Cook It Yourself

Bathe Your Soul

2011-08-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things to eat is sole poached in butter. Which got me to thinking the other day as I savored this decadent meal, what if I could poach my soul in butter? How good would that feel?

I'm going to work on that recipe.

In the meantime, I try to find recipes that are so satisfying they make my soul feel as if it's been bathed in butter. And you don't need actual butter to do that. You just need to feel happy about what you're eating.

Tonight I surprised myself with a simple recipe that I only tried because I didn't know what to do with Swiss chard. I never buy Swiss chard, I never buy tortellini, I never buy pine nuts, and I don't much like raisins, but because of an organic vegetable box delivery and a recipe that came with it, I ended up putting all of those things on a plate together. And it was delicious.

But let's not forget the secret ingredient that pulled it all together - garlic! A fine mince of garlic sauteed in oil coats the greens and nuts. The golden raisins, plumped in water and then added to the pan add rich sweetness to the bitter greens. Throw it on top of cheese tortellini, salty and creamy, and you have every texture and every flavor needed to bathe your soul in happiness. And you feel good because you don't even notice you're eating vegetables!

Swiss Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts (Door to Door Organics)

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients:

3 tbs pine nuts
2 lbs Swiss chard
3 tbs raisins
tortellini (optional) - for four servings
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbs olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste (if tortellini is very salty, then no added salt is needed)

Place raisins in a bowl and cover with hot water for 10 minutes, drain.

Meanwhile, bring well salted water to a boil in a large pot and add the chard. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes and transfer to a bowl of ice water. After a few minutes, remove the chard and squeeze out water. Remove stems and coarsely chop.

Cook tortellini (if using) according to package directions.

Heat oil on medium in a nonstick skillet. Add the pine nuts and cook, stirring until they begin to lightly brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook briefly, stirring as you go. Add the chopped greens and raisins and stir together until they are well coated and heated through, 2 to 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve with tortellini or as a side dish

The Taste of Summer

2011-07-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

Summer is flying by and I have been delinquent about updating this blog. I have a perfectly good excuse but sometimes when you make a commitment to something, it leaves other things behind before you realize it. People do that to their friends all the time...I only do it to my blog. But the good news is that I have not been delinquent about cooking.

Summer to me is about pulling out my ice cream maker, one acquired in a divorce which is pretty funny since I've never been married. But I'll take other people's discarded wedding gifts any time. Over the last few years, I've made all kinds of fruit ice creams - blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, and peach. I've made a few vegetable ice creams like pumpkin and corn. But this is the first time I've made an ice cream from a flower, or to be perfectly honest a tea bag of dried flowers.

I first had chamomile ice cream at a restaurant, on an apricot bread pudding. As soon as I tasted it, I was in love and came straight home to hunt down a recipe. The concept is fairly simple. Like a tea, you steep the dried chamomile in hot milk. Then carry on with ice cream making as usual, tempering the egg yolk, whisking up a custard, chilling and processing. But it tastes so much better than a tea. It's so good you'll want to pour cream into your next cup of chamomile tea to recreate that creamy flowery flavor, the color of freshness, the taste of summer.

Chamomile Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
2 cups heavy cream
A pinch of salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 chamomile tea bag (check ingredients - should be only dried chamomile flowers)
5 large egg yolks

Heat the milk, cream, salt, and sugar in a 3-quart saucepan. Add the chamomile tea bag to the mixture. Cover and remove from heat for one hour to allow flavors to infuse. Remove the tea bag before proceeding.

In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Re-warm the milk then gradually pour some of the milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Scrape the warmed yolks and milk back into the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula.

Place the saucepan in a bowl of ice to cool. Refrigerate to chill thoroughly for at least 8 hours but preferably overnight. Freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Instead of French Fries

2011-05-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

French fries are a food that I've avoided eating for years now. It's not that I refuse to eat carbs or fried foods or even pretend to be on a diet. But fries are one of those things I like but I can resist, and I may as well take advantage and resist them. I prefer to save my calories for those things I can't resist, like cheese, ice cream, and baked goods.

There is nothing that can replace the taste of french fries late at night, and it beckons those college days when we'd visit the 24 hour Burger King when nothing else was open. I'd order a milkshake and fries, their mingling salty and sweet a flavor profile that even today will make me feel 18 again. We'd talk about the boys in our classes or the tennis players from our floor or the guy who looked like actor Andrew Shue (Remember Melrose Place?). We'd huddle up in the cold walking back to the dorm, years of college ahead, friends we had only just met not knowing we'd be friends for life, not knowing which night would be the last one we'd make that BK run.

I don't miss those French fries, and I don't honestly miss that life or that age. But I miss that feeling of comfort, surrounded by friends and no real responsibilities other than making a decent grade and getting a date to dorm formal. I seem to be on a "grown up" theme lately, so here's my grown up version of French fries.

These roasted green beans look and sound like a vegetable, but the crispy salty exterior and tender interior is exactly like a fry. You'll pick them up and eat them with your hands and you won't be able to eat them fast enough. Eat them with your friends, gossip a little, let yourself feel like a college kid again - but a wiser, healthier version of one.

Roasted Sesame Green Beans (Cook's Illustrated)
Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 pound green beans, stem ends snapped off
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon mince garlic
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
2 teaspoons honey
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes

Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 450 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil; spread beans on baking sheet. Drizzle with oil; using hands, toss to coat evenly. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt, toss to coat, and distribute in an even layer. Roast 10 minutes. Meanwhile combine remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Remove baking sheet from oven. Using tongs, coat beans evenly with garlic/ginger mixture. Redistribute in an even layer. Continue roasting until dark golden brown in spots and starting to shrivel, 10 to 12 minutes longer. Adjust seasoning with salt and toss well to combine. Transfer to serving dish.

Grown Up Spaghetti

2011-04-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

This looks like just a pile of spaghetti. Any old pile of spaghetti. The kind I've been eating since I was a kid. I must have been 1o or 11 years old when I started "cooking" for myself. I boiled water and made spaghetti with salt, butter, and parmesan cheese. I made grilled cheese sandwiches. I mixed flour and milk and butter and made misshapen biscuits. I loved my hot dogs with mustard and cheese. Cooking for myself as a kid meant I didn't have to eat vegetables and other weird things my parents made me eat when they were home.

These days I still make all those childhood favorites, but they've matured a bit. Grilled cheese is no longer made with American cheese and white bread, but instead a variety of cheddar, brie, goat, or mozarella on challah, wheat, or homemade Italian loaf. Hot dogs are topped with homemade ketchup, hot peppers, and olive tapenade. I make rosemary biscuits or bacon biscuits with real bacon fat. And just recently I discovered an all new grown up way to eat my spaghetti.

That plain looking pile of spaghetti is actually covered with a luscious sauce, an anchovy carbonara. It has the flavor of a seafood pasta or a linguine and clam sauce. The anchovies and garlic are cooked in plenty of olive oil, then spiced up with lemon zest, red pepper flakes, oregano and parsley. The flavored oil is tossed together with hot pasta, and then the final touch is to stir beaten egg yolks into the hot pasta to create a creamy finish. I could lick the plate, it's so good.

I love it when I eat something that reminds me of childhood and that special feeling of cooking something good, all by myself, all for myself.

Spaghetti with Anchovy Carbonara (Food and Wine)

Ingredients:
12 ounces spaghetti
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
One 2-ounce can flat anchovies, drained and chopped
Pinch of Aleppo pepper or crushed red pepper
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon chopped oregano
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 large egg yolks
Salt and freshly ground pepper

In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook the spaghetti until al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water.

In a large, deep skillet, heat the oil with the garlic and anchovies and cook over moderately high heat until the anchovies have dissolved, about 2 minutes. Add the red pepper, zest, oregano and parsley, then add the pasta and toss to coat. Remove from the heat.

In a small bowl, whisk the yolks with the reserved cooking water and add to the pasta. Cook over low heat, tossing until the pasta is coated in a creamy sauce, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Hand Cut Noodles

2011-03-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, it's time to learn something new. You spent years of your life in school, learning all the time, started working and had to learn even more (usually nothing to do with what you actually studied in school), and finally you reach a point in your life where you're the expert and teacher. That's when it's time to humble yourself by buying a pasta maker.

I must have been delusional when I thought I could make pasta on a weeknight, after working out, when I was ready to eat almost as soon as I walked in the door. Here's what I thought: Mix some dough, run it through the pasta maker to flatten it, run it through the spaghetti cutter attachment, throw it in some boiling water and it's cooked in two minutes. Thirty, forty minutes tops.

Clearly I had never made my own pasta before.

The first problem was that I had no idea what the consistency of my dough should be. First it was too dry, then I made it too moist. It was sticking to everything. Once I got that sorted out, I ran it through the pasta maker attachment so it made a nice sheet of dough. And then I ran it through again and again and again, on finer settings each time. My dough stretched out into long, thin swatches, which I left laying around the kitchen on plates and cutting boards. Somehow a ball of pasta slightly larger than my fist made enough sheets to wallpaper my kitchen. Then I ran it through the spaghetti cutter attachment and got a long rope of dough with ridges in it. As soon as I tried to hold it, it smushed together again. Why was I imagining smooth, separate strands of spaghetti? When I finally gave up on that dream, I hand cut the rest of the dough into noodles and tossed them into boiling salted water. (Note that "hand cut noodles" are often a restaurant special. Now you know they evolved because the dough was sticking to the pasta maker and to itself.) The good news is that homemade pasta tastes great and super fresh!

Here I've tossed my hand cut noodles with broccoli and Italian sausage, a recipe from food52.

Breakfast Couscous

2011-02-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

As much as I like variety in all my meals, I've always been really boring when it comes to breakfast. That is because my breakfast cereal is dosed with crack and I cannot stop eating it. The box says it's just almonds, flakes, and honey. I swear there must be crack in there too though! Despite that addiction, I've branched out occasionally, obsessing over Mexican breakfasts, delicious muffins, oatmeal pancakes, and more. But most weekdays not only is it faster to pop open the cereal box, but also it requires less thinking at an early hour.

It's nice to have a hot breakfast, but it's effort. At least until I came across breakfast couscous. It's only a little more work than cereal seeing as it mostly involves pouring milk and couscous into a pot. There's a few other ingredients like brown sugar and cinnamon, dried fruit and nuts, but it's basically up to you what and how much you throw in there.

The best part is, it's really tasty. I could probably eat the entire 3 serving recipe myself. It's like a eating a bowl of rice pudding, all warm and creamy and sweet. Couscous is just another grain, pretty bland on its own and ready to take on the flavor of anything around it. Once I start making breakfast couscous, I want to have it every day for weeks on end. If I hadn't just made it myself, I'd think there was crack in this stuff too!

Breakfast Couscous (Cooking Light)
Yield: 2-3 servings

Ingredients:

1/4 cups water
1 cup nonfat milk
1/2 cup uncooked couscous
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt

Bring water and milk to a boil in a small saucepan; stir in remaining ingredients. Remove from heat. Cover; let stand 10 minutes. (Mixture will thicken as it cools.)

Laotian Fast Food

2011-02-08T20:30:00.000-08:00

Since I came back from New Zealand where I consumed the most delicious Asian food, I've had some cravings. So I declared last week Asian food week in my kitchen. Singapore noodles, Vietnamese banh mi, steak salad with Thai salad dressing and Thai hot and sour soup were all on the menu. My repertoire already contains quite a few Asian foods.

I really like getting beyond the stir fry and soy sauce when it comes to Asian food. In fact I didn't even consider making Chinese, though some of the potstickers I made a few months ago were still in the freezer and I popped those into a pan as an appetizer to my noodles. Many parts of Asia are not well represented here. In New Zealand, there was Malaysian and Laotian food at the international food court. I would love to find such a food court here, with the creamy curries, noodles, and spices replacing the hamburgers, fries, and chicken sandwiches.

So it was perfect timing that I found a section of Laotian recipes in a recent issue of Food & Wine. The lettuce wraps I made with ground chicken, scallions, cilantro, shallots, and a surprise ingredient of ground rice powder were delicious. They tasted fresh, with the brightness of lime juice and the bite of raw shallots and scallions. I ground the toasted rice in my new spice grinder - if you have a coffee grinder it should work just as well - and this added a really nice, nutty texture to the dish.

I guess you could say this is the Laotian version of fast food tacos.

Ground Chicken Laap (Food and Wine)
Ingredients
1 tablespoon long-grain white rice
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground chicken (turkey or duck)
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons chicken stock or low-sodium broth
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon Asian fish sauce
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
2 large stalks of lemongrass—tender pale inner core only, minced
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 medium shallot, thinly sliced and separated into rings
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 cup chopped mint
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Small romaine leaves and lime wedges, for serving

In a small skillet, toast the rice over high heat, shaking the skillet a few times, until the rice is golden brown, about 3 minutes. Transfer the rice to a spice grinder and let cool completely. Grind the rice to a powder.
In a large skillet, heat the oil. Add the ground meat and cook over moderately high heat, breaking up the meat evenly, until no pink remains, about 4 minutes. Add the stock and cook, stirring, until bubbling. Remove from the heat and stir in the fish sauce. Season with salt and black pepper and stir in the lime juice. Let stand for 5 minutes, then stir in the lemongrass, scallions, shallot rings, cilantro, mint, crushed red pepper and rice powder. Arrange the lettuce and lime wedges on a platter. Spoon the laap on top and serve.

Keep It Simple

2011-01-28T19:59:00.000-08:00

So here's a thought for the new year: Keep it simple. Since I've come back from vacation, which was filled with eating wonderful food in excess, and which followed the holidays and eating wonderful food in excess, I've been thinking I should eat less (though just as wonderful) food.

Even the most passionate foodie needs a break, especially when I'm putting on the pounds.

So this week I kept it simple. And simple doesn't have to mean cereal. I've never had cereal for dinner - not once! This week I had some salads and made a homemade Fontina mac and cheese. I sauteed baby spinach in olive oil and garlic - so easy and good with a little squeeze of lemon on top. And I made the simplest of Indian dishes, some tandoori style chicken legs made with a spice rub.

I used to be reluctant to use boxed spice rubs because I figured I had all the spices anyway, why not mix them myself? But then I saw my mom using them, and her chicken is amazing. It's tender and juicy and sprinkled with deliciousness. I've decided that deliciousness is actually a spice, or perhaps an undiscovered element.

Or it's this stuff, which can be found in any Indian store or ethnic market type of place. It's a very common brand.

The spice mix box has a recipe on it, but I wouldn't follow that. Here's what you should do. Use skinless drumsticks or thighs and rub salt all over them. Buy a ginger-garlic paste too, and rub that on the chicken. Or use fresh ginger and garlic. Then rub the spice mix all over the chicken. Use as much as you want, it can be spicy! Don't miss any spots though. Let that marinate for several hours or overnight. Even though you have to remember to marinate it, and you should be marinating all kinds of things on a regular basis, the spice rub and bottled ginger-garlic paste make for very fast prep. Bake in an oven heated to 375 degrees for 30 minutes, then brush with melted butter and move to the broiler. Broil on both sides until crispy and browned. In the summer, you can just throw the chicken on the grill...or into a tandoori if you have one! Squeeze some lemon on top when you serve it, this lovely dish of deliciousness.

Top 10 Best Things I Made in 2010

2010-12-30T13:31:00.000-08:00

Leaving a year behind can mean a whole new start, new resolutions, shaking off the old bad habits and acquiring new ones (bad and good!). Not so with food. When a good recipe enters my repertoire, it bears repeating and improving.

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve without a top ten list, and like other food bloggers I've assembled my Top 10 Best Things I Made in 2010. Some of these I made for the first time in 2010, some are old favorites that were presented to other people for the first time in 2010. Some I've written about here and some I just never got around to writing about or never had pictures for. In any case, they are memorable and sure to be repeated in 2011 and beyond.

10. Silken Comfort Tofu

I thought about writing about this tofu dish many times. It is warm, spicy, sweet and nutty. It is truly a representation of its name of silken comfort. It's not the tasteless tofu that many people fear. It is a treat, and since someone else wrote about it before me, I'll just refer you to that blog.

http://www.food52.com/blog/420_silken_comfort_tofu

9. Raspberry Ribbon Shortbread
A simple shortbread with raspberry jam baked onto it is the perfect Christmas cookie. (See recipe below)

8. Roasted Potatoes from Cook's Illustrated

The trick, my friend, is to parboil the potatoes first, then toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, before roasting them. This gives them a crisp exterior, creamy interior, and great flavor and color.

7. Haitian Chicken Puffs

These make a great appetizer. They are spicy and savory and anything with puff pastry is bound to be a success.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001981753

6. Miso Butter

I just made this a few weeks ago and waxed effusively about it. I can't imagine making steak without miso butter now.

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/12/warmth.html

5. Winter Cabbage Salad

I've got to throw a salad in here, and this is the best one of the year, edging out a nice Thanksgiving spinach and pear salad, a mushroom, fennel and parmigiano-reggiano layered salad, a frisee, ham and egg salad with dijon dressing, and any kind of salad with avocados.

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/02/getting-bad-rap.html

4. New York Style Crumb Cake

You will look for excuses to make this crumb cake. Suddenly you'll be throwing tea parties and showers, even though you're a celebrated hermit. You'll volunteer to bring in the cake for the office potluck and the 4th of July picnic. You'll invite yourself to your neighbor's annual summer luau and claim the cake is a Hawaiian staple. It's that good.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/New-York-Style-Crumb-Cake-358217

3. Chicken and Dumplings

This is the real thing. Boiling a whole chicken to make your own stock, gravy, and topping it off with dumplings is comforting and makes your feel a little like Martha Stewart or a settler of the old west or something.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001134065

2. Bacon Shrimp and Grits

I wrote about how decadent this recipe was, but it's also great because once you've made it you don't really need the recipe anymore. What could be easier than chopped onions and garlic, butter and olive oil, grits, bacon, and shrimp cooked in bacon fat?

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/05/decadent.html

1. Double Chocolate Mocha Brownies

Dense and chocolaty, they are my favorite kind of brownie. There was a time when I never made brownies from scratch. They always came from a box and they were perfectly acceptable. But let me remind you that desserts are a lot of calories and perfectly acceptable is not good enough. They need to be AMAZING. And these are.

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/02/kind-of-brownie-i-like.html

Here's wishing for a 2011 with as many great new finds and rediscovering old favorites, in food, friends, and life. Cheers!

Raspberry Ribbon Shortbread
Yield: 4 dozen bars

Dough:

½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened

½ cup vegetable shortening

½ cup powdered sugar

1 large egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 ¼ cups all purpose flour

¼ tsp salt

½ cup seedless raspberry jam for filling (stir until smooth in a small bowl)

Beat butter, shortening, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla in mixer bowl at medium speed until light and fluffy. With mixer on low speed, add salt and flour. Beat just until blended. Divide dough into four equal parts and flatten each slightly into a disk. Wrap each in plastic and refrigerate for a least 2 hours until firm or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On a lightly floured surface, shape each disk of dough into a 12 inch long “rope” then flatten to 5/8 inch thick and about 2 inches wide. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, 2 inches or so apart. Using the handle of a wooden spoon, press a ¼ inch deep groove along the center of each rope.

Bake 12 minutes. Remove from oven and gently press grooves down again using spoon handle. Fill each groove carefully with jam. Return to oven and bake 8-10 minutes more until firm and light golden brown at edges. Remove pan from oven.

Let cool 10 minutes on pan, then gently cut into ¾ - 1 inch wide slices. Transfer to wire racks and cool completely.

Homey

2010-12-28T14:35:00.000-08:00

I'm spending this last week of the year being homey. Which is not to be confused with being homely.
Homey: comfortably informal and inviting; cozy; homelike
Homely: lacking in physical attractiveness; not beautiful; unattractive; not having elegance, refinement or cultivation.

What I mean to say is, I'm spending some time at home at this week, making my place warm and cozy, comfortable and inviting, and part of doing that is cooking up some yummy food. Yummy is kind of a homey word itself. When you read a restaurant review, you see words like "delicious" and "tantalizing" and "excellent". But rarely do you see "yummy". And yet, as a home chef, I cannot think of a better word to describe the taste of cookies, cupcakes, stews, soups, bread puddings, and roasts that come from my homey kitchen.

Homey is like homely in that it is not aspiring to be elegant, refined, or cultivated. It is only aspiring to be yummy. It makes you feel good, and that is often just enough.

Happy New Year and enjoy this homey recipe for Pork and Wild Rice Soup. I ended up overcooking it a bit, and it turned into less of a soup and more of a pork and wild rice dish but the flavors are solid, and extremely yummy.

Pork and Wild Rice Soup (Cooking Light)

Ingredients

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 pound pork tenderloin, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/3 cup brown and wild rice blend
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 serrano chiles, seeded and minced
1 cup water
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
1 (32-ounce) carton fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons crumbled queso fresco
1 sliced peeled avocado
24 baked tortilla chips

Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown pork on all sides. Remove from pan. Heat remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in pan, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add rice, onion, garlic, and chiles; sauté 3 minutes or until onion is tender. Add pork, 1 cup water, oregano, broth, and beans; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in cilantro, juice, salt, and pepper; simmer 2 minutes. Top each serving with cheese, avocado, and chips.

Warmth

2010-12-12T06:54:00.000-08:00

December snuck up on me. I feel like I'm not quite over summer. Summer was good to me this year. It seduced me with warm winds and sunshine. It heated me from within. I think I walked around with a little summer glow for weeks after the last 80 degree day, pretending it was just gone for a day or two instead of months.

But there's no denying when December rolls around, the halls are decked and the first snowstorm descends, that summer is really gone. So I've been looking for a recipe that can heat me from within. There are soups and curries and braised meats that do the job nicely of course. But it's not just the heat of a spicy curry that I want. That hits your tongue and burns and titillates but doesn't last. It's a flirtation. I'm looking for a deeper warmth. Like being wrapped in a fleecy robe, the flavor permeates every pore.

What I found last week was unusual and amazing and completely unexpected. It was a steak topped with miso butter, and while you might think that sounds weird or interesting but not particularly warm, let me emphasize the butter part of miso butter. Because butter is warming. Maybe because it adds layers of fat to your body - I won't deny that possibility! But melt some butter over a good steak and it adds such a depth of flavor, especially when mixed with some salty miso, soy sauce, rice vinegar and ginger, that you are warmed from your tongue to your toes.

This recipe from Bon Appetit is for a Coriander Crusted Steak with Miso Butter, but I say you make that miso butter and put it on anything in the vicinity. A nice lean steak is best, otherwise it's too fatty to take the additional fatty topping. A note on buying miso paste - I had to buy a huge bag once as that was the only size I could find but it seems to last forever in the fridge. I've used it for salad dressings quite a bit, and now I'll be using it for miso butter as much as possible.

Miso Butter (Bon Appetit)
Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons chopped green onions
2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tablespoon red miso paste
1 tabespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons sake

Mix all ingredients through soy sauce. Cook the steak in a skillet and reserve your skillet. Add miso butter and sake, and boil until slightly thickened and reduced to 1 /4 cup, whisking often, about 1 minute. Spoon over steak.

Not Your Traditional Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T07:21:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl, my desire was for my family to celebrate, as all American families did, the traditional holiday of Thanksgiving. I didn't know my family wasn't American, not really. We didn't have loads of relatives to celebrate with, we ate with our hands and by the way, we didn't eat meat on Thursdays.

Last night my dad told me how I really wanted a turkey for Thanksgiving when I was old enough to know what you were supposed to eat. And yet there were only three of us to feed on this holiday, when we didn't have other families to join us and even if we did, they were other Indian families with no interest in turkey or mashed potatoes that weren't burnt yellow with turmeric. So he brought home a chicken. Was I fooled, I asked. Of course I was! My little unsophisticated palate didn't know any better.

Over the years, our Thanksgiving celebrations evolved. Some years we did actually have turkey (I checked the label), one year there was ham. Eventually we switched to celebrating on Friday at a friend's place so we could have the meatiest of meals, and Thanksgiving Thursday became either a non-event or a time for me to join other friends for a meal.

The last three or four years Thanksgiving has evolved again into a vegetarian feast. Last night, for example, we had butternut squash soup with chopped apples, fettucine alfredo, spinach and pear salad, sweet potato biscuits with honey butter, brussel sprouts, fruit and ice cream. I hardly missed the turkey.

Thanksgiving is actually a holiday made for immigrants, and I love the idea of making it fit my family's immigrant needs. And I'm all for two delicious meals instead of one!

Here's the sweet potato biscuits I made yesterday, which could go with any traditional or untraditional meal. Appropriately, they are from an "American" cookbook, but then what is American other than a blend of a myriad of cultures?

Sweet Potato Biscuits (from Bobby Flay Cooks American)
Makes 12

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter cut into pieces
7/8 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup mashed cooked sweet potato (about 1)
1 tablespoon honey

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or use a nonstick baking mat. Sift the dry ingredients together into a large bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles rolled oats.

Make a well in the center of the mixture and add the buttermilk, sweet potatoes and honey. Stir vigorously until the dough forms a ball. Knead lightly for about 30 seconds, until the dough just begins to look smooth.

On a floured surface, pat the dough out 3/4-inch thick into a 7 by 8 inch rectangle. Either cut into 2 inch rounds with a biscuit cutter or slice into 12 squares (which eliminates the need to reroll all scraps into another biscuit). Transfer to the prepared pan and bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned.

Serve with honey butter: Mix four tablespoons of softened butter with two tablespoons of honey, or more to taste.

Potstuck

2010-11-14T22:45:00.000-08:00

About ten years ago, my roommates and I were involved in a cooking extravaganza. Every dinner we made, every party we threw, was an elaborate array of dishes, around which we arranged to invite and impress our nine friends. Let's be honest, the parties were for us, not for them.

At random moments, I'll remember something ridiculous we cooked. Ridiculous because it was incredibly complex for a party full of 22 year olds who would be happy with a keg and a bag of Ruffles. Deep fried ravioli, grilled pineapple soaked in rum, a fruit salad in a watermelon half, marbled cheesecake squares (yes that does mean making two types of cheesecake batter), and who could forget our "authentic" Chinese New Year meal?

