New cookbooks

I have three new cookbooks.

1. Top Chef the cookbook with an introduction by Tom Colicchio. Bravo has been pushing this cookbook during their Top Chef marathons. So far I've made the Fideos with Clams, which did not turn out quite right although I followed the recipe to a T, and the Moroccan Cubanos which turned out perfect. The fideos were made with angel hair pasta and a cream sauce infused with saffron and mixed with tons of garlic. The problem was there was not enough liquid to cook the pasta, leaving it crunchy. Good flavors though. The Moroccan Cubanos were made with slow roasted pork marinated with Ras al-hanout (a spice blend I've mentioned before which I actually have) and pickled vegetables wrapped in corn tortillas like a taco. Delicious. One drawback: many of the recipes in the Top Chef cookbook require ingredients like elk, foie gras, ostrich fillets, and octopus.

2. Giada's Kitchen. Giada's newest cookbook. Haven't tried anything yet but here's what looks good so far: Crispy Smoked Mozarella with Honey and Figs, Panini with Chocolate and Brie, Linguine with Shrimp and Lemon Oil, Lamb Ragu with Mint, Lemon Ricotta Cookies. Love how her recipes are twists on familiar favorites.

3. Bon Appetit - fast easy fresh. Bon Appetit magazine has a section called "fast easy fresh" which has perfect weeknight meals. Now I have the 770 page book of these recipes. Feel like beef? Just look up the ingredient and you'll find Roast Beef Tenderloin with Wasabi-Garlic Cream or Flank Steak Salad with Roasted Shallots and Goat Cheese. Need to make scones for brunch? Choose from Meyer Lemon and Dried Blueberry Scones or Walnut, Golden Raisin and Fennel Seed Scones. Don't take the same old ham and cheese for lunch, here are ideas for Open-face Lobster Salad Sandwiches, Watercress Sandwiches with Jalapeno-Lemon Butter, or Pancetta, Mizuna, and Tomato Sandwiches with Green Garlic Aioli.

I'll never have time to make all the recipes I want to make.

The Hunt for Dried Porcini Mushrooms

When Elaine revealed on Seinfeld the recipe for the Soup Nazi's Mushroom Barley soup, the first ingredient was dried porcini mushrooms. Since then, I can never think of dried porcini mushrooms without remembering the victorious tone of her voice as she declared his secret recipes were no longer secret (and those in business to sell their culinary creations have an absolute right to keep their recipes secret, for the rest of us it's debatable).
I began searching for dried porcini mushrooms after an episode of Everyday Italian. Chef Giada de Laurentis made a porcini mushroom risotto. I had arborio rice, onions, white wine, garlic, chicken broth and parmesan. Giada's recipe also included gorgonzola cheese, which I could easily find at my local grocery store. But the main ingredient, the dried porcini mushrooms, were not available there. So I made a visit to the Super H Mart Asian grocery store. I was able to find my beloved Asian Home Gourmet spice blends there, as well as a wide array of unidentifiable dried mushrooms, but no dried porcinis. I decided I needed to go to Whole Foods.
I didn't make it to Whole Foods that weekend, and didn't decide to go until I was in the car on the way home several days later. Since I was new to the neighborhood, I didn't know exactly where the Whole Foods was and ended up calling a friend, calling 411, and finally calling my dad. By then, I was nearly home and not really expecting to go to Whole Foods that night, but my dad was very enthusiastic about the idea of porcini mushroom risotto. Especially if I made it for him on Christmas Eve.
I finally made it to Whole Foods a few days later and found the dried porcini mushrooms amidst a display of dried oyster, shiitake, portabella and other mushroom varieties. In case you're looking for them, they should be in the produce section. Dried mushrooms are always rehydrated in warm water or broth, and any good recipe will have you incorporate the rehydration liquid into the recipe. My mushroom risotto was made with chicken broth that was used to rehydrate the mushrooms.
Would fresh mushrooms be as good? I'm not sure you can find fresh porcini mushrooms. You can certainly make a risotto with a combination of shiitake, oyster, and button mushrooms. The idea behind the dried mushrooms is to use the rehydration liquid to infuse more flavor into the final product. And porcini mushrooms are often described as earthy or meaty. Like portabellas, the porcini can be part of a great vegetarian meal where you don't even realize the meat is missing.
Was the hunt for dried porcini mushrooms worth it? My dad declared the risotto had a strong mushroom flavor. I guess that means goal accomplished! Look for the recipe on the food network website.

Homemade Marshmallows

One of the things I would never have thought of making at home is a marshmallow. It comes from a bag, it looks kind of artificial, how could it be made anywhere other than in a factory? Or worse, a laboratory?
But I recently read about homemade marshmallows (in her Bon Appetit article, Molly Wizenberg has the same factory comment), helped make some homemade marshmallow fluff, and yesterday a coworker brought in homemade marshmallows. They taste fresh, not artificial, don't look factory made and yet don't look homemade at all.
Here's the article in Bon Appetit: www.bonappetit.com/magazine/2008/07/cooking_life_fluff_piece as well as the recipe: http://www.bonappetit.com/magazine/2008/07/homemade_marshmallows

The Asian Home Gourmet

I like this brand: http://www.asianhomegourmet.com/ and not just because of the dancing ginger family on the home page. I like their spice pastes, and I usually don't recommend spice blends and pastes - preferring of course to mix them up myself from the basic ingredients. But the flavor is authentic and I can add whatever proteins and vegetables I want. There are spice blends representing several Asian countries: China, Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Japan, and Thailand.
I've only ever found this brand in Asian grocery stores. In Minneapolis, United Noodles. In Chicago, Super H Mart. My favorites have been the Thai Tom Yum Soup (high sodium, very spicy but tasty with shrimp and spinach), Thai Green Curry, Indonesian Vegetable Curry, and Korean Bulgogi Marinade. And the Indonesian Satay. And the Sambal Stir Fry Noodles. And - well there are so many options and I'd be lucky to find them all. I may have to order some online.

