Top Chef, Meetup Style

Whenever I start a new hobby, I like to get involved in a group of like-minded people. When I wanted to train for my first triathlon, I joined Team in Training. Upon the realization that I was having trouble keeping up with running, I joined Back on My Feet, a local DC nonprofit that uses running to help people overcome substance abuse. Not only did both of these groups help me to train, but they also provided me with a social outlet as I made new friends. 

I wanted to do the same thing with cooking and I decided to get started with www.meetup.com. After doing a quick search on cooking, I found a group called "Eating and Cooking in Our 20s and Early 30s." Part of the group description read, "This is a group for those who want to explore all forms of food the DC area has to offer (restaurants, specialty stores, etc.), cook and bake for others, and meet new people in their 20s and 30s who want to do the same." Perfect!

Last Sunday, I went to one of the group's event. Entitled "Fall Flavors," this get together was a potluck with a Top Chef style competitive twist. Each guest was to bring a fall dish and people would then vote for their favorite one. Competition can sometimes stress me out, particularly when it involves a skill that is still fairly new for me. This time, however, I made a conscious decision to just make something easy especially since I was busy with other commitments. I settled on this pumpkin bread: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pumpkin-bread-iv/

Let me just say that this event was a great way for me to prepare for that overstuffed feeling I'm likely to experience at Thanksgiving. There was SO MUCH FOOD and I wanted to try it all! The picture to the right shows one of several tables covered with goodies. In addition to sampling many dishes, I also got to chat with fun people. A butternut squash dish received the most votes and the pumpkin gnocchi came in second. The best thing is that people are now posting recipes from the event on the Meetup group page. I can't wait to try making some of them myself.

I was a little bummed that not even a quarter of a loaf of my pumpkin bread ended up being eaten at the event. I had given one loaf to my family and my brother gave me some much appreciated validation. When I asked him what he thought, he exclaimed, "It's SOOO delicious! I heated a piece up in the microwave and slapped a spoonful of cool whip on that puppy." Eloquent as ever...

All in all, I had a great time last Sunday. If you're in your twenties or early thirties and want to explore cooking with a fun group of people, I highly recommend that you check out this Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/hungry20sdc/

Birthday Blessings

This past Monday (October 8), I celebrated my 29th birthday. I say that I celebrated it but to be truthful, I also agonized over it. Turning 29 reminded me that I haven't reached a lot of the milestones or achieved a lot of the goals that I thought I would have by now. I haven't settled down. I'm not married, I don't have kids, and I don't have my dream career. I spend a lot of time wondering what my big passion is and whether I'm doing the right thing.

Despite all these questions and doubts, I did have a good birthday. Mostly, I was provided with an opportunity to appreciate the friends and family members who enrich my life so much. While doing dishes the Friday before my birthday, I complained about getting gunk on my shirt and said that I need an apron. Smiling, my roommate Jenn grabbed an Amazon box and urged me to open it. Inside, I found an adorable polka dotted apron and a Julia Child cookbook with recipes that will probably be featured on this blog soon enough. 

My friend Natty always remembers my birthday and asks me what we're going to do to celebrate. This year, she suggested going to SAX, a plush restaurant and performance space in downtown DC. At the last minute, my roommate Lori who was battling a cold, decided to join us. I really appreciate the fact that she came out. We got all dolled up and took this picture just before we walked out the door. At SAX, Natty, Lori and I  sipped cocktails and nibbled on oyster burgers and fondue while watching live burlesque. To round out the evening, we enjoyed champagne and a beautiful birthday cake.

On Wednesday, my parents and brother came out to Silver Spring for a family celebration. We went to 8407 Kitchen Bar, where I had some of the best calamari of my life. The buttermilk breading and green salsa really made it flavorful. For my main dish, I decided on a seafood gumbo with oysters, shrimp, and okra. I couldn't decide what I wanted for dessert so my mom and I shared creme brulee and chocolate cake.