Using a fabulous cookbook called the China Moon Cookbook which taught us how to make our own hot chili oil, we slaved over egg rolls and hot and sour soup. But the best thing about learning to make Chinese food was finding out how easy it was to make our own potstickers.

Potstickers or dumplings or gyoza - whatever you want to call them - are the most pleasing little packaged food. With a lovely, chewy wontonny wrapper and a gingery garlic filling, a potsticker is hardly any more trouble than mixing up a batch of meatballs. Pork is a popular filling, but I'm a fan of ground chicken too. The best part of potstickers is how easy it is to cook them, but you have to do it the right way or they will be potstuck.

Lemongrass Chicken Potstickers (Food and Wine)

Ingredients
1 lb ground chicken
1 cup finely shredded napa cabbage
1/4 chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons finely grated lemongrass
2 tablespoons snipped chives
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 minced garlic clove
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon kosher salt
wonton wrappers
peanut oil

Mix all ingredients, kneading into the ground chicken. Fill a small bowl with water. Wet your finger and rub it around the edges of the wonton wrapper. Place a tablespoon of filling in the center of the wrapper. Lift the sides and press together. I keep it simple by making triangles but you can also crimp the edges or something fancier. It can take some time to fill all the wontons, but just plop yourself in front of the tv while you do it.

When your potstickers are ready, heat two tablespoons of peanut oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat. Fill the pan with potstickers with their pleated edges up and cook until the bottoms are lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Add 1/4 cup of water and cover, reducing heat to medium. Finish the potstickers by steaming them in the pan for five minutes until filling is cooked through and water has evaporated. Uncover and brown the bottoms another 1 minute. Transfer to plate and repeat with any remaining potstickers.

You can also freeze extra potstickers. Placed them on a sheet of parchment on a baking sheet that fits in the freezer. Freeze separately, then put in a zip lock bag and store in the freezer for up to 1 month. Cook the same way from frozen.

Meeting a New Friend

2010-11-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

Every day I have the choice to try a new recipe or make something I know is going to be good, that I've perfected, and that leaves me satiated. This is a surprisingly difficult choice for me. I like everything I eat to be a good, valuable consumption of calories. Otherwise I'm just crabby.

But I have a definite preference towards variety. I get three cooking magazines, have around twenty cookbooks, and search the internet constantly for recipes. But it's only worth it if I occasionally find a recipe that is worth making over and over again.

Kind of a conundrum isn't it?

Because there are recipes full of high hopes and disappointments. There are recipes that are so much work that I'll never bother with them again. There are recipes that are good but forgettable. And there are recipes that are one ingredient away from being something I already have a great recipe for. After all, how could those cooking magazines really print so many brand new recipes every month?

When I do find something new that is good, it's like meeting a new friend. You thought you had all the friends you needed in your life, and then you meet someone else who makes you laugh really hard and just gets you. One of my best friends I've known all my life, another I met barely three years ago. It's like that with best recipes too.

So here's my latest find. I just made it last night, and it has two components that taste pretty good by themselves but together they are outstanding. They are a pop of flavor in your mouth, a wake up call that reminds how many good things and people there are in life that are yet to be discovered.

Wild Mushroom Cakes with Avocado Pesto (modified from Bon Appetit)
4 servings

These cakes make a nice light appetizer, though I ate six little ones as my entire meal.

Mushroom Cakes
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 8-ounce packages sliced button mushrooms
2 large portabello mushrooms, gills scraped out and sliced
8 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 large eggs, beaten to blend
2 tablespoons finely grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs

Avocado Pesto
2 large avocados coarsely mashed
1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil

Make pesto: Add avocado, Parmesan, cilantro, and lime juice to a food processor. Process to blend. With machine running, gradually add 1/4 cup oil through feed tube. Transfer to bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Melt butter with oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add all mushrooms and saute until browned and edges begin to crisp, stirring often, about 14 minutes. Add garlic and stir 1 minute. Transfer mixture to processor and allow to cool five minutes. Add eggs, Parmesan, herbs, salt, and pepper to processor. Using on/off turns, process until mushrooms are coarsely chopped. Transfer to large bowl. Mix in 1/2 cup panko.

Divide mushroom mixture into 8 equal portions. Form each into a 3/4 inch thick cake. Spread additional panko out on plate. Coat cakes with panko. Melt butter with 2 tablespoons oil in large skillet over medium heat. Working in 2 batches, add mushroom cakes. Cook until browned and cooked through, about 5 minutes per side.

Serve mushroom cakes with avocado pesto.

Something to Do With Nutella

2010-10-17T09:08:00.001-07:00

It does not seem right to eat cookies for breakfast. Even if they are salted Nutella peanut butter cookies. Even if they are thin, chewy, sweet with a hint of salt, perfect with a cup of tea or coffee on a brisk fall morning.

But then again, it's Nutella. And if you don't know what Nutella is by now, get yourself to a supermarket, charge down the peanut butter aisle and scoop up several of those little European pots of chocolate hazelnut spread. You have some studying to do.

I've been looking for something to do with Nutella other than eat it out of the jar with a large spoon. Typically I will make some crepes, spread them with Nutella and roll them up for dessert. A chopped banana is good in there too, but don't try to pretend it's healthy at all. The crepe just becomes a sort of edible vessel to transfer Nutella to your mouth.

But I'm not always in the mood for making crepes, primarily because I eat them far faster than I can make them. So recently after I spotted a recipe for Nutella cupcakes, I started searching for other Nutella desserts. That's when I came across this super easy cookie recipe. Very few ingredients, nicely balanced in texture and flavor. So don't tell me it's wrong to eat cookies for breakfast. What's wrong is not making Nutella a regular part of your breakfast, in some form or another.

Salted Nutella Peanut Butter Cookies
Yield: 2 dozen

Ingredients:

¾ cups Nutella

¼ cups smooth peanut butter

¾ cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg, lightly beaten

¼ teaspoons kosher salt plus extra for sprinkling

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/4 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all the ingredients together until just combined.

Roll the dough into ½ inch thick balls (you can vary the size). Place balls one inch apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Flatten slightly, then sprinkle each cookie with kosher salt.

Bake 8 minutes. Let cool on the parchment for one minute and then transfer to a wire rack.

Pumpkin Bread

2010-10-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

I was frantic. I couldn't find my favorite pumpkin bread recipe and I had promised my knitting group I would be making seasonal treats. It's finally October, which is the season of trench coats, knee high boots, and pumpkin recipes.

About ten years ago, I procured a pumpkin bread recipe from a co-worker. It was made with brown sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate chips. It was almost cake like in consistency. It was a favorite recipe that I turned to every fall. It made two loaves so I doled out pumpkin bread to all my friends and co-workers. I didn't think anyone could beat that pumpkin bread.

Then about three years ago, when I worked at a different job in a different city and state, I ran across another pumpkin bread recipe at work. It only took moments with this new bread for me to abandon my old recipe and commit myself to the new one. Unlike its rival, this pumpkin bread was made with white sugar, four different spices, and not an ounce of chocolate. But it was delicious.

So the following year, I held a bake off. A pumpkin bread head-to-head. I insisted that my co-workers try both breads and vote. And despite the lure of chocolate in the first bread, only one person voted for it. Everyone else preferred the second, spiced up version.

The recipe is on a folded piece of paper. It is a photocopy of a photocopy from some unknown cookbook. It is oddly named "Lydia's Pumpkin Bread" and has another woman's name (not Lydia) at the bottom. The instructions are vague and brief, and I always leave out the raisins and nuts. It turns out wonderful every time.

So that's why last night and again this morning I frantically searched through my recipe clippings until I finally found it. There was no alternative and no electronic version. And that's why I had to record it here, so I never have to frantically search for it again.

Lydia's Pumpkin Bread
Yield: 1 loaf

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup pumpkin (about 1/2 can)
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/3 cup water
raisin or nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the first four ingredients in order in a large bowl. Sift remaining dry ingredients (flour through spices) in a separate bowl. Add flour mixture slowly to wet ingredients, alternating with water, and mixing after each addition. Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray. Pour batter into loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Test with knife in center of loaf. If knife comes out dry, bread is done.

Grill Master

2010-09-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

This here is my little grill. I've had it for over ten years and it's beginning to show its age. For one thing, it's become bowlegged. But I'm fond of it anyway, and I've been grilling up a storm this summer. I'm something of a grill master.

I don't know why people assume that grilling is for men. I love grilling. I've always grilled with charcoal, and I love lighting up a match and watching the lighter fluid flame up. Then I'll watch the flames dance in the bowl of the grill, until they slowly die down into a white ashy coating on the charcoal. I love that smell, the anticipation of a good, hot grill.

You can't be a grill master until you've made ribs. They are succulent, salty and sweet all at once. They are sticky and saucy and spicy. They are that naughty best friend you had growing up, the one who was trouble, but too much fun to stay away from.

Ribs were made to be grilled, so all that fat crisps up and they take on the smokiness of the charcoal. Most recipes call for the ribs to be boiled first, but here I've adapted an oven baked recipe to be finished on the grill. Start off by rubbing the ribs with a fragrant spice rub. Pop them in the oven for 75 minutes while you make the sauce and get the grill ready. Spread the hot coals in a single layer so you can cook all the ribs evenly. Then baste the ribs with the sauce and throw them on the grill. Five minutes per side should do it. Look at that, you're a grill master!

Spicy Chipotle Ribs (Gourmet)

Spice rub ingredients:

2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons chile powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 (2-lb) racks baby back ribs

Sauce ingredients:

1 1/2 cups chopped onion (from 1 large)
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups ketchup
1/2 cup cider vinegar
6 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 chipotle pepper and 1 tablespoon adobo sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to to 350°F. Whisk together brown sugar, salt, and spices in a small bowl. Line a 17- by 12- by 1-inch heavy-duty baking pan with a double layer of foil, then oil foil. Pat ribs dry and arrange in baking pan. Rub ribs all over with spice mixture. Cover pan tightly with foil; bake 1 1/4 hours. Remove foil.

Make sauce while ribs bake:

Cook onion, garlic, and ginger in oil in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 6 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, 15 minutes.

Purée sauce in 2 or 3 batches in a blender until smooth, or with a hand immersion blender (use caution when blending hot liquids).

Prepare grill. Remove ribs from oven and baste with sauce. Transfer to grill and grill for 5 - 6 minutes. Turn and baste again, grilling for another 5 - 6 minutes.

A Summer for Eating Outside

2010-08-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, just to make sure it's really summer, I eat a meal outside. When the air feels warm and non-air conditioned, and a breeze carries the scent of grilled meat, and I can sit on my balcony and stare down at the neighbors who camp on their porch all weekend as though we lived in the deep south - then I know it's summer.

This summer I've eaten lunch on my balcony every weekend. I've eaten rapidly melting mint chocolate chip ice cream while walking down the street, or frozen custard while sitting outside the frozen custard shop watching people at the walk up window with their dogs in tow. I've eaten outside but inside my parents' enclosed patio with the wind blowing through the screen but the bugs staying thankfully in the yard. I sat on a deck drinking beer and grilling hamburgers in Virginia on July 4th, and the next day I squatted on a blanket eating chicken salad and veggies and dip while listening to the North Shore concert band in Illinois.

It's been a summer for eating outside, where the food tastes so fresh, it's like it grew out of the ground just a few feet from where I sit.

Last night I sat outside again, at a picnic table eating fresh tomatoes. If you're going to eat anything outside, it should be a ripe, summery tomato. It should be bloody red, juicy, topping sandwiches or layered with fresh mozzarella or eaten like an apple, out of hand. Or best of all, toss it with some toasted Italian bread cubes, basil, olive oil, salt, and pepper for a tomato-bread salad. And eat it fast, before the bugs or the end of summer get you.

Panzanella (Italian Bread Salad) by Emeril

Ingredients

1/2 French bread loaf cut into 1" cubes
Olive oil for frying
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons chiffonade of basil
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon minced garlic
4 Italian Roma tomatoes, cut into 1/2 " slices

Directions

For croutons: In a large saute pan, heat the olive oil. When smoking hot, add the bread cubes and fry until golden, about 3-4 minutes. Stir often to prevent from sticking. Remove from pan and drain on a paper-lined plate. Season with salt and pepper. Toss the remain ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper.

To assemble, toss the fried bread with the other ingredients and place on a platter. Can be made ahead of time, by keeping the bread separate until serving.

Time for Corn

2010-08-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

I started eating this season's corn in June and by July I was corned out. Now it's August, and everywhere I look, I see corn recipes. Every cooking magazine is filled to the brim with variations on roasted corn and corn chowder and skillet fried corn and caramel corn. I've been completely disinterested.

Instead, I've focused on ice cream festivals and savory bread pudding and pizza with mozarella cream sauce and Italian sausage. I've focused on the green peppers and basil and oregano that overflowed a co-worker's garden and arrived clean and bright in my cube. I focused on firing up my lopsided little grill on my balcony and grilling chicken drumsticks and mushrooms and trout with lemon slices.

There hasn't been time for corn in this busy cooking life of mine.

But finally one of those devilish corn recipes caught my eye because it was disguised as something I love: pesto. And it had bacon in it.

Corn pesto is similar to basil pesto - it's blended with garlic, salt, pine nuts and Parmesan. A good glug of oil is added, and it's tossed with pasta. But the corn is cooked in bacon fat, and when blended it turns creamy like a carbonara. Add a little pasta cooking water and season with more salt, and you'll find it more satisfying than a cream sauce. People are always looking to eat light things in the summer but I'm not. Bring on the heavy, hearty food all year round!

Tagliatelle with Fresh Corn Pesto (from Bon Appetit)

4 bacon slices, cut lengthwise in half, then crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
4 cups fresh corn kernels (cut from about 6 large ears)
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus additional for serving
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
8 ounces tagliatelle or fettuccine
3/4 cup coarsely torn fresh basil leaves, divided

Cook bacon in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp and brown, stirring often. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon drippings from skillet. Add corn, garlic, 1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt, and 3/4 teaspoon pepper to drippings in skillet. Sauté over medium-high heat until corn is just tender but not brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer 1 1/2 cups corn kernels to small bowl and reserve. Scrape remaining corn mixture into processor. Add 1/2 cup Parmesan and pine nuts. With machine running, add olive oil through feed tube and blend until pesto is almost smooth. Set pesto aside.

Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain, reserving 1 1/2 cups pasta cooking liquid. Return pasta to pot. Add corn pesto, reserved corn kernels, and 1/2 cup basil leaves. Toss pasta mixture over medium heat until warmed through, adding reserved pasta cooking liquid by 1/4 cupfuls to thin to desired consistency, 2 to 3 minutes. Season pasta to taste with salt and pepper.

Transfer pasta to large shallow bowl. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup basil leaves and reserved bacon. Serve pasta, passing additional grated Parmesan alongside.

Let's Be Realistic

2010-07-19T20:58:00.001-07:00

Let's be realistic. If a recipe calls for Mexican oregano and I've got a bag of plain old oregano bought in bulk, am I going to run out to the store? If a recipe calls for sweet Hungarian paprika and my bottle has no affiliation with an eastern European country, am I going to abandon ship? And are panko breadcrumbs really far superior to other breadcrumbs?

All this time I've been preaching about cooking things yourself. But cooking it yourself is not about cooking it Top Chef style with a million ingredients, most of which are packaged in large quantities but only required in 1/4 teaspoons. It's about being realistic about what you need and what you don't need, and knowing what tastes good enough to eat at home because this isn't a restaurant and you don't need to put parsley on the plate so why buy a bunch for a recipe that requires five leaves?

But enough of that tirade. Let's just take a Top Chef recipe and see what we can make of it. A couple weeks ago, the recipe for Sesame Lamb Meatballs won the elimination challenge on Top Chef and I was all about making it at home. I figured it had some lamb, some sesame paste, salt, pepper, olive oil. You know, the basics. Then I looked at the recipe and counted 17 ingredients, or 18 if you want to count the lemongrass skewers the meatballs are threaded on. There were two kinds of meat! There were two kinds of sesame seeds!

I nixed the ground beef right away. These were lamb meatballs, I was sold on lamb meatballs, and I wasn't going to buy ground beef just to use 4 ounces of it. Next I nixed the parsley because, as mentioned above, I have no use for leftover parsley and my fridge is getting tired of the mess it leaves. Next I addressed the roasted garlic oil. I'm not sure if one can buy roasted garlic oil. I'm certain that I could make roasted garlic oil, but did I really want to make it? So I resigned myself to just adding roasted garlic, and then at the last minute just added chopped garlic and nixed the roasting altogether.

Next on the list was sherry vinegar, which I never have around but see in recipes all the time. I decided I would buy sherry vinegar, but then I didn't see any at the grocery store and so I used my standby substitute, cider vinegar. It works just fine. Mexican oregano = oregano. Smoked paprika = paprika. And black and white sesame seeds would have to be just one or the other, whatever color I spotted at the supermarket first. But here's a hint - don't skip the tahini or the chile paste. Because these meatballs taste like sesame and chile, and everything else just adds deliciousness. Maybe I'm sacrificing a little bit of deliciousness, but I'm getting a lot of darn good meatballs either way.

The moral of the story is, make decisions about what's realistic and make the recipe work for you. You're eating it - not some judge. And it's okay if the meatballs end up being flat instead of round (ahem).

Top Chef Sesame Lamb Meatballs (from Bravotv.com - but edited)

Ingredients:

16 oz ground lamb
1/8 cup chopped fresh cilantro stems
1 Tbl chopped garlic
2 Tbl cider vinegar
1 Tbl sambal (chile paste)
2 Tbl Tahini paste
1/8 cup chopped shallots
3 Tbl bread crumbs
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp ground cumin
1 whole egg
4 Tbl sesame seeds
Salt & Sugar, to taste

1. Distribute all ingredients evenly.

2. Form patties and wrap around skewers.

3. Grill to desired doneness.

Things You Can Do With Kalamatas

2010-06-22T19:26:00.001-07:00

The other day I was surprised to note that I was going through my kalamata olives at a rather rapid clip. They were turning up more often in recipes that appealed to me, and once you buy a bottle you are caught in a vicious cycle of using it up and then buying more because you are always a few olives short of the next recipe.

Of course, I would never say you were a few olives short of the next recipe.

It turns out that kalamata olives have many uses. Uses you would never suspect of a kalamata, much less a generic black olive. I'm not talking about an appearance on a pizza or a salad. Kalamatas frolic in those playgrounds every day. I'm talking about roasted potatoes. I'm talking about orange zest. I'm talking about hot dogs. I'm talking about buttermilk bread.

You have no idea what I'm talking about because if you've had a kalamata, it was probably in a Greek salad with some feta, a cucumber, and a hefty dose of red onions. That is a perfectly good place to eat a kalamata. But once you're comfortable there, and you agree that the savory little fellow could get out a little more, here's four things you can do with kalamatas that you never knew you could do.

1. Dirty potatoes

Potatoes are dirty when they come out of the ground, and it's only fitting to serve them up dirty once in a while. Make some olive tapenade (blend up kalamatas, olive oil, and lemon juice or buy a bottled version like Trader Joe's) and toss it with roasted potato wedges.

2. Spaghetti with Orange Zest, Basil and Kalamatas

This is an easy weeknight pasta. Saute some chopped garlic in enough olive oil to coat your spaghetti. When the garlic is browned, add chopped kalamata olives and orange zest from 1 orange. Toss the oil mixture with the cooked spaghetti and sprinkle with salt, pepper, fresh basil and grated parmesan cheese.

3. Muffeletta Hot Dogs

From last month's Bon Appetit, an intriguing recipe for hot dogs turns them into a version of a classic New Orleans sandwich, the muffeletta. Make some more olive tapenade but keep it roughly chopped. Top the hot dog with the tapenade and sliced pepperoncini, and/or roasted red peppers.

4 Kalamata Olive Bread (Cooking Light)

The buttermilk in this bread makes it taste buttery throughout, it smells fantastic from the oregano and of course you get to have more kalamata olives. What could be better for a savory bread?
Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup finely chopped onion
9 ounces all-purpose flour (about 2 cups)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup low-fat buttermilk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 large egg whites
1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
Cooking spray

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion to pan; sauté 3 minutes or until onion is tender. Set aside.

3. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Combine buttermilk, butter, and egg whites, stirring with a whisk. Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist. Fold in onion, olives, and oregano.

4. Spread batter into an 8 x 4–inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

Verging on Blue Soup

2010-05-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

I was having a blue soup experience. If you've read or seen Bridget Jones' Diary, you know how she tried to make her friends dinner and ended up serving blue soup. The meal I was making was verging on blue soup.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. But a lot of things were going wrong.

It started when I broke a yolk while separating some eggs, and my whites were tainted. Then when I made a fresh bowl of whites and whipped them, they splattered all over the counter. My chocolate roulade, a rolled log cake, broke when I rolled it up (probably because I lost too many whites in the afore mentioned splatter). My focaccia didn't rise (possibly due to expired yeast). I burned some dried apricots that I was making for a puree to fill the broken cake, and I still can't get the burned bits off the non-stick pan. My new focaccia, made with freshly purchased yeast expiring in 2011, rose and baked up nicely except for the sun-dried tomatoes on top - which burned.

To top it all off, my faucet sprung a leak and drenched the cabinet space under the sink.

So while I'm boiling the rest of the dried apricots for take two of the puree, while swirling it into fresh whipped cream that I whipped in a big enough bowl to avoid splatter, while stuffing the cream and apricot filling into the broken cake hoping it would stick together in some semblance of layers, while picking blackened tomatoes off an otherwise golden focaccia and mopping water up from under the sink, I started thinking that maybe this whole cooking thing had gotten the best of me.

But then I found the cups. Years ago I had acquired a free set of tea cups and since I like to drink my tea from fat mugs I never had any use for them - until now.

I made a cold avocado soup, creamy from avocados, spicy from jalapeno pepper and Tabasco sauce, tangy from lemon juice and yogurt, hearty from navy beans, and frothy and light from pureeing, which whipped air into it. Each serving was more than a sip, less than a cup, a perfect starter to soothe any anxiety that the rest of the meal was less than perfect.

And the soup was green, not blue, and meant to be that way.

Avocado Soup (edited from Cooking Light)

Ingredients:

2 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1 3/4 cups chopped avocado (about 2)
1 cup water
1 cup rinsed and drained canned navy beans
1/2 cup fat-free plain yogurt
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (such as Tabasco)
1 small jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped

Combine broth and next 9 ingredients (through jalapeño) in a blender; puree until smooth, scraping sides. Ladle 1 1/4 cups avocado mixture into each of 4 bowls, or 8 little cups.

Decadent

2010-05-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

When you haven't had bacon in a long time, the taste of it can transform you. It can transform a healthy, calorie counter into an indulgent eater. An apathetic diner into a passionate foodie. From someone who thinks about important things like world peace and helping the homeless to a person who thinks only about bacon. And you wonder why you haven't been eating it all this time.

There's a few other foods with this kind of power. Puff pastry. Chocolate truffles. Hollandaise sauce. Fresh whipped cream. Foods that are decadent, that taste good and make you feel kind of special when you eat them. You feel like you won the spelling bee and got picked first in gym class, all warm and glowy and deserving of good things.

So tonight I made bacon after a long hiatus. It was part of a recipe from a Bobby Flay cookbook that I rediscovered on my bookshelf and have been cooking from all week, and let me tell you, Bobby Flay is rocking my world.

I didn't mean to be this decadent, to swirl cream into buttery grits, grate some cheese and mix it in, to saute shrimp in bacon fat and slide them all grease slicked onto a pool of those grits, and finally to sprinkle some crispy bacon on top. I just followed the recipe, honest, and when I was done but before I took a bite, I thought, this must be pretty bad for me. And then I was done thinking for a while as I inhaled one bite after another.

It was decadent, but oh so enjoyable. Make it. Make it now. And don't let thoughts of Afghanistan or the economy get in the way of your bacon daydreams.

Shrimp and Grits with Double Smoked Bacon ( from Bobby Flay Cooks American)

Cheese grits ingredients:
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cups milk
3 cups water
salt and pepper
1 cup grits
1 1/2 cups finely grated cheddar cheese*

Shrimp ingredients:
8 ounces double-smoked bacon*, cut into 1/2-inch dice
20 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
salt and pepper
1/4 cup coarsely chopped scallions*

*I used regular, center cut bacon, white cheddar and left off the scallions.

Melt the butter and oil together in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring until soft. Increase the heat to high, add the milk, water, and 1 tablespoon of salt, and bring to a boil. Slowly add the grits and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until the mixture is smooth and thick, 15-20 minutes. Add the cheese and stir until completely melted. Season with salt and pepper to taste. (Quick cooking grits may take less time.)

Meanwhile, make the shrimp. Heat a large pan over high heat until smoking. Add the bacon and cook, stirring, until golden brown. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with paper towels. Remove all but 3 tablespoons of fat and return the pan to the stove over high heat. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper and toss in the pan until pink and lightly browned, 1 1/2-2 minutes per side.

To serve, pour a serving of cheese grits into a soup plate. Top each plate with five shrimp. Garnish with bacon and chopped scallions.

Ice Cream Summer Eating List

2010-05-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again in Chicago. The music is starting, summer is coming down the aisle and spring has never been such a delightful bridesmaid to her entrance. In fact, spring is currently putting to shame anyone who speaks pityingly of always the bridesmaid. The abundance of blossoms, the sunny days, even the showers that caught me in the last few steps to my car, have been a sweet transition to summer days, and I've abandoned the heavy coat, the boots, the winter stews and the root vegetables.

And I've started thinking about ice cream again.

That's not to say I ever stopped thinking about ice cream. The ice cream maker works in any season. A smooth, creamy pumpkin ice cream or a dark, rich chocolate ice cream have their place in the winter months. But summer is the season for ice cream, and so you have to ask yourself, what will be your flavor this year?

