No words.

I'm very happy that I have functional brachium and antebrachium muscles that allow me to make this.

Caramel apple coffee cake
Adapted from Pioneer Woman, with original input on the caramel sauce

For the cake:
3/4 stick softened butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 egg whites, whipped until stiff
1 apple, cored, peeled, and thinly sliced

For the streusel:
3/4 stick softened butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour, plus a little more if necessary
1/2 cup oats
1 tbsp cinnamon
Optional: 1/4 cup walnuts or pecans

For the caramel swirl:
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp water
3 tbsp butter
1/4 heavy cream or half-and-half
pinch salt
Optional: 1 tbsp liqueur, such as Calvados

First, make the caramel: Combine the sugar and water in a heavy saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Drop the heat to low and boil until the mixture is a rich amber color. Take the saucepan off the heat and stir in the butter. Add the half-and-half/heavy cream (and liqueur, if you're using it); the mixture will bubble vigorously. Continue to stir until the caramel is smooth. Set aside to cool while you make the cake.

Mix the dry ingredients for the cake together, and mix the milk and vanilla. Cream the butter and sugar. Alternately add flour and milk mixtures, beginning and ending with the flour mixture, and fold just until mixed. Gently fold in the egg whites. Pour the batter into a greased 9x9 cake pan. Pour the cooled caramel over the top and use a knife to swirl it in the batter. Layer the thin slices of apple on top of the cake.

To make the streusel, just combine all the ingredients until the mixture is made of large, pebble-like crumbs. Top the cake with the streusel. Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes, and serve warm with coffee or tea!

The many purposes of OkCupid

In order of importance:

1. Setting up hookups
2. Enabling me to procrastinate via blog.okcupid.com
3. Enabling friends around the world to compete for Creepiest Message Received
4. Enabling friends around the world to mock prime examples of duckface
5. Setting up meaningful relationships

This MD stomach is family-friendly, so I apologize for the more, hrm, tart content of the blog, but this thing is hilarious, not to mention pretty to look at. Faux science is such fun! Emphasis on observations about what makes a dating site profile picture attractive and why Lithuanians appear more willing to participate in bedroom enactments of a certain kind of fantasy.

Are we still family-friendly? No? Sigh. Kids these days.

So I asked Andy to pick up some soba on his way home from class* in order to make cold noodles with dipping sauce and a broccoli, tofu, and cashew stir-fry. Instead of the long, thin buckwheat noodles I envisioned, he brought home chuka soba from the Washington Square m2m. I was forced to make crispy chuka soba nests topped with broccoli, tofu, and cashew stir-fry instead.

The horror, Andy, the horror. Forty lashes with a wet noodle, variety to be determined. That'll teach you.

Chuka soba nests with vegetables

N.b.: I recommend trying to fry the noodle nests and make the sauce simultaneously.

1 package chuka soba

1 small head broccoli

5 carrots

1 package extra-firm tofu

1 cup miso broth

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sugar, or 1/4 tbsp Splenda

2 tbsp mirin

1 tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tbsp water to make a slurry

salt, pepper, Sriracha to taste

toasted cashews and chopped scallions for garnish

Blanch the vegetables, dice the tofu, and set aside. Boil the chuka soba 4 to 5 minutes or until al dente. Toss with sesame oil and allow to cool until it can be handled. Heat 3 tablespoons canola oil in a skillet. Form small portions of the noodles into nest shapes and fry until golden brown on each side. To make the sauce, brinch the miso, soy, sugar, and mirin to a gentle simmer, then gradually stir in the cornstarch slurry. Bring to a gentle boil and whisk constantly, cooking until it is reduced and thickened. Add salt, pepper, and Sriracha to taste. Mix in the vegetables and tofu. To serve, spoon vegetables, tofu, and sauce over a noodle nest, then sprinkle with cashews and scallions.

*Yes, he has a Saturday class. If you want to send a sympathy card, let me know, the cheesier the better.

Short bus

I'm special, in the euphemistic way. You see, when I see a recipe for sweet potato gnocchi calling for two pounds of sweet potatoes, I don't think, "Hannah, that's a lot of gnocchi, and only two of you to eat them. Maybe you should halve that recipe and use the remaining sweet potatoes to remake those sweet potato cinnamon rolls from this summer*." I think, "Hannah, go to the fridge and weigh out two pounds of sweet potatoes!"

Sigh.

