We play with our food

2012-01-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

And this one is even older; we made these rolls for Thanksgiving. But it's such a pretty picture that I felt the need to post the recipe. I wanted some dinner rolls, but I don't really like the bland, uniform, squishy rolls that most people consider dinner rolls. I remember loving four-leaf clover rolls back in the day, so searched for a recipe, and then realized that I didn't have enough muffin tins to make four-leaf clover rolls, so just made balls and let them rise in a cake pan. It worked, and the rolls were quite delicious - crusty on the top, delicate and almost sweet on the inside, and perfect for mopping up bits of gravy and whatnot.

I used this recipe, although I'll repost below. I mostly stayed true to the recipe... as true as I ever stay.

Thanksgiving dinner rolls

Made 24 rolls

1/2C warm water

1tsp sugar

2 tbs yeast

3/4C warm milk

2 tbs melted butter

1/4C sugar

1.5tsp salt

2 whole eggs

4C flour

1 egg yolk, for brushing.

Put the water, the teaspoon of sugar, and the yeast together in a big bowl. Let that sit for 5min or so, and then add the other liquid things and sugar. Add the flour one cup at a time; after the first cup add the salt. When the dough gets too stiff to stir, dump it out on a floured table and knead until smooth, about 5-10min. Then put it back in a bowl (preferably a clean, greased one), and let it rise about an hour, until doubled in bulk.

After an hour, dump the dough back onto a floured surface, and divide into 24 equal-sized chunks. Grease two round cake tins, and roll each chunk of dough into a ball. Place the balls in the cake pans at equal intervals. They probably won't be touching each other - that's fine, because they'll expand as they rise. Let them rise again for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 400F. Mix the egg yolk with 2tsp of water, and brush the wash gently over the now-risen rolls. Cook for 10-15min, checking occasionally and removing them when they're golden-brown.

These tasted best on the same day they were made, but I just re-warmed them in the oven (400F for 10min) the following day (Thanksgiving), and they were pretty tasty.

Cauliflower mac and cheese

2012-01-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

I guess I have a bit of a backlog here of photos I took of tasty food - this one is from after I got back from Rumford with the team. I had volunteered to Peter that I take some of the leftover food (we had lots), and he was thrilled, so packed me up four shopping bags worth of leftovers. Luckily, skiers eat relatively healthily, and it's all food that I like, but I now have like five bags of apples in the bottom of my fridge, and none of them are crispy enough for my tastes when it comes to eating raw apples. I'm whittling them down by putting an apple in my oatmeal every day.

We also now are in possession of the largest hunk of cheddar cheese I've ever seen, as well as four packs of english muffins, a 3lb box of macaroni, and three big tubs of yogurt. The yogurt I can use up on the oatmeal with the apples, but for the cheese and macaroni, well, there's only one solution there - mac 'n' cheese! I decided that I wanted to make this semi-healthy, so put a cauliflower in it, like this recipe.

The end result was pretty good, but given that it made a whole pan, we're still slowly working on the leftovers. The topping was ground up english muffins and more cheese, and I doubled the amount of cheese in the actual recipe - 1/2C is not enough for a full pan of this stuff! But the cauliflower was a good idea, and it got a passable Ed-rating. I think we also added some garlic, and some chopped up ancho chile, just for more flavor.

I'd recommend this - tasty, filling, and even has vegetables in it.

Chicken Tangine

2012-01-17T07:56:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, Ed got me a whole bunch of spices. Some of them were just normal spices, since we'd been running out anyway, but some were new and exciting! We now have things like Za'atar, preserved lemons, ancho chiles, two kinds of curry powders, whole vanilla beans, mustard seeds, tarragon... the list goes on. Anyway, having all sorts of exciting spices makes me want to try out all sorts of new and exciting dishes, and the preserved lemons put chicken tangine into my head as something to try. It ended up being absolutely delicious, although I shouldn't have doubled every spice in the recipe... it didn't look flavorful enough, but yeah, I overdid it a bit. The recipe below has the original amount of spices.

Chicken Tangine

Made enough for five

1 pack of chicken legs (8 legs?)

1 bunch of collard greens

Olive oil, as needed

1 red onion

2 tbs minced fresh ginger

5 cloves minced fresh garlic

1 preserved lemon

2" piece of cinnamon

2 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

2C stock

4 whole green cardamom pods

2 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste

1/2 tsp grains of paradise (or black pepper)

1/4tsp ground turmeric

1/4tsp ground nutmet

1/4tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 325F.

In a heavy dutch oven type dish, heat the olive oil and start browning the chicken legs. I took off all the skin, first. In a separate frying pan, begin to sweat the onions in some olive oil and a little salt, with the stick of cinnamon. You could use the dutch oven for everything, to cut down on dishes, but that would have taken too long.

Onions in.

10-15min later, they were getting nicely caramelized.

Toast the ground spices, and ginger and garlic, in either the dutch oven or frying pan, whichever has finished its task of browning things first. Toast the spices for 5 minutes or so, and then add the chicken back in and toss everything around to coat.

Add the collards (rinsed and chopped), and the preserved lemon, and then cover with stock. If that isn't enough liquid, add more water, until the chicken is mostly covered. Bring everything to a simmer in the dutch oven, and cook for 3-4 minutes, and then transfer to the oven for 1-1.5hrs. The liquid will reduce, and the meat will fall off the bones. It is utter deliciousness. Let it rest for 10 minutes, try to find the piece of cinnamon and the cardamom pods, and serve over rice.

Belgian Waffles

2012-01-12T08:02:00.000-08:00

We wanted waffles this morning, or at least, Ed thought that maybe if I made waffles, he would get his butt out of bed faster, but it didn't really work too well. Maybe part of that is my fault, because I wanted Belgian waffles, and that is a slightly more complicated recipe than the usual King Arthur Flour pancake recipe I use. This one uses yeast, and beaten egg whites, and I thought it was pretty tasty - nice and crispy on the outside, but moist and delicious on the inside.

But, but... why is all the coffee gone?

First you mix up all the dough bits, then you whip the egg whites, and fold them in. Then let it sit for 20min or so, and then you cook them!

Belgian Waffles

Made 7 waffles

1/2C warm water

3/4tsp yeast

1/2tsp sugar

1/2C milk

1 egg, separated

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbs melted butter

1/4tsp salt

1.5C sifted flour

1 tbs sugar

Put the warm water, yeast, and 1/2tsp sugar into a bowl. Dump in the milk, egg yolk, vanilla, butter, salt, and flour. Beat the egg white to a soft peak, and fold into the batter. Let it sit for 20 minutes, and then cook on a waffle iron.

Before egg whites.

After egg whites.

mmmmm.

Chocolate lava cake

2011-12-14T09:02:00.001-08:00

I wanted to make a chocolate lava cake the other day, but we don't have little soufflé moulds, so I just made one cake, in our smallest pyrex bowl. It was really delicious, and got a full-star Ed-rating. As pictured below.

Luckily, I saved the cake from Ed before he actually took a bite out. I highly recommend making this.

Chocolate lava cake
The recipe is from here, the NYT molten chocolate magic. I cut it in half.
1/4C butter (half a stick)
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2Tbs sugar
1tsp flour

Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. As it melts, beat together the egg and egg yolk and sugar. Let the chocolate cool just enough so it won't cook the eggs, and then mix it in. Beat in the flour, until just combined.

Butter the mold, and dust it with cocoa powder. Pour in the batter. Cook at 450 for 8 minutes, until it is just set.

Invert the mold, dump the cake on a plate, and dust with powdered sugar. Feel free to garnish with raspberries and whipped cream =)

Popovers, update

2011-12-02T18:25:00.000-08:00

So, we figured out a great popover recipe over last winter, but we've been tweaking. Basically, they weren't always rising as high as we thought they should be rising, and after adjusting every variable in the equation, I finally stumbled upon the reason. The ingredients just have to be warm enough. Also, you can't beat the batter too much, or you'll work the flour too much and it'll be all smooth and bread-like and not at all shaggy and rough like it should be.

The original recipe, which I'll retype below just for ease of use, is still a winner. These are pretty much my favorite bready thing to go along with dinner, and I think Ed's too.

Popovers

2 eggs, beaten

1 tbs butter

1C milk

1C flour

1 big pinch of kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 425F. Grease 8 muffin tins really well. Melt the butter in the microwave. Add the milk. Put that in the microwave too, until it's warm to the touch. Add the eggs, and whisk this mixture really, really, thoroughly.

Basically, you want the ingredients to be warm, so that when the popovers hit the very-hot oven, all the oven's heat will go into puffing them up, not into warming up the batter. You want the eggs very well whisked, because they're most of what provide the structure for the puffing action.

Add the flour and the salt to the liquids. Whisk to combine. Pour the batter into the greased muffin tins, 3/4-all the way full.

Cook at 425 for 15 minutes, without opening the oven door. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350 and cook another 20 minutes. Consume!

Puffy, golden, shaggy, and delicious.

Look at all that custard-y hole-y goodness! Yummm.

Also, the meal shown with these delicious morsels was a turkey, white bean, kale soup. With caramelized onions and lots of garlic. That was also tasty.

Gingerbread latte

2011-12-01T06:20:00.000-08:00

The other day, after some really fun orienteering training, Becky suggested that we stop by a Starbucks that was just around the corner from the park we were in. I think she used some excuse like "hot chocolate is a great recovery food", but I don't need much convincing when it comes to hot sweet drinks after a run. Anyway, I was all set to get a hot chocolate, when I saw the gingerbread latte on the board. I've never actually had one of those seasonal drinks from Starbucks, normally I don't go in there for anything other than a refill of my coffee mug, but I figured hey, if Becky says it's good, I may as well try it.

Holy crap! Those things are amazing! No wonder the world is addicted to $4 seasonal coffees!

Becky has no idea the damage she has wrought. Not only has she introduced me to something delicious, but she introduced me to something delicious that is too expensive for my budget, and that is only available part of the year. This is Not Good.

Luckily, I'm not the only person with this dilemma. I found this site. I made their gingerbread latte, with a couple tweaks, and it was delicious. Crisis averted! Now I can have my very own 300-calorie coffee drinks whenever I want one! Making an entire latte is probably too much work for an average morning, but I do think the syrup will be good just in normal coffee.

No Ed-rating for this, although maybe he'll try it in hot chocolate. He'll probably just turn up his nose, though, he thinks addictions are for wusses.

Gingerbread syrup
2C water
1.5C sugar
2 tsp molasses
2-1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp peppercorns
1 tsp whole cloves

(Yes, I use imitation vanilla. It tastes fine)

Put everything in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring somewhat continuously. After 10min, I tasted it, and decided that it was as spicy as I liked it, so I strained the syrup through a strainer into a measuring cup. Then I put it back in the pot, sans peppercorns and cloves, and continued to simmer for another 10 minutes, until the liquid ran off the spoon in a continuous stream, rather than in drops. It made just about two cups of liquid, so I put most of it in canning jars and just let them seal themselves.

The result is a sweet, spicy, flavorful syrup. Most delicious! Maybe it isn't exactly what you get at Starbucks, but it was a helluva lot cheaper, and tastes good enough to do the trick when I'm craving a $4 fancy coffee.

It made a really dark syrup. I'm going to pretend that makes it even more delicious. To make the latte, I microwaved ~1/2C of 2% milk until it was foamy, poured in the coffee, and then added probably 2tbs of syrup. Whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon completed the fruity tooty drink!

And of course, then came the test- is it possible to whip just two tablespoons of heavy cream? The answer is: barely. And it makes a mess.

Chocolate snickerdoodles

2011-11-30T10:10:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-22T19:15:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-02T18:06:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Salad of apple, fennel, toasted pecans and pomegranate seeds

2011-10-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

I saw this recipe initially on Simple Bites, and I was intrigued, mostly because I love pomegranate seeds and toasted pecans. I was less convinced about the fennel - I've had fennel about four times in my life. The first time, I was little, and I determined that I hated it. The second time, was last year, and it was roasted, and I decided it was ok. The third time was a few months ago, and someone else was cooking it, and I ate it out of politeness, and it was actually ok. But I've never had raw fennel, and I was worried that the anise flavor would totally turn me off. Luckily, mixed with apple, and in a fruity dressing, it was good!

The best part about this is definitely whacking the pomegranate seeds out of its shell. Cut the pomegranate in half, hold it cut-side down over a large (I repeat: LARGE) bowl, and start thwacking the back of it with a wooden spoon. Use your wrist. The seeds will just pop out, and it is a very good way to relieve tension and release some frustration.

For the pecans, chop them roughly and toast them for 5-10 minutes in a 350F oven. Don't over cook them, as then they'll just be burnt. I usually set the timer for 5min, and then check every minute until they look and smell properly toasty.

Cut up the fennel bulb and an apple, toss all four ingredients together, and you have a salad!

For the dressing, I used leftover apricot juice from the canned apricots I'd used for the tart - they were packed in pear juice, but it was all orange from housing apricots - mixed with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Pretty simple, although I'm sure a fancier dressing would be just as delicious, if not more so.

Overall, a very tasty salad. Will definitely make again.

Apricot tart with frangipane

2011-10-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

Before the World Orienteering Champs, I needed some US Team clothing, and I had missed the order deadline. Kat came to the rescue, because she can't really orienteer anymore (at least to the level she considers worthwhile to do it at, due to injuries), so she sold me a bunch of her US Team clothing. And instead of charging me in full, we made a deal where I'd cook her dinner some night. This sounds like a win-win situation to me, so yesterday I headed down to New Haven for the night, to have some quality girl-time and enjoy some really tasty food.

Given the rainy, cold weather, I was feeling inspired by Belgian cuisine. I decided on a four-course meal, although eventually gave up on trying to pair Belgian beer with each course, because the liquor store I visited was inadequate. The first course was mussels, in a white-wine butter sauce with thyme, and crusty french bread. Then the main course was an endive gratin with ham and gruyere, with boef bourguinon in puff pastry shells. Then a salad with fennel, apple, toasted pecans and pomegranate seeds, and finally, an apricot frangipane tart. The boef bourguinon was actually left over, from the night before, at Peter and Gail's house, so that made the whole thing pretty quick to make. My favorite dish was definitely the tart, so I'm going to start with that recipe, and work backwards!

Apricot and frangipane tart on puff pastry

Frangipane:
3 tbs butter
1/4C sugar
1 egg
1/2C almond meal
1/2tsp almond extract

Apricot tart:
1 can apricot halves
2/3 of a sheet puff pastry

For the frangipane, you basically make a cookie. Cream the butter with the sugar, and then stir in the egg and the almond extract. Then stir in the almond meal. You could also take blanched almonds and grind them up in a food processor, if you don't have almond meal. It makes a loose cookie dough thing.

To assemble the tart, break or cut the puff pastry into long strips (it comes folded in thirds, so if you don't bother thawing it, it'll just crack at the folds, and that makes a convenient size for tarts. Spread some of the frangipane over the frozen puff pastry leaving a little room around the edges, and then plop on some apricots.

Bake at 425 for about 20 minutes, until the edges of the puff pastry are starting to get golden brown. Pull out, let it cool a bit, and eat!

Garlic bread

2011-10-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

This was one of those awesome recipes that was super easy, and tasted delicious. You could either make your own bread, or use an existing loaf of bread. We made our own, just because we do things like that. Once the bread was baked, we cut it in half, and spread the open halves with butter, diced garlic, diced chives, and a sprinkle of kosher salt. Then we baked at 400F for another 10 minutes or so, until it was crispy. If it isn't crisping up fast enough, you could broil it. I'd highly recommend making this, because it looked pretty, tasted delicious, and was super duper easy to make. The chives aren't necessary at all, we just had some. You could replace with anything green (parsley, basil, spinach, etc), just because it looks pretty to have green stuff on there. Another addition that would be delicious is grated cheese. Do it.

Bacon Cheddar Chive Biscuits

2011-10-03T18:30:00.000-07:00

I made these, and they were scrumptious. I added about two tablespoons of chopped chives. Other than that, I actually followed a recipe! The biscuits were tender and flaky, flavored like bacon and cheese, crunchy on the outside, and pure deliciousness. I had one for breakfast the next day (not sure how any of them survived from dinner, but somehow, there was one leftover), and it was still tender and flaky, though less crispy on the outside. These DEFINITELY got a good Ed-rating. But then again, it's hard to go wrong with good, thick-cut, smoky bacon from Carl's sausage kitchen.

I've reprinted the recipe below, in my words and for my files. But for the true foodie effect, I recommend heading over to pioneer woman and following her recipe. Actually, now that I look at this, I did change some things. Using all butter instead of crisco, and adding 1/4tsp of salt. Oops.

Bacon Cheddar Chive Biscuits
2C flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp kosher salt
4 tbs frozen butter
1/4C olive oil
10tbs milk
1 egg
1C grated cheese
6 pieces bacon
3tbs chopped chives
1C diced onion

First, deal with the bacon: lay the strips out on a cooling rack, placed over a baking sheet, and bake for 10-20 minutes at 350F, until it is nicely browned and most of the fat has rendered out. Use some of that fat to sweat the onion, with a pinch of salt to help it along. Once the bacon has cooled, crumble it. Bump the oven to 400F.

Mix all the dry goods together. Using the big holes on a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into the dry stuff. Mix that around with your finger tips (pinch it) for about a minute, then let it be. Stir in the cheese, crumbled bacon, chives, and onion. Mix all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Dump the wet ingredients into the dry. Stir just until combined - no more. Plop biscuit-sized rounds of dough onto a greased baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Roasted eggplant with green tahini sauce

2011-09-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

I found a pomegranate at the store, and that immediately made me think of a recipe from Ottolenghi: the cookbook, that was garnished with pomegranate seeds. Obviously, you can't make a recipe until you have the right garnish! Anyway, it's also eggplant season, so I thought maybe this would be a nice new way to cook eggplant. It ended up only getting a so-so Ed-rating, because the eggplant was too cooked through. He said it was good, but only because of the sauce and the pomegranate seeds. Ah well, I liked it. Also, it was nice and simple to make, always a bonus.

Roasted eggplant with green tahini sauce
1 eggplant
olive oil
kosher salt
1C tahini
1 lemon
1-2 handfuls spinach or parsley
1/2 pomegranate
Basil leaves for garnish

Start by preheating your oven to 425F. Cut the eggplant into wedges - I cut it in half width-wise, and then each of those halves in half, so that I had four half-cylinders. The fatter end I cut into four wedges each, the skinny end was three wedges. Then brush olive oil on all the white parts of the eggplant, and stand upright on it's skin on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt, and bake for 20-35 minutes, until it's browning.

Ed's suggestion was to grill the eggplant, so that it didn't get as mushy, but still got brown. That would work, if we had a grill.

For the sauce, mix 1C of tahini with the juice of a lemon, a few handfuls of spinach or parsley (the original recipe called for parsley, but I didn't have any, and spinach is also green). Add ~1/2 tsp kosher salt, and a tablespoon or so of water. Put all this into a food processor, and like three seconds later you'll have the sauce.

For the pomegranate, I've discovered that the best and easiest way to get the seeds out is also great for releasing frustration. Cut the pomegranate in half, and then hold it, open-side down, over a large bowl. Take a wooden spoon, and whack the skin of the pomegranate with the back of the spoon, and the seeds all start popping out. This is immensely satisfying.