Pick a flavor. Make it the flavor you're going to pursue this year, at street festivals and ice cream shops, and finally in your own kitchen. Taste it everywhere, for all it's nuances and differences and make yourself an expert on it. Take a strawberry ice cream. Do you like it pink like Pepto Bismol, or mostly vanilla with streaks of strawberry? Do you like chunks of fruit or a smooth puree? Do you like it swirled with pieces of cake, to mimic strawberry shortcake, or cubes of cheesecake? This is your ice cream summer eating list.

Personally, I'm going with salted caramel ice cream. I tried making a version of this last year, with little success. But now I've got a Cooking Light recipe that will serve as the basis for any future tastings.

It's sweet and it's salty and tastes exactly like a melting caramel candy on your tongue. I limited myself to the sea salt in the recipe and didn't add any more on top. It was perfectly balanced for my taste. It's not the most common flavor, but I'll be on the lookout for it to fulfill my summer eating obligations.

Salted Caramel Ice Cream (Cooking Light)
(Yields 10 servings)

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups 2% reduced-fat milk
3 large egg yolks
1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon flake salt (optional)

Place milk in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Heat to 180° or until tiny bubbles form around edge of pan (do not boil). Place egg yolks in a large bowl; stir with a whisk. Gradually add half of hot milk to yolks, stirring constantly. Return yolk mixture to pan.

Combine sugar, cream, and butter in a large saucepan over medium heat; bring to a boil, stirring until sugar melts. Cook 3 minutes without stirring. Remove from heat; stir in sea salt. Gradually add caramel mixture to yolk mixture, stirring constantly. Return pan to low heat; cook until a thermometer registers 160°. Place pan in a large ice-filled bowl until completely cooled, stirring occasionally. Pour mixture into the freezer can of an ice-cream freezer; freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. Transfer to freezer container and freeze for at least one hour. Scoop about 1/2 cup ice cream into each of 10 dishes; sprinkle evenly with flake salt if desired.

Surprise and delight me

2010-04-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

I like meat. I like beef stew and goat curry and tandoori chicken and pork carnitas tacos. I like melt-in-your-mouth marrow and lamb shanks and kefta kabobs and turkey sausage. I like crispy chicken skin and crispy bacon and ballpark franks and cajun shrimp and kielbasa. I like grilled trout and raw tuna and salmon and gravy covered turkey and salami sandwiches. I could go on for days talking about all the different kinds of meat and fish I like. But the thing about meat is that it's easy to cook and make it taste good because, well, it tastes good!

So I don't spend a lot of time here writing about it and talking about, and if I ever mention something meaty I don't have a lot to say other than that it was good and you should make it. But then, you should make everything I tell you about.

It's vegetarian food that inspires me in the kitchen, that, when made well, can surprise and delight me. Main courses made with tofu or mushrooms or beans can be bland, but they can also be fantastic.
I'll write another time about spicy tofu or tofu in peanut sauce or mushrooms tarts, but today I'm going to praise my favorite bean, the garbanzo.

Last week I made these little chickpea (garbanzo bean) patties, mostly out of curiosity. They're still raw in this picture. I like chickpeas and have experimented with black bean patties and sampled other vegetarian burger alternatives. I feared these patties would be dry and tasteless. What I didn't expect was that they would be spicy and tender and I wouldn't be able to stop eating them. (My recipe excludes the rice that was in the original recipe, simply because it takes longer to cook the rice than to make and bake the patties. Thus the patties are not as firm as they could be.) When I drizzled tahini sauce over them, I scarfed down three patties without stopping to look for the meat.

Chickpea Patties with Tahini Sauce (modified from The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen by Rebecca Katz)
Makes 6 patties, 3 servings of 2 patties each

Ingredients for Tahini Sauce:
2 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 large garlic clove, minced and mashed to a paste with ½ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1/3 cup olive oil

In a blender blend together the tahini, lemon juice, garlic paste, and cayenne. With the motor running add the oil in a stream, blending until the sauce is emulsified. Season with salt.

Ingredients for patties:
One 15 ounce can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1/8 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons finely diced red bell pepper
1/4 cup loosely packed minced fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the chickpeas, salt, turmeric, paprika, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, garlic, ginger, olive oil and lemon juice in a food processor and process until smooth and well combined, scraping the sides occasionally. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and fold in the bell pepper and parsley.

Moisten your hands to keep the mixture from sticking, then shape the mixture into 1/4-inch-thick patties about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Place them on the prepared pan and bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until the patties start to get dry and crisp on the outside. They will firm up as they cool.

Serve patties with salad of mixed greens. Drizzle tahini sauce over patties and salad.

Sharing

2010-03-28T10:43:00.001-07:00

I've been eating lots of good food lately and I haven't been sharing. I know that's not very nice of me, but I'm sorry. Some of it just seems so simple, like scrambled eggs with Tabasco sauce wrapped in a tortilla and topped with guacamole. Just a little breakfast burrito makes me happy. Some days it's been some of my old favorites that I've told you about before, like fennel mushroom salad or Thai hot and sour soup. And some days it's been recipes without real recipes, like cajun spice sprinkled over shrimp, fried and tossed on a pillow of cheesy grits.
Plus, I was eating a gallon of homemade strawberry ice cream for weeks. That's what happens when I don't share.

But I'm going to stop that right now and share a very nice shrimp curry recipe with you, because my friend Huzefa shared it with me. It's a good recipe for lots of reasons. It's fast. It tastes good, like you spent a lot of time on it, but as I just mentioned, it's fast! And it can't go wrong. There are recipes you make once and they're great, but not so great the second or third time. Maybe you did something wrong, but you can't track down what that might be. So you have to let it go, and just remember it as a great meal you once had. But this recipe isn't like that. I've made it several times and it has never failed me. The spices, tomato paste and coconut milk are in perfect proportion (although it's quite spicy, and some may want to tone it down) so the flavor doesn't focus on any one element. I think the sauce is good enough that if you don't like shrimp, you could substitute fish or make it vegetarian with potatoes or cauliflower.
But I'll quit talking now and just show you a picture. And the recipe of course.

Indian Shrimp Curry (from Madhur Jaffrey)
4 servings

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
1 fresh, hot green chile, finely chopped (or 1/2 a chile if you prefer less spice)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
7 ounces coconut milk, well stirred (1/2 a can)
***Shrimp Ingredients***
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
10 dried curry leaves (I use bay leaves)
1 1/4 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

To make the sauce: Put the tomato paste in a bowl. Add the salt, sugar, cumin, cayenne, cilantro, green chile, lemon juice, dried curry leaves (bay leaves) and 1 Tbsp water. Mix well, slowly adding coconut milk until completely blended. Set aside.

To complete: Put the oil in a wok or frying pan over med-high heat. When the oil is hot, put in the mustard seeds. When mustard seeds begin to pop -- a few seconds -- add the garlic. Stir and fry till garlic turns medium brown, add shrimp. Stir until shrimp are opaque most of the way through. Add the sauce, turn heat to medium and heat till the sauce begins to simmer. Add the garam masala. Turn off heat and cover for ten minutes to allow flavors to develop before serving.

Happy Pi Day!

2010-03-14T20:17:00.000-07:00

Today I celebrated pi day. So did all the other math geeks in the world. It is 3/14, officially known as Pi Day. And if you're a math geek foodie then you also celebrated Pie Day.

I forgot about Pi/e Day last year. But this year I was ready. I debated for days about what type of pie to make for Pi/e Day. My favorite pie is always pumpkin pie. But it seemed out of season. My favorite fruit pie is peach, but as I noted last year at this time, peaches are not in season either. Apple is always a good choice, I thought about banana cream, discarded any thoughts of cherry or blueberry. Finally I settled on pear. It doesn't hurt that pear is also a homonym of another numerical term, pair.

But what kind of pear pie to make? A quick online search revealed that there were two main types of pear pies - a regular fruit pie and a creamy or custard pie. And there were two main types of toppings - a crumble topping or a pie crust topping. I figured a custard would mask the pear flavor so I decided to stick with a regular fruit pie. And who doesn't love a good crumble?

Look at that, most of the pie is already gone before I had a chance to take a picture! Pi/e Day puts people in a good mood, so don't forget to celebrate it.

Pear Crumb Pie

Thin sliced Bartlett pears (the super hard green ones), brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and lemon juice mingle to make a tangy filling. The butter, brown sugar, and flour makes an easy crumble. I am not tied to this crust, so use a favorite crust recipe if you have one. I served this with fresh whipped cream (1 cup cream, 4 tablespoons of powdered sugar, a splash of vanilla).

Ingredients

CRUST:

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
2 tablespoons cold water

FILLING:

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 dash ground nutmeg
6 cups thinly sliced peeled pears (about 5 pears)
1 tablespoon lemon juice

TOPPING:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup cold butter

In a bowl, combine flour and salt; cut in shortening until crumbly. Sprinkle with water; toss until mixture is moist enough to shape into a ball. On a floured surface, roll out pastry to fit a 9-in. pie pan. Flute edges. Combine filling ingredients; spoon into the crust. Bake at 400 degrees F for 35 minutes. For topping, combine flour and brown sugar; cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over filling. Bake 20 minutes longer. Cover edges with foil during the last 20 minutes to prevent overbrowning if necessary.

Thai Salad Dressing

2010-02-26T19:41:00.000-08:00

I don't have a picture for you today. I just have a recipe, a very simple recipe, for an easy and yummy salad dressing . It's so good, you'll drink it up if there's any left in the bowl after you finish swirling your last lettuce leaf around in the dregs.

Maybe all you have is lettuce in the fridge, because it's Thursday night and you're in a hurry to watch Grey's Anatomy and running out of food. Maybe you throw a can of soup into a pot, but it's all too unsatisfying and unhealthy and you pull that slightly wilted head of romaine out of the fridge and motivate yourself to wash it and tear it up. Then it goes into a salad spinner or patted down with a towel and finally you are staring at a pile of green in a big bowl. And that's even more pathetic than the canned soup.

Maybe you have a bottle of fish sauce in the fridge because you made a Thai curry two months ago, and a lime because you were going to make guacamole before the avocado turned mushy and brown, except it turned mushy and brown the day after you bought it. So you mix up some fish sauce, lime juice, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, sugar, and whisk in some vegetable oil. Toss that limp, clean lettuce with your dressing to wake it up a little, and what do you know, there are some ruddy looking radishes rolling around in the crisper, so you add some thin slices of radish on top for color and bite. A little salt and pepper and your meal just became something special. And it's nice to have something special during a mundane Thursday night meal.

Thai Salad Dressing (Joy of Cooking, for the Thai Beef Salad, but it's good on any light salad)
Yields 1 cup dressing

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
red pepper flakes to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.

The Kind of Brownie I Like

2010-02-15T20:22:00.000-08:00

I just made some amazing brownies. When I pulled them out of the oven, a little undercooked, it seemed like they were going to fall apart. I started imagining all baked goods in which the crumbs never fuse together, but instead form individual crumblets that stay in the pan shape until cut into. Like a Monet you've come too close to, or a dream that disintegrates when you wake up.

But with brownies, as with life, patience is a virtue, and once the recalcitrant crumbs had cooled down, they formed a dense chocolaty interior with a glistening crust, and held together just fine when I lifted my second piece out of the pan (just to be sure it was any good).

This was the kind of brownie I liked. Dense and gooey and not at all cake like. Not too sweet, with a dark chocolate richness enhanced with a touch of espresso. No nuts, no frosting, no embellishment of any kind.

There are a lot of brownie recipes out there. Besides the wide variety of plain ones, there are recipes for mint brownies and cheesecake swirled brownies and caramel brownies and the brownie's sweeter, gentler younger sister the blondie. And you could try all of them. You should try all of them, to find the kind of brownie you like. Take your time and enjoy the search.

Double Chocolate Mocha Brownies (Gourmet, Dec 2002)

This recipe uses unsweetened chocolate squares, but cocoa powder works just as well. Since cocoa powder is just unsweetened chocolate separated from the cocoa butter, you can substitute one for the other by altering the butter or fat in the recipe. The substitution rate I've seen is 1 oz unsweetened chocolate = 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder plus 1 tablespoon butter. Don't be fooled by the chocolate chips in this recipe. They melt away and you'd never know they were there. If you're like me and hate a strong coffee flavor, cut the espresso in half. Also, I cut the recipe in half, using 3 oz chocolate and 5 tablespoons butter, in an 8x8 pan, and baked for only 15 minutes. It was perfect.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter
5 oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon instant-espresso powder or instant-coffee granules
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a 15- by 10- by 1-inch baking pan with foil, allowing 2 inches of foil to hang over ends of pan, and grease foil well (except overhang) with 1 tablespoon butter.

Melt remaining 11 tablespoons butter with unsweetened chocolate in a large metal bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Remove bowl from heat and whisk in sugar, espresso powder, vanilla, and salt (mixture will be grainy), then add eggs 1 at a time, whisking after each addition until batter is smooth.

Toss together flour and chocolate chips in another bowl and add to batter, stirring until just combined.

Spread batter evenly in baking pan and bake in middle of oven until top is firm and edges just begin to pull away from sides of pan, about 20 minutes (do not overbake).

Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then carefully lift brownies from pan by grasping both ends of foil and transfer to rack to cool 10 minutes more. Cut into 32 squares and lift brownies off foil with a spatula.

Getting A Bad Rap

2010-02-10T20:49:00.000-08:00

I didn't think I really liked cabbage. Maybe it was a childhood influenced by Cabbage Patch Kids. I mean, what about a baby growing in a cabbage patch is appealing to my taste buds? Then there was the goopy, mushy coleslaw that comes as a side with fried chicken or hamburgers, stuffed into a translucent plastic cup on the side of the plate, the limp cabbage attempting to stand up for the vegetable team but crowded out by a plethora of fries and weighed down by an abundance of mayonnaise.

I admit the Napa version of cabbage does its part in making a solid potsticker. But most of the time I envisioned cabbage, particularly cooked cabbage, as a smelly, dark, tasteless dish doled out to poor orphans or homeless people.

It turns out that cabbage had been getting a bad rap all this time.

I don't know what changed my mind, but two things happened within a 24 hour period. I spotted a recipe for cabbage salad that was reminiscent of the flavors of guacamole, and I ate some cabbage salad by default because it was the only vegetable served at a dinner party. The salad I spotted looked so simple, with mostly ingredients that I already had in my house (other than the cabbage): cilantro, scallions, chilies, mayonnaise, lime juice. The salad I ate was light and crisp, dressed only with olive oil and salt, and when I ran back for more it had been cleaned out. Suddenly cabbage was no longer a bitter, ugly vegetable associated with patches of babies, no longer a limp accessory.

And yes, it's another salad, that's two in a row from me, so where's the dessert girl you know and love? There's no doubt she'll be back, but in the mean time, continue to follow your resolutions.

Winter Cabbage Salad
Yield: 4 servings

Half a head of green cabbage
Handful of cilantro leaves, washed, dried, and chopped
4 - 5 green onions
1 serrano chili
4 tablespoons light mayonnaise
Juice of 1/2 to 1 lime
salt to taste

Slice the cabbage. Slice the white part of the green onions and discard the rest. Slice the chili in half lengthwise and remove the ribs and seeds. Chop the chili. In a small food processor, blend together the mayo, lime juice, half the chopped chili, and half the cilantro. Toss together the cabbage, green onions, remaining chili and cilantro. Add mayonnaise dressing to the salad and combine well. Salt to taste.

Just this, and a knife

2010-01-27T20:00:00.000-08:00

I've been eating chicken and dumplings all week, and as much as I would like to share that recipe with you in all its warm comforting goodness on a day when temperatures are rapidly approaching single digits, I don't think it's a good idea. After all, it was a four hour endeavor that involved much prep work chopping celery, carrots, onions, and garlic, boiling a whole chicken, straining the stock, shredding the chicken, browning the flour and then thickening the stock into a gravy, mixing dumpling dough and cooking the dumplings on the simmering surface of the stewing chicken. Or maybe I'm just slow.

Rest assured, it was good and maybe I'll make it again some day when the memory of it's production fades, much like I imagine the memory of giving birth must fade because indeed the population of the world continues to grow.

Instead, I'll tell you about something much easier to make, and the main thing you need for it is a mandoline slicer. No need for stockpots or whisks or strainers. Just this, and a knife.

Take your knife and hack the base and the fronds off a fennel bulb, so that all you're left with is the bulb. Then, remembering my rule for all good produce, take a whiff of the bulb. If you're totally repulsed by the anise-like smell, you may not enjoy this dish so much, but don't be deterred. Shaved thin, fennel is just another crunchy base for a salad, not an assertive root vegetable. So shave that fennel with your mandoline slicer, until you get a pile of feathery, light flakes. Do the same thing with several crimini mushrooms. Now place half of the fennel on a plate, add a layer of a mushroom, and shave some good parmigiano-reggiano on top of that. Repeat the layers of fennel, mushroom, and parm, then drizzle on a healthy, fruity olive oil, squeeze some lemon juice on, and get your pepper mill going to grind some fresh cracked pepper over it all.

Believe it or not, I ate nearly this entire plate, and by the time I was finished I had forgotten all about my long labor pains with the chicken and dumplings. Which means that by next week, I'll be embarking on another four hour dish.

Fennel and Mushroom Salad
I've read about this salad on Orangette, but it's originally from the Joy of Cooking so I'll give their recipe here with the suggested dressing. But I highly recommend the simple combination of good olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice and pepper. I also happened to have some lemon grapeseed oil (oh the things you'll find in my cabinets) so I sprinkled that on too. It says 6 to 8 servings in the Joy but I used half the mushrooms and got two to three servings from one fennel bulb.

Dressing:
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
salt and pepper to taste

Salad:
8 ounces cremini (baby portabella) mushrooms, wiped clean and thinly sliced
1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
salt to taste
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese shavings (recommend you get a good parmigiano-reggiano)

Whisk together the dressing. Toss together the salad ingredients through the salt. Pour the dressing over the salad and top with cheese shavings. Or layer it the way I did, and get good chunks of cheese throughout the whole salad.

Not Once But Twice

2010-01-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited because the market near me sells lemongrass.

Yes, it does look like a funny, long stalk of grass. It's kind of thin and dirty and if I didn't know better, I would have walked right by it. I would be wondering if it was meant to be part of some sort of flower arrangement decor, maybe set in a round bubble vase in a base of marbles.

It would be lovely like that, but such a waste. You'll understand when you cut and crush your first stalk of lemongrass. Trim the base and bulb, and slice the stalk in half. Then hold one of those halves up to your nose and inhale. (I insist on this with corn cobs too - it makes it worth the trouble.) You'll get a clean scent of lemon from what looks like a weed. It's like cracking open a piece of coal to discover a diamond, or finding out that the quiet guy has a clever wit.

Lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves are the two components of authentic Thai food that are difficult to find. The lime leaves have still eluded me, though like vanilla beans, they are easily available on the internet. But with lemongrass in hand, I made a Thai hot and sour soup not once but twice this week. Usually I hate eating the same thing every night but the soup was spiced up with habanero chili, tangy with lemongrass and lime zest and juice, and chock full of mushrooms and shrimp and tomatoes. It tasted as good as any hole-in-the-wall restaurant's hold up the bowl to your mouth and suck it down soup. It's a light soup, only 135 calories per serving, but you can always put more coconut milk in it if you miss the creaminess. The flavor is there either way. Cooking Light recommends it with some sauteed snow peas, but for a heartier accompaniment, I found that a Thai beef salad was perfect.

Thai Hot and Sour Soup (Cooking Light)
(4 2-cup servings)

6 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
4 kaffir lime leaves or three strips of lime zest
1 (4-inch) lemongrass stalk, halved and crushed
1/2 habanero chile pepper, minced
1 cup thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms (about 2 ounces)
1/2 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 medium tomato, cut into wedges
2 green onions, thinly sliced (about 1/2 cup)
1 cup light coconut milk
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Combine chicken broth, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and habanero in a large saucepan; bring to a boil. Cook 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and shrimp to pan; cook 3 minutes or until shrimp are done. Add juice, fish sauce, tomato, and onions to pan; cook 2 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in coconut milk and cilantro. Discard lemongrass stalk and lime leaves or zest strips.

Adopted

2010-01-10T12:36:00.001-08:00

Today I sat down with my veggies and we had a little talk. I had to explain to them, my sweet baby portabella and baby bok choy, that they were adopted. The news came as a bit of a shock. They knew I was apt to take recipes from anywhere and adopt them as my own. I'd make minor changes in those recipes and prepare them for guests and send those guests away talking about my chocolate espresso cookies (Gourmet) or my chicken tagine (Cooking Light) or my bean dip (Mas). But baby portabella and baby bok choy had no idea that they had been adopted too, even though their seasonings were of an East Asian descent.

I get recipes from so many different sources, I can hardly claim any of them as my own. But when you buy the chicken, trim the fat, season and brown the meat, and add a myriad of ingredients and set it bubbling on the stove for a good long time, when you turn out a dish with flavors that surprise and please your guests, it's like you've adopted that little recipe and raised it to its greatest potential. And sometimes when you can't develop your own recipes easily, or aren't very good at it, adoption is the perfect alternative.

Ultimately my babies accepted the news and went on to provide a great side dish for a steak. For this dish, I've taken the sauce from a Cooking Light recipe for tofu and green onions and poured it on my baby bok choy and sliced baby portabella mushrooms after sauteeing them. The sauce is tangy, with an Asian flair, and pretty easy to whisk up. I imagine it's versatile too, and can be used for dipping potstickers or drizzled over rice. Just be sure to have that talk with whoever you adopt into your family, and your guests will never know.

Baby Portabellas and Baby Bok Choy with Korean Inspired Sauce
(4 side dish servings)

2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tsp dark sesame oil
1/8 tsp of kosher salt
1/8 tsp of red pepper
8 heads of baby bok choy, with the bottoms chopped off.
12 baby portabella mushrooms, washed and sliced thinly

canola oil
additional salt and pepper to taste

Whisk together rice vinegar, rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, kosher salt, and red pepper in a bowl.
Prepare the bok choy and mushrooms. Cut the bottoms off the baby bok choy. The baby bok choy will be more tender than regular bok choy, so you can retain the majority of the vegetable. If using regular bok choy, use only the green portion. Slice the mushrooms thinly with a knife or mandoline. Add oil to a pan heated on medium-high. Add mushrooms to the pan, saute until starting to brown. Add baby bok choy and saute just until wilted. Remove from heat and pour sauce over vegetables. Stir and season with additional salt and pepper as desired.

Vanilla Beans

2010-01-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

I need to talk to you about vanilla beans. I've been meaning to sit down and have a conversation with you about vanilla beans for quite some time. Because far too many recipes call for vanilla beans, and they're just not that easy to come by.

In the supermarket, or in specialty grocery stores, you can find a single vanilla bean in a glass jar for a price ranging from $10 to the value of your first born child. So you give up hope of ever making that vanilla bean ice cream, panna cotta, rice pudding, or cookie. Or you substitute vanilla extract, and it tastes fake and no longer homemade. What's the point?

I'm here to tell you that you can buy vanilla beans online, and it's not a scam. I found a pack of ten beans for $15 including shipping on beanilla.com. They have beans from all over - India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico. Whatever the difference might be, they are a deal. Here's the package I received, after I eagerly pulled out a bean to confirm that it was in fact the real thing:

Maybe you've never used a real vanilla bean. It's oily, long, flat, with a texture like thin leather. When you run a knife down its side, little beans explode from within and stain your fingers black. You scrape those little black specks into your ice cream base or custard or cookie dough and they are sticky and smell a little funky. Then you drop that whole oily bean into the cream and simmer it for half an hour, until the cream is infused with vanilla flavor and beautifully speckled. It's a bit of a process to use them, but you'll never get a flavor like that from extract.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
yield: 1 pint

1 vanilla bean
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
3/8 cup sugar
1 egg yolk

Using the pointed tip of a sharp knife, split the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape the tiny black seeds into a heavy medium saucepan. Add the vanilla bean pod, cream, and milk and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand 30 minutes at room temperature to blend flavors.

Add the sugar and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is hot, 6 to 8 minutes.

Whisk the egg yolk in a medium bowl. Gradually whisk in about 1/2 cup of the warm vanilla cream. Return the egg mixture to the saucepan, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook, stirring, until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon (at least 160 degrees F on a candy thermometer), 5 to 10 minutes. Do not boil or egg yolk will curdle.

Strain the custard into a bowl, pressing through as many of the vanilla seeds as you can. Remove the vanilla bean pod from the strainer and add to the custard for flavor. Partially cover and let cool 1 hour at room temperature. Refrigerate, covered, until very cold, at least 6 hours or as long as 3 days.

Discard the vanilla bean pod. Pour the custard into the canister of an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's directions. Transfer to a covered container and freeze at least 3 hours.

Warm Carrot Muffins

2009-12-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy couple of months. November is over, and I spent most of my available writing time working on a novel for National Novel Writing Month. I continued writing on through December, but I never stopped cooking.

In the last two months, I've made plenty of cookies (mint chocolate, sugar, molasses, ginger-lemon), spicy chipotle short ribs, a tasty turnip gratin, garlic tomato soup, pork chorizo burgers, the best roasted potatoes, Thai coconut soup, and today, some warm carrot muffins. I wish I could share everything with you but I'll have to save most of them for another day. The muffins are at the forefront today.

They're called Happy Morning Muffins and come from Small Batch Baking, a cookbook that has yet to fail me. It has produced bacon biscuits that are savory and buttery and made with bacon fat, and infused with bacon flavor. The almond crumble from this book is my go to dessert when I want to make something quick in a single ramekin, and doubles or triples well for a group. And yesterday I grated some carrots and chopped some pineapple, and mixed up some batter to bake this happy morning when I'm not at work and looking forward to beautiful day because the sun is out for the first time in weeks!

The muffins are displayed on my brand new cake stand (thanks Moe!) and I think they could have come right out of the bakery case. They are moist from all the pineapple and carrot, and spiced with cinnamon and vanilla. You can mess around with the ingredients, vary the nuts, use apple instead of pineapple, or other dried fruits instead of raisins. Whatever makes you happy.

