Whenever I imagined “cong you bing”, I pictured it spelled “tsong yo bing”. I guess that’s why I’m a waiguoren.

(Below is the direct transcription from a conversation with Mom on how to properly make a scallion pancake; includes interpreted and exact quotes.)

Get bing.
Roll flatter.
Spread vegetable oil thinly on just the surface of bing.
Sprinkle additional finely chopped scallions and a small, 2-finger pinch of salt.
Then roll it up, and coil around itself, with “open edge facing inside.”
Squash flat. And then you reflatten. If it’s sticking, add oil (not flour), and probably roll between wax paper or parchment paper (“know that bits of scallion will ooze out. That’s okay. But try to do it gently so it’s not just a total mess of scallion oozing”).
Get a teflon pan.
Bring pan to medium-low heat with a little bit of oil in the pan, and “you know, put your little cong you bing in there.”
Brown on one side and flip.
They will not be evenly browned: “it’s just the nature of the beast.”
Cut into 8.

Recipes are really draining to write in their entirety on here. It fosters my inner procrastinator.

But it’s kind of pretty so I want to show it and if I show it I have to share the recipe. Not to mention that if I don’t write it soon I might also forget what I put into it.

Fine.

Plum Tart

MATERIALS:

Dough

pie crust or pate sucree (I just used the leftover pie crust from the blueberry pie my mom made because blanching almonds and making a frangipane for the first time is stressful enough. So this recipe is really just for pie crust….yay for Marie Calendar)

Frangipane – (adapted from Dessert First)

6 Tbs butter (room temperature)

2/3 cups sugar

¾ cup ground blanched almonds (which means maybe like ½ cup regular almonds that you blanch. Because idiots like me would measure out over a cup and be like “oh, the particulate almond meal is totally gonna be more compact because they’re smaller bits and will occupy less airspace so you better overshoot the ground amount when measuring the whole almond amount”. And then I had a whole tupperware filled with extra almond meal because duh, non-compacted meal will be MORE aerated and that’s the end of that story.

2 tsp flour

t tsp cornstarch

1 large egg & 1 egg white

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp almond extract  (although honestly, it was a little too almond-extract-y tasting. I think I would have preferred more vanilla. So if you’re into the almond extract flavor, go for this ratio. Otherwise, maybe do an even split, 1.5 each vanilla and almond? Or instead, what I sorta wish I’d done, was put some actual fruit juice in instead. So maybe, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp almond, and 1 tsp plum juice (or whatever fruit, really).

Plums

2-7 mandolinned plums (it depends on your tart size. Mine was about a 4 inch tart and used almost 2 plums. But then again I have SO much extra frangipane. I’d recommend having a bunch extra do that you can just make the larger tart)

PROCEDURE:

1. Blanch your almonds by putting them in a pot of boiling water until they look wrinkly and pruny (maybe, 5 minutes? I was being angsty and stirring the whole time, so I wasn’t really clocking it in).

2. Pour them into a colander, run them under cold water, and pop them out of the shells (it’s like edamame. Weirdly satisfying, easy to accidentally lose ‘em into the sink).

3. Pat dry, then put them in your food processor. Grind until it’s all fine and mealy. The finer, the better, honestly.

4. Remove from processor and put into a bowl.

5. Food process butter and sugar until smooth.

6. Scrape down sides, add the almonds back in and process until blended.

7. Add flour and cornstarch.

8. Then egg and egg white until totally blended and smooth (don’t over-process the eggs if possible though. We don’t need meringues here, please and thanks)

9. Add in extracts (and fruit juice, perhaps?) just to combine. It’ll be kinda liquidy, but that’s fine.

10. Preheat the oven to 375˚F.

11. Roll your crust out into a few millimeters thick, and then arrange your crust in the pie dish. Poke some holes into it with a fork (as with pie-crusts).

12. Pour frangipane in until the shell is about ½ full.

13. Roll plums! Twigg does an awesome job at showing in pictures (after all, it was the inspiration for this tart), so start with rolling as many as you can, and once it’s so big you can’t really hold it, just put it into the tart and nestle/center it in the frangipane. Place more plum slices around the edges of your flower so that the whole tart will be covered in plum.

