Culinonicles

Garlic Soup

2011-01-10T21:21:00.001-08:00

This soup is SO good, made out of practically nothing, and also seems like it would be an excellent hangover dish.

Normally I'm not big on the whole celebrity chef phenomenon, but I found this in Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali ("with" Gwyneth Paltrow. Not sure what she was doing there since evidently she couldn't even keep him from wearing orange Crocs... but I digress).

The recipe says it serves six, but he has to mean as a first course. And I'm not sure why you would ever want to have this soup as a first course, since you will just want more of the soup.

Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2 pound stale bread, crusts removed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 3 cups) [I was too lazy to remove the crusts and it was delicious]
- 8 garlic cloves, finely minced
- 1 teaspoon hot pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika) [I have a feeling this is an important ingredient to get right. Regular paprika has very little punch. The Spanish smoked paprika I get at Penzey's (not sure where else you can get it, but I know it's around) is smoky and flavorful.]
- Kosher salt
- 8 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock, or water [I did like 1/3 chicken broth and the rest water]
- 6 poached eggs [pshhht. Or *three*, since it really only serves three].

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the bread and cook, stirring, until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, pimenton, and a good pinch of salt. Cook for about 3 minutes, or until very fragrant. Add the stock and bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the bread is very soft. Taste and add salt if necessary. Ladle the soup into six [three] bowls, put a poached egg into each, and serve.

Oh yeah, did I mention I poached my first (and second, for lunch tomorrow) eggs tonight? Kind of gross, kind of fun. Probably won't do it again for a while.

Saffron and Roasted Cauliflower Soup

2010-10-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

I adapted a recipe for Saffron Cauliflower Soup that was in The Oregonian yesterday - not many changes except that I used chicken broth instead of vegetable broth, green onions instead of chives, and no tahini. I'm sure it would have been completely delicious and over the top with tahini, but they didn't have it where I picked up the cauliflower and saffron. I roasted the cauliflower before adding it to the broth in the hope of boosting the flavor even without the tahini.

Here's the recipe as it appeared in The Oregonian. I've noted any substitutions I made.

Also, I used my pressure cooker to steep the saffron in the broth, and again to cook the cauliflower and potato in the broth. I still cooked the cauliflower and potato for about 20 minutes, plus cooling time, but I speculate that this is what allowed me to get away with using small yellow potatoes instead of a starchier Russet(t?) and still have a nice potato-thickened broth.

Ingredients:

4 cups vegetable broth (or chicken broth, or a combination of broth and water)
1/8 teaspoon saffron powder or threads
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium white onion, coarsely chopped
1 head cauliflower, broken into florets (I kind of just chopped it up, since I wanted to roast the pieces quickly. Tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper; roasted at 450 for about 25-30 minutes, until soft and a little browned)
1 large russet potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes (I used five small yellow potatoes because I already had them on hand)
2 tablespoons tahini (didn't have, didn't use)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chopped fresh chives for garnish (used green onions. Chives would have been yummy)

In a medium pot, bring the broth to a boil and add the saffron. Turn off the heat and let the broth sit for 10 minutes, allowing the saffron to steep.

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat and sauté the onion until translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cauliflower and potato and stir. Add the broth to the cauliflower mixture and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 25 minutes on low heat, until the cauliflower is fork-tender.

Transfer the soup to a blender (I just used my stick blender) and add the tahini. Working in batches, blend the soup until smooth and velvety. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer the soup back to the pot and reheat on low.

Serve immediately in soup bowls, garnished with the chopped chives.

I can't figure out how to incorporate my photos into the text after the fact with the new Blogger, so here are my pictures:

Cauliflower prior to roasting.

The cooked cauliflower and potato in the saffron broth.

The soup! Sooooo thick and creamy, even without the tahini. I can't wait for lunch tomorrow!

Jaded

2010-08-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.jadeteahouse.com

Nah, I would be "jaded" if I avoided the first obvious blog post title that presented itself.

I enjoyed my experience at this place so much last night, that I'm resurrecting my weblog. Next step: finding and charging my camera, taking pictures of things that I cook again, etc.

THIS PLACE ROCKS. Now. Disclaimer. Part of the reason that it rocks so strongly is because it's like the proprietors designed it with Carrina's dream restaurant in mind from start to finish. Adorable but unpretentious exterior? Yup. Sunny, laid-back, high-ceiling interior? Indeed. Oh, yes - the food. Menu with Vietnamese baguette sandwiches (banh mi, right? All that pickled crunchy daikon goodness) in the center, but splayed out in all directions, from sticky fish sauce wings (yes) to pho (YES) to spicy rice noodles of varied shapes and sizes (YES!).

But wait. You call yourself a "Teahouse and Patisserie." Meaning that I could sip on what sound to be satisfying teas and enjoy the free wi-fi or board games that are hanging out in that casual section toward the back? I won't, because this place is far, far from my neighborhood - but I COULD, which edges this place towards its third Carrinalin star.

And... what's that - patisserie? I'm sorry, in addition to baking your own fantastic baguettes for the sandwiches, you also have a cornucopia of baked, puffed, and/or filled goods? As we were walking out, I saw someone being served a layered, moussy, cross-section invention in pale green - some sort of matcha tiramisu? There were also multi-colored sandwich macaroons, a broiled s'more cookie (Mike liked it) and, and, AND - an amazing chewy sesame ball* (think cream puff or beignet except the texture is fifty times better) with pureed and fluffed angels' wings inside. Oh, I'm told that was actually some sort of combination of sweet bean paste and coconut. Served with a caramel dipping sauce. And the caramel dipping sauce officially gets Jade to its fourth star.

Mike had the sandwich with the barbecued pork. He couldn't eat a lot of it because he didn't pay attention to the cilantro advisory, but I sampled quite a bit and can tell you that it was everything wonderful. The daikon slices were as thick as maybe three pieces of copier paper. Carrot, cilantro, cilantro mayo, a little marination magic on the veggies, and barbecued pork - BOOM. Magic. And magic bread that holds up through it all.

I had the sticky fish sauce wings and rice. I've heard people talk about them at Pok Pok but have a bit of a chip on my shoulder for that place. I'm not a wings person, but I had to try them and was glad I did - crispy, sticky, SALTY, sweet. Good meat. Cilantro sprigs on top. Some cucumber, tomato, and plenty of wing-y juice to entertain me while I waited for my molten wings to cool down. They weren't braised wings drowned in sauce, which is what I have on occasion observed when I see others eat wings. Each individual wing was a crackling little treat. The coating reminded me in some weird way of a candy store at the coast - but if that creeps you out, don't listen to me, because all you need to know is that they were awesome.

In summary - I am now a fangirl. Now if only this restaurant-in-a-house could take a Dorothy-like journey up the river to St. Johns - I would be SET!

*appears in the left-hand corner of the picture

Sushi, Deconstructed

2010-01-05T19:37:00.000-08:00

Okay, not really deconstructed. And probably not really sushi. But I'm sick, and I'm bored, and it seemed high time to put up another post here.

My coworker let me try her version of this stuff the other morning, and it was DELICIOUS. Her salmon was way better than mine, and I think she also used some fancy plum paste - umeboshi? It was tantalizing. Mine didn't have the same kick, but it was still very yummy.

Basically, it's a hollowed-out cucumber partially filled with thinly sliced crisp vegetables, and then stuffed the rest of the way with cooked salmon. Next time, I will probably use an organic and unwaxed cucumber so that I feel good about leaving the skin on, since I think that would make the final sliced "sushi" round look even more attractive to the eye.

I have actually made this for myself two nights in a row now. Last night I used a little bit of avocado; tonight I didn't have avocado, but used some green bell pepper instead.

This can serve two people if served with a small soup, noodles, or rice (I think if you serve it with rice, it comes closer to qualifying as "deconstructed"). Tonight, I had it with some udon noodles with the extra chopped carrots and bell peppers.

- 1 cucumber, peeled (if desired), cut in half crosswise, seeds scraped out with long paring knife or some other skinny utensil
-about 3 oz (1/2 tiny can) canned salmon (cooked fresh salmon, or smoked salmon, would certainly be delicious as well)
- 1/2 small carrot, cut into very thin square strips about half the length of the cucumber (you will probably have some extra carrot to snack on)
-some other vegetable or fruit cut into thin, long strips, such as bell pepper, avocado, daikon radish, regular radish, green onion, etc.
-rice vinegar or other vinegar, if available
-soy sauce, plum sauce, anything else you would like to use for dipping
-black sesame seeds for garnish (totally optional)

1) Toss the salmon with a little bit of vinegar in a small bowl (not pictured below - this is just a gratuitous picture of all the ingredients).

Here are the veggie strips (below)

Here are the hollowed-out cucumber halves.

Take each cucumber half and fill the hollow about one-third of the way with the vegetable strips.

Then, stuff the rest of the hollow with the salmon, bit by bit. Take about a half-spoonful at a time and press it down to the bottom of the hollow with the paring knife.

When no more salmon will go into the cucumber, slice off the end with a sharp knife so that the cross-section is smooth.

If desired and if you have time anyway, store the cucumber halves upright (see below) over a towel in the fridge while you get the rest of your dinner ready. I found that my salty salmon helped drain the cucumber and veggies of some of their water even in the short 15 minutes that I had the cucumber halves propped up.

Now comes the fun part - like peeling the backing off a temporary tattoo, or drying your hair so you can see what color you actually just dyed it, you get to slice the cucumber halves into rounds. The portion below came from half of a cucumber.

...that's it! Serve with soy sauce and/or anything else you like to accompany your sushi.

Stir-Fried Plums with Carrots and Red Cabbage

2009-12-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

Hey, I'm back!

A lot has happened since the end of August. We moved (end result=bigger kitchen - hooray!), and then I lost the cable that connects my camera to my computer. Not that that's a sufficient excuse for not posting this recipe until now, since I took the pictures back in... July? Whenever plums are in season. Anyway, here's to more frequent posting.
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I have come into a million plums from someone at work who has a plum tree and keeps bringing them in. I think I will have to eat several for breakfast, then make a couple of pans of crisp when I get home, just to make sure I use them all. It's great! And these plums are gorgeous (see below).

Last night, I made a plum cake (which is now gone). Tonight, I thought I'd try to use them in a savory context. Our produce drawer is running low on veggies at the moment, but the plums at least get us in the same general section of the nutrition pyramid - right??

Yeah, I think so. Anyway, here's what I used:

2-3T oil (enough to cover part of the bottom of a medium-large non-stick skillet
1/4 small onion, halved and sliced into thin strips (if you magically have shallot on hand, that would probably be cooler)
1 boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces (freezing it for 10-20 minutes makes it easier to cut, IMHO)
2 carrots, sliced diagonally
4 garlic cloves, sliced
handful chopped red cabbage
3 plums (I used the little Italian ones), sliced into eighths
enough cooked dried udon noodles (fresh are even more delicious, though!) to serve 2-3. I had planned on this being only enough for dinner, but as it turned out I had leftovers for lunch the next day.
2 T soy sauce
splash of sherry, if you have it
1 T brown sugar
1 T roasted red chili paste (I use the "Taste of Thai" stuff)
lime wedges for garnish (you could splash a little vinegar in at the end, instead)

1) First, heat up the oil in the skillet to a pretty extreme medium/medium-high. Then fry the onion for several minutes, stirring a lot, until it is nicely browned. Browner than you usually want your onions. Scoop the onions out into a bowl to save for later, but leave as much oil as you can in the pan.

2) Reduce heat to medium, add chicken to skillet, and cook until no longer pink. Add garlic slices and cook for 30 seconds or so.

3) Add soy sauce, sherry, brown sugar, and roasted red chili paste. If everything is way too smoking hot, you can add some water too, to buy you some time. Cook for a couple of minutes or until it's all melted into a kind of sauce.

4) Add carrots and stir-fry for a minute or so (depending on how thinly they are sliced). Add plums and red cabbage and stir-fry briefly just to coat them with the sauce, and to warm them. Don't let the plums get too mushy.

5) Stir the reserved cooked onions back into the pan. Add the cooked udon noodles to the pan, and stir to combine.

6) Serve with lime wedges, if you have them. If not, put a little splash of vinegar (rice vinegar would be good) in the dish before serving.

Grapefruit Salad with Ground Cherries and Mint Sugar

2009-08-31T06:17:00.000-07:00

Title sounds all classy, doesn't it? Well, I already had the mint in the fridge for something else, so this dish was prompted by my officemate leaving me a message on a Friday that she was out of the office, imploring me to find some use for a grapefruit and ground cherries that she had left in her desk drawer, since they wouldn't make it through the weekend and she didn't want them to go to waste.

The ground cherries are to the left, below. I had no idea what they were, but they come from my officemate's garden and she explained that they look like tiny tomatillos, but taste kind of pineappley. They also have little tiny seeds built in, giving them a subtle crunch like figs! Yum.

As per my usual, I didn't make this recipe up: epicurious has something similar that uses grapefruits, oranges, pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries (I used dried currants), and no ground cherries.

Anyway, there's not much to describe. I peeled the grapefruit over a bowls so that I could save any drippiness. I pulled the sections out of the white stuff as best I could. I took the ground cherries out of their husks, washed them, and cut them each in half.

Then I ripped up a bunch of mint leaves (but not as many as you see in the first picture - maybe 8-10?), and smashed them with the leftover grapefruit juice and some sugar in my mortar and pestle.

The currants went on top.

This picture is really shaky!

Zucchini Enchiladas with Pumpkinseed Salsa

2009-08-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm back. It's been a busy August! We're trying to buy a house, so all posts following this one will probably be a little more... uh... economical in nature for a while. For instance, I have some pictures of a salad I made from the contents of my co-worker's desk drawer. I'll post those after this. Anyway...

Zucchini enchiladas. This was epicurious's recipe of the day when I went to their site looking for something to do with the ginormous zucchinis my officemate had given me (thanks, Julia!). So, it was meant to be right from the beginning. The actual title of the original recipe is "Zucchini and Red Pepper Enchiladas with Two Salsas," but come on - that doesn't even hint at the fact that these enchiladas are loaded up with toasted, spiced pumpkinseed puree - by far the coolest element!

These were absolutely delicious, and they held together surprisingly well for our lunch and dinner the next day. I will say that trying to seal these babies together by frying them in oil without having all the goodness drip out the ends and burn was a bit of a challenge, especially in the 100-degree weather we were having that night. In the future, I could possibly be persuaded to leave out the frying and assemble these like soft tacos, just because the frying was such a pain and left me with some finger burns.

The recipe asks for you to grill the vegetables. Yeah... I live in an apartment. I did, however, use this as an excuse to pick up a cast-iron grill pan at Goodwill! I've been very happy with it.

So, the recipe.

Ingredients

For enchiladas:
-1 large white onion, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
-2 red bell peppers, quartered
-3/4 pound medium zucchini, cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices [I had way more zucchini than this, and I used way more - probably why we ended up with enchiladas big enough to eat two, not three of them as a generous meal]
-12 (6-to 7-inch) soft corn tortillas [I used white, and I think they were a little bigger than this]
-1/2 cup vegetable oil
-6 ounces crumbled queso fresco or ricotta salata [I used the queso fresco]

For pumpkin-seed salsa:
-1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh serrano chile, including seeds
-2 garlic cloves, minced
-1 teaspoon ground cumin
-1 1/3 cups raw green (hulled) pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
-1/2 cup vegetable oil
-2 cups chopped cilantro [Mike doesn't like cilantro. I can't remember if I used a little parsley instead, or just ignored this]
-1 1/2 cups water

For tomato salsa [yeah, or you could just use some store-bought salsa]:
-2 medium tomatoes, chopped
-1/4 cup finely chopped white onion
-2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh serrano chile, including seeds
-2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
-Garnish: cilantro leaves

For the tomato salsa: stir together tomatoes, onion, chile, lime juice, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

For the pumpkinseed salsa: cook chile, garlic, cumin, and pumpkin seeds in oil in a 10-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat, stirring, until seeds pop, 4 to 5 minutes.

Transfer 3 tablespoons seeds with a slotted spoon to a bowl and reserve. Purée remaining seeds and oil with cilantro, water, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a blender until smooth.

Start enchiladas:Prepare a gas grill for direct-heat cooking over medium heat.
Preheat oven to 350°F .
Secure each onion round with a wooden pick for grilling. Oil grill rack, then grill vegetables, covered, turning occasionally, until tender (6 to 8 minutes for bell peppers and zucchini; 10 to 12 minutes for onion), transferring to a bowl.

Okay, grilling the vegetables in my little grill pan took many,

many,

many batches.

To make the enchiladas: cut vegetables into strips. Spread 2 teaspoons pumpkin-seed salsa on each warm tortilla and top with some of grilled vegetables, then roll up.

Heat oil (1/2 cup) in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Fry enchiladas, seam side down first, in 2 batches, turning once, until lightly browned and heated through, about 2 minutes per batch.

