Teh Noms du Jour.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaaangeeeesss!!!

2009-06-15T22:15:00.005-04:00

Hello friends.
Before we go any further, there is some news that I must give you. It is good news. It is exciting news.
Teh Noms du Jour is moving!!!!!!
About 8 months ago, while talking with my friend Leah, the idea of an All-Girl culinary gang came up. A group of girl food bloggers who were friends, who were talented, who thought each other were hilarious, and who had a serious love for talking about food, writing about food, and making food (AND baking!) A group of badass girls who knew what they're on about, but weren't afraid to laugh at themselves if things flopped, and ask questions so next time the flop maybe didn't happen.
And inspired with a great name, Pretty Girls Use Knives was born!!!
Please check out all the girls, because they are all wonderful and talented, and please come back often, because so many things are going to go on there, and we would love your support!! BUT, so that you can direct-link to my blog or add it to your Google Reader or whatever you do... here is the link to my personal PrettyGirl Blog: www.prettygirlsuseknives.com/johanna
Never fear, dear friends.... any entries you may want to review or reflect upon will still be find-able, since I have imported ALL the Teh Noms du Jour recipes into the new blog.

Now that all the joy and celebration and the big reveal have happened, I can get into something that I need to get off my chest.
I am a fairly competent baker. And I can make one hell of a biscuit. IN fact, I never even blogged about the Proustian flashback I nearly gave Jesse's Oklahoman soul with my most recent batch of biscuits and gravy. Suffice it to say, I am a biscuit maker.
So when I tackled strawberry shortcake a la Deb from SmittenLand, I was feeling pretty confident. After all, hers are beautiful. They're little fluffy biscuits, and they look heavenly.
So I made my best personal attempt. I boiled my eggs and got such beautiful yellow yolks. I didn't cut the butter up until RIGHT when I meant to throw it in.

And yet.....
I was foiled. Foiled by the instructions to process until the flour looked like coarse meal. Foiled by trying to make biscuits with a machine. Foiled by a hot night and not cold enough butter.
Foiled. Look at them - they're....they're...... flat. Pale. They spread. They didn't get tall. They didn't get brown. They didn't really....do.... anything. They weren't dense. They weren't light. They tasted ok, but they did NOT look ok at first glance.
I mean.... once you pile macerated strawberries that you bought at the farmer's market that morning, you can't really see the ugly shortcakes...which leads me to the only corollary I've ever developed:

With enough whipped cream on top, all dessert sins can be forgiven or ignored.
Seeya at PrettyGirls. :)

By Request.

2009-06-12T18:00:00.008-04:00

I love a reader request.
Seriously.
Because at heart, in the very core of my nature, I'm a people-pleaser. You have a request? Of course I'll make my every effort to fulfill it! German Chocolate birthday cake? Sure! Seared tuna? Sure! Fried chicken or pumpkin risotto or fried cheese sticks? I'll do my darnedest.
This also extends to blogging. Because sometimes, I forget that there are people on other glowing screens wondering what I'll say next. And I'm very sorry for that.
So, when the talented and entertaining Blue Jean Gourmet requests, nay, demands that I blog about my chimichurri and my blackberry tart, well...... how can I say no?

On Memorial Day, after a lovely afternoon spent lying in the sun reading at Prospect Park, Jesse and I realized we had nothing for dinner. Flank Steak with Chimichurri seemed an excellent idea.
Having never made chimichurri before, I sought the opinion of experts. And let me just say that while Ingrid Hoffman may not necessarily be an expert, at least her recipe didn't involve either cilantro or jalapenos. I like Ingrid.
Into my blender, I put an entire bunch of parsley (stems and all), some dried oregano, 2 garlic cloves, the juice and zest of a lemon, a little hot sauce, a few dashes of white wine vinegar, and some salt. I set it a-blending, and streamed in some oil. I started with olive oil, and switched to vegetable oil after a few seconds. I added more salt and pepper, and a teensy bit more hot sauce, which Ingrid doesn't call for, but I figured she won't be able to find my house in time to tear me apart over it, if it really upsets her.
When the sauce finally came together, it was thick, gloppy, and perfect for marinating. I salted and peppered the flank steak, and then brushed it with the chimichurri sauce and put it in the fridge.
When it was time to go, I grilled the steak, brushing it with more chimi right before it went on the grill, let it rest, sliced it thin, and served it with some chimichurri-dressed grilled potatoes, and a lentil salad. Because honestly chimi is Argentinian pesto, and it can go with whatever you like. Just don't let the Argentinians kill me for saying that.

I had also read a great post over at Adele's blog, about a Brown-Butter Raspberry Tart from Gourmet that she tinkered with, that lead to a Brown-Butter Brown-Sugar Raspberry Tart. And I do love me some tinkering, so the following weekend, to go with some fried chicken, we had a tart.

I got the chance to tinker a little more, because of course my grocery store doesn't carry raspberries right now, so we had a blackberry tart. Mmmm. I made Adele's recommended shortbread crust. I have to say that I'm 100% certain this is the right way to go. However, should we get lucky enough to bike to the Farmer's Market tomorrow (pray for no rain), I will be happy to attempt to replicate the tart, just to be sure. All for science, y'know.

I made the crust while marinating my chicken in buttermilk. Then, once the chicken had gone into the skillet (fried chicken takes a good half-hour), I browned the half-stick of butter, let it cool sort of, and set it aside. Then, of course, I washed out the mixer bowl from the pastry making, and flipped the chicken while the mixer combined 1 egg, 4 tablespoons of white sugar, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar (they were heaped. I'm not a good measurer, and I love brown sugar), a quarter-teaspoon (ish) of salt, and a half-teaspoon of vanilla (ish).
I added the quarter-cup of All-Purpose flour, and the browned butter. And then, I set to stacking my blackberries.
Blackberries tip over. They wobble. They have that one big nasty seed in them and they're generally not the easiest things to get to stand up and look pretty. But, they taste delicious. So, I persevered, poured in the custard, and baked the tart while getting the chicken taken care of. As I was putting the first piece of chicken on a baking sheet lined with brown paper bags to cool, the timer went off, and this was what came out of the oven:
I have never had such good luck with timing in my life. Please go thank Adele at once for tinkering with this recipe, and thank the gods of the kitchen for letting me get it all to the table without screwing up my chicken. :)

Would I leave you hanging??

2009-06-11T23:12:00.008-04:00

Here it is. The promise made good from the last entry.

