AmyK, Author at hello kelinda

April 7, 2015

Lemon Gradient Cake

My birthday was this past weekend, and I had a great time thanks to a wonderful dinner hosted by my friends and coworkers at Il Terrazzo Carmine (if you want the best clams and linguine in the city, that is the place). I also had boxes of treats sent to my home from my out-of-town friends and family, and who doesn’t like mail, especially if said mail contains cookies?!

I’m sure my heart did a Grinch-style “grow three sizes” thing, which was welcomed after a particularly rough week. So in case any of my Houston, Seattle, Atlanta, wherever lovelies are reading this — thank you from the bottom of my heart for making all of my years wonderful, and I look forward to spending yet another one with all of you.

Now that we have the sentimental crap out of the way, let’s get down to the really important business: cake.

AmyK

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March 25, 2015

New Digs & Good Ol’ Sandwich Bread

Well well well, it has been a while, hasn’t it? You look different — did you get a haircut? Oh, me? I didn’t get a haircut, but what I did get is a new apartment. I’ve been busy with moving these past few weeks, so for a while I was living in what seemed to be a very boring box-themed amusement park. But now I’ve officially bid farewell to my first Seattle home, and hello to my second — now with 800 square feet of lounging space! Finally, room enough for me to stretch my legs, and maybe dabble in the occasional breakdance routine.

Ready to get that boombox pumpin’

With the new apartment is a much bigger kitchen, and I am delighted to report that my range and oven setup is no longer fun-sized. That’s right, my oven can now hold two — that’s right, two — 9-inch cake pans at the same time on the same rack. This shit’s about to get real, y’all.

I don’t know about your method of unpacking and nesting, but the first box I always tackle is the one holding all my records and record player. This way, I can have some tunes immediately. Then, it’s on to unpacking and organizing the kitchen so I can break in the new cooking space pronto. All those other boxes can wait just a while longer.
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AmyK

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February 19, 2015

Zongzi (aka Chinese Tamales)

Happy Chinese New Year! Though I won’t be with my family in Houston to trade hong bao or to eat a bunch of dumplings this weekend, I’ll be keeping the festivities alive here in the Great Northwest by devouring some homemade zongzi (pronounced “joong-juh”). I’ve always had trouble describing these things to people until it hit me: these are basically the Chinese versions of tamales!

Instead of masa, we use a sticky rice, and instead of being wrapped in a corn husk, these are wrapped in bamboo leaves, which keeps everything together and also imparts a subtle tea-like taste to the rice. The filling can be anything, though traditionally it always involves a fatty piece of pork belly to keep it luscious. My favorite fillings are shiitake mushrooms, the aforementioned piece of pork belly, cured pork sausage, and a salted duck egg yolk, so that is exactly what I’ve made here.

AmyK

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February 10, 2015

Heartbreak Pie (aka Black-Bottom Cherry Pie)

Last week, my boyfriend and I broke up. The sudden change left me hollowed and lost.

I know what I’m feeling is nothing new. That’s why what Shakespeare wrote about coping is as relevant now as it was 400 years ago: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’erwrought heart and bids it break.”

Take torch songs, for instance. There is solace in the over-the-top and drippy lyrics because it’s like Bonnie Raitt just gets you when all the logic and well-intentioned advice in the rational world doesn’t. She just gets how it feels to love someone so completely, and to try so hard, but to have it not be enough for that someone to stay. She just gets the incessant thoughts that plague you: What if I did something different? What if I were prettier, thinner, funnier, smarter, anything-er? Does he even miss me, or did he already forget? She just gets the inconsolable grief that follows. She just gets what it’s like to feel as if you’ve been thrown away.

AmyK

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January 26, 2015

Roasted and Charred Broccoli with Peanuts

Do you guys subscribe to food magazines? Or pick any up from the grocery store check-out? Do people even read things on paper anymore? I somehow found myself with a subscription to Bon Appetit, though I don’t remember signing up for it. I can’t complain — I much prefer getting that in the mail each month as opposed to my light bill or those AOL subscription CDs if this were 1999.

But even though I get Bon Appetit in the mail and usually pick up Saveur and Lucky Peach each month, I have a habit of bookmarking recipes and then forgetting about them. Whoops. So to remedy that problem, I figured I’d share at least one recipe from them each month as a way to actually use them. Hooray!

