scromelet

Or, how Alex eats when Ed is not home. I know I should eat things like vegetables and some source of protein, so I try not to just have a bowl of cheerios for dinner. Though in summer, corn on the cob and a few peaches seems like an acceptable dinner. Anyway, usually those quick meals with no thought come from eggs. Either an omelet or a "scromelet", which is just when your omelet gets a bit more scrambled than you like. It's a pretty straightforward meal, but does require that you have gone grocery shopping at some point in the last week, if you want fresh veggies.

Chop the things you can find in your fridge. In this case, carrots, peppers, asparagus, tomatoes, sausage, cheddar. Other options for when you haven't been shopping in a while include onions, canned beans, random jars of pickled veggies, and mysterious frozen things from the back of your freezer.

Saute the various vegetal things until they're cooked. They usually require different amounts of time, so I tend to start with the meat, add in the heftier veggies, and finish with anything leafy. It appears that I added a handful of spinach to this mix. Then mix together your eggs (depending on the level of hungry, its 2-3 for me), with a dash of milk or water (because I usually don't have milk on hand), get that pan hot and dump it all in. Wait a few seconds until it just starts to set, give it a twirl to give it some volume, then let it set another 45-60 seconds. Now's a good time to add some salt, pepper, maybe some oregano. Now dump your stuff in the middle, fold it over, and have a tasty meal!

(it didn't all fit)

Curtido and pupusas

This is an old post that never got posted, but let's talk about something delicious here - curtido! It's an El Salvadorian slaw, consisting of cabbage and red onions and jalapenos and lime, with a little bit of natural fermentation, and it's pretty durn amazing. I don't *exactly* remember what went into our curtido, but there are a lot of recipes out there. And if it's not obvious from the photo, we have a lot to learn about making our pupusas, but that didn't stop them from being amazing! 

Curtido

(ingredients are all estimates)

(this recipe looks close, and might make sense to follow instead of mine)

~ 1/2 a head of cabbage (any cabbage), thinly shredded

1 red onion, thinly sliced

2 carrots, thinly sliced

1 jalapeno, seeds removed, diced

a handful of cilantro

~1 tbs dried oregano

juice of 3 limes

1 tbs kosher salt

Put everything in a big bowl, and thoroughly mix it around. Preferably with your hands, make sure all the veggies get thoroughly salty and lime-y. Then smoosh it into jars, and let it sit in the fridge for 4-7 days. It'll ferment just a bit, and it'll taste delicious. 

Pupusas

There are much better instructions for how to make these than how I did it. We filled the pupusas with quesa fresco, but I think any cheese would have been delicious, as would refried beans or pulled pork. I think our masa dough was a little too dry, hence the cracking on the sides. And, I don't think we fried them in enough oil, they didn't brown up as much as they should. All the more reasons to redo this meal! 

I would suggest this recipe.

Nachos

For those nights where your entire dinner comes out of a can or a bag... 

Bagged elements:

Tortilla chips

Shredded cheese

Canned elements:

Olives

Black beans

Pickled fiddleheads

Salsa

Pickled jalapenos

Worth it. 

Spaghetti squash

I haven't posted anything in a while, but then Sam went and posted some food, so I figured I may want to remember delicious things, too. This meal was basically a case of putting everything into the oven and just taking it out at the right time, but it was pretty tasty. The only part that required any real thinking was the spaghetti squash. First you have to hack the thing in half, then roast it, then mix together a bunch of flavors with the spaghetti strands. For the first time maybe ever, I managed to shred out the innards without burning my fingers!

Spaghetti squash is amazing stuff. Mostly, that's because it looks like spaghetti. But also, it's not as sweet as other squashes. Something about the sweetness of squashes tends to make me only tolerate them, not love them. It also has texture - nice and crunchy! I find it pairs well with savory flavors, things like sausage and sage, but also things like caramelized onions and toasted garlic. In this case, I had some hot turkey sausage, that I squeezed out of its casing into chunks and fried up, and a pile of shitake mushrooms. And, for good measure, some chiffonaded collard greens, all in the same pan. Then a touch of grated mozzarella on top, into the oven again (in the half-squash "boats", if you want to get fancy!), just to melt the cheese. Cheese is pretty awesome. 

The other stuff is roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts. My oven does a great job of heating from the bottom heating elements, so things brown very nicely when put with a little olive oil on a metal sheet pan!

Hearty Mac and cheese

I have a giant block of cheddar in my fridge. Well, maybe I should say "had", as it's since disappeared, but I was worried that I wouldn't get a chance to finish it before it went moldy. The first thing that came to mind was a mac and cheese dish, because mac and cheese is straight up awesome. This one has cauliflower and roasted squash in it, which adds a nice change in texture from just creamy sauce and pasta. 