Just to recap, here's where we started:
3 peppers (red, yellow, orange) and a container of grape tomatoes. The tomatoes halved, the peppers just the way they are. Drizzle the tomatoes and peppers with a little bit of oil (olive or the type of your choosing). Smear it all over the peppers, and sprinkle everything with some coarse salt and pepper.
Stick them in the oven at 325-350. Do something else.

An hour or two later, take a look. You should see something like this:
Peppers all soggy and deflated, tomatoes getting shrivelly and sweet. If it doesn't look like this, put them back and wait 20 minutes, then check again. When the peppers look like this, pull them out and put them in a bowl cover tightly with plastic wrap, and busy yourself with trying not to eat all the tomatoes.
Once the peppers are cool enough to touch, pour the juice that has accumulated in the bottom of the bowl through a strainer into the blender caraffe. Then, peel and seed the peppers. This will hurt. Running them under cold water helps. Once they're all peeled and the seeds are out, dump them in the blender with the aforementioned juices. Spin it all together until it makes a nice puree.
With the blender running, add in the majority of the tomato halves. I left out about 6. Maybe it was 8. Whatever. Don't judge me - slow-roasted tomatoes are the best thing on earth.

Heat a saucepot with a tablespoon of oil and a tablespoon(ish) of butter. Throw in a very small onion, chopped. Seriously, if this onion is any bigger than a baseball -- ANY BIGGER -- cut it in half and wrap up the other half. In fact, if it's one of those softball-sized monstrosities Rachael Ray always manages to find, use a quarter. We're going for flavor base, not onion soup.
Let the onion get a little see-through in the butter/oil mix before adding in a pinch of salt, and about a tablespoon of cumin, a teaspoon of garam masala, a teaspoon of tumeric, and half a tablespoon of dried oregano. Ok, I'm making up these measurements. But it's reassuring, isn't it? Basically, you'll be able to smell when it's right. If you can't, then taste it, and re-season. The measurements just make it look all safe and credible.
When you've got a nice base of flavors and your onions are soft, add in the pepper/tomato puree. Then, add about 2 and a half cups of chicken stock. I added almost all of a 26-ounce container, so I'm estimating. Roughly. Stir, and let it come to a bubble. Simmer until the flavors taste nice. I added about a tablespoon of hot sauce because it needed a little something. Go with your senses.
Because if you do, you'll get this:
I topped it with a little of the leftover avocado cream from last night's wonderment. It was pefect. Creamy, cool, nice and basic to the slightly acidic tang of the soup.

You can make this. It's easy. And it doesn't take all that long. Try it on a Saturday. I promise, you can do this.

Teaser

2009-06-11T19:23:00.003-04:00

Tonight, we're having roasted red pepper and tomato soup. And homemade bread. Get excited.

Top Chef?

2009-06-10T22:18:00.004-04:00

So I'm watching Top Chef: Masters, and I realized that my delicious din, cooked tonight, was something I could talk about on here. I also feel odd not blogging for 10 days, it feels like it's been a lot longer, since I've been cooking and there was a whole week of actual menus that I didn't share and....
I'm bad. I know, I'm bad.
I've made fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, roast chicken, parmesan crusted chicken, roast pork, carbonara, a blackberry tart, flank steak with chimichurri.....
And tonight.
Tonight, I made....
That's a fried egg with blackbean cakes and avocado cream.
If you make this dish for only one reason, you should make it for the avocado cream. I don't even like sour cream, and yet when you combine avocado, parsley (me +cilantro = bleh) sour cream, lime juice, and salt. Make sure your avocado is very ripe, because you want the smoothest, creamiest sauce possible.
This is fantastic. Make it. For brunch. For dinner. For whatever. Just make this. Please?

And I promise I'll blog better. Now that I'm getting some energy back, and once it stops raining, I'll feel better.

I wouldn't lie to you.

I am awful

2009-05-31T16:00:00.003-04:00

I have a kitchen full of hand-me-downs and gifts.
Examples:
Cast-iron skillet - hand-me-down from first roommate Hylton
Le Creuset Braiser - hand-me-down/bribe for helping Hylton move his couch down the stairs.
Everyday sautee pan with glass lid - Christmas gift.
Dutch Oven, 2 Saucepots - Hand-me-down from mom and dad's old t-fal set.
Stockpot - hand-me-down from Hylton again.
All-Clad small saucepot - Hand-me-down from Hylton
Cake tins, pie plates, baking dishes - gifts/hand-me-downs.

I love hand-me-downs. I love dishes that tell a story. But at some point, you have to stop cooking in your mom's old T-Fal and branch out. Someday you deserve a matching set. Or... you start to want a matching set. Which is more to the point.

And someday, because you think you're a bit of a cook, you decide that instead of more non-stick, more special utensils, you want to get stainless. You decide that you want to be able to cook at screaming high heats, and pre-heat your pans to smoking, and generally be a badass, not to mention the novel concept of being able to go stove to oven to table without having to use aluminum foil on the handles of your cookware. And by you, I mean I.

And so you get a little adventurous. You start looking at Amazon, and find the set of your dreams (at least until you can register for a wedding and have people buy you the real set of your dreams..... helloooooo, lover) and you start to think.
Hellooooo, lover.

This set is from Cuisinart. I have a soft spot for Cuisinart, since it's the brand of my lovely food processor, and my amazing grind-and-brew coffee maker that you can program to make coffee right as the alarm goes off in the morning. Swoon.

I'm kind of sunk.
This set is very affordable. Has great product reviews.
For a while, I flirted with the idea of the Rachael Ray stainless set.... with its adorable chubby, curvy saucepots, and its cute orange silicon handles. But then I started reading reviews. And the last thing I really need is stainless steel saucepots that leak at the rivets. Because as adorable as this thing is, and honestly if it had cheeks, I'd want to pinch them, I need stuff that will hold up under the demands and stresses of my kitchen. Demands and stresses like, "Shit I forgot to melt the butter, now I have to jack up the heat", or "Shit, I don't know the diference between simmer and boil so I'm going to hope for the best" or things of that nature.

These things happen.

So I'm pining. And thinking. About the day that I have a set of brand-new, 18/10, oven-safe no matter what, non-teflon-coated stainless steel cookware. And how the first thing I'm gonna do is go after that medium saucepot with a whisk. Or maybe I'll get myself a metal spatula, and flip a pancake in that big skillet. Hehehehe.