AmyK

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January 22, 2015

Dry-Fried Spicy Long Beans

I’m back! It turns out that I’m like a cat; I need to lie out and charge in a sunbeam if I’m expected to do anything at all for the remainder of the day. And well, the sun skidattles from the sky by 4pm this time of the year here, so I haven’t been doing much cooking for the past few months. Yikes. But now that it’s somewhat bright when I leave the office — even if it instantly becomes pitch black by the time I reach my front door — I can feel the desire to throw down in the kitchen returning to the frozen cockles of my heart. Hooray!

This weekend’s dinner gathering hosted by my friends Sara and Adrian was the perfect push to fire up the stove again. And what better on a cold Sunday night than something green and spicy?

AmyK

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November 3, 2014

Dark Chocolate Tart with Sea Salt

Do you guys like chocolate? If so, have I got a sweet little something for you! This is one of those things that will kick your chocolate craving in the kaboose, as the kids say these days (do the kids say that?).

I know pumpkin, pecan, and sweet potato pie are the Thanksgiving pies de rigueur, and I’m all for tradition, but what’s wrong with shaking things up a bit from time to time? Take this luscious baby to your next holiday gathering and be ready to shake hands with more adoring fans than a presidential candidate.

AmyK

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October 6, 2014

Hokkaido Milk Bread

Growing up, one of the staple weekend activities in our house was to go to the Asian market to replenish our fridge with bittermelons, salted eggs, Thai basil, and all that other stuff that we could never get from the local suburban supermarket. My mom loved to frequent one in Houston’s Chinatown called Hong Kong Market, and after an hour or so of grocery shopping (at the time, we had several aunts, uncles, and cousins living with us, so there were a lot of mouths to feed), we’d stop at the tiny Chinese bakery across the shopping plaza.

One of the things my mom would always get would be Hokkaido milk bread, though I always just knew it as “Chinese sweet bread.” It’s soft, fluffy, and a little sweet, and we always just ate it toasted with a thin layer of butter or completely plain. I guess the name “milk bread” comes from the use of milk powder or condensed milk, and some versions of the milk bread we’d get would also have swirls of grainy sweet milk mixture rolled in. It’s not as strange as it sounds, I promise!

This particular rendition of Asian milk bread doesn’t have anything swirled in, but I imagine you can easily roll in a cinnamon-sugar-raisin mix if you so please, or even the traditional milk mix (future recipe, perhaps?). The possibilities!

AmyK

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September 24, 2014

Chinese Chicken and Shiitake Dumplings

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that this past weekend, I made an entire armada of dumplings. A flotilla of delicious morsels. A squadron of alright, I’ll stop with the naval analogies. The point is, whenever you decide to make something like dumplings, you have to commit to it. You can’t just make a dumpling or five, just like how you can’t just eat a potato chip or a family-sized pizza.

The good news is, making these things is kind of therapeutic. I usually just set up my station: bowl of dumpling filling to my right, a baking sheet to my left, dumpling wrappers and a bowl of water somewhat in the middle, and a damp kitchen towel in front of me. Then I turn on some Mythbusters reruns or maybe Adventures in Babysitting and get to work. Once you get the hang of things, it’s almost zen.

Another plus: dumplings freeze beautifully. Just line them up on a baking sheet covered in parchment or foil (making sure the dumplings aren’t touching one another), pop them in the freezer for an hour or two, and then transfer them all into a freezer bag until you want to eat them. Your future hungry self will thank you for the foresight.

AmyK

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September 22, 2014

Hobbit Birthday Cake (Chocolate Stout Cake with Mascarpone Frosting)

I reread The Lord of the Rings every summer. I’ve done this for the past seven years, so at this point, you can probably say that I’m a bit of a fan. And today, my friends, is a very special day: it’s Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday!

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, these two characters are the intrepid hobbits who found and then helped destroy The One Ring, which was originally created by the villain Sauron during the Second Age of Middle Earth and wait, where are you going?

Hobbits live the kind of life I want to live — they enjoy eating and drinking, followed by more eating and drinking, and then perhaps with a light dabbling of more eating and drinking. I also get the distinct impression that when there’s a celebration to be had, they do things big and dramatic, including the dessert. I mean, did you see Bilbo’s cake in Peter Jackson’s LOTR movies?
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AmyK

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