The name of this recipe is slightly misleading as the cheesecake itself isn’t flavored raspberry. It’s more of a lemon cheesecake with raspberry topping. I think the lemon zest in the recipe helps lighten the flavor, but you can certainly leave it out if you prefer a plain vanilla cheesecake flavor. Also, a little lemon zest goes a long way, so avoid overdoing it unless you want a lemon cheesecake. In this case, I think the lemon should just complement the fruits, rather than overpower or compete with those flavors.

4th of July Cheesecake

Adapted from Ina Garten’s Raspberry Cheesecake

For the crust (9-inch springform pan)

1 1/2 c graham cracker crumbs (about 10 crushed graham crackers)

1 T sugar

6 T unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Wrap the bottom of the springform pan with foil.

Combine the ingredients until moistened. Pour crumb mixture into the springform pan and form the crust by pressing the crumbs into the bottom of the pan and up the sides of the pan.

Bake for 8 minutes and cool to room temperature before adding cheesecake filling.

For the filling:

1 1/4 pounds cream cheese (2 1/2 8-oz boxes), at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

3 whole large eggs, at room temperature

1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

1/8 cup sour cream

1/2 tablespoon grated lemon zest (1 lemon)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Once the crust is done baking, raise the temperature of the oven to 450 degrees F.

Cream the cream cheese and sugar together with a hand mixer at medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Reduce the speed of the mixer to medium and add the eggs in, one at a time. Reduce the speed of the mixer again to low and add the sour cream, lemon zest, and vanilla extract. Mix thoroughly and pour into cooled crust.

Put the pan on a baking sheet with high sides. Place the baking sheet into the oven and carefully add water into the baking sheet (as much as allows). This will create a steaming effect in the oven and helps to prevent cracks in the cheesecake (supposedly, hasn’t always worked for me).

Bake the cheesecake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature of the oven to 225 degrees F for 45 minutes. At this point, the center was set and the toothpick came out mostly clean. Let the cheesecake cool to room temperature.

Once the cheesecake has cooled, prepare the topping. Heat up a cup of strawberry preserves in a small saucepan over low heat on the stove. Once the preserves are liquified, pour it over the cheesecake and spread with a spatula, as needed. Top with strawberries and blueberries (or whatever else you want or have).

Unfortunately, all we have is a smaller Weber charcoal grill that we can’t even use on our balcony. So when we make ribs, we make them in the oven. But you can still get ribs with great flavor and fall off the bone tenderness.

I got a 4lb rack of pork spare ribs and rubbed them with a dry rub and put it in the fridge overnight. I used this recipe for Apple City Barbecue’s Magic Dust. I made half the recipe since it makes A LOT of rub and I didn’t know if it would be any good.

The next day, I stuck the ribs (meat side down) in an oven set at 250 degrees F for 4 hours. After 4 hours, I took the ribs out and flipped it over. Be careful when you flip them over as the meat will be falling off the bone at this point. Then I basted the ribs with some Famous Dave’s Rich & Sassy sauce (I know it’s better to make your own BBQ sauce…another time!) and stuck it in the oven for another half an hour. After that, I turned the broiler on and watch the sauce on the ribs start to caramelize. Be attentive or it will burn before you know it!

Serve with baked beans and potato salad.

Rarely do I see a recipe on a website/blog and want to make it immediately. First, I have to make sure I have all the ingredients. If not, I have to make a run to the store and get whatever I’m missing. Then, I also have to think about how much time it will take and if I want to postpone it til the weekend. But I saw this post on Dorie Greenspan’s blog for the “simplest loaf cake.” The list of ingredients was short and I happened to have them all on hand. And the bf was at home with nothing to do, so he got the job of actually making it!

Dorie recommends serving a chocolate sauce over it, but with us being on the verge of summer, we decided to top it with whipped cream and berries. We cut up some strawberries, sprinkled some sugar over it, and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours to let the syrup form.  The combination was just like a strawberry shortcake, and probably the easiest one I’ve (we’ve) ever made from scratch. The cake itself was everything you’d want from a pound cake.

What I like best is that it uses canola oil as opposed to butter. I just have an aversion to using a recipe with lots of butter in it. (Except with cookies…2 sticks of butter split up among 2 dozen cookies–doesn’t seem as bad, so long as I limit myself to a cookie a day!) Also, canola oil has health benefits – it’s low in saturated fat and it’s high in healthy unsaturated fats. I’m not sure how using oil as opposed to butter affects the texture and quality of bakery items. But you will definitely not miss the butter in Dorie’s recipe. We also used low fat sour cream to reduce the fat content even further. Check out this recipe from Epicurious for a Lemon Loaf Cake and look at its ingredient list! Too bad they don’t give you the nutritional info, like Dorie/Parade does. You probably wouldn’t want to know!

But I rarely tackle these dishes on my own. Partially because the guidance I get from my mom is so vague I get confused. Also, because I know that it will never turn out as good as how she made it.