I'm keeping the cast iron, Le Creuset, and the nonstick skillets Gie gave me, though, so keep your paws off. HEAR ME?!?!!?

Buckle your seatbelts

2009-05-24T21:13:00.008-04:00

This is gonna be a big one.

Saturday, Jesse and I walked to the BKLYN Yard, for Parked! Since they took down the link/info page on the BKYard's website, instead please refer to the photo of the flyer. I'll sum up: the PizzaMoto truck, a taco cart from the Red Hook soccer field vendors, the Green Pirate juice truck, and the VanLeeuwen Ice Cream truck (!!!!) were all present, parked in the lot, serving up their wares and showing their stuff. Highlights included watching the PizzaMoto Dough Maven do her thing with dough until they sold straight out of it, eating the delicious Margherita from PizzaMoto, having the Espresso ice cream from Van Leeuwen which was better than anything else, which is saying something, the delicious Green Pirate Hot Pink Lemonade, which involved beet juice, ginger, cucumbers, and some other crazy stuff. Also, the lovely Rita of the Pretty Girls Use Knives crew, joined us for some fun in the sun. Unfortunately, PM sold out before she got any, and the taco cart line was just. not. moving. So that was awesome regardless. Here are some pics of the aforementioned highlights:

And then.... there was the biggest amazingness of all. This is the item that made my day, and that basically justified the sunburn that I have and the money that we spent, even more than catching the VanLeeuwen truck and finding out about the taco cart and everything:
Andrew Knowlton!!! That's Andrew Knowlton, the BA Foodist, frequent Iron Chef Judge, and all around hottie-pants. He's even hotter in person, and let me just say, he was so low-key, totally chilled out, didn't pull rank and try to jump ahead of the line for PizzaMoto, didn't get shirty when they didn't recognize him.... sigh. Andrew Knowlton, everyone.

Sunday
I have some irrationalities regarding cooking. #1 - I decide, rather than plan, to bake, especially when reading about all the wondrous things that Deb from the Smitten Kitchen makes. #2 - I have a fear of cooking shrimp and scallops, as well as anything not in its shell that should be, like clams, oysters, lobster, crab, etc. I am not confident in my ability to cook them without overcooking them. Even though I'm much more likely to undercook them, since I'll take them off before they turn opaque, I still am not confident.

Tonight, I remembered one fear (that of cakes sticking to pans) and moved on my way to recovering from the other (grilling seafood).
First, the grilling seafood. Leah made a spectacular-looking grilled shrimp dish back in March, and undertook the Bon Appetit Modern Fiesta for date night the other evening. She's brave. I decided to challenge her braveness, and grill some shrimps of my own. I took a recipe from Epicurious, for grilled shrimp with a lemon-oregano dressing.
As per usual, I didn't follow the recipe entirely. However, here's the deal, here's what I did:
**De-vein 1 pound of large shrimp (if you're doing jumbo shrimp, get 2 pounds. go with what you can afford). Keep the shells on. Do this by using your kitchen shears (or whatever pair of scissors you feel like, just wash'em) to cut them open down the back, and pull the vein out. This is similar to how you'd butterfly them. Put them in the fridge.
**Mince and paste 2-4 cloves of garlic, depending on how many shrimp you're cooking with 3/4 teaspoon of salt. The easier way to do this is to microplane your garlic into the food processor and add a half-teaspoon ish of salt. Then add the juice of 1 lemon, a few shakes of black pepper, and turn on the foodpro/blender. Drizzle in olive oil until it's all emulsified and happy. Add a handful of chopped parsley (if you have oregano, use oregano) and mix. If it separates, you can just stir it up. No big whoop. You can also taste and mutate htis into anything you want.
**heat up your grill. Put 1/4 cup of the dressing over the shrimp, and after a few minutes, put your shrimp on some skewers and put them on the grill. I did not skewer mine, and I can tell you for sure that this is not a good idea. I lost 3 good shrimp to the gods of the grill. Don't make my mistake.
After a few minutes, the shrimpies are done, and you can take them off, serve the rest of the dressing in a bowl along iwth either rice or bread, and do peel-and-eat shrimps. Paper towels for everybody!!! Yay!!!

The cake....

The cake tastes delicious. It does not look as awesome as Deb's, but then again, mine never do. The grocery store didn't have raspberries, and while raspberry-lemon is a gorgeous combination, I had to go with blueberries. And I like blueberry-orange, so I added orange zest instead of lemon zest. Also, no vanilla because our store doesn't carry it.
The cake is delicious. And when it came out of the oven it looked..... too good to be true:
It was. When I tried to turn it out and cool it on the rack, the cake stuck, except for the center of the cake, which fell out onto the rack. It was sad. However, this cake is delicious and I think with about 3 more minutes of baking time, it will work brilliantly. Next time. Which might be tomorrow. Just sayin'.

In general, it's been a great food weekend, and it's got one more day, one more lovely day, and summer is here and I've finally learned when to turn over my charcoal chimbley to get the most use out of my coals, and basically..... It's been lovely.

On allergies and preferences

2009-05-20T12:54:00.003-04:00

I'm not a person who ascribes totally to any philosophies of food or life. Except for these:
Be good.
Be happy.
Be healthy.
Be well.

If you can live within those 4 theories, then who am I to tell you anything about your life? Or your dining choices? You can be picky, you can be open, you can be whatever you want to be, as long as you're good, happy, healthy and well.
However. I just got an e-mail from a coworker wondering at the nature of food allergies, and thinking it was ridiculous that a roommate would freak out that the coworker had cut a pineapple on the counter, and not wiped up the juice or washed the knife, since the roommate happens to be allergic to pineapple.
Apparently, food allergies were a new thing to this coworker.

I'm not here to judge, most of the time. But this girl's attitude toward food allergies was shocking at best, dangerous at worst. She mentioned that she thought allergies were weird, and would never presume to ask someone to make food to accommodate any of her food preferences, and was taught to just eat what was put on her plate. This is a girl who was raised in a range of cultures, in a very trans-world world. Part of her life in India, part in the UK, part in the US. And yet nowhere in her entire life had she ever heard of anyone having a dangerous peanut allergy. Never saw the markings on all packaged foods saying "this contains nuts or was processed in a facility that processes nuts". Never heard of celiac disease or lactose intolerance or people being allergic to strawberries.

At first, I tried to be calm and rational, told her that I really thought the allergy question was interesting. People could die from them. Etc etc.
Then, she came back to say that she found needing to accommodate someone's preferences strange, alien, that it wasn't something she would ever imagine.