Transfer enchiladas to plates, then drizzle with remaining pumpkin-seed salsa and sprinkle with reserved seeds and cheese. Serve with tomato salsa.

Yum!

Spoils of Summer - Daikon-Beet Salad with Mashed Plantain

2009-07-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

This heat is killing my produce. I had a plantain, two beets, a shallot, some garlic, and a daikon radish (the size of my forearm). They were all on their way out - even the garlic, which is saying something because my garlic standards are pretty low. I made something that actually resembles potato salad - in taste only, though.

I did a teensy bit of interwebs research before embarking on this experiment. I couldn't find anything that exactly resembled what I wanted to do, but this recipe helped me verify that beets and daikons could go together; this one gave me a recipe for a salad using regular potatoes and daikons (and about a million other tasty things I didn't have on hand), and this one told me how to get the plantain out of its skin. Thanks, epicurious!

I peeled the daikon and chopped them into matchsticks. Same with the beets, after cooking and peeling them (I simmered the beets with a splash of apple cider vinegar for about 20 minutes. About 5 minutes in, I threw in the plantain, with its ends trimmed off and cut crosswise into three pieces).

I minced the shallot, mixed it with some honey, (light) sesame oil, white wine vinegar, yellow mustard, slivered garlic, salt, and pepper, and then stirred in the beet and daikon matchsticks. This part then went into the fridge to chill and wait for the mashed plantain.

Once the plantain pieces looked soft enough for me to get the peel off, I drained the water and pulled the peel off with the help of a knife and fork. I mashed the plantain with a little salt and sesame oil (just enough to get it to more or less stick together - not creamy like regular mashed potatoes) and stuck it in the fridge to cool. I cooled it separately from the beet-daikon mixture because I didn't want the heat to un-crisp the daikon, but in retrospect I probably should have mixed the plantain in when it was still a little warm, so that it would have been creamier. I also would have used one or two more plantains if I'd had them. But hey - for a using-things-up dish, this really did come out pretty well! Mike even ate all of his and said something about "liking" it. Success! And pink, pink leftovers!

Spoils of Summer - Pasta with Raw Tomato-Avocado Sauce

2009-07-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

This recipe is based upon one that appears in a tomato sauce book that I have out in the kitchen, or, as I like to call the un-air-conditioned part of the apartment, the inferno. I will go look it up and properly cite the author soon. The author credits her friend, whose name is Flavia - that I do remember.

While your pasta water is heating up, you just dice up some tomatoes and avocados, mince or sliver some garlic, and toss with some torn basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little sugar if the tomatoes aren't on their A-game.

Once you drain the pasta (I always use the long and skinny variety, but have used everything from angel hair to the kind that's so thick that it's hollow - anything seems to work), you can either toss it hot with the pasta, which allows the avocados to almost melt their way into coating the strands, or you can rinse the pasta with cold water and serve the dish cold. Either way, you toss the mixture with the pasta and serve. Yum!

Spoils of Summer - Cherry-Apricot Crisp

2009-07-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

I tossed the fruit with a little lime juice, salt, and a little cornstarch. The crisp topping was almond meal, coconut oil, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. I can't remember if I also used a little bit of quick oats for the version that appears in this picture - we had a lot of cherries to use up and I made several batches of crisp! I baked at 350 - 25 minutes, maybe? Just until it gets bubbly.

Spoils of Summer - Caprese

2009-07-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do some brief posts of some no-cook, low-cook, or just-enjoying-the-summer-produce things we've eaten in the last few weeks. It's been a crazy summer so far, so I'm going to go heavy on the pictures and easy on the text, as I try to get the AC unit to meet me halfway between 68 and 105.

Anyway, here's some caprese that we had. That's what it's called, right? Tomatoes, fresh mozarella, basil, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Tortilla de patata - Spanish Tortilla

2009-07-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

I LOVE Spanish tortilla. I love that it is firm enough that you can slice off a piece and it holds together, with a beautiful potato-ey cross-section. I love that you can eat it cold or hot, and I love that the Spanish put it in sandwiches (yes - a starch-on-starch sandwich). I love that you can eat it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I've only it attempted it at home once or twice, however, and the results were a decided fail. It's hard to get the tortilla to stay in one piece, and if it breaks, you end up with a still good-tasting, but non-sliceable potato-egg scramble.

Cooks Illustrated published a recipe for Spanish tortilla in this month's (July) issue. I tried it out and got a tortilla that stayed in one piece on the first try. Success! They claimed the key to get it coming out right without using half a bottle of oil is to use Yukon Gold potatoes, which don't stick as much and therefore don't require as much oil. They also recommend doing a two-step flip to get the tortilla turned over: after using a spatula to loosen the tortilla from the pan around the edges, you slide it onto plate #1, cover it with plate #2, quickly flip over, remove plate #1 (which is now on top), and carefully slide the tortilla back into the pan so that the second side can get cooked. My tortilla had a couple of minor tears in it, but cooking the second side mended them.

The two final recipes that the article offered include added ingredients: roasted red peppers and peas, and chorizo and scallions. They sound good, but I was just after the traditional, no-frills recipe, which is the one I'll post here.

Ingredients
-6 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

-1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes (3 to 4 medium), peeled, quartered lengthwise, and cut crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick slices
-1 small onion , halved and sliced thin (seriously, slice them really thin if you can. You don't want to be able to say "hey, these are onions" when you bite into the final product. They should all but melt away)
-1 teaspoon table salt (I used kosher because it was all I had. It came out fine)
-1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
-8 large eggs

Instructions
1. Toss 4 tablespoons oil, potatoes, onion, ½ teaspoon salt, and pepper in large bowl until potato slices are thoroughly separated and coated in oil.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Reduce heat to medium-low, add potato mixture to skillet, and set bowl aside without washing. Cover and cook, stirring with rubber spatula every 5 minutes, until potatoes offer no resistance when poked with tip of paring knife, 22 to 28 minutes (it’s OK if some potato slices break into smaller pieces).

2. Meanwhile, whisk eggs and remaining ½ teaspoon salt in reserved bowl until just combined. Using rubber spatula, fold hot potato mixture into eggs until combined, making sure to scrape all potato mixture out of skillet.

Return skillet to medium-high heat, add remaining teaspoon oil, and heat until just beginning to smoke. Add egg-potato mixture and cook, shaking pan and folding mixture constantly for 15 seconds. Smooth top of mixture with rubber spatula.

Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook, gently shaking pan every 30 seconds until bottom is golden brown and top is lightly set, about 2 minutes.

3. Using rubber spatula, loosen tortilla from pan, shaking back and forth until tortilla slides around freely in pan. Slide tortilla onto large plate. Invert tortilla onto second large plate and slide it browned-side up back into skillet. Tuck edges of tortilla into skillet with rubber spatula. Return pan to medium heat and continue to cook, gently shaking pan every 30 seconds, until second side is golden brown, about 2 minutes longer.

Slide tortilla onto cutting board or serving plate and allow to cool at least 15 minutes. Cut tortilla into wedges.

You can see that I got our tortilla a little more brown than would have been ideal - but it was all in one piece and tasted great, so I was happy. It keeps really well under a plate in the fridge for at least two or three days - after that, it still keeps, but the condensation makes it a little less appetizing to eat cold.

We had our tortilla with a roasted beet salad (which was pretty good - I'll post the recipe separately) and some gazpacho for me - Mike's not a fan of chilled soups and it wasn't really tomato season yet, anyway.

Roy Rogers: The man, the myth, the beverage.

2009-06-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a clip from Scrubs that I always think of when ordering a non-alcoholic beverage that carries a person's name. So, Arnold Palmer, Shirley Temple, Roy Rogers, and O.J. (who skates through on a technicality - oh, hush, I just mean that "O.J." actually stands for orange juice).

J.D.: "I've taken your best qualities and my best qualities and combined them into something better - much the way that iced tea and lemonade were joined to become an Arnold Palmer. Incidentally, has anyone ever done less to become famous? I mean, 'Yay for me, I mixed two drinks together!'"

Dr. Cox: "Arnold Palmer is a golfer."

J.D.: "I'm sure he has lots of hobbies, Perry - the man's a drink mogul."

Grenadine? ...check.

Ice-cold Coca Cola? ...check.

Untold deliciousness that is more than the sum of its parts? ...CHECK.

Now where are my maraschino cherries?

Five-Minute Fancy Bananas

2009-06-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

This was kind of like a tiny-apartment-kitchen, no-torch-or-rum-available version of Bananas Foster. No comparison - but similar idea. And dang, it was good.

For two people (you can scroll down to the bottom to see one servine - it's on a dessert plate), I used:
-2 bananas
-3 tablespoons butter
-1/4 cup water
-3 tablespoons brown sugar
-pinch salt
-optional: Frangelico, or some sort of booze that would taste good in caramel sauce

1. Move the oven rack up close to the broiler. Preheat broiler.
2. Slice bananas into a bowl with enough room to stir a bit.
3. Heat butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat, watching carefully. As soon as it's melted, pour a little bit of it onto the bananas. Remove the saucepan from heat, but leave the burner on.
4. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of brown sugar into bananas, stir to coat (doesn't have to be perfect). If you have spray cooking oil, grease the broiler pan so the bananas won't stick (I didn't do this, but should have). Spread out banana slices on a broiler pan. Put bananas in broiler.
To make the caramel sauce:
5. Put melted butter back on heat. Lower heat to medium or a little above. Pour in water, sprinkle in remaining 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and pinch of salt. Stir constantly for 2-3 minutes or until caramel sauce is very bubbly (keep stirring, lifting and scraping occasionally) and light golden, but not burned. Pour in a splash of Frangelico or other liquor (if you want), and keep stirring. If caramel sauce, once removed from heat and calmed down, looks like the picture below before the bananas are nicely browned on the edges, remove the caramel sauce.

Once the bananas are golden-brown (they will be very soft), distribute them onto plates and pour caramel sauce over.

Ta-daa!

Fast Food = Balsamic Strawberry Goat Cheese Panino? That's some Burgerville lovin'.

2009-06-12T21:29:00.000-07:00

Remember when the hipster crowd used to say, "For serious"? I can just feel myself reverting back to those days when I think of this sandwich. It was quite a treat. Balsamic-soaked strawberries (to which I am already partial, having made a strawberry-balsamic basil salad recently), arugula, and goat cheese. Pretty dang good.

The tagline for the sandwich is, "Proof that vegetarians aren't crazy." I don't know if we want to be making blanket generalizations, but one thing that is not crazy is Burgerville's new seasonal specials. They already had me with their pumpkins and blackberries and hazelnuts and sweet potatoes. Now they want to up the ante by showcasing a new flavor each month? Dang, Burgerville - stop throwing yourself at me. People will talk.

If I recall correctly, it all started with the rosemary garlic shoestring fries and rosemary chicken sandwich. I thought that was in March, but maybe I missed a month. Then in May, we had asparagus: in a melty provolone and tomato sandwich (which wasn't quiiiiiite as good as it sounds, unfortunately - the provolone was as gooey as ABC gum), and as "golden-fried spears." Now for June, we have strawberry griddle cakes (or something like that), and then this sandwich.

That's it. End post. Wait wait - just one more thing you may not know about Burgerville - they will make ANY of their shake flavors with non-fat frozen yogurt instead! You just have to order it as a smoothie, and listen to make sure that's how they repeat it back to you. My coworker told me about this, and it's true andthey'rereallygoodokaysigningoffforrealnow...

Coleslaw

2009-06-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

I've never been a big coleslaw fan. I like it just fine once whatever barbecued item I'm eating with the coleslaw has dripped its spicy, tangy deliciousness onto the coleslaw. At that point, it's all just one dish. But enjoying coleslaw in its own right? Nah. As much as I love cabbage, I just don't like that weird fermented flavor that coleslaw in a bag has (for details on why claiming not to like "that weird fermented flavor" of a cabbage product makes me a total hypocrite, see my post on kimchi). And I have a fear of mayonnaise except under very specific circumstances. And did I mention that I don't like buying macerated produce in a bag?

So, now that we all know my coleslaw baggage: I made coleslaw last weekend. The recipe for pork tacos calls for a 16-oz bag of the stuff, and I figured I might as well make it myself, so that I could be sure about the mayonnaise. And here's the thing: it was good! I-wanted-to-munch-on -it good. I-would-offer-to-take-it-to-a-picnic good.

I used the Cooks Illustrated recipe and let the cabbage sit, draining (after having been salted), for the full four hours (they recommend 1-4). It's supposed to leave you with a less watery final product, and I think it did the trick. Here's the liquid that came out of the cabbage as it sat (it gets its orange hue from the shredded carrot that was mixed in with the cabbage):

I used Spectrum canola oil mayonnaise. Last time I faced my fear of mayonnaise (that would be the deviled eggs at Thanksgiving, thank you), I used Spectrum's olive oil mayonnaise, but this time I took a closer look at both labels and discovered that they're both canola oil-based, and the olive oil mayonnaise just has a little olive oil stirred in for flavoring. So, back to canola for me.

Here's the recipe (from Cooks Illustrated - originally published July 1995. I accessed it online):

Creamy Coleslaw

Ingredients
1 pound cabbage (about 1/2 medium head), red or green, shredded fine or chopped (6 cups)
1 large carrot , peeled and grated
2 teaspoons kosher salt , or 1 teaspoon table salt [Carrina's note: I'm pretty sure I used more than this when I salted the cabbage so that it could drain. I didn't have a bowl big enough to toss it around as much as I would have liked, and I wanted to make sure that it all got salted enough to drain. Note that you wash it all off later]
1/2 small onion , minced
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
Ground black pepper

Instructions
1. Toss cabbage and carrots with salt in colander set over medium bowl. Let stand until cabbage wilts, at least 1 hour and up to 4 hours.

Here are the cabbage and carrot just after I salted them and set them up to wilt:

Aaaaand, four hours later. As you can see, there was a huge reduction in volume.

2. Dump wilted cabbage and carrots into the bowl. Rinse thoroughly in cold water (ice water if serving slaw immediately). Pour vegetables back into colander, pressing, but not squeezing on them to drain. Pat dry with paper towels. (Can be stored in a zipper-lock bag and refrigerated overnight.)
3. Pour cabbage and carrots back again into bowl. Add onions, mayonnaise, and vinegar; toss to coat. Season with pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Coconut Lime Sorbet

2009-06-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. The weather in Portland and the Puget Sound has gone to pot, so this tasty little confection won't sound nearly as refreshing as it did when I made it last week. But, you know - file it away for later or something.

This recipe was easy-peasy with an ice cream maker. But even if you don't have an ice cream maker, you could still make a granité by (carefully) pouring the mixture onto a cookie sheet or baking sheet, sticking it in the freezer, and scraping the mixture around every 10/15 minutes or so to prevent it from freezing in a solid sheet. It won't be smooth - but SnoCones aren't smooth, and they're still pretty dang refreshing. Mmm, SnoCones...

So, here's the recipe for the coconut lime sorbet. Mind you, it packs a pretty high-calorie punch because of the cream of coconut (yes, that's right - cream of coconut, not milk - it's the stuff they put in piña coladas). But you only need a little of this stuff, because it punches you in the mouth with sweet and tangy at the same time.

I found the recipe on Epicurious. If I actually persuade anyone reading this post into giving this recipe a shot, and you go to the original link on Epicurious, you'll notice that the reviews are mixed. Most people rave about it, but a few complained that it was horrible and bitter. All I can say is: Read the directions, people (not you - the Epicurious reviewers). It says "Cream of coconut" and even gives you a brand suggestion - Coco Lopez. A quick Google search of Coco Lopez tells you it's the stuff they put in piña coladas - which means you can find it in the mixer aisle. It is not the same as coconut milk - especially not unsweetened coconut milk.

Sorry for the tangent - people just amaze me sometimes. If there are three ingredients - and the first two are water and limes - you'd better make sure you get the third ingredient right. And if you don't, maybe you should take a brief moment to view your methodology with a critical eye, before slamming the recipe.

So, here we go.

Ingredients

a 15-ounce can cream of coconut (preferably Coco Lopez)
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup fresh lime juice [Carrina's note: I needed four limes for this (unfortunately, I purchased 7). They weren't large, but they weren't tiny. Definitely larger than key limes, and with thin skin, which always makes me think they've been allowed to sit and get ripe, creating more juice. I don't know if science backs up that assumption or not, though]

In a bowl whisk together ingredients. Freeze mixture in an ice-cream maker. Transfer sorbet to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden.

Done and done! So easy. And awfully creamy for a product that doesn't contain dairy.

(Fresh) Pea and Ham Soup

2009-06-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

It sounds like regular (delicious) old split pea soup with a ham hock or bone thrown in, but actually, it was a little lighter than that. I got it from a new cookbook I picked up off the clearance cart outside St. Johns Booksellers while I was waiting for the bus this morning. It's called Seasonal Food, by Susannah Blake. It progresses through the four seasons based upon what's growing during that time of year. This soup was filed under "summer," and I know we're not actually there yet, but - close enough.