Once the eggplant is done, take it out of the oven and arrange on a big platter. Pour some sauce over the top, garnish liberally with pomegranate seeds, and top with some basil leaves, if you have them.

I should mention that while the eggplant only got so-so reviews, we were eating this with some porkchops that Ed had just picked up from Carl's Sausage Kitchen, up in Lynn. He's been in Lynn a lot, because that's where we're holding an orienteering meet this fall, and he's the meet director. Anyway, he came back with two pork chops that were cut super duper thick, and braised them in apple cider and a little smoked maple syrup. They came out utterly delicious. Most and tender! Also, because they're cut thick and with the bone on, you basically have a rib to suck on once you've eaten all the meat.

Below is a series of photos of Ed in various states of utter contentment, sucking on a rib.

Apple cider-glazed butternut squash

2011-09-23T08:19:00.001-07:00

Woo, more cider recipes! This one was for squash, since we also have lots of that right now. I found it on epicurious, as ever, but that was for delicata squash, which I didn't have, and also used sage, which I also didn't have. So like everything else, I modified it for the ingredients I had, and it was delicious. The original recipe is here, if you like real recipes with real ratings and stuff. The version I made got a good Ed-rating, and I also thought it was good, which isn't something I've ever said about cubed butternut squash before. It's usually just ok; I don't like the texture, although I love the taste, and it makes great soups. Anyway, I recommend this one. The cider becomes deliciously tangy and sweet, almost like candy.

Apple cider-glazed butternut squash
Made a lot, like enough for six servings or so

1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed. (save the seeds and roast them! delicious)
~3-4C apple cider
~2tbs butter
1 tbs dried rosemary
1 tbs cumin seeds
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tbs fresh rosemary (optional)

Melt the butter in a frying pan, and then add the rosemary and cumin to the butter. It should sizzle for a bit and smell delicious.

Once it's been smelling delicious for 30 seconds or so, add the squash, and then pour in the apple cider. You want enough liquid to almost cover the squash; it should still be sticking out above the cider. If there isn't enough cider, add more, or add some water. More cider will lead to a more concentrated apple-y taste. Add the salt.

Cover the frying pan, and turn the heat to medium-ish, so that it's bubbling, but not violently boiling. Stir occasionally, and let it sit there for 15-20 minutes, until the squash is just soft enough to poke with a fork. At this point, there should still be a good bit of liquid, so take the top off, and start trying to reduce the liquid. The goal is to end up with a thick, syrupy, concentrated cider sauce, coating your squash. If your squash finishes cooking before the cider has reduced enough (test this by poking it with a fork), remove the squash from the pan and finish the cider syrup on its own, then pour over the squash. If the cider reduces too fast and the squash still isn't done, add some water or more cider. In other words, you have a lot of room for error, here.

Once the squash is cooked through and tender, and the cider is reduced to a delicious, thick, goopy sauce, you're done! Taste, and add more salt if you need it, and garnish with chopped fresh rosemary.

Apple cider-glazed carrots

2011-09-16T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ed went and picked a gazillion gallons of apples up in Vermont, and then pressed most of them into cider. This is a good thing, but cider doesn't last, so I've been coming up with ways to use it up. We had carrots the other day, and epicurious has a recipe for cider-glazed carrots, which sounded good. Of course, the recipe calls for two pounds of carrots, and I had 7 carrots, so I sort of had to ignore their proportions and just wing it. The end result was delicious, so I'll definitely be making this again. It got a soaring approval in the Ed-ratings, too.

Cider-glazed carrots
Carrots, of some quantity. Preferably the relatively small ones, because they're prettier and they cook faster.
Apple cider
Cider vinegar
Kosher salt
Butter

Notice the lack of any quantities... you can follow the real recipe if you want quantities, gosh darn it!

Start by chopping the green bits off the carrots. If the carrots are particularly large, cut them into smaller pieces. My carrots were small enough that I just left them whole. If you are leaving them whole, wash them pretty well, or you could peel them, but that seemed like an unnecessary step.

Put the carrots in the pan. Pour in some cider, so that there is maybe 1/2" of depth around the carrots. Drizzle in a little cider vinegar, I used ~1tsp for my small amount of carrots, if you had more carrots and more cider you'd use more vinegar. Sprinkle the whole thing with some kosher salt, about two pinches in my case. Drop in some pats of butter.

Bring the entire thing up to a simmer, and then put a lid on the pot. Let it simmer away for 10-20 minutes, checking and stirring occasionally. Once the carrots are tender enough to poke with a fork (but not all the way through), keep the lid off, and continue to stir around occasionally, reducing the cider. Once the cider has reduced into a thick, caramel-y glaze, you're done. Serve the carrots warm, or I hear they're fine the next day, too. Carrots are pretty forgiving.

Anna's applesauce cake

2011-09-15T06:27:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I've never made this, or put it on the blog, yet. Anna Mcloon makes a mean chocolate applesauce cake, and apparently I asked her for the recipe once, back in 2007. It took some digging through old emails to find it, but Ed has been going nuts at making applesauce again this year, so I figured it was the appropriate baked dessert for the day. It also fits the budget pretty well, as I had everything on hand already. Cheap, tasty, sorta-healthy (I mean, it has applesauce, that's a fruit!), and easy to make. Good times! This one's for you, Anna, I'm missing you already.

Chocolate applesauce cake from 1,000 Jewish recipes by Faye Levy, with assorted comments, etc by Anna.

1.5C flour
1/3C unsweetened cocoa
1-1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
3 tbs vegetable oil
1C sugar
1 large egg
1-1/3C applesauce (unsweetened, 'cause that's what I prefer to eat)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour a 9" square baking pan. I used a round one, and I think it was only 8" diameter. Anna mentions that if you use cocoa instead of flour, you don't get the cake all white on the bottom.

Mix all the wet stuff together in one bowl, and all the dry stuff in another bowl. Combine, but don't overmix.

Dump the batter in the pan, and sprinkle some chocolate chips on top. Bake 25-30 minutes or until the tester comes out clean. Lastly, the most important instructions: "Bring to party!" Except we ate it at home. Whatevs, it's still tasty!

Tomato tart

2011-09-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

There are a bunch of tomatoes trying to fall onto the ground and rot right now, so I picked them, and some herbs that were hanging out nearby, and figured I'd use them up somehow in a dish for the potluck last Saturday. Inspiration struck in the form of a tomato tart, with caramelized onions and cheese. Can't go wrong with those ingredients. It was utterly delicious, confirmed by pretty much everyone who ate any of it.

Tomato Tart with caramelized onions and swiss cheese
1 recipe of pie dough, for an open tart
~2 fresh tomatoes
fresh basil
fresh thyme
fresh rosemary
~2C shredded swiss cheese (in this case, Jarlsburg)
2 onions
olive oil
kosher salt

The herbs are somewhat optional, but not really, because they tasted delicious. I also wouldn't bother with those tasteless store-bought tomatoes, since they just aren't that tasty. Not being a snob, just being realistic...

You can make your own pie crust, or buy some sort of pre-made thing. I made my own, and it took less than 5min. Here's a recipe.

First, caramelize some onions. I cut them in half, and then cut slices, so you end up with long pieces. It took maybe 1/4C of oil to get them properly caramelized, but it's worth it. Throw some salt on the onions as they cook, that'll help draw out the water. It was a 15-20min process to get them properly brown, but don't be impatient.

Then, blind bake the pie crust for 6 minutes or so, just to get it initially set. From there, I put the onions down first.

Then, I added the herbs.

Then, a layer of cheese, and then tomatoes! Slice them relatively thick.

More cheese, and maybe some little cherry tomatoes on top, because they're pretty.

We ate this the next day, and it was still freakn delicious. Make this.

Hurricane mousse

2011-09-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

While Hurricane Irene was hammering New England, I was making mousse at Ali's house. We actually made two kinds of mousse, but I only took a picture of the white chocolate one. It was really good, I liked the texture. It was just chocolate and cream; I don't know if that even counts as mousse, but it was delicious. The recipe was on the back of a chocolate wrapper that I'd gotten in France, intending to give the chocolate away, as a gift. Unfortunately, the chocolate got sampled at some point along the way, making it more difficult to give the chocolate away as a gift. The only action remaining was to make the mousse, obviously, and then eat it.

White chocolate mousse
1 bar white chocolate (one that tastes good to you - this one was Nestlé)
200mL whipping cream. I think we determined that is just about 1 cup, but use the google for exact conversions.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Whip the cream to stiff peaks. Transfer about 1/3 of the whipped cream to the chocolate, and stir it around, just to lighten up the chocolate. Add another third of the whipped cream, and fold to combine. Finally, add the last third and fold it in. Put the mousse into pretty glasses, and refrigerate for >2hrs. The wrapper said overnight, but we found it was firm enough for good eating after two hours.

Enjoy!

Grilled peaches

2011-08-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

The western mass renegade O' group was having a post-France dinner, mostly with a French theme, and I was on dessert. Since the French eat a lot of fruit for desserts, peaches seemed like a good idea, but I was torn between grilled peaches and peach melba. Grilled peaches won out, because I'd never grilled fruit before, and it sounded really tasty, and Gail also liked the idea. Phil was disappointed to not be having peach melba, so next time, it'll be that!

This was pretty simple, but I'm guessing it's pretty depending on having some really good peaches, since you aren't cooking them all the way through. I found my at Clarkdale, a farm up in Deerfield, and the taste test revealed that they were pretty awesome peaches. You also need butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and a grill.

6 peaches
2 tbs butter
2 tbs sugar
1tsp cinnamon

Rinse and halve the peaches, leaving the skin on. Heat the grill to medium-hot, oil the grill, and put the peaches flat-side down on the grill. Cook for ~5-6min, and then flip. Meanwhile, melt the butter and mix with the sugar and cinnamon. Once you've flipped the peaches, spoon some of the sugary butter mixture on each one, and let them cook for another 5-6 minutes. I figured they were done once I could insert a fork almost all the way through to the skin.

Take them off the grill, and serve immediately with ice cream. We found that Hagendaas dulche de leche was particularly tasty, but vanilla will work in a pinch. Enjoy!

Lemon-garlic-basil chicken thighs

2011-07-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

My favorite salad dressing is this lemon-garlic-basil dressing, from the Stacks cookbook. I think that was my first-ever cookbook. Anyway, I made the dressing (and it fit in that perfectly-sized olive oil bottle!), and decided to use it to marinate some chicken thighs. This worked out really well. I recommend it.

So, first, I slathered the dressing all over the chicken. Then, I stuck them in a pan, and roasted them for about 45min. Occasionally, I basted the skin with the juices. I maybe did that four times during the cooking stage. I tested them for doneness when the skin had crisped up and gotten brown.

Lemon-garlic-basil dressing:
Yielded: about 2/3 cup

3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon salt
zest of one lemon
1/2C fresh basil
3 teaspoons Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Pinch of cayenne
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Combine the garlic, salt, lemon zest, basil, mustard, lemon juice, cayenne, and pepper in a food processor and blend well. Slowly add the oil while the machine is running until the dressing is well blended and thickened. Can be made ahead and refrigerated.

Once the chicken was done, we served it on some green beans. Definitely won the Ed-seal of approval.

Gougères: two ways

2011-07-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

Ali just returned from France, where she had gougères for the first time, and she wanted to make some. I was all for this plan, and since she happened to be in Boston, we got to work. Unsure of what recipe to use, we made two different recipes: one from epicurious, because it had ratings, and one from a random French site we'd googled using the french google. This created lots and lots of little cheese puffs, so we had ample opportunities to sample the two options. The end result: the French gougères were far superior. They just had a way better texture, flakier and moister and cheesier. They also used three times the amount of butter. Minor details.

First, the epicurious recipe:
Blue cheese gougères
Made two baking-sheets-worth
1/4C white wine
1/4C water
1/2 stick butter, cut into cubes
1/4tsp salt
2/3C flour
3 eggs, whisked
1/3C blue cheese, crumbled.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Melt the butter and the wine and water in a saucepan, add the salt, and then add all the flour. Stir vigorously for about a minute, until it's smooth and leaves a film on the bottom of the pan. We did this over the heat. Then remove from heat, let it cool a minute, and add the eggs in three installments, vigorously stirring between each. Add the cheese, and stir that in.

Grease a baking sheet. Drop little balls of dough on the sheet. You can brush the tops with egg wash, just to make them pretty, but I'm not sure that adds to the taste. Bake for 25-30 minutes, checking occasionally. I don't think you want to overbake, you don't want dry gougères.

Ali, mélangez vivement!

The other version, from the French website, was much tastier. I highly recommend making it. Totally passed the Ed-test!

Gougères au fromage
Makes lots and lots and lots, but they disappear quickly
1C water
1tsp salt
1.5 sticks unsalted butter
4 eggs
2/3C grated gruyere cheese

Preheat the oven to 375F. Grease some baking sheets. Melt the butter in the water with the salt, in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir vigorously. For about a minute. Remove from heat, and let it cool a bit. Add the eggs, one at a time, and stir vigorously between. Once the eggs are incorporated, add the cheese, and stir it in. Scoop little balls of dough onto the baking sheet, and bake for 25 minutes. Don't eat them all in one seating...

Scooping the dough onto the pan.

Sweet Focaccia

2011-06-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

I have this cookbook, from the little shop around the corner from my grandfather's place in London, called Ottoloenghi: The cookbook. I've made a couple of the salads, and they've been pretty delicious, so I thought I'd try something from a section other than the salad section. Paging through to the back, the baking section had some really pretty pictures of focaccia. That seemed like a good idea, and reading about the grape and fennel seed topping, that seemed like something different enough that I'd never come up with it on my own. May as well try it! It sounded like it would make a sweet bread, something you could eat for breakfast, or almost as dessert, but I wasn't too daunted (although Ed said it sounded pretty gross). This being an English cookbook, they were talking about grams and milliliters, luckily I have the google to help me figure out conversions.

The end result was addictingly delicious. The dough was chewy yet soft, with a crunch on the top and bottom, and a beautiful mix of sweet and savory and salty. I couldn't stop until I got halfway through the first loaf. So, as weird a combination as this sounds - try it! It's worth it. It passed the Ed-rating, despite his initial reluctance.

Grape and Fennel Seed Focaccia
Made two round flat loaves

Starter:
1.5C flour
1.75C warm water
1.5 tsp yeast

Dough:
1.5-2C flour
1 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs kosher salt

Topping:
~1C red grapes, halved
2tsp fennel seeds
1/4C granulated sugar
1tsp kosher salt

You'll need a lot of resting time for this recipe - it was 6 hours total of rising time, so be sure to plan that in. The starter has to rise for two hours, and then the dough has to rise for 2 hours, and then after shaping it, it has to rise for another hour.

To make the start, mix together the water, yeast, and flour, cover with a damp cloth, and let it sit somewhere warm for two hours, until it's doubled in size. It'll be pretty cool-looking, with bubbles that are sort of moving, like it's alive...

Add the rest of the dough ingredients to the starter, and mix that around. I found this too slack to work by hand, even with the extra half cup of flour, so I stirred with a solid spoon for as long as I had the strength to do so, and then let it sit for another two hours. By the end of that, it had doubled in bulk again, and was very loosey goosey. I dumped the dough out onto a floured surface, cut it in half, and tried to stretch each half out into a circle. I wasn't that great at making a circle, and then it stretched again when I transferred it. I lined each baking pan with coarse corn meal, and plopped on the lopsided circles of dough.

This then has to sit and relax and rise for another hour.

Then, I poked down with my fingers, to make it ridge-y and knobbly. Mix together the sugar, salt, and fennel seeds. Brush on some olive oil, dot with grapes (cut length-wise), and sprinkle on the sugar-salt -fennel seed mixture.

Bake at 450F for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 375 and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!

Thai beef salad

2011-06-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

I bought some beef the other day, top round. It came in three long strips, and I figured it would be perfect for putting on top of a salad. And then I realized that it would be even perfecter on a thai-flavored salad! The bed was rice noodles, and there were random delicious things on top. Cilantro, fried mushrooms, cucumbers, mint, basil. The dressing was a mix of lime juice, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, mirin, and spiciness. You can play with those flavors - sweet/salty/sour/hot - and anything will be delicious.
The beef was marinating in a similar sauce, but with miso paste in it. Miso, mirin, fish sauce, lime, rice wine vinegar, fresh ginger.

First I cooked the mushrooms - oyster mushrooms. Cooked in butter, with kosher salt. The best way to do mushrooms.
mmmm cilantro!

Cooked the beef for about two minutes to a side, until it was just rare-medium rare inside.
Sliced it up, threw it on top of the rice noodles, poured the dressing over everything, and voila! salad. yum.

Mango shrimp spring rolls

2011-06-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make dinner one night this week, as I'm staying with Peter and Gail, and they keep feeding me, so I thought I'd make spring rolls. These turned out alright, but were too big, I need to learn how to roll the little ones. You need the squishy noodles inside to make it so that they don't break, although some of them broke anyway, but there were just too many squishy noodles, and not enough other delicious things. These flavors maybe would have worked better as a salad. Or maybe wrapping them more loosely would keep the ends of the avocados from poking holes?

Anyway, for three people we had 7 rolls, which was enough to fill us up (testament to their size), when combined with a salad thanks to Gail. I bought 12 large shrimp, and that worked well for the rolls, but if I were going to do it again in salad form, I think you'd want more shrimps. Maybe.

Mango shrimp spring rolls
Made 7 rolls
rice paper
rice noodles
12 large shrimp (raw)
1 mango
1 avocado
2 limes
~1tbs brown sugar
~1tbs soy sauce
~1/2C cilantro, roughly chopped. Mint and basil would also work. Or all three.
~1/2C bean sprouts
Red chili flakes, to taste
1/4tsp salt

Combine the juice of one of the limes, half a tablespoon of brown sugar, some red chili flakes, and a tablespoon of soy sauce. Mix it up and taste - this is the dressing for your shrimp. Adjust as necessary. Soak the shrimp in the marinade as you prepare other stuff.

For the rice noodles, boil them for 5 minutes, then drain, and toss with the juice of the other lime, the salt, and the other half tablespoon of sugar.

Slice the mango and avocado into strips.

Fry the shrimp in some oil, until they're done. It's about two minutes a side, although I suppose it depends on the size of the shrimp.

Soak the rice paper in hot water for a minute or two, one piece at a time. Once it's flexible, spread it on a plate. Put down the colorful things first, because you'll see those those through the wrapper. A piece or two of mango, a slice of avocado, one and a half shrimps, some cilantro, some sprouts, and a small handful of rice noodles. Then attempt to roll the thing up - fold in the sides, first, then roll away from you, using fingers to keep it taut.

The rice paper dries out quickly if you don't eat it immediately, so cover the finished rolls with a damp towel while you finish making the other ones.

We had a ginger-soy dipping sauce with these, that was delicious.

Will I make these again? Probably, but I'm going to try for a higher ratio of yummy-stuff-to-noodles.