I'm sorry, but to all my readers, let me make this very, very clear:
Allergy is defined by dictionary.com as:

al⋅ler⋅gy

1.	an abnormal reaction of the body to a previously encountered allergen introduced by inhalation, ingestion, injection, or skin contact, often manifested by itchy eyes, runny nose, wheezing, skin rash, or diarrhea.

2.	hypersensitivity to the reintroduction of an allergen. Compare anaphylaxis.

Preference is defined by dictionary.com as:

pref⋅er⋅ence

1.	the act of preferring.

2.	the state of being preferred.

3.	that which is preferred; choice: His preference is vanilla, not chocolate.

As you can see, there is a distinct difference between an allergy and a preference. Namely, the aspect of choice!!! Do you think anyone out there would choose to suffer from diabetes (which I group as an allergy because it's an extreme case where the body is unable to process an enzyme) or a severe peanut allergy that could cause anaphylactic shock?? Do you think anyone would choose to have to read every single label for elements or trace bits of peanuts, or wheat, or strawberries, or shellfish? I mean, let's not even start with the allergies like to pineapple juice (which is in most fruit punch, check your labels) or citrus fruits (try to find something that doesn't contain citric acid that's packaged.... let me know when you do) or eggplant or any of the 8 million things out there. Coconut!! My dad is allergic to COCONUT! Granted, he just has to make sure that he doesn't eat the dark chocolate truffles that are filled with the stuff, and he only gets hives, but why would anyone choose to have to deal with that????

My grandmother is allergic to penicillin. Shouldn't the medical community have to accommodate her allergy? What is the point of trying to save her life by administering something that would end it??
Similarly, why is pineapple, or strawberries, or shellfish, or wheat gluten or whatever so important to my coworker that she can't understand the concept of it being deadly? She's a vegetarian, and was taught to politely decline meat. Which is great for her! Go for it!! But if you can decline meat because of personal tastes or religious reasons or whatever.... why can't your roommates ask you to just wash the countertop to get rid of the pineapple? Or make a specific knife and cutting board for pineapple, so that the roommate doesn't have to come in contact with it?

For me, there's no ingredient or recipe that's worth causing a friend pain. I don't care if it's just that you get itchy after eating pepperoncini - which I never cook with - tell me! I always ask. I don't see any reason to make someone have to take a Benadryl after a meal with me. I don't have any recipes that I'm so attached to I couldn't change them or scrub them altogether for a dinner party with a friend with specific dietary restrictions. I can take the bacon out of my mac & cheese, or, genius, make a pot of cheese sauce without bacon. I can read labels to make sure all my ingredients are Kosher, or make sure that I'm using all vegetarian ingredients if you're into that. I can use rice pasta, or make risotto, or cook only chicken or cook no chicken. I can accommodate you. Because I don't want to make you sick!!! I don't want you to worry about your dietary rules or your religion or the new lifestyle choices you're making. I want you to be happy and healthy and good and well.

So please, fellow cooks and eaters, please remember these other rules:
#1 - ask your guests about any dietary restrictions.
#2 - guests, don't be afraid to TELL YOUR HOSTS what you will/won't/can't/choose not to eat.
#3 - let's all be a little more flexible, yeah? If you just don't like spinach, mention that, but say that you'll eat it if it's given to you. If you're deadly allergic to oranges, obviously shout that one out. If you're a vegetarian, please explain what you mean by that, so people don't go assuming things (meatitarians, i'm talking to you!!!!)

For heaven's sake, don't force people to eat what's put in front of them just because you were raised that way. It worked for me, that "eat what you're fed" raising. I'll eat anything, and I definitely will eat plenty of it. But it didn't work for my little brother, who is about as picky as they come, and whose dinner or unwanted something-or-other I always ate at home as kids. He's now the underweight, picky vegetarian one. And I'm the one with the cooking blog. What's good for the goose is not always good for the gander.
[
So honestly.... let's remember. It's an allergy. Not a choice.

They'll never know you're just....a bagel Part Deux

2009-05-17T15:56:00.007-04:00

For the recipe, as well as sponge and dough-making details, please click here.

Bagel Day 2
Saturday morning, the bagel odyssey continued. This part was considerably easier, as well as considerably scarier.
I started by setting up my water bath. I used my Le Creuset braiser, since it was wide enough for several bagels at once, and wouldn't require 8 gallons of water to fill. While the water was heating, I added the required tablespoon of baking soda and tablespoon of honey (still didn't have any malt syrup) and let it all come up to temperature. I pulled out one of the pans of bagels, and boiled half of them for about 2 minutes per side.
Here is something else you may not know about me. I love Cosi's square bagels. My company used to get them for us on Mondays. I always picked an Asiago Cheese - so of course when making my own bagels I decided to top them with cheese. I'm generally not a fan of pre-shredded cheese that you buy at the supermarket, because I don't like eating stabilizers. But it melts so nicely - so I topped some of our first test batch of bagels with shredded Mexican cheese blend. Basically, after they boiled, I picked the really hot bagel up off the slotted spoon and pressed it into a pile of cheese. In later batches, I mixed some chili powder with the cheese, which added a little somethin to the party. The rest I left plain, although in later batches I added some kosher salt/garlicpowder to make a garlic-salt bagel. Mmmm :)
The bagels baked for 5 minutes at 500-degrees. Then, in theory, I rotated the cookie sheet and reduced the heat to 450. When I baked the test batch, I actually remembered to do that. When I baked the other 2 pans of bagels later, I definitely forgot to rotate and reduce on the first pan, but remembered on the second. I'm not sure whether I noticed a difference.

And now, some photos, to give you an idea of what it all looked like, from boiling onward:

Ahh bagels with egg salad, or with cream-cheese and tomato. Perfection.

To sum up, these were pretty good. Next time, I will definitely be using all purpose flour and my wheat gluten (in case I forgot to mention it before, add 1 tablespoon of wheat gluten to every 1 cup of flour to get high-gluten flour) instead of whole wheat. But it was pretty darn good. And considering how scary I thought it would be.... pretty darn easy. Try these. They're fun.

They'll never know you're just....a bagel

2009-05-17T12:38:00.002-04:00

One thing you folks may not know about me is that I'm very very susceptible to the power of suggestion. So when so many of you get together and start talking about and eating and making bagel s, and one of you waxes poetic about lox on bagels (fine there's only 2 of you), I get bagels in my head.
And I think about them.
And eventually..... I want to make them. Luckily for me, I couldn't make them last weekend. I was too busy celebrating my birthday and throwing a party and eating brunch with my friends. But this weekend.... bagels were on.

