Good Glop

2009-08-25T18:10:00.001-07:00

Baby's birthday was last week, and we've been planning a birthday party for him for around 2 months. We used this as a motivational opportunity to clean and decorate our house further, so we've spent every weekend for a while getting ready. House projects, decorating, cleaning, buying furniture, buying frames, hanging things, it's been hectic to get ready in time! But we got almost everything we wanted to accomplish done. Could've stood a few more pictures, and we might someday paint a room or two as well, but for now, it was a success. We hung a few of Curtis' favorite paintings, and a few of my watercolors from school. Also got a number of funny portraits from etsy, of animals in business suits. The pigmy marmoset is C's favorite, and the sloth is mine.

The highlight of the party was the ice cream. I've been making ice cream for the party for about two months. Peanut butter. Tin roof sundae. Chocolate, banana, strawberry, peach, plum. Lemon, orange, cherry, and coffee. These came out very well, and were a big hit with the guests (though perhaps I made too much, as I still have probably 4 gallons of ice cream LEFT OVER!

With all that ice cream, though, I didn't want a heavy meal (and if you plan a party at noon, I believe you are obligated to feed people), so lasagna, or enchiladas, or pizza were out. And we're fully vegetarian at the moment, so no meat! I could've made some very good empanadas with the chicken and sausage that we already have on hand, but they take forever, and with all of the above, there's been no time. So what to do? We bought some veggie empanadas from a deli around here, and those were good. Plus egg salad and pimento cheese sandwiches, veggies, fruit, queso, 7-layer dip, pasta salad and rice salad.

All was well-received, though only about 25% of anything (except the fruit) was eaten. I overprepared, I suppose. I expected (and did get) 35 people plus kids, so I still think it was a reasonable amount. For future reference, though, we must remember this. We need approximately 1/3 less than I think we need. This is for daytime parties. For a dinner party, I might want to portion it out more carefully, because not enough would be more of an issue. But next time we have a buffet-style afternoon party, make less food and trust ourselves, it will be enough!

2009-05-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

How funny. The last time I posted was a month before we moved out of the old apartment into the new house. And then I got pregnant. And then had the baby. And moved again. And went back to work. I'm still tired, thinking on all of that. I've been cooking, though the challenge these days is finding time. I've also been cooking baby food, though that's more technique and less recipe (e.g. steam carrots until soft, puree until a good consistency).

But I rarely manage to take photos of anything that's not the baby. In part because I know little on how to take appetizing food photos. This blog is called Good Glop, sheesh! I'm used to gloppy messy food, not so much the "presentation" and while that might fly in the kitchen, on the page it just makes me feel like a halfwit who doesn't know how to use her camera. Or stage food. So much for my backup career as a food stylist - I haven't a clue where to start. Especially since I would rather start EATING.

But perhaps I will get back to it. Maybe I can post words on what was made, and then add photos later. Or photos, but with a significant lag in posting.

Recent wins:
Apple Cake - "better than the lemon meringue pie cupcakes"
Oklahoma Cake - a pineapple cake with very simple instructions and very good outcome
Poached Quince - not pretty, but pretty tasty
Roasted Eggplant and Onions - not pretty, but does contain pomegranate molasses (mmmmm)
Bread Salad - resembled a Thanksgiving Leftovers salad more than anything else
Egg Salad - duh. Good stuff
Potato Salad with Lemon and Herbs - not that great
Potato, Tomatillo and Chicken Thigh stew - Rick Bayless fast Mexican recipe, wonderful

And I'm sure I've cooked one or two other things. But, none are really noteworthy, as they are all "On The Go" due to baby constraints.

More posts to come? We'll just see!

2007-10-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes

Possibly the best cupcakes I've ever made. I brought two dozen of them to work a week ago Thursday, and they were gone by lunchtime. My lunch crowd on Friday requested a repeat performance, so I brought another 2 dozen on Monday, and those were gone by 10:30.

Based on the CulinaryInTheDesert recipe, but with a few modifications - whole wheat pastry flour rather than cake flour; lemon extract in addition to zest in the cake. All in all, delicious.

For the lemon curd

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1/2 cup granulated sugar
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 teaspoon fresh grated lemon zest (finely chopped/zested/minced, so the pieces are small)

For the cupcake batter

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tablespoon fresh grated lemon zest
1 cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup milk (whole, or part skim and part yogurt, which I used the 2nd time I made these this week)

For the meringue

3 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup granulated sugar

To make the lemon curd

In a heat-proof bowl, whisk lemon juice, eggs, egg yolk and sugar until smooth. Add butter and place bowl over a pot of simmering water. Whisking gently, cook mixture until it thickens and leaves a ribbon when whisk is lifted - this can take anywhere from 8 to 20 minutes depending on how high the heat is set and how cold the ingredients were (if you can't get a "ribbon" to form, cook til the eggs are done, i.e. 140-170? not sure which, but if it's up to 160, I'd say it's safe). Remove from heat and push through a fine mesh strainer (do not skip this step, or you will have eggy chunks in the smooth mixture, and they are not good). Fold in lemon zest, cover with plastic wrap and thoroughly chill before using.

To make the cupcakes

Preheat oven to 375.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl (or in kitchenaid mixer), mix together the lemon zest and sugar until the zest is evenly distributed and the sugar takes on a light yellow hue. Add butter and cream together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla until combined. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture alternately with the milk - beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

Evenly divide batter between 24 paper-lined muffin cups - they should be roughly half full. (important, or it only makes 15 cupcakes)

Bake until cake springs back when lightly touched in the center and is just beginning to get a golden hue - about 16 to 20 minutes. Remove and place cupcakes on a wire rack to cool completely. Seriously - take them out of the pan or the bottoms will get burned during the next stage of baking (browning the meringue).

To make the meringue

In a large mixing bowl, whip egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy. Slowly add sugar, a tablespoon at a time, and continue whipping until egg whites hold stiff peaks when beaters are lifted. This takes about 20 minutes altogether.

Assembly:

Preheat oven to 400. Place cupcakes on a large baking sheet. Use a paring knife to cut out a small cone out of the center of each cupcake. Pipe about 1 to 2 tablespoons of the lemon curd into each cupcake. Spoon dollops of meringue over the curd on each cupcake. Bake until the tops of the meringues brown - about 4 to 6 minutes.

Makes 24 cupcakes (small ones, which makes it more reasonable to eat 2 of them)

2007-09-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

This weekend's exploits

1. corn tart. leftover corn (3 cobs); 1/2 c grated colby-jack; 2 eggs beaten; 1 c (less?) buttermilk; 1 c diced potatoes, sauteed; 1/2 c onions, sauteed; ancho and chipotle chili powder (small amount); oregano; cumin; basic pie crust plus ancho powder. Prepared and chilled crust, mixed other ingredients and poured in. Baked 350 30-35 mins. Good flavor, but textural issues for me (C liked as is) - too much corn/solids for the egg base, I think. Also gummy crust suggests prebaking would help.

2. red cabbage slaw. sliced red cabbage, 3 c?; 1 sliced granny smith apple; 1/2 c dried cranberries; 3 T sugar; 2-3 T each of rice vinegar and white wine vinegar; salt, pepper. prepare dressing first, dissolve sugar fully. Add fruit/veg, stir well. If this is to sit for any amount of time, it will turn everything fuschia, which is a little weird on the cabbage but really irritating with the apples, at least if you're doing some sort of fancy thing.

3. wrote down recipe for low fat cheese cake from America's Test Kitchen. We'll see.

4. biscuits last week during the week - started at 7:30, ate at 8am. Didn't realize there was time for that in the a.m., but then remembered Grandma's house ALWAYS had biscuits that she must've whipped up at 3:30 in the a.m., so 7:30 is no big deal.

5. I love Roti Grill in Plano. Newest favorite is Punjabi pakora (kadhi?) - vegetable dumplings in yellow yogurt sauce - tangy and delicious. Almost as well-liked by C as the malai kofta. The gulab jamuns were extra good yesterday as well - thinner sauce with more flavor? not sure. but so good.

2007-09-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

No pictures equals no posts. I've been remiss in photographing my cooking exploits in recent months, and more remiss in posting. I've made a few good things, and forgotten more, I bet. The thing is, having taken up knitting, I choose to spend less time cooking and more time knitting! I have put some notes on recent dishes below, and will post more some other time as a reminder to myself (the intended nature of this whole blog) of what dishes we've made and enjoyed.