The recipe calls for prosciutto, but I don't really go for that prosciutto/pancetta stuff unless the recipe screams Italian and/or I'm feeling flush. We had a little leftover "root beer-ginger ham" (in quotation marks because I have no idea how those ingredients were incorporated into the ham, but it does seem to have a little "bite," much as Barq's does) from Sheridan. So I used that instead.

I also used chicken broth instead of vegetable stock. I just don't really like vegetable stock or broth much.

The recipe calls for creme fraiche (you can add the accent grave and hat yourself) or sour cream. Needless to say, I used sour cream.

So, here's the recipe:

Summer Pea and Ham Soup
Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 T olive oil
2 onions, chopped
18 oz shelled fresh or frozen peas (about 4 cups) [I used mostly frozen, but a handful of fresh thrown in as well as for garnish]
4 3/4 cup vegetable stock [or chicken]
6 T. creme fraiche or sour cream
handful of fresh mint, chopped, plus extra for garnishing
salt and pepper
4 slices prosciutto, cut into bite-sized pieces [or your cured-tasting pork product of choice]

Heat the oil in a large pot, add the onions, and fry gently for about 5 minutes, until soft. Add the peas and stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and let simmer gently for about 5 minutes.

Let the pea, onion, and stock mixture cool slightly, then pour into a blender or food processor [or by all means use an immersion/stick blender, if you have one] and blend until smooth. Stir [more like "whisk," if you're using sour cream, at least] in the creme fraiche or sour cream and chopped mint and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Heat through, then ladle into four warm serving bowls. Sprinkle the ham and the fresh mint garnish over it, and serve.

Of course, you can't see the ham because it sank.

The most labor-intensive part was chopping the onion. On a ridiculously humid day like today, I can live with that.

Ribollita with Rosemary Croutons

2009-06-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

Here's another oldie. We made this a couple of months ago. Ah, well.

My coworker brings me her old "FoodDay" inserts from The Oregonian when she's done with them, and that's where I found this recipe. It's actually a quartet of recipes: the end product is the ribollita (and no, I had no idea what a ribollita was before I made it), but you also get "Tuscan White Beans," "Spicy Garlic and Herb Oil," and "Rosemary Croutons" out of this article. I didn't make the oil - I like regular old extra-virgin just fine and didn't have the counter space.

The Matthew Card article (link above) describes ribollita as "a rib-sticking minestra, or thick stew, of white beans, vegetables, hearty kale and stale bread flavored with great lashings of garlic, pancetta and fruity olive oil." Hmmm... you had me at "stew." And then again at "kale." And a third time at "great lashings of garlic." Basically, I'm a sucker for everything in this dish.

Here's the recipe for the Tuscan White Beans. Of course, you could also just use white beans, but they were really flavorful made this way.

Ingredients
2 to 3 ounces pancetta, minced [I just used two strips of bacon from the freezer. Tasted great]
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, diced fine
1 large carrot, diced fine
½ large fennel bulb, cored and diced fine, or 1 stalk celery, diced fine [I used celery. As much as I want to, I just don't like the taste of fresh fennel].
Pinch crushed red pepper flakes
Pinch fennel seeds
Salt
1 pound Great Northern beans, sorted and soaked in water overnight
1 head garlic, top ⅛ cut off to expose cloves
1 bay leaf
6 cups chicken broth and/or water
Granulated sugar (if necessary)
Garnishes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Coarse sea salt
Grated Vella Monterey jack or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese[Carrina's note: or Parmesan from the green can]

Instructions
Combine pancetta and olive oil in a large Dutch oven set over medium-high heat and cook until pancetta has rendered its fat, 3 to 5 minutes. Add onion, carrot, fennel or celery, red pepper flakes, fennel seeds and large pinch salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown and sticking to bottom of pot, 12 to 15 minutes. Stir in beans, garlic head, bay leaf, and broth and/or water; bring to boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, until beans are soft and tender (adding additional liquid as necessary to cover), 1½ to 2 hours.

Remove garlic and bay leaf from pot. Discard bay leaf. When cool enough to handle, squeeze garlic cloves from papery skins, mash to paste with back of knife, and stir into beans. Adjust seasoning to taste with salt and a pinch of sugar, if needed. Serve with desired garnishes.

And now come the rosemary croutons:
Ingredients
Half to three-quarters of a stale baguette or rustic loaf, cut into ¾-inch cubes (3 to 5 cups)
3 to 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 sprig rosemary or sage
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
Place bread in large bowl and toss cubes with enough water to make bread soft, moist and pliable, but not crumbly. Squeeze bread and drain excess water from bowl.

Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat until just shimmering. Reduce temperature to medium, add bread and rosemary sprig,

and cook, stirring infrequently, until bread cubes are lightly browned, 7 to 10 minutes (you may need to use spatula to scrape any stuck-on bits of bread free). Remove rosemary and season bread generously with salt and pepper.

And now, the ribollita!
Ingredients
Salt
1 large bunch lacinato kale, stemmed, rinsed and chopped coarsely
½ to ¾ cup diced canned tomatoes, drained
4 to 6 cups Tuscan White Beans (see accompanying recipe)
3 or more cups Rosemary Croutons (see accompanying recipe)
Garnishes
Spicy Garlic and Herb Oil (see accompanying recipe) or extra-virgin olive oil
Lemon wedges
Coarse salt
Crushed red pepper flakes
Grated dry Vella Monterey jack or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Instructions
Bring large pot of water to boil over high heat and season liberally with salt.

Add kale and cook until tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Drain and cool under running water. Squeeze dry and chop coarsely.
Heat tomatoes and beans in Dutch oven set over medium heat to slow simmer (add splash of broth or water if necessary to loosen consistency). Stir in greens and croutons to combine. Divide equally among bowls and drizzle liberally with olive oil or Spicy Garlic and Herb Oil, and serve with other desired garnishes.

Pork Tacos with Slaw and Spicy Pepitas

2009-06-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

Wow. I just don't have the energy to type a whole lot about this recipe. But I do love it. It was published in Cooking Light in October 2008.

First, the recipe for the pepitas (toasted pumpkin seeds):

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted pumpkinseed kernels
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon ground ancho or chipotle chile pepper
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Preparation
1. Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Heat a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add kernels to pan; cook 10 minutes [Carrina's note: 10 minutes was waaaaay too long - more like 4] or until browned, stirring frequently [rule of thumb for how long to toast (while stirring constantly): once 4 or 5 seeds have popped - you'll hear it and they'll look flat and burned - the rest will be nicely puffed]. Remove from pan; cool completely. Makes 1 cup.
So here's a picture of the pumpkin seeds before they've puffed up:

And here they are after they've been puffed! They crunch really nicely. It's a really quick process, and just requires being vigilant for about 4 minutes (especially since the spice coating makes it hard to see if they're burning - you just have go by how puffed they are).

Now, the recipe for the tacos:

Ingredients
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ancho or chipotle chile pepper
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 pound boneless center-cut loin pork chops (about 1/2 inch thick)
Cooking spray
1/4 cup fresh lime juice, divided
1/2 cup sliced red bell pepper
2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onions
1 tablespoon minced jalapeño pepper
1/2 (16-ounce) package coleslaw (about 3 cups)
12 (6-inch) white or yellow corn tortillas
6 tablespoons light sour cream
6 tablespoons Spicy Pepitas

Preparation
1. Combine first 6 ingredients in a small bowl. Lightly coat pork with cooking spray; rub spice mixture over both sides of pork. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
2. Preheat grill [Carrina's note: or broiler. If broiler, move the rack up close, but not so close that it almost touches. For my oven, this means the second notch from the top].
3. Place pork on a grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 1 minute on each side or until done. Cut pork into 1/4-inch slices. Combine pork and 2 tablespoons juice in a medium bowl, tossing to coat.
4. Combine the remaining 2 tablespoons juice, bell pepper, onions, jalapeño, and coleslaw in a large bowl, tossing well.

5. Heat a nonstick griddle over medium heat. Coat griddle with cooking spray. Arrange 6 tortillas in a single layer; cook 1 minute on each side or until lightly browned. Repeat procedure with cooking spray and remaining 6 tortillas. Divide pork mixture evenly among tortillas; top each tortilla with 2 tablespoons coleslaw mixture, 1 1/2 teaspoons sour cream, and 1 1/2 teaspoons Spicy Pepitas.

The picture below is from when we used up the leftover coleslaw mixture for lunch the next day. We added some avocado (in retrospect, really not necessary since the coleslaw and sour cream provide more than enough creamy texture), and I added spicy peanut sauce from Fire on the Mountain (left) to my taco.

Rhubarb Chutney

2009-05-25T12:02:00.001-07:00

I made this recipe last summer. I remember it well because it was the weekend in July when I had just purchased an ice cream maker and was preparing to freeze the canister so I could get started with this cherry gelato recipe - and my freezer failed. It turned out that it had been melting down for a while, and the hot-as-heck weather that weekend just accelerated the liquification process. All this is just to say that I didn't trust my frozen rhubarb chutney, because it had been sitting in the door shelf of the freezer and sat there, never really freezing, for a couple of weeks. We had it once on the day I made it, but I ended up throwing the rest out.

I'm determined that this year will be different! We had this stuff over lamb last summer. Last night, I made it again and we had it over chicken breasts. I've got some lamb shanks in the fridge, and we will put the chutney to good use again with them tonight.

This recipe makes me think of Easter eggs, for two reasons: the color (bright pink - no lamb accompaniment has the right to exhibit such a flashy hue) and the smell (hot vinegar - you just don't smell that except when dyeing eggs at Easter).

I will say that although the recipe tells you to cook the rhubarb, green onions, and currants for only 4 minutes (before the rhubarb falls apart), you will also get fine results if you choose to just have the stuff simmer on the stove forever while you do other things, treating the chutney as more of a jam. That's what I did last summer, and I remember us saying, "Ooh, this is good." However, you do end up with a more beautiful and chunky mixture if you stop cooking when the recipe tells you to - that's how I did it this time.

I got the recipe from Epicurious - originally published in Bon Appetit in April 2003. A couple of modifications:
-It calls for 1 3/4 pounds rhubarb. This year, I only had three (long and slender) stalks, totalling about a pound, so I cut back on all the other ingredients a bit. The measurements seem very flexible.
- It calls for 1/2 teaspoon "(scant) ground cardamom." I love cardamom, and I had smoky black cardamom pods (further discussed in this posting) just burning a hole in my spice cabinet, so I threw a black cardamom pod into the mixture and discarded it when I took out the cinnamon stick. Here's a picture of the black cardamom. Just imagine a lovely smoky smell.

-Oh, also - you might notice in the picture below that my cinnamon stick is an Andre the Giant among its peers. I got it from one of those bags in the Hispanic foods section at the grocery store. They are very economical and seem to work well for savory foods that call for a little cinnamon flavor. Normally they have a heavenly scent of Mexican cinnamon, although this one seemed a little dried out at the beginning.

So, the recipe.

Ingredients:
-1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
-1/2 cup red wine vinegar (you could also use apple cider vinegar - I looked at another recipe, very similar to this one, that uses apple cider vinegar instead)
-1 1/2 cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon (scant) ground cardamom
4 1/2 cups coarsely chopped rhubarb (from 1 3/4 pounds rhubarb)
3/4 cup dried currants
4 green onions, chopped

Stir first 6 ingredients in heavy large saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves and mixture boils.

Add rhubarb, currants, and green onions; bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until rhubarb is tender but not falling apart, about 4 minutes.

Cool to room temperature. Discard cinnamon. Cover and refrigerate chutney until cold, at least 1 hour. [Carrina's note: or if you are impatient, just spoon out whatever portion you are going to use right away into a separate container, and stick it into the freezer until it is sufficiently jelly-fied for your taste. I think I put ours - about 1 cup's worth - in the freezer for about 15 minutes. It was fine.]

(Can be made up to 2 days ahead. Keep refrigerated.) Bring to room temperature before serving.

The chicken is slightly overexposed here, but you can still see the beautiful pink of the chutney.

Spumoni! (from Staccato Gelato)

2009-05-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Now granted, the only spumoni experience I have for comparison is that sweet spumoni that comes in the metal mini-goblet thing at the Old Spaghetti Factory. I even found a picture through Google Images confirming that my fond childhood memories of the "metal mini-goblet thing" are accurate. Behold:

"Old Spaghetti Factory: We treat you like mafia royalty."

Photo from blogtown.portlandmercury.com, 3/2008 review of the Old Spaghetti Factory's lunch menu - direct link to the review was taking five minutes to pull up, so I have given up on it. I will try back later to see if I can cite my source properly.

Anyway, I always loved the Spaghetti Factory's spumoni, and I still do. I'm so glad that my parents never told me (or that I never listened when they told me) that the three members of that alluring tri-color swirl were chocolate, cherry, and pistachios. Pistachios - most definitely a member of the nut family, and I declared war on that family around age 12 (Mom?) Pistachios got a brief early childhood exemption from this war because my cool aunt and uncle always had them hanging around, but eventually I lumped them in with all the other nuts I hated. Even now, I won't seek them out although I have no problem with them. But in spumoni, they're another story...

We used our Staccato Gelato 2-for-1 Chinook Book coupon yesterday. I can think of many sweets that I prefer to ice cream/gelato/sorbet, simply because ice cream is cold and hurts my teeth unless I eat it sideways. Staccato Gelato, however, has different flavors every time we go there, which means that while Mike goes to get his ice cream fix, I go to try out new flavors (past winners: Honey Lavender, Mojito, Rose Petal, Thai Iced Tea - yes, I am partial to the girlie foodie flavors. Check out their full list of flavors here, although you'll notice Spumoni isn't even listed, which implies that there may be other sleeper flavors that don't make it onto the official list).

We each got the second-smallest size, which still gets you up to three flavors if you so choose. Mike got Cherry Chocolate Chip, Creamsicle (tasted exactly like an Orange Julius if you ask me - not that I'm complaining), and something else. I got Spumoni, Spumoni, and Spumoni. And since I am writing this post about it, you already know that I loved it. The chocolate - oh so chocolatey - and not too sweet. The cherry - sweet and light, with little candied cherries mixed in every so often. And the pistachio - meaty and delicious.

The picture below is all melty, since we drove home with our gelato. Next time, I'll try to bring the camera along.

YUM! That is all.

Noodle Bowl #4 - brown sugar-roasted green beans and celery

2009-05-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

I don't feel like I've been in the kitchen any less than usual, but it seems like every time I reach for the camera to record the haps, it's either out of juice or MIA. Nevertheless, I've accumulated some acceptable pictures over month since my last posting, so here's my plan for hopping back on the weblog-wagon: immediately post 4 or 5 things that I made back in April, then rest on my laurels for another week until I feel like posting again (unless my camera is magically within reach and charged when I make this rhubarb chutney tomorrow - mmm... so good on lamb!)

So, here's another episode of "Pimp My Ramen" (hey, I kind of like that...). This time around, I had some old leathery green beans and just a teensy bit of baby celery, from the very inside of the group of stalks.

I smashed the heck out of some ginger, as is my routine... (mainly sharing this picture because my Ikea meat mallet looks like something out of one of my husband's role-playing games):

I tossed the celery and green beans in some vegetable oil, brown sugar, salt, and five-spice powder... (green beans not shown here)

...and roasted them at 450 for a few minutes - until I could tell that they'd been roasted, but they weren't blackened or anything.

...Stuck them in with the already-simmering water/chicken broth combo (the smashed garlic, ginger, and a star anise have already made it into the broth at this point as well)

...And from here, it's just a matter of following the instructions of Maruchan or Top Ramen, depending on who was on sale last time I stocked up: Boil noodles for three minutes, and serve!

No, we don't actually eat on the windowsill. It's just the only place in the apartment with good light.

Rosemary lemonade. I mean it.

2009-04-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

It's exactly what it sounds like. And it was good. Now I just have to think of how to get it tasting even rosemerrier. Maybe if I let the rosemary steep in lemon juice for quite a while? I could even heat it up, then cool it back down. We'll see. But even on the first try, this stuff was goo-oo-ood. I piled up some rosemary, salt, and sugar on a piece of lemon, and crushed it all into the lemon as best I could. Then, I poured in a little Sierra Mist, let it bubble, and filled the glass with lemonade.

It was flipping good!

Noodle Bowl #3 - Mustard Greens

2009-04-07T19:47:00.000-07:00

Can I just say that I don't think I'll ever get sick of noodle bowls? They're the only thing I'm in the mood for on Saturday afternoons, and this week I realized that they also have the side benefit of helping me use up unruly produce that is just threatening to get slimey before I get to it.

That said, I don't really expect anyone else to share my interest in the whole thing. But since I've started taking pictures of them, I think I'll just keep doing it. I'll try to title the posts appropriately, so that anyone reading knows it's not an actual recipe.

