“Ooh, let’s do a wave!”

“OK, serious Asian family portrait time.”

“Well, that was a bust. Let’s try again!”
Drew: “Everyone don’t smile.”
Andre: “Drew, shut up!”
…and, whoops.
(Andre bows out of the frame in shame.
Drew: “Why’d you say that?!?”
Stephanie: “Oh my gosh!”)

]]> http://www.xincindywang.com/2013/05/16/violarama/feed/ 0 http://www.xincindywang.com/2013/04/28/spicy-cheese-poppers/ http://www.xincindywang.com/2013/04/28/spicy-cheese-poppers/#comments Sun, 28 Apr 2013 17:56:03 +0000 cintwan http://www.xincindywang.com/?p=1096 When I was growing up, cheese was something that I regarded as distinctly American, completely foreign to my very Chinese family. As such, it had this magical, mystical, other-worldly aura about it, fueled by descriptions that made it seem like the Most Amazing Food Ever. Heidi’s soft-as-butter toasted cheese on that goat farm up in the Swiss Alps? (Whoa – apparently I’m not alone!) Or that long, stringy, gloppy mess in those pizza commercials? Yeah. Delicious.

Curious, I begged my parents to buy some cheese, which came in the form of Kraft Singles. I excitedly tore away the plastic wrapping, cutting out shapes – circles! squares! triangles! – with toothpicks before placing them onto my tongue. I was prepared for a revelatory, life-changing experience. Cheese! It was going to be so amazing.

But no. It was cold, rubbery, and tangy, a far cry from the warm gloppy creaminess I had imagined. I think I grimaced before spitting it out. To this day, I firmly believe the only place for Kraft Singles is in a grilled cheese sandwich, drenched in a bowlful of tomato soup.

Fast-forward to 8th grade. We read Robert Cormier’s I Am The Cheese in my Advanced Language Arts class, and my best friend and I somehow convinced Mrs. St. Gean that we should celebrate finishing the book with a cheese party. (The book, for the record, has almost nothing to do with cheese.) We went to the grocery store and picked out as many types of cheese as our $40 budget would allow.

It was at that party that I discovered Brie. And Camembert. And Colby. And Port Salut. And so many other new friends!

Nowadays, I always have cheese in my fridge – currently: an almost-gone chunk of Manchego and a half-gone wedge of soft goat cheese. And until 24 hours ago, I also had a block of extra sharp cheddar, which has since morphed into this delightful concoction.

The original recipe called these cheese crackers. These are not cheese crackers. That name is reserved for the flat, crispy stuff more commonly known as Cheez-Its. These are more like miniature gougeres – light, puffy, and full of punch. I’m calling them poppers.

Pineapples! I always knew my pineapple cake slash fondant cutter would come in handy.

Spicy Cheese Poppers
adapted from Joy the Baker

Gosh, I’m the world’s most inexact chef. I used Joy’s recipe as a base, but then I tossed in random amounts of spices. For someone who obsesses by day about making sure her pipettes are turned to the exact tenth of a microliter, I’m pretty darn sloppy when it comes cooking. Besides, taste is all a matter of personal preference, right? So just add however much spices as you see fit – you can always taste the dough before you roll it out.

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, finely grated
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cold water

Spice blend:
(Garlic) Salt
Black pepper, coarsely ground
Paprika
Cayenne pepper

1. Make your spice blend. See my note above. You’ll probably want no more than 3 tablespoons of spices total, and the salt should probably be ~1/4 of your total amount of spices. Be creative! I think I stuck some rosemary and thyme in there as well.
2. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together butter, cheese, and your spice mix. It’ll all come together into a soft ball.
3. With the mixer on low, slowly add 1 cup of flour.  The mixture will become dry and crumbly.
4. I kept the mixer running for about a minute longer, and my dough actually balled up pretty neatly – my cheese was pretty greasy. But if it doesn’t ball up, add some water, one tablespoon at a time, until you get a ball. The dough should be moist, but not wet.
5. Taste your dough. Is it salty enough? Spicy enough? Go ahead and add whatever other spices you see fit.
6. Wrap your dough-ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better).  The dough can also be frozen for future use.
7. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
8. On a lightly floured work surface, roll dough very thin, about an eighth of an inch thick. Cut into whatever shape you desire, and place crackers on baking sheets.  The pieces can be close together as they won’t expand much when baking.
9. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes until fragrant, golden brown, and crisp. (I like my cheese slightly burnt, so I went for 17 minutes).
10. Store poppers in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

