Monte Cubano Sandwiches - Easy, Yummy, Rich Weeknight Dinner

Quite recently, due to husband's schedule change, we have been eating our main family Korean meal at lunchtime, and the dinners have become my more casual meal - which means that I go nuts in the morning to cook a nice meal for the entire family while dinner can be far more relaxed. Because of that luxury of relaxing at dinner, I've chosen to do soups and sandwiches for a few of the meals as I am a true sandwich lover and daughters also appreciate a delicious sandwich.

Normally my sandwiches consist of opening the toaster oven, sticking in two slices of bread, a slice of ham on one and a slice of cheese on the other and toasting it until it is melting and crispy - in itself a delicious satisfying hot sandwich. However, this sandwich is NO WAY in the same league as the Monte Cubano. Truthfully the Monte Cubano is more effort, but the flavor and the experience are well worth it.

I saw it on the cover of my Gourmet magazine and it haunted me for a few weeks - and then I finally broke down and made it. It's essentially a ham and cheese sandwich with pickles, dipped in an egg batter and fried in butter - doesn't it sound amazing? My brief description doesn't do it justice because there is also a garlic mayonnaise that gets applied along with some mustard. It is rich, crispy, warm, oozing, comforting and oh so good! It tastes great with the Roasted Curried Carrot Soup and the pair together makes for a great meal!

Monte Cubano Sandwich Gourmet Magazine, March 2009
(makes 1 sandwich)

2 slices firm bread (I used pugliese, which is smaller, but a great firm bread to hold up to the frying.)
1 to 2 teaspoons mustard
4 or 5 dill pickle rounds
2 slices boiled or baked ham
2 slices smoked turkey (I did not use turkey - just used ham from Costco.)
3 thin slices Swiss cheese
1/2 garlic clove
1/2 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 large egg (I found one egg batter mixture plenty for two sandwiches)
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Spread 1 slice of bread with mustard and top with pickles, meats, and cheese. Mince and mash garlic to a paste with a pinch of salt, then mix with mayonnaise. Spread on remaining slice of bread and assemble sandwich.

Beat together egg, milk, and 1/8 teaspoon each of salt and pepper, then soak sandwich in egg mixture.

Melt butter in a heavy medium skillet over medium-low heat. Cook sandwich, uncovered, until underside is well browned, about 4 minutes. Flip and cook remaining side, covered, until well browned, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, 1 minute.

Curried Roasted Carrot Soup - Last Minute Creation

I was making Monte Cubano sandwiches for dinner, and felt like the meal wouldn't be complete without a soup - with less than an hour to prepare anything and only my pantry at my disposal - this is what I came up with - and it ended up being a super delicious addition. Daughters really enjoyed the soup and it was rich and creamy with no cream!

Curried Roasted Carrot Soup
(serves 4-6)

1 lb of carrots, cut into chunks
1 onion, cut in half
6 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoons of salt
1 quart of chicken stock (possibly an additional 1 or 2 cups depending on your soup's consistency)
2 tablespoons curry powder
2 tablespoons of grated fresh ginger

Preheat oven to 400. Toss carrots, onion, garlic with olive oil and salt. Place onto a baking in a single layer and place into oven. Roast for 30 minutes, or until carrots are soft. (It will vary based on how fat your carrots are.)

In a pot, add the entire roasted pan of carrots, garlic, and onions to the chicken stock. Add ginger and curry powder and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer for 15 minutes. Puree with a handblender until smooth. Add additional stock to get the consistency you want.

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My choice of handblender...inexpensive and efficient.

Crispy Skin Sake Chicken with Ginger Sauce - Slow and Easy in the Oven

For SPL and JEL

Some people have asked me about my mini "dedications" at the top of some of my posts. I thought I'd take a moment to explain the reason I like to do my mini dedications - and that is, more often than not, the food I am inspired and encouraged to make is intricately tied to the people around me. This recipe, for example, has a very unique story. The first person in the dedication, was a former roommate and she LOVED this ginger sauce which is served in Chinese restaurants, either with spring chicken or Hainan Chicken. We used to go to dimsum and try and get this ginger sauce (almost more a relish actually) and often ended up arguing with the waiter who refused to give it to us UNLESS we ordered the appropriate chicken dish. After having it a few times, I assured her that I could recreate it at home for her so that she could eat it any time...and with that, ginger sauce was born. The chicken was just a simple straightforward recipe that would go with the ginger sauce - I was looking for a way to highlight the sauce (since it was her favorite) and that is the chicken I came up with.

The second name in the post, is the friend who actually reminded me of this dish. About a month ago, in a regular conversation with her, JEL mentioned that her FAVORITE dish of mine was some chicken dish I had made for her over 10 years ago, and to this day was one of her favorite meals. I turned to her and asked, "What chicken dish?" and then she proceeded to describe it to me. Being a great cook herself, she carefully identified all the key components and described it to me in a way that made it clear that I had made this dish in the past, although I had no recollection of such a thing. After hearing her description, I decided that I would recreate the recipe to serve to her over a weekend dinner.

