San Diego Throwback

People, like our mothers, says "breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" Which seems pretty hypocritical when you watch her choke down a few cups of coffee and a handful of dry granola. But most people find out quickly that in the real world that breakfast is often a luxury and sleep takes precedent. We disagree with this notion, life is too short to not enjoy every opportunity for an experience. Breakfast should be an experience. Why not?

Every year we join Christian's parents for a weekend as they vacation in San Diego for a few weeks on the beach. Ocean Beach always seems to be the favorite destination for our accommodations. Perhaps its the soft ocean breeze and the nightly bustle in downtown. But maybe, just maybe, its about breakfast. In Ocean Beach everyone is selling the same thing: Acai bowls. So its all about trying them all and finding the one that speaks to you the most. From uber healthy bowls with chia, flax, and piles of fresh fruit to bowls covered in chocolate chips and other forms of sugar and everything in between. Ocean Beach has it all. Our go to is always the Tiki Port. Despite their lack of seating and often slow service, their acai bowls are unmatched in our minds.

But inevitabily the vacation ends, and with it our steady supply of acai bowls topped with delicious granola and fresh berries. So naturally when we came across acai in the frozen section at Costco we couldn't stop ourselves from imagining what it would be like to recreate these beauties at home. So this post is for Christian's mom... vacation all year long.

Acai Bowls with Banana Nut Granola

Since yogurt with store-bought granola was a staple breakfast for us, we decided to start here by working on creating a granola that was hand-crafted for optimal flavor and pairing with both breakfast options. Banana Nut was the obvious choice since its our #1 quick bread favorite.

Started out by just playing around a little and trying to recall some internal notes on our previous granola adventures from college. For starters, you need oats... lots and lots of oats. We start out by combining oats, walnuts (that have been chopped to about pea size pieces in our food processor), cinnamon, salt, a little flax seed (texture and we suppose it helps the nutritional value...), as well as some FRESHLY GRATED nutmeg. Note*: ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS grate your own nutmeg fresh; if you don't, you'll never know the great smell and flavor that come with it. Just trust us. Just do it.

Once you got that all together, heat some coconut oil, honey  (or agave if thats your jam), and some vanilla til its warmed up and mixed well. Vanilla is another thing thats worth doing high quality. Why eat imitation when the real thing is within reach. We have an amazing bottle from our recent trip to Cozumel. Once thats heated through, add a mashed banana and mix til combined.

Then it's as easy as combining the wet and the dry oil thoroughly mixed and everything is nice and hydrated. Then spread it out and bake until nicely browned. How much you bake it or mix it during the baking is up to you. if you like it chunky then don't mix it. We, however, mix it like crazy to make a nice fine granola, but thats personal preference. but you should let it cool and store in airtight container to optimize shelf-life.

We either pair this granola with yogurt and berries or we top an acai bowl with it. As for acai bowls, we use our much loved Vitamix blender to mix up some frozen acai puree, fresh banana and gala apples, as well as some frozen berries. Then we can top the acai cocktail with everything from coconut flake, to chocolate chips, and the granola in this recipe!

Banana Nut Granola

Dry Ingredients

• 3 C quick oats
• 2 C chopped walnuts
• 3 tbsp flax seed
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
• pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients

• Heavy 1/3 C Honey or Agave
• 1/4 C Coconut Oil
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1 ripe banana, mashed

Combine dry ingredients and mix. Heat all wet ingredients, except banana, til warm and combined. Add banana and whisk to combine. Fold wet ingredients into dry until thoroughly combined. Bake @ 350 degrees for 20-30 min mixing granola occasionally. Cool completely and store in airtight container.

Acai Mix

• 1/2 C Juice (cran-rasp is a fan favorite)
• 1 Banana, peeled and broken up
• 1 Apple, cored and quartered (Gala or Pink Lady is good and economical choice)
• 2 C Acai Puree
• 1 1/2 C Frozen Berry Medley

Combine ingredients in Vitamix blender in order written. Blend, increasing from variable 1 to 10 slowly, for 1-2min depending on consistency desired using the tamper to push ingredients into blade to ensure even blending. Serve immediately.

Sous Vide Ginger-Garlic Chicken

After a long day in lab (and getting home an hour before hungry Britt does), I don't always want to spend my whole evening cooking. What I cook, or if I even cook at all on any individual evening, is often determined by small results throughout the work day: PCR didn't work? Making fish tonight... Western worked? How 'bout a lasagna... Cells got contaminated? Fuck it. Going to Chick-Fil-A. Everyday is a new adventure, and there is no telling what I'm going to decide on. Today was a sous vide kind of day: cloudy, but work was good, so soup seemed too sad.

