Earthen Restaurant

1639 S Azusa Ave, Hacienda Heights, CA, 91745 (626) 964-1570

My sister and I went to Earthens for lunch and ordered green onion pancakes, sautéed vegetables, and tofu with mushrooms. The pancakes were a bit oily but the seasoning was very good. I loved the vegetables, they're my favorite kind of vegetables though (it was sautéed with garlic). The tofu with mushrooms weren't special. I would recommend coming here for the pancakes. I had tired their vegetable dumplings once and it had way too much pepper.

Little Boy Cookies

Little Boy Cookies

This time while I waited at my friend's house for bowling league to start, her little boy decided that we should decorate some cookies.

The little boy decorating them

And here he is putting the faces on the cookies. He actually wanted to make pirate cookies but since we didn't have enough time before we went bowling, he used M&Ms.

Rib Eye Roast

For Mr. Cutie Pie's birthday I made him a Rib Eye Roast, tater tots and for dessert, a Dove Ice Cream Bar (cause his parents already got him an ice cream cake). I've made a roast once before and it was more "medium done" than "medium rare", which is the way Mr. Cutie Pie likes it. This time around, I made sure to get the right cut of meat and took the roast out 10ºF before it reached the desired temperature for "medium rare" (145ºF). Since I don't eat meat I can't tell you how it turned out but Mr. Cutie Pie (and his dad) assured me it was very good.

Rib Eye Roast
Ingredients
4 to 6 lbs of Rib Eye Roast (I got a 5 lb roast which included 2 bones)
5 cloves of garlic cut into slivers
Salt and coarse black pepper
Instant read thermometer

Instructions
About and hour before roasting, remove the meat from the refridgerator and let it get to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 350°F
Make small slits all over the rib eye (about 7) and fill each slit with a few slices of garlic. Season liberally with the salt and coarse black pepper. Pleace the rib eye on a rack set inside a roasting pan and roast for about 2 hours to untill the thermometer inserted into the center of the meat registers 135ºF for medium rare.

Remove the meat to a platter, and tent with foil to keep warm and let it sit for about 15 min. still the thermometer reads 145ºF.

You can make a sauce with the drippings in the pan by adding wine, beef stock and some seasoning (such as fresh thyme leaves).

Thyme Au Jus
2 cups red wine
4 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves.

Place the roasting pan on top of the stove over 2 burners set on high heat. Add the wine to the pan drippings in the pan and cook over high heat untill reduced, scrapping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Add the stock and cook until reduced by half. Whisk in the thyme and season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Cookies

M&M and Chocolate Chip cookies

Since Mr. Cutie Pie doesn't like a lot of sweets, chocolate chip cookies are just about the only thing I know he'll eat for sure. A lot of the cookies I've made in the past have been too flat for my taste. The perfect cookie size and texture for me would be fat, soft and chewy. I usually followed the recipe on the back of NESTLÉ®TOLL HOUSE® Morsels packages but the cookies were too thin for me. I've also tried Alton Brown's recipe for The Chewy cookie and although it was chewy, the cookies were still too thin.

I wanted cookies like the ones I bought from Campitelli Cookies . I finally found the recipe while looking through Mr. Cutie Pie's mom's cook books. I didn't have a lot of unsalted butter (less than ⅓) so I looked for cookie recipes that used a combination of butter and shortening. The whole recipe needed ⅔ butter and ⅔ shortening so I just cut everything in half. The recipe also stated that for a rounder cookie, add another half a cup of flour. The resulting cookies were exactly to my standards. The only difference I would make next time would be to make the cookies bigger.

Reese's pieces cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies
⅔ cup shortening
⅔ cup butter or margarine, softened (I used unsalted butter)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 eggs (room temperature)
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
12 oz semisweet chocolate pieces (1 ½ cups)

Heat oven to 375°F. Mix thoroughly shortening, butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Stir in remaining ingredients. (For a softer, rounder cookie, add an extra½ cups flour)

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown (if you're making large cookies, bake for about 12 minutes but do not over bake). Cool slightly before removing from baking sheet.

About 7 dozen cookies.

Southern Biscuits

After making the Buttermilk Biscuits, I was a bit disappointed in the taste so I decided to make Alton Brown's Southern Biscuits and his had a much more buttery taste and a flakier texture. I think the reason why the Southern Biscuits rose nicely was that the biscuits were placed just touching instead of a an inch or two apart.

Buttermilk Biscuits

I got the recipe for these buttermilk biscuits from my newly purchased Baking Illustrated - Cook's Illustrated. I've made two other thing (Classic Brownies and Boston Cream Pie) using Cook's Illustrated recipes and wasn't thrilled with the results. This time around, I'm sad to say that I had similar results; perhaps I just have too high a hopes for Cook's Illustrated.

Rich Marble Pound Cake w/ confetti icing

I was over at a friend's house waiting for our bowling league to start so I decided to bake something. I was flipping through her many cake and dessert books and trying to match what she had available in the fridge for me to use and decided to make this pound cake.

She didn't have a stand mixer but she had a hand held mixer. The directions for the pound cake was to use a stand mixer with the flat beater adjusted on

Ingredients
3 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 granulated sugar, divided
1/2 cup natural (not Dutch-processed) cocoa powder
6 tablespoons water
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 large eggs
1/2 cup whole milk

To make the cake: ~haven't been back to her house so can't complete the instructions at this time~

Hot Vanilla Souffle

I've always wanted to make souffles because of the supposed difficulty involved in making sure they rose properly. Turned out it didn't take much, just don't open the oven door. This is because a sudden exposure to cold air could cause the souffles to collapse. I got this recipe on Food Network.

baking in the oven and rising nicely

We had to go to the gym from an hour so by the time we got back, they collapsed =/ Souffles will only hold their shape for about 20min so it's recommended to eat them asap.

my collapsed souffle

my collapsed souffle w/ chocolate sauce