101cookbooks whole wheat mexican wedding cookies, only with almond meal rather than pecan, and with 1.5T pomegranate molasses included for flavor, and oats instead of oat flour, and a bit of extra flour b/c they seemed rather wet (due to same lack of oat flour). Good, but loads of butter. Can this be reduced? Also, let them cool on the pan, b/c otherwise they fragment horribly.
Spinach-parmesan-chive souffle - not a winner in Husbandville, though I thought it was OK. A bit...tangy? Like the thing about some swiss cheese that makes it nasty instead of good? A bit of that in this souffle. And it fell, lots. Perhaps they just do that. I thought it was good, but too much work for the lack of spousal interest.
Pierogies made with won ton wrappers. Just don't think this will work next time, OK self?
Sour cream yellow cake and sour cream chocolate frosting. A big hit. Rich cake, great tangy icing. I chilled it and should've let it warm up before serving (not least b/c it was VERY difficult to cut). Delicious. The frosting - so fun, just a ton of chocolate, melted, with a bunch of sour cream and a tiny bit vanilla. How easy and neat a solution!
Strawberry cupcakes - interesting recipe, called for yogurt (like, Yoplait pre-packaged sweetened flavored) in order to low-fattize the recipe. Fresh strawberries. The strawberry flavor was good. I blew it on the icing though (in my opinion, though eaters liked it OK). I tried to take frozen fruit, grind it up in blender with butter, sugar, as one would normally go about making buttercream. I kept adding powdered sugar until I got the texture I wanted, but then it tasted TERRIBLE like powdered sugar more than any other thing (for instance the FRUIT). I added some frozen raspberries to bring the flavor back (as I was out of strawberries) and that punched up the flavor and color to be very pink. It was good, but too glazey, not enough fluff. Needs improvement.
Did I post about that quince cake? I got quinces when visiting Philadelphia, and brought them home in my suitcase. The cake - loads of work, results were off. Too buttery/nutty, not enough flour perhaps. An oily (but sweet and odd and fruity) cake, needs refinement, but probably not worth the time because quince is not available, and poaching them took hours. Blah! British-people food! (you can tell b/c they describe it as something to eat with Tea).
Couscous with shrimp and vegetables, only it became thai-inspired at some point. Fish sauce, soy sauce, white wine, rice vinegar, canned diced tomatoes, various veggies, fresh basil at the end, and there it is - a huge pot of something the husband doesn't like! How will I eat all this freaking couscous/soup mess? I'm trying my best.
At C's mom's house when we visited not long ago - roasted potatoes (new potatoes, salt, pepper, olive oil, high heat, one hour, stir every 10-15 (I should've done, and didn't, so they stuck a bit)), strawberry-rhubarb pie, boiled shrimp. I am a late comer to this train, I know, but boiling the shrimp with store-brand non-cayenne-ized crab boil makes them taste great! Nothing wrong with plain shrimp, but this makes them seem finished, I guess. The pie - pretty good! Frozen fruit, corn starch, sugar, pie crust, bake, etc. etc. For 1 lb. rhubarb Joy of Cooking recommended 1c sugar, but reduce that if using strawberries, so we went for 3/4 c? for 1 lb rhubarb and 1 lb strawberries. A good pie.
Wheat pancakes - probably 101cookbooks-inspired. Mixed up light wheaty pancakes, very tender, and made fruit compote of frozen peaches and frozen blueberries plus a little sugar, a little pomegranate molasses. Nice and easy, fruity, warm, good. Husband not 100% a fan - more like 70% I think. Is it the warm fruit? Not sure.

2007-04-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

One more dish, shamefully with no pictures: Chicken Legs.

Spring onions, chopped
Preserved lemon rind, chopped
Garlic
Honey
Ginger, fresh, chopped
Soy sauce
Rice vinegar
White wine vinegar
Olive oil

Combined all these into a marinade for some chicken legs. Refridgerated overnight. The next evening, I put these into a braising sort of pan and cooked on 325 for about 45 minutes. They looked pretty good, but the marinade tasted BAD due to the spring onions - next time white onion, because it doesn't turn bitter like green onions when cooked. Bad idea. So I took out the chunky parts of the marinade to try to combat the bitterness (which could've come from the lemons, too, not sure, really), and cooked a bit longer hoping the marinade would thicken up more and the chicken would brown. Not so much, so broiler for 10 minutes one one side after basting the tops of the meat with the juices so it'd carmelize, then turn over and do same again for perhaps 10 more minutes. These were not 10 straight unmonitored minutes, though, I checked frequently to make sure there wasn't burning. The remaining marinade gelled into a sticky tarry mess on the bottom of the pan, which was delicious if ugly, so I saved it for later chicken-eating. They turned out great overall, juicy, fully cooked, tender, flavorful, not too bitter, interesting flavors. I'd definitely do this again.

2007-04-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly good glop

I created another good glop. I don't know if I've mentioned the other name for this dish, "Sticky Brown," which I'm sure is just as appetizing as Good Glop. The thing is, they taste way better than they look.

Though I kind of like the look of the lavender rice. Earlier in the week, I cooked basmati rice with a bunch of red/purple cabbage, and it turned the rice a beautiful springy lavender. I wish I had taken pictures, but alas I did not. I served this rice (to myself, for lunch) with preserved-lemon/garlic/dill shrimp which were a bright saffrony color, and with roasted roma tomatoes, which were a rich tomato-ey red. A harmonious color arrangement to me, perhaps not so to the husband, but whatever. I had resisted buying tomatoes most of the winter, because it's just depressing, but as spring approached and there were still no proper tomatoes at the store, I gave in to my longing for that taste of summer and bought some crappy roma tomatoes, then roasted them with salt, pepper and olive oil for about an hour or hour and a half. They turned out well, and were a savory addition to many other dishes.

Back to the Sticky Brown du Jour, however. Purple rice, roasted tomatoes, some mushrooms sauteed with oregano, cumin and some garlic, and canned refried black beans with lime juice. I added avocado chunks and soft creamy goat cheese to serve, as well as a squeeze of real lime juice. The appearance of the dish was decidedly dogfoodish (with some lilac accents, for the most discerning of pets), but the taste was pretty good. The husband liked it quite well, which surprised both of us!

No proper recipe for this one, as it's more a process than a plan: What's in the fridge? How can I combine it? Do I have to buy anything else? No? GREAT. Let's EAT. Also no picture, due to the aforementioned gloppy appearance. Honestly, does anything involving refried black beans look good?

2007-04-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

Pasta casserole

I had been imagining a creamy pasta dish for about a week. It would have pools of creamy cheese, between well-seasoned noodly areas, with the usual spinach and mushroom additions. It would have a pleasing tomato sauce throughout, which would perhaps pool up in certain areas. I think part of the inspiration for this was that dish where you make a tomatoey mess in a pan with onions and maybe bacon or something, and then put eggs in little puddles you make with a spoon, and then cook until the eggs are set - sort of Huevos Rancheros without the tortilla? The dish that actually resulted was not like that, but was pretty good regardless.

I sometimes visit the chinese market down the road, and find all kinds of cool stuff. One surprising thing is that the apples there are huge and cheap. Where do they get these apples that the chain grocery stores don't get and if they did would sell for 3 times as much - China? Some other attractive items at the chinese market are all the noodles, and all the tofu. So many varieties! And yet, I have no idea what I'd do with most of them. So I restrain myself, and only occasionally purchase the one-off tofu experiment or noodle bunch. Once I got this seasoned tofu "snack" that I kept looking at for a month before I gave up and threw it out. I'm a chicken sometimes, and it bugs me, so I try not to buy things from there without a plan or an immediate urge to eat the mysterious item Right Now.

On my most recent shopping expedition, I got some fresh spinach noodles, and resisted even touching the Durian. Because if I am afraid of a little tofu, or if I fear that the amount of bok choy I get will spoil, I am deathly afraid of what would happen if I got a Durian, and stored it until it spoiled in my fridge. From what I hear, I suspect we'd actually have to move to escape the aroma.

I combined the spinach noodles, uncooked, with some spinach and feta chicken sausages from Central Market, some ricotta that I mixed with an egg or two and some italian seasoning, some bottled spaghetti sauce (like Classico or Barilla, one of the ones without added sugar or High Fructose Corn Syrup because it pisses me off that HFCS is in pasta sauce - why???), sauteed mushrooms and spinach, and some grated romano cheese. I baked all this until it was bubbly.

It was very tasty, though I admit I had some texture issues with the noodles. I suspect I should've cooked them for 2-3 minutes before casseroleizing the whole thing. The husband, however, didn't mind the texture at all, and said it resembled gnocchi, in a good way. The dish froze well, too, and reheated well for lunch over the next two weeks.

No pictures, but just imagine lasagna. But maybe with green noodles instead.

2007-04-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

Easter cupcakes

I have a coworker whose mother-in-law is Columbian, and makes the most fantastic food. Her rice is buttery and rich, her plantains perfectly cooked (mine always get too brown too fast), her yucca moist and tender, and I'll even eat pork chops if she makes them. I know all this because my coworker often gives me her food. One day I brought myself what I thought of as "boring veggie lasagna" for lunch, and my coworker brought typical MIL food but didn't feel like she could stomach it that day, as she was feeling under the weather. As we walked to the lunchroom we engineered a trade, and both were 100% more happy with lunch as a result. Any time coworker has extra, she knows where to bring it.

Due to all this feeding of delicious food by this coworker (let's call her B), I wanted to repay the favor and either feed this coworker or her mother-in-law. As Easter approached, I knew the other chief baker in the office (coworker J) would be traveling and thus not bringing in her thin, tender and frosty sugar cookies, so I had the baking field open for myself. I asked coworker B what kind of cupcakes I should make, and she selected Carrot Cake. Well, first she said strawberry, but then she said she's deathly allergic to strawberry and since I'd almost certainly use real strawberries, that wasn't the best option (and she was right, if you can consider Frozen Bag Strawberries "real"). And so, Carrot Cake it was.

And here's the funny part. I mixed up the icing into "easter-y" colors and almost threw up on myself with how cute they were. I got them to the office, and my boss and several other coworkers* were surprised with how cute they were, too. They're a little out of character.

I used the recipe my mother got when she was a teenager from Paul Newman's mom. No, not that Paul Newman, just the Paul Newman my aunt B used to date. My mother thought this recipe was pretty novel when she was a teen, because her family did not cook this sort of Weird Food. Her mother (my grandmother) still doesn't, though we've realized in recent years that my grandfather might've enjoyed the weird food all along, but never did and likely never will find out. I am not certain, but I suspect my grandmother finds something suspicious about pizza, and the closest she'll come to pasta is macaroni and cheese, or perhaps tuna casserole. You know, that ever-so-exotic Pasta.

Here's the carrot cake recipe, slightly modified from the Augie Newman family version, because I just cannot bring myself to put another 1.5 cups of vegetable oil into anything.

2.5 cups flour (some all purpose, some whole wheat pastry flour)
2 t baking powder
1/2 t soda
1/4 t salt
2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg (gross - I substituted cardamom)
1/2 t ginger
1.5 c sugar (recipe called for 2 c, I think 1.75 would be a better compromise)
0.5 c vegetable oil
4 eggs (I may have used 3 only)
2 c grated carrots
1/2 can (14 oz?) crushed pineapple (with juice)
1 c chopped walnuts
1/2 c raisins
1/2 c craisins (there may have been fewer raisins and craisins, don't go crazy on them, just enough to look right)

Mix the dry ingredients together. Then mix in the carrots, walnuts and raisins so they get coated with flour and suspend a tiny bit better in the mix. Then add the liquid parts (oil, eggs, pineapple) and stir until everything's wet. Dispense into 24 cupcake wrappers (or a 9x13 pan) and bake "until done" at 350. I'm actually a bit perturbed at this "until done" because that's what's in the recipe, and I honestly can't remember how long it took to get done. Cupcakes, probably start at 25 mins. Large pan full of cake? perhaps 45? but check it sooner to see.