We came to sous vide by virtue of our best-friend Kevin. Last Christmas he went above and beyond (until this year when he got us a skydiving adventure) and shocked us with a cylindrical tube bearing the name Anova. This new gadget changed the way we cook. From steak all the way to salmon, this glorified fan with a heating element has far exceeded our expectations! 

Tonight I was feeling something with an Asian flare, and decided that something along the lines of chicken teriyaki with veggies would not only satisfy the hunger, but would be easy and practical enough for a typical Wednesday evening in any home. Here's what I came up with:

Sous Vide Ginger-Garlic Chicken and Spicy Brussel Sprouts

For starters, you could marinate the chicken overnight in the bag that you'll sous vide it in or just do it right before you cook (my preferred option with these on-the-fly recipes). For the marinade, I combine fresh garlic and a few thumbs worth of ginger that have been grated (a fine chop would work if you don't care to make a mess with the microplane) with some hoisin, soy sauce, and a little chicken stock. I sealed those up on the "wet" setting of my vacuum sealer with my marinade (you could do all this in a ziplock bag with the majority of the air removed as well).

I preheat my sous vide bath to 62.5℃ (145℉) and drop the sealed chicken in for 1-2hrs depending on the thickness of the breasts (clip to side of your water bath if using a ziplock bag). Note* 1-2 hours may seem like a pretty large time frame when cooking chicken breasts, but with sous vide you cook the meat to the temperature you want and you don't have to worry about over cooking for the most part. There is some amazing science and technique to sous vide that I implore you all to read about from Kenji Lopez-Alt. His book, The Food Lab and his amazing blog, Serious Eats both explore sous vide in pretty great detail and he has great recipes to boot!

While the chicken was cooking, I put some shaved brussel sprouts in a nonstick pan and cooked on medium heat until just underdone, seasoning to taste (as you always should). Then adding a modified version of the chicken marinade containing hoisin, garlic, ginger, red pepper flake, and a little chicken broth and cooking until liquid has boiled off and sprouts are tender. In the same pan that has been wiped clean, the sous-vide chicken is briefly seared (30 seconds per side or so on high heat) to give it some color and crisp. Its important to not sear to long to avoid overcooking as well as burning, this marinade will burn quickly.

And there you go! Simple, flavorful and quick dinner from one busy person who "doesn't like dry chicken you spent way to much time slaving over" to another. Sous vide can give you moist and flavor infused chicken with very little active cooking time. 

Sous Vide Ginger-Garlic Chicken and Spicy Brussel Sprouts

Chicken Marinade- Enough for 2 large or 4 smaller breasts

• 1/3 C Hoisin Sauce
• 2 tbsp Soy Sauce
• 2 thumbs of ginger, grated
• 6 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped
• 1/3 C Chicken Stock
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Brussel Sprouts

• 10oz shaved brussel sprouts
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flake
• 2tbsp Hoisin Sauce
• 1/4 C Chicken Stock
• 1 thumb of ginger, grated
• 4 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Welcome to Our Kitchen!

Welcome to the Periodic Kitchen! Our names are Christian and Brittaney, and we live in Pasadena, CA. We came here almost two years ago, after college, from Oregon (Sco' Ducks!) where we both got degrees in the sciences. Brittaney is a chemist for a medical device company and Christian is a researcher at local university. Although we both love our jobs, we like to leave work behind when we get home! Cooking and baking have been passions for both of us even before we met, and it's one of the activities that brought us together as a couple. Christian tends to think himself the chef and Brittaney his sous chef, but the power struggle in the trenches can often be palpable. This playful competition is often hard to have in our small studio apartment, but we do our best to whip up tasty, innovative, and even sometimes healthy dishes together that fit our busy lifestyles.

The kitchen is our personal lab and we always go in with experiments in mind. We have even been known to keep a notebook with our data tables and ideas. We always fall for the latest and greatest gadgets in the kitchen and are always looking for that extra inch of storage in our 50 sq. ft kitchen for our newest toy. But we also love our classical cooking repertoire, recipes from Christian's grandmother and Brittaney's great-grandmother fill our recipe box and are always a fan favorite.

In this blog, we hope to show y'all everything from classical recipes from grandma to new recipes with newer gadgets and gizmos, and even some of our daily life adventures. We love to cook and we hope that we can share that love with you!