Bagels

Tim and I had a mean bagel craving this past weekend, so we decided to make some.  Funnily, when looking up bagel recipes that called for all-purpose flour, I stumbled upon this blog post on Inquiring Chef, a woman living in Bangkok also on the hunt for legitimate bagels.  Like her, I am able to find decent bagels here in Jakarta (we went to Bagel Bagel in Kemang... not bad, although the humidity messes with the chewy crust something fierce), but making them is pretty fun, so here we are.

I followed Inquiring Chef's recipe, for the most part, although I put 1 tsp honey and 1 tsp molasses into the dough and also did the overnight method, more like the recipe on Smitten Kitchen, making the dough the night before, but boiling and baking the morning we wanted to eat them.  Tim and I topped ours with sea salt and sesame seeds (why does everything I cook these days have sesame seeds in it?), which is a delicious combo.   The bagels were better if I baked them longer, though- more like 14-15 minutes for a darker and chewier crust.  Mmm.

Boiling.

Baking.

Cooling.

Eating.

Salty Sesame and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tim says these are the best cookies he's ever had.  

Coming from Tim, who usually says "They're fine," that says a lot.

I bookmarked this recipe the second I saw it on Joy the Baker... salty + sweet?  Yes, please.  The recipe is quirky, but it all comes together amazingly... a basic chocolate chip cookie dough, with the addition of some soy sauce in the place of some of the salt and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds.  Sounds crazy, but you should try it.  So good.

Sesame and Panko Crusted Chicken

Tasty, easy weeknight meal:  sesame and panko crusted chicken breasts served over an arugula salad with an Asian vinaigrette.  

The gingery, spicy vinaigrette it split in half at the beginning and serves both as a marinade for the chicken and as a salad dressing.  The crispy sesame and panko crust on the chicken is awesome. 

I added some romaine hearts to the arugula for crunch- I'm pretty sure you could use about any green for the salad.  Be sure to pound the chicken breasts flat so that they cook evenly- you don't want to accidentally burn the sesame seeds while trying to cook the fat part of the chicken breast.

Jazz in the Sculpture Garden Spread

More Jazz at the Sculpture Garden goodies... chicken satay with peanut and a spicy rice vinegar dipping sauces, summer rolls with mango and red pepper, sesame noodles... plus lots and lots and lots of sangria!

Sesame and Halvah Sundaes with Caramel Sauce

Martha loves sesame... not quite as much as she loves ginger, but definitely a lot. She was coming to DC, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to try out this recipe from Food and Wine for sesame ice cream sundaes with caramel sauce, sesame candies and halvah (a spongey, but pretty tasty sesame candy concoction.)
This recipe bordered on sesame overload, but could be slightly modified and greatly improved.

The ice cream by itself = delicious.
The ice cream with a caramel sauce = great (although the caramel in the recipe is less of a sauce and more of a candy- I added cream to the cooked sugar to give it a saucy consistency).
The ice cream and caramel with the sesame candy and halvah toppings = unique and tasty.
The tahini cream = weird and slightly off-putting.

If I made it again, I would skip the tahini cream in favor of more caramel. Also, I would use a different recipe for the caramel sauce- the one in the magazine was a little wonky, as I said.

Spicy Peanut/Sesame Noodles

For some reason, sesame/peanut butter noodles are one of my favorite things. Spicy, creamy, garlicy and gingery. Plus you can throw in a ton of veggies, whatever you have around. In this case, I threw in grated carrots, snow peas, scallions, and some steamed bok choy. The noodles are good warm right out of the pot, or cold the next day.

PS: Lincoln wanted to give his somewhat mixed review of the noodles:
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Chicken Cashew Lettuce Wraps and Sesame Stir-Fried Asparagus

We have a plethora of butter lettuce from the CSA right now- I was a little overzealous when putting in my order the past couple weeks. We're sorta between seasons right now, so the variety of veggies available from the CSA is minimal, but I know it'll boom soon and give us a ton of spring vegetables... in the meantime, we're trying to find lots of uses for the greenhouse grown butter/Boston lettuce we're getting.

Lettuce wraps it is! I've made lettuce wraps once before, back in the early days of the blog, and we liked them. This time I tried a stir-fried chicken and cashew filling- tasty!

Served with simple sesame stir fried asparagus and white rice.

Sesame-Coated Chicken With Broccoli

I'm totally on a stir fry kick of late. Not sure why, but so far it's been good to us.

This Food & Wine recipe was good- the sesamed-coated chicken pieces got a little crispy, and the sauce was gingery and a little spicy. Very nice.

Wangs

...yes...wangs...

So I had 100 wings to cook and four recipes...

Hot Wings

Sesame Wings

Asian Wings

Barbecue Wings

The sesame ones had a bit too many sesame seeds and were a little rubbery (nothing a few minutes under the broiler couldn't fix in the future).I put the asian ones under the broiler for a few minutes after getting them out of the slow cooker...The BBQ ones were good...and the spicy ones weren't all that spicy so I poured some extra Franks on them. It was a fun day of cooking and eating. Too bad the Patriots blew it!

Thank You Michael for taking the picture!!!

Sesame/Peanut Noodles with Tatsoi, Snow Peas and Yellow Pepper

I modified this simple Rachael Ray sesame noodles recipe to my liking, and it was really good!

- served it warm, not cold

- made the sauce as directed, but added some fresh orange juice to brighten it up

- used whole wheat spaghetti

- for veggies, I used raw shredded carrots, cilantro, scallions, yellow pepper slices, as well as snow peas and tatsoi (this week's CSA prize), both of which I blanched in the pasta water very briefly