I had some turkey lemongrass broth, left over from this recipe, sitting in my freezer for the last 4 months. Honestly, I had forgotten to label it and so wasn't sure if it was chicken broth, or turkey lemongrass. When its thawed scent revealed it to be the latter, I used it for a noodle bowl. Yay!

I used:
-2 cups broth
-1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
-dash soy sauce
-a few drops Sriracha or some other spicy ingredient
-a few drops dark sesame oil
-1 carrot, peeled and sliced thin diagonally
-about 2 cups chopped mustard greens
-1 green onion, chopped
-1 wedge lime, squeezed (or dash seasoned rice vinegar)

Instructions:
Bring broth to a boil. Add five-spice powder, sesame oil, Sriracha, soy sauce, and carrots, and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Return to a non-spilling-over boil, and ramen, and cook for two minutes. Stir in mustard greens and cook for another minute or until wilted. Pour into deep bowl. Squeeze lime into bowl (or splash with rice vinegar). Sprinkle with green onion.

Basil, Melon, and Prosciutto (or Bacon!) Salad with Cayenne

2009-04-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

There are a zillion variations on this recipe on the Interwebs, and since I remembered the three main ingredients from when my mom made this several years ago, I don't feel obligated to cite any particular source. Plus, I might have added the cayenne pepper part myself - not sure.

As long as you have enough melon (and it can be canteloupe, honeydew, whatever - I happen to like honeydew better) to serve the number of people you want to serve, the amount of basil and prosciutto/bacon is totally flexible. If you need to use up a strip of bacon from breakfast, use that. You can use as little as one or two large leaves of basil for a few people, and it would still be fine. Or, if you love basil, you can use much, much more.

I tossed the ingredients in a little lime because I had a leftover wedge, but it's not necessary.

Half of a small honeydew melon, combined with the other ingredients (which don't add much volume) yielded us two 6-oz mugs full of salad. Scroll down to the very last picture to see what I consider a "serving."

Hooray honeydew! I was so excited that New Seasons had delicious-looking (and tasting), ripe honeydew halves on sale by the pound, and that I only had to buy half of a teeny one. I know myself, and I know that there is no way I would properly preserve and then use the other half before it went bad. Below is the honeydew shredded up with my new melonballer (I started out trying to make actual melon balls, then decided scraping was the way to go). In the picture, it looks kind of like celery, doesn't it? Weird...

Okay, so the recipe. Like I said, any way you make it, it will taste good. But as a guideline, you will need:

Ingredients

- 1/2 canteloupe or honeydew melon, cut into balls or ribbons with a melonballer, or chopped into 1/2 inch-ish pieces

-1/8 cup chopped prosciutto, or 1/8 cup cooked bacon (cooked/broiled with brown sugar for extra pizazz!)

- 4 or 5 medium fresh basil leaves, ripped into small pieces

-Squeeze of lime juice

-dash of cayenne pepper

-2 shakes of salt

-1/2 teaspoon sugar or 1/2 brown sugar (unless you used bacon with brown sugar already)

Instructions

1. Combine prosciutto or bacon with basil in a bowl or in the melon shell.

2. Combine lime juice, cayenne, salt, and sugar (omit sugar if using bacon cooked with brown sugar) in small bowl. Stir to combine. Toss prosciutto-basil mixture with lime mixture.

3. Add melon pieces and toss to combine.

4. Serve immediately or let sit for awhile if the rest of the meal isn't ready yet. If you're not serving the salad until much later, wait until closer to mealtime to rip up the basil and add it.

Here's the prosciutto. I bought two little slices from the deli counter - it was prosciutto di parma and cost $23.99 a pound, and I paid 57 cents, so... not very much. It looks like it came to about 1/8th of a cup, chopped up.

Note: When my mom made this, she used bacon, and she says that it was broiled with brown sugar on top. If you have bacon at home, you should TOTALLY do that instead. The deli prosciutto was tasty, but the kind in the bag at Safeway (which I used the second time around) can't hold a candle to good ol' bacon.

This next picture is completely irrelevant to the recipe, except that I ended up mixing the salad up in the hollowed-out honeydew, and the shell looked kind of cool in the sunlight. It reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West's crystal ball!

Here's the salad. We had it with lentil soup. Disclaimer: Unlike his pad kee mao-obsessed wife, Mike is not a fan of the sweet-salty-sour flavor profile. And true to form, he wasn't crazy about this dish. Soooo... not everyone will like it. Only those with good taste. BURN!

Last note: I think the salt drew out a little more honeydew liquid from the honeydew shell - so if your melon is on the not-so-ripe side, you might want to consider lightly salting the melon shell, letting it sit for a while, and then harvesting any juice that gathers up.

Cupcake Rickroll

2009-04-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'm only posting this because I really, really wanted to put up a link to Becca's recipe for Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream frosting way back in the day (as in, St. Patrick's Day), but Blogspot was flipping out and wouldn't let me do it for some reason. So I'm doing it now. Make. These. Cupcakes. (And then give them to me!!)

Here's a picture I snatched of one of the cupcakes Becca brought over for us. Soooooo good. So good, that I can't even remember which MST3K episode was on at the time.

Corned Beef, continued

2009-04-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

Well, life has been busy and it's been forever since I've posted something. I left off with homemade corned beef. A corned beef posting on April eighth isn't actually quite as outdated as it seems, because we didn't have it until several days after St. Patrick's Day. But still... it's been awhile.

This was my third try making my own corned beef. I wouldn't make it all the time, because it creates a lot of leftovers that we have trouble using up (especially since we don't have a microwave). But when I do make it... oh, man. Corned beef is addictive, isn't it? And the broth makes the best danged vegetables you've ever tasted.

You'll need a beef brisket for this. The recipe I use (citation below) asks for a 4-6 pound brisket, "preferably point cut, trimmed of excess fat, rinsed and patted dry." The author adds:

"If you prefer a leaner piece of meat, feel free to use the flat cut. In fact, we found more flat cut than point cut briskets in supermarket meat cases, so you’ll probably have to ask the meat department attendant or butcher to bring you a point cut. Leave a bit of fat attached for better texture and flavor."

Sure enough, I've always just used a flat cut, and I can't imagine the result being much more flavorful than it is (and I'm not bragging - it's all about the goodness of beef that has been covered in salt and spices for seven days). The flat cut seems to have plenty of fat on its own.

I use a recipe from Cooks Illustrated. Here's the recipe for the stuff that gets rubbed into the brisket to allow it to cure (originally published March 1997):

Ingredients for salt mixture:
-1/2 cup kosher salt
-1 tablespoon black peppercorns, cracked
-3/4 tablespoon ground allspice [Carrina's note: I was running low on ground allspice but, surprisingly, had some whole allspice berries, so I went halvsies on the ground allspice and cracked some whole berries as well. Seemed to work out fine]
- 1 tablespoon dried thyme
-1/2 tablespoon paprika
-2 bay leaves , crumbled

Here are the instructions on preparing the brisket. Note that this all happens 5-7 days before you serve it.

1. Mix salt and seasonings in small bowl.
2. Spear brisket about thirty times per side with meat fork or metal skewer [Carrina's note: don't forgot the spearing step - but if you do, just spear the brisket before you throw it in the pot to cook it, and it will be fine. I speak from experience]. Rub each side evenly with salt mixture; place in 2-gallon-size zipper-lock bag, forcing out as much air as possible. Place in pan large enough to hold it (a jelly roll pan works well), cover with second, similar-size pan, and weight with two bricks or heavy cans of similar weight [Carrina's note: yeah, we live a 700sqft apartment and we DON'T have bricks. Just pile a bunch of heavy stuff on top of the second pan, and you'll be fine]. Refrigerate 5 to 7 days, turning once a day.

Here's the brisket on day 2 or 3:

And here's the brisket on the morning of day 7... or maybe day 8. Even though I only had a half-brisket (3 lbs) to begin with, I still had to cut it in half to make it fit in the pot I used. I love pictures of cross-sections!

Okay, when the brisket has reached at least day 5 and you're ready to cook it, here are the instructions. Of course, if you're just cooking the meat by itself (no vegetables or cabbage), you can just rinse it off, through it in a pot of water that completely covers it, and simmer it for 2.5 hours or so. But if you want to cook it with cabbage and/or other vegetables, Cooks Illustrated comes up with this deceptively complicated set of instructions that basically boils down to these steps: 1) Cook meat in water. 2) When meat cooked in water is done (nice and loose but not totally mushy), keep it warm somewhere and cook vegetables in the meat water. Put root vegetables and other tough vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions) in 10 minutes or so before more delicate vegetables (cabbage, brussels sprouts).

Here are the instructions for cooking the meat and veggies. I'll include the list of vegetables that CI includes, since they refer to "Category 1" and "Category 2" vegetables. The recipe calls for 7-8 pounds of vegetables total.

Category 1 Vegetables
carrots, peeled and halved crosswise, thin end halved lengthwise, thick end quartered lengthwise
rutabagas (small), peeled and halved crosswise; each half cut into six chunks
white turnips (medium), peeled and quartered
new potatoes (small), scrubbed and left whole
boiling onions, peeled and left whole

Category 2 Vegetables
green cabbage (small head), uncored, blemished leaves removed, cut into six to eight wedges
parsnips , peeled and halved crosswise, thin end halved lengthwise, thick end quartered lengthwise
Brussels sprouts, blemished leaves removed and left whole

Instructions
3. Choose 7-8 pounds of vegetables of your choice from categories 1 and 2, prepared as described in the ingredient listing.
4. Rinse the brisket and pat it dry. Bring the brisket to boil with water to cover by 1/2 to 1 inch in large soup kettle or stockpot (at least 8 quarts), skimming any scum that rises to surface. Cover and simmer until skewer inserted in thickest part of brisket slides out with ease, 2 to 3 hours.

5. Heat oven to 200 degrees. Transfer meat to large platter, ladling about 1 cup cooking liquid over it to keep it moist. Cover with foil and set in oven.
6. Add vegetables from category 1 to kettle and bring to boil; cover and simmer until vegetables begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Add vegetables from category 2 and bring to boil; cover and simmer until all vegetables are tender, 10 to 15 minutes longer.

7. Meanwhile, remove meat from oven and cut across the grain into 1/4-inch slices.
8. Transfer vegetables to meat platter, moisten with additional broth, and serve.
9. Serve this dish with horseradish, either plain or mixed with whipped or sour cream, or with grainy mustard.

We had our corned beef and vegetables with soda bread. I used a Cooks Illustrated recipe for this, too! I'm not a fan of baking, but this bread was super easy, once I decided to ignore the instructions telling me to knead the dough (maybe it's because I used all regular flour insted of part regular, part cake flour, but the dough was so RIDICULOUSLY sticky that half of it was stuck to my knuckles after a single kneading motion). This bread also froze really, really well. A couple of minor words of wisdom: I vaguely remember using this same recipe a couple of years ago. The bread came out like an injurious rock. So, don't do these things: 1) substitute milk for buttermilk, 2) over-stir or -knead the dough, or 3) leave it in the oven until the top looks toasted. Just be gentle with it and it'll be fine.

Here's the recipe (originally published March 1997):

Yields 1 loaf.

Ingredients
-3 cups bleached all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
-1 cup cake flour
-2 tablespoons granulated sugar
-1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
-1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
-1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
-3 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 tablespoons softened + 1 tablespoon melted)
-1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Instructions
1. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Whisk flours, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt in large bowl. Work softened butter into dry ingredients with fork or fingertips until texture resembles coarse crumbs.
2. Add buttermilk and stir with a fork just until dough begins to come together. Turn out onto flour-coated work surface; knead until dough just becomes cohesive and bumpy, 12 to 14 turns. (Do not knead until dough is smooth, or bread will be tough.)
3. Pat dough into a round about 6 inches in diameter and 2 inches high; place on greased or parchment-lined baking sheet or in cast-iron pot, if using. Place the loaf on a cookie sheet and cut a cross shape into the top.
4. Bake until golden brown and a skewer inserted into center of loaf comes out clean or internal temperature reaches 180 degrees, 40 to 45 minutes. Remove from oven and brush with melted butter; cool to room temperature, 30 to 40 minutes.

sneak peek at the McNerneys' St. Patrick's Day late bloomer...

2009-03-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

Here's what we're having for dinner tomorrow!

Actually, that's kind of a trick photograph. The pile-o-broth has been weighting down some brisket that has been corning (is that the verb?) for 6 days now. It'll finally be ready tomorrow, and I'm PUMPED! I picked up the cabbage, brussels sprouts, carrots, new potatoes, and pearl onions (fancy!) today. Our dinners (and my work lunches) for next week are set!

More tomorrow!

Kimchi!

2009-03-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

My kimchi had it all - it was spicy and salty, with just a hint of scandal!

...Daikon radishes!

Now, I know next to nothing about kimchi. All I know is that Big Kahuna's BBQ in St Johns offers it as a condiment for their saimin (Haiwaiian-style noodle soup - I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's the quick description), and when we lived in St Johns, I learned to like both - a lot. It's spicy, crunchy, tangy, salty, and a teensy bit sweet.

I'll now cut straight to the Wikipedia definition, so I don't screw it up: Kimchi is "a traditional Korean pickled dish made of vegetables with varied seasonings. Its most common manifestation is the spicy baechu (cabbage) variety. Kimchi is the most common banchan, or side dish. Kimchi is also a common ingredient and combined with other ingredients to make dishes such as kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae) and kimchi fried rice (kimchi bokkeumbap)."

I saw some big, beautiful daikon radishes on sale at the store a couple of weeks ago. I don't really like radishes, but I had read that daikons are sometimes used in different varieties of kimchi, and seeing them reminded me that I'd wanted to try making kimchi. So, I picked up a bundle... of three. Huge. Radishes.

When I got home and looked up some kimchi recipes online, I discovered that just to get by with basics (so leaving aside powdered dried shrimp and all that good stuff for the moment), I'd also need Napa cabbage, onion, ginger, and garlic, and maybe some bottled kimchi paste. In fact, it sounded like the daikons were a bonus, and actually turn the kimchi into a different variety. In other words, you can make kimchi with cabbage or radishes (or cucumber, etc.) as the only crunchy veggie - you don't have to have both. The recipes also called for a Korean red pepper powder called kochukaru, but since I started this insane quest on a Sunday, it seemed that all of the groceries that might have sold it were closed, and I wasn't about to trek across the river to Uwajimaya (though it was tempting - maybe next time!). So, I ended up using regular ol' red chili powder, and while I am the first to admit that the result was not identical to the bliss I experienced at Big Kahuna's, it was still better than I expected.

Much like my recent experience with shepherd's pie, I was nervous about putting all of my recipe eggs in one basket. So, I went back and forth between two recipes I found online: this one and this one.

I used:

2 large Napa cabbages, quartered and chopped into a combination of 1/2-inch little ribbons, and little squares. It's okay if the cabbage doesn't all look the same. It should definitely be a meatier cut than for coleslaw, though.
2 large daikon radishes
6 cloves garlic
3-inch knob ginger
1/2 large onion
1 cup red chili powder
1.5 cups sea salt or regular salt, plus extra for the first step
1.5 tablespoons kimchi base (I found a brand called Momoya at Fubonn)

Instructions (again, these are cobbled together from the two sources whose links I included above):

1. Place the cabbage pieces into a couple of gallon-sized bags, layer by layer, sprinkling a fair amount of salt between layers. So basically, add some cabbage to a bag. Reach your hand into the bag to sprinkle salt over all the cabbage. Repeat 2 or 3 times for each bag. You will probably use about 1/4-1/2 cup of salt total.

2. Let the cabbage and salt sit in the bags for a couple of hours (one of the recipes I read asks for the cabbage to sit for 5 hours. I found another one that asks for it to sit for 12 hours. I may try this next time, but I was doing this on a Monday night! I hedged my bets with 2.5 hours). Shake the bags around a couple of times.

3. While the cabbage is resting in the salt, prepeare the other ingredients: fine-chop the onion, mince (or press) the garlic and ginger, and peel and chop the radishes into 1/2-inch cubes.

4. Dump the cabbage from both bags into a colander and rinse really, really well.

5. Mix the chili powder, remaining salt, kimchi base, ginger, garlic, and about 1/2 cup of water together in a bowl. You may need to add more water - it should be sauce-y when it's all mixed up.

6. Dump the rinsed cabbage, onion, and radishes into a bowl big enough to hold everything when it's getting tossed around. Add the pepper sauce to the bowl, and stir, stir, stir!

Now comes the uncertain (for me, because I don't know any kimchi experts, or if I do they haven't revealed themselves) part.

I'm pretty sure the mixture needs to be fully immersed in liquid in order to ferment/pickle. My mixture didn't contain enough liquid as it was, so when I spooned it into the three containers I used, I added a little more water, salt, and kimchi base to each container and stirred the heck out of it until the mixture was pretty much covered in liquid.

Then, I crossed my fingers and let the containers sit on the counter for two days.

And, a week later...

Hey, it's pretty good! (below is a picture with flash - the red color shows up a little better). I stirred it into a noodle soup I made for dinner one night. It gave the soup the perfect amount of kick!

