I just thought this was funny. I love what was said about New York..."world's 14th biggest city..1st biggest ego.".......
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Milk Burfi: Indian Dessert
Recently, I'm going through another bout of youtube cooking videos addiction after a long time. Unlike previous times, however, this time I am determined to try out some recipes. Yesterday, I already made sheek kabab, since I followed that recipe almost to a T (well, almost except 1 ingredient that I didn't have handy), I didn't feel like writing about it or posting about it here.
Today, I made an Indian dessert that I never had before. It's called- Milk Burfi or in some places Kalakand. It's made of purely milk and sugar only.You just need varieties of milk..whole milk, skim milk, condensed milk, evaporated milk, cheese (freshly made out of milk of course)...well, you don't need all those types of milk in one recipe, but the variation of it.
I watched two videos on this, but I didn't like either fully. I liked some part of 1 and the other part of another recipe. For ex, in 1 recipe, they simply used store bought Ricotta cheese and used a cup of sweetened condensed milk and cooked it up in microwave..............yuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkk!!! I would never "cook" anything in a microwave, I reluctantly "warm" food in a microwave let alone cooking. However, I did like the idea of using condensed milk in the recipe.
In the other video, cook used regular whole milk and made fresh cheese out of it. And then used more whole milk and white sugar to complete the process. I didn't like the use of sugar here...so, then I combined the two recipes and add one extra thing in mine and came up with below and it tasted GREAT!! Veryyy sweet...but that's how I like my dessert....sweet.
Here is my recipe:
Ingredients:
To make cheese:
3 cups of whole milk
3 tbs vinegar
1/2 cup of evaporated milk
1 cup of whole milk
1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk
Pistachio-grated about 2 tbs
Method:
Make Cheese:
Add 3 cups of whole milk into a pot and let it boil
Once it comes to a boil, add 3 table spoons of vinegar and give a stir
Turn off the heat and let the milk separate
Once milk is completely separated, drain the curled up milk/cheese and discard the water
Drain the cheese using a cheesecloth or paper towel very well, it should be dry.
Proceed:
Pour 1/2 cup of evaporated milk, 1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk and 1 cup of whole milk to a pot on a medium heat
Start stirring and keep stirring for about 1 min
Add cheese to the mixture and keep stirring
Let it boil and let the liquid completely dry up (continue stirring on and off)
Once the milk-cheese mixture is all dried, keep stirring so it doesn't burn and turn off the heat.
Pour the cheese mixture into a serving plate or any square/rectangular shaped bowl
While hot press the mixture with spoon and try to make the surface as even as possible and sprinkle pistachio
Let it cool for few minutes and then put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes so it's completely cools and hardens up
Take it out from the fridge, and cut it up in square pieces and enjoy!
Now, the pictures:
Today, I made an Indian dessert that I never had before. It's called- Milk Burfi or in some places Kalakand. It's made of purely milk and sugar only.You just need varieties of milk..whole milk, skim milk, condensed milk, evaporated milk, cheese (freshly made out of milk of course)...well, you don't need all those types of milk in one recipe, but the variation of it.
I watched two videos on this, but I didn't like either fully. I liked some part of 1 and the other part of another recipe. For ex, in 1 recipe, they simply used store bought Ricotta cheese and used a cup of sweetened condensed milk and cooked it up in microwave..............yuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkk!!! I would never "cook" anything in a microwave, I reluctantly "warm" food in a microwave let alone cooking. However, I did like the idea of using condensed milk in the recipe.
In the other video, cook used regular whole milk and made fresh cheese out of it. And then used more whole milk and white sugar to complete the process. I didn't like the use of sugar here...so, then I combined the two recipes and add one extra thing in mine and came up with below and it tasted GREAT!! Veryyy sweet...but that's how I like my dessert....sweet.
Here is my recipe:
Ingredients:
To make cheese:
3 cups of whole milk
3 tbs vinegar
1/2 cup of evaporated milk
1 cup of whole milk
1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk
Pistachio-grated about 2 tbs
Method:
Make Cheese:
Add 3 cups of whole milk into a pot and let it boil
Once it comes to a boil, add 3 table spoons of vinegar and give a stir
Turn off the heat and let the milk separate
Once milk is completely separated, drain the curled up milk/cheese and discard the water
Drain the cheese using a cheesecloth or paper towel very well, it should be dry.
Proceed:
Pour 1/2 cup of evaporated milk, 1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk and 1 cup of whole milk to a pot on a medium heat
Start stirring and keep stirring for about 1 min
Add cheese to the mixture and keep stirring
Let it boil and let the liquid completely dry up (continue stirring on and off)
Once the milk-cheese mixture is all dried, keep stirring so it doesn't burn and turn off the heat.