Happy Morning Muffins

I altered the original recipe so this one makes 10-12 small muffins, which really make an appropriate serving size (but you might feel like eating more than one...)

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tablespoons canned crushed pineapple, or fresh chopped in a food processor
1 cup coarsely grated carrots
1/2 cup chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)
4 tablespoons raisins
2 tablespoons sweetened flaked coconut

10 - 12 small muffin cups

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place a fine-mesh sieve over a large mixing bowl. Place the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in the sieve and sift the ingredients into the bowl.

Place the sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla in a small bowl and whisk to blend. Stir in the crushed pineapple. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture all at once, and stir just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Then stir in the carrots, nuts, raisins, and coconut.

Arrange the muffin cups in a muffin pan or on a baking sheet. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling them about three-quarters of the way.

Bake the muffins until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean, 28 to 30 minutes. Remove and cool 10-15 minutes before serving. They are best served warm or will keep one day in a plastic bag at room temperature.

Camp Cooking

2009-11-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

The trip to Mexico was never supposed to be about the food. But two months before the trip, when I received the trip guidebook, there was a menu in it available to review. Chicken mole. French toast. Ceviche. It even listed happy hour drinks and snacks, like pina coladas and chips and salsa. I was as excited for the food as I was for the kayaking! Our meals were almost exactly true to the menu. The guides use the same menu every week so they were sick of it, but it's obviously a crowd pleaser.

So here's a couple of things you can do that taste really good when camping - or any time.
1. Veggie quesadillas for breakfast - Tortillas, monterey jack cheese, sauteed zucchini and onions - serve with salsa.
2. Cream cheese with roasted red peppers on crackers appetizer - use bottled roasted red peppers, dump onto a block of cream cheese and serve with crackers or wheat thins. Awesome.
3. Bake a cake in a Dutch oven - add canned peaches or pineapple to a box cake mix in a Dutch oven. Put heated charcoal briquettes underneath and covering the top and bake for allotted time or slightly longer. It's really good for breakfast the next day too.
4. Make an avocado and cheese sandwich. Fresh avocado, monterey jack, tomatoes and onions on a bread roll.
5. Serve hot sauce with everything.

This is what cooking looks like on an island in Baja:

It Must Be Fall

2009-10-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

I just perused my Facebook feed and learned that my friends spent the weekend picking apples, checking out the fall colors at state parks in Minnesota and Wisconsin, watching football, and cursing the broken heat in their apartments. It must be fall in the Midwest.

Usually at this time of year, I'm doing delicious things with pumpkins. Legal things, I assure you. For example, pumpkin soup makes a hearty fall meal. I'll buy cans of pumpkin for pumpkin bread duels. Is pumpkin bread better light and spicy or full of chocolate chips? Chocolate lovers are easily swayed by the chips but the spiced bread ended up with more votes. The one redeeming factor of fall has always been pumpkin.

But when I went looking for canned pumpkin, it was sold out, and the local market was too small to carry it. I was eager to make a bread that was warm and spicy and went well with tea. So I turned to another squash. Zucchini is a summer squash, one that doesn't get much as much attention as the pumpkin. It doesn't get carved with eyes, nose, and mouth, it doesn't get baked into a famous holiday pie. The humble zucchini doesn't have a strong personality. By itself, it can make a lovely, light salad tossed with lemon and olive oil and oregano, or it can be sauteed and drizzled with honey. But blended into a bread flavored with cinnamon, it melts away. So you can tell yourself you're eating healthy. You know you put a whole squash in there because it will look like it's all zucchini when it goes into the oven. You'd never know it when it comes out, moist and not too sweet, with a crunchy crust. The summer zucchini, like the trees around here, has lost its green.

Zucchini Bread
makes 2 loaves

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups shredded zucchini

Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

Green Olive Enchiladas

2009-10-15T20:31:00.001-07:00

I've had good luck with roommates. All of the friends I've lived with have loved to cook as much as I do and we've shared food and cookbooks, dishes and wine glasses. Even in grad school, when my roommate was a Phd student who worked, taught, and took classes, and I was an MBA student who spent hours in group meetings, at company presentations, or at happy hour, we found time to cook for each other. Kristen and I loved to cook and hated to do the dishes, so it was always a race to see who got dinner started first and so could pass dish duty to the other.

Ask yourself the next time your spouse or roommate makes you dinner, and you take it as a kind gesture, but then get stuck with the dishes, did you just get played?

Kristen used to make an easy green olive enchilada dish, and it's so tasty when you are looking for something vegetarian that is not pasta with red sauce. It's perfect for grad students with no time and little money, who want to cook enough for leftovers and for that ingrate roomie who will get stuck scraping the cheese out of the baking pan.

Green Olive Enchiladas
Makes 12 enchiladas, 4 servings of 3 enchiladas each

1 cup chopped onion
1 cup sliced green pimiento stuffed olives
1 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
1/2 tablespoon flour
12 corn tortillas
1 10 ounce can green chile enchilada sauce
1/2 cup shredded cheddar
Sliced jalapeno (optional)

Mix onion, olives, pepper jack cheese, and flour in a large bowl. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a large (9X13) baking pan with cooking spray. Heat skillet or griddle pan sprayed with cooking spray on medium heat. Warm each tortilla about twenty seconds on each side, then place filling down center of tortilla. Roll up and place seam side down in baking pan. If tortillas tend to crack or tear, add some oil to the skillet while heating. Continue warming and filling all tortillas. Scatter extra filling on top. Pour enchilada sauce over top and sprinkle with shredded cheddar and sliced jalapenos. Bake for 20 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly.

Raising My Standards

2009-10-14T21:21:00.001-07:00

I can't help it. I'm living in one of the best culinary cities in the country, but I crave the food I ate in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. I feel like an ungrateful child, the one who wants the proton pack instead of the shiny red fire engine (you know who you are!!!). When I was in Minny, I had a delicious huevos rancheros at Grand Cafe - melty cheese between two fresh tortillas topped with braised pork, black beans, and a mole sauce. Oh yeah, and some huevos. I had amazing Thai food at King and I Thai - flaky curry puffs, red curry with chicken, a shrimp pad Thai. And where else can you get Somali food at a wedding? Savory sambusas with a spicy green chutney, chicken fantastic (that's what it's called), and vegetable curry.

Dining in Minneapolis seriously raises my standards for home cooking. But traveling means my home cooking has suffered. I ran out of food the other day, and while my zucchini soup was tasty it was not enough to satisfy and left me stuffing my face with cheese and crackers. My lentil salad was lackluster. When I finally made it to the store and refreshed my fridge, I decided to make a simple but incredibly satisfying pork chop with apple compote. A good dinner makes a huge difference in how I feel. I stop craving the great food in Minneapolis, I stop missing my old home. I feel a little better about where I am.

Pork Chops with Apple Compote
serves 4

1 tablespoon olive oil
4 center cut pork chops (thick cut)
salt and pepper
1 large shallot, minced
1/4 cup white wine
2 apples, sweet and crisp such as Gala, peeled and diced
1 cup chicken broth
2 tsp balsamic vinegar

I like to use thick cut pork chops because they don't get overcooked as easily. Season pork chops with salt and pepper on both sides. Add olive oil to large skillet and swirl to coat. Add pork chops before heating pan. Heating the pork chops more slowly allows them to retain more moisture and not dry out. They lose a lot of moisture when you add them to a hot pan. Heat pan on medium high heat. Cook chops until browned, about six minutes on each side, or more if very thick. Remove to a plate and keep warm in oven. You may need to cook chops in two batches.

While chops are cooking, peel and dice the apples and mince the shallot. After removing the pork chops, add shallot to pan and stir until brown. Add white wine to deglaze the pan, stirring to loosen the brown bits. Add chicken broth and diced apples. Simmer apples for ten minutes, until tender. Stir in balsamic vinegar and any accumulated juices from pork chops. Season with salt to taste.

Serve pork chops with apple compote on top. If pork chops have cooled off, return them to pan with apples for one minute to heat before serving.

Totally Homemade And Only a Dollar

2009-10-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

I could hear the girl on the street corner from a block away.

"Cupcakes! Water! Cupcakes! Water!"

As I approached, she pointed to her card table set in the grass at the corner of Lincoln and Ridge in Evanston. She had purple frosted cupcakes to sell - and it was a game day. Her white posterboard sign announced $1 cupcakes and $1 water bottles. It was the perfect breakfast for Northwestern students who are walking to the football stadium for an 11am game.

I was coming back from a tailgate where I had consumed a scone, a twinkie, and a brownie, so I immediately shook my head no. Then I reconsidered. I had to support a fellow baker, an entrepreneur, a 10 year old marketing genius.

"They're totally homemade and only a dollar!" she crowed as I forked over a dollar bill. I asked if she had anything for me to put it in because I wasn't going to eat it right away. She profusely apologized for not bringing tupperware. In my car I found some scrap paper and wrapped it around the cupcake, then nestled it in the hood of my windbreaker on the passenger seat. I had visions of purple frosted seats, but the cupcake held up to my erratic driving and I got it home safely.

It's not hard to please with cupcakes and they don't require special techniques. If you can whip up a buttery cake batter, if you can frost with the best of them, you can equally thrill a room of 2nd graders or a group of a bachelorettes. Only the second graders' cupcakes would have a cute frosting carrot on them while the bachelorettes' cupcakes should boast another frosted phallic object.

We make cupcakes not to aspire to high gourmet but because they can be eaten out of hand, a ready made serving that stays moist in its paper wrapper. We'll wave away that slice of cake claiming a diet but accept the cupcake because it's perfectly proportioned. It's modest, like the cute, quiet girl at the back of the classroom, not the bossy drama queen that is a four layer cake. It won't beg to be consumed, but its unassuming quality is light and satisfying.

That girl's totally homemade cupcake was nothing to get excited about. The white cake and sugary frosting was all a bit too sweet, and uninspired except for the purple of the frosting. But little girls making cupcakes and being entrepreneurs and big girls still eating cupcakes instead of fancy desserts is always worth at least a $1 to see.

I Figure It Out

2009-09-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

A new friend, upon learning that I like to cook, asked me if I know how to cook Indian food. It's a natural question. The brownish tint of my skin and the heart disease that runs in my family would lead one to believe I have Indian roots. But I found it hard to answer her question. Have I learned the right way to knead the chapati dough, or memorized the proportions of salt, cumin, red pepper, and turmeric to shake into a curry? Did I know how to make ghee or have my own proprietary blend of masala spices? Because the answer to all those questions is no.

But do I know how to cook any specific cuisine? I don't know how to roll out pasta for raviolis. I'd be a mess filling a pan with layers of phyllo for baklava. I was afraid to buy lemongrass for a Thai curry because it looks like a houseplant. I don't really know how to cook anything when it comes down it. But I figure it out.

Hell, I don't even know how to do my job but I do it every day and get paid for it.

The cooking process starts hours, days, weeks before any particular dinner. It starts when I'm sitting at the table eating another delicious meal and flipping through a cookbook. With every recipe I read, I picture myself not only eating but actually going through the effort of cooking it. And if, in my head, I get more pleasure from eating than pain from cooking, I write it down, mark it with a post-it, add the ingredients to a grocery list, and away we go!

Maybe the book I'm perusing is my Complete Book of Indian Cooking, which has so many different ways to cook chicken in it that I read the titles out loud for a good five minutes before my dad made me stop. Maybe I'll come across a hot dry meat curry or some lamb kebabs, and decide I'm making them whether I know how to mold ground lamb to a skewer or not. Sometimes "not" is okay, because my oblong lamb meatballs were pretty tasty sans skewer. And the seemingly dull cherry tomatoes and baby onions sprang to life when salted and pan fried.

I don't need to know how to cook Indian food for this to work, and neither do you.

Mini Lamb Kebabs with Baby Onions and Tomatoes (The Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

Ingredients:
1 lb ground lamb
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon garlic pulp
2 medium fresh green chilies, chopped, and 4 fresh green chilies sliced
2 teaspoons chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons corn oil
12 baby onions, peeled and trimmed (fresh pearl onions should be in onion section - do not use frozen!)
12 cherry tomatoes

Blend together the ground lamb, chopped onion, garam masala, garlic, 2 green chilies, cilantro, salt, and flour in a food processor. Process for about one minute, until mixture has a fine, blended texture. Break off small pieces and roll into balls or oblong kebabs. Place on broiler rack, with pan underneath to catch drippings. I like to line that pan with aluminum foil to making cleaning easier, otherwise burnt drippings can be a pain to scrape off. Baste the kebab meatballs with 1 tablespoon of the oil and place under broiler for 12 to 15 minutes, turning halfway through, or until evenly browned. Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of the oil in a deep round-bottomed frying pan. Lower the heat slightly and add the whole baby onions. As soon as they start to darken, add the fresh chillies and tomatoes. Cook until tomatoes begin to brown. Remove the kebabs from the broiler and add them to the onion and tomato mixture. Stir gently for about 3 minutes. Transfer to serving dish and sprinkle with additional salt to taste. Serve with basmati rice and non-fat plain yogurt.

Easily Seduced

2009-09-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

I am easily seduced by food. Even as I flip through a cooking magazine to choose, say, the short ribs with sun-dried tomato gravy, I'm watching a cooking show where Barefoot Contessa is making a roast beef sandwich with truffle butter and I'm torn. Two delectable lovers stand before me and I cannot choose. I want them both, and if I choose either one I will surely end up craving the other.

What's a girl to do?

A friend was telling me today about how wonderful her boyfriend is and how much she loves him, but doesn't feel about him the way she felt about her ex - who would take her back if she'd have him. And such is her dilemma, whether to go back to her passionate first love, who comes with a roller coaster of emotions, or settle in with a stable man who she has grown to love.

How do we choose what to eat every day, what we crave or what we have a taste for? What's just a momentary fling versus a recipe that stands the test of time? Who would have guessed that a simple spicy spinach pesto could woo me week after week, but the promising Ethiopian chicken would fall flat? And every once in a while I remember the summer I ate breakfast couscous every day, I couldn't get enough, and now it hardly seems worth the effort. But damn it was good at the time. I couldn't have predicted that roasted broccoli was impressive enough to introduce to my parents, or that roasted tomatoes would have my friends talking. The only thing they all might complain about in the end, is that I won't just settle down already with all the recipes I've collected rather than running around with new ones all the time. But I'll distract them with some homemade butter pecan ice cream on a slice of oatmeal cake. They can be seduced too.

I swear this pesto is better than any basil pesto. Giada's version has arugula but I prefer just spinach which is less bitter. Get a good olive oil for this, it contributes at least half the flavor.

Spinach Pesto (Adapted from Giada's Fusilli with Spicy Pesto on foodnetwork.com)

1 cup chopped walnuts
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 (2-inch long) red or green jalapeno pepper, stemmed and coarsely chopped* see Cook's Note
2 cups grated (4 ounces) parmesan cheese
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
6 ounces baby spinach
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound fusilli or penne pasta

For the pesto: In a food processor, combine the walnuts, garlic, jalapeno, cheese, salt and pepper. Process until the mixture is smooth. Add the spinach and process until blended. With the machine running, gradually add the olive oil.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain and reserve about 1 cup of the pasta water. Place the cooked pasta and pesto in a large serving bowl. Toss well and thin out the sauce with a little pasta water, if needed.

Tool Kit

2009-09-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

I recently sent my brother a tool kit. It was a tool kit for cooking - filled with recipes, spices, pasta, tortillas, honey, and packages of Jell-O. Yes, Jell-O, the dessert of choice for single young men, elementary school children, and housewives making molds. But aside from the Jell-O, all the items I sent were key ingredients in preparing the recipes I included. I also sent money, with the caveat that it be used to purchase meat, vegetables, and other fresh ingredients difficult to mail, and not be spent on a pair of expensive headphones.

My gifts always come with apron strings attached.

I did slip an actual tool into the tool kit - a pair of kitchen shears. Kitchen shears are invaluable for cutting the skin off of chicken or cutting stew meat into smaller cubes. If you can't afford a good sharp knife, kitchen shears are a worthy investment.

Sending the recipes and the ingredients doesn't come close to capturing the joy of actually cooking for someone, especially someone like my brother who will lavish love and attention on a plate of meat. But tossing spices into the box was akin to sprinkling them into a stew and fitting tortillas and orzo into the box was like layering a lasagna. I arranged recipes and a shopping list as though preparing the mise en place. And I sealed that package like I was canning tomatoes or preserving fig jam for the long winter ahead.

I directed my brother via tool kit to make Tacos de Carnitas, a savory, slow cooked pork with highly concentrated flavor. It's great wrapped in warm corn tortillas topped with fresh tomatoes and onions, or fresh guacamole. The trick to this recipe? Follow it. Don't second guess it. For example, don't think you need to add more salt than it calls for. Just go with it.

Tacos de Carnitas
6 servings, 2 hours cooking time

2 1/2 pounds pork butt or beef stew meat
3 cups water
1 onion, diced
3 strips orange zest
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon oregano leaves
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves or 1 whole clove
12 small corn tortillas
Toppings: tomatoes, onions, cilantro, salsa, guacamole

Chop thick fat from outside of pork butt. Cut meat into 1 inch cubes. Combine pork with water, onions, orange zest, garlic, bay leaves, red pepper flakes, cinnamon, oregano, salt and cloves in a large pot. Heat to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer. Skim any scum that forms on the surface. Simmer until meat is very soft and falling apart, adding more water if necessary to keep the meat submerged, about 1 1/2 hours.

Season with additional salt to taste. Heat to a gentle boil; cook until the water has evaporated, about 30 minutes. Cook a little longer to fry the meat slightly, watching carefully to prevent burning. Remove bay leaves and cinnamon sticks. Remove any excess fat. Pull meat apart with forks if necessary. Fold a few tablespoons of carnitas inside each tortilla. Add your choice of toppings and serve.

Dough Hook

2009-08-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

This is a dough hook:

It reminds of that urban legend about the couple that parked at Lover's Lane and heard on the radio about the escapee from the insane asylum with a hook in place of his hand. When they got home, they found a bloody hook hanging from the car door handle.

My dough hook looks kind of scary, and I'm a little worried about what mischief it will get up to while I'm sleeping. I wonder if it will be hanging from my bedroom door knob in the morning, all covered in yeast. Because it's actually a genius of a hook, smarter and wilier than the average kitchen appliance. I find that I evaluate my appliances, as if they are team members reporting to me. The crockpot is old and set in her ways, the toaster oven performs well but don't push his limits, the ice cream maker is fast and clever. And now I have a new stand mixer with a dough hook, and it's like the cool new guy everyone wants to get to know, who brings to the table some tricks to get the job done faster, better.

But whether or not you have a mixer with a dough hook, you must make some focaccia. Focaccia is easier to make than pizza because there's no sauce to worry about, and you need very little or no cheese. Simple toppings are best, focaccia doesn't have to be the main course, but it's good with salads or roasted veggies or a saucy pasta. This focaccia with Asiago and sea salt and cherry tomatoes was so simple and delicious that I nearly dropped my food in a rush to give you the recipe and insist that you make it. But I was stopped by the dough hook. It's a rather intimidating enforcer of dining etiquette.

Asiago Focaccia with Cherry Tomatoes and Kalamata Olives
Makes 1 10 inch focaccia

1 teaspoon active dry yeast
2/3 cup warm water
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 tablespoon salt

Toppings:
1 oz Asiago cheese, grated
4 to 6 cherry tomatoes, sliced thinly
8 to 10 kalamata olives, halved and pitted
4 basil leaves, chopped
Sea salt

Combine the yeast and warm water and let stand until the yeast is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Add flour, olive oil, and salt. Mix by hand or on low speed for about 1 minute to blend ingredients. Knead for about 10 minutes by hand or with the dough hook on low to medium speed until the dough is smooth and elastic. Transfer the dough to a well-oiled 10 inch cake pan and turn it over once to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Punch down the dough and spread to fill the cake pan. Drizzle with olive oil. Top with grated cheese, tomato slices, olives, and basil. Sprinkle liberally with sea salt.

Bake the focaccia until golden, about 25 minutes. Remove from pan to cool on a rack and serve warm or at room temperature.

This Makes All the Difference

2009-08-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

Last year my 30th birthday was celebrated with the theme, "30 is the new 16!", complete with princess birthday hats, pink balloons and a fairy presiding over the food spread.

Those phyllo triangles in the front right corner - I made those, despite how I feel about phyllo. They were filled with mushrooms and cheese. I was told not to make anything for the party, but I insisted. That's how I roll.

This year, 31, wasn't quite worthy of the same level of celebration. It was, however, worthy of a cake. Earlier this summer, as I stood in line at Marshall's, I was unexpectedly wooed by a cookbook perched by the checkout. The title of the book was Great Cakes. Now I don't consider myself a cake person, but when a cookbook costs only $6 and boasts 250+ cake recipes, it's a no-brainer.

And now that I owned it, I decided I was making a cake for my birthday. Some people say I shouldn't make a cake for my own birthday, but I see no problem with it. It's not like I won't make a cake for yours! In fact, I would love to. Would you like Swiss Chocolate Silk or Black Bottom Mint Cheesecake? Graham Cracker Cake or Raspberry Ribbons? Holiday Honey Cake or Lemon Velvet Squares? There are over 250 to choose from.

I went with a cake called Double Trouble Fudge Cake, a two layer cake with a chocolaty nutty filling which I switched out for a raspberry filling instead. The cake itself was as good as any chocolate cake, but I what I want to tell you about here is the frosting and filling. Those two things can turn an average chocolate cake into a winner. It's like regular old "you" with a good haircut and clothes that fit well. Anyone who has seen an episode of What Not to Wear knows this makes all the difference.

The filling is easily made with frozen raspberries (1 1/2 cups), sugar (1/4 cup), lemon juice (2 T), and cornstarch (1 T) cooked briefly to combine and dissolve the sugar and cornstarch. The frosting is something like a chocolate ganache in its taste and texture. I swear it was just an ordinary cake underneath, but it was praised like no other. Or maybe that's just because it was free dessert.

Chocolate Custard Frosting
(yields about 3 cups, enough to fill and frost 2 9-inch layers, 3 8-inch layers, the top and sides of a 9X13X2 pan or a 10-inch tube cake.)

2 oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 oz semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon ground coffee
1/2 cup boiling water
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup half-and-half
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a small heavy saucepan, combine the chocolates, coffee, and boiling water. Stir until the chocolate is completely melted and the coffee dissolved. In a separate small bowl, combine the sugar, cornstarch, and salt and add to chocolate mixture, stirring until blended. Slowly add the half-and-half, whisking gently until well combined.

Bring to a boil over low heat, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon. Cook gently about 1 minute longer, stirring occasionally, then remove from the heat. Off the heat, blend in the butter and vanilla. To cool quickly, set saucepan in cold water. Stir gently, do not beat, until icing is thick enough to spread. This will only take a few minutes.

Contemplating Mini Pepperoni

2009-08-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting for a really great recipe to come my way so I can share it. I know there are quite a few I've alluded to but not shared - the roasted broccoli, the brown sugar bacon ice cream, the homemade granola. But they're not compelling me right now.

Lately, the best things I've been eating have been simple, whipped up without much planning, centered around the fact that I bought something because it was fun. Why else would one buy a bag of mini pepperoni? It turns out that mini pepperoni last a long time, and once you've tried them in salad (not so great), or as a snack while making dinner (not satisfying), you're left with a 3/4 full bag of mini pepperoni. You feel like a CPG sucker. For those that did not attend business school or work in the industry, CPG stands for Consumer Packaged Goods, you know those companies that are always coming out with some new and improved product for you to squander your money on. It's always some variation on a product you already buy, with a minor tweak, like the dark chocolate version of Milky Way, or different shampoos for curls, sleek, or shine - and what if I want sleek, shiny curls? Yes, I do have several types in my shower.

So maybe, just maybe, there's a pattern here. But putting that point aside for the moment, I'd like to point out that the mini pepperoni did inspire me to make some homemade french bread pizzas. I always liked frozen french bread pizza, but am mostly opposed to processed foods (no that is not a frozen burrito in the freezer, what are you talking about?). And yet, it had never occurred to me to make fresh french bread pizza until I contemplated the mini pepperoni.

Now if you're going to make your own french bread pizza, you have to do it right. Get some freshly baked bread, or Take 'n Bake. I used tomato paste sauteed in olive oil with garlic, oregano, wine, and a dash of salt to make a quick pizza sauce. Use fresh mozzarella, shredded right over the sauced bread. Then throw on anything you have lying around - I used spinach, chopped figs, and of course, mini pepperonis. Bake for 10 minutes at 375.

I've never been so happy to eat french bread pizza. I made it three times, until I used up all my bread. However, I am still contemplating the remaining half bag of mini pepperoni. Ideas?

You Only Have to Be Taught Once

2009-08-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone watched as my friends’ daughter Madeline placed her sandal clad foot directly on the kitchen table.
“Mommy mommy mommy,” she chanted. She’s not yet two years old, and her vocabulary is limited.
“Oh,” her mother Amy said from the chair where she sat nursing her younger daughter. “There she goes putting her foot on the table. I don’t know where she learns this behavior.” We all turned to observe Amy sitting sideways in her chair, one leg thrown over the stuffed armrest.
“Mommy!” her daughter announced.

We learn a lot from our parents, and not only how to sit at the kitchen table but also how to eat at it. My parents taught me about the joys of an English breakfast, a Thai Tom Yum soup, a kefta kebab. They taught me not only how to cut with a knife and fork so I could eat steaks, but also how to eat rice with my right hand (because we wipe ourselves with our left hand). They taught me that our family knows how to cook meat and fish and how to eat it – bones and all. They taught me how to suck the marrow out. They taught me to appreciate food.

Imagine that you’re five years old. Imagine that you have stomachaches all the time, and food is far less interesting than books and friends and weddings between your stuffed animals. Imagine you like hot dogs and corn pops and salty biscuits, but are picky about everything else. And then one day, you start eating goat curry. It’s meaty and spicy and suddenly the hot dog turns into the last kid picked for kickball. But you have to be taught to eat it correctly, to dip your chapatti in the curry and pick up a soft piece of meat, to chew every bit off the bone, and to seek out and call dibs on those fat bones filled with soft, buttery marrow. You are taught to suck the marrow out until it melts in your mouth. You only have to be taught once.

