Nomad Kitcheneer

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 ...