, had it cold...you name it...it's delicious! French Apple Cake Adapted from French Apple Cake  by Dave Lebovitz yields one round (20cm, roughly 8") cake Ingredients: 3/4 cup (110g) flour 3/4 teaspoon baking powder pinch of salt ~3-5 large apples (any kind) 2 larg...

Life outside of the beautiful California is an interesting adjustment. I'm in a new country (Germany), learning to speak a new language (German), and adjusting to a new life style. While there are many things I enjoy here in Germany and in Europe, I must say, I miss my Mexican food! Luckily, I have a Mexican coworker (also an expat here), and I managed to nag him into learning how to make mole when he visited home over the holidays. Last week, he hosted a mole cooking demonstration (again, at my subtle nudging). To complete the Mexican theme, I volunteered to bring some Mexican dessert and decided to make the Chocoflan (that is another topic…very interesting dessert). However, to make the Chocoflan, cajeta is needed. It seems like cajeta is not as well known as its cousin, dolce de leche. Whenever I tell people that I'm making cajeta, I have to launch a food-education program and explain the difference between cajeta, dulce de leche, and condensed milk. To me, ca...

  I must confess: for the longest time, I have a prejudice towards cupcakes. I find the frosting too sweet, and the cake itself very bland. That is, until I did a "tasting" for a girlfriend of mine's baby shower. I sampled 4-5 stores' cupcakes, and oddly, I realized, not all cupcakes are created equal. (Duh....should've known that a long time ago, but how can I never make that connection?) Fast forward to St Patrick's Day, and I was sitting around reading recipes online for fun. Yes...i do that, though I also often lacked the motivation to get over the "activation energy" to actually make something. Anyhow, I saw this interesting recipe for chocolate stout cupcake with chocolate ganache filling and Baileys frosting. And I went.....how can a cupcake be SO complicated?! It's so complex that I got curious enough to actually want to try making it myself. I mean.....first of all, having beer in cupcake is an interesting idea. Secondly, th...

Horchata I didn't really "discover" Mexican food until last year, despite living in LA for so long. Now, I'm always looking for new places to go, new taco and mole to try. Slowly, I'm building my Spanish food vocabulary. At least, now I know what a fajita or taquito is. Last week, when I was in San Francisco, and went to this amazing Mexican vegan restaurant, Gracias Madre in the Mission district. The horchata was probably the BEST I've had so far. It had a nice balance of creaminess from the rice milk and spiciness from the cinnamon. Not to mention, it wasn't overly sweet either. Normally, the horchata that I get is just over-powered by sugar, and the drink is super cinnamony. As a result, they are normally served on ice. Not that one from Gracias Madre, it was just simply poured into the glass, and voila, I can't stop drinking. So I thought, how hard can it be? It's supposed to be just a rice drink. There must be some recipes online th...

A slice of delicious and moist banana bread I'm not a morning person. It's hard for me to wake up, even harder for me to get out of my bed and start my morning routine, let alone getting out of the door. So every morning, I'm always rushing. Moreover, I never seem to be able to meet my target departure time (unfortunately...). Breakfast for me, therefore, is usually consumed in my car, while I'm driving to work. Over the years, I tried many store bought options, and rotated through the freezer isles and toast isles. These days, being more health conscious, I try to make my own breakfast. Afterall, it's much cheaper (cost-wise) and I have greater control of what goes in there. Moreover, especially for the sweet morning treats, I can CUT SUGAR! I finally finished all my oatmeal muffin experimental items from my Take 1 , Take 2 , and not-yet-fine-tuned Take 3 experiments. Gosh! That was a lot of oatmeal muffins to go through. (Side note: I store the muffin in ...

Chocolate Pudding, ready to dig in If I ever get the "weakness" question in an interview, my default answer always involves being a perfectionist. On the bright side, that means I have high standards; not so great side, I can be a bit paranoid about fine details. When it comes to cooking, especially when it comes to making dessert, I AM A PERFECTIONIST. So in most cases, I'd try a recipe, have a reasonable success with it (or failure occasionally), and I'll always have something I'd change, and I'd work on it later. This Chocolate Pudding recipe from Tartine....I don't have anything I'd change (except maybe reduce the amount of sugar). It's simple, not very time consuming to prepare, and the result was phenomenal! I served it at the end of my dinner party, and everybody just inhaled it. The pudding is rich, chocolate flavor intense, with a hint of saltiness that highlights the cocoa. I topped the pudding with unsweetened softly whipped cre...

  Fresh out of oven..... A few days ago, I made my first attempt of the oatmeal muffin , and the results were quite fantastic. According to review on epicurious, this recipe is supposed to be very flexible that you can make your own modifications. Since I still have my big bottle of buttermilk sitting in my fridge waiting to be consumed, I decided that I'd join the crowd and try to change things up a bit. Changes i made: Instead of butter, vegetable oil was used brown sugar quantity was cut in half half of the all purpose flour was substituted with rye flour added 1 tsp of vanilla and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon butterscotch chips in place of dried fruit lower oven temperature and slightly longer baking time With all the modifications I made, I was a bit scared of the result. I mean, usually I'd change one thing at a time, so if things didn't turn out well, I knew exactly what went wrong. However, with all the raving reviews on epicurous, I decided to just jump at ...

Oatmill Muffin, fresh out of oven I know...I know...breakfast is probably one of the most important meals of the day. For me, breakfast also pose another really tricky dilemma: do I want to sleep more or do I want to have a better meal? The choice for me has always been to sleep more. I told myself that I can eat while I'm driving (yes...and I'm pretty good at that, this is an essential skill if you live in Southern California, as we spend so much time behind the wheel anyways, might as well make good use of the time). The other thing is, I'm always sleep deprived, so I could really use that extra 15 minutes. Others would suggest eating breakfast after I get to work. Well....that doesn't fly for me, as I cannot eat at work, so everything must be consumed prior to me stepping into my office. Otherwise, you'll see me standing in front of the security trying to finish my breakfast as fast as possible.  So over the years, I've experimented with ...

Grand Marnier Crepe Cake It might not look like much, but this is some serious work! I love crepes. It's simple, delicious, and can go terribly wrong (read: floury and tough). I've been making crepes for years now, so long that I even forgot where/when I first learned it already. Oh well...let's say that I'm very particular about my crepes. I like them very thin, and not tough. And, in case you're wondering, I DO NOT have a crepe pan, and I don't plan on owning one either. To me, if it can be done using a simple non-stick skillet, then why bother spending a fortune on something that is uni-purposed. (Though....I'm guilty of buying many of these uni-purposed gadgets, but I've learned my lessons, and I'm much better at it these days! I promise!) Anyhow, I first came across the concept of crepe cake when I was in New York, upper west side. My friend and I went to this chic bakery, where everything on the menu is named in French. Ironically,...

I admit, I'm a bit unusual. Not that I'm weird or anything, but I have the urge to do complicated things at a very inconvenient hour. e.g. start baking at 9pm on a weekday, when I have to go to work the next day. AND to add on to my "what are you thinking" list, I decided at 23:50 that I'll start a blog and start rambling about my food adventures, using my fairly new computer, that I still don't know how to use more than half of the software that came with it. Oh well...I'll live. Probably going to be sleep deprived, and in desperate needs for caffeine tomorrow morning, but at least I accomplished something today (rounding rule applied here, since it's 00:18 of the next day).