I can’t share the recipe for goat curry – for one thing, I don’t have it in writing. But I can tell you to go out and buy a lamb shank and make something like this Braised Lamb Shank with White Beans. It's a good, homey sort of meal, with the fat of the lamb cut by the hearty white beans. Season the meat and brown it in canola oil in a Dutch oven, then remove it. Saute some chopped onions, carrots, and celery in the oil, add some broth, and return the lamb to the pot. Braise on low heat for 2-2 1/2 hours. Then stir in some white beans mashed with lemon juice and cook another ten minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste. Serve yourself a lamb shank, and on it there should be a bone, like the one on the left side of my plate, that will be full of marrow. Suck it out, making a really loud slurping noise. That's how I do it. I show my appreciation for the food, and to my parents for a lesson well taught.

A Meal That Tastes Real

2009-07-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

The cooking never stops. Every day I am chopping and slicing, sauteing and braising and boiling, baking and burning. And the cleaning - oh the cleaning that must come after the cooking. How often is the phrase "cooking and cleaning" uttered? The "cooking" is inevitably followed by the cleaning. It's not "cooking and lamenting" nor "cooking and relaxing". No, it is NOT EVEN "cooking and eating".

Which is just a damn shame.

And so every night, after the boiling and the braising and the peeling and the roasting AND the eating, I have a sink full of dirty dishes waiting for me, taunting me on the road to relaxation. Some nights I ignore them. It's okay, I live alone and if I ignore a dish it will not take revenge, except perhaps in the emission of odors (it's bad to ignore any dish that once held fish). Eventually though, I must face the music of the dishwasher - and yes, I do have a dishwasher so it may seem unfair to complain, but everything still needs to be detached from the caked on food. I do not have a garbage disposal, so my sink also requires a good cleaning now and then.

Tonight I decided to take a break. Although I am averse to frozen meals, Trader Joe's has some good food items (salsa verde, lox, olive tapenade, and double chocolate cookies are my favorites) and the short ribs looked good to me. But I remembered why I don't buy frozen meals when I ate the dish - the mealy vegetables and strange tasting sauce were not the best. And that is why I like to cook it myself.

I like having a meal that tastes real, like a sun tan not a fake bake. Like a documentary, not reality TV. Like real love instead of lust. It lasts longer, it's more satisfying, and it's more memorable. And sometimes it tastes so good, it makes me want to tell everyone about it, even if it's as common as oatmeal chocolate chip cookies or pasta with shrimp. Because even when real love is so common with all the couples that I know, I bet all of them think they're pretty special. And that the cooking is totally worth all the cleaning.

Pasta with Shrimp and Herbed Cream Sauce (from Giada's Kitchen)
4 to 6 servings

With recipes like this, you end up with leftovers of an ingredient like bottled clam juice, which you're never going to use up. My solution, because I liked it so much, was to make this dish again a few days later.

1 pound penne pasta
1/4 cup olive oil
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, plus more to taste
1 15 oz can chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 cup dry white wine
1/3 cup bottled clam juice
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain the pasta and set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the shrimp, garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until the shrimp turn pink and are cooked through, about 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the shrimp from the pan and set aside.

Add the tomatoes, 1/4 cup of the basil, 1/4 cup of the parsley, and the red pepper flakes to the skillet and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the wine and simmer for another 2 minutes. Add the clam juice and cream. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 7 to 8 minutes until the sauce thickens.

Add 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese, the cooked shrimp, the drained pasta, and the remaining basil and parsley. Toss together until all ingredients are coated with the sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and serve.

Summer Comfort

2009-07-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

Winter is the time for comfort food. It’s the time for thick stews and spicy chili and roasts resting in their juices. It’s the time for wrapping yourself in a blanket, flipping on the tv, and eating holiday cookies in a gnarly sweater. Some people do this all year long, but they are probably very depressed.

Summer is supposed to be the time to shed all that extra clothing, baggage, or weight. We eat light foods like salads and seafood and fruit desserts. But what about when you have a car accident on a sunny day, or your summer fling breaks your heart, or the A/C stops working during a heat wave? Life is frustrating all the time, with no concern for the season. It’s not only the weather we seek comfort from in our food.

But food is not my primary source of comfort. My first love is reading. When I’m tired, when I’m stressed, when I’m lonely, there’s no better cure than to curl up in bed with a book. But I also realize that reading and eating are closely linked in my mind. Some people can’t use the bathroom without a magazine in hand, but I can’t enjoy my dinner or even a five minute breakfast without some reading material on the table. I used to read a book at the dinner table as a child, baffling and annoying my parents who love to talk. It was meant to be a compliment to the food. The better my mom’s cooking, the more I wanted to read while I ate it.

Seeking comfort on a cold, rainy day in June, I went to a used book sale. Wandering through stacks of books under a giant tent, I remembered long summer days in grade school where I had nothing to do all day but watch The Price is Right and I Love Lucy, and read piles of books – mysteries mostly. Now I was more interested in the cookbook section. Typically at these things you’ll find a variety of diet cookbooks, microwave cookbooks, and issues of Bon Appetit from 1983. Occasionally you’ll find something unique - like an African cookbook.

For $3, I bought a cookbook with recipes like beef tripe soup and clam and peanut stew, neither of which I plan to make. But I also came across a recipe for a cold cucumber soup. It was nothing more than a potato soup cooked, then pureed and chilled with some chopped cucumber stirred in, and a dash of pepper sauce. Summer is the only time of year I would want to eat cold soup.

When I made the soup, I was expecting something as simple as the recipe sounded, and I was a bit skeptical about chunks of cucumber in my potato soup. So I was surprised when I found myself licking my bowl (I don’t do this in public, I promise). The crunchy cucumber played off nicely against the creamy potato, and the cold soup was well heated by the pepper sauce.

This, then, is summer comfort. A good book, or a good cookbook, a cold, spicy, hearty soup, and the ability to lick your bowl clean without anyone watching.

Cold Cucumber Soup
Yields 2 quarts

Ingredients:
1 cup white onions, chopped finely
2 oz. butter
1 cup peeled and cubed white potatoes (1/2 inch cubes)
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
a few drops Tabasco (more if you like it spicy)
2 quarts chicken stock
1 cup fat free plain yogurt
2 cups peeled and diced cucumbers

In a 3 quart saucepan, saute the onions in butter. Add potatoes, salt, white pepper, tabasco, and chicken stock. Cook until potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes. Puree with immersion blender, or transfer to blender or food processor to puree until smooth. Return soup to pan. Add yogurt and cucumbers and stir to combine. Check the seasoning and adjust if needed. Chill 2 to 3 hours before serving.

Certain Key Qualities

2009-07-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, you may get it into your head that you want to do something with phyllo dough. You'll think of flaky pastry stuffed with savory meat and cheese. You'll think of layers of phyllo and honey and nuts in baklava. You'll think of Greek themed meals with olives and flaming cheese doused in lemon, leading up to a large pan of spanikopita. Your ambition will get ahead of you and you'll buy not one but multiple boxes of phyllo dough, carefully follow the thawing instructions, and roll it out onto the table.

Think very carefully before you get to this point, because it takes cerain key qualities to work well with phyllo. Can you be patient, or do you skip the resting stage and cut right into your meat? Are you persistent, or did you give up making falafel because they disintegrated in the hot oil? Can you be graceful or do you constantly bump your knee against the table leg – the same knee and the same table leg every time you sit down for dinner? Maybe you can be. Maybe your patience is solid as a cheesy spinach filling. Maybe you have endless layers of persistence. Maybe your grace shines like an egg wash.

Or maybe you’re like me.

I can barely persist through this blog entry. I eat appetizers while making dinner. I bump my knee on the table leg – the same knee and the same table leg – every single day. And I struggle with phyllo dough.

But I must have some quality that takes me back to phyllo every now and then. Is it optimism, in believing that this time the process will go more smoothly? No, not even close. You see, no matter the messiness, no matter the trouble, at the end of the day phyllo wrapped packages with their tasty and varied fillings always receive praise and admiration. It's my ego that takes me back to phyllo again and again. Trying to impress by appearing cool and collected while presenting a platter of spinach and feta stuffed phyllo triangles to my guests, I anticipate their oohs and aahs. In reality, they must be thinking how crazy I am to work with phyllo when I could have just as easily impressed them with chips and dip.

Already, the dried out sheets crumbling to pieces and the sticky layers that wouldn't come apart are forgotten because the ego is satisfied. Phyllo, it muses, why that's nothing. But you'll notice, I never make such things when I'm eating alone.

Spanikopita

Ingredients:
2 pounds washed spinach, wilted
½ cup finely chopped parsley
½ cup finely chopped scallions
1½ cup finely chopped onion, browned
½ pound crumbled feta
2 T olive oil
1 package phyllo dough
5 beaten eggs
1 T dill weed
1 tsp oregano
1 T garlic
1 T lemon juice
½ cup salted butter
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350° F.
Mix all ingredients except for phyllo dough. Grease a 9X12X3 inch baking pan. Layer phyllo dough then mixture, in twelve layers. Cut into squares. Bake at 350° F for 1 hour.

To make this spanikopita into phyllo triangles:
Brush a sheet of phyllo with melted butter and place a second sheet on top of it. Use a sharp knife to cut the sheets lengthwise into thirds. Place a mound of filling at one end of each strip. Fold dough over filling, forming a triangle. Continue folding, like a flag, until you come to the end of each strip. Bake at 350° F for 15-20 minutes.

Cheese Whore

2009-07-02T11:07:00.001-07:00

For as much as I love cheese, I’ve written very little about it here. Maybe that’s because I love cheese most in its purest untouched form. I love a creamy brie on crackers, goat cheese tossed onto salad, a slice of manchego with some prosciutto. When cooked into a lasagna it's hardly worth mentioning. But it’s often an ingredient in a recipe I want to try, so that around my apartment you'll find a magazine open to a page with feta chile dip or a cookbook bookmarked at a recipe for asiago cheese bread. In my fridge right now I have 8 types of cheese: cream, asiago, parmigiano reggiano, it’s weaker second cousin parmesan, boursin, feta, cottage and monterey pepper jack. This stock won’t stop me from wandering around Whole Foods' impressive cheese counter picking up and contemplating every kind of triple cream brie. That's the kind of woman I am. I'm a cheese whore.

I mean, just look at those jalapeno poppers, stuffed with cream cheese and scallions and topped with pepper jack, broiled to elicit a golden brown crispy cover. I'm salivating just looking at the picture, remembering the heat of the pepper tempered by the silken cream cheese that gushed out when I bit into it. I won't lie. I pulled crusted cheese off the foil and ate it. That crispy caramelized cheese is the best part.

In fact, this crispy cheese makes the perfect snack by itself.

To make these Cheese Crisps, take a hard cheese like Asiago or Parm and shred a couple ounces of it. Sprinkle with some black pepper or cayenne for a little kick. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and heap little mounds of the shredded cheese on it. Make sure to leave space between them because they will spread out when they melt. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and bake for about 7 minutes. When you pull them out they will still be soft for a few seconds. If you want to shape them into little cups, you may be able to do so but mine hardened up almost immediately. Ideally you would have time to drape them over a shot glass so they form cups which can be filled with something like a tomato cucumber salad or a chicken salad with grapes. And then you could serve them as a cute hors d'oeuvre at your next cocktail party.

I ate my cheese crisps unaccompanied, enjoying them in their purest form. But maybe they'd be good dipped in something, like the aforementioned feta chile dip. Cheese on cheese? Why not? That's the kind of woman I am.

Pot Luck

2009-06-27T19:28:00.000-07:00

Northwest did not have a cafeteria worth boasting about. Dimly lit, a raggedy assortment of tables, a salad bar that held little in the way of actual vegetables, and a food display of today's menu items left me desperate for my own home cooked food. Whenever I joined my coworkers for lunch in the cafeteria, I brought my tupperware filled with goodies and refused to share. Then one day my coworker Caitlin had a brilliant idea - we should have a pot luck.

Everyone loves a pot luck (at least if you have friends who can cook and or can bring the alcohol and tubs of Haagen-Dazs). In your typical foodie pot luck, you might see a tomato, basil and buffalo mozzarella salad, scalloped potatoes with blue cheese, or peach cobbler. The host will pull a hot roasted chicken out of the oven, or make a big vat of spaghetti bolognese. Three new year's eves in a row, my friends and I had themed pot lucks. The first year we had to make a "new" dish - something we had never made before, which resulted in homemade crackers with mushroom pesto, stuffed pork tenderloin, and a chocolate bombe cake. The second year, everyone had to bring a dish containing apples, and the third year our secret ingredient was nutmeg. The themes, the rules, and the competitive spirit (my dish has to be the best) of pot lucks are why I love them.

But a pot luck for the common, every day affair of lunch in the cafeteria was novel. I never thought of filling my tupperware with food to share. Because we were the only ones around that really cooked, or maybe because we were slightly selfish, the pot lucks were dubbed "Two Person Potlucks" and we kept them completely exclusive. Other coworkers would sit down with us at lunch and stare as we dolloped homemade salad dressing over abundant produce, or sliced slabs of lasagna in half. When you cook for yourself, you don't take as much care, but when you cook for another person, even if they're eating out of your tupperware, the effort you put into the food skyrockets. Suddenly I took more time to determine if the food I was bringing would be good, healthy, and interesting. That ruled out bologna sandwiches completely. Instead, I found healthy salads, hearty risottos, and one happy occasion for which I wrote a song, egg rolls.

Two Person Potlucks are only one of the things I miss about working in a place where I have real friends, people who support me and who listen no matter how many times I complain about my job. People who give advice when I don't know what to do, who believe I deserve better, and who will devour the food I bring them in plastic containers.

Here's a favorite from a Two Person Potluck. It's a perfect dish to take for lunch. Some advice on quinoa - washing it will drive you crazy because it sticks to everything. It's like styrofoam peanuts. You may want to skip that step.

Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa (Gourmet)
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons grated lime zest
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup quinoa
1 (14- to 15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 medium tomatoes, diced
4 scallions, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Whisk together lime zest and juice, butter, oil, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4teaspoon pepper in a large bowl.

Wash quinoa in 3 changes of cold water in a bowl, draining in a sieve each time.

Cook quinoa in a medium pot of boiling salted water (1 tablespoon salt for 2 quarts water), uncovered, until almost tender, about 10 minutes. Drain in sieve, then set sieve in same pot with 1 inch of simmering water (water should not touch bottom of sieve). Cover quinoa with a folded kitchen towel, then cover sieve with a lid (don't worry if lid doesn't fit tightly) and steam over medium heat until tender, fluffy, and dry, about 10 minutes. Remove pot from heat and remove lid. Let stand, still covered with towel, 5 minutes.

Add quinoa to dressing and toss until dressing is absorbed, then stir in remaining ingredients and salt and pepper to taste.

For Old Time's Sake

2009-06-21T07:17:00.001-07:00

I never cooked in college since I lived in the dorms, but after college I was lucky enough to live with roommates who loved cooking. In our three years together, a pattern emerged. Weekends were spent perusing cooking magazines and cookbooks, creating lists of dishes we wanted to make, and grocery shopping together or ordering Peapod. During the week, we'd email all day about what to have for dinner and who would be home first to start cooking. We took turns cooking for each other, but the best nights were when we cooked together. The kitchen was just big enough for three - one at the stove, one chopping and prepping, maybe one peering into the oven or refrigerator hungrily.

Whether we cooked together or separately, everyone had their specialties. Somehow, I became responsible for salad dressings. It became my habit to dip into the condiment cabinet and fridge shelf, pulling out random vinegars, mustards, oils, or the occasional worcestshire sauce. I'd whisk them together, seasoning with salt, pepper, or lemon juice as I saw fit. Now at this point you might be thinking that salad dressing comes in a bottle labeled "Kraft" or "Hidden Valley" and resides in the refrigerator doorway, lasting for years all hyped up on preservatives. But why ruin a perfectly fresh, homemade salad with that? To quote Julia Child, "The perfect vinaigrette is so easy to make that I see no reason whatsoever for bottle dressings."

One of my standby dressings was a tahini dressing, which will help you use up the tahini you bought to make hummus. It's quite good on a salad of mixed greens, cucumber, red onion, and chickpeas, but it's basically quite good on any kind of salad or just as a dip for carrot sticks and the like. I usually whisk up a small batch in a bowl, but you could make a larger batch in a food processor or mini blender. The dressing is so memorable that when I recently made it to welcome my former foodie roommate back to Chicago, she recognized its creamy pale complexion instantly.

"Is that your tahini dressing?" she asked. When I acknowledged that it was, she was excited. I made it for old time's sake, but it was like bringing an old friend back into my life. It was just as good as I remembered and I'm happy to have it back gracing my table or huddling in the kitchen with me, making any ordinary salad taste phenomenal.

Tahini Dressing

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 large garlic clove, minced and mashed to a paste with 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1/3 cup olive oil
water to adjust consistency

In a blender, blend together the tahini, lemon juice, garlic paste, and cayenne. With the motor running, add the oil in a stream, blending until the dressing is emulsified. Add water to adjust the consistency to your liking. Season with additional salt if desired.

A good place for a date

2009-06-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

I had a coworker once who told new acquaintances that he worked with models. This made him seem sexy and exciting, until his listeners realized he was talking about models of the mathematical variety.

In the same vein, I like to talk about all the dates I have. Some people have never had a date, and that is very very sad. The dates I had as a child were among the most memorable. I've had dates at Spanish restaurants and I've had dates in my own kitchen. Any place can be a good place for a date.

Dates of the gastronomical variety are rather like models of the mathematical variety. Not as sexy on the surface, but elegant and surprisingly useful. When I was young, I ate chewy date bars from the supermarket, packaged and processed but tasting like they were homemade. My mom liked them too, and we bought them all the time until suddenly they were discontinued - which is something like making a best friend at work only to have them quit. (The fact that I equate food to a best friend speaks volumes about how highly I value my friends.) At many a tapas bar, you can find bacon wrapped dates simply broiled, and why we pay so much for them is beyond me but they're delicious. Something about dates is mysterious and fascinating, maybe because they're under utilized, the bench player of the fruit squad, and by no fault of their own, often confused with prunes or figs.

As I wandered around the fruit section of the supermarket the other day, a shopping list held firmly in my hand, I spotted a little basket of dates. I was compelled to purchase them, with no particular recipe in mind, but a taste for chewy, sweet bars or bread in my mouth. But a week later those dates were still sitting on my counter making me feel guilty for buying them under false pretenses. So I hussled over to the computer and dug up a date bread recipe. Now the key to this recipe is not anything complicated in the ingredients of the bread itself, but the recommendation that you eat it with cream cheese. If you've had a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, you know what I'm getting at. The cream cheese cuts the sweetness of the bread perfectly. Use reduced fat cream cheese if you must, but put a thick layer on the bread. This is no time to skimp and ration. The cream cheese needs to be toothmark thick - which means it's thick enough that when you take a bite, you can see your toothmarks on the cheese.

I'm hoping for more dates in my life, of any variety. But this is a good place to start.

Date Nut Bread (Gourmet)

3/4 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups chopped dates
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350°F.

In a medium bowl, pour hot water over dates and butter. Stir and let the mix sit until lukewarm. In a food processor, puree 1/3 of the mix to make a paste. Stir it back into the bowl full of date mix. Add the brown sugar, molasses, vanilla, and eggs. Stir until combined.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in the date mixture. Mix. Pour the batter into a butter-greased loaf pan.

Bake for 60 minutes or so; loaf is done when the top has risen. Remove the bread from the oven and cool it on a rack for at least 30 minutes before serving.

You'll Be Fine

2009-06-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

Are you sitting down? Good. Because what you're going to make this week requires lots of sitting down. Specifically with a glass of wine and maybe a few friends, but only if you're willing to share. And you might not be after you taste these tomatoes.

Several months ago I found a book called The Improvisational Cook at the library. The author Sally Schneider has a creative approach to cooking in that she does not use recipes. That's right, she just cooks on the fly. Which is how a real chef works, I suppose. You learn about foods and flavors and cooking techniques and when you have all these tools collected and polished and lined up, you can start inventing dishes of your own. For example, she'll tell you how to infuse oil with zest and garlic and chilis and then you can make a variety of oils to drizzle over salads or fish or fresh mozzarella.

Her idea for tomatoes was simple - roasting. I'm a huge proponent of roasting, and if I haven't told you about roasted broccoli yet then you haven't been talking to me enough because I talk about roasted broccoli the way some people talk about their children or their 401K plans. Roasting brings out the best in all vegetables. Tomatoes look like they're too weak and tender to stand up to roasting but you just have to know how to treat them.

You can roast any size tomatoes. I tried large beefsteak tomatoes (which are perfect for pureeing into soup, just roast some garlic alongside and blend it all together, then let it sit overnight to meld the flavors) and cherry tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes were much faster and naturally have more sugar to caramelize and create flavor. Here's what you need to do.

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and line them cut side up in a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake for about an hour and a half. While you wait, you can sit around drinking your wine and telling your friends how good they have it to know you. But don't forget about the tomatoes. You know they're done when they are dark but not black, with a little sizzle and easily smashed. You can scoop them out into a bowl, but make sure to pour all that flavorful oil into the bowl too. The tomatoes become something like a chutney or compote which you can then put on pizza, pasta, or as I did - on bread spread with goat cheese.

It's not a recipe. It's just guidelines. If the oven temperature isn't exactly right, you'll be fine. If the timing isn't exactly right, you'll be fine. If you don't serve it the same way I did, you'll find another way, maybe even a better way. Let me know what it is.

Crispy and creamy and crusty

2009-06-04T20:46:00.001-07:00

I don't mind a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. You know, the kind with metallic tables and chairs with plastic seats that stick to the back of your legs in the summer. Where the ethnicity of the patrons gives a clear indication of the authenticity of the food. Where the floor is sticky but the ingredients are fresh and the waiter is nice not because he wants a good tip but because he's NICE.

There was a restaurant in St. Paul which my old group at Northwest, that hummus loving group, enjoyed going to. It was called Saigon, and was authentically Vietnamese, serving big, comforting bowls of pho. But I went there for the sandwiches. Sandwiches don't sound Vietnamese, but they have them as a result of French colonialism in South East Asia. They call them Banh Mi, which sounds more Vietnamese, and they're made like this.

Take a good baguette, or some kind of crusty French bread. Slather it with paté and mayo. Add some carrots (I made strips with a peeler) and sliced jalapeño peppers both pickled in rice vinegar. Top with some fresh cucumber slices. And make some peppery pork (recipe below) to slice up on the sandwich.

It wasn't a sandwich that sounded good to me the first time I was told I had to order it. The pho sounded good, lots of fat noodles and meat swimming in broth. But paté and mayo? Pickled vegetables? More pork on top? I was unsure.

But I've always been willing to try new foods. Not that I would eat dog or most insects, but in the realm of normal foods, I will try just about anything. Sometimes this leads to disgusting flavors I will never ever forget (e.g. gefilte fish, durian), but often it leads to amazing new flavor combinations. Wasabi blended in soy sauce. Candied ginger. Avocado white bean soup. Goat cheese with honey.

Why should these things not go together? Just because it hasn't become commonplace doesn't mean it can't be good. After all, the first time someone came up with a recipe for, say, lasagna, it may have gone like this:

Cook: Maybe I should mix up some meat and tomatoes and cheese.
Spouse: Why would you do that?
Cook: That's all I have left in the house. Oh and this flour that I can mix with water and egg to make dough. I'll just put the meat mixture between layers of dough.
Spouse: That sounds gross.
Cook: I'll put more cheese on top. Then it'll be good.
Spouse: You can't make me eat that.

And yet lasagna is much loved. How do we get from there to here unless I try something new?

It turns out that I loved the sandwiches, and not just because they were $2 each. And not just because my expectations were low. I loved how the ingredients from different cultures worked together and complemented each other. There were fresh crispy vegetables and creamy spread and crusty bread. Crispy and creamy and crusty, all in one package. I always ordered two, ate 1 1/2 and took the last half home to enjoy later. I miss that restaurant in St. Paul but I've heard about a good place in Chicago with Banh Mi. Until I get there, I found I can make Banh Mi at home.

Black Pepper Pork Banh Mi Recipe

1 pound of pork chops, shoulder or loin. Sliced thinly

2 cloves crushed garlic

2 table spoons of fish sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

1-2 tablespoons fresh ground black pepper. If you like the spice and flavor, add more!

2 tablespoons of finely chopped shallots or onion

1/4 cup vegetable or grapeseed oil

1 teaspoon of sesame seed oil

1. Mix all marinade ingredients (except for pork) in a plastic bag. Let all ingredients dissolve in oil, then add slices of pork. Allow everything to marinade for at least 1 hour.

2. Heat up frying pan, lay slices of pork, one layer at a time. When one side is cooked, flip to other side to finish cooking.