Rule#1 - anyone who goes shopping for bagel essentials after Happy Hour gets what she deserves.
Case in point: I went shopping for my bagel stuff after happy hour, and as such, I missed the key difference in my flour choice. I picked up WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR instead of ALL PURPOSE FLOUR because I read the tag on the front of the shelf at Whole Foods, instead of the actual BAG OF FLOUR in my hand. Oy.
Rule#2 - do not start bagels, which require a significant amount of time in their early stages, at 10pm.
Case in point: When I got home from happy hour (which turned into 4 happy hours, I'll admit) and Whole Foods, I decided it was the perfect time to start making bagels. Because Jesse said that he'd prefer them for breakfast on Saturday. And I live to make him happy (no I'm not being tongue in cheek - I actually kinda do). So I started bagels at 10 pm. Which means that they weren't ready to be put in the fridge overnight until roughly 2am. Brilliant is my middle name.

For the record, I used the recipe from Smitten Kitchen for Peter Reinhart's Bagels. Deb's dad (SantaDad) gave them his Bronx-Childhood Seal of Approval, which is really all I need in the way of endorsement. I'm also not going to speak specifially about the amounts and stuff for the recipe - read it on SK, because it's a novel in itself without my blathering.

Bagel Day 1:
It's always a little nerve-wracking to begin a baking project knowing that you don't have the correct ingredients. However, knowing that High Gluten flour was difficult to come by, I purchased a box of vital wheat gluten, which is not as hard to find at Whole Foods as you might think. I still have no idea what instant yeast is, but WF doesn't sell it, and Google said I could use it interchangably with Active Dry, so I did.
I had decided that if I didn't see the desired results from the sponge after the 2-hour sit, I would throw the whole mess away and start again on Saturday. My stomach sank when I realized that I would have to add a TON more water to make the sponge reach the "thick pancake batter" consistency, because of the density of whole wheat flour as compared to APF. I mean, I'm all for improvising and adding more of whatever you think you need, but there's a difference between that and setting yourself up for embarrassment and wasting 6 hours of your life.

The sponge got puffy. It seemed encouraging. So I added the rest of the flour and salt and yeast and Vital Wheat gluten and mixed it all up. I didn't add malt powder or syrup because I didn't have any and couldn't find any at Whole Foods. So.... too bad.
Let me just tell you. 10 minutes of kneading ends up making your shoulder hurt. Specifically, my right shoulder. And the dough never quite got as satiny as I was hoping, but then again, what do I know?
I shaped my dough into 3-ounce balls. I think next time I will go with the 4.5-ounce size on half, because there is no way that I need as many bagels as I ended up with. But yes, pull out your kitchen scale and start weighing dough balls. You'll thank me.
After a short (20-min) proof, I poked my thumb through the center of the funny little dough balls and made bagel holes. These also had to proof for 20 minutes, and then I did one of the silliest tests ever for bagels. Basically.... you drop a bagel into a bowl of cool water, to see if it will float or not. I'm not sure why. I don't really want to question it, though, because it worked brilliantly and the bagel instantly floated, so I threw all three cookie sheets into the fridge and went to bed.

Bagel Day 2 coming soon!!!

Maybe I'm the lucky one

2009-05-03T22:34:00.008-04:00

There are some things in this world that I'm just bad at. Origami. Math. Shooting 3-pointers with a defender's hand in my face. Y'know - things I can accept that I'm bad at by a fluke of genetics or disposition or whatever. So I don't continue to try them, because I know I'm bad at them.
There are things that I'm just pretty good at. Making bread. Having neat handwriting. Taking naps/falling asleep anywhere. I do them and I enjoy them.
Then, there are things that make me think I'm a glutton for punishment -- things that I am not all that great at, but keep trying anyways. Things that make me disappointed because they don't go as well as they should.... things that ruin my mood because I'm following the directions very carefully (or as carefully as I can) and I'm really encouraged..... and then.... bupkus.
Like making Cinnamon Rolls. I've mentioned before that I'm just a little bit mystified by them. They're kind of like making bread, but they're also kind of more like making muffins. A little like making brioche, I would guess. Somehow..... it never quite does for me what it does for others.
Today.... I decided to follow Deb's advice, and make these cinnamon rolls. I had all the ingredients, I had nothing to do today besides wash dishes and clean, so.... I tried it out.
Something went awry.

They are not as airy as I'd like. They are not as light as I'd like. They are kind of heavy. Some of them burned. I'm not in love with them. I think it's me. I think I need to find out what the difference is between instant yeast, rapid rise yeast, active dry yeast.... etc. I think I need to read and research a bunch of recipes, find out the similarities and the differences, and do some work. Because it's hard to make delicious Cinnamon Roll French Toast if you can't make cinnamon rolls all that well.

In a bit of a funk over the failure of my cinnamon rolls to double in volume during the second rising, I was feeling incredibly uninspired for dinner. I went to the grocery store and honestly could not think of a single thing to make. This may be because the stench of the fish counter an hour before closing on a Sunday evening was overpowering. But it was also a funk and a little bit of a cooker's block. Eventually, after my fifth pass down the protein case, I settled on the beef cut up for stir-fry. I decided to make an asian chili-beef noodle soup. Even though I've never actually MADE such before, or even seen a recipe for it. So I wandered the aisles, squinting because my glasses are the wrong prescription, trying to figure out what would go in such a soup.
I eventually settled on the Stir Fry Beef, Angel Hair pasta, Beef Stock, Carrots and Scallions. I was concerned that my typical hot sauces wouldn't provide enough kick, so I had to do something I wasn't happy about.
I had to buy...... Sriracha.
I know, I know.
There's no way to make authentic or even pseudo-Asian Chili dishes without sriracha. But it's SPICY!!! I order the mild wings whenever we go out for burgers and wings. I reworked my go-to wing sauce so that it included tomato paste and cumin instead of the quarter-cup of hot sauce alone. I don't like curries unless they're warm, not spicy.
Plus, I really hate the rooster on the bottle. But the real reason I bought it had nothing to do with authenticity or real Asian flavors. It had to do with the fact that if the soup sucked, I was pretty sure I could just throw in some Sriracha and torch the soup and blame it on the hot sauce.