Mojitos

2011-06-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

I had oodles of leftover mint from something the other day, so we emailed Tiffany to see if she wanted to hang out and make mojitos. It seemed like a really logical thing to do. Naturally, she thought this was an excellent idea, so we got to go hang out with a friend we don't see nearly often enough, and a good time was had by all (to use an old Colby Outing Club saying. "There were no tears, and a good time was had by all" is the way you finished every trip report. Unless of course there were tears, and some people did not actually have a good time). We improvised a muddler, using a rubber band to hold together a bunch of chopsticks - it worked pretty well.

Mojitos
For each glass:
Fill about 3/4 with fresh mint leaves. Add some simple syrup, maybe 1-2 tablespoons of it. Muddle the leaves. Add about a shot of rum, preferably good rum. Pour in the juice of a lime. Fill to the top with bubble water. Stir it around with your make-shift muddler. Garnish with a lime wedge, and an optional raspberry (it's pretty!).

Greek-ish pasta salad

2011-06-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

A while ago, Sam and Ross fed us a deliciously tasty Greek-themed salad, with barley and chicken. I was overwhelmed by the deliciousness of the lemon and olives and sweet cherry tomatoes, so set out to make the same thing last week for Ali and myself, as I was staying out there. But, being me, I naturally didn't go to look up the recipe, and sort of did a cross between tabouleh and that Greek salad and a random salad. It was delicious anyway, but I think that's just because I love olives and lemon and feta cheese. Also, having neither barley nor enough time to cook it, I used orzo, which worked really well also, and basically turned this into a pasta salad. So be it. Anyway, I recommend this one for a hot evening when you don't want to cook anything. The only time you have to apply heat is for about 20 minutes to boil water and cook the pasta, then it's back to no heating devices turned on.

Greek-inspired pasta salad
Made enough for 2 very hungry people, with a bit left over for lunch. Would probably feed 4 normal people, or 6 as a side dish
1 can chickpeas, rinsed
1/2lb orzo, cooked and cooled
~1C halved kalamata olives (or another flavorful black olive)
1C halved cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2C chopped fresh parsley
2 tbs chopped fresh mint
1/2 onion, diced
1 cloves garlic, minced
1/2C feta cheese, crumbled
2 small pickling cucumbers, chopped
1/2 orange pepper, chopped
Anything else you have in the fridge that you want to use up

Dressing:
Zest of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
about an equal portion of olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste.

Put everything in a bowl. Mix it around. Toss with the dressing. If you let it sit, it only gets better as the dressing sinks in and the flavors all meld.

Lamb Gyros

2011-06-06T18:57:00.000-07:00

Coming back from Team Trials, Ian's car-ful of people stopped at a diner, somewhere along I-84, and I had some delicious gyros. So delicious that I decided that I had to make some for myself. We stole Ross for the evening, since Sam had a retirement party to attend, and fed him lamb gyros and pitas and we were all pretty happy with how they'd turned out. I made the lamb mixture earlier in the day, and kneaded dough for the pitas. Then when we all got home from the Park-O, it was pretty quick to fry some lamb patties and bake the pitas. We also had fresh greek yogurt from the Greek place, and olives, and feta, all delicious stuff.

Lamb patties:
Made enough for three hungry people, might feed four regular folk
1/2lb lamb - if you can get it ground, great, if it's in chunks, that's fine too
1/4C bulgur wheat, cooked
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tbs rosemary
2 tsp marjoram or oregano
Other tasty things are optional.

Slice the lamb chunks against the grain, and then slice those long pieces into little chunks. Put them in a food processor and process until it makes a paste. Put in a big bowl. Put the onion and garlic in a food processor, process that to a paste, and drain the water, squeezing with your hands. Add to the bowl. Add the other stuff. Mix it around. Take a tiny bit and cook in a frying pan, taste, and adjust seasoning.

Let the lamb mixture sit marinating for at least an hour. Then break off pieces with your hands and make little mini hamburgers. Smaller is better, for more texture of crust, but, that also takes longer. Fry in a frying pan, with some oil to lubricate things.

Pitas
Made 8
1-1/4C warm water
1 packet yeast
1tbs sugar
3.5C flour (and more as necessary)
2tsp salt
2 tbs olive oil

Put water and yeast and sugar in a bowl. Stir in flour one cup at a time. After the first cup, add olive oil and salt. Keep adding flour until it's bread-like. Knead for 5-10 minutes. Let it rise in a greased bowl for minimum 1.5hrs. Cut into 8 pieces, roll into round pitas, cook for 10-15min (?) at 400F. Take out of the oven before they get brown.

Tzatziki sauce
1C Greek yogurt
2 little salad cucumbers
salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste

Put pita, tzatziki sauce, lamb meatballs, chopped peppers, and crumbled feta in a stack. Roll up pita, and eat! Ed is looking pretty pleased with his gyro here.
As is Ross. You can't see the drool, but he can't wait to tear into this thing. It definitely got a good Ed-rating. Most delicious!

Roasted Chickpeas

2011-06-02T06:12:00.000-07:00

I had a can of chickpeas lying around, and wanted to use it in a salad. But I also had the oven on, so figured I'd see what happened if I roasted the chickpeas first. I tossed them with olive oil, kosher salt, and stuck them on a baking sheet for 15 minutes, and the result was pretty delicious! They were crunchy on the outside, bean-y on the inside, and a perfect addition to a salad. Will make these again, for sure.

Apple Turnovers

2011-06-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a hankering for apple turnovers. Knowing that we had a bunch of phyllo dough in the freezer, I figured turnovers were within my reach. I didn't count on them taking forever to make, so naturally, they took forever. First you have to make the apple filling, then you have to mess around with the phyllo dough, finally you bake the darn things. They were quite delicious, but I'm not sure they were worth the trouble, given that you can just buy puff pastry and it's the same end result.

I did sort of follow a recipe, but really that was just to get the proportions remotely close to right. My reference recipe was this one, but I only had four apples. They were big apples, though.

First, melt the butter with the sugar and the cornstarch and other stuff.

Peel, core, and chop your apples; stir them into the goopy stuff.

Then it's time to play with phyllo dough. Mine was not sealed - apparently Ed used some a while ago, and so the sheets had dried out in the freezer. They broke into thirds, pretty much immediately. Not one to be put off by uncooperative phyllo dough, I figured that instead of folding them in half and stuff, I'd just layer a couple pieces and roll them up. It worked. Between every layer (I had 3-4 layers for each turnover, which may have been too much, as they had lots of crust and I thought they needed more apples), brush on some melted butter. This takes lots of butter, but that's what makes it so delicious!

Plop about 2-3 tbs of apple filling on one end of the phyllo. Keep the other sheets covered with a damp cloth.

Fold the dough over the apples, to make a triangle. Roll up triangularly, like a flag.

Don't be afraid to use your fingers to push the apples back into their pocket - you want lots of apples inside. They are tasty.

Then, brush the top with more butter, sprinkle with sugar if you want, and bake at 350F for 12-15 minutes.

And then do your best to not eat them all at once when they come out of the oven. Because they have an entire stick of butter in them, and Ed might want some, too.

These were quite delicious, but next time, I'm buying puff pastry. I imagine it'll be easier to work with. But they did get an approving Ed-rating, so worth it this time!

Chocolate mint brownies

2011-05-27T18:22:00.001-07:00

I wanted to bring Neil something baked and delicious as a thank you for all the work he put into setting team trials, mostly single handedly, but it is supposed to be five gazillion degrees this weekend, and humid. That is not good weather for wanting to eat baked goods. But I wanted something rich and chocolatey (hey, a cook's gotta taste stuff...), so I settled on mint chocolate chip brownies. Because mint always tastes cool, and brownies go down well any time. There are a lot of recipes out there for chocolate mint brownies, but I ended up mostly using this one. With lots of modifications, mostly due to what I did or didn't have in my kitchen. The end result was delicious, but I've only eaten them frozen so far. They're so good that way, I don't think I'll bother thawing them, although they'll probably thaw by the time I get them to Neil.

Chocolate Mint Brownies
Made one 9x13" pan... cut into however many pieces you want.

Brownie base:
3/4C flour
2 tbs dutch process cocoa powder
1 tsp espresso powder
1/2tsp salt
~1C chocolate (in this case, a mix of 100% dark ghiradelli, some chocolate chips, and the last of my KAF burgundy bites)
1 stick butter, cut into chunks
1C brown sugar (I don't have any white sugar right now)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mint layer:
1/2 stick butter
1C confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp mint extract
1 tsp water

Chocolate topping:
~1C chocolate (chocolate chips would do... I was scrounging for anything chocolate, and found something labeled "ooey gooey chocolate sauce (2009)" in my fridge, and it was hard, like chocolate should be, so I mostly used that. I am now out of chocolate. This is a situation that really should be remedied).
1 tbs butter

For the brownies, melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler. Remove from heat and add the sugar, whisk to combine. Add the vanilla, and then the eggs. For the eggs, first beat them together (not a lot of beating, just enough so that they're not separate whites and yolks) in a separate bowl, then temper them with the hot chocolate, or let the chocolate cool to room temp before you add the eggs. Then sift all the dry stuff on top, and fold to combine. Don't beat or whisk, as that'll cause the eggs to work magic and turn your brownies into chocolate cake.

Preheat the oven to 325, and bake for 12-15 min, in a greased 9x13" pan. I had to cook mine for the full 15 min. Cool the brownies. I put mine on a piece of parchment paper (greased both sides), and that let me pull them out of the pan and onto another pan, for faster cooling.

For the filling, beat the sugar and butter and flavor together, until it makes frosting. Spread on the cooled brownies, and then put in the freezer so it can set up before you put on the chocolate layer. Green food coloring is optional at this point.

In the microwave, melt the chocolate and butter for the topping. Be very careful not to burn the chocolate. Use a flexible spatula to spread the chocolate on top of the green frosting. Put the brownies back in the freezer to set up before you cut them.

Cut them into squares, and eat immediately, or keep them in the freezer and eat them one at a time. They're pretty yummy.

Pasta. with tomato sauce.

2011-05-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

I love pasta. Usually, a jar of tomato sauce will do the trick, but we often put all sorts of crazy stuff into sauces, and that makes pasta even more delicious. Ed decided yesterday that he wanted to make a *really good* pasta sauce, with some of his smoked andouille sausage, and good bacon, and greek yogurt. When Ed says he wants to make something that's really good, I just step back and occasionally wash dishes, because you know it's going to turn out tasty. His experiments, on the other hand...

This ended up being a really creamy, tangy, smoky, delicious sauce. He finished the pasta in the pan, so it absorbed some of the saucy goodness, and it was so good I didn't even feel the need to smother everything in parmesan cheese. I guess it helps that we're basically out of cheese.

The sauce started with:
1 onion
a couple cloves of garlic
a can of tomato paste
a lot of rosemary
olive oil
kosher salt

Dice the onion, and throw that in a pan with some olive oil and salt. Let the onion sweat, and then add the garlic and rosemary. Once you can smell it, add all the tomato paste, stir that around, and let it cook for a bit - 5 minutes?
Once the tomato paste has cooked down a bit, add a can of diced tomatoes, and a bunch of fresh basil, that's been chiffonaded.

Meanwhile, get a big pot o' water boiling, with some salt in it.

Meanwhile, chop some bacon (good bacon) - maybe 3 pieces? and get that rendering in a separate pan. Chop some andouille sausage. I think we just used one link, but it may have been two.

Once the diced tomatoes have simmered for a little bit, pour all of the sauce, very carefully, into a blender, and blend it until it's a little more smooth. In other words, no more diced tomato chunks.

Stir in about a half cup of greek yogurt. Some cream would work here, too, if you didn't have greek yogurt, but we still have a good bit of that lying around.

Add the andouille, (ours was basically pre-cooked), and some smoked maple syrup, if you're lucky enough to own any of that, or smoked paprika, if you don't have smoked syrup. Add some smoked paprika anyway.

When the pasta is almost done, grab a cupful of the cooking water, set it aside, and drain the pasta. Pour it all into the sauce, and toss it around to coat. Add the pasta water if you need to thin things out.

Serve!

Short version:
Made enough for 4-6 regular people...
1 box pasta, fun shapes if possible
1 can diced tomatoes (16oz)
1 can tomato paste (little mini can, 6oz?)
4 cloves garlic
1 onion
~1C fresh basil, chiffonaded
1 link smoked andouille sausage
3 pieces good bacon
~2tbs rosemary
kosher salt
olive oil
1/2C greek yogurt (or cream, but probably less of it)
~1tsp smoked paprika, or 1tsp smoked maple syrup

-blender

Cook down the onion, add the garlic and rosemary, add the tomato paste. Get a pot of water boiling, with salt. Chop the bacon and get that rendering. Cook the andouille sausage if it isn't already. Add the diced tomatoes and all their juice, and the basil. Use a food processor or blender to chop everything up into a sauce-like texture. Return to heat, add bacon, sausage, paprika and/or syrup, and yogurt. Stir it around.

Get the pasta cooking. When it's basically done, reserve a cup of the cooking liquid, drain the pasta, and toss it in the pan with the sauce. Add the cooking liquid to thin things out if necessary.

Serve!

Corn tortillas

2011-05-16T04:58:00.000-07:00

Ed bought a giant bag of masa flour the other day, and we've been making corn tortillas (and we did try tamales, too) since. The fish tacos we made with Chris was here were truly delicious, but these were a different version of fish tacos. I think the fish was halibut, but any flaky white fish will do the trick. The flavors here weren't very Mexican, but it was delicious. The nice thing about home made tortillas is that they're flexible, so they actually act like tortillas should!

Corn Tortillas
Made 6
1C masa flour
1/2tsp salt
2/3C water

Put everything in a bowl, mix it around, and lump it into a ball. This'll take 5 minutes, max. Use a knife and cut the ball of dough into 6 pieces, and roll each piece into a sphere. Use a rolling pin and roll out each sphere into a tortilla-shape, about 1/8" (I think) thick - you don't want it too thin, or it'll tear.

Heat a frying pan to medium heat, and grease the pan, with butter, bacon grease, oil, whatever. Drop the first tortilla into the pan. Cook for about 2 minutes on that side, and then flip, and cook another minute. If you don't have the pan greased enough, the tortilla ends up looking too dry, but it doesn't actually taste any different, I think. Store the cooked tortillas on a plate as you finish cooking them.

It's easiest to roll them out on a silicon mat, because then it's easier to transfer them into the pan without tearing them. Clearly, I'm good at rolling round tortillas...

What to put inside? Well in this case, we went with cooked white fish (just salt, pepper, and cooked in butter), leeks (cooked down until they're soft and sort of sweet), and some purple cabbage (that thing never dies! This was cooked with salt, in bacon grease). And, of course, Greek yogurt, from the little Greek store where Ed gets the olives. So much tastier than sour cream!

Ed demonstrates how to make your tortilla. First, hold it in your hand, and spread the yogurt.

Then, put all the stuff on top. And then eat it.

I built mine on a plate, and massively over-stuffed it, as usual. Luckily, it's a taco, so you don't have to wrap it up, you just sort of nibble at the edges first until everything fits properly.

I highly recommend making these - they were simple and fast, at least for two people. and if you had a griddle for cooking them, they'd be even faster. And, most importantly - they're delicious!

Coconut date balls

2011-05-03T19:45:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, I made some energy bar things with dates and coconut and almonds. They were delicious, but somewhat complicated, involving eggs and baking and stuff. I wanted to make something portable and delicious and full of calories for the weekend, and figured I'd make the coconut date balls again, but this time, without bothering to bake them. I think these turned out even better (and certainly passed the Ed-rating), and they were super easy to make. Took about 10 minutes, and most of that was wandering around the kitchen trying to find various ingredients.

Coconut date balls
Made 25 balls
1C sweetened shredded coconut
1C fresh dates (with or without pits)
1C almonds
~1tbs lemon juice
1/2tsp salt
~1/4C cocoa

Equipment: food processor.

Start with the almonds - put them in the food processor and grind them up as finely as you can, but before they turn into almond butter. Dump them in a big bowl. Dump in a cup of coconut. Take the pits out of the dates, and mash those up in the food processor, too. They should make a pretty smooth paste pretty quickly.

whole date.

Mashed dates.

Put the dates in the bowl. Add the lemon juice and salt, and then use your hands to squish everything together until it's nicely mixed. Lick your fingers afterward, because the mixture is delicious.

mmmmm.

Roll the mixture into bite-sized balls. I got 25 out of this recipe. Put about a quarter cup of baking cocoa in a shallow bowl, and roll each ball in the cocoa. Really this is just to keep them from sticking too badly to each other, I think, but it has the added benefit of making them taste like chocolate. Once they're rolled, you're good to go - you can just put them in a tupperware and they'll last for a long time (weeks? months? you be the guinea pig...), or just start eating them. I prefer them on day 2, because more of the cocoa has sunk in, so it's less powdery.

And since these are basically energy bars, I figured I should calculate out the macronutrients - each ball (if you make 25) is 65 calories, with 2.9g fat, 8.7g carbs, and 1.2g protein (40%, 53%, 7%).

Sweet and sour purple cabbage

2011-04-26T05:14:00.000-07:00

I went and did it again - bought more cabbage. This time, at least, it was purple, which is mildly exciting. And when I added enough bacon, it was actually quite tasty. I recommend this dish, because it doesn't taste like cabbage, it tastes like sweet and sour bacon, and its PURPLE! Not Ed-rating, since he isn't in Amherst, but I did deem the dish tasty enough to bring another batch to the training camp last weekend, where it was generally agreed that 1) bacon is delicious, and 2) this didn't taste like cabbage. So with that ringing recommendation, here's the recipe!

Sweet and sour purple cabbage
Made enough for 12 modest servings

1 head of purple cabbage
1/2lb bacon
1 onion
~1/4C lemon juice, or just juice from a lemon
~2tbs white sugar
salt to taste
cilantro (optional)

I'm not sure the cabbage has to be purple, but at least that'll make the dish pretty, and it's not like purple cabbages cost more than the green kind. I also learned the lesson that buying the $2.50/lb bacon is not necessarily a good thing. It rendered out a WHOLE lot of fat. I should find a use for bacon grease... popovers?

Dice up the bacon, and throw that in a large frying pan. Render out most of the grease, and pour most of it off. Dice the onion, and cook that down for a while, until it is soft and beginning to taste sweet. Chop the cabbage into little chunks, and put that in the pan. Add the lemon juice and sugar and some salt (a couple pinches). Cover, and let it cook for a while. Take the cover off, stir around, and let it cook some more. It's done when the cabbage is soft and silky. Add the chopped cilantro, and serve warm or cold.

Dessert crepes

2011-04-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

When Chris was here for the marathon, I made crepes for dessert one night. So delicious! We filled them with maple syrup-sweetened ricotta, raspberries, and maple whipped cream, and I think we were all pretty much in heaven. It helped that we'd also had delicious fish tacos for dinner, so it was hard to go wrong, but I'll be making these again. The recipe is from Dave Lieberman's website, but it seems pretty standard.

Crepes
Made about 10 pancakes
3/4C flour
1tsp salt
1C milk (I used whole)
2 eggs
2 tbs sugar
1tbs melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Put everything in a bowl and whisk. Heat some butter in a nonstick frying pan, and pour a small amount (~1/4C worth of batter) of batter into the pan, and swirl the pan around to spread out the batter. Cook for a few minutes on that side, until the bubbles on top aren't filling in after popping. Flip the crepe, and cook another minute or so on that side. Eat immediately!