3. Assemble pork in your sandwich with condiments.

It's Like That

2009-05-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

I found the best little shop the other day. I was wandering through Old Orchard mall (great outdoor mall here in Skokie, except when it's cold which is about 9 months of the year) and noticed a little store called Oil & Vinegar. As you can imagine, I love these culinary shops. Not because I buy a lot of food or cookware, but because they are INSPIRATIONAL. I see a muffin mix so I make homemade muffins. I see a bottle of fancy mustard and decide to make a tilapia filet with mustard sauce. I see a waffle maker and crave waffles but settle for pancakes. It's like that.
So I walked into Oil & Vinegar and was in heaven. On my right was a tasting table with tiny cubes of bread speared with toothpicks arranged on a plate and surrounded by plastic cups filled with vinegar. Another tasting table held cups of oil. Yet another had tastings of salad dressing. The back corner of the store had large vessels holding the oils and vinegars, and empty glass decanters were available for purchase and filling. Oil and vinegar on tap! The Turkish store manager had endless suggestions for every type of oil in his store - use the lemon oil on fish, rosemary infused oil for lamb, or walnut oil in a salad dressing. I wanted to be invited over for dinner. The store had other fun foods too, like specialty chocolate, flavored pasta (squid ink pasta anyone?), fig spreads, honey, spices mixes and rubs, olives, pickles and tapenades. All these foods that make me think of decadence, luxury, and concentrated flavor that satisfies on first taste and doesn't require stuffing myself.
But I wanted to stuff my shopping bag. I restrained myself and picked a only a single delicious white truffle balsamic vinegar to bottle and take home. That night I sprinkled it over a salad of mixed greens, granny smith apples, and goat cheese, letting the cheese soak up a good amount of vinegar. The white truffle adds depth to the balsamic vinegar and would also be delicious as part of a pan sauce for meat.
But if you're going to buy a good balsamic vinegar, there is one thing you must do with it - make dessert. Get some good strawberries or blackberries. You can soak them in the vinegar raw, or cook them down a bit and add the vinegar in to make a compote. Then go into your freezer and find that ice cream you've stashed. I know you have some in there. You don't? That's even better, because then you can get out the ice cream maker and make some almond ice cream in no time. Take a basic vanilla ice cream recipe which requires no cooking, and add in the same amount of almond extract as there is vanilla extract before pouring it in the ice cream maker. When the ice cream is almost frozen, add some chopped toasted almonds. Now serve up a scoop of the almond ice cream with a spoonful of your balsamic vinegar fruit mixture. Drizzle some extra balsamic over the ice cream, and if you're wondering now whether vinegar is really meant to be with ice cream, just put your mind at ease and try a spoonful. And then stock up on vinegar.

Brunch

2009-05-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

I rather like these strawberry cinnamon muffins I made last week. They smell fantastic and are the perfect addition to a brunch menu, alongside some deviled eggs, a salad of mixed greens and cold bay shrimp with a lemony vinaigrette, and a leek and onion quiche.

Brunch is probably my favorite meal of the day. I say probably because if you ask me the question while I'm devouring creamy broccoli mascarpone soup, then soup would be my favorite meal. And if I happen to be savoring a spoonful of almond ice cream then dessert would be my favorite meal. And I have a weakness for appetizers, canapés, and foods that are cute.

But when no immediate food is set before me and I can state an unbiased opinion, brunch is always my favorite meal of the day. It's my favorite meal to go out for, it's my favorite meal to cook, and it's my favorite time of day to eat. Mid-morning my appetite is at its peak.

My friend Huzefa once asked what exactly defined brunch. Brunch doesn't exist in India where he grew up, and he wanted to know why we had to go out for brunch instead of lunch. Technically brunch is defined as a meal that replaces both breakfast and lunch. Eating anything before it qualifies your second meal of the day as lunch, not brunch. But brunch connotes so much more than that. It is hot tea and croissants and smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels and fruit. It is pancakes and waffles thick with syrup and whipped butter. It is wearing wool sweaters in January and waiting 45 minutes for a table at a favorite restaurant that never has enough tables but has wild rice porridge on the menu. It is sitting outside on a summer day eating an organic egg omelet and free range chicken sausage. But most of all, it is making something at home as simple as challah french toast.

Brunch is scents too, the smell of coffee, of cinnamon rolls, of sizzling bacon, of banana bread. It's good in the rainy season, it's good on a snowy Christmas morning, it's good on a hot summer day when all you can eat is a cold plate of deli meat and cheese and fresh berries. Have you noticed that just about anything qualifies as brunch food? No wonder Huzefa was confused - brunch couldn't be defined as a particular food so much as a particular feeling. It evokes coziness and satisfaction.

Maybe I love brunch because it means it's the weekend and I can take things easy, sleeping in a little and then eating good food. What could be better than that?

Strawberry Cinnamon Muffins

*Don't be afraid to add plenty of strawberry jam because it won't seem like enough after they're baked.

Day In Day Out

2009-05-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

I have to confess something. I have a hummus habit. It started years ago at Pita Inn, the best place for cheap Middle Eastern food like kabobs, rice pilaf, and falafel. There you can get a hummus plate, the creamy chick pea and tahini blend spread thick as mayonnaise on the plate with a puddle of olive oil in the middle, a garnish of parsely and specks of cayenne pepper sprinkled over it all. I didn't think about it much those days, when I was more interested in the flavorful kabobs of ground lamb or the strips of gyro meat doused in tzatziki sauce. I never expected hummus to be the kind of food one could eat day in and day out.

Fast forward to 2005. I had just started my job at Northwest Airlines in the international route planning group. My group was small, close, and we talked about the food we like all the time. My director had a heart attack a few years earlier and followed a strict diet, but hummus was allowed and was one of his favorite foods. Being the savvy employee that I was, I whipped up a batch one day and brought it in.

That was it. I was the hummus queen. At most offices people bring in cookies, brownies, or other baked goods. I brought in hummus. If in fact I dared to bring in something less healthy, my director chastised me and asked me when I was making hummus again. Even when I was invited over to his place for a cocktail party, I was instructed to bring the hummus. My director was the kind of person who had a very strong opinion about right and wrong and my hummus was all that was right with the world. It was healthy and flavorful, filling but light, and had the perfect balance of garlic and lemon. It could be a snack or a meal, eaten with carrot sticks or crackers or bread.

A bacon cheeseburger, on the other hand, was all that was wrong with the world.

I still think hummus is one of the easiest things to make myself, but others have had problems when using my recipe. I swear it's not a recipe that magically changes ingredients and quantities for the recipient à la Harry Potter, so that only the original owner can make it well (but wouldn't that be cool?). Hummus is one of those amazing foods that is made up of things that don't taste particularly good by themselves. Chick peas aren't bad, though a bit dry and bland. Raw garlic is pungent, lemon juice is not a popular beverage. And if you've never tasted tahini, don't bother. It's a gluey, bitter sesame seed paste. I put all the ingredients into a food processor, adding salt and a dash of cayenne. Olive oil is added in a stream until the chunky mixture turns soft as whipped butter. Then it's packed in a tupperware to take to work, sliding sloppily up the side, crackers stashed in a zip lock bag. My presentation of the hummus is a bit different from Pita Inn's. But it's just as good.

Hummus

2 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 15 ounce can chick peas
1/3 cup tahini
1/8 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup water

Mash garlic with salt. Add to food processor, add remaining ingredients through lemon juice. Pulse to blend, then add olive oil in a stream with the processor running. Add a little water at a time until thinned to a consistency you like.

Choosing Between Your Children

2009-05-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

When I handed around the shortcake, I got the inevitable question.
"What's in this?"
"Butter, sugar, flour-"
"Ok, you had me at butter and sugar!"

It's really no secret by now that I love butter and sugar too. I greatly prefer cookies to cakes because the butter and sugar to flour ratio is higher. A brownie sitting next to a cupcake and I go for the brownie every time. But don't make me choose between cookies and ice cream. It's like choosing between your children, it's simply impossible.

So today I'm going to talk about both my favorite cookie recipe and one of my favorite ice cream recipes. Desserts are back on the table, and in case you think I'm not eating my vegetables I'll have you know I had a hearty serving of brussel sprouts yesterday. Braised in cream of course. (It's either that or roasted with bacon and I believe the cream has more redeeming qualities.) But I digress.

I'll start with my favorite cookie recipe because at one time it had me bemused and befuddled. My roommates and I had two recipes with the same name: Chocolate Espresso Cookies. One was in Bon Appetit and one was in Gourmet. One recipe was sublime and the other was...like slime. Well it didn't taste bad but it didn't produce a nice cookie, it just made a mess on the baking sheet. The problem was that my roommates and I had made them both and didn't know which had given us the amazing cookie and which has given us the mess.
Only one thing to do: make more cookies.

The correct recipe (from Gourmet) turns out these beautiful cookies - soft, chocolaty, only a hint of espresso for those of us who don't like it but enough to enhance the chocolate flavor, and a shiny, crackly top. No one can eat just one. That's because the recipe starts by having you melt a lot of chocolate with a lot of butter. After you've mixed that with your eggs, sugar, and espresso, you just add a bit of flour, salt, and baking powder and load it up with more chocolate in the form of chips. This is one of those never fail recipes. Everyone loves it. You just can't go wrong with that much butter and chocolate.

The only possible thing that could make a cookie like this better is to top it with ice cream.

A girl with an ice cream maker is not to be ignored. She will tease you and tempt you with creamy, unusual delicious flavors like blueberry cheesecake, brown sugar, or lemon custard. There will be forays into peanut butter, pumpkin, peaches and cream, caramel, and vanilla bean. Ultimately she will take you down with a peppermint ice cream the color of cotton candy eaten before a carnival ride or the Pepto Bismol taken immediately after. There's just something about a pink ice cream that begs to be eaten in abundance, leaving sticky pink smears around your lips and drips on your shirt.

I got the peppermint ice cream recipe from my friend Ann who got it from her sister-in-law. It's also good with brownies - really anything chewy and chocolately will do. Maybe not a tootsie roll though...

As for the shortbread recipe that won accolades for its butter and sugar proportions, I'm still working out whether it's the best I can find. I have a feeling my efforts will be appreciated.

Chocolate Espresso Cookies (Gourmet)
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3 large eggs
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons finely ground dark-roast coffee beans, such as Italian-roast
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease 2 large heavy baking sheets.

In a double boiler or a metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt unsweetened chocolate, 1 cup chocolate chips, and butter, stirring until smooth, and remove top of double boiler or bowl from heat. In a bowl with an electric mixer beat eggs, sugar, and ground coffee on high speed until very thick and pale and mixture forms a ribbon when beaters are lifted, about 3 minutes, and beat in chocolate mixture. Into mixture sift in flour, baking powder, and salt and stir until just combined. Stir in remaining chocolate chips.

Drop batter by heaping tablespoons about 2 inches apart onto baking sheets and bake in batched in middle of oven 8 to 10 minutes, or until puffed and cracked on top. Cool cookies in baking sheets 1 minute and transfer to racks to cool completely.

Peppermint Ice Cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp peppermint extract
3/4 cup crushed hard peppermint candies
Red food coloring optional

Whisk the milk and sugar until sugar is dissolved. Stir in cream, vanilla and peppermint extract. Thicken in ice cream maker for 25-30 min, then add crushed peppermint in final 5 minutes of mixing. Freeze for several hours before serving.

Sandwich Evolution

2009-05-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

My dad made my lunch for me every day for twelve years of school. He did a lot of other things for me too, far too numerous to list, but the lunch making was persistent. Here is what was in my lunch: a ham sandwich with iceberg lettuce or peanut butter and jelly on Thursdays (the day we didn't eat meat), a baggie of chips, some kind of fruit, pineapple juice, and a Nutty Bar. The ham was always Polish ham from the deli, picked up on Saturday mornings, wrapped in waxy paper and stuffed in a plastic bag. Later, there may have been some honey roasted or smoked ham, but I always preferred that somewhat watery, bland Polish ham with mayo gluing the lettuce in place, the sandwich cut diagonally across into triangles.
I rarely take sandwiches for lunch now. I usually have interesting dinner leftovers I'd rather eat, I never buy loaves of bread because I can't finish them fast enough, and frankly twelve years of the same lunch was enough. But if I do decide to take a sandwich for lunch it is (surprise surprise) far more complex than those ham sandwiches I grew up with. That's because sandwiches have evolved. They aren't just ham and cheese or PB&J. They have veggies or even fruit, they come in wraps (though I'm opposed to the use of tortillas for cold foods), they are toasted or grilled into paninis. And the bread is not just Wonder white bread or soft wheat. Whole grain, French baguette, sourdough, ciabatta, or specialty bread with herbs or sundried tomatoes is common.
I had a memorable sandwich in Sonoma a couple of years ago, and recreated it for lunch one day. The key ingredient was a black mission fig jam that was layered with salami, brie, and sliced pears, and I bought the jam then and there and tried to sneak it onto the airplane without checking my bag. All for the love of a sandwich.
Another favorite sandwich is portabella and goat cheese, with a crusty bread soaking up the juices from thick sliced portabellas sauteed in garlic and olive oil and salt and pepper. Or pesto with rounds of fresh buffalo mozarella and tomatoes on asiago cheese bread. Grilled chicken with avocado and sprouts. Steak and caramelized onions. Hot turkey with cranberry jam. Suddenly a sandwich sounds perfect for dinner and for lunch leftovers.
So that's what I'm having for lunch tomorrow - a sandwich. It's a sandwich inspired by a pasta salad I made recently with chunks of monterey jack cheese, salami, and pepperoncini. Use your favorite kind of bread - I like those Take 'n Bake baguettes which allow me to freeze them until I need them or even cut them and bake only half the baguette at a time. Sprinkle a little olive oil on the bread. Feel free to use some of the good stuff. Sprinkle some oregano on there too. Layer on slices of thin cut Genoa salami, pepper jack cheese, and pickled pepperoncini or any other pickled peppers (there are quite a few varieties in the pickle aisle). Wrap it up, tuck it into a lunch bag with some fruit, and oh, go ahead and sneak some cookies in there too. Just like when you were a kid.

Coup

2009-04-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

Lately I can't seem to find a recipe to work for me. Sure, I occasionally beat my food into submission - or into a cake - but at the end of the day I've left it to the food to do the work while I sit back and enjoy the results. So I think my groceries have gotten together, elected a leader, and launched a coup. I've thus far imprisoned an unpliable yeast bread, an unfreezable ice cream, a dry and overly clovey cake, some overcooked chicken and stinky salmon. I'm trying to torture the name of their leader out of them. Maybe the limp cilantro sulking in murky water in the fridge is behind this. Or the one night stand I had with the chili sauce left it bitter - literally.

I don't know what's going on in my kitchen.

There have been a few allies however. Warm and comforting goat cheese grits. Spicy lamb meatballs. And my new favorite tomato curry sauce which gets along with everyone.

I found a recipe for a chick pea curry called chana Punjabi or chole (cho-lay). I've made and eaten chole before, but I gave the new recipe a try. Basically you cook up some chopped onions, garlic, ginger, and jalapenos, and then puree them with some fresh chopped tomatoes. Simmer the sauce for a while with spices like paprika, garam masala, turmeric, and coriander. At this point, you are meant to add chick peas but it occurred to me that the sauce was good enough to mix with any kind of meat or vegetable, and I had a piece of meat mysteriously marked "Goat" which I was ready to cook. The mysterious meat portion turned out to be a rack, and I decided that rather than cut it up and stew it in the sauce it would be better off roasted. I marinated it in garlic, ginger, red pepper, turmeric and salt over night, then seared it off on the stove before transferring it to the oven. Two hours later the goat was soft and supple, falling off the bone with a nicely browned crust. I poured in the tomato sauce and let it roast a bit longer, so that the tomatoes could take on the meat with their own sweet roasted flavor.

If it looks like I devoured the meat, it's true. Drenched in my new favorite sauce, it was delicious. Not to be outdone by my rebellious kitchen, I prepared a nice plate with, of course, some greens on the side.

Now that I have my tomato sauce ally, I can get back into the battle and try to hold off the dried out salami, the moldy cheeses, and the mushy vegetables. Soon I'll be whipping them into shape, or at least into a hot dish. Because that's where bad food goes to die.

Get Into Greens

2009-04-21T20:31:00.001-07:00

I've decided to get into greens. Frequent readers of this blog may have noticed a slight bias towards desserts. But I do eat well-rounded fully balanced meals. Even though there's a pan of shortbread cooling in the kitchen right now. Mmm...
I was wandering around the supermarket last weekend, trying to stick to my shopping list. (My shopping list has sensible things on it like pears, salmon, eggs, cereal. And somehow I come home with logs of goat cheese, bottles of tahini, tins of crab meat, and dijon mustard. Canned tomatoes are a good pantry staple, but I also bought canned chipotle chilies in adobo sauce just in case. And I ended up with an entire bag of frozen mixed berries in the freezer, as if I were preparing for a fruit pie binge in the middle of the tundra.) Typically I pick up some spinach every couple of weeks, but I had just spent the last two weeks going through a giant bag of it so I was sick of spinach. I was ready to skip right past the greens to the zucchini when I noticed something. There are many leafy green vegetables other than spinach.
I've been something of a spinach junkie for a while now. There is no shortage of spinach recipes. Easiest side dish in the world? Sauteed spinach in olive oil. Best vegetable soup? Cream of spinach. Spinach and strawberry salad. Spinach pesto. Spinach pizza. But I'm feeling like such a hypocrite because I espouse the virtues of variety in food everywhere else, yet with my vegetables there is safety in cucumbers.
I do like many vegetables but I tend to buy the same ones: spinach, broccoli, carrots, zucchini, or brussel sprouts. Occasionally a red or green pepper, and lettuce and cucumbers for salad. If I'm trying to feed a vegetarian I might purchase a parsnip or rutabega, but never shall an eggplant enter my abode. But looking around at the abundance of greens, I decided I would do it. I would buy kale. I mean, it looks gorgeous. Almost too good to eat.

I quickly discovered that kale is as easy to saute as spinach but takes a little longer to wilt thick leaves that look more like a garnish than a side dish. Add a little water to the pan and cover it to braise them, or dunk them in boiling water long enough to boil (not blanch) them. Squeeze a little lemon on top. Any way you do it, you end up with a green that has more body and substance than spinach. In other words, it doesn't end up shrinking to nearly nothing the way spinach does, and a big bunch of it goes a lot further.
I can never give up my first love, spinach, but kale is a worthy adversary. Next up: collard greens. But don't worry, dessert girl will be back before long...

Sweet and Salty

2009-04-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

In Evanston, just south of Northwestern's campus is a historic building. Students go there often, grateful that its doors are always open. When the town is shrouded in darkness it lets off a beacon of light, of hope. Despite the ups and downs of the economy and the many businesses that have departed the downtown, this place has continued to survive. I can only be talking about Burger King.

In college, I refused to go to Burger King for a proper meal. I never ate the burgers. I only ever went there late at night, when all the good restaurants and coffee shops around downtown Evanston were closed. It was a common hangout after a party or drunken dorm room binge. But often it was just something to do for a college student who didn't sleep before 3am, who was bored of ordering Papa John's pizza and cheese sticks with garlic sauce, who had exhausted the dorm's movie collection, who didn't have a boyfriend or a pre-med major.

How can I write about Burger King in a cooking blog? Isn't that like sacrilege? I only bring up Burger King because I have a memory lodged in my taste buds of salty greasy fries eaten alongside a thick vanilla milkshake. Even at age 18 I had a sophisticated palate and could recognize that combining sweet and salty flavors was satisfying.

I've since graduated from french fries and milkshakes, and had my flirtations with pretzels dipped in chocolate, canteloupe topped with feta, and caramelized walnuts. I put honey on steamed brussel sprouts and sauteed zucchini. For breakfast I can never decide whether I should have the waffles or the eggs benedict, and end up with pancakes and a side of sausage, or an omelet with a scone to start. Seeking snacks on a dreary Sunday afternoon, I bounce back and forth between cheese and crackers then scoops of Nutella. A little bite of salty, a little taste of sweet, and back again. It's like reading a book that makes you laugh and cry, like teasing the person you love the most, like listening to Prince followed by a little Norah Jones.

Lately I've been obsessed with caramel ice cream. It could be because Top Chef contestants were always making salted caramel sauce, or because I "shared" a delicious dessert of profiteroles with caramel ice cream and chocolate sauce at Enoteca Roma where I ate far more than my share. Having tried the burnt caramel ice cream recipe last week, I decided to try a regular caramel ice cream recipe and revel in the salty-sweet combination.

This recipe combines sugar melted and browned with cream, milk, egg yolks and corn syrup. Once it's been strained and frozen, the ice cream is topped with a sprinkle of sea salt (which has a slightly less harsh, less chemical flavor than regular salt). From the picture, you may detect a certain inconsistency in the consistency of my ice cream. Yes, unfortunately my version did not freeze and rather resembles a custard...or a soup. I don't know what went wrong, though I speculate that the sugar to dairy ratio was too high. But no matter. Make yourself some caramel sauce, then sprinkle on some sea salt or kosher salt. Eat it by itself, eat it with ice cream that actually freezes, eat it with a dark chocolate cake. Have a little sweet, a little salty, a sip of milkshake, a french fry, play a John Mayer CD, switch over to Nelly, and curl up in front of Little Miss Sunshine. Enjoy the flavors.

Burned is Better, Baby

2009-04-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

Right now I have a burn mark on each arm. My right arm was not burned from cooking per se. I was boiling some water for tea, went to pull the hot water heater plug out of the wall, and my arm hovered over the steam a moment too long. It's currently peeling, this amoeba shaped burn, while doggedly impersonating a birthmark.

On my left arm is a burn from one of my new stainless steel Calphalon pans. Stainless steel pans can get hot, especially when you transfer olive tapenade steaks to the oven in them. I used an oven mitt to pull the pan out of the oven. But then I took off the mitt and leaned over the pan with a fork and knife, ready to check the steak, remove it, and reduce the pan juices into a sauce. My left arm grazed the handle and the hot metal immediately branded me. I ran for the freezer where I keep some ice packs ready for just such an occurrence. There was no residual pain, only a nasty thin brown mark. If I press it to the burn on my other arm I can shoot laser beams out of my arms and slice my enemies to shreds. Hopefully I won't end up with any scars.

In the spirit of burns and burning things, I decided to try this recipe for Burnt Caramel Ice Cream. It's an interesting concept. Go ahead and burn some sugar. Just let it melt, turn brown and then a little bit black. Come on, you burn things all the time - just not on purpose. Now add some cream and milk and let it mellow out the caramel until you get a dark, thick sauce.

Now strain it and mix in some more cream and milk, cool it in the fridge, and pour it into the ice cream maker.
I did all this without a hitch, but when I pulled it out of the ice cream maker it looked like...well...have you ever played that baby shower game where you put different types of chocolate candy mushed up in diapers and everyone has to guess what kind of candy each diaper has? Some of the candy looks an awful lot like what you might really find in a diaper.

Okay, so it's not the most appealing color for ice cream. And when I first tasted it, all I could think was This is burnt. But then I kept licking the spoon. And then I ate a whole scoop. Something about the flavor was addictive. A little bit bitter, a little sweet, with a rich wrapping of cream. It was frozen but tasted of warmth, of bonfires on the beach and roasted marshmallows. And who doesn't like the little crispy bits of pulled pork, the caramelized cheese on a pizza, the char on a hot dog, a blackened chicken sandwich? Burned is better, baby. That's how I feel about these burn marks on my arms (and the one on my wrist from a long ago misunderstanding with an oven door). I may be burned but that only makes me better.

Disappointing Peaches

2009-04-01T17:55:00.000-07:00

I should have known it wasn't peach season. But this is how easily I'm seduced. As I wander past the fruit stand in Trader Joe's I keep my eyes scoured for my usual winter fruit purchases - apples, bananas, pears. And then I spot them. A basket of peaches claiming they would ripen in the basket and could be stored in the fridge. My excitement gets the best of me. Peaches are summer - exploding with sunshine and warmth and juice. I love the fuzzy skin and the scent. I love eating them fresh over the sink, sopping up the juice with napkins, or sliced in a fruit salad, or baked into a tart or pie. So I grab that little basket of peaches and coddle them all the way home.

But the thing about buying peaches at the end of March is that they are sure to disappoint. As soon as I bit into the first one, I knew. It was brown and mealy inside. I had to spit out the first bite. I nibbled around the worst part but that is not how you should eat a peach, by nibbling. It should be devoured. And since I can't devour these peaches, I'll have to cut them up and sadly throw quite a bit away.

*****************************************************************************************

It's been about a year since the Delta and Northwest merger was announced. A known part of the merger was that headquarters for the combined airline would be in Atlanta. For Minnesotans, contemplating a move to the deep south is bizarre. No ice festival in the winter? Staying inside during the summer months? Eating grits instead of hot dish, hush puppies instead of deep fried food on a stick? It's a big adjustment.

As you know, I like to celebrate any occasion with food, and whether or not I was happy about the news was irrelevant. Just days after the announcement when my group gathered for a staff meeting to discuss the merger I carried in a peach pie. The crust was homemade, I said, but the peaches were frozen. We weren't in Georgia yet and peaches were not in season. Nevertheless, I was committed to honoring the impending Southern exposure with some peach pie Northern style. I hoped that the pie brought a little levity to a depressing meeting. At the time, the news was disappointing - but the peach pie was delicious.

Have some respect

2009-03-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

The waiter hugged each of us goodbye while the hostess looked on and a man entering the restaurant wondered aloud if everyone got such good treatment. I guess we were lucky to get a waiter who looked like a black Jack Black (he concurred) and shared with us his dreams of acting and tales of his troublesome younger brother. In between the gossip, he recommended our dinner choices (free range Amish roast chicken or roast duck with a side of duck confit rather than the short ribs) and wine selection. He told us about his employee discount - no free meals but at least he never took the food for granted. It seems that when you get it for free you don't have respect for it. The food, that is.

I don't usually write about restaurants but sometimes the food I eat in restaurants inspires my cooking. I can make cheese grits, one of the delicious sides we had (just keep adding butter and cheese and top with olive oil). I can make white chocolate panna cotta, one of the free desserts we had (did I mention that the waiter loved us?). I can make a risotto cake, one of the appetizers we had.

Okay, I'll admit that the risotto cake in the restaurant was fat and moist on the inside, not flat and a tad dry like mine. It was topped with a salad with a noticeable but light dressing and some plump grilled shrimp. I topped mine with shredded leftover Amish chicken.

Let's not forget that making risotto cakes is a two step process. See, you first have to make the risotto. Get a little Arborio rice, some shallots and garlic together in a pan, and fry up about five or six slices of pancetta in there too. Remove the pancetta and let it drain on paper towels. Once the rice has rolled around in the fat and flavoring for a bit, add a splash of wine. Cooking wine works just fine, but I usually have a bottle of something that was never finished sitting around. Now you're ready to start adding the hot broth. Sometimes I get this far before I realize I don't have any broth, much less hot broth. But this time I was prepared and had already dissolved a hearty bouillon cube in water in a pan on the burner next to my risotto pan. Now start scooping quarter cups of broth into the pan and let the rice absorb them. Do this slowly. It could take 20-25 minutes. Keep stirring. Drink some of the wine. Unless it's cooking wine, then don't drink it for god's sake. When the rice is creamy and cooked through - I always taste a few pieces and find them undercooked when I'm out of broth but just add some water at this point - then you can stir in the peas and the crumbled pancetta. Add some grated parmesan, salt and pepper.