The Good Shepherd's pie (with Guinness!)

2009-03-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

I first made shepherd's pie about a year ago, and we've had it three or four times since then. I'm not normally a huge fan of lamb, but I do like it in the context of stew (and while this isn't exactly stew, it's pretty darn close). My husband loves lamb, though, so we both win: I get to make something like a stew, where I don't have to worry about whether the meat is done or not (because after 2 hours in the oven, it'd better be done), and he gets lamb. So there.

Every time I've made shepherd's pie, I've combined some techniques from this recipe with most of the ingredients of this one and this one (I found them all on epicurious). Each recipe alone seems to have some little twist that sounds like way too much work (such as the venison the first recipe calls for - what now? I'm not on the Oregon Trail here! [although Johnny does have dysentery]). But from the three of them, I've been able to cobble together a process that works for me. And frankly, although I always toggle between the recipes to make sure I'm not forgetting something, I would have to do something horrendous to screw up shepherd's pie. Like, put in soy sauce instead of Guinness. That's literally the only thing I can think of that would make it bad.

Anyway, I thought I'd do myself a little service here and write down what I actually do, so that I don't have to go between the three recipes anymore. Next time I can just refer to... my own notes! Hey, there's a novel idea.

To make this recipe, you'll need a heavy dutch oven or some other pot that you can throw into the oven after cooking with it on the stovetop. Or, if you have two mutually exclusive pots, you could simply transfer the lamb stew mixture from the stove pot to the oven pot.

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds of boneless lamb shoulder, cut into 3/4-inch cubes. Already, we face some ambiguity here. One of the three recipes calls for 2 pounds of boneless lamb shoulder. Well, 2 pounds seems like a lot of meat to me. I've used 1 pound before with no sacrifice to flavor. In addition, I'm only able to find bone-in lamb shoulder, and the last time I used bone-in shoulder for shepherd's pie, I shaved some bone into the meat with my knife before I noticed what I was doing. So this time I picked up some lamb from Sheridan that had already been cut into large stew-like hunks. Honestly, I'm not sure what part of the lamb it was from, but it looked good and fresh, and it was delicious. I'll figure out the anatomical origin next time. ANYWAY, once you figure out what cut of lamb you're using - probably something that starts out all tough but softens with extended cooking is best - then cut it into 3/4-inch cubes. Or, if you don't mind happening upon enormous hunks of meat mid-bite, then make them 1-inch cubes like the epicurious recipes say. I myself find that to be a little too big.
5 tablespoons flour
olive oil to brown the lamb in
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup beef broth (reduced sodium works great, if you have it)
1 cup water
1/2 cup Guinness, or other stout/porter
1.5 tablespoons tomato paste
Fresh thyme from 3 or 4 sprigs
2 pounds baking potatoes
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk (enough to mash the potatoes with - you might need a little more, or less)
1/2 large onion, chopped
5 carrots, peeled and sliced diagonally
4 leeks, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch slices
2 turnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
5 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
1/2 cup of cheese curds, or medium cheddar cheese if you can't find cheese curds (Trader Joe's sells them, as does New Seasons and probably any grocery that has a fancy cheese section).
1 cup frozen peas, or whatever quantity is left in the frostbitten bag you need to use up

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. If necessary, move oven racks around so that your dutch oven will fit into the oven when the time comes.

2. Heat a tablespoon or two of the olive oil on medium heat, or lower if your stove is hot and your pot is thin.

3. Put the flour and some salt and pepper in a plastic bag large enough to hold the lamb. Put the lamb in, seal the bag, and shake it around until the lamb is coated in the flour.

4. Once the oil in the dutch oven is hot, add half the lamb and brown on all sides, about 6-8 minutes. Transfer the browned lamb to a plate and repeat the process with the other half of the lamb (if your pot is huge, you might be able to brown all the lamb at once).

5. When all the lamb has browned, reduce the heat to medium-low, put the plated lamb back into the pot, and add the 5 minced garlic cloves. Cook, stirring well so the garlic doesn't stick and burn, for 1 minute or so, until the garlic starts to smell good. Remove the lamb-garlic mixture to the plate once again, retaining the cooking liquids in the pot (if possible).

6. Add the Guinness to the pot. Boil over high heat for 1 minute, scraping up any brown bits. Stir in tomato paste and boil until mixture is reduced by half - 2-3 minutes.

This seems as good a space as any for a brief intermission of produce photos - yay, turnip! Hurray, leek!

...and, we're back.

7. Add beef broth, water, thyme, lamb with any juices on the plate, leeks, carrots, onion, turnips, and a little salt and pepper. Stir to combine. Bring mixture to a simmer, then remove from heat.

8. Cover pot with foil before putting the lid on, if your dutch oven is sneaky like mine and allows a good amount of air to get through. If you have a fancy Le Creuset casserole dish with a lid that weighs more than the average household pet, then you probably don't need to bother with foil.

9. Put the pot into the oven. Simmer for 1.5-2 hours, stirring once or twice (I usually let it take the full two hours).

Here it is: your last chance to opt out of having shepherd's pie tonight! (not that you would want to do that). At this point, if a better offer comes along you can just cool the lamb mixture once it is done, refrigerate it, and reheat it the next day to add the frozen peas and assemble the pie.

Otherwise, carry on to make the mashed potato topping:

10. When the lamb mixture has about 45 minutes to go, put on a pot of water to boil for the potatoes. Peel and chop the potatoes. Add them to the boiling water, or heat them up in the cold water - however you normally make mashed potatoes. When the potato chunks are soft enough for mashed potatoes, drain them, return them to the pot, and mash in the butter, a little milk at a time, and some salt and pepper. Note: you do want the potato topping to end up slightly soupier than you might prefer your mashed potatoes to be normally, so that you'll be able to spread it over the lamb mixture. Normally I don't like over-processed mashed potatoes, but I force myself to make an exception in this case.

11. When the lamb mixture's two hours are up, pull it out of the oven and stir in the frozen peas. If you do it right away, you shouldn't need to put the dutch oven back on the heat. If the mixture looks really soupy, you can put it back on the heat and stir in a little flour. Otherwise:

12. Move the oven racks around (AGAIN) so that whatever (broiler-safe) baking dish you use for the pie will be about 3 inches away from the broiler. Preheat the broiler.

13. Spoon the lamb mixture into a traditional broiler-safe pie pan, if that's what you're using, or into multiple smaller casserole dishes. Really, you might just need to eyeball the quantity of lamb mixture you ended up with and compare it to the various sizes of baking dishes you have lying around. It's pretty flexible.

14. Spoon the potato mixture over the lamb mixture, spreading it around with a spatula or spoon until the mixture is covered. If you want, use a fork to make fun little hatch-marks in the potato - it looks cool once the broiler has done its magic.

15. Grate the cheese curds or cheddar over the potato topping (note: if you have a grater that will produce microscopic chips, instead of long strings that cling together, that would be best. When the cheese gets shredded instead of grated, it tends to ball up in clumps, which produces the unevenly-broiled appearance that appears in my picture below).

16. Broil the pie for about five minutes, until it's golden-brown and bubbly on top. Don't pay any attention to the anemic appearance of the pie in the picture - it suffered the cheddar-clumping fate described above, and was also under-broiled the first time around, and then reheated the next day.

Spoon onto individual plates, and enjoy! This recipe makes 6-8 servings.

Hey, guess where I went yesterday!!!

2009-03-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

That's right -

PENZEYS!

This place is like a toy store! This is actually only the second time I've been there, but it's been way too long!

It's a small store, but spice jars are small merchandise, so it all works out. Generally, I buy my spices in bulk so that I can buy just what I need, and use it before it loses its flavor. Penzeys doesn't sell spices in bulk, so I have to really consider which new spice I'm going to invest in as a treat.

There's a chili and pepper section, a cinnamon section, a baking section, and some more I'm forgetting. You can also just follow the alphabet as it snakes around the store, accomodating the herbs and spices that don't fit into the sections I listed above. And, every single spice has a detailed description of where it comes from and what it's used for. And, of course, you can SMELL every single one of them.

Last time, I went with some coworkers and came out with pink peppercorns, smoked Spanish paprika, and "Bangkok Blend" (oh yeah, that's the other thing about Penzeys - they make a zillion interesting blends and mixes. It's fun to read the ingredients blend, and then try to recreate the mix at home).

This time, I got annatto seeds, savory, and black cardamom pods. They smell so smoky! I'm excited to put them in a spicy stew, or lentils, or something.

Oh, and I also got mace!

So, I had always assumed mace was, you know, in the pepper family. As in, pepper spray. But no. Here's the description that came on the bag. I was like... nutmeg skin? Really?

So, now the challenge is to figure out ways to use my new toys. I'm thinking I'll make some pink polenta with the annatto. At least, I hope it turns out pink. Pink-ish, anyway.

Pasta, continued: the applications

2009-03-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hey, so here's my professional-looking (well, kinda) pasta!

I'm not sure what kind of pasta it is, actually. Tagliatelle, maybe? We had it with toasted pine nuts (I just stir them around in a saucepan on medium until they look toasty),

And broccolini! My favorite!

It was a low-stress dinner! I just heated up some olive oil in a skillet, cooked some garlic and crushed red pepper in the oil (on pretty low heat so the garlic didn't burn), blanched the broccolini in boiling water just until it turned bright green, then threw it into the skillet with a little of the water, put the lid on, and let it cook from the steam in the skillet while the pasta cooked in the boiling water.

Once the broccolini and pasta were both cooked, I stirred everything together, and that was that! Mike grated a little parmesan to put on top.

and winning the least-photogenic award: Cabbage-Potato Soup with Bacon, Beer, Smoked Ham, and Cheddar (16-hour part optional)

2009-03-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

have

sixteen hours

CABBAGE

1/2 of medium or 1 entire small head cabbage, chopped into two-inchish ribbons
1 smoked ham hock
6 oz light-colored beer (I used an entire bottle this last time around and the soup turned out too sweet, so I'm turning it into a teaching moment: easy on the beer)
2 strips bacon (optional, but yummy for flavor). If not using bacon, you'll need a couple of tablespoons of olive oil
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1.5 large onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
3/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar (smoked if you can find it!)
About 48 oz chicken broth
About 48 oz water
3 small baking potatoes

Instructions:

1. Bring the chicken broth and water to a boil with the potatoes in a large pot. Once it comes to a boil, stir in the cabbage and turn down heat to a healthy simmer. Simmer for 20-25 minutes or until potatoes are softened enough to use for mashed potatoes. MEANWHILE...

2. Heat a dutch oven or other big pot (big enough to hold 102 oz of liquid plus all of the solid ingredients in this recipe...) to medium-high heat and fry the bacon. Lower burner to medium; remove dutch oven from heat. Remove the bacon and chop it up. Return the dutch oven to the burner and return the bacon to the dutch oven (which should still be coated with the bacon fat) along with the carrot, celery, and onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 8 minutes. Add minced garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Remove dutch oven from heat until the potatoes and cabbage are softened.

3. Add the potatoes, cabbage, and their cooking liquid to the dutch oven. Add the smoked ham hock and the beer. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to a low simmer. Simmer, uncovered, for 2-2.5 hours or until the potatoes are completely tender and/or disintegrated into the soup, and the ham hock is falling apart.

4. Remove the ham hock, shred, and return the meaty pieces to the soup. Whisk the shredded cheddar into the soup, stirring constantly until way after you think it's all melted. Otherwise, you will end up with fatty cheddar globules.

5. Serve! Your soup will not look as brown as mine did (below), unless you go the insane and regrettable 16-hour crock pot route.

I found some butterleaf lettuce on sale at the Sheridan Fruit Company, so we had a salad with minneola and that chipotle-honey glaze I used on that jicama salad with the soba noodles a couple of weeks back.
Here's what the soup looks like once the potatoes and cheese are properly distributed into the broth:

PASTA!!!

2009-03-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

So, I've made pasta at home before, but I've always used the same whole-wheat tagliatelle recipe from an old Cooking Light. It's good - and it got even better after I realized that I'd been using a broken kitchen scale to measure my flour, using three times the amount of dry ingredients (back to the measuring cup for me!) I've always wanted to try making pasta with regular old semolina, though, and today I did! I used the recipe off the back of the Bob's Red Mill semolina flour that I bought for the pasta:

Basic Pasta Recipe (from Bob's Red Mill)

1 1/2 cups semolina flour (I used 3/4 cup semolina and 3/4 cup regular white flour - the recipe notes said "many people prefer" this, so I thought I'd try it the cheap way first)

1/2 teaspoon salt, optional

2 eggs or 3 egg whites, beaten

2 tablespoons water

2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine semolina and salt. Add beaten egg whites (or eggs), water and oil. Mix to make a stiff dough. Knead 10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Wrap dough in towel or place in plastic bag and let rest 20 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out to desired thickness and cut as desired.

I added the liquids to the dry ingredients by pouring them into the food processor while it was running (on the lowest setting - "stir," I think).

I made half of the dough into nondescript linguine-like noodles (the skinniest I could make them while still keeping them in one piece).

I decided to turn the other half into orrechiette, but not before I had already rolled the dough out flat. So I cut it up into little squares (doesn't it look like it's going to become Cinnamon Toast Crunch?), then pressed them into little ear-shell things.

Udon Noodles with Soy-Caramelized Shallots and Baby Bok Choy

2009-02-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm mainly posting this because I will never get my fill of pictures of noodles swimming in broth.

I was super hungry on Saturday and had a baby bok choy that had been sitting in the fridge for a week. I had planned to split it between Mike and me at some point during the week, but it kept getting pushed to the back of the fridge. So, I prepared it pretty much the way I did in an earlier post with the Coke-and-lime chicken: seared it on both sides in peanut oil, removed the bok choy and cooked the remaining oil, ginger, garlic, brown sugar, soy sauce, chopped shallot, and a few drops of sesame oil into a glaze, then turned the glaze onto the bok choy. I simmered some udon noodles in chicken broth, water, and some five-spice powder, then dumped the bok choy into the noodles and broth and added a little lime juice. Yum! I will eat udon noodles completely plain, but it's a bonus when they come swathed in something interesting.

Sunsmoke Salsa with Soba Noodles

2009-02-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

Hey, a recipe that I didn't get from The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper!

I can't claim that I came up with this idea on my own, because there are many delicious-sounding recipes out there that call for jicama ("HEE-kuh-muh" - there should be an accent over the "i" there) with mango and some sort of grilled or smoky ingredient, and I've drooled over all of them at one time or another.

I think of jicama as a cross between an apple and potato (and am sure that I'm not the first one to make the connection - heck, maybe that's its actual lineage), because it's crisp like an apple but leaves your knife all starchy like a potato. Oh, and because it burns my hands just like potatoes burn my hands - but that's just me and my weird hands.

I was really getting a craving for some kind of salsa on Saturday morning, and found myself in the fortunate (for me - I love grocery shopping when it's quiet) position of having half an hour to kill at Safeway. So I picked up most of these ingredients without knowing exactly what I'd do with them, but knowing that they all sounded good together, at least.

Here's most of the star produce in a group shot - except for the ginger, which is like that guy who can be seen in the back of at least one family photo per vacation, scratching his nose or contorting his face to yell at someone unseen by the camera. What I mean to say by all this is that I ended up not using ginger in this recipe. I think it would have tasted weird.

Here's the jicama! I avoided jicama for a long time after my first experience with it, because it is so difficult to peel with your average-to-dull regular peeler, and I wanted better things for my knuckles than to die a bloody death in their twenty-somethings just because their master wanted to take a shot at "Gracie's Pepper Salad with Jicama" or whatever it was. Jicama skin is tough, or at least it is by the time it gets to the grocery stores where I live! But now I have a serrated peeler, which I think is meant for fruit, but it also does a great job of peeling anything tricky.

And not to show off, but here is my adorable Microplane grater! Actually, I have now invested in three of them total, but here is the one that proved to be the perfect size for grating a little zest off the blood orange. Here it is pretending to be a skyscraper in the most recent "Godzilla" flop:

Convincing, huh? And to the left, it reveals its true stature. I got it for a dollar!

To our right we have the dried chipotle

chiles that figure in the dressing/liquid component for the salsa.

Get a look at that texture on the chipotle! Doesn't it just look like the paper bag that got left in the backyard, partially sheltered by the roof or a garbage can or something, and proceeded to get rained on and dried out by the sun repeatedly for five years?

Anyway, enough yammering about paper bags. Here's the recipe:

Sunsmoke Salsa with Soba Noodles (or other grain of your choice)
For the dressing/liquid part:

1/8 cup honey
Juice from one blood orange (or regular orange! I just think the blood oranges are pretty), about 1/4 cup
Juice from 1/2 lime
1/4 teaspoon zest from orange
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 or 2 dried chipotles chiles (I used 1 but wish I'd used 2), chopped into 4 or 5 easy-to-fish-out pieces
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Instructions for dressing:
1. Heat honey and olive oil in a small saucepan (as small as you have, really, so that the chipotles get covered up as much as possible) oon low, or whatever will heat the liquid without burning the honey on your stovetop.
2. When the honey and olive oil are warmed and thin, add the cumin and the pieces of chipotle. Cover and let the mixture sit a little above low for 15 minutes or so, so that it smells smoky from the chipotle. If it starts bubbling angrily, turn it down.