14. Loosen the center of the flower a bit so that it won’t just be a tight bundle of plum; you want the petals to fall and wilt back into the tart. I ended up pouring a little extra frangipane in the center too, just to cover the base of the petals so that they’d connect to the rest of the tart. Don’t let the frangipane drown your plum petals!! Make sure the plums don’t sink. It’s sort of finicky. This part took longer for me than expect. If you want, lightly sprinkle some sugar atop the plum petals.

(this is PRE-adding the little bit of frangipane to the center… use your best judgement)

15. Then bake for….20 minutes for a smaller tart, 30 (about how long mine took), to 40-45 for a full size, probably.

16. Let cool. Consume.

“Leftovers are a magical creation that are underrated and neglected by a significant portion of our population”

– Survey; Jess Vander’s Brain, July 2013

But really though. Do you think Wilcox invented the Oyster Pail in 1894 (and the sorry graphic designer who’s reaped no credit for stylizing it for Chinese Food nearly a century later) for naught?

Do you think that it’s just a coincidence that Googling “empty chinese takeout container” does not produce a SINGLE visibly chinesefoodless container with the classic vermillion pagoda?

YOU CANNOT. THERE IS ONLY THIS:

[Jampacked with MSG drenched, artery clogging, soul-warming Americanized slop that makes your heart melt and come back again tomorrow]

AND SURPRISINGLY, THIS:

(The same bakeshop voted the Best Cupcake in Philly? How have I never heard of them ever? Plus, I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole savory-food-reminiscent-cake thing. Like these…

….who in their right mind would want to eat those? Oh. Of course. It’s Disney.)

DOUBLE TANGENT: Did you even know that Disney had a whole site of beloved recipes from their gazillion restaurants and eateries and play places-that-serve-food? That site is pretty magical.

But the containers are not my focus here.

I accrue great consternation from people leaving half of their plate full and guiltlessly letting their waitstaff throw it away simply because they

“don’t do leftovers”

Okay. Who in the F doesn’t do leftovers? If I paid for my dinner, I didn’t just pay for the amount of food I could eat in that sitting, I PAID FOR ALL OF THE FOOD ON THAT PLATE. (or maybe someone else did. IT WAS PAID FOR). And I refuse to let them throw away those dollars.

I righteously will enjoy my subpar, second-day meal like a TRUE WOMAN.

However, my aversion to throwing away leftovers is extreme.

I. Hate. Waste.

And it shows on weekly basis where Sundays (at my summer job at the Art of Bread, where we close without managers and knowledge of how to donate to our usual churches and foodbanks and recipients of surplus) I feel obligated to take all of the extra bread when my coworkers refuse.

“I can’t have them throwing it away! I know people who could take some, would want some, even! I could make stuff with it! I’ll just make 60 bread puddings and a croissant trifle, layered with more croissant and maybe some cookies”

To the point where now I take so many sweets home out of guilt that I don’t partake as much in my hobby (that usually takes the reigns in summer’s free time) of baking.

But yesterday, I was determined not to throw away the small sourdough I compulsively took home yesterday.

And thus became the Cheesy Jalapeño Pullapart Bread.

MATERIALS:

1 small sourdough loaf

1&½ cup drained mozzarella balls drained and cut into small bits (shredded mozzarella would also work…. also add more cheese)

½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

3 sliced jalepeños

1 to 2 Tbs garlic oil (put smashed/sliced garlic into a bowl with oil. Let infuse and make-awesome)

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F (have I mentioned convection bake is the only way I bake? None of that regular ‘bake’ button 'ish. Hit convection, and if you’re feeling progressive, maybe even 'broil’ later into the baking and once the loaf has been in the oven)

2. Slice the bread so it looks like the photo (diagonally in one direction, then diagonally in the other) almost all of the way but not through the bottom crust of the bread.