Now here's the really important step: Don't eat all of the risotto. You may think this is obvious, but I'm telling you, you will want to eat it all and then what is left for risotto cakes? Nothing. You'll have to start over.

Save some of that risotto for tomorrow because you don't want to make the risotto cakes now, you're too busy eating risotto. When you're ready to make them, just mix in some beaten egg and cornmeal. I had a little trouble getting my risotto to stick together but I just flattened it down into the frying pan and once it started frying, it stuck together just fine. If you can make a pancake you can make a risotto cake.

I think they turned out cute and tasty, but I would never take a risotto cake for granted. Because when you make it yourself, you have even more respect for the food.

Irresistible

2009-03-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend my friend Monika and I made an excursion to an Indian grocery store near her house. Supposedly it was the "larger" store in the area. This means when you walk down one of the two aisles in the store, you don't knock bottles of chutney off the shelf.

Have you been in an Indian grocery store? Here's what you'll find. Frozen flatbreads. Frozen dinners of spinach and cheese or lentil stew. Huge bags of ground and whole spices for about $3 each. Bottled ginger paste, bottle garlic paste, and my favorite - bottled ginger/garlic blend. Different kinds of pickle made with lemon or mango. Flour and beans of every variety. Refrigerated mix for making dosa (Indian version of a crepe). Fresh vegetables like ginger, cilantro, onions, garlic, okra, eggplant, potatoes and tomatoes. Goldenrod and tangerine colored sweet blocks made from flour and sugar, nuts and cheese.

I'm a kid in a candy store in there. Not because I like to stock up on the frozen samosas and naan (though I do). It's the aisle of spice mixes that gets me going. Because here's a secret: I never really learned any Indian recipes from my mom. She doesn't use recipes. This is how she makes goat curry. Get my dad to cut up the goat meat. Coat it in ginger, garlic, turmeric, red pepper, salt, and other mystery spices. Marinate overnight. Cook in a big pot with some water on a low heat for a long time, until it's tender. It's magically delicious. I might be leaving out some steps since I never really watched her make it, I just turned up when it started smelling good.

So I need those spice mixes. I need them to cook with and I need them to inspire me. I went in there to buy a chicken biryani mix and picked up one for kofta curry (also known as meatballs and gravy). But there were many options for curries, kebabs, veggies, tandoori, and desserts. Those boxes of spice mix last a long time so as much as I wanted to buy a shelf full, I restrained myself. I used my biryani mix to marinate my chicken overnight, mixing it with yogurt, tomato paste, slow cooked chopped onions, cilantro, garlic, ginger, and salt. I cooked the chicken and soaked the rice with whole spices - cinnamon, cardomom, and cumin seeds. Then everything went into a pot with some fried potatoes and saffron infused milk and cooked for nearly an hour. Don't you dare say I made my biryani from a mix.

Shan Food has a list of all their products. I especially like the category labled "Irresistible Pickle" and plan to name my off-the-beaten-path pub that some day.

Celebrate with food

2009-03-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

I'm bummed. It turns out that I forgot to celebrate Pi Day. I have never celebrated it before but now that I've been made aware, I'll never forget again.
If you haven't caught on yet, Pi Day is March 14th. 3.14. If you're really geeky you can celebrate it at 1:59. I'll choose to be semi-geeky and celebrate it by making pies. Pizza pies, fruit pies, pot pies, shepherd's pie. Next year will be the year!
I like to celebrate with food. Yesterday was St. Patty's day and I was wrapping up my food challenge week by making bacon wrapped shrimp skewers on a bed of couscous with a salad.

I was certainly being "green". But I wanted to make something Irish to celebrate the holiday, like corned beef or boxty. (Every time I go into an Irish pub I look for but rarely find boxty, the Irish potato pancake, best found here). I settled on Irish soda bread, for which I had all the ingredients. It is not made with a can of pop (though that could produce an interesting bread product). It's made with baking soda so it rises despite a lack of yeast. Thus it's a "quick" bread - just mix up the ingredients and put the dough in the oven. You'll be shocked at how much it rises, so don't put it on a lower rack with the upper rack right above it or you'll end up with grill marks on your loaf. Not that I've ever done this.
I used this recipe. I'm not saying it's the best one. But it's easy, it tasted good and I managed to have a slice with every meal today. And the same tomorrow...did I mention the loaf gets pretty big?

EDF: Days 4 - 7

2009-03-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

Day 4: Russell Peters!
Instead of staying home and cooking I went out to see a fantastic stand-up comedian, Russell Peters, at the Chicago Improv and ate some food while I was there.

Days 5&6: New York City!
Had some good food in New York but nothing I couldn't have made myself, if in fact I were to buy octopus and braise it. Ironically, I studied a cute octopus model at the Natural History Museum that very afternoon.

Day 7: I arrived home from my weekend trip and studied the contents of the fridge. Now I'll admit that some things in there have not survived the week (or two or three) that they've been patiently awaiting my culinary inspiration. Disturbingly soft jicama and withered mint leaves were promptly discarded. The teaspoon of whipping cream which remained after I made cream braised brussel sprouts did not need to be saved any longer. And the first wheel of brie from the buy 1 get 1 free sale was ready to be finished with some crackers while I made dinner.

Feeling good about my progress, I focused on the most perishable items remaining in the fridge: an open can of coconut milk, scallions, and a bag of sugar snap peas. I thought I could combine these items with tofu from the pantry to make some kind of coconut curry.

I went with the first recipe I found online. I had all the spices, could substitute sugar snap peas and carrots for the recommended bell peppers and mushrooms, and the reviewers raved about it. Picking a recipe is an art, nearly as challenging as making one up myself. The last few weeks I've had some misses, when recipes turned out less delicious than I thought they would. But those were recipes from cookbooks and magazines, not online, and there were no reviews. I love reading reviews. I may not agree with every reviewer but on average, when the reviews are great I like the recipe.

So I drained my tofu, soaked some glass noodles in boiling water to use them up instead of rice, and cooked up some vegetarian coconut curry. Not bad for a Sunday night.

Coming up...let the challenge continue because I have no time to go to the store anyway.

EDF: Days 2 and 3

2009-03-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

Day 2: Pasta with meat sauce
Tuesday night's dinner was classic out of the freezer into the frying pan food. Ground beef and leftover tomato sauce were combined with olive oil, a fresh tomato, chopped onion and garlic, a bay leaf, oregano, salt, pepper, a scoop of beef demiglace (Williams Sonoma indulgence that I keep in my fridge) and a splash of white wine in my brand new Calphalon saucepan. I had noticed that the cheap non-stick pans I bought six years ago were peeling. For at least the last two years. Don't tell my mom how long. When I mentioned the peeling issue to her, she suggested that I might be ingesting carcinogens. Since I don't have a wedding registry coming up, I'll have to acquire new cookware slowly, but I bought two new stainless steel saucepans and a new stockpot over the weekend.
I don't know if I can credit the pan, but the meat sauce turned out really delicious over some linguini fini. Too bad I ended up with so much that I had to put some of it back into the freezer. Am I making any progress here at all? Maybe if I had made a salad or vegetable...but I was too tired so I just ate a banana and called it a day.

Day 3: Zucchini soup with rosemary biscuits and brie
I have always loved biscuits. They're bready and soft and savory. Sometimes they're fluffy like cupcakes and sometimes they are dense as scones. They taste delicious with honey butter. Seasoned with herbs or cheese or flavored with pumpkin, biscuits are a satisfying food. And they're easier to make than yeast breads. A child could make them.
As a kid, I spent long summer days alone at home before I was old enough to be employed and I generally kept out of trouble (phone bill incident notwithstanding). But I was intrigued by the kitchen. I poured through my mom's cookbooks looking for something easy to make that would leave no trace behind. I'm not sure why it had to be a secret. Maybe I thought my parents would disapprove. More likely they would think I was a weirdo for randomly making biscuits. In any case, the drop biscuits were the easiest recipe I could find. Flour, salt, baking powder, butter, and milk or buttermilk. No rolling the dough, just scoop out the biscuits and drop them on the baking pan or into a soup or stew. (I also really like eating raw dough, but that's not for everyone.) They bake up in 10 minutes or so and even though there is butter in the recipe, I really can't resist a little more melted butter on top.

Zucchini soup This is an easy healthy soup. I skip the bread and herbs and just make the soup. Add a squeeze of lemon, a dollop of plain non-fat yogurt, or a swirl of buttermilk to elevate the flavor.
Rosemary biscuits (topping for this root vegetable pie, which is a great vegetarian entree)

Eating Down the Fridge - Day 1

2009-03-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of Eating Down the Fridge. EDF is a week long challenge to not go food shopping but instead, eat what you have in your pantry and fridge and freezer. That stuff frozen in a tupperware? Defrost it. The can of butter beans that you bought even though you don't know if you like butter beans? Open it. The fish sauce and curry paste leftover from your one attempt at making Thai food? Use it.
Obviously I went grocery shopping over the weekend, right before the challenge began. I went with the plan to buy ingredients which I could combine with food I already had in the house and for the next 7 days I can't go pick up anything I forgot. (I think it's also part of the challenge to not go out to eat every night.) I'll be out of town for the last few days of the challenge so to be fair, I'll extend it through next Tuesday. I know you can't wait to see what I come up with on those last few days. Probably something made from frozen peas and tofu.
This challenge is about being creative, being frugal and green, not wasteful. It's also about getting my name and blog listed here and having to live up to the deal.
If you want to join me, please leave a comment!

Day 1: Parmesan-thyme biscuits topped with ham and brie, salad with pears, bleu cheese, walnuts, and Craisins, fruit crumble with ice cream

Biscuits w/ Ham and Brie:
Parmesan - fridge
Butter - fridge
Thyme - freezer
Flour, baking powder - pantry
Ham - fresh
Brie - fresh, buy one get one free (this means I have a lot of brie to deal with in the next few weeks)

Salad
Lettuce - fridge
Pears - fresh
Bleu cheese - fridge, leftover from pasty making
Walnuts - fridge
Craisins - pantry
Oil and vinegar - pantry

Fruit crumble:
Apples - fresh
Blueberries - fridge
Brown sugar - pantry
Almonds - fridge
Flour - pantry
Butter - fridge
Ice cream - freezer

Looks Can Be Deceiving

2009-03-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

I now keep my camera in the kitchen and rush to take pictures of anything I make that looks promising. But lately it's been a matter of "looking promising" and not delivering. Isn't that the worst?
I mean, doesn't this look appealing (for meat lovers)?

Meatballs are getting cozy with ham in my Dutch oven. I added the rest of the sauce ingredients and let them stew for 30 minutes. Soon after, I'm settled with a plate in front of the TV for Lost.

I had high hopes for this recipe and it looks sensational. So what's the problem? Sometimes looks can be deceiving.
I usually pride myself on being a good recipe picker. Smoky Meatballs in Serrano Ham Tomato Sauce had all the indications of a good recipe. Basic ingredients with a twist (smoked paprika in the meatballs for a smoky flavor, ham in the tomato sauce), the make ahead aspect of the meatballs, and the addition of chunks of red bell pepper allowing the recipe to stand as a one-dish dinner. But overall the recipe was lacking something, namely salt. Only 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt was allocated to a full pound of ground beef, and no salt was added to the rest of the recipe. As any Top Chef judge would say, the dish was underseasoned.
Not that one cannot add salt after tasting the dish. But as I mentioned, I was already well settled into the couch with my plate watching a gripping episode of Lost and never got around to finding the salt shaker. I was only aware enough to know I was disappointed in the recipe.
(Note that when I was warming up the leftovers at work, a woman standing next to me nearly drooled into my tupperware as she asked me what I was eating. At least that made me feel good.)

I tried another promising recipe the next week. Malaysian Chicken Curry with Sweet and Spicy Peppers:

Again with the red peppers. I'm sensing a theme. Do red bell peppers suck all the taste out of things? I'm not sure where this recipe went wrong. The chicken was seasoned well, browned in the pan and then simmered in coconut milk with curry powder, red peppers, and jalapeños. I forgot to start the rice so I turned to my favorite rice substitute, couscous, which is always ready in five minutes and does a good job of soaking up the coconut curry. And yet. The recipe didn't wow. And there is too much good food out there to settle for a lackluster performance.

So did I make anything good recently? I've been making this trout for a few years now, and it always satisfies yet doesn't look exciting:

I need a supply of these unassuming recipes which are delicious and memorable enough that I can keep coming back to them to recover from bad recipes.

Indian Grilled Trout (adapted from "step-by-step Indian")

4 trout fillets
2 tablespoons butter
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/2 fresh green chile, deseeded and chopped
1/2 tsp chopped ginger root or ginger paste
3/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp ground cumin
Grated zest from half a lemon
Juice from one lemon
salt

Season the trout and place in broiler pan. Heat the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add the crushed garlic, chile, chopped ginger, and spices and cook very gently for 30 seconds, stirring. Remove the pan from heat and stir in lemon zest and juice. Spoon half the mixture over the trout pieces and cook under the broiler for five minutes. Turn the fish over, spoon the remaining mixture over the fish and broil for a further five minutes. Garnish with cilantro and lemon wedges.

Spring

2009-03-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

It happens every March. A stranger strikes up a conversation with me by asking whether I'm on spring break. I'm not in New Orleans collecting beads and I'm not on a beach in Mexico with 20 of my BFFs, but apparently I still look like I eat dorm food and have an undecided major. Because today for no apparent reason, as I was minding my own business on the elliptical machine, a woman asked me if I was on spring break. I wish.
I'm not 19 anymore no matter what I look like, and I don't get a spring break. But it is March 1st. And even though it snowed today, with temperatures in the teens and windchills in single digits, I'm thinking about spring. Spring rolls to be specific.
Isn't this a wonderful image of spring? Slices of carrot, cucumber, and jicama are marinated in rice vinegar and nested in a rice paper wrapper, along with softened glass noodles, fresh mint, and cilantro. Damp lettuce leaves are arranged on top to keep the rolls from drying out, and for a darling presentation.
I first made these spring rolls for my housewarming party when I was looking for a vegetarian appetizer that didn't involve cheese. (You can of course add cold cooked shrimp or pork to the spring rolls as found in many Vietnamese restaurants.) The spring rolls by themselves are like a salad without dressing. So the key is a good peanut sauce. I used San-J brand bottled sauce (yes I know I didn't make it myself but I got it from someone who left the country and I've had it sitting in my pantry for a long time). I did buy some peanuts, crush them up and mix them into the sauce.
If you eat the peanut sauce by itself, it will be concentrated and intense, salty and sweet and sour flavors overstimulating your tongue. If you eat that spring roll by itself, it will taste as dry as a college statistics class (wink). But something funny happens when you slice the spring roll in half and spoon peanut sauce into one half. Take a bite of the combo and the sauce mellows out while the crunchy veggies in a chewy wrapper come to life like a barren tree in the spring. Which is coming any day now.

Note: I found spring roll wrappers at Whole Foods in the Asian food section. They are dried and need a quick soak in hot water to soften them so they can be rolled up, and then are completely edible. They are not the same as egg roll wrappers which are usually found in the produce section near the bean sprouts and cannot be eaten unless cooked. Fillings are up to you. Place the filling on the spring roll wrapper, about 1/3 of the way from the left side, then fold the left side over the filling. Fold down the top and fold up the bottom, then continue to roll up from the left side.

Hot Dry Meat Curry

2009-02-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

I don't normally try to grow things. I do not own plants, I don't have a vegetable garden or a windowsill full of herbs. I'm not the Martha Stewart homemaker type with a clean crafty home. I cook and that's about all the homey stuff I do.
But if you saw this in my fridge, you might think I was trying to grow something:

You might think to yourself, how sad that Shalaka doesn't know her plant has died. But really all I'm doing is extending the life of my cilantro. Cilantro is not expensive. But you buy a bunch of it and use a few leaves chopped into your homemade guacamole or sprinkled in a curry (see below) and before you know it the bunch is turning brown and leaking something across the bottom of your fridge. Oh cilantro, how fleeting is your life.

So now I put my cilantro on life support. A glass of water is all it takes. This cilantro is about three weeks old, wilted but not going bad. There are still plenty of leaves to sprinkle into my Hot Dry Meat Curry.

If you think that I'm writing about this recipe because of its name, you'd be correct. I'm also writing about it because it was surprisingly tasty. But the name is ridiculous! There was never a more generic name for a recipe than Hot Dry Meat Curry. Most curries are hot. Many curries have meat. The word that got me was Dry. A meat curry is usually saucy and wet. Curry spices can be used on meats that are roasted or fried but when the dish is called a curry, it seems like an oxymoron to call it a dry curry. So the name and the fact that I had nearly all the ingredients convinced me that I should make it. Besides, my cilantro was in top form.

An aside on Indian food: I don't cook Indian food very often but I do have a couple of good cookbooks plus I can call my mom any time and get a random recipe without measurements. The fact that recipes require a lot of ingredients and spices, time to marinate, and time to stew make it unlikely that I'll choose anything but the most straightforward of recipes. What could be more straightforward than Hot Dry Meat Curry?

The recipe called for extra hot curry paste and the only thing I could think of to fit that description was the red curry paste usually used in Thai curries. To that I added chili powder, five spice powder, turmeric, bay leaves, and the usual onion, garlic and ginger. So the Hot part was covered. To take care of the Meat part, I added lamb shoulder chopped, with the bone. But in contrast to the Dry part, the recipe did call for coconut milk, which is added after the meat has cooked for 20 minutes. Then the meat and spices are simmered in coconut milk until the meat is cooked, and finally the liquid is reduced. Aha! Hot Dry Meat Curry at last, though if you're impatient like me you'll still end up with some good liquid curry to sop up with your naan. Don't forget to garnish with cilantro.

Hot Dry Meat Curry (from The Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion, finely sliced
1 piece fresh ginger, crushed
4 cloves garlic, crushed
6-8 curry leaves (I used bay leaves)
3 tablespoons extra hot curry paste (I used Thai red curry paste)
3 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon five-spice powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
salt to taste
2 lbs lean lamb, beef or pork
3/4 cup coconut milk
chopped tomato and cilantro leaves, to garnish

The recipe doesn't require marinating, but I like to marinate my lamb overnight so it tastes better. A typical Indian marinade is ginger, garlic, salt, chili powder, and turmeric.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the onion, ginger, garlic and curry leaves until the onion is soft. Stir in the curry paste, chili powder, five-spice powder, turmeric, and salt and cook for a few moments, stirring frequently. Add the meat and stir over medium heat to brown the pieces. Keep stirring until the oil separates. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Add the coconut milk, mix well and simmer until the meat is cooked. Toward the end of cooking, uncover the pan to reduce the excess liquid. Garnish and serve hot.

Molten

2009-02-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

This picture was supposed to be better. There was another, blurrier picture I took before this one, so I only posted the one. Honestly, I should have taken more pictures but I was in such a hurry to eat this Hot Chocolate Fudge Cake, this molten, gooey, chocolaty melted goodness that I hurriedly snapped some shots and ditched the camera in favor of a spoon.

Luckily the recipe in Cooking Light has a beautiful picture - but then, they don't use real food in those pictures do they?

This was my third attempt at baking the cake. It took me three attempts to even get a picture worthy cake because the cooking time on the recipe was far too long for molten, and my first two attempts resulted in very good but fully cooked cake. Such a disappointment when I wanted a messy melting spoonful in my mouth, not a dry cakey one. I've wanted some good molten chocolate cake ever since a long ago meal at M&S Grill in Minneapolis where I had one for dessert. So for my final attempt, I reduced the baking time drastically, from 21 minutes to 11 minutes.

This recipe actually has espresso in it, which means for the last three nights I've been restless and sleeping fitfully and am writing a long blog entry at 11:45pm. While I don't like coffee flavors much, espresso mixed with chocolate is wonderful. I'll write about chocolate espresso cookies one of these days. However, for the caffeine sensitive I would tone it down a bit in this recipe or get rid of it completely. When I lived with Kristen the dessert girl, she started popping chocolate covered espresso beans that someone gave her, and then had trouble sleeping for days until she made the connection. Espresso is strong stuff.

The original recipe was for ten servings. Now depending on how well you know me, you know that a)I don't have nine other people living with me, b) I can barely gather nine friends in the same zip code, and c) I am somewhat smaller than I have been in the past and intend to stay that way.

So making ten cakes was not option. I only have four ramekins anyway because my mom did not expect me to gather more than three friends in the same zip code when she bought them for me. So I divided the recipe by three and made three perfect servings (perfect = slightly large than Cooking Light deems appropriate).

Here it is then, the proportions for three servings. You can find the remaining instructions via the recipe link.

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 2/3 teaspoons instant espresso powder
1/2 teaspoons baking powder
Dash of salt
1 1/3 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup egg substitute
1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ounce bar dark (71% cocoa) chocolate (such as Valrhona Le Noir Amer), finely chopped
2/3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Bellywashed

2009-02-21T07:22:00.000-08:00

When I moved to Deerfield, I was a sophomore in high school and like any teenager I was worried about fitting in. If I wanted any friends at all, I had to do what the Deerfield kids did - luckily this wasn't drugs, drinking, or unprotected sex. (In fact these Deerfield kids were disgustingly smart and over-achieving). But one thing that was popular with my new friends was pineapple pizza.
The first time I was invited over for pizza, it was a given that we were getting pineapple. Where was the pepperoni, sausage, green pepper, mushrooms, etc. I wondered. Those were the popular toppings. The pineapple, that was like the misfit, the Ally Sheedy of toppings.
Well I didn't want to be the misfit so I said nothing, ate my pineapple pizza and thought it was weird. And then the next time we had it, I was prepared and kind of used to it if not loving it. By the third time, I was enjoying it - and finding that this Deerfield place wasn't half bad.
How did this happen? How did pineapple pizza, something I had never conceived of at age 14, become one of my favorite pizzas to this day?
There's only one explanation - I was bellywashed. That's right - bellywashed. My stomach was brainwashed into believing that I liked this odd combination of sweet and savory. And I would never go back. That's what happens when you're bellywashed. Someone else's favorite food (often your significant other or roommate or person who just won't leave you alone) becomes your favorite food. At first you only eat it to be nice or to not make a fuss. The next thing you know, you're buying things like fresh fennel to roast, and never looking back.
That's my goal in cooking for friends. Yes, I want to make them food that they enjoy, but I also want to convert them to loving food that I enjoy. (Why do you think I write this blog?) And the funny thing is, when they begin to love it, I remember why I loved it in the first place. So when my friend Monika raves about goat cheese mushroom tarts with GOAT CHEESE in all caps, or my friend Katy repeatedly makes a garlic shrimp recipe I gave her or my dad keeps asking me to make risotto, I know they've been bellywashed. And that makes me feel like the popular kid.

Dessert Girl

2009-02-17T19:36:00.000-08:00

I never used to be a dessert girl. I don't have a sweet tooth. I'll order an appetizer and forgo dessert. I hate it when Thai curries are sweet, when salad dressings are sweet, when barbecue sauce is sweet - as barbecue sauce tends to be. I prefer a spicy bloody Mary to a syrupy daiquiri and a salted yogurt lassi to a mango one. I love it when you can taste the salt in chocolate chip cookies, a cheese plate makes the perfect end to a meal, I like bacon in my ice cream for pete's sake.
No, I definitely don't have a sweet tooth.
But the funny thing about dessert is that once you start eating it, you can't stop. Oh, I don't mean in one sitting, that would be disgusting but have no long term effects. I mean, night after night you will begin craving dessert. You'll scoop Nutella out of the jar with a spoon for the hazelnut sugar rush. You'll concoct odd combinations of puff pastry, chocolate chips, and frozen peaches. You'll make a microwave brownie.
I didn't eat dessert every night growing up. This is because I tend not to like Indian desserts (too sweet) but the only things lying around the house were Indian ice cream or barfi. I was rarely hungry for dessert. Everything changed after living with Kristen in Chicago. She was always talking about dessert. She's been known to scoop frosting out of the container and eat it with graham crackers, a far more ridiculous dessert than a spoonful of Nutella. Her boyfriend calls "eating ice cream" one of her hobbies. Kristen wanted dessert all the time, and she made quite a few good ones. I got recipes like chocolate espresso cookies, ginger ice cream, and football shaped mini carrot cakes from her. I also got my dessert craving from her, because now I always feel like a sweet treat after a meal.
So where does this lead except to a story about making dessert? Last weekend, Katy (another fan of dessert, specifically cookies) and I took a chocolate cooking class at The Chopping Block in Chicago. We made chocolate souffles, chocolate espresso pudding parfaits, and devil's food cake with buttercream frosting. Of the three, I was most excited about and most gratified by the souffles. I never made a souffle before, I was unsure how difficult it was. Turned out to be easy. You can find a chocolate souffle recipe anywhere so I won't type it out for you. Here are the basics: Separate your eggs properly. You can even buy an egg separator, which is basically a plastic spoon with a space to let the white drip out while the yolk stays put. Beat the yolks with sugar, vanilla, and melted chocolate. Whip your whites to stiff peaks, then fold into the chocolate mixture. Pour into ramekins and bake for 10 minutes or until just set. That's it. Instead of having to concoct strange things with leftovers, you can be sophisticated and make chocolate souffles. So maybe I am a dessert girl now, although I still like bacon in my ice cream. But that's a story for another day.

It's a Pasty!