The Truth About Homemade Pizza

I was really into making my own pizza last summer. I made the dough and waited hours for it to rise, fighting with the sticky mess to roll it out. I made the sauce and slowly simmered it to enhance the flavors, I shredded fresh mozzarella cheese, and I added toppings like caramelized onions which had their own lengthy cooking process. The other day I had a craving for my homemade pizza but I was tired. I decided to make an easier version. I found a new crust recipe that only needed 30 minutes to rise and bought canned pizza sauce and shredded mozzarella. I pre-baked the crust for 8 minutes, added sauce and cheese and toppings like arugula and turkey pepperoni (half the calories of regular).
Here's the truth: my lengthy process for making homemade pizza was worth it! I was surprised because I thought just making the dough would be enough to make a tasty pizza. But the easier recipe didn't result in the same light crust with a savory flavor. Homemade sauce is key even if you start with canned tomatoes or canned tomato sauce and add herbs and spices. Fresh mozzarella is far better than any shredded pre-packaged variety which just ends up tasting rubbery. My easy pizza recipe left me craving my more difficult pizza recipe! Now I've learned my lesson.

Nothing But the Best

My friend Monika came over for dinner last night and I made broccoli mascarpone soup and potato pancakes with apple compote and Greek yogurt. She claimed everything was excellent and I assured her that it was "nothing but the best" for her. Let's face it, I added, "nothing but the best for me!"
It's true, I refuse to eat bad food. There is too much good food out there to waste time, calories, and stomach space on bad food. I made some rice pudding the other day which turned out bitter and disgusting. I won't eat it, even if it wastes a cup of rice. Too bad. It will end up in the garbage whether it passes through my body or not, so why suffer?
Refuse to eat bad food. Put down your fork and wait until you find something worthy of your taste buds. When you eat bad food, you overcompensate by eating something else you really like later. Now you've just eaten twice as much as if you ate the good food to begin with. Refusing to eat bad food doesn't mean playing it safe. It just means trying a lot of foods, and not having to finish something you hate.
When I spend a long time cooking something, only to have it turn out bad, it's disappointing to throw it away. I'm tempted to try and "fix" it or choke down a little bit at a time. But it doesn't work, and it's just not worth it. I'll only remake the recipes that are great, while making my friends believe they get nothing but the best from my kitchen.

The Immersion Blender

My mom and I went out for a little Black Friday shopping and left my dad in charge of lunch. He was making sambar, a sort of lentil soup. When we came home from a full morning of shopping, we enjoyed the sambar with dosas, an Indian style crepe. It was only in the post lunch cleanup that my mom discovered just what he had done. He had ruined her immersion blender.
My immersion blender is one of my favorite kitchen tools. It's highly useful for making soups because you don't have to pour the soup into a blender to puree it. Just place the blades of the immersion blender into the pot and turn it on, stirring the handle so the entire pot is pureed. Then the blade attachment is easily removed to go into the dishwasher. My immersion blender has other attachments in addition to the blender blade - a whisk and a mini food processor/chopper. Without an attachment, the motor is pretty useless. Except where my dad is concerned. When he picked up the motor to puree his sambar, he did not realize that the blade attachment was needed and he dunked the entire motor into the sambar. Somehow it managed to puree without electrocuting him. It would be an embarrassing story if it had.
My mom was livid. There were bits of lentil in her blender motor and she could not exactly rinse them out with water. The sambar had already dried by the time she found the blender so she made my dad scrape out the dried bits, wipe it out with a damp cloth, and use a hair dryer to remove any trace of moisture from the motor.
If nothing else, my mom can hold this over my dad's head for years to come, or at least until the next time she burns the rice.

Today's Challenge

Top Chef fans will appreciate the challenge that faced me at lunch today: try to make a fast, hearty, healthy meal with the ingredients in my parents' kitchen. Sounds easy enough until you see what they have in their kitchen. The pantry has some rice, pasta, onions, and garlic. The fridge has decaying tomatoes, pathetic looking cucumber, lemons, eggs, a pack of muenster cheese, a bag of gourmet cheeses that somehow had chunks of ice in it, radishes, and mini peppers. The freezer held quite a few unidentifiable items in zip lock bags.
Normal people slap some cheese between two slices of bread and call it a draw. This is what I made:

Roasted Pepper Risotto
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp dried thyme
1 cup Arborio rice
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1 large roasted pepper, peeled, or 7-8 small
salt and pepper

I chopped up half an onion and the garlic cloves and added them to the pan of hot olive oil. After they cooked for a few minutes, I added the thyme and then the Arborio rice. At this point, a typical risotto recipe has the addition of white cooking wine. I could only find red wine in the house - four open bottles in fact - but I didn't want red risotto so I left out the wine. On a side burner, a pot of chicken broth slowly simmered. I scooped 1/4 cup of broth out at a time and poured it over the rice, constantly stirring, allowing the rice to absorb the broth before adding another scoop.
In the meantime I roasted the mini peppers. Note that roasting mini peppers results in mostly burnt peppers. Stick with roasting the big ones and sauteing the smaller ones. After peeling off the roasted/burnt skin, I added pieces of pepper to the mostly cooked risotto. I squeezed some lemon juice over the whole concoction and stirred. Finally I added the Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. I tasted a few grains of rice to make sure they had cooked all the way through. Nothing worse than crunchy risotto.
The risotto ended up being quite tasty, but what I really enjoyed was making something out of the nothing that was my parents' kitchen.