1. Ugh, I don’t understand any of this. Science is so hard! Ugh.
2. I can’t even focus long enough to figure any of this out.
3. You know what, I don’t even care. My experiments keep failing for no good reason, and I barely care enough to try to figure out why.
4. Wait, I don’t actually like doing this! So why am I here? Why am I in grad school? Why am I trying to be a scientist?
5. I’ve always wanted to do more with food. Or design. Or music. Or brand management. Or [insert cool-sounding job here]. Why am I not pursuing that?
6. *goes to craigslist/coroflot/etc. and looks at job postings*

…and so on. (Confession: I have multiple incomplete cover letters sitting in my gmail drafts.) I have a perpetual case of grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side-icitis. It’s dangerous, because dwelling on those what-ifs and why-didn’t-Is sometimes blinds me to how much I actually do enjoy grad school, and how incredibly lucky I am to be doing what I’m doing. Yes, science is hard. Yes, the gratification is intensely slow. And yes, experiments fail for no good reason (all. the. freaking. time!). But you know what, someone is paying me to learn how to be at the forefront of knowledge, and I have the flexibility and privilege to design and actually carry through experiments to figure out my ideas. That’s a pretty incredible deal.

But I needed a break, so I made brownies instead.

These are from a recipe that claims that they will be the best brownies of your life. Are they? I’d say they’re pretty close. They’re definitely the richest, most fudge-y brownies I’ve ever had – the chocolate literally just melts in your mouth and lingers on your tongue in the most satisfying way.

(But my favorite brownies will always be Wallmuth Brownies, the signature brownies of my high school Science Olympiad coach Ms. Wallmuth, who would bring two batches to every competition. We would all be intensely sleep-deprived, having crammed (and gossiped) late into the night, and those decadent Wallmuth brownies would taste so good – breakfast of champions!)

P.S. These brownies went with me to the marathons of rehearsals that I had today, all in preparation for the bajillion Cal Day performances I’ll be in next Saturday. Music: yet another thing that keeps me sane. Huzzah.

The Best Brownies of Your Life (Or, Midnight Panic Brownies)
adapted from Amateur Gourmet

This recipe was originally made for an 8×8 square pan – I doubled it for a 9×13 pan. Also, it calls for using a double boiler to melt the butter, but honestly, you could just melt the butter in a microwave and stir it into the sugar and cocoa powder. I love the sea salt sprinkled on top, and I would also love to incorporate peanut butter into this somehow. Maybe as a swirl?

10 tablespoons (1+1/4 sticks) unsalted butter
1+1/4 cups sugar
3/4+2tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs (cold)
1/2 cup flour
sea salt

Last weekend’s concert ended with Shostakovich’s 8th Symphony, which he wrote at the height of WWII. Dear Shostakovich, every time I listen to that symphony (or anything else you wrote, for that matter), I just want to give you a big hug. You make my insides feel like jelly, with your dark and twisty melodies meandering through the musical landscape, searching for a resolution that, although confidently executed, never feels quite right. I can’t even imagine what your insides must have felt like.

I want to tell you that it’ll all be okay, but then, at the end of that symphony, you’re the one who tells me that it’ll all be okay. Go to 59:15 – listen to how that shimmers. Like you said, “[the 8th symphony] can be summed up in these words: life is beautiful. All that is dark and evil rots away, and beauty triumphs.”

If you were a cake, you’d be something bitter and complex, with dark overtones that unveil a faintly sweet aftertaste. Maybe something like a moist mocha cake, a sugarless batter, heavy on the espresso, 80% dark cocoa, laced with a thin dusting of powdered sugar. You would not be this gooey butter cake, which is full of warm and chewy sweetness. This cake is more like Rogers and Hammerstein meets Enrico Morricone, the whimsy of the former combined with the artery-clogging lusciousness of the latter.