It was that kind of a day.

In any event, I made the soup, and I knew going in that I would have to marinate the beef somehow. Meet......
The marinade. Or, at least, part of it. Cumin, Chili Flake, Garlic, Tumeric and Chili Powder got rubbed all over the steak pieces, along with some salt. This all got put into a ziploc bag with about a tablespoon of vegetable oil.
Then, came the heavy hitters...
Red Devil, Sriracha (the other red devil) and Soy Sauce. All sprinkled (judiciously) in the Ziploc with the meat. Those sat around while I painstakingly trimmed carrots into julienne (seriously. I am sick) and sizzled up some minced garlic cloves (3), a diced shallot, and a tablespoon of olive oil. I added in the carrots and about a teaspoon of sriracha, followed by about the same of Soy sauce. Then, I added a can of beef stock and a small box (16 ounces) of chicken stock (weird??? yes).
While that came up to a bubble, I heated up a small saute pan for the beef. Get it pretty f'ing hot. You want to sear the outside before the inside is cooked. Add about a tablespoon of vegetable oil (safer for high heat) and half the beef. Stir around, no more than 60 seconds, then remove to a plate and add the other half of the beef. Same drill.
The soup was boiling, so I splashed in some more Red Devil, probably a tablespoon which was too much. Start with a teaspoon, taste, and add more.
Then, I added in an eighth of a package of capellini (angel hair) and set to work turning scallions into matchsticks. When the pasta was cooked (about 3 minutes, maybe 5....) I threw in the beef and the scallions, covered, and turned off the heat.

After 3 more minutes, the beef was warmed through, the flavors were all melded, and we were good to go:
Shockingly, it was delicious. It was VERY hot. But it wasn't the "set your tongue on fire" kind of hot. Rather, it just heated up the back of my throat in a very pleasing, "I might start to sweat soon" kind of way.
Or, in an "I might make this again soon" way.

Just don't expect me to give Sriracha a place next to Miss Salsita. I'm not that kind of girl.

Women of the World, Read this/Eat this

2009-04-20T21:39:00.002-04:00

Women of the world, I have created The. Perfect. PMS. Food!!!
Seriously.
It's also the perfect food for being home alone on a rainy, windy, cold wet night after yoga.

I tried to take a photo, but it just looked lumpy. But this dish is the best food evs. I promise. Get a pen, make a shopping list.
1/2 cup arborio rice (or whatever's left in the bottom of the bag if you're Joh)
1 1/2 cup milk
1/2-1 cup water (as needed)
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, divided use
Salt to taste
Brown sugar to taste.

Before you start with the "Bitch, not another effing risotto", just wait. Trust Joh.
1. Heat up a cup and a half of milk, and half a cup of water in a small pot. Don't let it boil - it will scald and make a mess of the bottom of the pot.
2. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan. Don't let it get foamy.
3. Add the rice, and stir around so that things get all coated in the fat. This is just like risotto.
4. Start adding the milk/water by about half-cupfuls. You may need more, just add a little water to the milk in the pot. It's ok.
5. When the rice has absorbed as much milk as it can, you'll know. It'll taste smushy. And delish. Also, the last addition of milk won't actually absorb all the way. It'll just sort of stay soupy, with the rice's starch helping suspend the rice granules in the milk.
6. Add the last half-tablespoon of butter, off the heat. Mix it in. Then, start adding brown sugar and salt until you're satisfied with the flava.
You don't want to salt the risotto before it's done cooking. You want to really taste the clash of the salt and the brown sugar. This is the beauty of this dish. There's the creaminess of the risotto texture. And the milky addition. And the sweet/salty thing. Plus, it's warm, and you don't end up with a casserole dish full of the leftover, which makes it better than rice pudding.
I'm not going to lie, this pretty much serves 2 people. But, I'm eating it all myself.
Jesse's loss for being out working on his bike and drinking beer.

Sucka!!! :)

From Calzone to Chicken

2009-04-19T22:04:00.005-04:00

I'm back after a crazy weekend, kicked off by ricotta, goat cheese, arugula and slow-roasted tomato calzones. These were ultimately a learning experience. The pizza dough, goat cheese, ricotta and tomatoes were all good. The arugula was much softer than I would have liked. It pretty much steamed in the crust, which is not what we're really going for. Next time I'll pick a different vegetable to go with the lovely slow-roasted tomatoes. I need to figure out how to better combine the textures of the various cheeses. Because the goat cheese didn't get adequately melty, nor did the parmesan get stringy enough. Just wasn't exactly the squishy, cheesy comfort food I was looking for in a big way on Friday night. But the crust.... was delish, as always.
Tonight's fried chicken was maybe a little better than usual. Maybe the same. The chicken was really juicy, and the breading was pretty good. I used mostly flour, a double-dredge, as usual with egg. But instead of panko I added regular seasoned breadcrumbs, to the second flour dredge. I also separated the chicken legs myself, because Fresh Direct's bulk pack of chicken legs has the thighs and drums connected. So, I played butcher and split quite a few chicken leg joints this week. Shockingly satisfying, although I don't think I'd want to take up a career in butchery any time soon. I roasted some potatoes, onions, garlic and sweet potatoes to go with, which is pretty nice considering that typically I'd make a big pot of mashed potatoes full of butter and cream to go with this lovely fried dinner. But tonight, oh no! Tonight, before I have to go do 5 straight days of workout this week, I ate healthy, roasted potatoes WITH their skins. Healthy healthy healthy.

Andrew Knowlton and Donatella Arpaia bitched at each other on Iron Chef. The chef from the Spotted Pig got a perfect on taste, which was amazing to see, especially since all the judges couldn't agree on ANYTHING.
I'm sick of Food Network Challenge. Quite.

Just for you:

2009-04-13T21:03:00.003-04:00

Have you found yourself lately thinking, "Y'know, I wish that Joh would post some fun, delicious, progressive recipes for us vegetarians" ?? Have you wondered what in heck you'd eat were you to come to a cookout at my place and not be able to stomach a burger, hotdog, or steak? Are you just hoping that I've finally updated this stinkin' thing, so you can comment on my fabulosity once again??

You're in LUCK!!!

