use real butter

Recipe: wonton soup

My trip to San Francisco was originally intended just for BlogHer Food 2010. When I checked my calendar to book my flight, I realized the following week was my dad’s birthday and my grandma’s birthday. I drummed my fingers on my desk – could I afford the time to hang out for ten days or should I fly back home and then back to the bay area? The wheels began to turn and I quickly formulated a plan checking with my parents, my aunt, my grandma, and Jeremy. For my father’s 70th birthday, I’d take him on a tour of wine country as his designated driver. Dad likes it when I make all of the plans and arrangements, and that’s exactly what I did. Mom isn’t a big drinker, so Jeremy joined us to taste wines with my dad. My parents love Jeremy. He is the perfect Chinese son-in-law, except for the fact that he isn’t Chinese.

wine tasting

one of several vineyards we visited

jeremy checks out the room’s balcony at the hotel healdsburg

Our first stop was Jordan Winery just outside of Healdsburg in Sonoma Valley. I’ll talk more about Jordan in a later post, but it was a gorgeous introduction to Sonoma’s wine country. It was also blazing guns hot – in the 90s! If ever my dad doubted my love, enduring this heat should be proof enough :) After visiting a few other wineries, we drove into town. I adore Healdsburg. I had such a lovely time last year that I wanted to share it with my parents and Jeremy on this special occasion. We stayed at the luxurious Hotel Healdsburg for the night where they leave you a bottle of local wine (and in this case, local is freaking awesome) in the afternoon, the staff come in and turn down your bed and leave freshly baked cookies… and the wifi is not only FREE, but it WORKS. That evening, we had dinner at Dry Creek Kitchen to celebrate dad’s birthday week.

patio dining at dry creek kitchen

chef’s tasting menu

toasting dad’s 70th

We had the chef’s six course tasting menu and for the most part, it was exceptionally executed. The only real disappointment was the final main course – the American Kobe beef. A good deal of my cut was gristly and rather unpleasant, which is a shame. Having had Kobe beef on several occasions at The Flagstaff House, I came to appreciate just how awesome Boulder’s own restaurants are. My dad commented as much too. I think my parents are sold on Boulder (full double rainbow all the way). Dry Creek Kitchen’s service was impeccable and overall I think everyone had a truly delightful time.

seared hawaiian ahi tataki

roasted sugar pie pumpkin soup

butternut squash ravioli

lemon-marinated petrale sole

american kobe flat iron

spice cake

warm valrhona chocolate cake

After a good night’s sleep (those beds are like clouds) we took a stroll around town before setting off toward Napa Valley. Jeremy and I mapped out the vineyards to visit based on our route, some of my dad’s preferences, and the encyclopedic recommendations that Lisa emailed me a few months ago. The pleasant drive along California highway 128 from Healdsburg to Calistoga rolls through picturesque hills of wine country. My dad’s favorite aspect of wine tasting is… the wine. My favorite part of the wine tasting is walking around the grounds of the nicer vineyards (some are better than others, to be sure). I let Dad decide if he wanted to sit down to lunch or pick up some goodies from Dean and Deluca in St. Helena. He opted for a baguette, pâté, and cheese from Dean and Deluca and we circled back to Beringer Vineyards to get a nice bottle of wine.

i had to take them by seghesio family vineyards before leaving healdsburg

driving from sonoma valley to napa valley

so neat to visit wine country during the crush

wow, that is huge

chateau montelena winery

at beringer vineyards

Dad was happy. Very happy. He fell asleep in the car as we drove south. I thought about all the years that I fretted over what to get my dad for his birthday. It’s like that with my parents – I can’t buy them things because they either get what they need or don’t want more stuff. So to plan for and take him on a trip into wine country was something I could finally do for my dad that I think he really enjoyed. In fact, I know he enjoyed it because he mentioned something about how he liked having me drive him around and that we should do more trips like this in the future. Okay, well… good thing he doesn’t turn 70 every day ;)

We returned to San Jose just in time to meet up with Grandma and two of my aunts for dinner. Jeremy had to fly home for the day job while everyone else was starting to arrive for the two birthday banquets – my dad’s and my grandma’s. When my family gets together, we eat… and eat… and eat. It’s suuuuuch a Chinese thing. The first thing we did after I picked my parents up from the airport in San Francisco was head to a Sichuan restaurant for lunch. We bond over food.