Maple-sweetened ricotta:
Made ~1.5C
2C whole milk
~2tbs lemon juice
pinch of salt
1 tbs maple syrup

Put the milk and salt in a saucepan, and heat until just before it starts to simmer. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice, stir that around. It should immediately start to curdle. Let it sit there curdling for 10 minutes or so, and then pour it through a cheesecloth into a straining device. Let that sit and drain for 5-10 minutes. Put it into a bowl, and stir in the maple syrup. If you want the ricotta harder packed, you can squeeze it; I prefer a loose, gloopy cheese for filling crepes.

The raspberries were just frozen raspberries, microwaved to thaw, and to get some juice from them. The maple whipped cream was cream whipped with maybe 1tbs of maple syrup.

Put some of everything inside your crepe, and roll it up. Try not to drool, because these are delicious!

Sandwiches

2011-04-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

Last week, I decided that I didn't feel like "cooking", so I would just buy sandwich ingredients and eat sandwiches all week. At the time, that seemed like a good idea, but then I remembered that I don't actually like sandwiches. If there is melted cheese involved, that's ok, but cold cuts sort of turn my stomach. I guess if I'd not started making grilled cheeses, it would have been some sort of horrid sandwich-diet. Ugh. I discovered, in buying the ingredients I felt were necessary to make a good sandwich, that sandwiches cost a lot of money. I made the bread, but buying deli turkey, bacon, basil (couldn't bear to cut off Barry's leaves... he isn't doing too well to begin with, I'm hoping that leaving him with all his photosynthesizing bits will help him out), sprouts, hummus, mustard, avocado, cheese, and salad ingredients - that was probably my most expensive run at the grocery store I've made in the last couple months. Yikes. How do people afford to eat sandwiches?

So after looking at that bill, I figured I damn well better enjoy my sandwiches. Unfortunately, it just wasn't going to happen. So once I ran out of turkey and bacon and avocado (that only took two days), it was back to grilled cheeses. And broiled cheese-on-bread. Melted cheese is delicious. Add bacon, and you have a double deliciousness!

The first few bites were delicious - turkey, bacon, avocado, sprouts, basil leaves, hummus on one piece of bread, yummy mustard on the other side, roasted red peppers - it was a far cry from those bland bread-and-ham sandwiches that I ate every. single. day. of highschool. I think that's where my hatred of sandwiches dates back to. I keep trying to make myself like them... melted cheese helps.

Next up was grilled cheese. Basically, I had a cold sandwich for lunch and melted cheese deliciousness for dinner - sort of like a reward for eating the cold sandwich. These photos don't do justice to how delicious that grilled cheese sandwich actually was. Cheese (a mix of cheddar and mozzarella in this case), basil, bacon, and bread.

By the end of the week, I was going for full-blown open-faced bread-and-cheese. Far superior to sandwiches. This is getting closer to pizza, which is delicious.
This one finished off my cheese stash - basil and sundried tomatoes underneath some cheddar and shredded mozzarella.

Next time, it'll be a week of pizza, not sandwiches. I had to try, I guess. At least I seem to be over the gag reflex.

Cabbage wedges

2011-04-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

I don't usually buy cabbage, because there is just so damn much of it once you buy it, and because it doesn't actually taste that good. But, it's cheap, and relatively nutritious, and I was at Whole Foods (aka Whole paycheck), and needed more veggies without breaking the bank, so I bought a cabbage. One of the relatively small, light green ones.

The first thing I tried was stir frying it with a bunch of other veggies, but that wasn't exactly exciting. And that only used up half of it. I looked around at recipes for cabbage, but it seems that usually it's used as a filler, no surprise there. So I decided to go my usual vegetable route - apply heat, olive oil, and salt, and see what happens. What happened was actually pretty good, with brown bits and flavor. I'm not sure I'd recommend this for anything other than using up cabbage, because while it tasted perfectly fine, it was hardly exciting. Maybe if you had a delicious sauce to pour over the top, or if you were on some sort of cabbage diet. Or if you just really like cabbage - the overall flavor was "cabbage", which actually reminded me of most brassicaceae, like brussels sprouts, which I love. So, maybe I'll try this again, we'll see...

Cabbage Wedges
Made 4 wedges, depending on how much you like cabbage that would be good for 1 - 4 people
1/2 head of savoy cabbage
Olive oil
Kosher salt

Cut the cabbage into wedges, leaving the stem on, to hold the leaves together. Heat some oil in a frying pan, medium-ish heat. Put in the cabbage wedges, and salt the upper side. Let them sit there for about five minutes, until they're looking nice and golden brown on the bottom. Flip, and salt the upper side (which hasn't had salt yet). Let them sit there for another 5-10 minutes, until the stems are nice and soft if you poke them with a fork. You can flip and keep cooking if you like them to be softer, I guess I like my veggies to have a bit of a bite.

Serve as is, or with a sauce of some sort. The flavor is pretty neutral, and the texture is fairly smooth, with some crunch. Not actually all that bad, considering that it's cabbage...

I guess I was feeling Irish today. Or something like that.

Eating PRO on the go - creative pork loin...

2011-03-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned that our kitchen is pretty small. We have an oven, but it is about the size of a toaster oven. I did find some sort of baking sheet equivalent thing, sort of, so I decided to cook a pork tenderloin in the oven. It worked, and actually tasted pretty good. I served it with sweet potatoes, and cauliflower and cheese and caramelized onions. And couscous. Mostly, I made a fancy meal because I was refusing to eat pasta every single night this week - Greg would have been happy, but I think Cristina would have gotten annoyed too.

Pork tenderloin stuffed with caramelized onions:
Served 3, but one of them was Greg, so probably would serve 4 normal people

1/2kg pork tenderloin
1 onion
olive oil
salt
pepper (in this case, lemon pepper, as it came with the apartment)

Preheat the oven to 200C ish. Chop the onion, and cook it down in a frying pan with some salt and oil for a while, until its golden brown and delicious. Add salt and oil as needed. Cut the pork tenderloin almost in half, lengthwise - basically, butterfly it. Stuff with onions. Rub copious amounts of salt and pepper on top. Cook for 30min, more or less, until it looks and tastes done. I'm sure there is a temperature it should have been at, but, our snow thermometer doesn't have a meat probe.

The sweet potatoes were simple - cut them into wedges, toss with olive oil and salt, and bake (at like 250C, or more like 400-450F) until they're also golden-brown and delicious. They are wonderful, because the sugar inside makes them crunchy and caramelized.

Did I mention that we're using a McDonald's tray as a cutting board? High class.

The cauliflower was also delicious. I caramelized more onions, and then sauteed the cauliflower until it was soft. Then, add cheese chunks.

That was a darn tasty dinner for only being prepared in a kitchen the size of my bed at home. I impressed myself. I think tomorrow we'll have pasta and meatballs again, though...

Eating PRO on the go - in Sweden!

2011-03-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

I'm in Sweden for the ski-o world champs, and Greg, Cristina, and I are here training in Mora for a couple days. We're in a dorm room type situation, in a bit room with a tiny kitchen, so we've been making use of that. So far, so good!

The meal last night was spaghetti and meatballs, sort of. Swedish meatballs are delicious. The sauce was one can of little cherry tomatoes (in tomato juice), half a leek, an onion, some garlic, some carrot, and some mushrooms. It was also delicious.

Then, the pasta was covered with cheese. Win!

Popovers

2011-03-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

Ed has been hunting for the perfect popover recipe, and I am hardly complaining. It's rough, having to consume a batch of popovers every few days. Anyway, I think he may have stumbled onto the winning recipe. The trick seems to be that you have to fill the tins pretty full, so that there is enough batter to let them really pop.

The recipe, if I can remember it, is as follows:
1C flour
2 large eggs
1C milk
1 tbs melted butter
salt?

Preheat the oven to 425, and put a liberally-greased muffin tin in there to warm up.

You beat together the eggs and milk, add in the butter, beat it some more, then beat in the flour. There must have been some salt, call it 1/4 teaspoon. Take the muffin tin out of the oven, and pour in the batter, filling the cups to almost full. I think this filled 10 of 12 cups. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, without opening the oven. Lower the heat to 375, and bake another 10 minutes, then you can peek. If they're starting to be too brown, call them done, if they're still yellow, let them keep cooking another 5 minutes.

Turn off the oven, take out the popovers, pop the side with a fork or a knife, and return them to the oven for 5 minutes. Apparently this helps them keep their pop.

Then do your best not to eat the entire batch all at once. They're pretty tasty.

Chocolate Mousse

2011-02-28T07:06:00.001-08:00

I've eaten my fair share of chocolate mousse, but I'd never actually made it on my own before. We were wandering the aisles of the Londonderry IGA, wondering what to make for dinner, and Ed suggested chocolate mousse for dessert. Sounds good! Neither of us knew what went into it, but we figured chocolate chips and cream would be a good start. Turns out all you really need is chocolate and eggs, but we whipped some cream to put on top, anyway. Luckily, there is a cookbook at the Upper Camp (from like 1950), which, while having useful recipes for things like chocolate mousse, also has recipes for things that include jello, and recipes for "exotic" salads, basically that means anything that isn't iceberg lettuce. At least it wasn't like the 1001 Muffins book, which has recipes for liver-and-onions-muffins, fudge-sauerkraut-muffins, and lettuce-muffins. Why oh why would you want to make a lettuce muffin? I think I need to try some of these recipes, just to see how they turn out...

I think it was a Good Housekeeping cookbook, either way, what I can remember of the recipe is below.

Chocolate Mousse
Made enough for three, although we divided it between the two of us

1/2C semisweet chocolate chips
3 eggs, divided
1 tsp vanilla
Heavy cream for whipping, for topping, if you want.

Divide the eggs, and whip the whites to stiff peaks. I used a hand beater thing. An electric one would have been easier.

Melt the chocolate chips. You can either do this over a double boiler, or in the microwave. I used the microwave, the trick is to take the chocolate chips out of the microwave when they're still shiny, but not yet melted. Then you stir them around, until they melt. Add the egg yolks to the chocolate all at once, and stir vigorously. Add the vanilla. I think espresso powder would be wonderful here, too, but we didn't have any.

Fold the egg whites into the chocolate. I generally do this in three installations - the first third of the egg whites, I just stir into the chocolate, to lighten it up. The next third, I fold in, and the last third, I fold in.

Using a rubber spatula, pour the mousse into serving dishes. I was able to fit it all in two wine glasses, but 3-4 of them would be ideal.

Supposedly, you have to chill the mousse for 4 hours in the fridge. I stuck it in the freezer for about 30 minutes, and then removed it to the fridge while we were eating dinner, so it wouldn't be frozen. Although frozen mousse wouldn't be so bad. Top with whipped cream, and serve. The freezer-method seemed to work just fine, because the mousse was delicious. I suppose you should be worried about where you get your eggs for stuff like this, but so far so good, no salmonella.

Butternut squash soup

2011-02-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

This is a fairly straight-forward soup recipe, but what really makes it are all the delectable toppings. The soup is fine without them, but better with. This got a good Ed-rating, for anyone who was wondering.

First, roast the squash. I peeled it afterward, you could peel it before, it doesn't really matter. I chopped my squash into chunks, tossed with olive oil, sprinkled on some sliced onions and chopped sage leaves, and roasted about 15min at 400F.

Then I put it in a pot, with some good chicken broth. I happened to have made the broth recently - chicken bones, carrots, celery, onion, bay leaves, rosemary, and garlic, all boiled down for a few hours. Home made broth is nice and all, but you could have used boullion and water. Add enough liquid that you've almost covered the chunks of squash, but there are still some chunks sticking up.

I added a rind of parmesan cheese at this point - we happened to have one hanging out in the freezer. I also peeled and chopped 1/4 of a granny smith apple, and put that in there, along with a couple chunks of fresh ginger. I recommend a bay leaf, too.

Simmer the soup for a while, maybe 20-30 more minutes. Remove the parmesan rind (unless it dissolved completely and you can't find it), and then blend the soup. I used a stick blender. Less stuff to wash. Pour in a tablespoon or so of cream, and stir that in. Serve in bowls. You could grate some more parmesan cheese on top, if you wanted.

All the stuff on top made it even more delicious. The glob of which stuff in the middle is greek yogurt - I'm not sure I'd do that again, it was a bit too tangy. But the caramelized onions, and oyster mushrooms fried up in butter until they're crunchy, and cream, those are all very necessary additions.

Chocolate covered strawberries

2011-02-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

Every year on my birthday, I buy strawberries. Having a birthday in February means I feel a little silly buying my favorite fruit in the middle of winter, but I figure, its my birthday, I can buy strawberries if I want. I don't know if I have a healthy relationship with buying food... I like to eat it, but not to spend money on it. Anyway, I have strawberries, and I have been enjoying them. Since it's my birthday, and I'm in Amherst but Ed's in Boston, he suggested that I bake myself a cake. That seemed like far too much work, but chocolate-covered strawberries was just the right amount of work. And far more delicious than a cake, anyway. It's true, there is a way to improve strawberries - dip them in good chocolate!

This took about five minutes, start to finish, thanks to a microwave. I used some of the KAF burgundy chocolate chunks, about a third of a cup, and put them into a pyrex measuring cup. I think in the future, a wider bowl would be better. Anyway, I microwaved the chocolate for one minute, but it wasn't starting to melt yet, so I did another 15 seconds. After that, I could stir it around, and it was beginning to melt, but it took another 15 seconds to really get gooey.

The strawberries were washed and dried and sitting on a towel ready for use. Since I didn't have any wax paper, I buttered a plate, and used that. I had meant to only dip 7 strawberries (I'm just one person, after all), but I had enough chocolate to do 12. And you can't let good chocolate go to waste!

Once the chocolate was all gooey, I stirred it up with a spoon some more, then removed the spoon, and commenced dipping.

The dipping was a fairly messy process, and involved a lot of finger-licking. I found if I rolled the strawberry through the chocolate, that worked best, although near the end, I was just using my index finger to paint the chocolate onto the berry.

After dipping, I put them on the plate, and the chocolate had hardened up pretty well before I was even done dipping the last berries. I've heard you can put them in the fridge, but clearly the house was cold enough they didn't need it.

End result: perfection. The perfect mix of sweet and bitter and sour, chewy and crunchy and soft and toothy. So good. So worth it. Happy birthday, me.

Lemon Garlic Green Beans

2011-02-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

Let's pretend you had some leftover, frozen, butternut squash gnocchi in your freezer from the fall. If you happened to also have butter, fresh sage, an oyster mushroom, and some salt, I'd highly recommend chopping that mushroom, frying it in a healthy glob of butter with a pinch or two of kosher salt until its just brown, adding some sage leaves, frying those up until they're starting to get crunchy, adding more butter, dumping in the cooked gnocchi, stirring it all around, and serving it with a dash of freshly grated parmesan cheese. If you did all those things, you'd probably have a darn tasty meal sitting in front of you. Just sayin'.

Clearly, a dish like that needs a side, preferably a green one. I had some green beans, and I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to cook them, but I had recently had some of the lemon-garlic olives from Whole Foods, and those are tasty, so I decided to make lemon-garlic green beans. Not quite the same as olives, but hey, they were still pretty good. No photo, and no Ed-rating, but I'm guessing he'd like these.

Lemon Garlic Green Beans
Makes however much you'd like
Green beans, of some amount - they don't really cook down, so just pick out as many as you'd like to eat.
1 lemon
3 cloves garlic
olive oil
salt

Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium-ish heat. Chop the garlic finely. When the oil is hot, add the garlic, stir it around, and then add the green beans. Sprinkle with some kosher salt. Slice the lemon into 4-6 round slices, and place those on top of the beans, mashing them a bit with a wooden spoon so they start to give out juice. Let the beans sit without moving them for a few minutes, then stir everything around, and let it sit for another couple of minutes. Taste a bean every once and a while. Once they taste as cooked as you want them, pull them off the heat. Discard the lemons and garlic pieces, just eat the green beans. They were delicious like that.

Creamed spinach

2011-02-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

I've never actually had creamed spinach before, but Ed wanted to make some, after seeing an Iron Chef episode where they made creamed spinach with gruyere. I think it was battle gruyere, because he was talking about cheese a lot. This was another Monday-night bribe, as I came home from coaching to various projects all over the kitchen. The plan was for the creamed spinach to be the base of the dish, with a poached egg on top, and then a little gruyere cracker thing on top (that's where you can tell it was from Iron Chef - what normal person makes cheesy tuile things?).

Unfortunately, he put me in charge of the gruyere tuiles, after telling me to turn the oven to broil, and I forgot about them. Then I smelled burning, opened the oven door, and was greeted by flames. Oops. So, no gruyere tuiles.

The creamed spinach, however, was delicious, with or without its fancy bits. Being an Ed-recipe, quantities are approximate, but, this was delicious.

Creamed spinach
Made enough for two large bowls, big sides

1 bunch of fresh spinach, rinsed and dried
4 pieces bacon (Ed used black forest)
1 clump oyster mushroom
~2-4tbs heavy cream
~1/4-1/2C grated gruyere cheese

Chop up the bacon and mushroom into very small pieces, and cook it until the bacon has rendered out all its fat and the mushrooms are cooked.

Blanch the spinach for about a minute, then pull it out and chop it up as finely as you can. Add it back to the mushrooms and bacon in the pan. Mix it around. Add some cream. Stir things around. Our spinach was still pretty green, not that creamy. Add in the cheese. Stir around some more, until the cheese melts. Add more cream if you feel you need that. Put the whole mess in a blender, and blend for a bit, until it looks more like gloop.

Serve. You can sprinkle cheese on top for more deliciousness. Ed served this with a poached egg on top, and while that was tasty, the spinach on its own was delicious. This is crazy, because I never thought I liked creamed spinach, but I don't think I've ever had it before, either. Just goes to show, you can't know you won't like something until you try it...

Bribes

2011-02-11T07:50:00.000-08:00

The other week, I had said something about wanting to leave Monday night (instead of Tuesday morning) for Amherst, to avoid the snowstorm on Tuesday. I went off to coach, and when I came home, Ed was in the process of cooking a steak tenderloin, mushroom risotto, and opening a bottle of wine from when we were last in France. Needless to say, I stayed home that night! What a bribe =)

This makes me start drooling. The risotto was a regular sort of risotto, with oyster mushrooms and shitakes in it, and then some oysters and black trumpets fried in butter until they're crunchy, and sprinkled on top of the risotto. Oh man, I just started drooling again.

We also had a very tasty salad, with a cilantro-ginger-lime vinaigrette. The vinaigrette is the only real recipe from that night...

Cilantro-ginger-lime vinaigrette
About a handful of fresh cilantro, rinsed
~1" cube of fresh ginger, peeled
1 lime, its zest and juice
olive oil
lemon juice, to taste
salt, to taste

In a food processor, combine everything. Process that up, until it makes a smooth dressing. Taste it. Add more salt, lemon juice, or olive oil, as needed.

Potato-kale pancakes

2011-02-10T07:40:00.000-08:00

This was a bit spur-of-the-moment, but, I wanted something hot for lunch, and I had kale and a potato to work with. Any time you fry something in a quarter inch of oil, it'll get my approval, anyway. And the Ed-stamp of approval. These were quite tasty.

