Chocolate snickerdoodles

I had a real chocolate craving the other day, and I don't have any chocolate hanging around. For sort of the same reasons I don't have any ice cream sitting around. That stuff disappears too quickly; I have no idea where it goes to. So I just don't buy it. But, what to do when you really want chocolate??!? Turned out I did have cocoa powder, so I looked up a recipe for chocolate crinkle cookies, and I was all set to make them, when I realized that I didn't have any powdered sugar to roll them in. But then I came up with an even better idea! Roll them in cinnamon and sugar! I don't know if this is the only definition of a snickerdoodle, but it seemed like a damn good idea to me.

They got a pretty high Ed-rating, too, so clearly, the idea wasn't completely whacko.

Chocolate Snickerdoodles
Made 26 cookies

1 stick of butter (1/2C), room temperature
3/4C sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1-2/3C flour
1/2C unsweetened cocoa powder
1-1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt

2 tbs cinnamon
1/4C sugar

Cream the butter and the sugar. Once it's soft and homogenous, add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until the mixture is smooth between each one. Then add the vanilla. Then dump all the dry stuff (except the cinnamon and sugar) on top of the batter, mix together the dry stuff lightly, and then stir it into the batter. It may feel a little dry, that's ok, just get it all incorporated.

Preheat your oven to 325F. Grease two cookie sheets. Roll the cookie dough into small, bite-sized balls, using your hands.

In a small bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon. Roll each cookie in the cinnamon mixture, and place on the greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-15min, until the tops of the cookies are a little cracked. Don't overbake the cookies! Chewy cookies > crunchy cookies, always.




(Rolling the cookies in cinnamon and sugar)

Gyoza

We'd picked up some gyoza wrappers at the Super88 last time we were there, but then I went and stole them from our freezer and brought them to Amherst, where Ali and I played at being Chinese factory workers frantically making gyoza. The frantic part comes in because we were really hungry, and had discovered that you couldn't just use the shells as a taco - they really wanted to be cooked.

The filling was somewhat uninspired, but it was tasty when wrapped in gyoza wrapper. I think it was diced cabbage, onions, carrots, pork meat, and lots of soy sauce. The smaller you dice stuff, the more even the filling, and then it'll hold together better.

I should have taken a photo of the wrappers - they were like four inches across, and round. I put 1-2 tbs of filling in each one, and then folded them over on themselves to make a taco shape. I used some water to seal the edge, spreading the water with my finger. Then I spread a little more water on one of the ridge sides, and sort of pressed the ridge up against itself bit by bit, until it made a pretty ridge-y thing. I can't really describe it any better than that. You just have to play around.

Once we had a plateful of these guys made, we heated some oil in the frying pan, and fried the dumplings on medium-high heat until they were golden brown on one side. At that point I dumped some amount of water (I think 1/3C?) into the pan, and covered it, and cooked for another 5-7 minutes or so, until the water was mostly gone, and the dumplings looked done. They were delicious! But I'm not sure if they're worth making just for eating - maybe for a dumpling party, but I thought it was a lot of work!

Kale with sausage and garlic

I was getting sick of crunchy kale, my usual use for the green stuff, and I had a sausage in the fridge, so I figured it was time to try something new. It was pretty tasty, and I made it all pretty by putting it on a plate over some sliced sweet potatoes, and topping it with some pan-fried oyster mushrooms. Pretty things taste better.

The kale itself was pretty simple. I chopped the sausage up into bits (a more flavorful sausage would have been good, but I had a mild one. It was fine). I cooked that in a separate pan, just to cook it through. In the main pan, I heated some olive oil, then toasted some slices of garlic. Once they were golden brown, I added the chopped kale, as much as you can fit in the pan. I threw in some lemon juice and some kosher salt, and then covered it and let it cook away. When the kale was properly wilted, and the sausage was cooked, I combined the two, and we ate it.

This got an approving Ed-rating. Another fine way to eat your greens!

Also, sweet potatoes sliced thinly, tossed with olive oil and salt, and baked at 400F for 10 minutes are pretty delicious.

Tapas

Left to his own devices, Ed came home with all sorts of random ingredients, and announced that we were making tapas for dinner. To me, this just sounds like a lot of cleanup after, because you're making like five different courses and only eating little bits of them, but it was delicious enough to be worthwhile.