The Cripsy Skin Sake Chicken with Ginger Sauce is actually a simple dish - it has 8 ingredients, chicken, sake, soy sauce, ginger, salt, scallion, oil and pepper and merely requires an overnight marinade for the chicken and some baking time. I will offer up two methods of baking, one slow and one less slow, both resulting in a crispy skin. I myself prefer the slower method (1.5-2 hours at 350 degrees) only because you end up with the chicken skin wonderfully crispy, the fat of the chicken fully rendered, and the meat just melting off the bone. The quicker method (30 minutes at 500, 15-30 minutes at 350) crisps the skin, renders the fat but does not yield the melting meat experience.

Crispy Skin Sake Chicken with Ginger Sauce

Chicken Marinade
3-4 lbs bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (do NOT be tempted to go with the skinless or boneless - it will completely ruin the experience)
1 cup sake
1 cup soy sauce

Mix sake and soy sauce in a container where you will marinate the chicken. Add the chicken. Cover and marinate - at least 8 hours, if not overnight.

SLOW cooking method (1 -1.5 hour)
Preheat oven to 350. Carefully remove chicken from marinade, allowing as much of the marinade to drip off. Place chicken into roasting pan. Bake in the oven for 1 hour. Check every 15 minutes until skin is golden and crispy. Chicken should be golden, with crispy skin.

Serve with ginger sauce.

LESS SLOW cooking method (45 minutes-1 hour)
Preheat oven to 500. Carefully remove chicken from marinade, allowing as much of the marinade to drip off. Place chicken into roasting pan. Bake at 500 for 30 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for another 15-30 minutes. (depends on your oven) Chicken should be golden, with crispy skin.

Serve with ginger sauce.

Ginger Sauce
1/2 cup finely chopped ginger (in a mini prep food processor for the finer chop)
1/2 cup vegetable oil (grape seed, canola, safflower, corn are all fine choices)
3 tablespoons scallions, finely chopped
2 teaspoons salt
pepper to taste

Combine the ingredients together. Allow to sit for 30 minutes to allow flavors to develop.

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Lemon Mascarpone Cupcakes - Two Ways

For SYJ, JJ, JEL, HJL, EK, CA, TR, SWC, MKL, LCH, RH - My Lemon Cupcake tasting crew...

Initially when I started this blog, I had the idea that I would hunt and search and find the one perfect recipe that would mean my readers didn't need to find another recipe - they would have the one tried and true recipe at their fingertips, thereby eliminating any extra research.

I began my quest for a perfect lemon cupcake about one month ago. I started out with one recipe for the cake and a couple of different frosting attempts and had them taste tested by an expert panel of judges (basically close friends and family - my guinea pigs.) My judges told me hands down it was the perfect cake - dense, moist, rich, lemony and buttery all at the same time. But I found myself wanting something different - lighter, less dense. I decided to try yet another cupcake recipe - something lighter, fluffier and spongier, if you will. And I did - only to find myself torn with the all-important question...

In a cupcake - do you want fluffy or dense?

(In the photograph, dense is on the left, fluffy on the right.) In polling friends and family, I found that the two camps were fiercely loyal to their preference -dense or fluffy. The dense camp favored their cakes because they liked bite and substance to their cake - they also argued that dense was moister and more flavorful. The fluffy camp liked the lightness of the cake - you could eat more of them, you weren't so weighed down by them.

Finally I decided to do a head-to-head taste testing of the two cupcakes -dense vs. fluffy, and this past Saturday I did, for an expert panel of taste testers. I made one set of cupcakes with the fluffy cake another with the dense and frosted them with the same lemon mascarpone frosting. The results were surprising - when I tasted them next to one another, I actually found myself leaning more towards the denser cake, when I thought I was a fluffy girl. My best friend, self-proclaimed dense lover, carefully analyzed the merits of both cakes - dense was moist, rich and delicious, but she actually preferred the flavor of the fluffy. In her final analysis the frosting pretty much equated everything making the cupcakes virtually equal in her eyes.

In the end, I was unable to choose WHICH cupcake was the superior one - and ended up deciding to post both here. The dense lemon cupcake is from my favorite cupcake blogger Cheryl, who made a lemon cupcake with some lavender and rose frostings. I just took the lemon cupcake batter and used it. The fluffy lemon cupcake is from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook which is actually a lemon cake which I modified to make into cupcake portions. The mascarpone frosting is of my own creation, although the fundamentals of cream cheese/mascarpone frostings are pretty standard. You'll need to taste test both and decide if you like it...dense or fluffy.