1 potato, shredded
2 leaves of kale, rinsed, dried, and chopped into teeny little pieces
~1/2C shredded parmesan cheese
1 egg
cooking oil
salt and pepper

Grate your potato, and squeeze out the water. Then put it in a bowl. Add the kale, cheese, egg, and maybe 1/4tsp of salt and a couple grinds of pepper. Mix that around until its homogenous.

Heat a generous layer of cooking oil in a frying pan - the cast iron pan worked well for this. Once the oil is shimmering, use your hands to roll out hand-sized balls of the glop, and put it down in the oil. You'll have to work the potato stuff a bit with your hands, first, so that it all stays together, but it should stay. Once the balls of potato mixture are in the pan, flatten them a bit with a spatula.

Let the patties sit still for about three minutes, and they should be sitting there sizzling away. Once the bottoms are browned, flip, and shake some table salt on top of the side that just got flipped. Squish the patties with a spatula once you've flipped the patties.

After another 2-3 minutes, when that side is also browned, pull the patties out of the pan, and drain on a paper towel for a second before serving. Repeat the frying as necessary, I ended up with five patties. These are quite good, but if you fry up anything as little pancakes, and make it crunchy, and put cheese in it, well, I'll like it. The kale was a tasty addition though.

Filled cherry scones

2011-02-09T07:21:00.000-08:00

I decided to try something other than the standard Alton Brown scone/biscuit recipe, and I tried the King Arthur Flour one, from another one of my favorite baking cookbooks. I hate to admit this, but this was the first KAF recipe I ever tried that failed. Luckily, it was just a texture fail, and I was able to rescue the batch of scones. They ended up tasting delicious, and in Ed's words, "these are delicious". So, its worth trying them, but with the modified recipe, not the original one. The filled bit comes from the final step - instead of just making a circle of dough and cutting out wedges, I made two circles, spread cherry preserves on top of the lower circle, and put the other circle of dough one top. Then I cut the wedges. Success!

Filled cherry scones
Made 16 large scones

2C white flour
1C whole wheat flour
1tbs baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
1/4C sugar
1 1/2C buttermilk (original recipe asked for 1 1/4C, which wasn't nearly enough, and I added another half cup, which was a bit too much)
1/2tsp almond extract
4tbs butter, frozen
~1/2C cherry preserves, or other jam

Preheat your oven to 450F.

Mix together the flours, baking powder, soda, salt, and sugar. Use a cheese grater to grate the butter into the mixture. Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour for 37 seconds. Dump in the buttermilk and almond extract, and stir just until the mixture comes together. It'll still be pretty sticky.

Flour a work surface, and dump out the dough into two equal-sized balls. Smoosh them down with your fingers until they make equally-sized discs, and spread jam on one of the circles. Careful to not overwork the dough - just sort of squish it into a circular form. Move the second circle onto the first, so that you have dough - jam - dough. you can squash that out a little wider now that its filled.

Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into 16 pieces, however you'd like. If the dough is sticking to the knife, feel free to flour it occasionally.

Carefully transfer the scones to a greased baking sheet (or two). Turn the oven down to 400, and bake for 20 minutes, until they're golden brown on top. Don't eat them all at once when they come out of the oven... you'll get a stomach-ache.

Biscuits

2011-02-08T19:12:00.001-08:00

Biscuits are delicious. This is Alton Brown's buttermilk biscuit recipe, from his book I'm just here for more food. Make these, they have a high Ed-rating, and are quite delicious. Also, you can have them in the oven in 10 minutes. And out of the oven in another 15.

2C flour
4tbs baking powder
1/4tsp baking soda
3/4tsp salt
1C buttermilk
1/2 stick butter, frozen

Mix all the dry stuff together. Use a cheese grater to grate the butter into the dry stuff. Use your fingertip to rub the butter into the flour for all of 37 seconds. Dump in the buttermilk, and mix just enough to combine. I sort of fold it, usually.

Now comes the tricky part. The recipes all say to knead the biscuits and then cut them into shapes, but I've always just made plops of dough. I decided to try both. In the end, I think I prefer the kind that is just dropped onto the baking sheet, because they are crispier, and I like the shaggy look. The kneaded/folded ones were too much like a dinner roll. Still light and flaky, but just less delicious.

Bake 15-20min at 400F.

Regardless of whether they're lumpy or smooth, biscuits are delicious straight out of the oven. I think that plate is biscuits is basically all I ate that day...

Raspberry chocolate oatmeal muffins

2011-02-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

I wanted to make muffins, and I was thinking of making blueberry oatmeal muffins, because I'd remembered them being awesome. However, I didn't have any blueberries, and I wanted to put chocolate into the muffins. I solved problem number one by walking down to the corner store (a much faster prospect than digging out my car and attempting to get out of the driveway), but all they had by way of frozen fruit was raspberries. For $7. Yikes. But, I haven't bought any food yet this week and it's already Wednesday, so I felt like it would be ok to splurge on frozen raspberries. It was a big bag, anyway.

I walked back home with the raspberries (and milk. I'd needed milk, too.), and looked up some recipes for raspberry oatmeal muffins, and everything kept pointing back to this person's muffin recipe. I figured if enough other people liked her recipe, I'd follow it, too. The big difference between her muffins and the kinds I usually make is that she was making a butter muffin instead of an oil muffin. I find butter to be too many extra steps, but at least this recipe was just melting it, as opposed to creaming it or some other labor-intensive process. The end result was delicious, but raspberries and chocolate are a match made in heaven, so I was sort of expecting deliciousness. Its not a very sweet muffin, but again, the raspberries and chocolate take care of that. I've posted the recipe below, but I followed the original one almost exactly. Almost. I am incapable of following a recipe as it's given to me...

Raspberry chocolate oatmeal muffins
Made 12 big muffins

1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4C sugar
1/2C (1 stick) butter, melted
1C milk
1C rolled oats (not quick oats)
1tsp lemon juice
1/2C white flour + 2 tbs white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/2tsp salt
1tsp baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
some cinnamon
1C frozen raspberries
1/2C chocolate chunks

Combine the oats and milk and lemon juice in a bowl, and let it sit. The original recipe said let it sit 1hr, I got impatient at 30min, and that was just fine. Buttermilk is an acceptable substitute for milk+lemon juice (which should be vinegar, anyway, but I didn't have any).

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Melt the butter.

Put the egg, vanilla, sugar, and butter into the bowl with the milk and the oats. Stir that around thoroughly. Dump all the dry goods (flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder) on top, and mix those around lightly so they're uniform before you fold them in to the wet stuff. Add the raspberries and chocolate, and fold that into the batter. Don't overmix things.

Put the batter into lined muffin tins, and bake for 25-30min. I think mine took just about 30min, the raspberries add a lot of moisture. The muffin tops will be golden brown, and spring back when you poke them, when they're done. Remove to a cooling rack, and enjoy!

The muffins were really crumbly, but, moist and delicious at the same time, if you can get your head around that. Mostly, they were just awesomely raspberry-y and chocolate-y, which is what I was going for.

Pitas

2011-02-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

After our lettuce pitas the night before, I decided to make some actual pitas for lunch, so we could put our leftovers from last night into fresh pitas. I followed this recipe, and it worked beautifully. Didn't take too long, either, which was nice.

Pitas
3C flour
1.5tsp salt
1 tbs sugar
1 tbs yeast
1 1/3C warm water
2 tbs olive oil

Put the warm water in a bowl, add your yeast and sugar, and let it sit for five minutes or so to proof the yeast. Then dump in everything else, stir it until its mixed, and dump that lot onto a floured table or some other surface for kneading. Flour your hands, and knead the dough for 5-10 minutes continuously. I set a kitchen timer for that sort of thing. When you're done, the dough should feel wonderfully elastic and stretchy, and smooth.

Grease a bowl, and let the dough rise somewhere warm (mine went near a radiator) for an hour. The original recipe called for longer, but I was hungry. The dough should have doubled in bulk by then, if not, let it keep rising for a while. Once it's doubled in bulk, dump it back onto that floured surface, and cut it into 8 pieces with a knife. Roll each piece into a round ball, and let those sit while you pre-heat the oven to 400F.

Once the oven is warm, roll out the first ball into a flat pizza shape. Don't roll it too thin, just pretty thin. Put one to two pitas on a baking sheet at a time, and bake for 5-8 minutes, until they're really poofed up.
You don't want them to get too brown, because then they'll be crispy instead of soft and pliable.

Let them cool for a little bit, and then cut them in half and proceed to stuff them with things. Here we have leftovers from the lettuce pitas from last night. Quite tasty. Although according to Ed, I overstuff my pitas.

Ed's version of a pita. Not nearly enough stuff inside.

Lettuce pitas

2011-02-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

Ed is admonishing me to post more recipes more often, since I keep taking photos of things but not doing anything with them. I'll try to upload some of our yummy meals in the next few days. I've sort of given up on the whole tasty-healthy-cheap idea for now - not that everything I cook isn't at least one of those adjectives, and often two, but given that I'm only in Amherst for two nights a week, I'm not buying food for myself as often. Mostly, I steal food from our fridge at home, and brave Ed's wrath when he discovers all the kale has gone missing out of the fridge. At least I don't take his beer...

Anyway, Ed had gone to Russos and gotten lots of veggies, but he called me up as I was driving home from Amherst and asked me to pick up something bloody from the store. I stopped by Whole Foods, because they have yogurt pretzels in the bulk section (not that I'd ever sample from the bulk section), and they had some top round (I think?) that was relatively cheap and looked pretty good. I want to say it was around $5/lb, which puts it on par with hamburger when you're looking at the WF meat case. Anyway, half a pound of that went pretty far, since we ended up slicing it.
*drool*

We both decided pitas would be just the thing, but, we had neither pitas nor the patience to make some. So, we made lettuce pitas, and that worked out pretty well. Sort of interesting, but very tasty, and pretty healthy too.

The stuff for inside: steak (boy is that cooked perfectly), tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and a sort-of-tzatziki sauce that Ed had made a day or two before.

The tzatziki is the only real recipe, and being an Ed-recipe, all quantities are approximate...
Combine: greek yogurt, diced feta cheese, diced cucumber, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I think that is more or less in descending order of quantities, but just keep tasting it until it tastes tangy and creamy and salty and delicious.

The mushrooms are giant oyster mushrooms (we get them from Russos - they're like $3.98/lb, which is actually the same price as the white button mushrooms, and they taste way better. Score!), sauteed in butter and kosher salt. The onions have just been sliced and cooked for a while until they're just starting to caramelize.

Lay your stuff on the fatter end of the lettuce leaf, and try not to over-stuff, because lettuce breaks. Cabbage might have been better, but we only had redleaf lettuce.

Roll it up, attempt to seal it shut, and eat!

Ribs and mousse

2011-01-25T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've never made ribs before, and neither has Ed, but we were thinking it was about time to use up the ribs that have been living in our freezer all fall. We took them over to Ross and Sam's place, and after a long day of playing in the snow, they were an excellent thing to have for dinner. I don't remember exactly what we put in the pot, but I don't think it actually matters that much. Ed chopped the ribs into rib segments, or maybe it was two-rib segments, and put them in the dutch oven. We covered them with a container of turkey stock (from thanksgiving, good stuff), a can of tomatoes, and a whole slew of other spices, including cayenne and bay leaves (and other stuff I don't remember). I think we also had an onion and some garlic in there, and a good bit of cumin.

After that simmered away for about two hours, maybe three, the meat was basically falling off the bone. Delicious.

Ed made a bbq sauce, and I have no idea what he put in that but it was quite tasty, and I'm sure you could use something store-bought to the same effect, more or less. He slathered the ribs with bbq sauce, and then broiled them in the oven until the sauce started to caramelize. I don't know if he flipped them, I don't think he did. Anyway, the end result was delicious. I highly recommend it.

We also took the leftover turkey stock juice stuff and used it as liquid for the rice, like a dirty rice sort of thing. That was also delicious.

Also, Ross and Sam fed us mousse. It was utterly delicious, and they used this recipe. They actually follow recipes, so you can just use the same one. So good. I seem to have it backwards, though, and I'm trying to eat the glass, rather than the mousse. Don't worry, eventually I figured it out. Turns out a spoon was easier.

Stuffed endive leaves

2011-01-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

Ed had an idea to stuff endive leaves with stuff, and I thought it was a good idea, so took pictures as we did it. The filling was a mixture of ground pork, roasted red peppers, onions, and garlic, with a little salt and pepper. We put those onto the scoopy part of an endive leaf, and placed them artfully around a pile of rice. The rice got cooked with a spoonful of yellow curry paste, which made it quite tasty.

While the endives were pretty and all, the pork mixture really just tasted best when eaten with the rice. At least we tried it both ways!

To roast the red peppers, cut your pepper into strips, and place skin side up, on a baking sheet. Broil for 5-10 minutes, until the skin is all blackened and bubbled. Take out the peppers, let them cool, and then peel off the skin with your fingers.

On an aside, Ed put the weather station thingy that had been sitting collecting dust for a few years outside, finally, and in the process extracted a sweet icicle. Luckily, the tip fell off before he could attack me with it.

Espresso white chocolate macadamia nut cookies

2011-01-18T18:34:00.000-08:00

I love these cookies. The espresso powder was a last minute thing, but I'd been scheming to make white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for a while, I had the macadamia nuts, I just needed to acquire a tasty enough white chocolate. The Ghiradelli chips I have don't taste quite right, I can't figure out what it is about them, but I'm not a huge fan. Anyway, Ed's mom came through in a big way for Christmas, and gave me some sort of chocolate-lover's pack from King Arthur Flour, it had fancy cocoa powder, mini chocolate chips, fancy chocolate chunks, espresso powder, and fancy white chocolate chunks. Perfect. Paired with the jar of macadamia nuts from my mom, I was all set.

The espresso powder made the cookies a bit darker than they'd normally look, but its tasty - adds a bit of a kick. I got the idea after eating one of Sam's truffles that she gave us for Christmas that was white chocolate and espresso. Not necessary, but worth it if you have it.

I found the recipe for these guys online, and decided to halve it, since I'm one person. It seems to have worked, so I'm posting my halved recipe.

Espresso white chocolate macadamia nut cookies
Made 12 big cookies

1C flour
1/4tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
6 tbs butter
1/4C brown sugar
1/4C white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp espresso powder
3/4C white chocolate chunks
1/2C macadamia nuts

Preheat your oven to 325F.

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Once the butter is light and fluffy, add the egg and the vanilla. Then stir in all the dry stuff on top.

Once you've mixed together your dough, dump in the nuts and chocolate - it was about equal parts dough and chunky things.

Spoon the cookies into 12 equal-sized piles on the baking sheet.

Bake for 10-14 minutes, and take them out before there is any goldenness around the edges - you want them to be soft and chewy.

These ones rose a lot, and I think I want them flatter. I'm going to try less baking soda next time, although I'm almost out of nuts, so there might not be a next time. Or I could flatten them a bit more. Either way, they are delicious.

Croque monsieur

2010-12-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

When my mom was visiting last weekend, she bought me cheese, one block of which was some emmental. That made me think of grilled cheese sandwiches, so I went to the store to buy some bread. And then I decided that I wanted to make a croque monsieur, which involves ham (didn't have) and bechamel sauce (have never made before). Not one to be daunted by something as little as not having an ingredient, I used salmon pate (also courtesy of my mom) in place of ham. And then I looked up some recipes for bechamel, and it didn't seem that hard. In the end, it was a success! Deliciousness.

So the first task was to grate some cheese. Ok, grate a lot of cheese.

Then, I made the bechamel. It was hardly a traditional sauce, as I went for the kind with an egg in it, and you're supposed to just use the yolk, but I didn't have any immediate uses for egg whites, and I hate wasting food, so I just beat the whole egg and used that. I also put a bunch of garlic in the sauce. It made everything taste garlicky, which was a good thing. And the final change was that I didn't add any nutmeg - I didn't have any.

Bechamel (Alex's version...)
Made ~3/4C?

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
~3/4C milk
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste
1 clove garlic, minced.

Mince the garlic. Melt the butter in a saucepan (or frying pan, if you're me). Once its melted, add the garlic, and cook that for just a little bit until it smells delicious. Add the 2tbs of flour all at once, and whisk until its smooth. It should be a thick paste-like substance now, with a couple lumps of garlic. Add the milk, and whisk some more. The milk thins things out, but then you cook it for another couple minutes (less than 5), and it thickened up again. Take it off the heat, and season with salt and pepper, tasting.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg. Add a little (~1/4C) of the hot bechamel to the egg to temper the egg, then add the egg-bechamel sauce back to the larger quantity of it. Whisk some more. Done! Set aside until you're ready for it.

Melt the butter.

Add the flour and whisk - it turns into a thick paste.

Add the milk, cook for a bit, and when it pulls away from the bottom of the pan, its thick enough.

Meanwhile, spread your salmon pate (or ham, if you're being all traditional - I think ham would have been better in this position than salmon pate, honestly) on one side of the bread. Mustard would be good here, too. Put some cheese on the other half, and close into a sandwich. I ended up taking off some of the cheese shown here, because I ended up making two sandwiches, and didn't feel like grating more cheese, so had to share the cheese.

Butter a baking dish, and put your sandwich(es) onto it. Spoon the bechamel over the top, nice and thick and gloopy. Top with more grated cheese, and bake for ~15 minutes at 400F.

After 15 minutes of baking, turn your oven to broil, and check every minute. Once the cheese is brown and delicious-looking, its done. Pull out the sandwiches.

Yum. One of these bad boys filled me up quite nicely after a 2hr run this morning...

To continue with the non-traditional way of making things, I topped the sandwich with avocado. Avocado makes everything taste even more amazing, because avocados are awesome.

Leftovers heat up nicely in a toaster oven, to get that crunchy crispy cheesy top again.

Pecan Pie

2010-12-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

I have never made a pecan pie before, and since I know that they're not good for you, its probably not a good idea to make one and leave it sitting around, where I'll end up eating 4000 calories of pie over the course of a day. I kid you not, they're heavy duty. And DELICIOUS. So, I figured, why not experiment on Leo and Jenny? It might turn out to be a total flop and never set up, but then we can pick out goopy pecans from the filling and eat the pie crust on its own, Leo and Jenny are those sorts of people. My sorts of people. But in the best case scenario, it'll all work! To help with my endeavors, I followed a recipe. Sort of. I'm just incapable of properly following one of those, but what I did, worked out. The recipe I tried to follow is here. But I've reprinted what I ended up doing.

Maple pecan pie
3/4C maple syrup
1/4C molasses
3/4C dark brown sugar
1/4C white sugar
3 eggs
3 tbs melted butter
1 tbs flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-3/4C pecans

Pie crust for one pie bottom.

Preheat your oven to 350F. Mix everything together except the pecans. Put the pie crust into a greased pie pan. Put the pecans in the crust, and pour the filling over the top. Bake for 1hr, until it puffs up, and a tester comes out clean. Let it cool a bit before you try and eat it, or it'll be runny.

Hearty turkey lentil stew

2010-12-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

I was going to just make a lentil soup, today, but then I realized that I could totally put turkey in it. Still not nearing the end of the turkey leftovers, which have now migrated to the freezer. Anyway, this is quite glop-ish, but, its tasty and warm and fairly comforting, if you're at the end of a cold, rainy, exhausting December day.