We made fried sardines - fresh sardines! I've never had them before, they were very pretty and shiny. They also tasted pretty good. Meaty, and not salty like the canned ones. I mean, we also deep-fried them, so of course they were delicious. We served them with a dipping sauce, that was a mix of greek yogurt and sriracha, with some salt sprinkled on top. And some fresh-squeezed lemon over the fish. Very delicious!

Shiny!


We also made some toasted bread things - the first one was with black forest bacon bits, shallots caramelized in the bacon grease, and topped with smoked cheese. It was delicious. The second toasted bread thing was toasted bread, topped with a mixture of beet greens and feta cheese and lemon juice.

There is also plenty of toasted garlic and kosher salt in this dish.


We also made a beet-and-feta cheese salad. This was tasty. Ed had bought some golden beets when he bought the sardines (hence the beet greens), so I boiled and peeled them, then diced them and tossed in vinaigrette of lemon juice, brown sugar, and olive oil. I added chunks of feta, toasted walnuts, and some pomegranate seeds, and I thought the salad was delicious. Ed wasn't into the pomegranate seeds. Apparently he doesn't like the taste. More for me!


And we also had some random olives scattered about. Overall, a very delicious meal! And the cleanup wasn't too bad.

Endive gratin

Forgive the horrible photo - I'm usually bad at taking food photos, but this is worse than most. These gratinéed endives were delicious, but I don't know if they were that much better than just pan-fried endives. Worth making at least once, though! There are a lot of recipes out there for Endive gratin, I basically followed this one, but I'll put my steps below anyway.

Endive Gratin
Made enough for two servings

2 endives
4 pieces of black forest ham
gruyere cheese (enough for 1/2C grated)
2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
1C milk
salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350F. Cut the endives in half, lengthwise.

Melt the butter in a frying pan, and then add the flour and whisk, until it makes a paste. Cook on low for a minute, and then add the milk, still whisking. Remove the sauce from the heat, and add the salt and pepper. Taste. Season. Taste. Season.

Wrap each endive-half in a piece of ham. Place them in a cassarole dish, and pour the sauce all over their tops. Sprinkle the grated cheese on top.

Bake for 40-50 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is browned on top. Serve them one at a time, and enjoy!


This was part of the main course for the thank-you dinner for Kat. We also had some [leftover] boef bourguinon in puff pastry rounds, and some sauteed mushrooms. Very, very delicious.

French Onion Soup

After rescuing some cheese from the Gagarins' fridge (they lost power, and were leaving for Turkey, so I took away some perishable stuff), we have lots of cheese. It's pretty yummy stuff, one block is aged and one is smoked, both sort of semi-soft cheddar-like cheeses, not sure what they actually are. Anyway, we decided that French onion soup would be a good way to use the cheese, so embarked on that endeavor. It wasn't too hard, actually, but most recipes call for much more cooking time than we used. Hey, we were hungry. We did let the onions fully caramelize, but didn't both cooking the broth that much longer. End result was quite delicious, although anything with toasty bread and melted cheese is going to be good, in my book.

French Onion Soup
Made enough for two people

4 onions
olive oil
kosher salt
~2C chicken stock
~2tbs balsamic vinegar
1/4C apple cider (optional)
several sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf

~2C croutons
~1.5C grated cheese. Swiss or gruyere or emmental are probably best.

First step: caramelize the onions. Basically just cook them until they turn golden brown. We cut them in half, and then into slices, so they made long pieces of onion, and then cooked them in a dutch oven with some olive oil and a pinch of salt until they were delicious and brown and soft. Keep the heat relatively low; you don't want to burn them, just cook them. Stir occasionally. Add oil or butter as necessary, although we were fine this time.

Meanwhile, turn some old bread into croutons. Cut into pieces and bake for 10-15min, until it's pretty hard. If they're soft, they'll just turn to goo when added to the soup.

Once the onions are caramelized, add the chicken stock and the vinegar and the thyme and bay leaf. If we'd had any white wine, we would have added that, too. We let that cook for another 10 minutes or so, and then called it done.

Season the soup to taste for salt and pepper. Then pour it into soup bowls that are oven safe. Something with straight sides and a narrow mouth would be best, but we just used regular bowls. Top the soup with croutons, and then the cheese. Put the bowls on a baking sheet (to catch drips), and broil until the cheese has melted and is starting to brown a bit.

It's done! eat.





Headless Ed eating onion soup.