2. Prepare your cheeses and slice your jalepeños to about 3-5mm diameter.

3. Stuff the bread evenly with cheeses and jalepenõ.

4. Spoon the whole loaf with the garlic oil, especially on the outer crust so that it doesn’t over-crustify and tastes epically nomtastic.

5. Put that suckah on a parchment covered baking sheet and on the middle rack of the oven.

6. And then bake until the cheese has visibly melted and the crust has reached only a somewhat toastier shade of brown (see first photo).

7. Consume.

Although maybe not the way that a friend and I did. By literally just eating the entire thing at once.

We also kind wished there was even MORE cheese, hence why I included more in the recipe (I only probably used ½ cup of mozzarella and 1/3 cup cheddar).

So, go to town. But beware of leftovers. They might be more delicious than you expect.

Despite my exhaustion, I’m determined to make pizza tonight.

With two of my favorite foods, pineapple and jalapeños. Which also happen to be some of my favorite pizza toppings. Oh, and sausage. And cheese. And arugula.

If only it were fig season. Swoon.

Instead I’m left to my own devices. Including a dough hook, a thermometer, and pure determination.

Except really only the first two.

Wow I’m so tired.

Homemade Pizza (for two)

MATERIALS:

Dough

½ package of yeast (Active Dry. Not Fast-acting. It ain’t gangsta, it just frontin’)

½ cup water

Awks. The moment that you realize that you put in too much sugar into the first batch. There goes halving the recipe.

Homemade Pizza (not actually for two because I suck at dividing by 2)

MATERIALS:

Dough

1 cup water (if you have a thermometer, it should be about 95-100˚F. If you don’t…. you should be lukewarmish; you don’t want to kill your yeast. And if you DO kill your yeast, then dear god do not proceed with your recipe. Stop, and do it again. The worst case scenario is when you keep going with those cinnamon buns because you’re so stubborn and then they come out like rocks and you’re embarrassed when people smile pityingly and are like ‘at least the flavors are right…ish’. Not like that’s ever happened of course.)

1 tsp sugar

1 package of yeast (roooooooom temperature plznthx)

2 tbs olive oil (and extra to coat your proofing bowl)

1 tbs salt

2&½ to 3 cups all-purpose flour (that you spooned into the measuring cups; recently I did some reading about proper measuring methods and it turns out the way to accurately gauge flour volume without packing too tightly is to spoon the flour from the bag into the measuring cup and then of course level off with the straight edge of a knife. And not tapping it on the counter beforehand (or some such tomfoolery).

Sauce (a la Mommy)

…..actually, anything 'a la Mommy’ really has no recipe or measurement attached to it. But let’s just pretend that I made the super basic, epically delicious sauce with just

tomatoes

oil

salt

pepper

with maybe some garlic, basil and oregano.

anyways.

warning: this will take at least two hours. do not proceed unless you have steel willpower to not eat all of the pizza toppings because the pizza is taking too darned long and who has time to make homemade dough anyways.

1. Measure your water into a liquid measure and if it’s too hot (if you just heated it with a kettle or something) then check the temp and add an icecube to cool it until it’s about 105˚F.

2. Add in the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Sidenote: sugar makes yeast happy. It eats. It farts and burps in gluttony. You can practically hear the little guys being like “ahhhhh that was sooooo satisfyi-*BELCHHHHH*”

3. NOW your water should be ready. Pour in your packet of yeast and stir gently until it dissolves into a tan, creamy liquid. Let the yeasties sit for 5-10 minutes until the brainless gourmands seem to have let all of their gas out.

4. Pour in the olive oil and salt, and stir around in the mixer (probably should start with the paddle attachment on LOW-SLOW speed. You can switch to the dough hook on low-slow speed next).

5. Start gradually adding in the flour to the mixer bowl. Switch from the paddle to the dough hook after adding about ½ to 1 cup of the flour.