DENSE Lemon Cupcakes
14 regular cupcakes

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup milk
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
zest of one lemon

1. Preheat oven to 350. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.
2. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until incorporated.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. Measure out milk and vanilla.
5. Add flour mixture and milk alternatively, beginning and ending with flour mixture.
6. Mix in lemon juice and lemon zest.
7. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean.
8. Let cool and then frost with Lemon Mascarpone Frosting

FLUFFY Lemon Cupcakes (from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook)
12 regular cupcakes (I've managed to squeeze out 14 a couple of times)

8 tablespoons of butter, softened (1 stick of butter)
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup self-rising flour
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin pan with liners.
2. Cream butter until smooth, add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes.
3. Add eggs one at a time.
4. Combine the flours and add in four parts, alternating with milk and lemon juice and zest, beating well after each addition.
5. Divide batter in muffin tins. Bake 20-25 minutes.
6. Cool and then ice with lemon mascarpone frosting.

Lemon Mascarpone Frosting (enough for 14 cupcakes)
4 tablespoons butter (2 oz or 1/2 stick), softened
8 oz of mascarpone cheese (I get 8 oz for $2.99 at Trader Joes)
2 1/2-3 cups of powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest

With a mixer, cream butter and mascarpone cheese together until well incorporated and fluffy. Add lemon juice and lemon zest and 1 cup of sugar. Gradually add more sugar - you will need more sugar for it to be pipeable (stiffer) and less if you are just going to spread it on the cake.

Egg Rolls - How to Host Your Own Eggroll Party!

To the original eggroll loving crew - SPL, HYK, HKL, CY, SB, RH

Back in my late twenties, before I got married, I had the great fortune of living with three other women over a two year period. We shared a house, lived separate professional lives (an attorney, a high school teacher, an elementary school teacher, a planner for a clothing company) but always came together under the roof as hungry women. I cooked for them all back then - and they were subject to my whims and my desires for what I wanted to cook on any given day - most of the time they were satisfied and most of the time they were all grateful. I was always willing to cook something new, and one day, while one of the women and I were walking, she mentioned her obsession with eggrolls and how much she loved them. I told her, "I can make them for you" and "Eggroll Party" was born.

Eggroll Party was simply this - I made the filling, the girls got together and rolled eggrolls while I waved my wooden spoon complaining about the lack of consistent quality in the rolled product. Then I would fry them. We would eat them while we continued to roll and then have our tally of how many we actually ate. (SPL and HKL always thought they ate the most, but the current official tally record holder has HKL at 9 eggrolls for lunch.)

Eggrolls are seemingly now in "style" as during Super Bowl Parties they seem to make their appearance. This past Super Bowl I was at a party where one of the guests brought eggrolls, freshly made from some restaurant - they were pretty good, but nothing compares to homemade, made from scratch, make your own filling, fry them up piping hot and eat them at your own risk of burning your mouth eggrolls. They are fun to do as a group and I promise, you do it once, you'll want to do it again and again. This could be great for your next Super Bowl party - practice it now and you'll be ready to do it next year.

The filling I make is of my own invention - I just put things in there that I like in my eggrolls - pork, cabbage, celery, onions, scallions, carrots, mungbean noodles - quickly fried up and then put inside the eggrolls. It is not a "traditional" eggroll - whatever that means. But it's a good filling and not hard to make.

The night before an eggroll party, I always pre-chop all my ingredients (chopping vegetables always takes LONGER than you expect) and put them in tupperware (or a plastic bag) ready to simply be fried up the next day. Once my guests begin arriving, I get one person going on the fry pan and the rest of the women limber up their fingers and think zen thoughts of how they will roll the perfect eggroll.

Joanne's Yummy Eggrolls (for lack of a more sophisticated description)
(makes approximately 40 - but depends on how fat you make them.)

1 lb of ground pork (usually get the leanest one they have available)
3 tablespoons of ginger
3 tablespoons of garlic
1/4 cup oyster sauce (Lee Kum Kee Brand please...former student's family)
1 head of cabbage, shredded
4 carrots, julienne (around 2 inches in length, 1/8 in thick)
4 stalks of celery, julienne
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 bunch of scallions, chopped
Salt
Pepper
Soy sauce (optional)
4 bunches of bean thread noodles (mung bean thread noodles - sometimes called vermicelli - available at your local Chinese Supermarket)
2 packs of eggrolls wrappers, defrosted (I like the Menlo brand)

4 cups of vegetable oil (I use safflower or canola for cleanness of flavor - some use peanut)

Unwrap the noodles and put them at the bottom of a very large mixing bowl. The noodle serves a key purpose beyond noodles being in the eggroll - the noodles will soak up any excess liquid from your eggroll mixture thereby preventing you from having juicy exploding eggrolls, and instead will have firm non-exploding eggrolls. You keep the noodles UNCOOKED and the steam from the hot vegetables and the liquid from the vegetables will soften them.