All in all, I enjoyed many birthday blessings but the best one was realizing that I don't have to have it all figured out right now. Each day gives me a chance to learn something new and to spend time with the people that are important to me. This may sounds cheesy but my birthday wish is to be present and to pay attention to my everyday blessings. I'll let you know how I did this time next year.  

In Remembrance of Crepes Past

A few weeks ago, my roommate Jenn and I started talking about how awesome it would be to make crepes. This got me thinking about my time in Paris as a study abroad student in college.    There was nothing like the warmth of a Nutella banana crepe to ward off the damp cold of a Parisian winter. While my first Parisian crepes were sweet ones, a friend and I eventually discovered Au P'tit Grec. At this delicious crepe place located in the Latin Quarter we would fork over three to four Euros for crepes filled with savory ingredients.

I'm a creature of habit when it comes to food. When I try something I like, I will order it over and over. At Au P'tit Grec, it was the chevre chorizo crepe containing goat cheese and chorizo sausage. When Jenn and I started talking about making crepes, I remembered Au P'tit Grec and could practically taste my preferred crepe. The only problem was that even though I'd ordered it many times and had a memory of how it looked and tasted, I didn't initially recall the name of the type of sausage that they had used. 

All I can say is, thank goodness for Google. I Googled "Au P'tit Grec Paris" and a bunch of different food review websites came up. Then searched the phrase "Au P'tit Grec menu" but didn't get much further. Finally, I switched to an image search and found a picture of the menu here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/weggenrode/310279371/ Scanning down the list of savory crepes, I saw "chevre chorizo" and knew that this was the one I wanted to recreate. I knew I could easily get goat's cheese but where would I find the thinly sliced chorizo that I craved? 

It was on an impromptu trip to Trader Joe's that I found a pack of meats that, in addition to salami and prosciutto, contained the coveted chorizo. It looked exactly like the meat I had seen added to the crepes at Au P'tit Grec six years earlier. 

Last Sunday afternoon, we actually made crepes. I put the cheese and chorizo on top of one and folded it over. It was the moment of truth. I cut off a piece and popped it into my mouth. It tasted exactly how I had remembered it and just as delicious. The cheese was smooth and the chorizo added just the right amount of spiciness. 

It may seem strange to put all that thought and effort into recreating a crepe but to me it was well worth it. I suggest this combination of ingredients and if you're ever in Paris, do yourself and your pocketbook a favor and check out Au P'tit Grec. Not only are the crepes delicious and huge but they are also very affordable. It's quick meal to grab while out sightseeing in one of the greatest cities in the world.  

I'm going to end with a quick recap of other cooking I've done recently. Last weekend, I made chocolate chip pumpkin muffins for a party. I used this recipe but just spooned the batter into muffin pans instead of using a loaf pan:  http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Chocolate-Chip-Pumpkin-Bread-2. When I found myself with some ingredients I wanted to use up, I was presented with the opportunity to make this delicious squash gratin: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/baked-squash-gratin-recipe/index.html. I'll leave you with pictures of these two culinary efforts. I'm assuming you can guess which one is which!

Polish Food, Panic Attacks, and Pizza

One of the reasons that I've gotten into cooking recently is that my roommate Jenn loves to cook. It's been fun to share recipes and to get her input on dishes that I've made. At her suggestion, we started a weekly "family dinner" night. We rotate cooking duties and use these evenings as an opportunity to try completely new recipes. So far, we've eaten moussaka, stuffed chicken breasts, and zesty peach and avocado shrimp burgers.

This week, we welcomed a special guest cook to our house for family dinner night. Our friend Chuck offered to share his heritage with us and cook Polish food. I hardly knew anything about Polish cuisine and Chuck described it as ultimate comfort food. That's something I can get behind! 

He made golabki, which basically consists of ground meat and rice wrapped in cabbage and covered in a tomato sauce and a dollop of sour cream, a staple of many Polish dishes. I thought it was interesting that the rice wasn't cooked before it went into the oven. Instead, it cooked in the meat juices while it was in the oven. I would definitely try to make this myself sometime!