6. When it’s all beautiful and ball-like (more accurately, when it’s not crumbly when you pinch the dough but also not too sticky) and you can pick it up in your hands, it’s probably time. Plus, you wouldn’t want to overmix or add too much flour. Just knead a couple or a few times just to make sure everything’s been mixed properly and the texture feels right. [Practice makes perfect]

7. Lightly oil your proofing bowl, and after balling up your dough, LIGHTLY coat the ball in the oil. Cover bowl with a moist paper towel or regular cloth and let sit in a warmish area. Like your stove-top on a burner that isn’t on but near enough to burners that are that it’s warmish feeling. Let sit for an hour.

I made mine more like a semi-flattened ball-ish thing…. the shape doesn’t matter too much

8. After the dough has doubled in size (hopefully this will have happened in that hour you waited so patiently), preheat your oven to 500˚F with your hypothetical pizza stone inside on the middle rack, split your 1 ball of dough into 3 smaller balls of dough, and knead once or twice before letting sit for another 10 minutes to relax (who knows why recipes always say this. As if the dough has had a long day at work and needs to chill out because it’s too high stressed. You know who’s too high stressed? ME. FROM WAITING FOR THIS FREAKING HIGH STRESSED DOUGH TO UN-STRESS ITSELF. JUST CALM THE F DOWN ALREADY).

9. After you’ve calmed yourself down a bit as well by snacking on intermediate mozzarella balls, your dough will probably have done the same (except for the mozzarella balls part). Take a ball of dough and, on an extremely well-floured wooden cutting board (okay, seriously, don’t put too much flour so that your dough is sitting on a flour beach. But definitely enough so that your dough will not stick to the surface), shape your dough into 1/8 inch thick circle or lung or whatever-shape-you-want. Don’t make your crust too wide nor too thick! You’ll regret it later, wishing you’d just extended the best part (aka any part with toppings on it).

10. TOP. You can put whatever you want. You can also get overzealous and make two different kinds of pizza on your one pizza and put on sauce and mushrooms and basil and tomato and mozzarella and pineapple and jalapeño and hot sausage and roasted garlic and arugula and garlic-infused olive oil.

But of course I can control myself.

Whoops.

Definitely cannot control myself.

Also:

Mom’s looked so much prettier than mine….

Whatever, Mom.

But after a flailed attempt and getting my pizza to not fold in on itself, bringing me to Step…

…11. Using two sets of (preferably human) hands, have one person hold the cutting board nearish to the pizza stone, while the other (equipped with one or two pancake spatulas) gets the spatulas under the pizza and slides it onto the stone.

It’s probably the hardest part (aside from the patience) of this whole endeavor. But once it’s in there it’s just

12. Some random amount of minutes later (depending on your pizza….maybe 10-15? I should have been counting), your crust will brown and your pizza will look like pizza. And that is when your mental timer should be ringing and you extract your pizza with extreme finesse (use a metal pancake spatula here because it’ll just be so much easier to shift your stubborn pie off of the stone) onto a plate or cutting board or whathaveyou.

And VOILA.

Success! Albeit a messy one. And a poorly photographed one.

But super mc-nom. So donmattah.

It’s not like a have a super-secret tactic about researching recipes. It’s just, I’ve been baking long enough to know what things need to be exact, what things can’t, what can/should be substituted, and whether or not people are lying when they say 

I have the best recipe ever!!!

Since secretly they’re ACTUALLY saying

I  think this is great when actually it's overly sweet/dry/not-actually-spicy/not-actually-delicious/etc.

A few tricks when reading recipes:

1. Just because it’s a blog/chef/author/person you like, doesn’t mean it’s going to be a delicious recipe READ REVIEWS like it’s your JOB. (If you don’t, I’ll personally fire you)
2. If it’s a blog, the blogger will likely give in-depth descriptions to why they like it. If you (like me) like chewy cookies, and the purported “Best Cookie Ever!!!!!”’s Blogger is like “I like crisp, crunchy cookies” you know it’s time to escape. Immediately.
3. Good bakers often own good cameras. Or, geez, at least a smartphone that can take a good photo. I never trust those hooligans with fuzzy/nonexistent photos posted of their recipes. Maybe I’m just a sucker for presentation. Or maybe bad bakers actually make bad photographers. Whatever.