But maybe the very reason we needed this cake was to expel your dark aftertastes, an antidote to your melancholy. We gorged ourselves on this cake, relishing every bite, going back for seconds, some even thirds. Only a few slices remained at the end of the night, and by the time I got up the next morning, it was all gone.

Oh man, it was really that good. That gooey layer – there really is no other way to describe it, it’s just gooey - has a chewy caramelized crust, which makes it absolutely perfect. I mean, it’s from Paula Deen – each bite probably shortened our lives by a few hours (days? years? oof.), but y’know what, I would gladly do it again.

(The photos in this post were all taken and processed by my incredibly talented roommate Sam, who also happens to make the world’s best sweet breads. Check out her blog!)

Gooey Butter Cake
adapted from Paula Deen

I was going to be all hardcore and make the Smitten Kitchen version, which has a yeasted cake layer, but let’s be real – why would I put myself through a complicated two-hour fermentation when using a box of cake mix would turn out just as well? It felt a little like cheating, but you know what, it was still mighty tasty, and I won back two hours of my life. I can live with that.

The original recipe calls for an incredible amount of powdered sugar in the gooey layer – an entire 16 oz. package! I used about 7 oz – less than half the amount called for – and the cake was still too sweet for me (though admittedly, I have a much lower tolerance for sugar than most people I know).

The independence is refreshing. I feel like a little kid left alone at home for a week – I can lounge on the couch reading about fonts until the wee hours of the morning! I can blast Copland and clang around in the kitchen at 9am on a Saturday morning! (I know I know, my life is not very exciting. But I’m only on day two – there is plenty of time yet to indulge in those stereotypical luxuries of leaving large messes and throwing rowdy parties.)

You know what else I did? I made not one, but two loaves of coconut bread. Yes. I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to celebrate my new roommate-less-ness with a baking splurge. Why is this infinitely wise? Because these two delicious, golden brown loaves teeming with toasted coconut and browned butter are mine. All mine. I don’t have to share it with anyone.

…and this is where I go sit in a corner and cry.

We have a white board in the kitchen with a PLEASE EAT: section. Whenever we bake anything, we write it on the board and leave the goodies on the kitchen counter, and their disappearance – presumably into Other People’s Stomachs – is the highest form of flattery the chef could receive. I left my coconut bread on the kitchen counter, but every time I walk out there, it’s exactly the same as I had left it, untouched and lonely, a constant reminder of my own condition.

Phoooooooooey. Well, I guess if the eaters won’t come to the food, then the food must go to the eaters! Who wants some coconut bread? At least my labmates and classmates are still around.

Coconut Bread
adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who got it from someone else who got it from someone else…

This is not a yeasted sourdough loaf with hints of tropical island goodness – it’s a full-on cake bread, the same way pumpkin bread is really just pumpkin cake but in loaf form (why is it always pumpkin bread, anyways, and not pumpkin cake?). As I prepared to make this, I opened my fridge to find a package of plump strawberries that I’d neglected, and decided to add them into the bread. However, since I didn’t really know how that would turn out, I decided to 3/2 the recipe and make two loaves – one with strawberries, and the other without. The strawberry version has all the right flavors, but strawberries don’t really bake well – they make the bread mushy, and now I understand why every other recipe I found either uses strawberry puree or just dots the cake with strawberries after baking. Ah well, it was a great idea while it lasted.

The recipe below is for one strawberry-less loaf. Next time, I’d probably skip the cinnamon and add in some ginger powder instead – I think the cinnamon masked the coconut flavor. I’d probably also use all brown sugar (I love the dark nuttiness), and use coconut milk instead of regular milk to maximize the coconut flavor. But even as is, this turned out beautifully.