a big spicy sichuan lunch

cantonese dinner

beef noodle soup, congee, shredded pressed soybean curd sheets, and other goodies (lunch)

everyone grabs a slice of hot scallion pancake (another lunch)

It’s a little surreal hanging out with my family. We’re always celebrating someone’s birthday. Dad turned 70 and Grandma turned 89. Those are big numbers. But when you look at them, look at my family, they all seem remarkably young for their ages. Good genes, I’m telling you. I remember what they were like when I was a little kid and to be honest, they haven’t changed all that much. But time moves in one direction and as I grow older, I know they won’t be there forever and so I cherish these moments. Grandma said next year is going to be extra special, because my cousin turns 20, my other cousin turns 30, I turn 40, my uncle turns 60, my mom turns 70 and Grandma will be 90. Grandma told me the Chinese like those round numbers. I told her I like her.

On Dad’s actual birthday, we had a 10-course banquet at Dynasty Seafood Restaurant in Cupertino (thanks again to Lisa for her outstanding recommendations). The dishes were: Chinese cold appetizers, shark fin soup (hey, I did not pick the menu), crab balls, stir-fried scallops, Peking duck, abalone, lobster, smoked sea bass, special noodles, and peach buns. They weren’t real peach buns, they were steamed sweet buns with lotus seed paste shaped like peaches – shou tao or longevity buns. The food was terrific. My favorites were the duck (I always love duck) and the sea bass.

four beautiful women: my mom and my three aunts

stir-fried scallops

peking duck

happy 70th birthday, daddy!

The next day was Grandma’s birthday, so we had yet another banquet that evening at Chef Chu in Palo Alto. I know you’re wondering how it is that we can all keep eating like this. The only explanation I can come up with is that we expend a lot of energy shouting Chinese at one another. It’s exhausting! Grandma’s banquet menu included: an incredible plate of Chinese appetizers, lobster special noodles, Hunan tofu, mustard green hearts, some kind of beef (seriously, I lost track), miso sea bass, and tapioca taro root soup for dessert (in addition to a mango-raspberry mousse cake). The best part of the evening was seeing my mom and my grandma smiling so much.

delectable plate of chinese appetizers (the pickled cukes were the best!)

you’d never guess my grandma turned 89

lobster noodles

a chinese birthday isn’t complete without a *crazy* birthday candle

The following morning, most of us shipped off to our various corners of the country and I felt that pang in my heart whenever I leave my parents or my grandma. I think it comes from those feelings of being a kid when these adults were around to care for you and make everything right. I’m an adult now and I still get those warm fuzzies remembering how I used to go for afternoon walks with Grandma or when Mom would hold me in her arms when I was sick until I fell asleep. But when I come home to Jeremy, his gentle embrace has a similar effect on me. And when I open the front door and Kaweah bounds around me, sniffing and licking my pants (I know, she’s an odd dog) because she’s so excited to see me – I see it is the progression of family and I’m grateful for that. Also… I noticed that the heat wave in California broke the day I left. Thanks a lot.

my aunt, grandma, and mom

Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you that I’m always busiest right before a trip. That’s because I plan ahead for Future Me. I clean the house, and prepare for the day I return from my trip. I always think to myself that if I were to die on my trip, that would totally be wasted effort. But I still do it. I can’t help it. So before my trip to California, I was busy making wontons. Not for Jeremy to eat while I was away (I made plenty of food for him), but for when I came back so I wouldn’t have to cook because I knew I wouldn’t be in the mood to dine out. What I realized was that I hadn’t blogged soup wontons before – I had only fried them.

wonton wrappers, pork filling, and little dippy bowl of water at the ready!

chopsticks are far easier than a spoon for filling the wonton skin

Unlike the fried wontons which had a shrimp filling, these are pork wontons. The reason I like wontons is because I find it mentally acceptable to purchase wonton wrappers and so it is super easy to make heaps of them. Dumplings are another matter. I cannot buy dumpling wrappers. Physically impossible for me. I have to make them from scratch and that is a bit of a commitment.

moisten the edges

pinch the top together

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pumpkin soup

I have 36 hours, but I need about 72. It’s times like these that sleep takes a back seat. Oh well… I plowed through the photos from this last shoot in record time knowing full well if I didn’t get them processed now, it would be 2011 before I’d look at them again. So here ya go:

this hillside was ablaze (in the good way)

mixed bag: reds, greens, yellows, stripped

sunset

aspens lean

You can see the rest of this fall shoot set on my photo blog.