Frosting:
8 oz package cream cheese (room temperature)
4 T butter (room temperature)
0.75 t vanilla extract
0.25 t lemon extract
dash salt
2.5 c powdered sugar (perhaps more if necessary to get your desired consistency)

Cream the butter and cream cheese in the stand mixer, then add the flavor extracts and salt. Slowly add sugar a half cup at a time, until all is incorporated. I separated the batch into four parts, and colored them individually.

Cadbury mini-egg on top. The chocolate ones with hard candy shell, not the gross "Cream Egg," the grossest simulation of a food you wouldn't eat in that form anyway. Blech!

*Coworker B noted that said cupcakes looked like they had nipples, and almost made coworker D (no longer with us**) shoot coffee out his nose.
**Not dead, you sicko, just got a new job. In Austin, making me combine a number of clues together and realize I miss living in Austin sometimes. Mainly because the "farmers' markets" here in DFW are just terrible. The produce is labelled with the same stickers you see on store produce, right? This suggests to me that there's a wholesale produce provider that sells all they can to the chain grocers, then sells the rest to these smaller vendors, a few days later. I believe this because if you buy anything at the farmer's market, it will spoil about 3 days sooner than you expect. And the prices aren't that great either. In Austin, the farmer's market I like requires that the vendor produce the items being vended, which is lovely. Except for the Emu Oil man, who can go to hell for putting EMU OIL on my hands. Gross.

2007-02-17T12:45:00.000-08:00

Cheesecake

My husband's grandparents consolidated houses not long ago, giving up their Houston house and moving certain items to Florida. Other things, they just wanted to get rid of completely. We visited at around this time to help out, and got a bunch of things they didn't want to take with them. This included a few paintings and some pantry goods, but also a bunch of small paperback cookbooks and, get this, his grandmother's stash of recipes, for probably the last 20 years.

The little books were interesting. There were a couple of unremarkable low-fat or low-sugar books, and a meatless cookbook. Coming from the grandparents' generation and New York City, of course, that doesn't mean no meat, it means no "meat" as in beef or pork. It has interesting ideas, though, like "pate" made of beans and stuff. I haven't taken too close a look at this yet, though.

The recipe stash, though, is full of interesting things. Being from the South, from north TX, all the recipes in the newspapers my whole life have included things like candied ham, or Coca Cola cake, icebox pies, fried chicken, and chicken fried steak. There are often key lime pie recipes, or special Thanksgiving sweet potatoes with brown sugar and little white marshmallows. Recipes that get passed around between friends inevitably include chicken breasts, cream of mushroom soup and instant rice. Maybe some broccoli if we're lucky, but it's frozen broccoli or none at all.

This is why it was refreshing to see a collection of recipes from an 80-year-old Jewish woman from NYC. There were probably 10 recipes for cookies I'd never heard of - hamantaschen and mandelbrots. There were chicken and salad recipes that were fairly unremarkable, and various matzoh recipes for passover. I think matzoh recipes are interesting and somewhat inspired; whenever I was given a restriction in college that required me to do, or not do, a specific obvious and standard thing, I had much more successful results in the finished product, and I believe that was not in spite of, but because of, the restrictions. Matzoh recipes remind me of this, and I hope I'm right, if I someday try them.

I've never seen so many cheesecake recipes, though! So many, including cream cheese, sour cream, cream or cottage cheese; sugar, brown sugar, splenda or nutrasweet; graham cracker crust, regular crumb crust, no crust or chocolate crust. Too many to even try! I don't want to make cheesecake, I told myself when sorting through these various recipes.

Until this week, when I decided I wanted to make cheesecake. Based on what I had at home and had purchased from the store to do this, I made the following from a combination of two recipes (one of which was in mimeograph-purple print!). It turned out nicely, though before it was chilled we (the husband and I) weren't quite sold on the texture, and the crust was far too crumbly. Once chilled overnight, though, it resolved into pretty much proper cheesecake. Next time I might add 8 oz more cream cheese, though.

Filling:
2 8-oz packages neufchatel cream cheese
1 c sugar
1 c sour cream (the recipe called for 1 pint, so more might be nice)
2 T flour
1 T vanilla
juice from half a lemon
pinch salt
4 eggs

Crust:

1 1/2 c graham cracker crumbs
5 T melted butter
2-3 t sugar

Preheat oven to 350F.
Combine crust materials and press into bottom of 9" spring-form pan.
Combine cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, salt, lemon juice and vanilla in stand mixer until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, until smooth. Pour into crust, and bake for an hour at 350. Turn off oven and open slightly, allowing cheesecake to cool slowly over the next hour to try to prevent cracking (I was unsuccesful and it cracked, but c'est la vie. I think slicing between the pan and the cake so it didn't stick to the pan might have prevented the cracking).

Yay cheesecake! Probably serves 8-10, small-to-medium pieces. The cheesecake was only about an inch tall after it cooled (it was probably 2-3 inches tall in the hot oven), so adding more cream cheese and sour cream might make it a better (bigger) size and still not make it burst over the top of the pan while cooking.

2007-02-16T17:34:00.000-08:00

Corn tortillas

In the past I've been a (wheat) flour tortilla kind of girl. At a Mexican restaurant, I would never order corn tortillas (except in fried form, of course). Flour tortillas were also better at home, too. Corn tortillas were dry and coarse, while flour tortillas were light and fluffy and delicious. This was perhaps influenced by my dad's house's preference for white bread and the like, but even as recently as last year, I still preferred wheat to corn tortillas, though I would now go for a whole wheat tortilla and scoff at a white one.

The only use I had for corn tortillas was enchiladas, where they performed much
better than wheat tortillas. Corn tortillas don't absorb water like wheat tortillas and thus don't turn into a sticky wet-bread mess in the middle of your tasty enchiladas. This, in fact, was the inspiration for my new-found change of heart. I was making enchiladas for the husband's birthday (a week before the party, partly as a test run and partly because I like to indulge any specific food requests he makes), and wanted to try making my own tortillas for it, at least one time. It was then that I found out - Corn tortillas can be awesome!

I bought a bag of corn tortilla mix at the store, which contains corn meal and lime. You add salt and water (don't forget the salt, or else blech!), according to the bag instructions. You divide the resulting dough into an appropriate number of pieces (2 c flour = 16 tortillas), and roll the pieces into little balls. Then you take each ball and shape it into a tortilla.

The easy way is to use a tortilla press. Lacking this, as I did, you can use a rolling pin, but it's a little tricky to figure out how to roll it into something approximately round and not full of cracks. My first roll-outs looked like Gondwanaland. The next phase resembled Australia, which seemed like an improvement at the time. Eventually, 32 tortillas later, they got a little more uniform. An important factor in the whole process - the pre-tortilla sticks to EVERYTHING except heavy plastic. Like ziploc bag thickness plastic. Finally, a use for all those ziploc bags we save! Also, do not make more tortillas than you can lay out onto pieces of plastic, because they stick to things or to each other, and will not let go without some disintegration, and then it's back to the pin for reshaping!

Regardless of the shape, though, the cooking process is simple. Use whatever pan you use for pancakes, and cook the tortilla about a minute on each side, or until it browns a bit. They don't take long to cook, and as the first side cooks, the whole thing will curl up a little bit. It might be necessary to use a spatula to mash them down in the middle once you flip them, so they get a bit flatter.

Serve with butter, or make into your favorite dish. You could probably even fry them into chips or tostada shells, if you were so inclined and didn't have a hatred of frying like I do.

Once cooked, they supposedly can keep for a week if wrapped up in the refrigerator.

2007-02-16T17:19:00.000-08:00

Preserved Lemon Chicken

I made preserved lemons a while back, and didn't know what to do with them. I asked an internet buddy and she provided the inspiration for this dish. The lemons themselves are prepared by basically cutting lemons into almost-wedges, stuffing them with salt and letting them sit for a month in the refrigerator. However, the end result is a little creepy - slimy and strange, and the fact that they sat in the refrigerator for so long was a little fear-inspiring together with the slime, so I felt that they had to be cooked. This dish worked really well for that, because if the lemons acquired a bacterial population, I'm sure I burned it up in the oven!

Take the preserved lemons and chop them up in the food processor. I skipped a critical step here, I realized, after eating the finished dish. First RINSE the lemons to get some small amount of their dense salt saturation out of them. THEN chop in the processor and use as a marinade.

So, taking the chopped lemons, add them to some bone-in chicken thighs in a shallow pan that you can cover and bake for an hour or so. Smear the lemon bits on the chicken, leave some chunks on the side of the meat, and add garlic and olives. The garlic could be in whole clove form, but in this case, I used olives that were combined with garlic from the store (Central Market). Add some seasoning - coriander, cumin, chipotle powder. Not too much of any of these - the flavor is supposed to come from the chicken and the lemons and garlic, not from the spices so much. They're supposed to make the flavor more complex and deep, not drive the whole thing into Spiceville. Cover and bake at 300-350F until the thighs have reached an appropriate internal temperature - 180F? - then remove the cover and broil to make the skin a little crunchy.

Serve with couscous or rice or pasta, by pulling the meat off the bones and chopping up a little bit with your fork or serving spoon. You could go even the extra mile and use a cutting board so the whole thing ends up a little more even and chopped, and in that case I'd chop the olives as well. I actually enjoyed the variety of piece sizes, though, from the simpler option. Except - watch out for cartilage! Don't eat it, or serve it if you can help it!