Lentil glop stew
Made lots and lots, but that is because I put lots and lots of veggies into it. Basically three huge servings

~1/2C dry lentils
1 can diced tomatoes
1C turkey stock
1/2 broccoli
1/2 zucchini
1/2 eggplant
a bunch of mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1/2 green pepper
1C chopped kale
olive oil
1 bay leaf
salt
pepper

Start by putting on a pot of brown rice. This is a very brown-rice-appropriate sort of meal. Yea hippies!

Put the lentils, turkey broth, tomatoes, and bay leaf into a pot and bring that to a boil. Once it boils, lower the the heat to a simmer.

Meanwhile, in a frying pan, cook all the veggies. Once they're as done as you like them (i.e. cooked, but with some bite, still), pull that pan off the heat, and taste the lentils. Salt and pepper them, and if they're done, dump in the veggies, and serve. If they're not done, wait. (instructions for how to make lentils: cook until done).

It took about 20 minutes, total.

Enjoy with rice, or bread, or just on its own.

Turkey Thai curry soup

2010-11-30T17:04:00.000-08:00

Yup, more turkey leftovers posts! In this one, I make a curry. With lots of lime and cilantro. All the other stuff that goes into it is optional, but I recommend going heavy on the veggies, it tastes better and is better for you. Pretty much everything in this recipe is optional except the curry paste, coconut milk, lime, and cilantro. So, go wild...

Turkey Thai curry
Made about three servings

1 can coconut milk
~2tbs Thai red curry paste (I have some Thai Kitchen brand kicking around, used that)
1C turkey stock
1 lime
~1C cilantro
~2C chopped, cooked turkey
1/2 jalapeno
2 cloves garlic
a bunch of mushrooms
1/2 broccoli
1/2 eggplant
1/2 zucchini
1/2 green pepper
Oil
Salt

Heat some oil in a big frying pan. Chop the garlic and the jalapeno, and throw those in. Chop all the other veggies into bite sized pieces, and throw it into the pan, but reserve about 2 tbs of chopped cilantro for garnish. Once its all in the pan, add the coconut milk and curry paste - taste as you go with the curry paste, you might not want that much if you don't like spicy things, but the more you add, the more it tastes like curry. Also, its not on the ingredients list, but I highly recommend putting in some fresh ginger, too. Zest the lime, and put the zest into the curry. Add the turkey broth and the turkey, make sure everything is mixed together, and let it simmer away for 5-10 minutes, until the veggies are at a state where you like to eat them.

Once the veggies are cooked, pull the pan off the heat, and serve over a heap of rice, or just in a bowl as a soup, garnished with some cilantro. Squeeze lime juice over the top. If you want it more soupy, add more turkey broth, if you want it more curry-like, add less broth.

Also, use all your leftover veggies tomorrow, in the hearty turkey lentil stew.

Creamy turkey en croute

2010-11-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

Yup, we cooked a turkey, the smallest one we could find (at 13 pounds) for three people. Because Jenny doesn't eat turkey. Needless to say, we have lots of leftovers.

mmm, so good at the time, so not-good as leftovers. But that's referring to the cold type of leftovers. This is totally transformable. I think my hatred of sandwiches extends to cold turkey breast.

We also had some leftover pie dough, enough for one pie. I thought about making another pie, but Ed took the pie dough and made little mini-pie-crust-things, and we put a leftover turkey mixture into those. Actually quite delicious! I will call it, turkey en croute! Sort of.

The shell was a blind-baked pie crust. Roll it out, and cut into squares, I think they were ~4" per side. Stuff those into a greased muffin tin, poke a bunch of holes (with the tines of a fork) into the bottom, and bake them at 350F for ~15 minutes, until they're golden brown. You'll end up with pretty little cups for putting filling into.

Creamy turkey filling
Made enough for four hungry eaters

Olive oil
~2C leftover turkey (white or dark), cut into bite-size or smaller chunks
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
~1/2C turkey stock (optional?)
~1/2-1C greek yogurt
salt and pepper, to taste
~2 tsp rosemary

We happened to have some greek yogurt, so that is what turned into the creamy part of the creamy turkey filling. Greek yogurt is awesome, by the way - tangy, thick, and almost (if you squint your eyes) good for you. Buy the full-fat stuff, by the way, it tastes better. We got ours from the greek place, which means its definitely full fat.

So, heat some olive oil, toss in the onion, add some kosher salt, and let that sizzle away for a few minutes. Add the rosemary and let that sizzle until things smell like rosemary. Add the garlic, toss it around until it smells fragrant, then add the other veggies and the turkey stock. Cook those down until they're basically done, taste one to see how crunchy it is. Add the turkey, toss it around until its warmed up, then pull the pan off the heat and stir in the greek yogurt and some pepper. Taste, and adjust the seasonings as needed.

Lump some creamy turkey into the pie dough shells, and serve while warm. Its delicious!

Nachos!

2010-11-22T16:54:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure if I've ever made nachos before. The premise is pretty simple, cover tortilla chips with grated cheese and heat until the cheese melts. But I've always preferred the chips that have way too much stuff on top, sort of like my overstuffed burritos, so just chips and cheese isn't going to cut it. Then there is the consideration that tortilla chips are the best calorie-per-dollar food you can get, which doesn't put them in such a good light in terms of healthiness. I wanted something goopy and cheesy and warm, though; its been a rough week and weekend. I experimented with making some oven-toasted corn tortillas, and those worked well as chips - no deep-frying necessary. And then I loaded up an entire dinner's worth of food on top of those, with a ton of cheese, and voila! nachos. Alex-style.

Nachos, Alex-style
Made enough for definitely more than one Alex

~1/3lb ground beef
3 tbs Alton Brown's taco seasoning
1 red onion
1 clove garlic
some spinach
6 corn tortillas
1 can black beans
1/2 block of cheddar
1/2 avocado
1 jalapeno
~1/4C salsa
~1/4C olives (kalamata in this case)

Preheat your oven to 400F. Meanwhile, set a pan on your stove, and turn it up to medium-ish. Dump in the beef (I used ground sirloin, and it was durn tasty). Add the garlic, half the onion, and the taco seasoning. Let that cook away, stirring occasionally to break up the beef.

Take your six tortillas, stack them, and cut them into wedges. I cut each into eight wedges. Spread them on an ungreased baking sheet, and bake for ~10 minutes. Take them out when they're crispy and just browning around the edges.

Once your beef is done, add the beans, stir that around for some flavor, and put it all in a bowl. Dump the spinach (maybe two handfuls) into the pan, and stir that around until it wilts thoroughly.

Grate the cheese.

Put your "chips" into a smaller baking dish, so that they're a bit overlapping. Sprinkle on the rest of the onion, the chopped jalapeno, and the olives, and cover with a couple spoonfuls of salsa. Cover that with the spinach, and some (probably about a third) of the beef/bean mixture. Put the grated cheese all over that. Put the entire concoction back into the oven, for another 10 minutes or so.

Dice the avocado. I only ended up using half of it, but the whole thing would have been scrumptious, as would have been some cilantro. Alas.

When the cheese is melted and a little brown on top, your nachos are done. You can eat them straight out of the pan, or attempt to transfer them to a plate. Sprinkle with the diced avocado, and enjoy!

Yes, this is how I like my tortilla chips - loaded. Also, yes, I was eating dinner in front of my computer. This is not a rare happenstance, unfortunately...

Rosemary pecans and cranberries

2010-11-19T08:45:00.000-08:00

One of the things in my giant Trader Joe's care package from TNC when I left was a pack of these rosemary pecans and cranberries. They were delicious, and I figured they couldn't be that hard to replicate, so, I went ahead and experimented. I think it worked out, although I overcooked them by about five minutes. Basically, you just melt some butter and sugar in a frying pan, add rosemary, let that cook for a while, throw in the pecans and cranberries, toss around until they've absorbed all the fat, toss with some kosher salt, and bake for 10 minutes. Deliciousness!

Rosemary pecans and cranberries
Made about two cups
~1C pecans, chopped
~1C craisins
~1tbs rosemary, dried
2 tbs butter
1 tbs sugar
~2tsp kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 350F. Melt the butter in a frying pan with the sugar. Once the sugar is dissolved, add the rosemary, and let that cook in the hot fat until it smells like rosemary. Should smell delicious. Add the pecans and cranberries, and stir those around until they've absorbed all the fat. It should take less than 5 minutes. At some point, sprinkle with ~2tsp of kosher salt. Once there is no longer anything left on the bottom of the pan, dump your fruit 'n' nuts on a baking sheet. Shake it a bit to spread the mixture evenly, and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the mixture is mostly dry. You don't want to overbake, as the cranberries will get hard, and the nuts will taste burned. No good.

How do you eat this deliciousness? Sprinkle on salads, on mashed sweet potatoes, eat them as a snack, heck, I put some in my oatmeal. They're crunchy and caramel-y and rosemary-y. A good combination.

Oven-roasted broccoli

2010-11-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

I roast vegetables in the oven a lot. Usually I don't do broccoli, but I had wanted roasted brussels sprouts, and they were all out of those at the Big Y. So I got broccoli, and pretended it was Brussels sprouts. The result was surprisingly similar, green thing that tastes roasty. Yum. Anyway, if you're sick of doing broccoli in the same old ways of however you normally do it, here is an idea for you.

Chop up the broccoli into bite-sized pieces, and put it in a pile on a baking sheet. Drizzle with some oil - the stuff will soak up oil like that's its job, so be sparing. Then toss with your hands until each piece is reasonably well coated. Sprinkle some kosher salt on top, and bake at 400F for ~15-25 minutes - when it stops making crackling noises, its probably done, so take a look at it. Enjoy!

Sage-butternut squash gnocchi

2010-11-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

Tossed in a sage-brown butter cream sauce. Holy richness deliciousness, those were good. I've made pumpkin gnocchi before, but never butternut squash gnocchi. But, its yellow, and has a nice flavor, so I figured that was good enough for me. The gnocchi turned out nice and light, which I counteracted by adding lots of butter and cream. If I'd had booze, I would have added that, too, just to get the trifecta. Anyway, this dish took a little planning ahead to prepare, because first you have to roast the squash, mash it up, and let it drain a bit. Then you add flour and spices, roll into snakes, cut into gnocchi-sized pieces, and boil. At the same time as making the sauce. It all works out, in the end. I meant to take blurry pictures along the way, but I forgot. You're probably not missing much.

Scroll down for the caramelized onion, and sage-brown butter sauce recipes.

Sage-butternut squash gnocchi
Made enough for 4 servings, or 3 for really hungry people

1 butternut squash
olive oil
1 onion
1/2 packet (a couple sprigs) fresh sage, or dried sage
kosher salt
Flour (~2C?)
Various fall-flavored spices

First, roast your squash at 350F for 30 minutes. I did this by cutting it in half, lengthwise, scooping out all the seeds, smearing some olive oil and kosher salt on the cut side, and putting it cut-side-down on a baking sheet. Then I put the baking sheet in the oven for 30 minutes, until you could poke through the skin of the squash really easily with a fork. Easy peasy.

Once the squash is cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh out of its skin, and put it in a bowl. Mash the flesh with a potato masher, or a food processor, or a fork, or whatever you use to mash things. If you have time, put the mashed flesh into a sieve of some sort and let it drain for an hour or two to get out extra water. If you don't mind just using extra flour, forge ahead without draining.

Add ~1tsp of kosher salt, ~2tbs chopped sage (less if you're using the dried variety), and other spices of your liking. I suggest: cinnamon, black pepper, coriander, cumin, cloves, dried ginger, garlic, whatever you think would taste good. I think I used a combination of cinnamon, ginger, cumin, and pepper. It was tasty.

Stir that around so that its all mixed in. Then add some flour, about a cup, and mix that around. If its too wet to roll into a snake, add more flour. I think I ended up adding about two cups worth of flour.

Once the dough is dry enough to roll, pull out a handful at a time, and on a well-floured surface, roll it into a snake. It'll be loose, but as long as it holds its snake-like shape, you're good. Then cut the snakes into ~1/2" chunks, making sure to not let them stick together. Put about 15-20 pieces at a time into a giant pot of boiling water. The more water you have, the less likely your gnocchi are to stick to each other. When you add the gnocchi to the water, they'll all sink. Give them one gentle stir to make sure they're not sticking to the bottom, and then wait. They're done cooking when they float to the top. This took a little under 5 minutes for mine. Once they're floating, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and toss with the brown butter sauce.

Keep cooking them in batches until you've used up all the dough. Alternatively, freeze some of them - I don't know how this will turn out, but, I put about half the batch into the freezer. I cut them into gnocchi shapes, then laid them on a sheet pan to freeze individually. Once they were frozen, I put them all in a ziplock bag, with the date. Good for next time!

Caramelized onions

1 onion
~2-3tbs olive oil
kosher salt

Peel the onion. Chop it in half lengthwise. Slice across the grain, so that you end up with little half-rings. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the onion, and a good dose of kosher salt. Stir around, and let it cook for ~15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add more oil as necessary if the onions start to stick. When they're golden with brown edges, they're done - taste one. It should taste sweet and delicious.

Sage brown butter sauce

2-3 tbs butter
~1/4C fresh sage (or half that dried)
~2tbs cream (I used light cream)

Melt the butter in the onion frying pan (after taking out the onions). Add the sage, chopped coarsely. Cook for a while over medium heat, until the butter looks sort of brown-ish. Add two splashes of cream, and stir around. Taste. Add salt and pepper if you want. Pour over gnocchi, sprinkle some caramelized onions on top, and serve.

Chocolate chewy everything cookies

2010-11-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I made some chocolate chewy cookies, I think following the epicurious recipe. I had mentioned back that that you could also follow the King Arthur Flour recipe, which is basically the same thing, so I tried that one today. Except, I added toasted walnuts, craisins, and white chocolate chips. Which really made things even more delicious. These were the cookies that took three egg whites (from the biscuits that I made with three egg yolks). The only downside, is that I only had the "special dark" cocoa powder, and it made things a bit too chocolately, if that is even possible. Maybe I'll use less cocoa next time. Anyway, these cookies were, as promised, chewy and delicious. The shininess is a bit off-putting at first, but then you taste the cookie, and it doesn't matter anymore that they're shiny.

Chocolate chewy everything cookies
Made 11 giant cookies

2-1/4C confectioners sugar
1C special dark cocoa powder
1/4tsp salt
3 egg whites
2 tsp vanilla
~1/2C white chocolate chips
~1C toasted walnuts
~1/2C craisins

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix everything together. This made a pretty thick paste for me. Grease the cookie sheet, and plop down some cookies. They spread a little in the oven, but nothing horrible, not like last time when they turned into brownies.

Bake the cookies for 8-13 minutes, until they're crackly on top. Mine took 13 minutes. Don't overcook these cookies, or they won't be chewy, and that is the whole point.

I make a darn good chicken stew

2010-11-04T17:45:00.000-07:00

So the last couple weeks have been decidedly not-normal in the whole $30/week thing. Mostly its been because we've had friends in Amherst, and dinners at Peter and Gail's house, and Ali's house, and eating out way too much, and then a sudden trip to Boston to go vote, and basically, life just got crazy. I have been shopping, last week I bought corn flakes, and this week I bought two boxes of corn flakes (buy one get one free!). Yeah, basically I've just been scrounging around and coming up with food, somehow. Sometimes, its cereal for dinner. I have actually cooked things, and we've cooked things at home too, but with no camera, it just doesn't seem worth writing about. Sirloin tips - get some sirloin tips, those were delicious, and only $6/lb from Whole Foods, when all Ed and I could agree on for dinner was that we wanted something bloody.

Anyway, today I took a photo, and it was actually a very tasty recipe. I had some frozen chicken drumsticks, from when Ed went to the fresh-killed poultry place, and I also had some very floppy and almost dead celery and carrots. So, chicken stew it became. I think this would get a good Ed-rating, but he isn't in Amherst, so all I can do is guess. But its plenty rich (I DO have butter), and a bit spicy thanks to the floppy jalapeno I found in the carrot bag, and quite delicious paired with crunchy-on-the-outside, flaky-and-tender-on-the-inside biscuits. This was a darn good meal!

Chicken Stew with biscuits
Made 2-3 servings, depends how hungry you are

2 drumsticks
3 carrots
3 sticks of celery
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil
1 zucchini
rosemary
1 jalapeno
chicken stock (or water)
1 bay leaf
1/2 potato
2 tbs butter
2-3 tbs flour

First things first, get about two cups of chicken stock (or water) boiling in a medium-sized pot. Once its boiling, add the bay leaf, the drumsticks, one carrot broken into 3-4 chunks, and the flowery tops of the celery that you'd normally not eat. You'll pull out the carrot and celery chunks in a bit. Reduce the heat from boiling to simmering, and leave it be for ~30min.

For the veggies, heat some oil in a pan, then add the diced onion. Once that is sweated, add the finely diced garlic and about a tablespoon of rosemary. Stir that around until it smells fragrant. Add the diced pepper, which is totally optional, by the way, but I liked the heat it added. Add the chopped celery and carrots, and let that cook away until the carrots are soft. Then you can add the zucchini. Take that pan off the heat once things are cooked.

As all this stuff cooks, prepare the BISCUITS! Apparently, I've never written about biscuits on this blog, so the recipe I used is below. It loosely follows Alton Brown's biscuit recipe, which I'm sure is much better, but, I didn't feel like looking it up, so I just used this one, which worked.

Biscuits
Made 12 lumpy biscuits

2C all purpose flour
1tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 stick butter - grated
3 egg yolks *
1C milk (skim)

*Use 2 eggs, normally. I just happened to make cookies that called for 3 egg whites early today, so I had extra egg yolks, and figured I'd use them up.

Mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a big bowl. Using the big holes on a square cheese grater, grate the butter into the flour. This puts it into little chunks, or if you have a pastry cutter, I hear those work, too. Use your fingers and work the butter and flour together with your finger tips, for exactly 37 seconds (this is according to Alton Brown). The butter grates better if it is frozen, but mine was only refrigerated, and it worked out.

In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and milk. Dump that into the dry stuff. Mix just until its combined, no longer. Plop 12 little heaps of biscuit batter on a greased baking sheet, and bake for, oh, 20 minutes or so, at 400F. Keep checking after 15 minutes, and take the biscuits out when they are golden brown, and the chunky bits are darker brown. They'll be crispy on the outside, and flaky and tender on the inside. Delicious!

Now back to the stew. When you deem the chicken to be cooked, take out the celery and carrot chunks, and drop the diced, half a potato into the pot. Meanwhile, make a roue. Melt the 2tbs of butter, and whisk in about 2 tbs of flour. I eyeballed it. It turned into a thick pate a choux, I think that is what its called - looked like batter of some sort. I dumped that into the stew, and whisked for a while, and the broth got thicker. Then I took out the chicken, used two forks to remove the meat from the bones, and dumped in the veggies. Voila! Chicken stew. Serve with biscuits. Perfect for cold, rainy days like this one...