So whenever I do cook Chinese food, I make something that mom never, or rarely made. For example, an asparagus stir fry and mapo tofu. I don’t think we ate very much asparagus back then, or I didn’t notice because the only vegetable I ate back then was choi sum loaded with oyster sauce. But asparagus has since become one of my favorite veggies.

Many people consider mapo tofu a comfort food, as do I. I’ve had it in Chinese restaurants over a mound of rice and in Japanese restaurants over a big bowl of saimin. Great either way, and it’s very simple to make. I did a variation of Rasa Malaysia’s Mapo Tofu recipe. But instead of using chili powder and chili oil to add heat, I used sambal oelek. And I also added a constarch slurry at the end to thicken up the sauce. Here’s how my dish turned out:

For the asparagus stir fry, I followed 101 Cookbooks’ recipe with my own variations. I omitted the cashews since I didn’t have any on hand. I used gai lan (Chinese broccoli) instead of the dark greens she suggested and I also substituted the mint with cilantro.

When I visit a Thai restaurant, I usually get a noodle dish (with the exception of pad thai) and one of my favorites is pad kee mao, AKA Thai Drunken/Drunkard noodles. Why are they called drunken noodles instead of spicy noodles? Are the noodles doused with tons of alcohol? No! There are 2 explanations that I’ve heard of. The first is that the dish is so spicy that it makes you feel like you’re drunk. The other is that this is the favorite of drunken folk in food stalls back in Thailand.

Now, you may not be in the mood or have the mental capacity to whip this out after you’ve had a few. But if you’re feeling proactive, you can make this ahead of your trip to the bar and have it waiting for you when you get back home. Or you can just enjoy it with a nice cold beer or a glass/bottle of riesling.

For the sauce:

2 T oyster sauce

2 T fish sauce

2 T palm sugar/brown sugar

1 T mirin

1 T rice vinegar

1 T Golden Mountain sauce or Maggi

1 T Thai chili-garlic paste (or substitute with another Asian chili sauce, like sriracha)

Juice of half a lime

Other ingredients:

7 ounces (about half a package) wide rice noodles (XL)

3 T canola oil

1 T minced garlic

4-5 Thai chili peppers, seeded and chopped (or substitute with another hot pepper, ex: jalapenos)

3 green onions, white ends thinly sliced, green tops cut into 2-inch pieces

1 package of tofu, cubed

Handful of fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped

Handful of fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped

Lime wedges, for serving.

Optional additions:

Broccoli florets

Bell peppers

Napa cabbage

Tomato wedges

1. In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients for the sauce. Mix until the sugar has dissolved and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, pour boiling water over the noodles and soak for 15-20 minutes, or until softened. Then drain.
3. Add oil to a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add garlic, chili peppers and sliced green onion ends, and saute for about a minute.
4. Add vegetables (from optional additions list, except tomatoes) and stir-fry for 3-4 minutes. Keep texture in vegetables.
5. Add noodles and sauce to wok. Toss until noodles are coated with the sauce and heated through, 2-3 minutes.
6. Add basil, cilantro, and green onion tops (and tomatoes) and toss until well mixed.
7. Serve hot, with lime wedges.

Note:

The amounts for the sambal and the chili peppers are variable, of course, depending on your heat preference. I had to add more sambal at the end. But you do not want to have it so spicy where you can’t enjoy the other flavors of the dish.

You can add any vegetables you like, or have, to this dish. I prefer ones that can keep a crisp texture during the cooking process, such as broccoli and bell peppers, to contrast the soft noodles. The sweetness of tomatoes balances the heat in a bite.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a Thai restaurant and had pad kee mao there. So I can’t compare the results. Without the extra heat and the lime at the end, this dish might actually be too sweet. If you want to avoid this, without having to add more heat and lime, reduce the brown sugar in the sauce mixture to 1 T.

You can see the specks of chili dotted all throughout the dish.

I will definitely make this again, after I try it again at a restaurant. It is a great wake up call for your drunken haze!

There will also be a review of Jasmine Deli in The Hot Dish, a food blog on the City Pages website, sometime this week that will also discuss their banh mi.

Thanks to the large Hmong population in the Twin Cities, there is an abundance of Vietnamese restaurants in both St. Paul and Minneapolis. Everyone has their favorite, but my favorite is Saigon Restaurant in St. Paul. Saigon has a good variety of banh mi sandwiches. My favorite has a combination of xiu mai (meatballs) and grilled pork. It recently relocated kitty corner to its previous location. I have not been to the new location yet, but hopefully it is cleaner and the food is still as great!

Although Saigon is located only a mile from my workplace, I feel some guilt about spending $3-$4 for a delicious banh mi instead of bringing something from home. So my solution to filling my banh mi craving was to make my own!