On the same day I marinated some shrimp with the preserved-lemon spread, with garlic, pepper and salt, but again, this suffered terribly from the oversalty lemons. I sauteed the shrimps and marinade after they sat for an hour or so in the refrigerator. When I ate the first one, I was shocked at the saltiness. Blech! I rinsed one shrimp off in the sink and ate it, and yep, Still Salty.

One more jar of the lemons to go, and I'll know better this time - new culinary heights will be reached....

2007-02-16T17:04:00.000-08:00

Spanakopita

I've made what the husband calls "Dirty Span" many times. It's been fairly good before, but not great. Too much egg and cheese, not enough egg and cheese, problems with the phyllo making it tough to cut and eat, or not enough salt. This time I think I got it down. The filling is moist and full of fresh spinach and salty feta. The phyllo is light and crunchy, and cutting everything to pieces before baking made a big difference. Next time I want to make the dirty span', this is it.

Ingredients:

A ton of spinach, chopped into small pieces, and cooked in the microwave until wilted (don't overcook!)
One bunch of green onions, sliced, and cooked with the spinach
Feta - 4 cubic inches - crumbled
8 oz cream cheese (neufchatel)
Phyllo dough - thawed
Salt (1/4-1/2 t), pepper (freshly ground, 1/4 t?), oregano (1/2 t), dill (1/4-1/2 t) (alter as you like. Don't put too much dill or it will probably taste weird.
1 t minced garlic
3 eggs
olive oil

Thaw the phyllo dough. Allow time for this, and don't try to rush it too much!

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix the cheeses, eggs and spices in stand mixer. Add this to the cooked spinach and green onions once they've cooled a bit. Brush oil on the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan (or thereabouts - a tall-sided large cookie sheet would work as well). Layer in some phyllo dough, with oil brushed on between every few layers. Spread the spinach mixture onto the phyllo, and spread til even. Add more layers of phyllo, brushing with oil as before. Cut into serving pieces (squares, triangles) before baking, making sure to get all the way to the bottom.

Bake about 45-60 minutes. Done when the crust is browned lightly, and the filling is not too wet (basically, make sure the eggs are done). Slightly easier to serve once it has cooled a bit.

Preparation time - about 30 minutes? Baking time around 60 minutes. Altogether, not a weeknight meal, but good when there's time to wait for things to bake. Also, the filling could probably be prepared in advance a day or two, and baked early on the day of an event, just warmed in the oven.

2007-01-29T12:20:00.000-08:00

Birthday Party

This weekend we had a birthday party for C at our apartment. I cooked so much!

Black beans and spanish rice
Guacamole and queso
Sweet potato oven fries
Spinach salad with goat cheese, tomatoes, red onions and toasted pumpkin seeds
Wheat bread
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
Apple pie

I started Friday night chopping EVERYTHING that I'd need the next day. I chopped six onions (five yellow, one red), and they all made me cry. I chopped swiss chard, poblano peppers, tomatoes, pineapple, cilantro and sweet potatoes. I was very tired after all this chopping, but relieved because I knew I was prepared for the next day.

I started at around noon. First I sauteed onions and peppers for the black beans, then added cumin (about 1 t), coriander, chili powder, oregano (about 1/2 t of each) and garlic (a clove or two). I simmered that until around five p.m., when I added a bunch of salt and pepper. This was the first time I felt like the beans were fully successful, and I attribute that to two things: I've grown increasingly liberal with salt, and the realization that my main complaint with every prior batch of black beans has been "not quite cooked enough." This time, though, they were perfect. I wish I'd tossed some lime juice and cilantro on top of them to serve, but there was no time!

Next, I prepared the Pineapple Upside-Down Cake; the recipe was from Simply Recipes (http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000231pineapple_upside_down_cake.php), and was fantastic. It worked beautifully, though I worried that the batter might spill over the pan. No such worries necessary, though. It worked just right. It was a rich, moist cake, tender and juicy from the pineapple and caramel juices that sank down after I flipped the cake onto a platter, but also creamy from the sour cream and ground almonds. I'd definitely make this one again, and am considering making another this very week.

Next, I cooked a whole chicken for the enchiladas, in a big boiling pot of water with some onions, carrots, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper corns. I took out the cooked chicken, removed the meat and refrigerated for the enchilada assembly later, and put the bones and skin back in to keep making stock, for the spanish rice later.

The enchiladas were made with swiss chard, mushrooms, onions, chicken, queso Chihuahua (I think), cheddar cheese, corn tortillas and salsa roja with chipotle and ancho chili powders. I assembled them all about an hour before dinner time and cooked in the oven on about 350 F for 45 minutes. I also cooked the sweet potatoes (wedges, coated in olive oil, garlic, salt and paprika) at the same time. I was shocked as I cleared the table after dinner to find all but a piece or two of the potatoes had been eaten - they were far more popular than I anticipated!

The spanish rice worked great, but in an attempt to use all the stock I'd just made from cooking the chicken, I accidentally made four cups of rice, which is enough to feed an army! It's fine, in that we have plenty of leftover rice, but I really overshot the mark on this one. It was made with a big can of crushed tomatoes, a ton of chicken stock, salt, pepper, some chili powder, garlic, and a ton of sauteed onions. I measured about 2 cups of broth for every cup of rice (or rather, vice versa - four cups of rice to deal with about 8 cups of broth), and cooked for 20 minutes, which was right - done perfectly, not too mushy or hard, just right. Yay for things working out according to plan!

We'd set 6 pm as the time for guests to arrive and as we got closer to that time, we realized we were going to have more people than anticipated, and needed to make sure we had enough food. That's when the queso joined the picture, and the vanilla ice cream to go with the cake. But would that be enough dessert? No! Time for a quick apple pie! The pie was fuji apple slices, dried cranberries, giant raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, cardamom and lemon juice, baked in a grocery-store crust. I wish I'd thought to brush the crust with egg or something to pretty it up, but it worked fine without. I tend not to add sugar to this pie, though, so it is probably better with ice cream than without.

The food was all great; I usually have personal critiques after making a big meal, like "the green beans could've used a little more pepper" or "next time I'll add some rosemary to that." This time, however, I think it was all perfect. I just have to think of an occasion for another pineapple upside-down cake. Or maybe how to make them cupcakes...or what happens if I make it in the cathedral bundt pan with crushed pineapple....

2006-12-31T18:33:00.000-08:00

New Years dinner

Turkey from Honeybaked Ham
Mashed butternut squash with dried orange peel, butter, white pepper and salt and parmesan
Green beans
Spinach salad with feta, pecans, granny smith apples, pomegranate seeds, croutons and creamy Balsamic vinegrette dressing
Dill rolls
Bread (no-knead variety)
Apple crumble pie

The pie was the big hit, as well as the turkey. The turkey got good comments from people like "I don't usually like turkey but this is good."

The pie - the result of a year or two of experimentation, included the following:
granny smith apples, peeled and sliced
raisins
craisins
chopped pecans (a handful)
cinnamon, dried ground ginger, allspice (a tiny bit)
1 T coarse-grain sugar
crumble topping of with butter/sugar/flour/oatmeal combination
bottom crust by pillsbury
Served with blue bell vanilla ice cream
Baked at 350-425 for about 45 minutes or so, until crust browned. I'm impatient and kept raising the temperature while cooking (after an initial 30 min at 350).
The only flaw in the pie is that it doesn't produce much juice, so it needs something creamy to go with it. next time I might add a T of water to see if it juices the apples up a bit more. or a top crust to contain the steam they lose in cooking.

2006-12-27T19:12:00.000-08:00

Shrimp Barbeque Dish

Tonight was dinner from stuff in the pantry and freezer, with no new shopping. It looks like chili but tasted closer to barbecue sauce. The mango helped enhance that, I think.

Shrimp! frozen (about 15 medium sized)
Half a red onion, thinly sliced then chopped into about 1" pieces
A little minced garlic
Canned corn (1/2 of regular size can)
Canned tomato sauce (small can)
Rice
Frozen mango
Spices - chili powder, cumin, oregano
Balsamic vinegar, and a little sugar
Cheese - capricho de cabra, a tangy goat cheese. Feta would probably be good, too.

Prepare rice in the usual way. 1 c was more than enough for this.

Sautee the onion and garlic with a bit of olive oil. I used a nonstick pan. Add 1/2 t cumin and 3/4 t chili powder, toasting them before adding the tomato sauce and corn, diced mango (1/2" dice), a bit of water, a dash of vinegar, pinch of sugar and maybe 1/3 t oregano. Reduce heat, simmer, until only about 3 minutes remain until the rice is done. At the appropriate time, add the shrimp and cook until done. Serve over rice, sprinkle with a little cheese.

I think a little cilantro would not go amiss here. And lime juice. And spiciness - a bit of chipotle or ancho powder would be good to spice it up, as it was VERY mild. But quite tasty and well-balanced.

2006-12-23T07:48:00.000-08:00

Quince marmalade

With 1-2 quinces left over from my tart below, I chopped them to tiny pieces and cooked in enough water to barely cover, until soft. During that time I added a couple of squeezed lime wedges but then feared they would be bitter so took out the wedges after a few minutes. I added 3/4 of the measure of the quinces of sugar. I cooked 20 minutes, stirring to prevent burning. I also added some vanilla extract, since I had no vanilla bean piece to use. Due to the high pectin of the quince, this gelled slightly. This is a good toast-topper. I don't know if it would work with any other fruit, though - maybe apples? But then they'd turn all brown, and not golden-pink like the quinces.

2006-12-23T07:41:00.000-08:00

No Knead Bread

Just like everyone else on the foodblogosphere, I made the bread, the bread was good, I want to save the recipe for the next time I remember to do it. This bread is very easy, tastes good, great crust due to baking process (the time with lid on is super-important), but does take a long time. Timing is the primary issue for me. One day I mixed up the dough before work (7:30a), came home and started the rest of the process (6p) and had bread by 9 or 10. A LONG time later, if what I wanted was bread for dinner. But if I mix it up at 10 the night before, then 18 hours later is 4pm, and what happens if I leave it until 6 when I get home? Probably nothing, and I'll try that next time. Or make it on a weekend.