Spinach salad

2010-10-14T16:55:00.001-07:00

I thought I did pretty well at the grocery store this week - no time to get to Sunset Farm. There was a little impulse spending, though, like the avocado, the olives, and a whole bunch of fruit that is neither in season nor from this country. Anyway, I wasn't going to get salad-makings, because salads just take a whole lot of time and effort to make and there is rarely enough leftover for lunch the next day, but the Big Y had a giant tub of baby spinach on sale for $3.00 - ok, done. Probably means it will go bad in a day, but then I'll just cook it. I made it out of there for $24.83, just under that meaningless $25 limit I've set for myself, but I was impressed, given that I went in there with no list, and a lot of the stuff will get eaten next week, thanks to some poor planning. The big spending came on the cantaloupe, mushrooms, spinach, cilantro, avocado, and olives. But the salad I made with some of this stuff was delicious!

The dressing was sweet: olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and a little fig jam and some salt. Quite tasty. The filler was baby spinach, and the toppings included toasted walnuts, mozzarella, kalamata olives, avocado, tomato, and orange pepper. I guess I could put less stuff on my salads, and then they'd be quicker to make, but I just don't roll like that.

I don't have a photo, but I cooked up a chicken thigh to go with it - I recently had a lightbulb moment where I realized that if I rendered some of the fat out of chicken skin, and then stuck it in the oven, it would crisp up even better, and I was right. I highly recommend that approach! The rent-a-dogs loved cleaning up all that chicken fat out of the pan, too.

Spinach Quesadillas and beans

2010-10-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

I had four corn tortillas left over from when I made tacos, and some cheese leftover from last week from the tomato tart that I haven't put up a recipe for. So, I turned that into quesadillas, served with some of those beans I had made, topped with some greek yogurt.

Quesadillas are easy to make. First, saute some garlic in olive oil. Once the kitchen smells like toasted garlic, add a whole bunch of spinach to the pan, and salt it. Spinach cooks way down, so depending on how much of it you want, you may want to add like four cups of it. Of course, if you just want enough for the quesadillas, just add two handfuls or so.

Next, grate cheese. I used cheddar. Grate lots of cheese.

If you have cilantro, that tastes good in these things too, so chop up some of that.

Once the spinach is done, pull it out of the pan, and add some more oil to the pan. Put down one tortilla, then add a bunch of cheese (probably half a cup?). Put some spinach over that. Then put on the second tortilla. This can all be done in the pan. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes, and then use a spatula and flip the whole thing. Once the looks thoroughly melted, pull it out and let it cool on a cutting board. Cook the other quesadilla while the first one cools. You want it to be relatively cooled before you cut it, or the cheese will just run out of it and it'll flatten. But you don't want it to be cold, because cold quesadillas are gross.

I decided that just eating cheese and corn tortillas for dinner wasn't very well rounded, so added some beans and greek yogurt, and the extra spinach. Pretty tasty.

Texas baked beans

2010-10-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

I like beans. But I don't like normal baked beans, the Boston variety I suppose, because I don't particularly like the sweetness. I discovered that Texas baked beans aren't sweet, so I tried making some the other weekend, and they were awesome. I now plan to make a batch of beans every time I'm home, since Ed has the dutch oven, and slow cooking stuff works best in a dutch oven. Apparently, Texas baked beans recipes vary widely, with all sorts of spices and stuff that can go in the pot - it doesn't really seem to matter. As far as I could tell, based on the internet (which never lies), as long as you have beans, water, salt, pepper, and some sort of meat product, you're good to go. I was a little more elaborate than that, but not much.

Don't tell Ed, but I've been hacking off chunks of a giant rack of baby back ribs that he bought a couple weeks ago and stashed in the freezer. I've just been taking one rib at a time, if it weren't for the cut packaging, I'm sure he wouldn't notice... Back to the point, though, that entire rack of ribs cost $5.88. And if you're cooking one rib each week, well, that is a darn economical piece o' meat, especially as you're using the bone for flavor, too.

Right, recipe:

1lb beans (any kind will do, I used pinto this time)
soaking liquid from beans
more water as necessary
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
1 can diced or chunk tomatoes
1 beef rib, or other hunk of meat that will do well with slow cooking. A bone would work, too.
bacon grease, or oil - best yet, fry up some bacon first, then use the grease!
spices, in seed form (cumin and coriander for me) ** optional
spices, in ground form (more cumin, cayenne, more coriander, black pepper)
salt
1 bay leaf

The only dishes I used for these beans were a cutting board, knife, and dutch oven. Its a nice change from how I usually trash the kitchen, getting the maximal number of pots and pans dirty. If you don't have a dutch oven, you can use a crock pot, or just a regular pot and check it and stir it regularly - its more likely to burn things. The dutch oven has nice thick sides that hold heat well, so you can use a lower heat.

First, soak your beans for 6-8 hours (i.e. overnight), or do a quick soak - bring them to a boil, then let them sit for an hour.

Dice up an onion, and sweat it in some bacon grease. We always have bacon grease stored in a can in the freezer, its basically free, since you don't really feel like eating it with your bacon. And, it tastes delicious.

Once the onions are nice and sweaty, add the diced garlic. Let that toast for a bit, and then add any spice seeds you're planning to use - I find cumin leaves a nice flavor if you add it to the fat in the pan and let it pop open.

Dump everything else into the dutch oven. My beef rib was still frozen at this point.

Stir around the mixture so its all evenly distributed, and add enough water (or stock) so that you have full coverage, but don't make it too deep. This photo is showing liquid that is a bit too deep. Bring this to a boil, and once its there, reduce it to a simmer. Let it simmer for ~3 hours. Add the salt near the end, supposedly salt makes the bean skins tough if you add it too soon. But you don't really need to do anything, you can leave the house and just let it keep simmering away, with the lid on.

After 3 hours, it'll look something like this - most of the liquid will be gone/absorbed, the beans should be tender and delicious, and the meat should be mostly fallen off the rib - you can help it along with a fork. Discard the bay leaf and the rib bone, season with salt and spices the way you like it, and eat your beans. I like them with rice, some chopped cilantro, and a dollop or two of greek yogurt.

If there is still too much liquid after 3 hours, take off the lid and let it simmer away for another half hour or so, until the liquid is at a level you find acceptable. It should be pretty thick, and tasty.

Supposedly, and I have yet to test this, you can mash up the leftovers and it makes very tasty refried beans.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

2010-10-12T18:21:00.001-07:00

I suppose these are muffins, but they certainly have enough chocolate to qualify as a cupcake. Where is the line between cupcake and muffin, anyway? These are loosely based on a chocolate applesauce cake of Anna's, but then I tweaked stuff, for no good reason other than not having the full 1-1/3C applesauce. I put in regular chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, I think nuts would have been good, too, but I wanted to be able to share these with Ali on our way to Canada, and she can't do nuts, under penalty of death. So, no nuts.

Chocolate chocolate chip muffins
Made 12 huge muffins

1C white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/3C cocoa (I used the special dark variety)
1C applesauce
1/3C oil
1/3C greek yogurt
1 egg
3/4C sugar
1/2C chocolate chips
1/2C white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350F. In a big bowl, mix the dry goods. In another bowl, mix together the wet stuff. Add wet to dry, and don't overmix. Line the muffin pan with muffin liners, or just grease each cup, and load 'em up. I found I had to fill the cups above the top, but they didn't explode or anything, they just made big muffins.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a testing stick comes out clean, and the top rebounds when you poke it with a finger. Don't overbake, because these guys are deliciously moist. And dark, holy cow that's a hit of chocolate.

Lunchbox muffins

2010-10-05T18:11:00.000-07:00

Lunchbox muffins is sort of a silly name, nobody uses a lunchbox. I've used a plastic grocery bag for the last four years, maybe that counts as a lunchbox. Anyway, these are basically a redo of veggie muffins I made a long time ago. I remembered them being good, and I wanted to see what would happen when I added some greek yogurt. Basically, looking to get these have the right macronutrient ratio to eat as a meal. Although, you'll need like four at a time to get enough calories. Anyway, I came pretty close, thanks to the huge slug of protein the greek yogurt delivers. They also taste really good, but that's because you should never sacrifice taste in the name of "nutrition". The one problem was that these guys stuck to their wrappers, I probably should have greased them.

Lunchbox muffins
Made 15

1/2C white flour
1C whole wheat flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2tsp flavoring - mix of black pepper, red pepper, dried herbs, whatever you like. I used a mix of peppers.
4 eggs
1/4C oil
1C nonfat greek yogurt
1C kale (packed down)
1/2-1C beet greens
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
~1/4C dried tomatoes
~3/4C shredded cheddar cheese
~3/4C shredded pecorino cheese (or other flavorful cheese)

The types of veggies and cheese are totally optional. Its basically 2-3C of chopped veggies, and 1.5C grated cheese.

Preheat your oven to 350F. In one bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, salt, and dried flavorings.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs and greek yogurt and oil. Chop all the vegetables super finely, and add them to the wet stuff. Add the cheeses to the dry mixture, and mix around until they're coated with flour. Add the wet to the dry, and stir to combine. It'll be super dry - I decided that was a good thing, because the veggies were uncooked, so they'd give off some moisture during baking.

Line the muffin tins with muffin tin liners, and spray those with something nonstick. Load 'em up high - they don't rise much on their own, so I just filled each tin as much as I feasibly could. As you can see from my blurry pictures, the muffin stays lumpy. Don't expect it to spread out.

I thought these were delicious, very definitely cheese-y and a bit spicy. They would not have passed the Ed-test, because Ed thinks muffins should be sweet, and preferably frosted. I'm not sure he realizes the difference between a muffin and a cupcake. Maybe he would eat these now, he certainly didn't eat the last ones, and still gets indignant that I put broccoli into a cupcake. Except, its not a cupcake. Sigh.

I added up the numbers, and each muffin is 153 calories. 8.5g fat, 12g carbs, and 8.5g protein. That's 22% of the muffin's calories coming from protein, making it just about a perfect snack/mini meal. If you eat like four of them. I just need bigger muffin tins. I bet sprinkling the cheese on top would be good, too, and might look nicer than having it hidden inside. Also, bacon would be good. That might get an Ed-approval, if I had bacon in the muffins.

Not the most attractive-looking muffin I've seen, but tasty enough to make up for it.

Tomato-bread salad

2010-09-29T17:14:00.001-07:00

I have lots of delicious vegetables, and this is one of my favorite ways to eat them. The overall color is a bit pink, because of the beets, but it was a delicious salad. I recommend it. The quantities are all pretty relative, it just depends what you have on hand. I meant to put anchovies in it, but I forgot - I think that would make it taste even better.

Salad:
Makes enough to serve two as a side dish or one hungry person as a main dish

Chop everything roughly into cubes:

2 heirloom tomatoes
1 salad cucumber
1 red pepper or sunburst pepper
1/2 red onion
1 clove garlic
a whole bunch of cilantro, basil, or other fresh herbs
1 beet
1/2 avocado
two handfuls of croutons, preferably the homemade kind.

Dressing:
lemon juice
olive oil
salt

whisk to combine, taste, add whatever you think needs adding. I'd start with about half lemon juice and half olive oil, and go from there.

Croutons
Take a couple pieces of stale bread, or it doesn't have to be stale, that's just usually the way bread is when its not fresh out of the oven, cut into cubes, and toss with olive oil. Then bake for ~10 minutes in a 350F oven, until the croutons are crunchy on the outside.

Toss to combine, and eat immediately.

This week's plan

2010-09-28T16:43:00.000-07:00

So, last week was under the budget, thanks to all the free grad student things. The freegan stars were aligned. This week, not so much, so I went down to Atkins Farm, by Holyoke college, to get my veggies, since someone had recommended it. From the outside it looks like the sort of place that will cost an arm and a leg, and maybe it would if you got sucked into buying the homemade baked goods and chocolate apples and other deliciousness, but I stayed strong, and only bought foods that were not for immediate consumption. They also have a fish counter and some local chicken and beef, as well as a very nice (if small) beer selection, so I would hazard a guess that I'll be back. I got out of there for just $17, but I had dropped $6 at the store over the weekend for eggs and tortillas and some other stuff, and after another $2 on tomatoes at Sunset Farm on my way home, I'm at my limit.

But I have such a bounty of beautiful vegetables! I'm psyched. Spent some time cooking this morning, and now I have some whole wheat rosemary rolls for munching on with my gazpacho soup and making into beet-goat cheese sandwiches. Should have taken a picture of that. Other things I'd like to make are a tomato tart, apple crisp, and some sort of tomato-bread salad. Hopefully Barry the basil plant is ready for me to harvest some of his leaves...

I have enough kale for a family of eight right now, so expect some more kale dishes soon. Although I might stick with the tried and true favorites - kale chips and kale and eggs. Maybe I'll try a kale salad, that would be seriously branching out.

7-layer dip tacos

2010-09-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

I made some delicious baked beans (texas style, not sweet) over the weekend, and for lack of a desire to cook tonight, turned them into a mess of things on a plate sort of wrapped in tacos. I still have leftover pulled pork, so that went in there, plus an heirloom tomato, avocado, a ton of cilantro, an ear of corn, and a sunrise pepper. And some salt. I had just been to the farm stand, hence all the delicious veggies. It got messy fast, though, my corn tortillas are too dry to hold a taco shape, so the stuff fell out the bottom and out the ends. Hopeless. But delicious!

This made enough for four people, so, just take that as a warning. Or use half of each veggie.

The layering was: Pulled pork, beans, greek yogurt (tastes like sour cream, but better!), cilantro, tomatoes, avocado, corn, salt.

Oven-dried tomatoes

2010-09-25T15:03:00.001-07:00

With the massive quantities of tomatoes that Sunset farm is selling for $1/lb, it would be a crime not to get enough to dry some. Because sundried tomatoes are awesome. I've oven-dried tomatoes before, and like those other instances, I wasn't totally pleased with this - seemed like just a bit too much work for the product. Anyway, they do taste delicious, and I can't wait to use them in stuff!

I started with 4lbs of tomatoes, which was just enough to fill two sheet pans. I sliced the tomatoes, I think they were closer to 1/2" rather than the 1/4" I was aiming for, and laid them out on the sheet pans and salted them. The salt helps pull out some water. After about half an hour of that, I squeezed out some of the water with a clean dishtowel, and then put them back on the pans, drizzled with some oil and salt, and put in the oven at 200F, for many hours. I should mention, I sucked the juice out of most of the tomatoes - anything you can do to dry them more =).

I checked first after 2 hrs... still pretty fresh-looking. I checked again after 4hrs, and they were a little better. Checked at 6, and they needed more time. By 8 hours they were looking done. I'm not sure I'd leave these drying overnight, even though it did take 8 hours... its worth it to keep checking them. I may have let them go a bit too far, but they have that perfect chewiness to them right now. Now to learn how to store them...

Chocolate coconut cupcakes

2010-09-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

One of the food blogs I enjoy is www.loveandoliveoil.com, written by Lindsay and Taylor. They make tasty food and take good photos of it, which I suppose is a useful quality for food blogging. I make experimental food and usually forget the photo. Hmmm.

I used her recipe for the cupcakes I made for Ed's party. I wanted to make car-bomb cupcakes, but I didn't feel like going out to buy Guinness and eggs and sour cream, all things I didn't happen to have on hand. Her cupcakes are vegan, which means I didn't have to go and buy eggs and milk and stuff, and they use coconut milk, which I had on hand. I used the recipe for the chocolate raspberry truffle cupcakes, minus the whole raspberry bit, and they were delicious and dark and moist and not too sweet, which made them perfect for the Bailey's cream cheese frosting, which is good enough to eat on its own, actually.

I've reprinted the recipe below, in my own words for my own records. I'll be making these cupcakes again, as they were pretty simple to make and tasted quite good. They were also strikingly black, thanks to the special dark baking cocoa, and that made a nice contrast to the white-ish frosting, very pretty.

Chocolate coconut cupcakes
Made 11.5 cupcakes

1C coconut milk (shake the can well before opening)
1/3C oil
1 tsp vanilla
3/4C sugar (I used brown because that was what I had)
1C flour
1/3C Hershey's special dark cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix all the wet ingredients together, and in a separate bowl mix all the dry goods. Mix dry into wet. Stir just to combine. Plop large spoonfuls into lined cupcake tins, and bake for 18-22 minutes. Mine took 19 minutes.

Top with Bailey's cream cheese frosting. It makes any bad day immediately better.

The perks of grad studenting: free food!

2010-09-21T13:11:00.001-07:00

So, I was doing quite well with this concept of "budget" last week, until I went to buy stuff for Ed's birthday party, which was on Friday. But I don't think that should count for the overall food budget, because its not like you are throwing a party every week. Anyway, the damage from that was $19 at the grocery store for curry and cupcake ingredients and then $65 on cheese and beer, but that counts as a birthday present, not as food shopping. It was some darn good cheese and beer!

From last week, all the veggies from Sunset farm got eaten, there had been some small leftovers and I cooked those up for lunches over the weekend (complement rice and beans real well), since I had to bring lunch to this Nordic Symposium thing I was at. Barry the basil plant is doing much better, actually pointing his stems sky-ward (his only access to light is a skylight). There is one tupperware of zucchini-eggplant-tomato stew stuff in the freezer, as well as half a bag of spinach. Also in the freezer is one tupperware of pasta sauce with grass fed beef, I should eat that soon.

I've decided to exercise my powers of grad student this week and see if I can get through the entire week without shopping. It'll be a stretch, but there are a couple free lunches to help me out. I have yogurt and oatmeal and nuts and dried fruit for breakfasts, a TON of pulled pork from Ed (he worked a pig roast all day Friday, and got to keep some leftovers), half a cabbage I stole from our fridge at home, some cilantro, onions, and some bread. Ali fed me dinner yesterday, I get free lunch tomorrow, we're going out to Bub's bbq after rollerskiing on Wednesday, I get free lunch Friday, and so all I really have to do is make it through Thursday. And then hope Ed will feed me over the weekend. We should still have leftover cheese and beer, that'll get me the calories I need... Bub's shouldn't be that expensive, so that'll be ~$10 for the week. Woot. Right, this satisfies tasty and cheap but definitely not healthy...

In a normal training week, I'd die on as little food as I've just listed, but with this stupid knee injury, I've only been training like a normal person, and its scary how quickly my appetite withered and died. Sigh. I miss my 3-hr mountain runs...

Tomato-basil salad

2010-09-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

Its almost a caprese salad, except I didn't have any mozzarella. There also wasn't too much basil, because I didn't want to kill Barry the basil plant. Speaking of Barry, I finally transplanted him from his miniscule supermarket pot to a more healthy-sized pot, and I fear for his health. The roots were quite intertwined, and a fair bit of roots fell out as I separated some of the smaller plants. I've fed him sunlight and water, but he is quite droopy. I hope he makes it. I have a somewhat notorious black thumb.

Anyway, if Barry is going to croak, I'm harvesting all those leaves and having a basil feast. He also got shaken up a bit just before transplanting, when I fell down the stairs while carrying him. Whoops. I should look where I'm going and not wear slippery socks.

Barry before the traumatic transplantation.

Back on track, the salad was delicious. This isn't something worth making if you don't have the freshest, tastiest, meatiest heirloom tomatoes you can get your paws on - I happened to have just some of those, and this was the perfect way to showcase their perfection. At $1/lb, I feel like I'm really ripping off Sunset Farms, but hey, they set the price.