Anyways, I’m usually a cupcake person (as my friends and family know), but yesterday after eating a bowl of cereal I decided that instead of eating that for breakfast I would’ve rather eaten a warm blueberry muffin.

Do I still have blueberries in my fridge?

Yes?

…and moments later I was at my computer doing my whole research-thanggg looking for a blueberry muffin recipe.

THANK YOU AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN FOR LISTENING TO ALL OF MY RULES ABOUT RECIPE SELECTION AND DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMESTIBLES. You make me smile.

Except no thanks for hiding your recipes to non-subscribers.

At which point, I then paid my thanks to the interwebs, as of course some random lady mah girl Judy had already posted it up.

Except where I didn’t actually follow any of her substitutions, halved the recipe, used buttermilk powder, measured minimally when making and using the lemon-sugar topping, and baked the six muffins in flower-shaped-baking-cups for maybe 14, 14.5 minutes.

Lauds, Judy.

These are moist, very blueberry-y, and the lemon-sugar topping is a nice addition. I probably would have benefitted from baking them another minute or so, but didn’t want to overbake them. I think 15 minutes of uninterrupted oven-time, and then 5 minutes cooling time would’ve been fine.

BTDubs: If I do write recipes, I’m going to write them like I’d write really informal science labs. Deal? Deal.

Blueberry Muffins (my version of America’s Test Kitchen)

MATERIALS:

Blueberry ‘Jam’

1 cup blueberries

1&½ tsp sugar

Lemon-Sugar Topping

1/3 cup sugar

1&½ tsp. lemon zest

Muffin

2&½ cups all-purpose flour

2-½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp sea salt (Don’t be picky. Sea? DONMATTAH. Kosher is probably better than table salt, just for quantity’s sake. I just pinched and was like 'ehhhh, that’s about right’)

2 large eggs

1&1/8 cups (8 oz.) sugar (I eyeballed this. Honestly, go for 1&¼ cups. It could use the extra sweetness)

4 Tbs unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

4 Tbs vegetable oil

1&½ tsp pure vanilla extract (Pour it innnnnn)

1 cup buttermilk (Don’t be afraid to use powdered stuff. Saves my butt regularly)

1 cup fresh blueberries

Jam

1. Grate zest into the bowl you’ve already measured the sugar into. Mix berries and sugar in small saucepan over medium heat, scraping down sides so it doesn’t burn, and squishing the berries with your spatula. Cook down until it looks like this:

I’m borrowing photos today. Hopefully in the future, when I’ll be more on-my-game and not ghost-posting (posting about yesterday’s muffins? EEEEK. Pure phantom-ery) I’ll use my own photos.

Topping

1. Grate zest into the bowl you’ve already measured the sugar into.
2. Mix with spoon and set it aside.

Muffin

1. Heat oven to 405˚F.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in large bowl.  Set aside.

3. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until it looks light, like this:
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together melty butter, oil,vanilla, and buttermilk.
5. Add egg mixture and whisk well until combined.
6. Add wets into drys, mixing gently with a spatula. It’s gonna be a tad lumpy, and that’s quite alright.
7. Stir in blueberries.
8. Line a 12-muffin muffin tin with baking cups (I chose yellow flower ones. Hadn’t used them yet. They were super cute), and pour/spoon the batter into each one about 4/5 of the way up the sides (leave about 1cm of room from the top).
9. Spoon equal amounts of jam onto tops of the muffin batter cups, and swirl the jam into the muffins using a skewer or chopstick (the chopstick method was excellent. Don’t overmix! Marbelize-it!
10. Sprinkle muffins evenly the lemon-sugar mixture (you don’t have to use it all, but don’t be concerned when some of it absorbs into the batter).  
11. Bake for 15-16 minutes, or until the muffins are set, are slightly browned, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out basically clean.  Cool in pan 5 minutes before transferring to rack to finish cooling.

NOM.