3 c flour (all-purpose or bread)
1/4 t yeast
1 1/4 t salt
cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

Combine flour, yeast and salt in large bowl. Add 1 5/8 c water, stir until blended. Dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover with plastic wrap, let stand 12-18 hours at warm room temperature (70F).

Dough is ready when surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Sprinkle with more flour and fold over itself 1-2x. cover with plastic wrap, let rest 15 mins.

Using a little flour to keep from sticking to you or to work surface, shape dough into a ball. Coat a cotton towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal (not too much!), put dough seam-side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another towel, let rise 2 hours. When ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not spring back when poked with a finger.

30 minutes before dough is ready, preheat oven to 450, and place a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot in oven as well. When dough is ready, remove pot from oven, slide hand under dough and turn into pot (seam-side up). Shake pan a little to distribute dough evenly. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15-30 mins (until browned). Cool on rack.

Yields 1 1.5lb loaf.

2006-12-23T07:33:00.000-08:00

Quince Tarte Tatin

From The Serendipitious Chef (serendipitouschef.blogspot.com). Mine did not turn out as beautifully red as theirs, but tasted good to C and me. Not as much to the rest of the family, as it was pretty tart and not very sweet, and even to me the crust was a bit...wholesome. As in, not much flavor. Also mine was too thick, so that was part of the problem. But also not enough flavor. I'd do it again if I found quinces for a low enough price. Or had a better pan for the job.

2 c whole wheat flour (or half whole wheat, half allpurpose unbleached)
1/4 t salt (could've used more)
3/4 c cold butter, tiny cubes (I used less - 1 stick plus a little)
1/3 c very cold water
4 whole quince, peeled, cored, sliced
1/4 c butter
1/2 c sugar

combine salt and sugar, massage in butter until resembles very coarse meal with pea-sized lumps of butter. Add cold water, quickly mix and form into a ball. Form into a disk on counter (with flour), and cover with plastic wrap, chill 30 mins.

combine butter and sugar in heavy-bottomed pan with short sides. Heat until sugar turns golden amber color (5-7 min). Swirl pan to combine butter. Add quince slices, toss to cover completely, sautee over medium heat until the slices start to soften, stirring frequently.

Turn off heat. Remove slices to a plate, arrange into pan, starting at outer edge, circular pattern, packing slices close together and interlocking. Cover bottom of pan entirely and evenly. Return pan to medium high heat, and without stirring, cook quince slices a few more minutes, until caramel is fully bubbling and boiling and deep brown. Remove from heat.

Roll out crust while quinces are cooking, to 1/4" thick and about 1" larger than the pan with the quince. Place dough over surface of quince, tuck edges underneath to cover. Bake 20-40 minutes or until crust is golden (or like forever, b/c the crust takes really long time to brown). Remove and let stand 15 minutes, then flip onto serving plate or wooden board.

2006-12-23T06:53:00.000-08:00

Yogurt biscuits

1 c flour (I used 3/4 white 1/4 wheat)
1.5 t b powder
0.5 t salt
0.25 t b soda
2 T butter
1 c lowfat plain yogurt
1 t sugar
0.5 t milk (skim)

combine dry. cut in butter. stir together yogurt and sugar. add to dry mix just til moistened. knead on floured surface 4-5 times. pat into rectangle on baking sheet, cut into 6 square biscuits (don't separate). brush with milk. Bake 450 F 12-15 minutes until brown.

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These tasted great, and were much more moist than the buttermilk biscuit recipe below. The dough was very moist, somewhat sticky. I baked for long enough to develop a nice golden brown on top, then removed. Once semi-cool I cut into them and found the insides were still a little doughy. Either I need to cook longer at a slightly lower temperature, or add more flour. Since they were very tender and moist, I think they can support a little more flour and keep the same temperature.

2006-11-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

Another Good Glop

Spag Squash
Spinach
Turkey Bacon
Mushrooms
Cream sauce
Parmesan

Sauce
1 oz butter
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic
thyme, ground fennel, salt (approx 1/4 t each?)
bacon - chopped
1 c mushrooms, sliced
2 T flour
1 c milk
1/4 c cream
1 T chopped fresh parsley
Black pepper to taste

Melt butter in frying pan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook. Add bacon and cook until crisp. Add mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are tender. Blend in flour and cook 1 min. Remove from heat and stir in milk and cream. Return pan to heat and cook until sauce thickens (stirring constantly), meanwhile adding spinach and wilting it with this heat. Add in spaghetti squash cooked in oven and flaked from shell. Stir in parsley and black pepper. Top with parmesan.

2006-11-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

Lemon Bars

These were tasty. Made with valley lemons (TX meyer lemons), which cut the tartness. I think regular lemons would be better here. The color was a little pale for what I anticipated. The little green flecks in the picture are from the rind of the valley lemons, which was mainly green.

The crust was overdone, and probably over-thick.

One taster described them as little nuggets of sunshine, which I think was nice.

crust
1/4 c sugar
3 T softened butter
1 c all-purpose flour

beat butter and sugar together in mixer, add flour until crumbly. press into 8" square pan. Bake 350F 15 minutes. cool.

filling
3 eggs
3/4 c sugar
2 t lemon rind (grated)
1/3 c fresh lemon juice
3 T all purpose flour
1/2 t b powder
1/8 t salt

Beat eggs til foamy. Add remaining ingredients, beat until well-blended. Pour onto crust. Bake 350F 20-25 minutes until set.

2006-10-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

Cinnamon Rolls

2 large eggs, room temperature
2 yolks, room temperature
1/4 c sugar
6 T unsalted butter, melted
6 oz buttermilk, room temp
4 c all purpose flour
2 1/4 t dry yeast
1 1/4 t kosher salt
1 c packed brown sugar
1 T ground cinnamon
pinch salt
raisins or craisins
chopped nuts
1 1/2 t melted unsalted butter

whisk eggs, sugar, melted butter (6 T), and buttermilk in stand mixer. Add 2 c flour, salt and yeast and mix until combined. Switch to dough hook. Add all but 3/4 c remaining flour. Knead on low 5 min, add flour if necessary so dough is soft and moist but not sticky. Knead 5 more minutes until clears sides of bowl. Knead 30 s by hand. Oil L bowl, put dough in, oil top of dough. let double in size (2 to 2.5 h)

combine brown sugar, cinnamon, nuts and raisins, and salt in small bowl. butter 9 x 13" baking dish. Shape dough into a rectangle, roll to 18" x 12". Brush with butter (1.5 t), except for 3/4" on one long edge. Sprinkle filling, press gently into dough. Roll into cylinder, cut into 12 1.5" rolls. Arrange in baking dish, cover tightly and refridgerate 6 hours or overnight.

Take rolls from baking dish, put into cold oven for 30 mins with a shallow pan of water. Remove all from oven, preheat to 350F, bake about 30 minutes until golden.

Top with cream cheese frosting or just powdered-sugar-drizzle made with milk/sugar/maybe van.

2006-10-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes

My boss's birthday was today, but she's out of town, so my office was going to go out to lunch with her yesterday. I thought upon our return we should have cake, and I wanted to make something good. I didn't want to make cake from a box, as there are so many good cupcake recipes I wanted to try (see www.cupcakeblog.com for about 100 examples of awesome cupcakes). I had a grapefruit the day before, so I still had the astringent bitterness of citrus in my thoughts, and so I considered the cupcakeblog's basic cupcakes filled with various citrus curds, with cream cheese frosting and zest on top. When I got to the various stores to replenish my egg and powdered sugar supplies, though, I couldn't find the many varieties of curd I expected, nor could I find the "grapefruit slices" candy I meant to top the cupcakes with. Grapefruit slices are like orange slices, only 100 times better: less gooey, a little harder, a little less sweet, a little more bitter. I get them from Central Market, but alas, they had none.

So I sampled other candies and tried a chocolate-coated orange peel candy, which had that astringency I was craving in the citrus cupcakes. So then they became chocolate orange cupcakes with little candies on top. This recipe was based on a Williams-Sonoma recipe I found online.

3 T cocoa
1/4 c hot water
1 1/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1/8 t ground cloves
1/8 t ground allspice
1/4 t ground ginger
1 orange
2 eggs, room temperature
3/4 c sugar
1/2 c buttermilk
1/8 t vanilla, 3/8 t orange juice
1/4 c butter, melted and cooled

Dissolve cocoa in water. Sift together flour, b. powder, soda and salt. Add the zest of the orange. In the stand-mixer bowl, mix the eggs and sugar, then add the buttermilk and vanilla. Add the cocoa mixture, then the butter, and then the dry ingredients (bit by bit). Fill 12 cupcake wrappers halfway to 3/4-way full. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes (15 was not nearly long enough, but 20 was pushing dryness). Remove them from pan and cool on a wire rack, once they are cool enough to handle. Frost after they are completed cooled.

Cream cheese frosting

1/2 stick butter
8 oz cream cheese (neufchatel is fine)
2 c powdered sugar
1/2 t vanilla, 1.5 t orange juice

Beat the butter until smooth, then add cream cheese and vanilla and OJ. Add powdered sugar a little at a time until 2 cups are incorporated. Add more if necessary, to obtain the stiffness you desire.

2006-10-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

Cilantro-Soy-Lime Chicken

I bought some chicken thighs to make a curry from simplyrecipes.com, but didn't get around to it, b/c instead I made some fish soup (see #5 below). So I've got these chicken thighs, and limes, and soy sauce I finally bought after wanting for months, but never remembering because it's soy sauce, and don't you already have that at home? What goes with lime and soy? How about rice wine vinegar, cilantro and basil? Add pepper, 1/4 t chipotle powder, and 1/2 t ground ginger. Marinate for 20-30 minutes, then cook in hot skillet with some garlic. Try to have the heat high enough that the chicken gets browned to a nice color, then remove chicken and reduce remaining marinade into nice brown sauce. Very tart and tasty. Not a big hit with the husband, however, but that's mainly because of it being chicken; he didn't taste it.