2009-02-14T05:59:00.000-08:00

September is particularly chilly in Marquette, Michigan. My roommate Jessica's family cabin was located on Lake Superior and she had invited 10 of our closest friends to spend Labor Day weekend there in September 2000. We had underestimated the rapid temperature decline that far north as soon as summer was over. Bundled up in sweatshirts and jeans, we took windy walks on the beach, played pool at empty bars with locals giving us dirty looks, and searched for a local specialty - pasties.
Not to be confused with pasties. One is a meat and potato and rutabaga filled pastry and the other is an adhesive strip that is literally the fine line between going topless and not. We were looking for the first. Although the men (with 14 year old teenage boy mentality) liked to say we were looking for the second.
They are spelled differently in the singular (pasty vs. pastie) and pronounced differently. Paaaasties are a comfort food. Pay-sties sound uncomfortable to remove.
The origin of a pasty is actually England, Cornwall to be specific. Why this savory turnover became a local specialty in Marquette must have something to do with the English origins of the locals. I love a savory turnover. It has all the elements of a hearty meal (meat, potatoes, bread) in a tidy package. A good crust is key, as is a good steak which steams inside the package and becomes quite tender. Other versions of this food I enjoy are Jamaican meat pies (look for them in the Montego Bay airport for $2 each), my mom's kheema (ground and spiced goat meat) stuffed in bread and pressed in a panini press, or Chinese crescent moon turnovers filled with curried ground chicken.
The pasties we found in Marquette were traditional. The pasty recipe I found in Bon Appétit this month was modern and slightly upscale, as BA tends to be. But it had all the comfort of a good pasty. The crust was excellent. Because it requires a significant amount of chilling time in the fridge, I made it the night before in my food processor, blending shortening, butter, flour, salt, baking powder, and ice water into a sticky dough. I divided it into equal portions and wrapped it in plastic. I also caramelized some onions and refrigerated them overnight. The next evening I cut up some steak (tri-tip from Trader Joe's) and crumbled some blue cheese (goat cheese blue cheese from Whole Foods, a creamy not too strong blue). I rolled out the dough into circl-ish shapes and piled on the onions, steak chunks, and blue cheese. After brushing the edges with egg white, I folded and sealed the dough. The style of folding is up to you though ideally the package is a half moon shape with prettily crimped edges. But I was hungry and the dough was sticky so I ended with some odd shaped packages. I cut slits in the top to let the steam out, and put the pasties in a 400 degree oven for half an hour.

My pasty didn't end up being a perfect shape but it was steamy and moist inside, flaky and buttery on the outside. By itself and this size, it makes a satisfying meal. The recipe for four pasties can easily be made into six smaller portions and served with salad or other side dishes. It's plenty of food. But please pronounce it correctly when you serve it.

Beef Pasties with Caramelized Onions and Stilton Cheese

Caramelize

2009-02-10T20:36:00.000-08:00

Some people are like onions. They have a sharp bite and they're hard to take raw, but they have their uses. Cooked correctly, those too tangy onions can become sweet and succulent. If you want to get the best out of them, sauté them slowly in a light olive oil, for 30 to 45 minutes. Keep the heat on medium. Don't turn it up or you'll burn them and ruin the effect. Watch them turn a warm brown shade, the smaller slices getting crispy, and notice the air filling with a delicious savory scent reminiscent of seared meat or buttery fried potatoes. You've just caramelized onions, bringing out and browning the sugar in them. Now they don't have to be hidden in a supporting role but stand proudly on their own in a dish. Aren't they beautiful?

Caramelization takes patience and so do some people. It's amazing what a little warmth can do.

You Can Wrap a Crêpe Around Anything

2009-02-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

It was hot that day walking down the Rue Mouffetard in Paris. My friend Katy and I had already been to a couple of museums and the Latin Quarter that morning, and it was barely lunchtime. But we were in the perfect place for lunch because the Rue Mouffetard has a number of food stalls, tiny shops, and an open air market.
We were in Paris for only two days and I had a list of food I wanted to eat while I was there. Duck confit, paté, pain au chocolat, a variety of cheeses, and of course crêpes. I had read in my Lonely Planet guidebook about some crêpe stands which could be found on Rue Mouffetard. So I suggested that we should find one of them for lunch.
Katy was hesitant. I couldn't figure out why. I had been eating crêpes for years, since my 7th grade french class went to La Crêperie in Chicago for dinner. I had an escargot filled crêpe in Ft. Lauderdale of all places. My roommate Kristen's German classmate held famous crêpe breakfasts with a buffet of fillings. I took visitors in Minneapolis to the Mall of America crêpe stand. And (naturally) I finally got my own crêpe pan and started making them myself, filling them with mushrooms and bacon when I took brunch to my friends Dan and Bonnie after they had a baby, or spending a day making three dozen crêpes for a dinner party for 8, which included a choice of fillings of chicken and mushroom, or ham, spinach and cheese, as well as fruit, whipped cream, and nutella for dessert. As I said to Kristen when she took me to the famous crêpe breakfast, you can wrap a crêpe around anything.
Eating a crêpe in Paris was not optional. So I dragged Katy to the crêpe stand. The options included fillings like ham, cheese, mushrooms, and tomatoes. What was unusual about the crêpes offered was that they came with lettuce, like a deli sandwich. Katy ordered reluctantly, got her crêpe, and then was surprised to find out it was quite good. Why wouldn't it be, I asked. It turns out she had never had a savory crêpe before, crêpes were always a dessert in her mind. Until she tried it, a savory crêpe was the equivalent of having a ham and cheese cake (given the stuff I see done on Iron Chef, this may not be half bad).
Savory crêpes are the best kind. Cheesy, sauce oozing out the sides, flavorful meat and veggies on the inside of a buttery thin pancake. The batter can be made without sugar, neutral, so the crêpe can be filled with savory ingredients for the entree and sweet ingredients for dessert. Here's my foolproof recipe, easy to memorize in case you have to make dessert for a cooking challenge, and a suggestion for a savory crêpe dinner. But of course, you can wrap them around anything in your kitchen.

Spinach Stuffed Crêpes with Feta Cheese White Sauce

Crêpe Batter:
1 cup milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/2 cup flour

Filling and Sauce:
6 cups packed spinach leaves
1 tablespoon water
1/2 tsp salt
dash of pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons feta cheese
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Make the crêpes: Beat together the ingredients for the crêpe batter. An immersion blender works great for this to get the flour completely incorporated into the wet ingredients. Heat a crêpe pan or non-stick frying pan on medium heat. It is ready when a drop of water sizzles on it. Add about 1/4 cup of batter to the pan and swirl to coat. Add a little more to fill in the holes. This does not have to look perfect. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes, until you can slide a spatula underneath and the crêpe holds together and is lightly browned. Flip and cook for another minute. Remove to a plate and keep covered with plastic wrap or paper towels, or keep warm in a 200 degree oven. Repeat with remainder of batter, should make about six crêpes.

Make the filling: Put spinach leaves and 1 tablespoon water in a large pot. Cover and heat over medium heat until spinach is wilted, about five minutes. Remove from heat and sprinkle with 1/2 tsp of salt and a dash of pepper.

Make the sauce: Remove the spinach from the pot and reheat the pot on medium heat. Add butter and allow it to melt. When just melted, add the flour, whisking until smooth. This forms a roux, the base for many sauces. Cook roux about two minutes but do not brown. (Brown and dark brown sauces can be made by browning the butter, but in this case we're making a white sauce which would be aesthetically less pleasing if browned). Whisk in the milk slowly, adding a little at a time to maintain a smooth sauce. Sprinkle in the feta cheese and allow it to melt, then remove sauce from heat. Stir in nutmeg.

Assembly: Distribute the spinach among the crêpes and roll them up. Top with sauce. Sprinkle additional feta on top. Serves three, two crêpes each.

Fresh Corn

2009-02-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I slid a knife down the side of a cob of corn and then held the cob up to my nose to smell it. Have you ever done this? The cob has the most delicious scent, like fresh yeasty bread. You can only smell it after you cut the kernels off. The outside of the corn smells good too, fresh and sweet, especially in the peak season. But the inside - wow! Bottle that scent.

So that's why corn off the cob tastes better than frozen corn kernels. But the cob is so flavorful that it's used to add depth to soups and custards before discarding. Unlike a banana peel, useless after removal, the cob seems a waste to just throw away.

I know it's funny to write about corn in the middle of winter, but when the temperature drops into the single digits yet again, I need a reminder of summer. I used to roll my eyes at recipes that called for fresh corn, resorting to my trusty staple of frozen corn for all recipes. They're not bad, but they don't have the milky sweet taste of fresh, which can be eaten raw or just barely cooked. You can't go wrong if you serve them because they require so little effort. But if you want a recipe, try this. Cut up some bacon (about 1 strip per corn cob) and fry it with some chopped scallions. Cut the fresh kernels off the cob and sprinkle them with chili powder, then add to the bacon and scallions and saute for just a minute or two. Add some salt and pepper to taste.

Johnny Cakes

2009-02-02T19:51:00.000-08:00

When my friend Jess visited me in Minneapolis, I took her to a little restaurant called Cafe Maude for brunch. She noted that they had a most unusual brunch menu (offering things like chorizo hash and tempura asparagus) and happily ordered a Croque Madame. I ordered the Roasted Sweet Corn Johnny Cakes with sauteed shrimp.
I never had johnny cakes before. Johnny cakes were originally made back in pioneer days. The flat cakes were a mix of cornmeal, milk, and salt - simple and inexpensive to make on the frontier. They were cooked on a griddle, or in the absence of one, on the blade of a hoe. That is why in some recipes they are called hoe cakes. This makes them sound like a Little Debbie snack cake!
When Jess got the Croque Madame she ordered, the waitress brought me the wrong order. Instead of johnny cakes she arrived with flatbread. So I sent it back and waited. Jess chowed on her sandwich while I watched. When she was done eating, I started shooting the waitress nasty looks. She stopped by once and said the kitchen was backed up. Finally, after 45 minutes, she brought out my order and said it was on the house. And even though one of the cakes was burned, they were good enough for me to forgive the poor service and plan on making my own, timely johnny cakes.
A modern johnny cake recipe, like the one in Cooking Light that I found, has more than just cornmeal, milk and salt. Fresh corn, egg, and leavening make the cakes puffy and moist. The recipe also calls for scallops, which I replaced with shrimp. The sauce, a blend of mayo, ketchup and mustard with sour cream, slightly resembled McDonald's "orange sauce", and would probably be better with just sour cream, onion and herbs.

The johnny cakes turned out beautifully and would be ideal for someone who likes cornbread and fresh corn. My favorite part was the extra shrimp that I fried up to garnish the cakes. I doused it in lemon juice, salt, pepper, and chili powder and tossed it into the pan. I added some of the leftover corn kernels and then arranged the garnish on the cakes with a scoop of sauce and some chopped chives. I don't know what took them so long at Cafe Maude...

Carrots Do Have A Place in Cake

2009-01-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

Carrot cake is like a presidential candidate. Everyone knows carrot cake. Many like it and some can't stand it. Everyone has an opinion.
"It's more about the cream cheese frosting than the cake."
"Next time you should make little orange carrots out of the frosting."
"Carrots have no place in cake."

These are just some of the opinions I collected when I brought carrot cake into work. I was reluctant to bring it in because I thought it was a delicious recipe and wanted to keep it all for myself. But I figured it would be best to not eat half a sheet cake.

Who thought to put carrots in a cake? It sounds like a ridiculous idea, and yet it's delicious. Are there any other vegetables we're forgetting to put in desserts? Cabbage eclairs? Artichoke ice cream? Cucumber flan? Radish rice pudding? I could go on...

My recipe was from Cooking Light, noted as receiving the test kitchen's highest rating at the time it was published in 2005. It was a traditional rendering of the cake. Packed full of moist shredded carrots, a touch of cinnamon, brown sugar, butter, and eggs. Buttermilk added moisture without as much fat. Nothing unusual like coconut, pineapple, raisins, or nuts in the recipe. The cream cheese frosting was similarly straightforward, blending cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar. No distinct flavors like maple, orange, or Irish cream. (For these and other unusual carrot cakes, search on Epicurious) A plain and simple traditional carrot cake was exactly what I was looking for, and it turned out exactly right.

Growing up, I had no idea about cream cheese frosting. I didn't know that a requirement of carrot cake was that it was cut square with a thick white layer of frosting on top or cut as a wedge just so each piece got its own orange frosting carrot. I thought carrot cake was baked in a bundt pan, sliced so that each piece was the shape of a gumdrop, and served unfrosted. I thought this because carrot cake was the only American dessert my mother knew how to make (now she makes whiskey cake quite often too), and that was how she made it. She had acquired a recipe from someone, and made it every time we had guests - which was often since my parents love to entertain. I remember standing at the mixer adding in coconut and mounds of carrots, watching the batter turn a pale orange, folding in the nuts. It was a hearty and dense cake. It could have taken you out back and roughed you up a little, so you didn't forget it was made of vegetable. It was its own breed of cake.

Traditional carrot cake is gentle, with a light, airy crumb. I like my Cooking Light version for those characteristics, and for not being too sweet or rich, but it does leave you craving more cake. I liked my mother's cake for being ultimately satisfying and filling.

Cooking Light recipe: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1054818

Mom's recipe: TBA

Splenda

2009-01-24T10:45:00.000-08:00

A quick comment on Splenda. I like using Splenda in place of sugar in some desserts. I don't understand the full chemistry of it, but it has worked really well in banana bread, white chocolate cheesecake, and peanut butter cookies. I would not recommend it for ice cream or the microwave brownie recipe. The distinction appears to be in the number and strength of other flavors in the recipe. White chocolate cheesecake, for example, has sugar in the white chocolate and that flavor dominates the cake so Splenda works just fine. There are also many other ingredients in it like cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, and vanilla. In ice cream, the sugar is combined with cream, milk and maybe one other flavor, so the flavor of the Splenda has nowhere to hide.
In the microwave brownie I have a feeling the chemistry of the Splenda combined with the microwave cooking method just didn't get along. It was hideous.

Too Much For One Night

2009-01-20T20:03:00.000-08:00

There was something about this recipe that I was drawn to. I think it was the chive crust. I was looking at a recipe for beef and leek pot pie. You always hear about chicken pot pie, but rarely beef, and it sounded infinitely better than chicken. And I never get to cook leeks! Or do anything with chives. I put beef and leek pot pie on my list for the week.
The only problem was the amount of prep work required. Cut 1.5 lbs of beef into 1 inch cubes and brown it. Chop up onions, celery, carrots and potato. Make and chill the crust. Cook the beef (essentially making a stew) for an hour. It was really a weekend kind of meal. I decided to make it on a Tuesday night.
I got home at 6:30 and was in the kitchen sharpening my knives by 6:40. I started chopping and prepping. I had already cut up the meat in the morning but that only saved me about 10 minutes. I spend 40 minutes chopping the vegetables and browning the meat. Then everything went into a big pot to stew for an hour.
In the meantime I made the crust. Crust is always made the same way. Mix up dry ingredients like flour, salt and chives. Add the fat - in this case, shortening, and create a coarse meal. Add ice water until just moist enough to come together in a dough. It turns out I didn't have any ice water ready, and I never filled my ice cube tray since moving in. Ice water is used for making crusts to keep the fat in solid form while the dough comes together. Later when the dough is in the oven and the fat melts, it leaves pockets of air which create a flaky crust. Otherwise the crust can become gluey and dense.
I put a mug of water into the freezer and waited for it to chill. I finished prepping the vegetables that were to be stirred into the stew before putting it in a pan to bake. I whisked some flour with beef broth, which would be used to thicken the stew. Finally my water was chilled, my dough formed and went into the fridge. It was supposed to chill for 30 more minutes.
At this point, the stew had been stewing for the appointed hour which meant it was nearly 8:30. I allowed the dough a mere 15 minutes of chilling time while I poured the stew into a pan. Then I rolled it out, slapped it onto the stew where it barely covered the entire pan. (Note that the recipe called for 11X7 and all I had was 13X9.) Another 20 minutes for the pot pie to bake and then it was ready. I was too tired to eat more than a small square.

Beef and Leek Pot Pie
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1714572

Pros: Uses less common ingredients like leeks and chives, loaded with veggies besides leeks like carrots, potatoes and peas, and everyone likes a good crust
Cons: Takes way too freaking long to make

Conclusion: Make a beef stew. Enjoy. The next day, make a crust and pot pie the leftovers. It's just too much for one night.

Five Minute Brownie

2009-01-18T06:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I made a brownie. No, not brownies. One brownie. Better yet, I made it in under five minutes.
How does one make a brownie that fast? One way is to buy Betty Crocker Warm Delights: http://www.bettycrocker.com/Products/Warm-Delights/ But what if I'm home at 9pm and craving dessert? I don't want to go out and buy something. If I have the raw ingredients, I don't want to spend an hour making and baking a pan of brownies. The solution is the very simple five minute brownie - made in a mug.
This recipe from Instructables.com (via the Chicago Tribune) can be mixed in a few minutes and then is microwaved for 1 - 1.5 minutes. That's it! It's not as good as a great brownie mix which is often more dense and intense. But the reward to effort ratio is enormous. I found that the portion was pretty large and I only needed to eat half of it in one sitting (I at the other half later that night) so it could serve two, but I wouldn't bother cutting it in half. I also found that the cooled off brownie that I ate later was actually more dense so I think some of the liquid had evaporated. If you can hold off from immediately digging in, it might be worth letting the brownie cool. But then five minute brownies aren't made for holding off.

Microwave chocolate mug brownie

4 Tbsp flour
4 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp cocoa
Dash of salt
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp water
1/4 tsp vanilla

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large coffee mug. Add oil, water and vanilla and mix thoroughly, making sure there are no clumps of flour left at the bottom of the mug.
Microwave on high for 1 to 1.5 minutes. It should not be quite set in the center. Cool a couple of minutes and eat right out of the mug.

See http://www.instructables.com/id/Mug_Brownie/ for comments and suggestions for alterations to the recipe. People have added peanut butter, baking powder, powdered sugar, peppermint candy, etc.

Hot Dish

2009-01-14T20:16:00.000-08:00

Another new cookbook I have that I forgot to mention is The Great Minnesota Hot Dish, which I received as a going away present when I left Minnesota. For the uninformed reader, "hot dish" in Minnesota is like casserole in the rest of the country - a pan of meat, cheese, veggies, and/or rice and perhaps a tater tot or two, which is combined with a canned creamy soup and crunchy topping, baked, and brought to pot lucks, wakes, or served for supper. I have a dish towel which displays hot dishes by region across the state of Minnesota. In the twin cities, it's Tater Tot Hot Dish and Bologna Supper, in Duluth it's Shepherd's Pie, near the Boundary Waters it's Foil Packet Dinner, in the northwest corner it's Jiffy Tuna Hot Dish and Hawaiian Meatballs, and right before you cross into Fargo it's American Chop Suey and Impossible Hamburger Pie.
The names are often better than the flavor, I'm guessing.

The cookbook recipes ranged from the safe: Chicken and Rice Hot Dish, Swedish Meatballs, Cheesy Spaghetti Hot Dish, and Cheesy Fish, Rice and Asparagus
...to the gourmet: Tuna Broccoli Brie Hot Dish, Salmon with Saffron Rice, Dilled-Scalloped Potatoes
...to the downright disgusting: Spam Hot Dish, Dried Beef Hot Dish, Tofu Potato Hot Dish

I'm not too keen on making things like hot dish because I end up with far too many servings for one person (I don't want to eat hot dish for a week) and pouring canned soup over everything doesn't strike me as the best way to add flavor. But I'll give any cookbook a try.

I tried a very safe recipe to kick things off: Chicken Artichoke and Rice. With chicken pieces (I used thighs), frozen artichokes, and long grain rice, it was a hot dish with no surprises and simple flavors. Rice cooked in chicken broth with garlic, onions, lemon juice, and herbs had wonderful flavor and the only problem was there was not enough of it. The proportions seemed to be way off with only a half cup of rice for four servings. You should estimate about 1/3 cup of rice per person you want to serve. The chicken would be tastier if it were marinated in lemon and garlic overnight. But then hot dish is not known for flavorful meat. Still, I would make something like this again with tweaks to the recipe.

Next hot dish on the horizon: Maybe Parmesan Shrimp Hot Dish. No canned soup, and if I can get over the combo of clam juice and catsup in the recipe, I might like it.

Unplanned Pumpkin

2009-01-09T20:30:00.000-08:00

Each week I pick out some recipes to make, write up a grocery list, and get around to making some but not all of my recipes. Sometimes I can't find one ingredient, like dried porcini mushrooms, or I have lunch plans or dinner plans, or my leftovers last longer than I expected. But sometimes I'll have a week like this one where I ate everything in my fridge over the course of the week, and I ran out of planned dinners by Thursday night (actually by Wednesday night - maybe I didn't plan so well).
I came home at 7:30 on Thursday and looked in my freezer. The four remaining potstickers in the package looked good. While I cooked the potstickers (pan fry for a minute until they are "potstuck" or brown on the bottom, then add a couple tablespoons of water, cover the pan and steam for 5-6 minutes. This gives you a great texture on the potsticker, different from steamed dumplings. I guess I could write a whole separate entry on dim sum!), I looked back in my freezer. I spotted a tupperware of frozen canned pumpkin, leftover from making pumpkin biscuits. Pumpkin freezes really well, so don't be afraid to try a recipe that leaves you with leftover canned pumpkin. Throw the extra in a tupperware in the freezer, I've used it months later. The pumpkin biscuits had required such a small amount of pumpkin that I had nearly a whole can left. Immediately I hit on the idea of making pumpkin soup.
I chopped a carrot and half an onion and started cooking them in a small quantity of butter while the pumpkin defrosted in the microwave. The carrot and onion base, commonly combined with celery, is called a mirepoix in French cooking, and is the base for quite a few soups. Then I added the pumpkin to the pot, with several cups of chicken broth made from bouillon, salt and pepper, and allowed the soup to cook until the carrots were soft enough to puree. My only mishap at this point was forgetting to cover the soup - the cooking pumpkin splatters quite a bit and was soon all over my stovetop and floor! After cleaning that up, I used my immersion blender with the appropriate attachment and blended the vegetables. I tasted it but it was a bit bland so then I spiced it up, adding brown sugar (just enough to cut the bitterness, not to make the soup sweet), cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, and cloves. Note that this is an appropriate use for ground ginger rather than fresh. It still didn't taste quite right, with the pumpkin giving off a slightly mealy flavor and texture. I had one more thing to add. I had some leftover heavy cream from the last time I made ice cream. I swirled some cream into the soup and tasted it. Now it was good enough to lick the bowl, and tasted even better the second day (rule of soups - they're always better after the flavors have a chance to meld overnight). Here's the approximate recipe:

Pumpkin Soup (3-4 servings)

1/2 tablespoon butter
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 can pumpkin puree
4 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 cup heavy cream

Place a pot on medium heat and add butter. When the butter melts, add carrots and onion. Cook until slightly soft, about four minutes. Add salt and pepper, stirring to coat vegetables. Add pumpkin and chicken broth and stir. Cover and simmer for ten minutes, until carrots beome soft and easily crushed. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Place soup in blender or use immersion blender to completely puree carrots and onions with pumpkin. Return to pot and heat on medium again. Stir in brown sugar and spices. Add heavy cream and continue to heat for two to three additional minutes. Serve with bread.

Cookbook update

2009-01-06T20:09:00.001-08:00

I've tried a few more recipes from my new cookbooks. First and foremost, the Bon Appetit cookbook had a delicious and simple pork cutlet recipe with a sauce made of figs, balsamic vinegar, shallots and cream. If you're trying to cut back, you can leave out the cream and it would still be delicious. Don't worry about finding fresh figs, the dried ones worked just fine. You can find the recipe here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pork-Cutlets-with-Figs-and-Balsamic-Vinegar-15604

Also from the BA cookbook, I tried to make a cornmeal crusted trout recipe. However, when I looked for cornmeal in the grocery store, all I could find was a five pound bag. I refuse to make that many corn muffins or cornmeal crusted meats. Since I had a bag of panko (Japanese bread crumbs) at home, I decided to make a panko crusted trout. Then I added a few spices to the coating, like red chili pepper and garam masala. Finally, the recipe called for a bed of watercress, which was also impossible to find in a grocery store not going by the name Whole Foods. So I ate my trout with rice. You can find the original recipe here, but my adjustments were quite tasty. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Crispy-Trout-with-Wilted-Watercress-107920

I tried a couple of recipes from the Giada cookbook but didn't quite follow directions properly. Never mind that the pasta with shrimp and lemon oil recipe said to drizzle the oil on at the end and I just went ahead and cooked the shrimp in it. It was infused with lemony flavor! And for the broiled zucchini with parmesan, I had to skip the broiling step after sauteing the zucchini. I was getting hungry!

New cookbooks are fun.

Another Use for Post-it Notes

2009-01-03T20:50:00.000-08:00

My friend Michelle asked me a good question. When I get a new cooking magazine in the mail, how do I keep track of all the recipes I want to make? Do I mark the pages or tear out the recipes? My answer, honestly, was that I either make the recipe right away or not at all. But as I thought about it, this seemed like a lame and inefficient way of dealing with all the great recipes I come across. I feel like there is never enough time to make all the recipes I find, but I still have days when I can't think of anything to make or nothing I think of sounds interesting or delicious. So I have to go flip through some old magazines and an hour later I finally find something that I want to make.
So now I have a new strategy. Post-it notes! I'll slap a post-it on the front of the magazine and write down all the recipes from that issue that sounded good or that I wanted to try. It's an interesting exercise because as I flip through the magazine I find myself only writing down the recipes that I can truly picture myself purchasing the ingredients for and making. Although the sausage, roasted red pepper and spinach torta rustica combines bread, meat and veggies in a quiche-style dish that I would certainly enjoy, I'm not compelled to make it. On the other hand, the mac with two cheeses is more appealing to me - maybe because the second cheese is goat (first cheese is cheddar) and it's topped with caramelized shallots. Whatever the logic, it reduces the number of recipes I'm willing to try to about three per issue.
I have five years of Cooking Light and one year of Bon Appetit to go through and apply my post-it scheme. Maybe I should hire an intern.

New cookbooks

2008-12-29T19:30:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-24T18:08:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-18T20:11:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-16T16:45:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-11T06:52:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

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.