Tonight, through a convergence of circumstances that can most accurately be described as "shite", we had a delicious, nutritious, vegetarian dinner! BlackBean Burgers, with mango chutney!!
THey were delish. Seriously. And so easy!!
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained.
1 tablespoon onion flake reconstituted, or some chopped onion/shallot. Basically by 1 tablespoon, I mean a handful, thrown in a prep bowl with some water to get all fresh again.
cumin
chili powder
breadcrumbs
garlic powder
Salsita
dried parsley

Everything after the onion should be added to taste. Except the breadcrumbs, which should be a shallow palmful. Less, if you have big palms. You'll have to come measure my palms to get something exact, suckas!!!!!
For those who've been reading along, this is a LOT like my falafel procedure. Smash up or food process the black beans, then add the seasonings and breadcrumbs and process again. Or smash again.

I dusted the patties with a little flour, and pan-fried them in a little vegetable oil (strained from my latest fried pickle exploits....nomnomNOM) until they were crispy on the outside and warm through. I put them on toasted Sandwich Thins, which are by far the most amazing inventions of mankind since fork-split English Muffins. I smeared the bottom of the bun with Mango Chutney that I had in the fridge, and it was heavenly.
These are really good. I'd post a picture, but right now Jesse is using the USB cable to help him build the site for our SuperSecretSideProject, which will be awesome. :) I promise.

For now, consider making black bean burgers. They're delish. And cheap. very cheap. And when you've just smashed your lovely French Press by knocking it over in an attempt to not break anything else on your countertop..... cheap, tasty, healthy dinner is always for the win. :)

Admission.

2009-04-08T21:58:00.003-04:00

My name is Joh, and I'm a reactionary baker.
Today I got some really frustrating news. I won't go into it too far, but suffice it to say that something I had done 3 weeks ago and followed up on last week didn't actually get received. So for all my best efforts, it's now still a waiting game.
Oh well.

When I got bad news as a kid, I'd cry. I'd get upset, I'd freak out, I'd break down. Since Pop died and we were all so starved for something more comforting than lemon cake, even though the lemon cakes were all lovely, I've turned to baking chocolate chip cookies. Or baking, in general. That's what I did tonight.
I heard some frustrating news, and immediately set about baking cookies.
I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and I made these cookies:
I used more salt than the recipe calls for, because the last time I made them, they weren't salty enough for me. I used Turbinado sugar instead of plain white sugar, because it's all we had. And they have a lovely, soft-yet-grainy texture that I'm quite pleased with. I also dropped an egg on the floor of the kitchen for the first time, literally, in years.
THis is a big thing.
My mom, who reads but rarely comments, can attest to the fact that in my younger days, I was a capital K-klutz, knocking into doorknobs, knocking over canisters of sprinkles or colored sugar during Christmas Cookie time, basically dropping or falling over anything I could. The fact that I now cook proficiently and don't cut myself or drop/smash things all the time is a minor miracle. Which might be why it was so frustrating that I dropped this egg on the floor. Especially since all I wanted from it was the yolk anyways. I always feel like I'm wasting an egg when I only use the white, or only use the yolk. And so I wasted TWO eggs tonight, because I dropped one and used the yolk from one. Argh.
But, the cookies are good and someday my life will stop throwing me curveballs. at least for one at-bat.

speaking of which, let's go red sox!!!

Quickly, quickly

2009-04-06T23:00:00.004-04:00

So I've been in a bit of a funk lately. Just a little down.
So tonight, on a whim, at 9pm I started baking pretzels. I'm insane. I know it, it's ok.
I think I really needed to do some yeast cookery. I haven't made bread since February. And really really.... I miss it. So, this was a good move. They're delicious.

Just try it. I don't know what the soda solution bath does. I brushed mine with butter and sprinkled them with salt before I baked them. I support this method. Do it.

***UPDATE****

Fun facts:
Contrary to popular opinion, these are not difficult. The only difficult thing is the folding of the pretzel. And if you're not bothered by fugly pretzels (I'm not) even that's not hard!! You just make a long, skinny snake out of pretzel dough (don't flour your board/counter. your dough will be sticky, but if you flour, it'll fall apart.) and then make an upside-down U with the pretzel, so the ends are pointing at you. Pick up the tails, cross left over right, and smash down into the upside-down U part. Done.
Don't salt them if you're planning to have left-overs. The salt makes them mushy and a little.... wet. It's odd.
OR, just eat them all in one go. This also works. :)

Cleanup

2009-03-29T10:40:00.005-04:00

I have a backlog of photos and stuff to post about -- we cooked this week and I haven't been doing the blogging justice.
No more, I tell you. No more.

On Tuesday, we had Ginger Chicken Noodle Rice Bowls. This is something that I love to make and to eat. It reminds me of when I lived alone, because I probably entertained with this 3 or 4 times in the first few months I lived in Williamsburg. And I definitely would make pots and pots of it to sustain me over the week. Plus, Hylton hd a Le Creuset red Dutch Oven, which is the perfect pot to make this in.
I've changed up the preparation of this soup into many varieties. I prefer to use boneless skinless chicken thighs, because they're cheap and aren't as dry. When I lived alone, a package of chicken thighs could get me through two soup pots, which is the basic reason I love them so much. The original recipe calls for Chinese 5 spice, ginger, cumin, carrots, garlic, stock, vermicelli and scallions. The basic plan is to brown the chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces, in a little vegetable oil, then add 2 or 3 cloves of fine-chopped garlic, an inch of ginger shredded, and the 5spice and cumin, salt and pepper. Once that gets all friendly, you're supposed to add carrots, shredded, and then stock -- when it all comes to a boil, you add in the vermicelli. A few minutes later, the scallions, sliced into matchsticks.
I've definitely switched this one up. I now use Garam Masala, which is basically Chinese 5spice only a little Indian-afied. I didn't use ginger this time, because the ginger root that I had in my fridge was all wrinkly and nasty. And since I used chicken in several preparations this week, we used chicken breasts instead of thighs. This recipe is very malleable.
I won't lie. I added a little bit of Miss Salsita to the soup pot, because the soup was missing a little something. This is the kind of thing that you can do with this receipe. You can mold it to fit YOUR tastes. In fact, in a flash of brilliance, I added a blob of coconut milk to the bottom of our bowls before I poured in the soup, which lead to something AMAZING!!! I'm glad I remembered this recipe, and that it was as good as I remembered. :) mmmmm

Thursday, we had Honey-Lime Glazed Salmon, with warm black bean and corn salsa. No big whoop. The salsa is amazing - red onion and garlic sauteed for a few minutes, then some chopped red pepper. Once that gets all friendly, you splash in a little chicken stock, let that bubble away with some cumin, red pepper flake, hot sauce, until it's all fabulous and tasty. And then you throw in some defrosted frozen corn, and black beans.