Juice of two limes (about 0.25 c)
0.25 c soy sauce
0.25 c rice wine vinegar
handful of basil, chopped
handful of cilantro, chopped
0.25 t chipotle (or ancho) chili powder
0.5 t ground ginger
0.5 t freshly ground pepper
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
7-8 chicken thighs, trimmed, cubed (though breast would be good, too, or probably very firm tofu, which could then be baked. also would be fine with beef, if one were so inclined, though more chili might be in order in that case)

2006-10-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

A number of recipes I have tried but did not take pictures of, foolishly:

1. Pesto
I tried to grow basil this year. It did OK. I sprinkled basil seeds in with my tomato seedlings. The tomatoes never made it, since I didn't water them regularly enough, and they can't take that if they are in little clay pots. The basil did better, but still not great. Actually, pretty great considering I mistreated them (see above re: no watering). Only at the end of the summer did I read that basil plants grow more if you pinch bits off and use them, so on that day, I went out and harvested half the basil. You see, I thought the end of summer was near. That was in August or so, and yesterday was 90 degrees out. To be fair, today it was about 65 at the highest point of the day.

The pesto, however, was excellent:
2 T pine nuts
2 large garlic cloves
2 3/4 c basil
2 T grated parmesan
2 t lemon juice
3 T olive oil
I used these measurements as approximate guides. Process the pignoli and garlic, then add basil, parmesan and lemon and process again. Finally, add olive oil until a smooth (but still chunky) consistency. You know, like pesto.

2. Fruit cobbler
I love making fruit cobbler, and spent probably years "refining" my apple crisp recipe. Really, that just means trying different additions to the apples, and different types of apples, and occasionally trying different toppings. Or sometimes even different fruit. Peach crisp was nice too. Back in cherry season, I made a cobbler with cherries and nectarines. I will not include the recipe, however, because it was too biscuity on top, not sweet enough, too stout. I will note, however, that it was baked at 350 for about 35-45 minutes.

Then recently I tried again with the nectarines, this time what I think of as a crisp, though it might more properly be called a grunt or slump or crumble or something. I am not sure of the classifications on this type of dessert. Just that I like it.

Nectarine crisp
1-2 cups oats (like for cereal, the 5-minute kind, not the instant)
1.25 c brown sugar
0.67 c flour
0.67 c butter or margarine
sliced fruit (enough to fill the pan - medium-sized oval corningware pan, if you are me)

Mix oats, sugar and flour. Cut in butter. Top the fruit with this mixture, and bake 45 minutes (or until browning on top and fruit has obviously cooked to the point where it releases its juice).

3. Bread pudding
On returning from our last trip to Houston, we stopped in Corsicana at the Cooper Street Bakery outlet (or something like that; if you've driven from Houston to Dallas, you've probably seen the signs). They had lots of fruitcake and cookies, which I did Not buy, and some things that I did: egg bread rolls (delicious), a stale cupcake (blech), and English Muffin bread (blah). We did not really eat the muffin bread, because I made proper bread in addition. So midweek, there's this whole loaf of muffin bread staring at me with an accusatory tone. I decided to make bread pudding. It was pretty good.

2 c milk
3 eggs
4-5 c bread, cubed or torn to 1" pieces
0.75 t nutmeg (or since I hate nutmeg, cinnamon instead, and a little cardamom)
0.5 c raisins (I used dried cranberries)
0.75 c sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1 apple, cut into little pieces

mix the eggs, sugar, milk, cinnamon and vanilla. toss the bread, craisins and apple. Pour liquid over bread mixture, let sit for 30 minutes. Bake at 350-400 (it went too slowly and was in for 45 minutes, so I raised the temperature - I am impatient for results) until golden brown on top.
If reheating, add a bit of milk to each serving so the microwaving is more effective and less drying.
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So, that is all of the recipes with no pictures. They were good.

2006-09-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

Lemon-Mace Cupcakes

Mace is the lacy outer covering of a nutmeg, and is scarlet red in the raw form. This skin must be removed to harvest the nutmeg, and is flattened out and dried. When removed and dried and powdered, it turns a lovely warm orange with little red/brown bits. The spice can be used in either sweet or savory settings.

Upon inspection (sniffing), it seemed like citrus would combine well, perhaps orange or lemon, and this made me want to try the sweet version of the spice. This made me realize cupcakes were what I wanted. I am not familiar with mace and so thought I'd make the cupcakes with a focus on one spice. I wanted to "experience the mace" and not confuse it with other spices. So, I found a spice cupcake recipe and substituted mace for the cinnamon blend. This cake recipe also called for sour cream, and I had low-fat yogurt but no sour cream. Substitutions aside, the taste of the resulting cupcakes was good, but the texture wasquite tough. This could be due to overcooking, overbeating, not enough fat, too much flour, I am not sure what. They were substandard.

Then bakingsheet.com posted praline cupcakes, and the buttermilk cupcake sounded nice and tender, and like a good base for experimenting. This was way more successful than the previous recipe, yielding light, soft, tender cake.

Mace-Lemon Cupcakes

1 1/4 c granulated sugar
1/2 c butter, softened
2 large eggs
1 egg white
zest of one lemon
2 t lemon extract
1/4 t vanilla extract
2 t mace
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1/2 c wheat pastry flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 c lowfat buttermilk

combine sugar and butter in large bowl, beat with mixer until well-blended. Add eggs and egg white, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the lemon extract. Combine 2 c flour, baking soda, mace and salt; stir well with whisk. Add the flour to the sugar mixture alternately with buttermilk, starting and ending with flour mixture.

Bake at 350F for 18 minutes (+/- 2 min?) or until pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool.

Frosting/glaze:
2 T butter
1/3 c lowfat cream cheese
1/2 c lemon juice
zest of one lemon
3 c powdered sugar

I started this one from a bad internet frosting recipe, and kept adding sugar and cream cheese and lemon bits. It may have had some lemon extract, and the amounts are approximate. The end result was halfway between frosting and glaze, but was very tasty - bright, lemony, a good match to the soft buttery cupcake.

2006-09-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

Biscuits

2 c flour (I used 1/2 c whole wheat, 1/2 c unbleached bread and 1 c unbleached all purpose)
4 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
2 T butter
1 c milk

Combine dry ingredients, rub in the butter. Add milk, stir, roll out, cut, bake 425F 15 minutes.

2006-08-21T08:58:00.001-07:00

Banana Bread

C likes to eat bananas, sometimes. And often, one will remain and go brown. I don't like bananas most of the time, and usually only when they are just barely ripe, no spots but only a tiny bit of green at the top or else they are starchy. However, I do like banana bread. So I saved two brown bananas by freezing them, for use in the banana bread.

I thawed the bananas out because the recipe called for mashed bananas, and I didn't think I could peel or mash frozen bananas very well. I left them in a cereal bowl for a couple of hours, and as they thawed, they felt really really mushy. Gross, almost. And then once they were pretty much there, I peeled them and they slid off into the measuring bowl, in a slimy mess. They continued to thaw and exude banana liquid, which I disposed of because that is gross. Bananas should not produce liquid. The only time they do that is when you forget about them for so long that one day there's a brown mess on your counter and you think, "did someone spill tea?" but realize that no one at your house would have made tea, nor would they have spilled it on the counter and left it there.

Anyway, mashed bananas. Two frozen ones made 3/4 cup, just about perfectly. Mashing by stirring them up with a fork or knife and gently mushing them a bit was sufficient.

The recipe:
1/2 c shortening (I used butter, which made the baking time just about double)
1 c sugar (I used 3/4 and it was just fine)
2 eggs
3/4 c mashed ripe banana
1 1/4 c sifted cake flour
3/4 t soda
1/2 t salt

Cream butter and ugar until light. Add eggs one at a time, beating well afte reach. Stir in banana. Sift together dry ingredients, add to banana mixture. Mix until well-blended. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake in moderate oven (350F) for 30-35 minutes (with shortening, more like 45-60 with butter).

I used my kitchenaid mixer and ran into a little trouble. The white flat blade doesn't pick up things off the bottom of the bowl, so once the whole mixture was together and being poured into the pan, I found probably 1/3c worth of butter/sugar mixture that didn't make it into the rest. I mixed it in as much as I could, but next time should remember to take the time to spatula up the whole bottom of the bowl before calling it quits.

2006-08-17T07:37:00.000-07:00

Stir-fried vegetables

After two weeks of busy work here and there, I finally had time to do some cooking again. I sliced up garlic, red onion, scallions, mushrooms, broccoli, zucchini and red bell peppers, and stir-fried the lot, starting with the onions, then peppers, then mushrooms, then broccoli and zucchini, added sauce ("Lemon Song Sass" dressing/marinade), then scallions, then three eggs, scrambled. The egg thing was a little weird, little eggy bits all through the dish, but added some non-meat protein. I think more might be a good idea, or some good tofu bits, somehow. The sauce was good, but could've stood more, and the whole dish needed salt, more pepper, more garlic probably. Served over rice.

2006-08-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

This dish, mentioned on Slashfood, from San Francisco Chronicle Food, sounds interesting, and once I have tried it, I will add comments.

Roasted Chicken with Salsa & Poblano-Corn Hash

2 tablespoons olive oil + more as needed

2 russet potatoes, chopped in 1/4-inch dice

2 shallots, peeled and chopped in rough 1/4-inch dice

Kosher salt and pepper, to taste

1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 ear corn

1 poblano or green bell pepper

1/2-1 cup mild or medium-hot fresh tomato salsa

Sour cream (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 425° and place racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven.

Place 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large baking sheet and spread it evenly with your fingers or a brush (a paper towel absorbs too much of the oil). Lightly grease a second, smaller pan with more oil.