I have many fond associations with autumn. Besides the fall colors and our (mine and Jeremy’s) birthdays, it’s also that time of year for BlogHer Food in San Francisco. BlogHer Food ’09 is where I met Shauna and Danny and little Lu. I don’t go to these conferences intent on meeting (or stalking) specific people unless they are already my friends. So when I met Shauna, I was vaguely aware that she was Gluten-Free Girl. I just knew she was incredibly sweet and that her baby girl kinda ran off with my heart. It was only on our second meeting together at Kingsford University that I became aware of her rock star status (so I’m slow on the uptake, cut me some slack!). But that rock star status is nothing compared to the lovely woman she is. I got to talk with her and Danny on the bus ride into wine country and by our final dinner of the trip they told me about The Beatles, their first date, tattoos, and why Danny was sharing his bottle of lemonade with me.

and now they share this act of love

When I was at IFBC in Seattle, I got to flip through Shauna’s only copy of the book. It made me hungry. I don’t go out of my way to be gluten-free since I like gluten and I can eat it. I can eat the hell out of gluten. So a gluten-free cookbook has to appeal to me at the cooking level, not at the gluten-free level. And this is what I find so special about the book: if you were to erase all mention of gluten-free in the book, it would stand on its own merit as a damn fine cookbook. That’s the magic in the book. That’s the magic in how Danny and Shauna cook and live their lives.

i couldn’t wait to try their pumpkin soup

little pie pumpkin

By the way, this isn’t a proper review – it is merely my heavily biased opinion. I haven’t read the book cover to cover yet as autumn is my busiest time of year. But when I began flipping through the book to tag the recipes I wanted to try, I found myself reading. Shauna has a beautiful writing style and writing voice. A couple of paragraphs into the introduction, her words made me catch my breath and I had to blink back a few tears… because Shauna and Danny are two people I care about very much and their hopes and happiness bring me great joy. It’s about the journeys of discovery, growth, love, happiness, learning, and really incredible food.

oiled and seasoned, ready to roast

scrape out the flesh after the pumpkin has cooled

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: thai chicken coconut soup (tom kah kai)

People have been asking me all day who is baking the cake. They mean my birthday cake. Um… no one. I don’t have time for cake let alone a birthday because I’m hitting the road tomorrow and I have a to do list long enough to beat out a double roll of Charmin. Jeremy and I have birthdays fairly close together such that we agree to celebrate at a later, more convenient date. Probably in October. September is just insane for both of us. We’re cool with it.

pretty sure kaweah would have liked some cake

I do want to thank all of you for your sweet birthday tweets and Facebookings. It was a special day, because every day is special! So I’ll just share some of what made it all so nice:

not a full double rainbow, but i’ll take it!

grilled ono for dinner

new member of my apple family

The weather has turned from summer to autumn here. Today. Like a switch. I love it! In between all of the frantic work piling up, I spied fresh snow on the local mountains, I got to see my friend Kath, the UPS delivery dude arrived EARLY instead of the typical 5:00 pm (now THAT is a birthday present on a signature-required package), and the very best part of the day? Getting an impromptu ice cream cone with Jeremy. So you see, a very good day – birthday or no. Cake can wait and yeah, *I’ll* be the one baking it :)

Remember that little cold I caught in Seattle? There’s nothing like being sick to make you appreciate being healthy. I kicked that one pretty handily, but being well again seems to heighten my appreciation for the fall colors, the change in the weather, the crisp chill on the air. I’m giddy with excitement just thinking about snow. Okay, but back to being sick… As soon as I got home from Seattle, I bought an organic chicken and made some homemade chicken broth. I swear by it. My mom used to make it for me whenever I got sick as a kid and it made me feel so good. This time, I recovered quickly enough that I still had some chicken broth left and found myself in the mood for some spicy, tangy, luscious soup to jettison that last bit of crud in my chest.

homemade chicken broth, fish sauce, coconut milk

chicken, straw mushrooms, cilantro, lime, kaffir lime leaves, galanga, thai bird chiles, lemon grass

Yes yes yes. Tom kah kai – Thai chicken coconut soup. I was just about to type that it is one of my favorite soups, but I actually love all manner of soups – especially with the cooldown in the weather. As long as you can find the ingredients, it is ridiculously simple to prepare. Kaffir lime leaves, galangal, and lemon grass are probably the toughest ones to find. You can always make substitutions like ginger for galangal, but the difference is striking. Galangal is more floral, delicate.

pour the broth and coconut milk in with the aromatics

**Jump for more butter**