Pumpkin Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Icing

Thanks to Jamie for sharing this recipe last year! The original recipe calls for you to make your own caramel...but as I've said before, I can't make caramel for the life of me (despite being able to make a pretty good roux!), so I opted for this delicious Trader Joe's caramel sauce. Since my caramel sauce was already salted, I sprinkled the cupcakes with a bit of cinnamon sugar for color and added sweetness.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1/2 cup applesauce 
• 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside.  In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice; set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the  brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, applesauce and eggs. Beat on medium speed until well combined.  Add dry ingredients, and mix on low until smooth. Fold in pumpkin puree. 

Divide batter evenly among liners, filling each about halfway. Bake until tops spring back when touched, and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes, rotating pans once if needed. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely.

Makes ~ 18 cupcakes.

Salted Caramel Buttercream

• 1/2 cup caramel
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 stick salted butter
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 cups powdered sugar

In a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter and salt together until lightened and fluffy.  Reduce speed to low and add powdered sugar.  Mix until thoroughly combined.

 

Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the caramel.  Beat on medium high speed until light and airy, and completely mixed (about 2 minutes).  Mixture should be ready to use without refrigeration.  

Pistachio Crusted Chicken - pantry cooking!

It's one of those nights where I decided to just make dinner with whatever I found in the pantry. (Well, technically Jonathan's pantry.) Here's my creation: pistachio crusted chicken with a wonderfully baked  potato. Not the prettiest dish, but it sure was tasty! The chicken came out super juicy, and as always, rubbing the potato with oil and salt before baking it made the skin delicious to eat!

Pistachio-Crusted Chicken

2 skinless chicken breasts

1/2 cup whole shelled pistachios

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp seasoning salt

1 tsp parsley

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp olive oil

1) Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

2) I used a Bullet blender to crush the pistachios. I left some larger pieces, bit for the most part, they came out to the consistency of bread crumbs.

3) In a small bowl, pour in crushed pistachios. Add all other dried ingredients. Mix well.

4) In a medium bowl, using a fork or whisk, mix together mustard, honey and oil until you get a smooth consistency.

5) Dip chicken breasts in mustard mixture, then in pistachios. Place on a greased cookie sheet.

6) Place the chicken in the oven and IMMEDIATELY TURN DOWN to 375 degrees. Bake for 25 minutes or until juices run clear when cut.

Alton Brown's Baked Potato

Heat oven to 350 degrees and position racks in top and bottom thirds. Wash potato (or potatoes) thoroughly with a stiff brush and cold running water. Dry, then using a standard fork poke 8 to 12 deep holes all over the spud so that moisture can escape during cooking. Place in a bowl and coat lightly with oil. Sprinkle with kosher salt and place potato directly on rack in middle of oven. Place a baking sheet on the lower rack to catch any drippings.

Bake 1 hour or until skin feels crisp but flesh beneath feels soft. Serve by creating a dotted line from end to end with your fork, then crack the spud open by squeezing the ends towards one another. It will pop right open. But watch out, there will be some steam!

Canh (Vietnamese cabbage soup)

Another Vietnamese staple - canh! (And luckily, one of Jonathan's favorites.) Growing up, we'd always have a soup like this, a protein dish, and Jasmine rice

for dinner. This can also be made with other veggies instead of cabbage. I've used cauliflower (one of my FAVES as a kid), chayote squash and watercress in the past. Don't like pork? Ground up or just throw in some whole shrimp instead (or IN ADDITION to pork!)

for meat:

1/3 - 1/2 pound ground pork (I usually take two thin sliced boneless pork chops and grind them in my mini-prep cuisinart)

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. sugar

1/8-1/4 tsp. pepper

half head cabbage sliced into small strips

for broth:

4 cups chicken broth

1/2 tbsp fish sauce

1 tsp. sugar

1 clove garlic, minced

1 shallot, minced

dash of oil

Chopped cilantro and/or fried shallots for garnishing

1) Mix ingredients for ground meat and set aside. (If you're lazy, I sometimes just slice up pieces of pork instead of grinding it.)

2) In medium stock pot, heat oil, garlic and shallot until fragrant.

3) Pour in chicken broth and bring to boil.

4) As you're bringing the broth to a boil, drop in small chunks of pork (about half tsp. size). 

5) Let pork cook in boiling broth for 1-2 minutes.

6) Add sliced cabbage, fish sauce and sugar.

7) Reduce heat to medium, cover pot, and let simmer for 15-20 minutes.

8) Optional: Season/garnish each individual bowl with fresh cracked pepper, chopped cilantro and friend shallots before serving.

Thit Kho

Mom used to make this all the time. It's funny that this dish is often found on dinner tables in Vietnamese homes, but rarely will you ever find it at a Vietnamese restaurant. (They have versions of braised meats, like the ones normally made in clay pots, but rarely this dish with the hard-boiled eggs!)

Here's how I made it!

- 3 tbsp coconut caramel sauce (bought at an Asian grocery store bc I can't make caramel on my own for the life of me!)

- two cloves garlic, minced

- dash of olive oil

- 2 soda cans of coconut water/juice with pulp

- 2-3 tbsp fish sauce

- 1 lb pork, cut into inch-and-a-half cubes (traditionally this dish is made with pork belly, but tonight I used tenderloin because it was on sale)

- 6 peeled hard-boiled eggs

- 1-2 tbsp brown sugar to taste

- cilantro for garnish

1) Par boil the chunks of pork for 2-3 minutes to get rid of the impurities. (This will ultimately make the juice clear and not cloudy.) Remove pork from boiling water and set aside.

2) In a big pot (I use my trusty Le Creuset Dutch oven) heat the caramel, garlic and olive oil. 

3) Add the pork to the pan so that all the pork is eventually covered in the caramel. Add fish sauce and allow to cook for 3-4 minutes.

4) Pour the two cans of coconut water I to the pot. Add the hard-boiled eggs. Cook on a simmer for at least 30-45 minutes, covered. The longer it cooks, the more flavorful it gets!

5) Like always, taste it while the sauce is cooking. This time around, I added some brown sugar to sweeten the sauce a bit.

5) Serve over white rice and garnish with cilantro.

(A side note...one of my favorite things to do is to cut open the hard-boiled egg and pour some of the sauce on it so that the yolk soaks up the yummy sauce!)

If you want a more detailed recipe with pics taken while cooking, check out this link. 

http://gastronomyblog.com/2007/03/20/thit-kho/

a birthday present to myself...

As I embark on my 34th year (or rather, the sixth anniversary of my 28th birthday), I'm following some advice from a college friend (thanks Chrissann!) to start my own recipe blog. It makes perfect sense: I love to cook, I love to take pictures of what I eat (and by that I mean I love forcing Jonathan to take pictures of what I eat), and most of all, I love sharing with friends. A blog helps me do all of that! Maybe, just maybe, one of these days I'll share my recipe for super awesome Vietnamese Cha Gio. Maybe.

A little bit about the name of my blog: "Heo" means "pork" in Vietnamese. How do you pronounce it? Imagine you're a southerner saying the phrase, "What the hell?!" Now imagine you're a SUPER southerner with one of those accents you only see on TV and hear on cheesy southern radio stations, and you don't even pronounce the L's at the end of the word. That's how you pronounce "heo". (I should give a shout out to Jonathan for inspiring the title of this blog...I've heard him many a time use the word "hell" and realized it didn't sound like "hell" at all, but rather "heo". I'm pretty sure at some point I'll need to get him a t-shirt that says, "What the heo?" It's almost as funny as a shirt that says, "What the pho?")