Place the potatoes and shallots on the larger pan and spread out all in one layer, then season well with and salt and pepper. Season the chicken breasts well on both sides with salt and pepper, and place on the small baking sheet.

Place the chicken and the vegetables in the preheated oven on separate racks and roast until the chicken is no longer pink in the middle, 12 minutes, turning once. Remove from the oven and let rest at least 5 minutes. Cook the potatoes until they begin to crisp up, 15-20 minutes, stirring once.

Meanwhile, remove the corn kernels from the corn and chop the poblanos or bell pepper into 1/4-inch dice, then stir them into the potatoes with more salt and pepper when the potatoes have cooked 15 to 20 minutes. Cook until the potatoes are tender throughout, another 5 minutes. Adjust seasoning.

Place the chicken breasts on plates next to the hash. Spoon the salsa over the top of the chicken, and garnish with dollops of sour cream, if you like.

Serves 4

PER SERVING: 355 calories, 38 g protein, 26 g carbohydrate, 11 g fat (2 g saturated), 94 mg cholesterol, 210 mg sodium, 3 g fiber.

2006-08-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

Baked Tofu with Cilantro Pesto

The baked tofu w/cilantro pesto from Whole Foods is delicious. Here are the ingredients, so that some day I might try to make the pesto:

cilantro
ginger
canola oil
sugar
salt
lime juice

the overall dish ingredients include tofu, wheat free tamari, cilantro pesto, and sesame seeds. I suspect that the tamari and sesame add some depth that the pesto alone might lack, and might be good to include in another version of this dish. Maybe fish or chicken made with this pesto? Or pasta, in which case some cheese (mild and creamy) or nuts would be a good addition..

2006-07-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

Potatoes

Inspired by www.andreasrecipes.com Papas Fritas con Rajas, we had this with dinner tonight.

Sweet potato
New potato
(both sliced into 1/4 to 3/8" thick slices
1 poblano pepper, seeded and sliced
1 med-large onion, sliced
1 t garlic, minced (or two cloves, or to taste)
paprika
pepper
salt

saute onions on med-high to high until a little soft, then add potatoes. cover, cook for about 20-30 min stirring every few minutes, until soft. The sweet potato may disintegrate into mash by the time the new potatoes are done. Add the peppers when the sweet potatoes are soft but the regular potatoes are not, so they'll have time to cook down a bit and spread their flavor around. When all potatoes are soft, add salt and pepper to taste, perhaps 1/4 of lime's worth of juice and chopped cilantro, and serve.

Steam is important to actually getting these potatoes cooked without developing a blackened outer shell. Cover early in the cooking process until cooked a bit, and then let them crisp up a little.

2006-07-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

The titular Good Glop

My sister B says that the Good Glop this is named after is not the generic "pile of good stuff" cooking that I recalled it as being, but instead a specific dish. This is not a dish that I intend to cook (or eat), but here it is, for reference sake:

canned green beans
canned cream of mushroom soup
cooked ground beef

all above stirred together, then topped with tater tots and baked.

What I THOUGHT Good Glop referred to was the sort of cooking I once did, where I would chop and saute various vegetables, spices, perhaps chicken or fake meats, and dump the pile on some rice or pasta. "Pile cooking," as it were.

I suppose in some ways most pasta or stir frying is a form of pile cooking, but I prefer calling it by the base starch ingredient now, rather than "Good Glop" or pile cooking. For instance, onion, garlic, asparagus, tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, herbs sauteed, the tomatoes yielding liquid to create sauce with some balsamic vinegar, all served over jasmine rice - this would now be called "Rice and Vegetables." An uninspired name, perhaps, but descriptive of what has occurred.

I often enjoy the meals we create from "whatever is in the refridgerator" as above, more than ones where we go purchase the items specifically for the dish, because stranger things must come together, and often do. It makes me feel ingenious.

2006-07-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

Egg Casserole

We went to Houston for C's sister's wedding this weekend. The day after, C's mom had everyone over for breakfast. I made egg casserole and fruit salad, and she had bagels, lox and cream cheese as well. I wanted to make an asparagus frittata, but there was enough eggy stuff already to go around.

The egg casserole is, to me, traditional to Christmas breakfast, and there are few other opportunities to make it. If we ever have brunch we could do this dish, but I also just tried baked eggs and think they'd be a wonderful brunch dish also.

The recipe, this time:

8 eggs
1-2 c milk
multigrain bread - about 6 large pieces
two cans (7 oz) green chilis, chopped
butter spread
mild 2% milk cheddar, 2 c
sharp 2% milk cheddar, 1 c
dry mustard
garlic powder
oregano
white pepper

cover bottom of a 9x13 and a 8x10-11 glass dish with the bread. butter the bread on one side.
mix eggs, milk, chilis. IDEALLY should add spices to this - 1/4-1/2t mustard, 1/2 t oregano, 1/4 t white pepper, 1/4 t garlic powder (approximate measurements). Pour egg mixture over bread, sprinkle cheese on top, and cover. Refridgerate overnight (or 4-6 hours might do it).

Preheat oven to 400, bake for 45 minutes.

Issues to correct:
This made a nicely browned dish, but also some plasticky material on the bottom - a black bubbly layer (<1 mm) that didn't taste burned, exactly, but I think should be avoided if possible. Some people seemed to like it, though. I think the solution is to bake at 350 for an hour, and 10 minutes before the end if it's not browned, then up the heat to make it pretty.

Someday I will post a picture of this, should I ever make it again, but I neglected to at this time, due to lack of sleep.

The taste of the dish is nice, though I prefer the cheese sharper. The chilis give it a nice flavor but very very little heat. The eaters of the dish were from NY and FL, and I believe not accustomed to the spicy foods, and had no trouble with it at all.

2006-07-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Butterfly Effect Meme - what influences here and there inspired me to cook

1. An ingredient
I hate peas. I have always hated them. Even the fresh ones that seem so appealing and green and cute, they taste like peas. You can't avoid the essential pea-ness of them, and I hate that. My mom and stepdad insisted on cooking canned peas with dinner every week or so, even though I despised them. I think this is because they wanted to include something green and vegetable in the meal, and misguidedly reached into the CANNED GOODS and not the crisper. Blech.

One day the peas were different. They tasted interesting, and almost OK. I was so excited! I thought there was now a magical ingredient that made peas OK, it was such exciting news. HOWEVER. The ingredient did not work next time, though I then found out that this ingredient could be found elsewhere, and was delicious. Garlic!

2. A dish, a recipe

I recall the first time I had really good cheese. We visited my stepfather's brother's house, and they had this swirl of creamy goat cheese with sundried tomatoes in the swirl. I had never tasted anything so good, ever. I thanked my aunt profusely for this, so much that it was embarassing to one or both of us how much I liked this cheese. I wouldn't say that this incident was the start of my interest in good food, but it was probably the first time I realized there was even better stuff out there, that I had never had.

This, however, did not convince me to eat the other novel dishes they served those days, including what they called "Tiger Meat" but was really just steak tartare. It looked like a gigantic raw hamburger, waiting to go on the grill, but the bun would've been the size of a pizza. And they just ate it and ate it. On crackers. So Gross. And my mom speculates that the indigestion they all felt after a big holiday meal might not be simple indigestion from eating a lot, but from eating a lot of RAW MEAT.

3. A meal (in a restaurant, a home, or elsewhere)

If you ask what my favorite restaurant is, I might say Castle Hill in Austin, though I have been there but twice or three times, and I don't even live in Austin anymore. They have a changing menu, every few months, I think, but their overall notion of what goes together appeals to me. Nice salads, salty and fruity and cheesy, but not too heavy. Entrees that are put together with great vegetables. My favorite meal there, believe it or not, was little beef medallions with glazed carrots and gorgonzola mashed potatoes. I wouldn't even say I Like steak or carrots, but perhaps that's because I am hypocritical when it comes to what I say I like vs. what I actually like. I like steak and bacon and chicken and butter and all that, but I don't want to like it or eat it. Castle Hill somehow convinced me that this was the right choice, though, and it was delicious. And finished off with a delicious pear and apple cobbler. So good.

One other memorable meal was in San Diego at some fish place - Charthouse maybe - right on the ocean. I had some sort of sweet soy-glazed firm white fish, some spinach or carrot accompaniment, with sesame perhaps, and the most delicious coconut rice I've ever eaten. Wow.

Another really great place - West Lynn Cafe in Austin, now defunct. The most delectable vegetarian place around, spinach lasagna that was creamy and soft and moist, and the best dessert ever, this vegan chocolate mocha torte from some local bakery that convinced me that while vegan food is not all that compelling for me, they sure can bake some delicious stuff. Like, to make up for the harsh strictures on every other food, including HONEY, they make the best indulgences. Hell, that cake might not even have had WHEAT in it, it might have been that kind of vegan, but it sure was good.

4. A cookbook or other written work

Cooking Light magazine, and Cooks Illustrated magazine.

Cooking Light suffers from some flaws - overemphasis on the lifestyle section, and sometimes really terrible recipes due to the "lightness" aspect. However, they have some really good ones, and good ideas on how to lighten up a dish. Good vegetables, good quick meals, good ideas, but not good enough to remember when I'm actually trying to figure out what's for dinner.

Cooks' Illustrated is a great magazine that scientifically tests products, tools, and recipes to create the ideal version of a given dish. They have some really good recipes, especially for desserts, but they emphasize some fairly meaty stuff, and I just don't do meaty that much. I appreciate that they tell you how to make great pot roast or roast chicken or pork tenderloin or whatever, but really I want a semi-vegetarian dish, with lots of fresh vegetables, and they just don't do that too much. However, their scientific approach really thrills me and makes me enjoy their magazine a great deal.

5. A food “personality” (chef, writer, etc.)

I think the Frugal Gourmet, Jeff Smith, was an influence, because he cooked so effortlessly and seemed so smart and fancy. Yan Can Cook, another PBS cooking show that we watched at lunch at my grandmother's house, was inspiring mainly because he was an entertaining cook, chopping vegetables so quickly I was sure he would cut his hands off.