Jenn and I had been talking about making pizza for the past few days and we finally decided to do it last night. Unfortunately, we hardly had any of the necessary ingredients and we waited until very late in the day to go shopping. This leads me to the second part of this post's title, panic attacks. I'd just like to say that the writer in me loves alliteration and I totally exaggerated when I used this term. 

Basically, I learned that it's important to have a good idea of exactly what I need before I go to the store and to make sure I'm not hungry or likely to get hungry. I did neither yesterday which led me to get frustrated when my phone didn't work for looking up recipes. I wandered the aisles aimlessly and then got very grumpy when I needed to eat something. 

I also realized I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to cook something new, to make everything from scratch, and to have it be perfect. It's good to remind myself that I'm still relatively new to regular cooking and that the whole point is to have fun and to experiment. I finally bought the pizza ingredients and a snack to tide me over until dinner.

Jenn decided to make a margherita pizza with some of the yummy tomatoes she'd bought at the farmer's market the previous weekend while I chose to make a white pizza with chicken and onions on top. We started with the dough. We used a pretty standard recipe with the basic ingredients of flour, sugar, yeast, and water. Jenn's electric mixer really came in handy!

After we made the dough, we let it rise for an hour. You can see the before and after pictures above. With the dough done, it was time to move on to the sauce and topping. I started my white sauce by melting butter and mixing in some flour. I added milk and then parmesan cheese, garlic, and fresh basil. Jenn and I were rubbing elbows as she worked on her red sauce. Here's a pretty picture of the two different sauces side by side. You can also see some covered dough left on the stove while we were cooking sauces. We realized it might not have been the best idea to leave it there when the dough ended up partially cooked from the head of the stove. Live and learn.

With the sauces done, I moved on to sauteing my chicken with onions, garlic, oregano, and a bit of paprika while Jenn grated the mozzarella and cut up the tomatoes for her pizza. Finally, we were ready to roll out the dough, add toppings, and cook our pizzas in the oven. Below, you can see the final results. We were so pleased! We enjoyed the pizzas with a few glasses of wine and good conversation with another friend who had visited us.

What is a Third Culture Cook?

When I was thinking about starting a cooking blog and wondering what to call it the name “Third Culture Cook” came into my head. This title is a play on words that conveys an important part of my identity. You see, I'm a Third Culture Kid or TCK. 

Sociologist Ruth Useem was the first to create and define this term. After conducting research, Useem wrote that she and her team began to use "third culture" as "a generic term to cover the styles of life created, shared, and learned by persons who are in the process of relating their societies, or sections thereof, to each other. The term 'Third Culture Kids'or TCKs was coined to refer to the children who accompany their parents into another society." 

My father had a thirty year career as a Foreign Service Officer. As a result, I spent my childhood moving every two or three years. I lived in Guinea, Mexico, Alabama (super exotic, I know), Honduras, and Brazil. Because of all of this moving around, I got to have many experiences at a young age that most people don't get to have until they reach adulthood, if at all. I swam with dolphins in Roatan, Honduras when I was in middle school and visited the Cristo Redentor statue in Rio when I was in high school.

While I'm very appreciative of this unique life, I also have  struggled with issues of identity as an adult. When I returned to the US for college, I had a hard time relating to my peers. I went to a small liberal arts college where most of the other students shared an upper middle class New England background. On the other hand, I often didn't know how to answer the simple question, "Where are you from?"

I found that giving a one word answer denied the richness of my experience and yet, I also felt that responding with a list of all the places that I lived gave way more information than other people wanted. I felt out of place and like I didn't fit. 

So, what does any of this have to do with this cooking blog? I've been getting into cooking recently. I’ve always loved food but I thought that cooking was some mythical challenging thing that you had to be very talented to do. I also told myself that it took too long and required too much planning.

Now, I'm starting to see cooking as a creative endeavor that can allow me to get in touch with my past. I can recreate the multiple tastes of my childhood while also learning enough to experiment with new flavors. I’m not an experienced cook (yet) and I'm learning to enjoy the process. To me, being a Third Culture Cook means being open to new possibilities and experiences and incorporating them into my food. I look forward to sharing my creations with a broader audience!