3. Once the mixture smells nice and smoky, stir in the juice and zest from the blood orange and let the mixture simmer for a few minutes. When it seems "combined" enough and a little syrupy, take it off heat. When it's cool, take out each chipotle piece and squeeze the honey mixture stuck on the inside back into the pan. Let the mixture cool completely before adding the lime juice. You could really just add the lime juice right before you put the meal together. If you put in the lime juice before you are ready to toss the vegetables with the dressing, be sure to whisk the dressing mixture again before combining it with the veggies.

For the salsa and soba noodles:

1 carrot, grated
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed (or soaked and cooked dried black beans)
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed through garlic press
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1.5 tablespoons finely chopped shallot (or not, if you hate onion breath and think the garlic and green onions will be enough for you)
2 red bell peppers, diced, sliced, or whatever you prefer - I did a combination
1 medium jicama, peeled and cut into matchsticks
1 mango, peeled and diced
1/2 serrano pepper, seeded, deveined, and finely chopped
1 avocado
Cooked and cooled soba noodles for however many people you are serving - or rice, or pasta, or whatever else you think would taste good under the salsa!

Instructions for the salsa:

1. Combine all ingredients except the black beans and the avocado in a large bowl. Toss to combine. Drizzle dressing into bowl, adding it in two installments if the bowl is on the smaller side. Toss salsa to coat with dressing.

2. Peel and dice avocado. Spoon 1 cup or so of salsa over each person's plate of cold soba noodles; sprinkle black beans and avocado over each serving. Or, if serving family-style, place the black beans and diced avocado over the rest of the salsa in the bowl. Serve promptly.

The "serve promptly" is so the avocado won't brown. As long as you save the avocado-chopping step for last, you've got oodles of time. I'm anticipating this salsa will keep for days (and will report back if that proves not to be the case. And hey, check out the nifty avocado-saver ("saver" - I hope) I MacGyvered together so I can have more avocado at work tomorrow. Right now, it's sitting in a mug in the fridge.

Of course, only after creating the limado (as I plan on calling it) did I remember that we're going to my brother-in-law's for dinner tomorrow, so we won't get to use the leftover avocado for dinner. So, a true test: a 48-hour avocado?! We shall see.

One final note: I described sprinkling the black beans and avocado separately on top because my black beans were a little on the mushy side and were going to be crushed under the weight of the rest of the ingredients. Beans of a springier nature should be able to handle the incorporation just fine, and adding them to the leftover salsa will do wonders for their taste, I'm sure.

Weekday-Worthy Muffins: Carrots, Raisins, Apple, Coconut, and Orange Juice

2009-02-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

Confession: I don't eat breakfast. I do scrounge the cafeteria at my work for bagels and pastries, which show up every couple of weeks. They are leftovers donated by Starbucks, frozen and then reheated when there are meetings people find deserving of coffee and pastries... but I digress.

The point is, my mom made these unbelievably delicious muffins from the King Arthur flour website when I was visiting my family last month. I'm not a morning muffin kind of person. Frankly, I avoid chewing before 11AM if I can help it. But these - ooh! They have enough natural sweetness to them that I've found I can cut the amount of sugar in half - which really helps my blood sugar not to lose it before lunch. The first time I made them, I basically followed the instructions below except that I didn't use walnuts or sunflower seeds. When I made them again at the beginning of this week, I used about 2.5-3 cups of grated carrot (the recipe calls for 2 cups) and probably 3/4 cup of raisins (the recipe calls for 1/2 cup). I also cut the coconut down from 1/2 to 1/4 cup, just because that was all I had left. Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup raisins
2 cups whole wheat flour, traditional or white whole wheat
1 cup brown sugar (I upped the raisins and carrots, and halved the amount of sugar, and they still turned out plenty sweet)
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups carrots, peeled and grated
1 large tart apple, peeled, cored, and grated
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut (I used the kind from the bulk bin. I wasn't sure if it was the same thing because it certainly doesn't start out as moist as the kind you buy in a bag in the baking aisle - but it worked out just fine)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (meh. Didn't use these, since like I said, I don't chew more than I have to in the morning, and don't really like walnuts)
1/3 cup sunflower seeds or wheat germ, optional (didn't do this, but it sounds good)
3 large eggs
2/3 cup vegetable oil (I used a couple of tablespoons of coconut oil for the nice scent and because I wanted to try it out)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup orange juice (I don't regularly have orange juice on hand, so I just bought a can of orange juice concentrate, and each time I make these I scoop out a couple of tablespoons and mix them with warm water)

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin, or line it with papers and spray the insides of the papers.

To make the muffins: In a small bowl, cover the raisins with hot water, and set them aside to soak while you assemble the rest of the recipe. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, spices, and salt. Stir in the carrots, apple, coconut, nuts, and sunflower seeds or wheat germ, if using. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and orange juice. Add to the flour mixture, and stir until evenly moistened. Drain the raisins and stir them in. Divide the batter among the wells of the prepared pan (they'll be full almost to the top; that's OK).

To bake the muffins: Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, until nicely domed and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes in their pan on a rack, then turn out of pans to finish cooling.

(Carrina's note: 20 minutes seems to be plenty of time, especially if you're using a dark pan like I did. I think my mom found this to be the case, too.)

I tried out some freebie silicone muffin cups.

Best. Brussels Sprouts. Ever.

2009-02-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

When I was little, brussels sprouts made me literally gag, in the same way that I now gag when I take a deep whiff of milk that is weeks past its prime (this happens too often in our apartment). Sometime in the last couple of years, I started sauteeing them instead, and liked what I tasted. When I was starting out, I would chop off the base and then take them apart leaf by leaf. This is a quick and fun way to go, since sauteeing the leaves in olive oil with salt and pepper takes only a couple of minutes, and leaves you with tasty, crispy morsels that look nothing like brussels sprouts. It's a little bit oilier of a method, though, which is why I do things a little differently these days.

For two people, I use:
-10 brussels sprouts
-1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
-about 1/2 cup chicken broth
-extra credit, but not necessary for yumminess: toasted pine nuts!
-salt and pepper (sea salt's yummy, but any will work)

1. First, chop just a little off the base of each sprout. Then, cut each sprout in half from base to top.
2. Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to a little over medium in a skillet (non-non-stick is nice because it allows the sprouts to get a little more caramelized), and throw the sprouts in once the oil is nice and hot. It should be hot enough that the sprouts sizzle. Let them sit there for a couple of minutes, stirring if they are clearly on their way to burning.
3. Turn each piece over after a while, so that they get browned on both sides.
4. Once most pieces are nice and browned, turn the heat down to low, move the skillet off heat, and add the garlic to an area of the skillet that still has enough oil to keep the garlic from burning, adding more oil if there is no such area. The garlic only needs twenty seconds or so; as soon as it is on its way to smelling good,
5. move the skillet back to heat, turn the burner down to medium-low, add the chicken broth, stir, and cover. Let simmer, covered, for four minutes or so. If you end up needing extra time for whatever else you are cooking to finish up (for us it was spaghetti with lentils from Monday), the sprouts will keep very patiently, covered, in the pan for quite a while. If you're using the toasted pine nuts, just scatter them on each person's plate, or stir them into the communal vegetable bowl right before serving (not that anything will go wrong if you add them earlier: they just won't be as toasty-crunchy).

We had extra fun with this dish last night by sprinkling the sprouts with red alder smoked salt from The Meadow. I've been trying forever (well, since I bought the salt) to find something that isn't overwhelmed by this salt, and I have a winner!

So there you go. Brussels sprouts that melt in your mouth in the deliciousness sense, but still stand up to your mouth in drawing a hard line against mushiness.

Spaghetti With Lentils

2009-02-15T20:22:00.000-08:00

We did indeed end up having spaghetti with lentils last night. However, I modified the recipe from the USDA website (read more about the site on yesterday's post, if you want to) a little, based upon what I had lying around in the kitchen.

First, here's the recipe from the USDA website:

Lentil Spaghetti Sauce

Serving Size: 1 cup
Yield: 6 servings
-1 pound ground beef
-1 cup chopped onion
-1 crushed garlic clove or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
-1 1/2 cups cooked, drained lentils
-1 jar (28 to 32 ounce) spaghetti sauce

1. In a large sauce pan brown meat. Drain.
2. Add onion and garlic to drained meat. Cook until onions are soft but not brown.
3. Add cooked lentils and spaghetti sauce and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook gently for 15 minutes.
4. Serve sauce over hot cooked spaghetti noodles.

Cost: Per Recipe: $ 8.10; Per Serving: $ 1.35
Source: Adapted from Montana Extension Nutrition Education Program Website Recipes Montana State University Extension Service

And then they give you the nutrition facts! (right)

The original recipe is a little high in sodium for my taste, but I cut back on that by using no-salt-added canned diced tomatoes, and some leftover tomato sauce and tomato paste, instead of a premade jarred or canned spaghetti sauce.

Here's what I did instead of following the recipe exactly. In my case, my modifications actually saved money, since I had extra tomato sauce and paste sitting around in the freezer, but did not have any premade spaghetti sauce or ground beef. So, this is not supposed to be a recipe "makeover" by any means, because I've made the recipe the original way and it's very tasty. I just thought I would follow the spirit of the recipe by using what's most readily available to me.

New Ingredients:
- about 3 cups cooked lentils, mostly regular brown lentils, but 1/4 cup of baby red lentils thrown in as well. I'm not sure how much they were before they were cooked. 1 1/2 cups, maybe?
-1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup chopped onion (about 1/2 of a large onion)
-3 garlic cloves, minced
-1/2 teaspoon thyme
-1 bay leaf
-1 can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, mostly drained
-about 1 1/2 cups tomato sauce (or if you don't have it, just don't drain the diced tomatoes)
-about 1.5 tablespoons tomato paste (if you don't have it, use less liquid and switch heat to low as soon as the sauce gets chunky enough to spoon over pasta)
-3/4 cup red wine (totally optional. I have a 3-liter box of good red wine (really!) sitting in my fridge right now, and since the lack of air exposure in the box means I can actually use the whole thing before it turns, this means that adding the wine to the lentils cost me $1.04 [really - I calculated it]. Unnecessary, but cheaper than the ground beef would have been, and this is why I have the wine, anyway).

1. Cover the lentils with a bunch of water in a medium saucepan. Bring to an almost-boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover.
2. Put on water to boil in a separate pot for spaghetti noodles.
3. Once the lentils have had 10 or 15 minutes of simmering, heat the olive oil on medium in a Dutch oven or pot big enough to hold six cups of spaghetti sauce. When oil heats up, sautee onions until they soften. Add minced or pressed garlic and cook for a minute. Add diced tomatoes, whatever tomato liquid you are using (but not tomato paste), thyme, bay leaf, and wine. Bring to an almost-boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover [note: if you used a non-non-stick pan and little brown bits of onion and garlic are stuck to the bottom, you might as well add the wine first and have it help you scrape the brown bits back into the mixture].
4. When lentils seem like they are done, drain (if there's any water left over) and add to the tomato sauce. If your spaghetti noodles are still cooking, keep the sauce simmering and stir in the tomato paste when the noodles still have a few minutes left.
5. Taste sauce for salt and pepper (I added a fair amount of both), spoon over drained spaghetti noodles, and serve!

Not overly photogenic, but tasty as all get-out!

Economical Swedish Furniture Makes Me Ravenous

2009-02-15T15:08:00.000-08:00

... so I was ready to eat when I got back from Ikea at CascadeStation (ha! A mall that thinks it's an insurance company, by the sound of its name) this afternoon. When I drive back from the airport on Sandy, I go past soooo many intriguing noodle places - Ohana, Got Pho?, Thai Lao Bistro, Pho Gia - and those are just the ones I can think of right now. There are literally at least five more, and those are just the signs in English. I really, reeeeally wanted noodles - but I really didn't want to stop or spend money. So, I dressed up some Top Ramen! I brought water to a boil with a few tablespoons of leftover chicken broth, part of the spice package, and half of a leftover carrot, quartered. Once it got to a boil, I added the noodles, a handful of frozen corn (whew! Finally used up the last of the bag), a clove, and some Five-Spice powder (cinnamon, anise, fennel, ginger, clove, and licorice root. Hey, wait... Sun Luck, are you sure you want to call it Five-Spice - yes? Well, okay...). I have no idea if four minutes of simmering was enough for the whole clove to make any contribution, but the five-spice powder certainly did its share!

Once the carrots were soft enough to stick a fork through, I put it all in a bowl, added a dash of rice vinegar, a dash of soy sauce, and a couple of drops of toasted sesame oil, and some sesame seeds on top just for sass. And it was great, and psychologically so much more filling than a regular bowl of ramen!

My cheap and oh-so-good noodle bowl got me thinking. A couple of years ago, I discovered the USDA's online recipe-finder tool (http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/). It features a sizeable database of easy, generally healthy, and very economical recipes. Each recipe has been analyzed for cost and nutritional content. Many of the recipes are submitted by nutritionists who are trying to get people to eat healthily while using food stamps. This makes it a great place to go to find basic, bare-bones recipes that cost between 30 and 90 cents a person (some more). Then, if you decide that you want to splurge on kale or use leftover green onions, you can do that - but in most cases, you don't have to go out and buy something crazy just because it holds the recipe together. And, the database is incredibly searchable, since it's partly intended for social workers to use to get their nutrition messages across.

Here are just a few of the many ways you can search:

-Nutrition Education Topic (Calcium-Rich Food; Whole Grains; Less Saturated Fat, Trans Fat and Cholestorol)

-Theme (Ready in 30 Minutes Or Less, Food Resource Management)

-Menu Items (self-explanatory)

-Ingredients

-Ratings

-Audience (Parents of young children, Middle Eastern, Southern, Vegetarian)

-Cooking Equipment (Microwave, Wok, No Cooking Required, Stovetop/Hot Plate)

-Aaand: recipe cost! Yes, you can actually specify that your search results cost less than a certain amount per serving and/or recipe.

There are even official-looking Nutrition Facts with each recipe, as well as a shopping list feature (you can browse through recipes, click "Add to shopping list" when one looks good, and then view your list to see what you'll need).

In honor of our crappy economy, I've decided to start using this website a lot more. It's such a great tool! In fact, I may try to cook things from it every day this week. I'll let you know how they turn out.
So, tonight we're having Spaghetti With Lentils, which is kind of cheating because it's the first recipe I ever used off of this site when I first discovered it.

Birthday Cupcakes For My Sister!

2009-02-15T14:44:00.000-08:00

My sister Megan's birthday was last week, and we celebrated it yesterday (Valentine's Day). So, I made some cupcakes! Another recipe from Cooks Illustrated - I have to make sure I get my money's worth for my online membership fee, I guess! These were pretty fun to make - I don't usually enjoy baking, but these had very few of the annoying parts of baking, and all of the fun (melting chocolate over the stove! stirring white sour cream into dark, dark, chocolate! oooohhhh...)

Here's the recipe (originally published 3/1/05):

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

Makes 12 cupcakes.
"This recipe does not double very well. Cupcakes made from a doubled batch and baked side by side in the oven yield a slightly compromised rise. It's best to make two separate batches and bake each separately. Store leftover cupcakes (frosted or unfrosted) in the refirgerator, but let them come to room temperature before serving."

-8 tablespoons unsalted butter , cut into 4 pieces
-2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped [Carrina's note: most chocolate bars seem to come in 3.5 ounces, which means that you will need to use 4/7 of the chocolate bar - a very unhappy fraction since most of the bars also come in eight pre-scored rectangles. I eyeballed it and it turned out fine. It's all chocolate!)
-1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa (1 1/2 ounces)
-3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (3 3/4 ounces)
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-3/4 teaspoon baking powder
-2 large eggs
-3/4 cup sugar (5 1/4 ounces)
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/2 teaspoon table salt
-1/2 cup sour cream (4 ounces)

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position; heat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard-sized muffin pan (cups have 1/2-cup capacity) with baking-cup liners.

2. Combine butter, chocolate, and cocoa in medium heatproof bowl. Set bowl over saucepan containing barely simmering water; heat mixture until butter and chocolate are melted and whisk until smooth and combined. Set aside to cool until just warm to the touch.

3. Whisk flour, baking soda, and baking powder in small bowl to combine.

4. Whisk eggs in second medium bowl to combine; add sugar, vanilla, and salt and whisk until fully incorporated. Add cooled chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Sift about one-third of flour mixture over chocolate mixture and whisk until combined; whisk in sour cream until combined, then sift remaining flour mixture over and whisk until batter is homogenous and thick.