They were really good after a brown in browned butter, topped with Argentinian Parmesan. And after a wine and cheese tasting at the medical school. And after a private apple tasting of $5 worth of farmers market apples.

These are, in order starting from the bottom middle, proceeding clockwise, and ending with the center apple, Cameo (the only one I'd eaten before), Caville Blanc, Melrose, Suncrisp, Arlet, Newtown Pippin, Jonathan, Winter Banana, and Northern Spy. I loved the Caville Blanc and the Suncrisp, the Jonathan and Melrose, not so much.

This is the Pippin, which was a close third to the Caville
and the Suncrisp. Very close indeed.

This is the Jonathan. Ew.

In short, this was a really good day. Except for that work thing. Don't remind me.

*Huh, I think I actually forgot to blog about those. They were amazing. AMAZING. I'll make them again soon** and post about the results.

**But I also want this exam's post-exam cooking spree to involve either croissants, homemade pasta, or a cookie exchange. Dilemmas.

Flip-flopping

This morning: "Man, I had better adapt this recipe and bake rather than fry the squash. It will be healthier, and plus I really, really need to study."

This evening: "Man, I have exactly enough olive oil left! And fried things are delicious. And I can always catch up on learning the arteries of the arm after lifting tonight. Let's do it."

And I'm so glad I did. The only bad thing about this recipe is the instruction to fry garlic until golden, then remove all the garlic and discard it. Who does that? I thinly sliced the garlic so that it would be easier to pick out of the oil and then mixed it into a yogurt sauce with scallions, lemon juice, dried mint, pomegranate seeds, salt, and pepper. Amazing... and yet, really, I should have made some other protein with this, perhaps chickpeas. I hate it when people use a hearty vegetable as a substitute for protein in vegetarian dishes, and yet I commit this sin constantly. Vegetables are too delicious.

On that note, Andy and I ate an entire bunch of kale in salad form with dinner tonight. And by Andy and I, I mean mostly me. Erm.

Superfreekeh

It's a very special grain. But I'd totally take it home to my mother.

Especially considering that I probably don't get enough protein in my diet, and this is a relatively high-protein grain. I put it in a salad with persimmon, pistachios, mixed greens, shallots and scallions (overkill? who cares). Dressing: olive oil, rice wine vinegar with a shot of white vinegar, a little lemon juice, salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, and dried mint. Andy ate it all before I had a chance to pack some away for lunch. I suppose that's a compliment?

Whatever it is, this stuff is delicious. It's my first time cooking it, and I might go with more traditional preparations next time just for fun, but it's definitely going to reappear in our diet.

Also, a final shout-out to my mom and aunt, who ran the NY Marathon this past weekend (and fed us delicious food at locations like this one) for Shoe 4 Africa. Well done!

Study skills

New strategy: now that I have finished reviewing all lectures at least once, I am going to type up outlines to every single lecture and then review those all weekend long. This will require epic amounts of Diet Coke. Also, bread stuffed with cheese, pesto, and tomato paste.

Mmm, cheese. Did you know that cheese contains casomorphin, an opioid? That is one of the reasons cheese can cause constipation (a notorious side effect of morphine) and is reputedly one of the reasons cheese is so hard to stop eating.

Now please excuse me while I have another slice and try to hit upon more pleasant dinner-oriented topics.

Pisum thank you

After making a series of neurology termination-related puns with a friend, I feel a little bit better about the fact that we are in our ninth week of this neverending unit and it is severely interfering with my food and exercise routines.

I suppose I should have expected this; it's what med school is supposed to be about. Up until this point, though, I could manage blogging a lot/working out a lot at the same time. Perhaps limb anatomy next week will be a bit of a respite? Or perhaps I should take this as a sign that my blogging/working out career is over and my medical career has begun to actually rear its head. Or perhaps I should take this as a sign that in order to manage exercise, cooking, and school, I shouldn't be spending time reading 1Q84. I was a little skeptical of it at first, considering that there's an episode of sporadic barely legal teen Asian lesbianism within the first 20 pages and I generally prefer my literature to be a little less like an idealistic porn scenario. But it's increasingly worth reading.

Here is pasta with peas, lemon juice, olive oil, and just a little taleggio. I thought of making taleggio crisps or taleggio ziti, but my resident garbage disposal got into the cheese and reduced it in quantity somewhat. No matter! It's so powerful that a little bit on top is all that is necessary.