Also, it turns out that multiple opinions on the "right" way to do mac and cheese can actually coextist. I discovered that Ed really likes his mac and cheese to be a solid block of food, that you carve out of the pan and eat with a knife and fork, pretty much. Can we say noodle pie? I prefer something with a creamier, runnier sauce, covered in more cheese and breadcrumbs, so you get a mix of textures. It's all about the textures for me. Luckily, you can keep cooking a roux to thicken it, or add more milk to thin it, so this is a recipe that can fit all tastes. Though you kind of have to choose, at the time. Generally the cook gets it her way :)

This isn't a recipe, so much as some flexible steps that will make you a tasty dish. Not like that's anything new. All the steps below can pretty much be done simultaneously.

1. In an oven-proof skillet (cast iron, perhaps), cook a diced onion to your happy point. For this dish, I just sweated it. Add some diced garlic.

2. Cube your squash (I think this was a butternut), and roast with some olive oil and salt until it's done. Brownness is ok, so blast that thing with heat, as it'll cook faster. Should take 10-15min. Boil a head of cauliflower, until al dente.

3. Cook some pasta, until just short of al dente. Drain.

4. While the pasta cooks, make a roux: melt a tablespoon of butter, whisk in a tablespoon of flour, and then whisk in as much milk as you need to get to the consistency you need. Grate a bunch of cheese. Add to the roux. 

5. Dump all of the above ingredients into a big bowl, and toss it around to mix. Taste, and adjust seasonings with salt and pepper. Add more cheese.

6. Put the glop back into the cast iron pan (you can mix in the pan if you're talented, but I would make a mess), top with more cheese and some breadcrumbs, and bake for 5-10 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling. You can broil a few minutes at the end if you want a crispier top.

7. Enjoy!

Stone fruit cake

I'm not a big cake person. I'll take ice cream, or pie, or cookies, or any other sort of baked good, over cake any day. But, there are some cakes that are very tasty indeed. Rich, lemon-y, Italian cakes with a hint of almond and pistacchio, for example. Anyway, not sure how I came about this cake, but I decided to give it a go, and I'm sure glad I did. I've made it twice now, once with the full amount of sugar and once with a little less, because it was just a bit overwhelming, and I think it's better with the less-sweet version. Then you can really taste the fruit.

I think this has become my go-to cake, at least for the time being. It's quick, easy to remember, and tastes delicious. Give it a shot!

Original recipe

The only change was to use 2/3C sugar instead of 3/4C. And, peaches rather than nectarines, since that's what I had. 

The second time, I had some very ripe plums, so those went in, and boy do they make it pretty, staining the area around the plum purple and tart and delicious. 

It'll look like way too much fruit. It's not; the cake will rise right up over that. You could even add more fruit. I bet this would be real pretty with raspberries.

See? Cake eats up the fruit no problem.


I pretend to myself that if I put a piece of cake on a plate, I will only eat that one piece of cake. The reality involves replacing the piece of cake on the plate as soon as the plate is empty...

Lemony shrimp and pasta

A few years ago, Ali was living in Amherst, and I would stay with her every week or two when I'd show up to talk with my adviser and do some actual work for grad school, sort of alternating between Ali's house and Peter and Gail's house. Anyway, Ali had a stack of Cooking Light magazines, I think they'd been gifted to her when Ross and Sam moved out of the country. This was a recipe, roughly, from one of those magazines, and it was quite good. Not just with the qualifier "for a Cooking Light recipe", but on its own! The bright and tangy lemon-mustard sauce brightened the pasta, and the capers provided bright little salty notes. I wanted to make it again, and amazingly, I actually found the original recipe online! This is a good one - quick, easy, and relatively cheap, depending on how many shrimp you use. Below is how I remade this recipe, since I'm incapable of following an actual recipe.

Pasta with shrimp and chickpeas

1 box Pasta

Shrimp (vary the amount based on how many shrimp you want - we went with a half pound for two of us)

1 can chickpeas

several handfuls of fresh arugula

1 red onion

several spoonfuls of capers

1 clove garlic

olive oil

Sauce: 

1 lemon

1 spoonful dijon mustard

A splash of olive oil

a pinch or three of salt

a pinch or three of freshly ground pepper

Get your water boiling. Lots of it. Salt it.

Dice the onion, sweet on high heat in olive oil until there's some browned bits. Dice the garlic, add that to the pan and cook until it's starting to get fragrant. Cook the shrimp, a few minutes (2?) on each side, until they're just pink. When they're nearly done, throw in the capers, chickpeas, and arugula/spinach/swiss chard/baby lettuce of any sort to wilt, and once the greens are wilted, take off the heat.

Meanwhile, make the sauce - juice the lemon, mix with mustard and oil and salt and pepper, taste and adjust. 

Once the pasta is done (cook to your preferred cookedness), mix it all together. We got a solid four servings out of this, two for dinner and two for lunch.

Enjoy!