5. Divide batter evenly among muffin pan cups. Bake until skewer inserted into center of cupcakes comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes.

6. Cool cupcakes in muffin pan on wire rack until cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes. Carefully lift each cupcake from muffin pan and set on wire rack. Cool to room temperature before icing, about 30 minutes. (To frost: Mound about 2 tablespoons icing on center of each cupcake. Using small icing spatula or butter knife, spread icing to edge of cupcake, leaving slight mound in center.)

Safeway was out of powdered sugar, so for the frosting, I turned to my friends Duncan and Betty.

Chicken with Lime Juice and Coca-Cola(!), plus Red Quinoa and Baby Bok Choy with Sesame-Soy Glaze

2009-02-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

First, the recipe for the chicken: I got it from a friend who now lives in Peru.

Chicken with Lime Juice and Coca-Cola (thanks, Laura!)
-4 medium boned, skinless chicken breasts
-5 cloves garlic, minced
-Juice of 5 limes
-1 can Coca Cola
-Salt and pepper to taste
-Olive oil to coat bottom of skillet

Heat olive oil and place chicken breasts in skillet. Brown on medium heat turning as needed. As soon as chicken is brown add garlic and saute 1 minute. Pour Coca Cola and lime juice over chicken and simmer uncovered on low heat, approximately 20 minutes. Serve over rice along with your favorite vegetable.

It was so easy, and so good! My only regret is that I did not brown the chicken enough. I thought I had, but really it just had kind of a temporary dark glaze from the oil. It looked a little pasty when all was said and done. Next time I'll give the breasts several minutes on each side.

And now, the baby bok choy! This recipe was a lot of fun: the oil spatters quite a bit though, so watch your glasses and make sure the fan is on. Oh, and use your best judgment with whether you really want to go adding garlic to a pan as hot as this one gets. I found myself holding the pan off of heat for at least a minute, throwing the garlic in after the green onions (scallions) so that the moisture from the onions could act as a buffer to keep the garlic from burning.

This recipe is from Cooks Illustrated and was originally published on May 1st, 2001.

Sesame-Soy-Glazed Baby Bok Choy

Serves 4 as a side dish.
"This recipe works best with baby bok choy weighing no more than 4 ounces each. If your market sells larger baby bok choy, remove a layer or two of the large outer leaves."
-2 tablespoons soy sauce
-2 tablespoons chicken stock or canned low-sodium chicken broth
-1 tablespoon rice vinegar
-2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
-1 teaspoon granulated sugar
-3 tablespoons peanut oil
-4 baby bok choy (about 4 ounces each), each head halved lengthwise
-3 medium cloves garlic , minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1 tablespoon)
-1 inch piece fresh ginger , minced (about 1 tablespoon)
-2 medium scallions , sliced thin
-1 tablespoon sesame seeds , toasted in a small dry skillet over medium heat until lightly browned and fragrant, about 4 minutes

1. Combine soy sauce, stock, vinegar, sesame oil, and sugar in small bowl.

2. Heat large nonstick skillet over high heat until hot, about 2 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons peanut oil, swirl to coat pan bottom. Place bok choy in skillet, cut-side down, in single layer. Cook, without moving, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Turn bok choy and cook until lightly browned on second side, about 1 minute longer; transfer to large, warm platter.

3. Add garlic, ginger, and scallions to now-empty pan and drizzle with remaining 1 tablespoon peanut oil. Cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add soy sauce mixture and simmer until reduced and thickened, about 20 seconds. Return bok choy to pan and cook, turning once, until glazed with sauce, about 1 minute. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve immediately.

I love baby bok choy! Love it! It's so cute and wrinkly, and invidual-serving-size-ready!

It looks kind of burned, but I think it has to in order to get that caramelized flavor.

And here's how everything came together! I didn't write any instructions for the red quinoa because it basically made itself. I gave it a quick rinse (turns out that the kind I buy in bulk is pre-rinsed to get rid of quinoa's naturally bitter coating) and threw it in the rice cooker with 1 part quinoa to 2 parts chicken broth. So easy!

Note: I've tagged this recipe as "gluten-free" because the main dish is. The baby bok choy, however, contains soy sauce, which has wheat. So, the menu is not gluten-free. But it could be with a few adjustments.

Two Broccolis With Cavatappi and Raisin-Pine Nut Sauce

2009-02-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

I'm on a splendidly tabled kick this week! My parents gave me the book (can't assume that anyone's read my other posts, so, "the book" is The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper) for Christmas, and I've just been getting into it again recently.

I don't know if I've ever consciously eaten broccoli raab (rapini), although I read about it in mouth-watering contexts on a fairly regular basis. I was expecting it to be a lot spicier than it was! It had a kick, I guess, but I was bracing myself for a smackdown which, mercifully, did not come.

I made a few changes: the recipe calls for cavatappi, which I think are those little corkscrew tubes. I didn't have any, but I used radiattore, which seemed to catch the yummy sauce just as nicely. Also, it calls for Genoa salami. I used what the deli case called "Venetian hot Genoa salami." Hmmm... Google tells me that Genoa is also in the north of Italy, just on the opposite side from Venice. Anyway, because of the extra hotness from the salami, I omitted the second jalape*o. And for the cheese, we STILL had some mizithra left over from weeks ago, so I used that and made up for the extra saltiness by not adding salt anywhere else they say to, except a bit in the pasta water.

Final note: use a huge pot for the pasta and broccolis if you are making all four servings, and use a big saute pan, too!

Notes from the recipe: they say it serves 4 as a main dish (looks more like 6 to me, but I may have gone overboard on the broccolis), and that the sauce can be made one hour before serving.

1 to 1 1/2 pounds broccoli
1 large bunch (1 to 1 1/4 pounds) broccoli raab (broccoli di rapa, cime di rapa, rapini)
8 quarts salted water in a 10-quart pot

The Saute

Good-tasting extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste
2 ounces Genoa salami, sliced 1/4 inch thick and cut into 3/4-inch dice
2 jalape*os, fine chopped (seeded if you want less heat)
4 large garlic cloves, fine chopped
1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup water
1/3 cup raisins

Pasta

1 pound imported cavatappi, rotini, or fusilli [Carrina's note: uunnh? Imported? I used Golden Grain Mission and had no complaints...]
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded Stella Fontinella, Asiago, or young sheep cheese [Carrina's note: hm, I think I've heard of Asiago... any kind of cheese would have been yummy in this dish]

1. Bring the salted water to a boil.

2. Peel the broccoli stalks (huh? I've never done this. Maybe someone can tell me to do it without peeling my knuckles off), and cut them into 1/4-inch-thick diagonal slices. Quarter the florets. Trim the broccoli raab stems to within an inch of where the leaves begin. Pile up the stalks and slice them into 1/4 inch pieces (WHOOPS! missed this last sentence while making the recipe, but frankly, I liked having some recognizable broccoli in there).

3. Generously film the bottom of a straight-sided 12-inch saute pan with olive oil, and set it over high heat. Add the onion and generous sprinkles of salt and pepper. Saute until the onion is golden brown, stirring often. Halfway through the saute add the salami and jalape*os.

Once the onions are browned, blend in the garlic and tomato paste. Cook for 1 minute. 4. Stir in 1/2 cup of the water and boil it down to nothing as you use a wooden spatula to scrape up everything from the bottom of the pan. Repeat with the remaining 1/2 cup water. Once it is boiled off, stir in the raisins and pull the pan off the heat. Cover and set aside.

5. Drop the pasta into the boiling water. Cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes. Stir in the two broccolis and boil until the pasta is just tender. Scoop 1/2 cup of the pasta water out of the pot and set it aside. Immediately drain the pasta and vegetables in a colander.

(As you may have guessed by the presence of both hands, my husband took this picture for me! Although an optically-activated camera that straps to one's head would be flipping sweet...)

6. Reheat the onion saute over medium-high heat. Blend in the reserved pasta water, and add the pasta and vegetables and the pine nuts. Toss over the heat for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the pasta is lightly coated with the moistened saute.

Taste the pasta for seasoning. Turn it into a serving bowl. Pass the cheese separately.

Done! Delicious, hot dinner with the vegetable stirred right in, and at least three servings' worth of leftovers.

So, I'll be contending with leftovers tomorrow, but here are the ingredients for Wednesday's meal (if all goes according to plan):

4 medium boned, skinless chicken breasts
5 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 5 limes
1 can Coca-Cola

Yes, that's right: Lime juice. And Coca-Cola. And chicken. I'm so excited it just may affect my sleep! I got this recipe from a friend who now lives in Peru. I can't wait to try it!

Yeah, still not over it. Chicken... and Coke! Can't wait.

Pho, Interrupted

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

Disclaimer: This isn't really pho. I'm sure a closer title would be "Soup which superficially resembles pho, but whose broth was concocted in an inauthentic manner." But whatever it is, I love it almost as much as I love the bowl I get down the street at Pho Gia! So, I just wanted to get that off my chest: this broth has no beef knuckles or anything of the kind. It's just an approximation.

Aaaaanyway, I bought a knob of fresh turmeric the other day (grown organically in Hawaii! Who knew?) and was itching to use it in something. I don't think I've ever seen turmeric in its non-yellow-powder form before! Looked like ginger except for the whole orange factor. This picture doesn't really do it justice.

I've made my Splendid Table-inspired pho-proximation several times. The broth contains a bunch of broiled ginger. I figured I would use a little less ginger than usual, and add in some turmeric. The turmeric gave the broth a beautiful color!

The bad news: All of my pictures are showing up tiny, even though I select "Large"! What gives??

Here's the recipe:

Vietnamese Rice Noodle Soup With Beef and Fresh Herbs (Pho)

From The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper

Cheater's Asian Broth (this name comes from the cookbook! not me)

-1 medium onion, thin sliced

-4 large garlic cloves, thin sliced

-One 2- to 3-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and thin sliced

-6 whole cloves

-1 whole star anise, bruised; or 1/2 teaspoon anise seeds

-Fresh-ground black pepper

-Four 14-ounce cans chicken broth

-2 tablespoons sugar

-2 teaspoons Asian fish sauce (nam pla or nuoc nam)

Soup

-6 to 8 ounces linguine-style rice noodles

-6 to 8 ounces top round steak (chicken breast can be substituted), sliced extremely thin

Table Salad

-10 sprigs fresh coriander (okay, where I come from this is cilantro, and the Splendid Table isn't British so I'm not sure who they're trying to impress...)

-6 to 8 sprigs Thai or other fresh basil

-2 serrano chiles or jalape*os, thin sliced

-Generous handful bean sprouts

-1 large lime, cut into wedges

Sauces (I've never used these and haven't particularly missed them)

Hoisin sauce

Hot sauce

1. Position an oven rack 4 to 6 inches from the broiler, and preheat. Double a very large piece of heavy foil. Scatter the onion, garlic, ginger, cloves, anise, and 5 grinds of pepper on the foil.

Broil for 5 minutes, turning the pieces once. You want the onion to have some toasted edges, and the spices should be fragrant. Scrape everything into a 6-quart pot. Be sure to get all the anise seed if that's what you used.

2. Add the broth, sugar, and fish sauce, and bring to a gentle bubble. Cover tightly, and simmer for 20 minutes. [Carrina's note: stop right here! Every single time I make this broth, I end up simmering for closer to 40 minutes, because I forget to start soaking the rice noodles until the broth is done. Consequently, the broth always ends up being a little too, ahem, pungent. 20 minutes really is plenty of time for this method. Just sayin'. Now could you please tell my future self this, so she remembers the next time she makes this broth?]

3. Meanwhile, put the rice noodles in a large bowl, and cover them with very hot tap water [Carrina's note: hot tap water just did not cut it when I made this at my mom's house. We ended up just having to boil water at the last minute. I've started using almost-boiling water from a teapot instead, and it works much better. And yes, cover it!]. Soak the noodles for 10 to 15 minutes, or until they are tender but with a little more firmness than you want. Stir a few times. When they are ready, drain and rinse well with cold water. Divide the noodles between two large soup bowls.

4. While the broth is simmering and the noodles are soaking, arrange the table salad on a platter and set out the sauces.

[Carrina's note: also slice the meat at this point, if you have time! I used top round steak that had been frozen solid for a month, then thawed in the fridge for five minutes. It was like I was shaving the meat! I used my super-sharp, fairly new chef's knife, or this method probably wouldn't have worked.]

5. To serve, divide the beef between the soup bowls. Ladle the bubbling broth into the bowls [check out the beautiful yellow color the turmeric gave to the onions!]

Top each serving with selections from the table salad.

...and my first Cakewrecks tribute cake!

2009-02-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

My friend rocked the GRE yesterday, so my husband and I got invited over for some celebratory drinks. I also used the occasion to make... my first Cakewrecks tribute cake! I should clarify that I did not actually make the cake, or even the frosting. I'd like to think that I would have if time had allowed (despite my apathy toward baking), but given the time constraint, this was definitely a supermarket job. Since we were taking it over to someone's house as a stand-alone dessert, I wanted it to actually taste good, so I chose New Seasons over Safeway, despite the latter's undoubtedly deep tradition of creating Cakewrecks-worthy creations.

Unfortunately, New Seasons was fresh out of stereotypical supermarket cakes. Everything behind the glass case was prohibitively expensive (sorry Becca, but those cakes are designed to be sold by the slice - paying $42.95 for a whole cake and then doing what I did to it would be like someone in the Pearl District letting her puppy do its business while wearing a Nordstrom decorative one-piece knitted jumpsuit). That left me with the pre-packaged baked goods, which were attractively priced but all a little too - flourished. I didn't particularly want a key lime or lemon cake, but nothing else had a flat writing surface big enough for my dark purpose. Finally, I settled on a chocolate truffle cake that was big enough to write on, if only my frosting-writing-thingum could bridge the crackly parts.

And... tra-la-laaaaaa...

This particular inscription job pays tribute to Cakewrecks in at least four ways:

1. The word "Congratulations" is inexplicably mangled

2. "And Under Neat That" - blatant reference to Cakewrecks' "Cake That Started It All"

3. Inappropriate use of quotation marks around the word "test"

4. Color instructions carelessly transcribed onto cake

One could also draw attention to the haphazard pink blobs, and the cake's sunken topography. If you don't get it, go to cakewrecks.blogspot.com and click on some of the old reader favorites on the right-hand side.

Spicy Turkey and Jasmine Rice Soup

2009-02-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

- from Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak (yes, the same guy who wrote Where the Wild Things Are - but this is the book that gives me kindergarten memories).

I pulled a bag of this soup out of the freezer to have for lunch yesterday. Even without the snappy toppings, this soup makes a great meal - it's like your classic chicken soup and rice with a kick.

I got this recipe from Cooks Illustrated online a couple of years ago (and it originally appeared in the magazine on November 1, 2000), but have never actually made it with a turkey carcass until our Thanksgiving hosts were kind enough to let me walk off with theirs last November (thanks, Becca! link to her awesome and prolific food blog appears here). Before November, I'd just used chicken - sometimes with intention, and sometimes because I had extra chicken "pieces" to use. Either way works. If you don't have enough bone-in chicken/turkey/fowl of your choice to bring flavor to this much stock, just use less water or combine the stock with some canned chicken broth until the flavor is bumped up to acceptable.

I always simmer the jalapeños [note to self: stop posting recipes with jala - dang it - until you figure out how to put the "~" over the n without copying and pasting from Word. This is the third time in two days, and is getting tedious], garlic, ginger, and lemongrass longer than the 10 minutes the recipe calls for, because I love pungent spiciness. Taste it after ten minutes and see what you think.

I cook the jasmine rice separately and then throw it into the broth to simmer for a few minutes at the end, because no matter what I do, leftover rice in a soup always soaks up any remaining broth, and there's no way I'm going to slave over a homemade stock only to have it gobbled up at the last minute by rice.

This recipe freezes great! You may need to add a little chicken broth when reheating, due to rice greediness problem alluded to above.

A note on the lemongrass: the recipe calls for one stalk. I usually use three or four, since I have them anyway. Safeway sells lemongrass, sometimes at least, in the "refrigerated ethnic produce" section with the cactus arms, tamarind, bell peppers, and tomatillos. In the past I have been tricked into buying a big bundle of lemongrass at Safeway, but I think you can just pull out a couple of stalks. If not, you will have a lot of lemongrass to use up. New Seasons in Portland definitely sells it by the stalk. Some grocery stores also sell little pieces of lemongrass in a plastic box along with the other fresh herbs, but it is soooo marked up! If you can't get fresh stalks, try lemongrass paste, also available near the refrigerated ethnic produce section.

Last note: this recipe assumes that your primary goal is to rid yourself of a turkey carcass, and that you won't mind staying home all day to accomplish this goal. If the spiciness sounds good to you, but you'd just as soon infuse the spicy flavors into a commercially-prepared chicken broth, then just do that! You can save yourself, oh, four hours (still allow some time for that massive amount of white wine to simmer, though - or cut back the amount).