The idea is courtesy of Viet World Kitchen and the recipe, Sunday Nite Dinner. Viet World Kitchen is my go-to source for anything Vietnamese. In a post about banh mi incarnations, Andrea Nguyen of VKW recommends using the Vietnamese Pulled Pork recipe from SND as the filling for banh mi. She also provides the recipe for pickled daikon and carrots that is a must in all banh mi.

We tweaked the pulled pork recipe since we were using a smaller roast and we wanted to put it in the slow cooker, rather than roast it. Leaving the oven on for 4-5 hours seems like a major waste of electricity, compared to plugging in  a crock pot for 6-8 hours, set on low. Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t need the extra heat in my apartment, that’s for sure.

We made the basting liquid and placed it in the crock pot with the pork roast. Also, we used Kewpie (Japanese mayo) instead of the jar of Hellmann’s mayo we had in our fridge. The Kewpie is creamier and a little bit tangier than its American counterpart. Plus, the only other thing we use Kewpie for is making spicy tuna sushi, so we needed to use it up.

The lemongrass caramel sauce that is supposed to go with the Vietnamese pulled pork was a little off putting at first. The caramel had a very burnt taste to it and the fish sauce was very prominent, more than I’d like. It seemed to mellow out later and went well with the pork. Upon covering it up to go to the fridge, I strained out all the lemongrass, shallots, and peppers from the sauce. Even though the lemongrass was minced, there were a few pieces that were hard to swallow, and I figured at that point all the flavors have been extracted.

We put the filling into some bollillo rolls. We threw the rolls into an oven heated to 350 degrees for a few minutes to get a nice crust. In the end, it was a decent attempt at banh mi. It did take a lot more effort than driving to Saigon, but I’ve got leftovers for the rest of the week. I think next time, I will try making a simpler meat filling – one that I can whip out in less than an hour.

On the CPK website the pizza is described as having “grilled Tandoori chicken, mango, mild onions, red peppers and Mozzarella cheese on a SPICY golden curry sauce. Topped with fresh cilantro and a sweet mango-chili sauce.” My recipe is based on that description.

Suggested Ingredients:

Pizza Dough (homemade or store bought)

1 T Patak’s Tandoori Paste

1 T plain yogurt

1 Large chicken breast

1 rectangle tablet of S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix – Hot

1/2 c water

1/2 small red bell pepper, diced

1/4 small onion, sliced thinly

Mozzarella cheese

Handful of cilantro, chopped

1 fresh mango, largely diced

1/4 c nuoc cham (sweet chili sauce used to dip vietnamese spring rolls in), thinned out with a little water

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Mix the tandoori paste and yogurt together and marinade the chicken with the mixture for 15-20 minutes. After 15-20 minutes, grill the chicken until cooked through. (We used the Foreman.) Cut the chicken into cubes once it has cooled down.
3. In a small sauce pan on medium heat, add the water and tablet of golden curry sauce. At first, the sauce may seem to be too thin, but the mixture will thicken up quickly once theconcentrated curry is completely melted and the liquid starts boiling. Add more water if it becomes too thick, but be careful not to add too much water. This will make the base of the pizza.
4. Mix the diced mango and the diluted nuoc cham together. The nuoc cham should be thin enough to coat the mango lightly.
5. Add the golden curry sauce to the rolled out pizza dough. Then add the mozzarella cheese, as much as you like. Top with the cubed grilled chicken and diced red bell pepper.
6. Place the pizza in the oven for approximately 12-15 minutes, or until the crust is lightly golden and the cheese is starting to bubble. Take the pizza out and add the onions and mango.
7. Put the pizza back in the oven for another 3-5 minutes, until crust and cheese is golden.
8. Top the pizza with cilantro and drizzle the remaining nuoc cham over the pizza.

Note:

Although this is the recipe I would recommend trying, it is not the one we actually followed. Instead of using tandoori paste, we used tikka paste. The last time we made tandoori chicken pizza (using a different recipe), my sister accidentally grabbed the jar of Patak’s Tikka Paste. The chicken turned out fine last time and since I didn’t want to spend another $4 for the tandoori paste, we stuck with the tikka paste.

Also, instead of using the combination a fresh mango and nuoc cham to top the pizza, we used Patak’s Hot Mango Chutney. This was also used for my previous Tandoori Chicken Pizza attempt.

We made the pizza dough following the recipe provided in the CPK cookbook. This recipe can easily be found with a Google search, though I recommend using one that you like.

Results:

Aside from the crust, it comes very close to the original. We used the Medium Hot S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix, but you should definitely try using the Hot sauce mix. There was not enough heat and I remember feeling a little burn from eating CPK’s version.

I need to find a new pizza crust recipe. I have not been happy with the way the CPK recipe has turned out both times I’ve tried it.

Overall, it was a success and quieted my cravings!! Next time, I will try the recipe as I’ve written and with a new pizza dough recipe. And I’ll have the hot mango chutney on hand to dip my crust in.