Tomato-Basil salad

1 large, delicious, heirloom tomato
6-20 basil leaves
salt
olive oil

Sharpen your knife. Then slice the tomato into ~1/8" slices, and arrange them artistically on a plate. Sprinkle with salt, and drizzle with olive oil. Roll up the basil leaves together and chiffonnade them, then sprinkle them on top. Try not to drool too much while eating, its that good. But I also have a love-affair with tomatoes.

Barry, post-transplant. Droopy.

Zucchini with caramelized onions

2010-09-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

Caramelized onions make everything taste better, including zucchini. Not that pan-fried zucchs are bad, just that they're better with onions. The only other flavor additives were olive oil, salt, and some dried thyme. Quite satisfying, in the end, but not exactly something I'd serve with the mind to be fancy. I'd come home for lunch, so I made a big pile of this, served on top of a heap of spaghetti squash (side note - I wasn't sure what type of squash it was, just that it was cute and yellow, so I figured I'd treat it like it was spaghetti squash and hope for the best, which ended up being a perfectly acceptable strategy). I also had a tomato-basil salad, which was so good it deserves its own post. All those veggies are filling, but I probably should have made something more, given how hungry I was by dinnertime.

Zucchini with caramelized onions

1 zucchini
1 onion
olive oil
salt to taste
other dried herbs, optional

Peel the onion, slice it in half length-wise, then cut it into half-moons. These'll make those nice stringy caramelized bits that taste so good. Heat some oil in a frying pan to medium - medium-low, and add the onions. Sprinkle on some kosher salt. These will cook for about 10 minutes before they start sticking, after 10 minutes they should be browning a bit around the edges and tasting sweet. You'll have to stir occasionally.

I cut the zucchs into half moons, you can slice or dice them any way you want. I tossed them into the frying pan after the onions had been going for 10 minutes, added some salt, and cooked for another 5-10 minutes. Some people like their zucchini very well done. I like it on the crunchy side.

Serve as is, or over some sort of starch.

Fried potatoes and ratatouille stew

2010-09-15T09:32:00.001-07:00

Last week, I had made a ratatouille pizza, and that had only used about half of each vegetable. I sort of forgot about the two tomatoes, half a zucch, half an eggplant, and three tomatillos languishing in the bottom of my fridge when I went to buy new veggies this week, so first order of business was to use these poor guys up. The fridge runs too cold, and I have the bottom shelf, so all my veggies tend to get too cold. This meant that the tomatillos and tomatoes were not very happy, the only way to eat them and enjoy them would be if they were cooked down.

My delicious heirloom tomatoes and peaches are not being stored in the fridge. Learned that lesson.

Anyway, I wanted to use some of the potatoes I'd gotten, and potatoes taste best with lots of fat and salt, so I decided to fry them, in slices, with some onion and the two links of sausage that I had living in the freezer. Quite delicious. The ratatouille stew gloop was a sort of side dish to that.

Its been cold enough at night recently that a good, hearty, greasy meal was just the thing. I should probably limit these sorts of meals in the near future, since I'm on a sort of limited amount of training due to a knee injury... but whatevs, olive oil is good for you.

I had half a purple potato dying a slow death in the fridge along with those ratatouille veggies, so I fried that one up too. That's the random blue thing in with the other potatoes.

Pan-fried potatoes
Made enough for two meals

A couple handfuls of small red potatoes
Olive oil
Kosher salt
1/2 onion

Wash the potatoes, then slice them into ~1/4" slices. Put a decent amount of oil into a fairly wide, flat-bottomed frying pan, and heat that up to medium-low-ish. Once the oil is shimmering, put down the potato slices, as many as will fit in one layer, and sprinkle with salt. You'll probably be doing a couple batches, I did three.

As those cook on the first side, finely dice the onion.

After about 5 minutes, check the bottom of one of the potato slices. If it is golden brown, or has brown spots, flip the potatoes. If it is just white, leave them cooking. Once the bottoms are golden brown, flip over all the potato slices. Once you've flipped them, add about a third of the onion to the interstitial spaces so its touching the pan. Make sure there is still enough oil in the pan to keep things sizzling. Once the other side is golden brown, the taters are done.

Repeat this process as many times as you need to to finish cooking the rest of the potatoes. Enjoy!

Ratatouille stew
Made enough for three meals as a side
*Note*
This is a recipe that is using up old veggies. For god's sake, don't go following it to the exact letter - be creative and use up your own veggies. Or use these veggies and use the whole thing, rather than half. The eggplant and tomatoes are what give it the gloopy-stewyness.

1/2 eggplant
1/2 zucchini
1/4 summer squash
2 tomatoes
3 tomatillos
1 small round hot red pepper
1 orange-y green pepper
1/2 onion (the other half got used in the potatoes)
kosher salt
olive oil
dried thyme leaves (rosemary would have been better), any dried herbs work.

Put some oil in a frying pan. Dice the onion. Sweat the onion with some salt, then add the peppers. Chop everything else, put it in the pan. Put a lid on the frying pan and let it cook down for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally and tasting too, for salt and other herbs. Once it looks pretty gloopy and stew-like, you're done. Enjoy with bread, or as a side dish, or on pasta, or on rice, or on potatoes... you get the idea.

The sausage links, I just fried in the pan, flipping every once in a while.

Anne Leith's awesome salad

2010-09-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

I think that is basically the best name for this salad. Its a salad, in that there are vegetables in it, but it could also be an appetizer (served with bread) or a full meal (served with more bread). I added more stuff to Anne's base salad, and changed the dressing due to a lack of some crucial ingredients (soy sauce), but any time you mix avocados with perfect heirloom tomatoes, its hard to go wrong.

I really meant to take a photo with the blurry iphone, but I didn't bring it, and its not like there was any left over. Use your imaginations, and then make it for yourself, you will not be disappointed. I don't have an Ed-rating for this, since he wasn't here to devour it with me, but I do have an Ali-, Gail-, and Peter-rating, and it passed with flying colors for all of them.

Anne's awesome salad (+ Alex's changes)
Served four, as a side course

1 avocado
2 perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes - go for the best quality you can find, here.
Basil leaves
~1/4lb marinated mozzarella balls
~10 kalamata olives
1-2C chopped spinach
1/2 cucumber
Dressing, or a nice pesto in lieu of dressing
Salt, to taste

Your serving dish for this should be wide and flat - to showcase the beauty of this salad. It can be made in a bowl, but looks nicer when on a serving dish. The spinach and cucumber aren't part of Anne's original salad, and don't really do anything except add more green stuff to round out the total volume to feed four people...

Coarsely chop the spinach, and put that down as your first layer. Peel the cucmber and cut that into slices, put that on top of the spinach, that is your second layer. Slice the tomato (use a really sharp knife) into rounds, and lay those on top of the salad. Sprinkle on some salt. Slice the avocado, and layer that on top of the tomato. Slice the mozzarella rounds into 3-4 slices, sprinkle those on top, then halve the olives lengthwise, and sprinkle those on top too. Chiffonnade the basil - the more the better, but I didn't want to kill Barry the basil plant by taking too many of his leaves this early. Salt the whole thing gently.

The dressing was mostly olive oil. An oily pesto would work well too, and Anne swears by soy sauce on her avocados.

Dressing:
Makes far more than you need at once

1/2 onion
1 clove garlic
1 red pepper
dried herbs of your choosing
a couple pieces of lime rind
juice of a lime
Olive oil to fill a 1C tupperware

The idea here is to let the oil steep in the flavors of the dressing, and then just drizzle the oil on top. Use a tupperware as your mixing bowl/storage container, then you can have flavored oil for other salad dressings, too. So smart. Chop the onion, garlic, and pepper - if you want it really spicy, keep the seeds, otherwise discard them. Put everything into a tupperware, add the oil until its all covered, put on the lid and shake to combine. Let it sit for at least an hour, then shake before serving, and serve with a spoon, to drizzle the oil over the salad.

Make this salad.

New Twist

2010-09-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

So, I've started grad school. This means that my salary has taken a hit, I now make about half what I'm used to. Of course so far its been pretty easy going, and I get an education out of it, so I'm not complaining, but I've had to tighten my budget a bit. Belts can stay loose. So, I think this blog might head towards the $/week variety. I'm trying to keep myself on $25-30/week, but of course I don't really count weekends since I sort of assume Ed won't let me go too hungry, although he did suggest that I go hunt some rabbits for us last night. We ended up eating pretzels instead. That is probably not a good thing.

Anyway, I think I'm going to blog about what I buy and what I make out of it. I might just revert again to using this as online recipes, but we'll see how it morphs.

I stopped by Sunset farm stand during lunch (ach, I should know not to go shopping on an empty stomach...), and then hit up the Big Y (local supermarket) to round out the week's goodies. It was kind of expensive because I'm bringing a salad to Ali's tonight, and I wanted to make an avocado-tomato-basil-mozzarella salad, and those are expensive ingredients. Oh well, its delicious and healthy, therefore worth it! Tasty, healthy, cheap - gotta get at least two of the three...

Sunset farm:
$3 - 3lb tomatoes
$1.25 - chard and kale
$0.50 - some sort of yellow winter squash
$2 - musk melon
$2 - heavy bag of small potatoes
$1 - two beautiful striped zucchinis
$0.25 - two cute little hot red peppers. They're round. Not sure what kind, or how hot they are.
Total: $10

Big Y
$3.00 - kalamata olives and marinated mozzarella balls for salad (~1/2lb)
$0.56 - 2 bananas
$0.34 - 1 lime
$0.69 - 1 cucumber
$1.44 - crimini mushrooms
$1.50 - bag of spinach
$3.00 - 2 avocados
$1.98 - a basil plant - I have high hopes for this little guy, I'm going to transplant him to a big pot, and water him, and put him in the sunlight, and not eat all of his photosynthesizing surfaces all at once, and I'll name him Barry the Basil plant. Usually I kill my basil plants early on in life by removing and eating all their leaves. Barry will live.
$1.39 - pumpkin muffin. This turned into lunch, with a tomato. Not so good on the healthy side of things... whoops.
Total: $13.90

Total total: $23.90

I suppose I should add another disclaimer which involves the stuff already in my pantry/freezer - that's getting used for stuff, and I no longer have any idea how much it cost. So, it'll bring the total up to some unknown value. But I think this is a good project. Lets see how long I keep it up!

Ratatouille pizza

2010-09-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

I had half the pizza dough from last time in the freezer, so I decided to use it up with some of the veggies I'd just gotten from the little farm stand by the university. I decided that a ratatouille-like combination of veggies would be good, so I sliced everything thinly and layered it over some of the basil hummus/pesto stuff and under some ricotta salata. Which you could make on your own, all it takes is milk and lemon juice, but the small block of it at the store only cost me $3.36, and I only used half.

The dough was my standard pizza dough:
1C lukewarm water
1 tbs yeast
1 tbs sugar
1/4C olive oil
1 tbs salt
~3C flour

Dissolve the yeast and sugar into the water, and once the yeast is proofed, mix in everything else. Keep adding flour a cup at a time, until the dough is dry enough to knead with your hands. Knead for 5-10 minutes, then let it rest on a floured surface while you prep the veggies.

This dough freezes really well - I used a version that had been frozen for a couple weeks, and that really made it stretchy, so I could stretch the pizza crust rather than roll it out. Something about gluten continuing to develop even in the freezer? I wouldn't know, talking out of my ass.

Ratatouille pizza
1/4 of a medium-sized eggplant
1/4 of a zucchini
1/4 of a summer squash
1 tomato
~1/2C pesto, optional
~1C crumbled ricotta salada
Kosher salt
pizza dough

Slice the veggies very thinly. Salt both sides of them, and let them sit for 10 minutes, or more if you have time. Do this with the tomato, too. This pulls out some of the water, and keeps them from making the pizza crust soggy.

While they sit there sweating, you can roll out the pizza dough. Mine was enough to fill a regular-sized cookie sheet. Once you've rolled/stretched/cajoled your pizza dough into a large enough shape, sprinkle some coarse cornmeal onto the pan, then gently put the dough down, stretching to make it fit the corners. For a 3C batch of dough, half the batch stretched to a full sheet makes a very thin-crusted pizza. That is how I like it, but some people (ahem. Ed.) like thicker crusts. In their cases, I'd use all the dough in one pan.

Spread pesto over the pizza. I used up some of that pesto/hummus stuff I'd made. If you don't have pesto, I'd recommend at least spreading some olive oil over the crust, it'll just make things taste better.

By now the veggies should be done sweating. Rinse them in a colander, then dry them with a towel. Yeah, its weird, but it keeps the dough from getting soggy. Spread the towel out on a counter, lay a batch of rinsed veggies on the towel, then put another towel on top and push down to extract more water. Do this for all the veggies. Yeah, it'll take 5 minutes, but its worth it.

Layer the sliced veggies over the pesto, in whatever artistic manner you feel like adopting. I did rows of different veggies. Sprinkle some more olive oil on top of that. Crumble the ricotta on top.

Bake at 500F for 10-20 minutes. Depends on the thickness of the crust. The cheese should be slightly browned on top when you pull out the pizza. Just a warning, this cheese doesn't melt at all, so its likely to fall off when you eat the pizza. You could try putting it under the veggies, or just use mozzarella like normal pizzas. This was an experiment, and I thought it tasted good.

Pizza!

2010-09-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

This was sort of a use-up-ingredients pizza, but pretty tasty anyway. Pesto/hummus (its not pesto, but not hummus...), onions, mushrooms, spinach, sardines, and cheddar. That's sort of a strange combination now that I think about it, but it tasted good. The best part is the hummus/pesto stuff.

The hummus/pesto was basically a ton of basil, some chickpeas, some toasted walnuts (they turned it gray, not very appetizing-looking, despite being delicious), some toasted garlic, salt, and lots of lots of oil trying to bring it together into a smooth paste. Didn't quite work out like that, but it works as a spread and tastes delicious.

The onions got sweated, as did the mushrooms, and the spinach, before I put them on the pizza. The dough was fairly standard, ~2C of flour to a cup of water and ~1/4C oil, and lots of salt. And yeast. No real rise time, just while I was prepping vegetables. We'll call it free-form pizza, since there isn't much of a recipe to go along with it. Worth making all the same though!

Toasty eggs

2010-08-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

So, no photo, you'll have to use your imagination one this one. But it was delicious enough I've got to get it down in writing before I forget how worth the extra 15min to cook breakfast and then do dishes this breakfast actually was. I had some leftover bread, specifically, one thick slice of Baba a Louis' cheesey herb bread, that was starting to get stale, but not moldy yet. And that is some tasty bread, stale or not, so I was determined to use it up before it went bad. I also have cheddar cheese in the fridge right now, and tomatoes, and basil, and one fresh egg from the farmer's market last weekend (not sure its still fresh in that case, but its probably fresher than the supermarket variety). The tomato and basil were from Anne's garden, I suppose as a thank you for taking zucchini... Anyway, talk about good ingredients, I had an armful of them.

So, a pat of butter into one frying pan, and down goes the toast to fry up one side. Meanwhile I cut the tomato into slices and sucked out the seeds and juice (it browns better with less liquid), can't let any of that deliciousness go to waste. I also chiffonaded some basil (just because I like that word), and sliced some cheese. Once the bread was toasty on one side, I flipped it, and put the cheese down on top of it. Also added the tomato slices to the pan, with some salt. I got another pan going with some butter to fry the egg. You could do this all in one pan, but I was hungry, and impatient. At some point, just as the cheese was softening up, the tomatoes were ready to flip.

And just as the egg finished, the toast was done and the cheese was almost melty and the tomatoes were done, so I put the hot tomatoes on top of the cheese to help it finish melting, added the basil, dropped the egg on top, and voila. Breakfast. Best eaten with a knife and fork, but boy was that delicious - crunchy on the bottom, cheesy, eggy, with tomato and basil and a hint of buttery richness... drool. This is worthy of a dinner!

Chanterelle scromelette

2010-08-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

I may not have a camera, but, I have a computer with photobooth... which means, the photos are utter crap. Anyway, while we were up in Vermont, Ed and I wandered over to the chanterelle patch and picked up a couple last little yellow fungi. It is near the end of their season, if there even is such a thing, but we got a fair number, and so yesterday I used some of them to make a delicious scrambled omelette. These things start out well, and then I get impatient and the omelette just turns into scrambled eggs. This happens every time. Maybe someday I'll learn the patience...

Start with about a tablespoon of butter, and throw in the mushrooms, roughly chopped, then salt them with some kosher salt. They'll give up a ton of water, I actually had to boil off some mushroom juice before I could get down to cooking them until the edges are crispy. It'll take about 20 minutes, and probably 2-3 more tablespoons of butter, before the mushrooms are properly crispy on the edges and a little chewy in the middle, and fully delicious. At that point, add your two eggs, scromble them around (totally a word when you're talking about scromelettes), until they're cooked to how you like them, and dump the whole mess on a plate. I grated some parmesan cheese on top, with some salt and pepper, and it was sheer deliciousness.

You could do this with any sort of mushroom. But the wild ones taste best...

No more camera

2010-07-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

I lost my camera. And recipes are hopeless without a camera, how are you supposed to know what things look like? Hopefully, I come up with a solution soon... until then, go make some kale chips.

Almond lemon cupcakes

2010-06-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make some cupcakes, and felt like repeating the lime polenta cake I'd made before, but, I had lemons, instead of limes. And then I thought about using almond flour, because I like almonds. So basically, other than it having cornmeal and being citrus-y, its not a repeat at all. It was delicious though, and very lemony. The syrup helped keep things moist, so that the cupcakes are still good, three days later.

Almond lemon cupcakes
Made 36 mini cupcakes

3/4C flour
1/4C cornmeal - the coarser the better
1/2C almond flour - I took toasted almonds and ground them up
3 eggs
1/2C oil
1/2C yogurt
3/4C sugar
zest of 1 lemon
1/2tsp salt
2tsp baking powder

Syrup:
~1/2C powdered sugar
2 splashes triple sec
Juice of a lemon

Frosting:
~2C powdered sugar
Lemon juice, as needed

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix together the yogurt, oil, eggs, lemon zest, sugar, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cornmeal, almonds, and baking powder. Add the dry stuff to the wet, and stir just until its combined. Grease three mini muffin tins (or work in batches), fill each one almost to the top, and bake for 15min, until the top bounces back. Don't overbake these little guys, or they'll be dry, although the syrup helps

When they're done baking, pull them out, put them on a cooling rack, and poke the top of each one with a fork a couple times (poke all the way down), then dunk the top of the cupcake into a bowl holding the lemon-y glaze-y syrup. It should be a fairly thin syrup, but you want to dunk the top of each one well - get that syrup into the cake.

Let them cool completely now, and when they're cool, use the same dunk-the-top method with the glaze. To make the glaze, put a whole bunch of powdered sugar in a bowl, and add some lemon juice, then whisk. You want the glaze to drizzle off the end of the whisk, but drizzle slowly, so that is actually far less liquid than you'd think necessary. Luckily, its hard to mess it up, add more sugar or more liquid as needed.

Once you've dunked the top of each one, press on whatever garnish you'd like - the glaze will dry hard, and hold anything on the top.

Then don't eat them all at once, or you'll get a tummyache.