Spicy Turkey and Jasmine Rice Soup

(originally published in Cooks Illustrated, November 1, 2000)

Basic Turkey Stock
-1 turkey carcass from 12- to 14-pound turkey, cut into 4 or 5 rough pieces to fit into pot
-1 large onion , peeled and halved
-1 large carrot , peeled and chopped coarse
-1 large rib celery , about 4 ounces, chopped coarse
-3 medium cloves garlic , unpeeled and smashed
-2 cups dry white wine
-1 bay leaf
-5 sprigs fresh parsley leaves
-3 sprigs fresh thyme

For the Soup
-1 stalk lemon grass , trimmed to bottom 6 inches and bruised with back of chef's knife
-3/4 inch piece fresh ginger , peeled, cut into thirds, and bruised with back of chef's knife
-2 large cloves garlic , unpeeled and smashed
-2 jalapeño chiles (fresh), or Thai chilies, halved lengthwise and seeds removed
-Table salt
-1 cup jasmine rice
-2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro leaves
-3 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves
-5 medium scallions , sliced thin

1. For Stock: Bring turkey carcass, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, wine, bay leaf, and 4 1/2 quarts water to boil in 12-quart stockpot over medium-high heat, skimming fat or foam that rises to surface. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, 2 hours, continuing to skim surface as necessary. Add parsley and thyme; continue to simmer until stock is rich and flavorful, about 2 hours longer, continuing to skim surface as necessary.

2. Strain stock through large-mesh strainer into large bowl or container; remove meat from strained solids, shred into bite-sized pieces, and set aside; discard solids in strainer. Cool stock slightly, about 20 minutes; spoon fat from surface. Use stock immediately or cool to room temperature, cover, and refrigerate up to 2 days.

3. For Soup: Bring turkey stock to simmer in large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add lemon grass, ginger, garlic, chiles, and 1 teaspoon salt; cover and simmer until broth is fragrant and flavorful, about 10 minutes. With slotted spoon, remove and discard lemon grass, ginger, garlic, and chiles. Add rice and reserved shredded turkey meat from stock; bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer, covered, until rice is tender, 12 to 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper; ladle soup into individual bowls and sprinkle each with a portion of cilantro, basil, and scallions. Serve immediately.

Refried Beans With Cinnamon and Clove (wait - beans don't COME refried?!?)

2009-02-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

I tried this recipe a week and a half ago and am just now reporting back on it - but that's the way it goes. First things first: this dish was very economical to make. As in, $4.25 for four servings, INCLUDING the twelve (small) tortillas and organic produce. As the queen of cheap (sounds like a tarted-up Mary Engelbreit character) (except when it comes to my morning espresso), I will be coming back to this recipe again and again, especially now that I no longer get a free lunch at my workplace. Oh, and did I mention that the beans hold up extremely well? I took three-day-old leftovers on a train trip, and they were very forgiving. The notes in the cookbook even say that they'll keep for five days! Ultimate econo-food, this.

I got the recipe from The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper.

-Good-tasting extra-virgin olive oil

-1 large onion, chopped into 1/4-inch dice

-Salt and fresh-ground black pepper

-4 garlic cloves, fine chopped

-1 fresh jalapeño, seeded and fine chopped

-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

-1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

-One 14-ounce can whole tomatoes, drained

-Two 15-ounce cans red kidney beans, rinsed and drained [Carrina's note: SURPRISE! The red kidney beans are (or will become) the refried beans. I can't even imagine what a cinch this recipe would be if you just threw everything into a can of ready-made refried beans. Hmmmm...]

-1 1/2 cups water

-2 tablespoons butter

1. Generously film the bottom of a 10-inch skillet with olive oil, and heat over medium-high heat. Sauté the onions with salt and pepper to taste until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. You want to hear a sizzle as they cook.

2. Add the garlic, jalapeño, cinnamon, and cloves, and cook the mix until it is fragrant, about 1 minute, taking care not to burn the spices. Add the tomatoes, crushing them as they go into the pan. [Carrina's note: "...as they go into the pan"? Meh, what a pain. Wish I'd just stuck a spoon and the can and crushed them right then and there.] Sauté for another minute.

3. Stir in the beans and water.

Bring to a fast simmer, crushing the beans with a potato masher (or the back of a large spoon) as they cook,

and scraping the bottom of the pan as the beans begin to thicken.

Simmer until the beans are thick, about 10 minutes. Blend in the butter, and taste for seasoning just before serving [Carrina's note: pursuant to this blog's subtitle - I did it! I did taste for seasoning just before serving!]

Speaking of cinnamon and clove, go to Better With Garlic for recent recipes for Red Chile and Cinnamon Clove honeys! (two different types of honey - although the combination sounds delicious as well).

*I've tagged this recipe as gluten-free. This does not take into account the flour tortillas that I used.

My Hands Smell Like Burning

2009-01-28T18:04:00.000-08:00

"And there's nothin' cold as ashes/after the fire is gone."
- Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, from "After the Fire Is Gone" (L.E. White)

THE REASON

My new slow cooker is a bit more powerful than my old one, apparently. I threw together a simple stew in the slow cooker before heading off to work this morning. It (the recipe) is an old standby and has never, ever failed me. It's called Merlot Beef Ragout, is from "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes For Two," and is exactly what it sounds like: hunks of stew meat, some onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, and a bunch of red wine. I brown everything beforehand just so I don't feel too guilty about how easy it is. I've had it over rice, noodles, and spaetzle, and it's always delicious.

THE RUIN

Well, I've never called home halfway through the day and told my husband he should help himself to some of the slow cooker food for lunch. That's what we did today, and I guess the small quantity of food remaining in the pot, combined with my unfamiliarity with the strength of the new slow cooker, were what made my dinner the way it was tonight. I came home and the Wednesday D&D group was already in full swing (yes, I know I mentioned a D&D game going on in my Monday post as well - it's been an odd week). The living room window was wide open. I walked to the slow cooker. The first thing I noticed was that there was no liquid in the pot. The second thing I noticed was that about 50% of the food was tinged with black. The third thing I noticed was the presence of charcoal (formerly beans and meat) around the edges, and the strong smell of smoke. I asked, "Did you open the window to get rid of the burning smell?" Someone muttered some excuse about it being hot.

THE RESCUE

I was able to add some beef broth and reconstitute most of it, leaving the ring of briquettes around the edge. I put it over some pasta and topped it with some leftover mizithra and green onions, and it wasn't bad. I'm still going to get some pizza action when the mages and... what are the other ones called? clerics? dwarves? ... behind me have dinner in a while, though. And my hands really do smell like burning. Still.

THE REBOUND

So for now, I'm going to daydream about dinner tomorrow! I guess it's just a bean kind of week (tried to think of a pun involving the word "legume" - couldn't), because I'm thinking I'll try one of the bean recipes in The Splendid Table's "How To Eat Supper": Refried Beans with Cinnamon and Clove. YUM! I've never even thought of combining those things. And it looks like they throw in some kidney beans, too.

Here's the recipe for the Merlot Beef Ragout (that "u" is supposed to have a pointy hat on it), since this carcino-charcoal experience I had tonight was a total aberration and it's normally sweet-tastic.

Serves 2 with leftovers

Setting and cook time: Low for 7 to 8 hours; optional to cook on high for last 45 minutes (Carrina's note: ... or whatever amount of time you want to cook it until the meat is tender. Sometimes I cook it 3 or 4 hours on high instead).

1 3/4 pounds lean, boneless beef stew meat, chuck or bottom round, trimmed of fat and cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium-size onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
One 14.5-ounce can diced peeled tomatoes, drained (Carrina's note: or just chop up canned whole tomatoes; they're less salty and more, you know, "rustic")
1 cup dry red wine, such as Merlot (Carrina's note: or such as the awesome boxed red wines they are putting out these days, since then you can spend around $5/bottle for a decent wine, AND keep it around for weeks)

1. Sprinkle the cubes of beef with salt and pepper. In a large saute pan over medium-high heat, heat the oil until very hot (Carrina's note: take off glasses now). Add half of the beef and brown on all sides, 3-4 minutes. Transfer to the slow cooker. Repeat the browning with the remaining beef.

2. Add the onions to the skillet and brown slightly over medium-high heat; add the garlic and cook just for 15 seconds or so, then add the onions and garlic to the crock.

3. Pour the tomatoes and wine into the saute pan and raise the heat to high. Stir constantly while bringing to a boil, scraping up the browned bits accumulated on the bottom of the pan. Pour into the crock. Cover and cook on low for 7 to 8 hours, until the meat is tender.

4. During the last 45 minutes of cooking, check the consistency. If the juices are too thin for you, increase the heat to high and leave the cover off (Carrina's note: now that I have a non-digital slow cooker that doesn't short-circuit every time I take the lid off, I can actually follow this step! Huzzah!), letting some moisture evaporate. Serve hot.

From Beth Hensperger's "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes For Two"

Smoky Slow Cooker Chili, without the slow cooker

2009-01-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

"I'm a low-brow but I rock a little know-how."

- the Red Hot Chili Peppers

THE (spicy) HISTORY

The last time I attempted this recipe, I stirred in a little shame as an afterthought, and was less than pleased with the results. The shame developed because I hate to waste food. I used chipotle chili powder instead of regular (I was out!) and (this was the true meal-killer) used probably 1/4 of a cup of "El Pato" hot sauce. I thought I was compensating for the fact that I had no "Mexican hot-style tomato sauce [such as El Paso]," but in fact, I pulled a Jeffrey Rowland and overcompensated, rendering the chili inedible. My husband and I managed to choke a little down, but when I couldn't finish a bowl even after diluting it with two hunks of cornbread and with two glasses of water by my side, I knew there was not a lot of hope for the rest of the batch. So bring out... REMATCH!

THE CHANGES

First of all, some mods. I used the pound of ground pork and the smoked ham hock (I'll put a smoked ham hock in anything but breakfast cereal), but omitted the pound of boneless pork shoulder. It just sounded like an extra step that I didn't need, especially when I always end up soaking more beans than I need and hence have more protein than I know what to do with anyway. Which brings me to my next modification: dried beans over canned. Canned beans are saltier and more expensive, which is not to say I don't use them, but my cheapskate side gets a little irked when a recipe tells me to use canned and I already have dried. So, I used dried - which meant that I had a very late dinner indeed.

I also used only a handful of pinto beans - the rest were pink beans. Google tells me that "another common term for pink beans is chili beans" (recipezaar.com), so I hope I'm in the clear. If only I hadn't squandered all of my pintos on that capsaicin-fueled nightmare last week!

I guess I made only three other modifications:

1) still couldn't find that elusive "Mexican hot-style tomato sauce [such as El Paso]" and used a can of tomato sauce and a few squirts of "El PaTo" hot sauce instead,

2) squirrelled away a couple of ounces of beer for myself in spite of the author's admonishment to use 12 oz instead of a cup if cooking on the stovetop, and

3) omitted the cilantro on top at the end because I forgot that my husband, and his aversion to said herb, would be out of the house playing Dungeons and Dragons tonight - so didn't buy any. Oh, and I guess modification number

4) is that I didn't use the slow cooker for this recipe. I was planning on using it, right up until late last night when I realized I'd have to get up at 4:45 to prepare this for the slow cooker and still get to work on time. Eeewww. Anyway, I just used my Dutch oven instead.

THE WORK

First, I browned a pound of ground pork. I have to say, though, that I think this chili would be yummy without the meat, as long as you put in a little chipotle chili to keep the smoky flavor from the ham hock, and kept the beer.

Then, I put the pork in a different container and sauteed the onion, pepper, and then garlic (added at the last minute) in the pot where the pork had been. Sauteeing onions is one of my favorite things to do because 1) my stomach knows that it means that some kind of soup is on the way, and 2) unless I forget about the pot and go downstairs to do laundry, I can't really screw it up.

Next, I added the tomato paste. The recipe had me sautee it with the onions and peppers for 3 minutes, I guess to just keep cooking the whole mixture down? And then, the beer. I love adding alcohol to a sizzling dish. It opens up another whole family of aromas.

I then added the rest of the herbs and spices, tomatoes, beans, hot sauce, smoked ham hock... and... the tomatillos! They're my favorite - they're so cute! Here's one to do a little striptease for us now:

I love the teensy seeds!

Despite their individual charms, however, the tomatillos ended up spending their night in service to the greater good: my chili.

After adding the tomatillos, I covered the pot and settled in for a looooong, hungry, 2.5 hours.

Here's a glimpse of the pink beans about halfway through. They really are pink!

When the 2.5 hours were up, I pulled out the ham hock, shredded the meat, and threw the shreds back into the pot. Here's the defrocked ham hock:

Of course, even with 2.5 hours to spare while the chili was cooking, I forgot that I had a little prep work to do for the toppings. So at the last minute, so desperate from hunger (it was at least 9:30 at this point!) that I actually used the recipe as a cutting board, I chopped the green onions, crumbled the queso fresco, and hacked up some lime wedges.

(lime wedges not pictured)

Aaaaaaaaand, the final product!

I had some cornbread in the freezer from last week's failed attempt of the chili recipe. It thawed and reheated pretty nicely!

THE END!

I would make this chili again in a heartbeat (assuming we didn't already have chili leftovers in the fridge) using the slow cooker or the pressure cooker, but would probably not do it again in the Dutch oven unless I had all afternoon. Definitely NOT a weeknight dish with the dried beans. I might have been able to speed up the process a bit by cooking the beans with just the veggies and a non-acid cooking liquid for a while, adding the tomatoes and beer later (acid keeps beans from cooking quickly, right? I think I've read that). Even so, it's too big of a project for a Monday night, IMO.

I have to confess that my motivation for making this chili in the first place had a lot to do with the toppings. Here's how my line of reasoning went, even if I couldn't have articulated it at the time:

I love noodle bowls.

Noodle bowls (sometimes) have limes and green onions on top.

This chili has limes and green onions on top.

I will love this chili.

And hey, I did! But if you're going to make it, don't leave out the toppings. The tomatillos were fun, but not nearly noticeable enough to justify "trying something new" in a chili recipe all on their own. The stuff on top makes the meal!

Oh! the irony

2009-01-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

Just spent what turned into five hours making a slow cooker chili recipe... without the benefit of a slow cooker. I'll post the story and pictures tomorrow. And now, bed!

2009-01-25T15:12:00.000-08:00

Classic. I'm not going to say that I "forgot the attachment" (in the mental health world they say "I have an attachment disorder" - har, har), but one way or another, the adorable Dunkin' Donuts picture didn't make it up here on the first try. Let's give this another go.

Oh, and since I've already received a couple of comments on facebook re: the glove element to this shot: the gloves are not supposed to indicate that this coffee is a corrosive substance (any more than coffee already is). I just invested in a sweet new pair of Casabella water-stop gloves, and as the coffee, gloves, and thirty other pieces of clutter were hanging out together on the kitchen counter, I noticed that the gloves made the DD packaging look even purtier. So, I got them to pose for a picture together.

Not great, not bad, just... coffee. But, oh! the packaging!

2009-01-25T14:54:00.000-08:00

Six to eight weeks ago, I stumbled upon the world of online free samples and sent my future self some tasty treats. The first free sample arrived last night: Dunkin' Donuts original blend coffee - medium roast. I brewed it up this morning, and I'm here to tell you that it's not bad, but I don't get what everyone raves about. When I opened up the packet I thought I smelled a little cinnamon - Mexican, not cassia - but the aroma didn't transfer to my cup o' joe. If the free sample box had come with a doughnut hole for me to set afloat in my coffee cup - like those hot chocolate packets that come with mini-marshmallows - that might have changed things. Does this coffee get attention because people are used to consuming it in between bites of frosted treats? A kind of publicly traded comfort food?

Anyway, I don't anticipate publishing many free-sample reviews in the future; but frankly, I love the colors of the accompanying picture and thought they might look nice against my blue background - I'm still having fun with all the formatting decisions I have to make. And posting this review gets me to post #3, which will be a charm! Tomorrow, I'm calling a re-match on a chili recipe that I tried last week, but essentially ruined (along with my husband's and my respective digestive tracts) by using an obscene amount of "El Pato" hot sauce to compensate for the fact that I had run out of chili powder.

... And we're off!

2009-01-25T14:41:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last hour and a half formatting this page and playing around with different color combinations. That's how effective I am at dodging my own written word, when I don't want to put pen to paper (or fingerpads to keyboard. Note to self: do google search of blog-age expressions to stand in for "pen to paper," "pen mightier than sword," etc.). I could attempt to justify my hesitation to break the blog-ice by noting that my husband and I will be going out to dinner tonight, so I won't have any cooking travails to report on for at least 24 hours. In fact, as my justifications for not having anything to show for a writing assignment go, this is one of the better ones. But a post-less page looks silly, so I'm posting this introduction just to get rid of the empty space. Then, if I feel like it and can bear to do so on an empty stomach, perhaps I'll put up my brief review of a free sample of Dunkin Donuts coffee that I received in the mail last night. No promises, though - I'm starting out slow.