Pour the cheese mixture into a serving plate or any square/rectangular shaped bowl
While hot press the mixture with spoon and try to make the surface as even as possible and sprinkle pistachio
Let it cool for few minutes and then put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes so it's completely cools and hardens up
Take it out from the fridge, and cut it up in square pieces and enjoy!
Now, the pictures:
 |
| Add 3 cups of whole milk into a pot and let it boil |
 |
| Add 3 table spoons of vinegar and turn off the heat and let the milk separate |
 |
| Drain the curled up milk/cheese |
 |
| Once it's drained using a cheesecloth or paper towel squeeze out all water it should look like this |
 |
| Pour 1/2 cup of evaporated milk, 1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk and 1 cup of whole milk into a pot on a medium heat and stir for a minute |
 |
| Add cheese to the mixture and keep stirring |
 |
| Let it boil and let the liquid completely dry up (continue stirring on and off) |
 |
| In the meantime have the pistachios ready..grated |
 |
| Once the milk-cheese mixture is all dried, keep stirring so it doesn't burn and turn off the heat |
 |
| Pour the cheese mixture into a serving plate or any square/rectangular shaped bowl |
 |
| While hot press the mixture with spoon and try to make the surface as even as possible and sprinkle pistachio; Let it cool for few minutes and then put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes so it's completely cools and hardens up |
 |
| Take it out from the fridge, and cut it up in square pieces |
 |
| Enjoy!! |
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Vienna 1900 : Neue Galerie New York
The other day while coming home from the Met, I saw Neue Galerie on the 5th avenue, 86 street. It's a museum for the German and Austrian Art. What caught my eyes was the banner on street post that says currently at the Galerie there is an exhibition called "Vienna 1900: Style and Identity". I would love to see that only caz when I was visiting Vienna two years ago, I actually didn't get to visit any museum!!!!! How pathetic and sad that was despite staying there for about 10 days. Won't get into too much details on why...but I was really looking forward to seeing "The Kiss" art by Gustav Klimt, which didn't happen. I know, this is not gonna be like being in Vienna and actually enjoying a museum there....but I will be happy with what we got here. This exhibition does have works by Gustav, so I guess that's good!
So, I did look into their website and I see, the admission price is 15.00!!! yawzaaaa!! But good news is, this museum participates in some museum mile thing and thanks to Bloomberg (I'm guessing the financial Bloomberg not the mayor ;) ) they have First Friday of Every month free from 6-8 p.m., at least for the rest of the year. So, of course I want to visit then...which will be on June 3rd! I hope I will have nothing else going on and can get to see the exhibition.
And they have cafes that sell Sacher Torte!! Another thing that I missed in Vienna...being in actually Viennese cafe and pretending to be one of those intelectual who sip coffee all day long and talk nonsense about politics and such! I did have Sacher Torte...not a fan of it however! And the price of the Sacher Torte at this cafe is whopping $8.00.........nooooooo!!!! Needless to say, I won't be having that!
This is an article I found on the net regarding this exhibition, which explains things a bit more:
Article
Pic from the website of Neue Galerie:
So, I did look into their website and I see, the admission price is 15.00!!! yawzaaaa!! But good news is, this museum participates in some museum mile thing and thanks to Bloomberg (I'm guessing the financial Bloomberg not the mayor ;) ) they have First Friday of Every month free from 6-8 p.m., at least for the rest of the year. So, of course I want to visit then...which will be on June 3rd! I hope I will have nothing else going on and can get to see the exhibition.
And they have cafes that sell Sacher Torte!! Another thing that I missed in Vienna...being in actually Viennese cafe and pretending to be one of those intelectual who sip coffee all day long and talk nonsense about politics and such! I did have Sacher Torte...not a fan of it however! And the price of the Sacher Torte at this cafe is whopping $8.00.........nooooooo!!!! Needless to say, I won't be having that!
This is an article I found on the net regarding this exhibition, which explains things a bit more:
Article
Pic from the website of Neue Galerie:
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Sakura Matsuri 2011
So, last weekend on Saturday my sis and I made a trip out to Brooklyn Botanical Garden all the way from Inwood, Manhattan to experience the Cherry blossoms and Japanese cultural festival. It was a long ride from home, but not too rigid. Our ride involved two quick subway train changes, and all went well. Considering it was weekend I was glad that there were no service changes or delays on the train line that we had to take!