Justin Wilson was amazing in that he didn't use measuring tools very often at all. And when he did, he would ignore the recipe anyway. Mainly when it came to wine, though - if the dish called for 4 cups of wine (and honestly, what the hell dish calls for 4 c of wine???), he'd add 5 or so, whatever he felt like. He didn't seem to measure spices or salt, either, though I seem to remember a time when he showed off that actually he WAS measuring, just didn't use the same tools as everyone else. He poured salt in his hand and said "this is 2 tablespoons" and poured it into real measuring spoons and he was exactly right. I think this may have been more influential on my cooking than I realized, because I don't have a recipe for half the normal stuff I make, and I don't measure the spices, just know the right relative amounts for how much food there is, how much of the other ingredients, etc. I don't think Justin Wilson deserves all the credit there, though, because my mom and grandma cook the same way, I think.

6. Another person in your life

My grandmother inspired confidence in the kitchen, showed us how stuff was done, supported our modest cooking efforts as children. They had a farm out in the country, an hour or more south of Ft. Worth, and grew tomatoes, potatoes, blackberries, peaches, green beans, blackeyed peas, hard little pears, okra, pecans, and corn sometimes. Their neighbors grew melons (watermelons, canteloupe/muskmelon, cranshaw melons) and occasionally other things too. My grandmother canned tons of this stuff, and still has canned pears and tomatoes from 10 years ago (don't worry, they don't eat it, they know it's bad, they just don't like to get rid of stuff, like, Ever).

My sister and I spent many summer weeks there as kids.

We picked the vegetables. I was terrified of picking the blackberries because the were pokey but also because supposedly they were a snake hangout, so I was always afraid to get too close or stay too long in one place, because I feared a snake would come out and get me. Combine this with the thorny obstacle course of vines that kept each berry safe from me, and it was not a good deal. I also disliked picking okra, because it too is prickly. Picking beans was fun, and peaches, and tomatoes. They had little "lightbulb tomatoes" in yellow and orange. Also bigger red ones.
We "helped" plant vegetables. Once, they say, we were planting potatoes. The trenches had been dug, and either B or my grandmother were placing the eyes in the furrows, and my job was to cover them with dirt after they had been placed. Somehow I got ahead of the sowers, and covered the nothing with dirt. Grows less potatoes like that. I wonder how this could've happened, though, and begin to question the authenticity of this story. However, I remember thinking it was very funny.
Once the produce was in the house, we helped process it: I shelled beans, and snapped beans, and sliced okra (which I hated, because it stung). I washed the lightbulb tomatoes and put them on my fingers. I tried to figure out a way to put fireflies inside the lightbulb tomatoes, so I could have a lightbulb tomato that actually lit up. I couldn't figure out a way to do this that didn't involve 1) touching bugs and 2) suffocating said bugs once they were IN the tomato, so it never happened. I also drew labels for the plum jelly.
The most exciting processing, though, was one time we had tons of tomatoes and were grinding them up into sauce using the food mill. The tomato juice shot everywhere, and grandma, B and I laughed and laughed. I think we wore old white t-shirts that were grandpa's undershirts, so that we didn't get filthy. I can still sort of remember B and I perched precariously on the stools by the end of the counter, rearing back from tomato squirts.

I think the most important thing I got out of all this farming is that fresher food tastes better, and farmed food is fresher and more interesting than what you see at the store. I try not to buy produce at the regular grocery store, and recently had this underscored for me by buying peaches that did NOT come from a farm within the state. I just picked up 3 peaches from Kroger and they were disgusting, and I regretted not taking the time to go to Central Market to get good ones from Henderson TX or wherever, because they were very good the week before.

One more influential person - my sister B who reminded me while I lived in a little blue house in Austin that I really did like bacon, and that we should eat some.

2006-07-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Breads today

From No Need to Knead, by Suzanne Dunaway. My mother loves this book, and I recently saw it at a time when I was considering starting to bake breads. On the one hand, nothing wrong with kneading, but on the other, this book promises to make quick bread. I have always thought bread took about 6 hours to make, and I am very busy, and knew that would be too long, so I thought the No Need to Knead would be a good starting point. My experience thus far is not that it takes six hours to make bread, or if it does, it's a very low-labor six hours, which I can handle.

I made two breads today, one wheat sourdough, and one focaccia-like bread shaped in a semi-pretzelloid fashion.

Wheat Sourdough (or Filoncino Integrale)

I started this one the night before, and the biga (sponge) oozed over the counter. I made it, it took a long time, and in the end, it looked like the wheat bread at Subway sandwich shop, and tasted worse than that shop's plain, boring bread. I will not make this one again.

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Pretzelline breads (Fougasse de Colloiure)

These were delicious. I called them pretzelline because they look like a pretzel and have some of the chewiness of one. The book calls them the italian name above for their resemblance to a ladder. As the book suggested, they have a good buttery taste without adding much fat to the recipe. I think the problem with these will be that they are not good to make sandwiches of, and probably will not keep well, either, but they are so delicious and fun, that probably won't be a problem as they will get eaten quickly.

Will add recipe tomorrow when I make these again.

2006-07-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

Pancakes!

I made pancakes last weekend, and they were good.

1/2 c + 1/8 c all purpose flour (unbleached)
1/2 c + 1/8 c white whole wheat flour
1 T sugar
1/4 t cardamom
1/4 t salt
4 t baking powder
2 eggs
1 c milk
1 t vanilla
4 t butter melted and cooled slightly

Bowl 1 - mix dry
Bowl 2 - mix eggs, milk, van and mix to smooth batter
Add butter and stir until thick and smooth.

I added cherries (pitted, chopped in 1/4s) to the cooking pancakes, and served with tons of the cherries on top, along with the rosemary-ginger syrup from one of the cakes mentioned below. I enjoyed it, C would've preferred regular syrup. The recipe called for powdered ginger (1/8 t) but I couldn't find mine. The basic recipe is from tigersandstrawberries.com, modified to fit my cherry demands.

Yields about 12 4-6" pancakes. Finally a recipe that makes enough for 2 people, not 4.

2006-07-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

Cake

I made three chocolate cakes this week.

1. Chocolate pound cake with rosemary/ginger sauce, from lexculinaria.com. Made in cathedral bundt pan with only minor incident. Dusted outside with cocoa. Was delicious, and a big hit at the 4th of July party.

Criticism (personal) - a bit dense and fatty due to the high chocolate (Callebaut) and butter content. I think I like a lighter cake. Perhaps that is the definition of a pound cake, however, or at very least a chocolate one. The syrup was good, a bit thin, but tasty. The ginger dominated the rosemary, perhaps due to heating - maybe ginger holds up to heat better than rosemary.

2. Chocolate cake from online recipe. Valhrona cocoa.

3/4 c cocoa
1 c boiling water
1/2 c + 2 T butter
2 c sugar
3 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 3/4 c all purpose flour (unbleached)
1 1/2 t baking soda
3/4 c milk, 1/4 c sour cream (I used 1 c buttermilk)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare 3 9" round pans (or 2 8" and 4 cupcakes was my yield). Mix cocoa and boiling water, set aside to cool. Beat butter and sugar in bowl until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating in between. Add vanilla. Add cocoa mixture gradually (if too hot, maybe cooks the eggs? mine got specky after this addition). Combine flour, soda and salt. Add alternately with milk mixture, beat. Fill pans, bake 30-35 minutes until pick test is clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans, and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

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Stuck to the stupid silicone cake pans, b/c I didn't oil or flour them at all. Thus very crumbly. Tasty cake, though. Sturdy, like it could handle cream filling or fruit or something. Used buttermilk instead of milk and sour cream. Tastes a little fruity? like berry-flavor in wine?

Tried to make frosting with remaining callebaut chocolate and prob. would've been delicious, but the night making the cake I was stricken with food poisoning from an unknown source. Was it the turkey sausage from the pasta casserole? Or was it the yogurt and sour cream that were in the frosting? Or even the cake (#2) itself? (yes, yogurt, due to lack of enough sour cream). Lacking a strong sense of smell leads me to these disasters I think. I can't tell if it's bad dairy or not. And suspected it. Thus tossed the lot, sadly, b/c it was probably fine but did not want to be sick again.

The frosting recipe:

1 c chocolate pieces
1/4 c butter
1/2 c sour cream
1 t vanilla
2 1/2 c powdered sugar, sifted.
1/8 t salt

Melt chocolate with butter, cool 10 minutes. Stir in sour cream, vanilla, salt. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating by hand until desired consistency. Yield 4 cups.

3. Box chocolate cake with whipped tub frosting. The best surface appearance of all. Very fragrant, nice appearance, but lacked depth of flavor. The frosting was so gross in the tub, but pretty and smelly (good) on the cake, though again pretty simple in profile. It was whipped chocolate frosting, and the tub was like 7" tall, but the frosting slumped and looked so oily and nasty in the tub. Never again. I've been converted to just making frosting in the future.

2006-07-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

Jealous of the many foodblogs I've been reading, I want to make my own record of the stuff I've been trying. I need to remember what I've done, what worked, what didn't, what the spousal response was, what I thought could be improved. I'm hypercritical of my cooking, and every time I cook a particular item, I think "but this could be better with x, y, z." If I write those things down, perhaps it will help.

Things I cook by:

Recipes - some foods, like the Carrot Cake, require following the recipe pretty much exactly.
Semi-recipes - saw an item in a book or magazine, made something in the spirit of that item. Macaroni Casserole was last night's version.
Non-recipes - a pot of beans or chili - no written recipe. Changes from time to time. Means that the beans from last month might be better than this month's, but I have no idea what was in them, how they are different. Salads are in the same camp.

Hopefully I will learn to take nice pictures of the foods, too. I wonder how you do that when the foods are sort of ugly and brown by nature. Garnish? Pretty dishes? Backgrounds? So much to find out.