In a large frying pan, add 2 teaspoons of oil, ginger, garlic and pork. Work quickly, cooking up the pork and add the oyster sauce. The pork should be fully cooked. Pour the pork, liquid and all over the mung bean noodles.


In the same frypan, over medium heat, add another 2 teaspoons of oil, and add cabbage to the oil. (as much as will comfortable fit in the fry pan.) Sprinkle with a pinch of salt (or soy sauce -but soy sauce will mask the freshness of the vegetables more than salt.) and pepper. Stir fry until the cabbage is wilted, but not totally soggy. Add to the pork and noodle. To speed up the softening of the noodle process, cover the bowl with its hot ingredients with a heavy lid.

Continue batch frying all the vegetables cabbage, celery, onions, with salt and oil (but not scallions) and add to your big bowl of cooked ingredients until you are done frying. Add scallions to the bowl of cooked vegetables and slowly begin mixing the ingredients. If the noodles are soft enough, take kitchen shears and cut them into smaller pieces. If your noodles are NOT soft enough and there doesn't seem to be enough liquid or heat to make the noodles soft enough, add boiling water in 1/4 cup increments, slowly, mixing as you go, in order to produce the soft noodles. (I've only EVER had to do this once -and still am unclear as to why it happened that time.) Carefully mix the ingredients, so you have a uniform filling. It should look something like this:

In a heavy pan, heat up your 4 cups of oil over medium heat. (you can use less oil if you use a smaller pan - I always use a deep tiny pan that only requires 2 cups of oil - and I only fry 3-4 eggrolls at a time.)

Gather around your team of rollers -set them up with a tray and the eggroll filling in the center of the table. Have an bowl of beaten egg (for the glue) and then begin rolling.

Put 1/4 cup of filling in one corner of the wrapper.

Pull the corner up and tightly push it against the filling.

Roll the wrapper up until you are just shy of the middle of the wrapper. Fold over one side.

Fold over the other.

Keep rolling as tightly as possible

Seal the end with a dab of beaten egg (the glue)

Roll and seal tightly. While waiting for them to be fried, lay them SEAM SIDE DOWN.

Your oil is heated and ready when you put a wooden chopstick into the bottom of the oil and bubbles rise rapidly to the surface. Place eggrolls into your pot, not enough to crowd, giving them enough room to move around. Since the filling is completely cooked, you are looking to fry the eggroll skin to a golden brown.

Be careful when eating a super hot egg roll! We like it with the Vietnamese fresh chili garlic sauce or soy sauce. Others look for plum sauce.

A beautiful finished product...don't you want to have your own eggroll party?

Ginger Soy BBQ Chicken (닭 구이) - for your family or for a party

I've had quite a few people ask me for this recipe - and although I've been prepared to write it (most of my posts require me to have a photograph of the item) - just hadn't gotten around to it, until friend called me again and casually mentioned she was waiting for the recipe. I wasn't hiding the recipe nor do I consider it some specialty of mine that I need to "keep it a secret." It's a pretty straightforward marinade which just cooks up marvelously on the bbq or you can roast it in the oven.

I ALWAYS use thigh for this, only because it is so difficult to make dry. The marinade is subtly sweet, with the ginger prominently featured. If you do NOT like ginger, you can simply leave it out, only I would ask WHY - because ginger is such a great pair with chicken. (it sort of kills the "poultry" flavor.) I also recommend marinating overnight for optimum flavor. This is also another thing that freezes very well - and can be pulled out of the freezer for an easy dinner. I like this recipe because it is great just to serve for your family, but also can be made very well in bulk and goes very well at any bbq party.

Ginger Soy BBQ Chicken (닭 구이)

3-4 lbs chicken thighs, gently rinsed. (I buy the costco prepackaged packs - which are a pain to open especially since I always use the ENTIRE thing.) (1 lb is more or less 5 chicken thighs...so if you make 3 lbs, you'll have about 15 thighs and 4 lbs will yield 20.)

1/2 cup soy
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/4 cup mirin (for a sweeter marinade- this is my preference) or sake (for a less sweet version)
2 tablespoons chopped garlic (or more if you like it more garlicky)
4 tablespoons minced ginger, with its juice if possible
1 tablespoon roasted sesame seeds (Asian markets sell one that is already roasted. Look for Japanese or Korean ones)
1 teaspoon black pepper

Mix all the ingredients for the marinade together. Make sure the sugar is all dissolved. Individually dip each piece of chicken into the marinade and then put it into your storage container for marination. (see my beef flank post for details and pictures.) Marinade overnight.

Grill over medium heat until done. Alternatively, set your oven to broil, and broil for 10 minutes or less. (you can't really make it dry, you can really only burn it.)

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