As we had bought our tickets earlier from BBG's website, we didn't have to stand in line to get it. It was muy simple! As we walked through our very first sight of "fun" was this: I am not sure what this person tried to be...as in what kind of costume this was ...
This festival was truly a Japanese cultural festival and hence represented tons of things/activities that were Japanese. This was an area for Manga....I had no idea what that was....all I could figured was something to do with comic, may be?
A fun J-Lounge for kiddies...and adults a like...and yea, those chairs were quite comfy..I sat on one of those..it was gooodddd...
Besides the things that we saw, there were so many other activities going on for kids, and then there was a tea-ceremony demonstration (which we made it...but for the lack of seating we ended up leaving..it was crowded and we weren't gonna stand for God knows how long and watch two people drink tea in front of us!), and also there were some guided tours of the various parts of the park, there was also J-Pop cultural performances.. (we got to see one)...
As we had bought our tickets earlier from BBG's website, we didn't have to stand in line to get it. It was muy simple! As we walked through our very first sight of "fun" was this: I am not sure what this person tried to be...as in what kind of costume this was ...
 |
| Someone in weird costume! |
A fun J-Lounge for kiddies...and adults a like...and yea, those chairs were quite comfy..I sat on one of those..it was gooodddd...
A walk past the above ground known as Osborne garden, we came upon the Cherry Esplanade, where lots of main performances took place on below stage
The whole shindig started with some introductions by Brooklyn Borough's President, BBG's President, a rep from Queens, and here shown below the Japanese Ambassador to Japanese Consulate in New York:
 |
| Japanese Ambassador to the Consulate of Japan, New York |
First performance was Taiko Drumming. My first time experience this, it was good...enjoyed it!
 |
| Taiko Drumming |
Later there were series of traditional dances from Okinawa...
 |
| Dance # 1 |
 |
| Dance # 2 |
 |
| Dance # 3 |
 |
| Dance # 4 |
After enjoying above mentioned performances we decided it was time to take a walk, and check out other stuffs that were happening. And besides, we needed to use the restroom...I needed to use it BADLY! It was a bit of walk from the Cherry Esplanade to Visitor Center, where the restrooms were...but good thing we made it! We then decided to check out the Ikebana exhibition that was going on the 2nd floor of the visitor center...
Ikebana (Japanese art of Flower arrangement) : The very first time I heard of Ikebana was probably when I was either in 2nd or 3rd grade. It was in an article in our text book...the topic of that article was "Japanese Children" or something to that effect. Though I don't quite remember the content of the entire article, but I think, the point of the article was to tell us how well mannered Japanese Children were! It was to clue us in! Anyway, in that article it was mentioned that some female children learn the art of Ikebana as part of the grooming process....though there was no picture of Ikebana in that article, it was portrayed being very different from just any regular flower arrangement. I could tell it was probably very artisty...and it actually is!
Some Ikabana on exhibit: My very first time seeing Ikebana in person
And I am going to safely guess any Japanese event wouldn't be complete if there are no strange stuffs going on...the sighting of the strange people in strange costume...They actually have a parade going on starting from the Cherry Esplanade to Osborne Garden....but we missed it...and then again we really didn't miss it...caz they were all over the park...showing off their costumes...posing for people...and just I guess were having a good time!
Needless to say, any trip report of BBG and Cherry blossoms would be totally incomplete without the mention of beautiful Japanese Hill & Pond Garden and of course those gorgeous Cherries!
 |
| Japanese Hill and Pond Garden |
And the beautiful...Cherri blossoms...and the amazing colors!!!!
While we were watching the Samurai Drama (comedy based and one of the last performances for the day at Cherry Esplanade stage)...in the middle of it, I had it from seating so long on grass...on bare butt (well..almost) and was having way too much pain...so we decided to leave (hint to self : next time take a blanket or something to put underneath like other normal people did). It was all in all a very good 6 hours of good time (sans the butt pain)...!! I would definitely recommend this event for just about anyone to experience at least once! And of course this is an annual event, which means it's not going to happen again until sometime in late April-early May 2012! As for dining, people did take food from home, there were designated area for food consumption...and they also had stalls around that sold Japanese bento box to snacks to drinks....and BBG also has a cafe. And to save the day, Hagen Daz was there to sell ice-cream! There was also a stall set up to sell some Japanese souvenirs, which included from fans to candles, to Japanese coloring books for kids and post cards...! There was also some cute infant Kimono style onsies, and at $22.00 a piece, I passed! It's okay! :) I did buy post cards (how can I not? specially $0.50 each and a coloring book for my lovely soon to be toddler niece! :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)