2 large eggs
1+1/4 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2+1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1+1/2 cups sweetened flaked/shredded coconut
6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and browned

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk 2 eggs, 1+1/4 cups milk, and 1 tsp vanilla extract in a bowl.
3. Sift 2+1/2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp cinnamon into a large bowl.
4. Add 1/2 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar to the dry ingredients, and stir to mix.
5. Move the dry ingredients to the sides of the large bowl, forming a hole in the center. Pour the egg/milk/vanilla mixture into that hole, and stir it all together.
6. Brown your butter! (You don’t have to do this, but it’s infinitely more delicious if you do.) Melt the butter over a stovetop on low-medium heat, and let it bubble on the heat, stirring/swirling occasionally, until it smells nutty and has a crusty brownness along the bottom of the pan.
7. Add the butter to the mix, and stir just until smooth – be careful not to overmix.
8. Pour the batter into a greased 9×5 loaf pan, and bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out smooth (~1 hour).

(OK, so “helped out” is a little generous – several of my friends organized the entire conference, and they lured me into donating my photography “skills” in exchange for free food and free t-shirts. I think – no, I know – I definitely got the better end of the deal!)

Science education is one thing that is seriously lacking in schools these days – if I hadn’t gone to IMSA and taken Ms. Wallmuth’s Scientific Inquiries class, I probably would never have really understood science as a process of discovery rather than a bunch of fun facts about the universe. I’m glad these girls got the chance to spend a day exploring – and mad kudos to the scores of UC Berkeley students who put it all together!

Quite possibly the most entertaining (and edifying!) math doodles I’ve ever seen. Vi Hart calls herself a mathemusician, and she’s also got a lot of videos where she explains math via music. Check them out here.

So I’m cramming. And I stocked up on loads of frozen Chinese food.

Then the scheduling fairy threw me a curveball: 23 emails and 2 doodle polls later, I learn that my too-cool-for-school committee members don’t have a mutually free block of time until late May (for comparison, most people take their exams in mid-April). The bad news? While my friends are all reveling in their post-quals glories, I’ll probably be sitting in a sad, windowless room reading piles and piles of papers.

The good news? I probably won’t have to start studying in earnest for another month! Time to bake a cake!

Oh, and did I mention it was my roommate Sam’s birthday today? Just a minor, small, inconsequential detail. It’s not like I enjoy living with her or anything. We just hang out all the time and share long gossip-filled evenings on our super-comfortable couch, but really, she’s nothing special. NBD. Really.

(As I was frosting the cake, Sam asked what it was for. “Oohhhh, it’s a secret!” “What kind of a secret?” “A dark and twisted secret!” “A scandalous secret?” “Yes! A verrrry scandalous secret!” And thus the name of the cake was born.)

Anyways, this is perhaps the most fool-proof carrot cake recipe on the planet. I’ve made it at least three times, and it’s always soft, fluffy, and delicious. Grating the carrots takes a bit of elbow grease, but the recipe itself is super-simple and is basically impossible to screw up.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
adapted from All Recipes
makes 2-3 round 9-inch cakes, or one 9×13, or a whole lot of cupcakes

4 eggs (or 3 large eggs)
1.25 cups vegetable oil
1.5 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (or just use cinnamon, or your favorite combination of cinnamon/cloves/nutmeg/ginger)
3 cups grated carrots (I used 8 small carrots, it’s probably about 3-4 normal-sized carrots)
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Grease and flour your pan of choice (I like cutting parchment rounds for the bottoms of my 9-inch cake pans).
2. In a large bowl, beat together 3-4 eggs, 1.25 cups oil, 1.5 cups white sugar and 2 tsp vanilla.
3. Sift together 2 cups flour, 2 tsp baking soda, 2 tsp baking powder, .5 tsp salt and 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice. Mix it with the wet ingredients.
4. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans (optional). Pour into prepared pan(s).
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 (muffins), 35 (rounds), or 45 (9×13) minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
6. Cream Cheese Frosting: In a medium bowl, mix a stick (1/2 cup) of butter, 1 pkg (8 oz) of cream cheese until soft. Mix in 2 tsp of vanilla extract. Slowly add in up to 4 cups of powdered sugar, and frost the cake. To make the cool swirly marbled pattern on the top, take your spatula and make thin lines back and forth across the entire cake top. Turn the cake 90 degrees and make lines again, spaced much farther apart, and voila!

gnossienne

Go: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

But I digress.

The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn’t paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early ’40s through the early ’70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.

Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the ’60s through the ’80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early ’90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead | Mother Jones.