While all that magical yum is happening, You're glazing your salmon with lime juice, honey, chili powder, salt and pepper.... and then you're cooking it on your really hot grill pan, until it's done and delish. The result is a party. You should most definitely try it.
IF you can read my handwriting....

Friday's dinner, I have no words for. The closest I can get: Grilled Hangar steak with Blue-Cheese butter. Roasted Asparagus. The rare side of Medium Rare. Drooling.
Mmmmm.

And yesterday. Yesterday we made a chocolate cake together. Jesse has been cooking wtih me lately, which is fabulous!! And so we made a chocolate cake to accompany our macaroni and cheese. Behold!!!!
Inn'it preeeeety?

Back at it

2009-03-23T23:07:00.003-04:00

After a few weeks of sporadic grocery-ordering and menu-planning, we're back on track. And we're probably going to have some input from Jesse coming in the near future, since I'm going to be working after work to maintain the girlish figure while still cooking the delectable foods you readers (and Jesse) have come to expect.

Tonight, we had Rachael Ray's Honey-Nut Chicken Fingers, with roasted asparagus and brown rice.
Of course, I'm a bit of a weirdo, so I had to mess with things. I couldn't find Honey Nut Cornflakes from FreshDirect, so I audibled and went with Honey Nut Chex. I don't have paprika, and don't really see any reason for it, since I'd rather use cumin just about every time. So...I used the cumin instead of the paprika. And instead of grill seasoning, I used straight-up salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
I roasted the asparagus with just olive oil, salt and pepper. And of course... brown rice is brown rice. We all love it. Jesse and I probably love it more than most. Especially since I make it with chicken broth and water, instead of just water. And because my rice cooker does literally ALL the work. God bless whoever invented the rice cooker. Seriously.
The food was nommy. It was all baked/roasted. I like this, because it means that I can eat some of it for lunch tomorrow as fuel for the "Cardio Body Sculpting" class I'm taking.... oh joy.
We'll be back with more tomorrow, although Jesse might be blogging in my stead if I'm temporarily dead. :)

It's good to have friends

2009-03-14T09:49:00.001-04:00

Friday March 13th was probably the best day ever for me. Seriously.

I rarely say these kinds of things, but this one I most definitely mean. From adorable little girls waving at me on the train to minor and major work successes, to the amazing events that occurred from 4:30 onward.

My former nanny bosses recently opened a restaurant. I heard about it from a Daily Candy e-mail. I knew that they had the space, knew that they were working on the place, but didn't know the open date until I opened my e-mail on Monday and saw the Daily Candy about Scuderia. I was so excited!!! It was finally happening for them!
Friday evening, Cara called to ask if I wanted to come to dinner with her, and Jesse as well. I was pretty ecstatic and pretty honored because this was FIRST FRIDAY!!!
We went to dinner.
It was amazing.
Cara basically ordered several plates, to pass around, and then we picked our entrees. I'm not going to lie, this is the only way to dine, and the next time I have several hundred extra dollars, I'm totally rolling this way.

We tried the arancine, which were sent over by Alex. The polpette, which were pretty good, although Alex said that the chef had "fucked them up" that night. Tasted like amazing meatballs to me!
The mussels, and the arugula salad, were both delicious. I love arugula, seriously. Especially with sweet cherry tomatoes and salty parmesan. Tomato season is coming -- try it sometime. Soooo good.

Next, we had pizzas and pasta. Cara picked the Pizza Scuderia, which is the most amazing thing I ate that night, without doubt. Fig Jam, which I absolutely loved, blue cheese, and speck, which I've never had before but deeply love now. I only had 2 pieces, because otherwise I would have ignored my whole dinner. But seriously, this was amazing. If you are ever in New York, if you ever eat at Scuderia, pick the Pizza Scuderia as your appetizer. Sweet plus tangy plus salty/porky = sigh. glee. Love.
We also had the Pizza Piccante, which was nice and spicy, but not TOO spicy, and had a topping of nice peppery arugula, which again, I loved. We also got a pasta with sausage, peas and cream that was tasty at room temperature, and if we had all stopped talking enough to eat it hot, would have been excellent. Not the pasta's fault.

The entrees came, and I have to say that I picked the best thing on the menu. I know how to order. I will never steer you wrong. Jesse got the grilled rabbit, which I tasted and it was delish. Cara got the mixed fried fish, which had a nive tempura batter and was remarkably crispy. The house tartar sauce that came with was also delicious. And the tempura green beans that came as sides to both her meal and Jesse's meal were outstanding. My meal, though, was the best choice and that is saying something, believe me. I ordered the seafood stew.
If you have ever heard of cioppino, you will know something of what this was like. The broth was tomatoey, spicy, salty, insane. The seafood was all perfectly cooked, and I defnitely had shrimp, mussels, fish, and possibly lobster, I'm not sure. Cara said that he chef at Scuderia uses the lobster shells and heads to make the base for the broth. It was excellent. It came with two pieces of toasted bread in the bowl, and I only wish I'd had room in my stomach to eat it all. Seriously, it was that good.

For dessert, we had a nutella and mascarpone pizza, and the Coppa Scuderia, which is a PBJ ice cream sundae. It was delicious. My dirty vodka martini was delicious. The wine we drank with dinner was delicious.

Even more wonderful was the company. It's diffiuclt to explain how wonderful it is to see Cara and Alex in a setting other than employer/employee. It's wonderful to get to talk to them, and it's wonderful to see them so happy. They were so excited to see me, to have me around, and Alex proposed having brunch or dinner later when the weather was better, and bringing their daughter along. I'd love to see her, love to see them more. It was so wonderful to eat the food and hang out with Cara and talk to her and see how things were going. I loved it. I love seeing Alex having so much fun in his own restaurant and basically... it was wonderful.

I'm really happy, and I hope that they have incredible success. And honestly, I'm really really effing happy that on the First Friday, I got to eat there with Cara, who I think will become a real friend, and Jesse, who I obviously love a lot.
It was a great night.

Well, that was.....interesting.

2009-03-10T23:00:00.007-04:00

***Apparently the comment box was not working for some people. Silly Blogger. This time, I'm editing it so maybe it will work. Fingers crossed, leave me love!!!***

I'll admit it: I'm slightly disturbed.
I'm a pretty savvy cook at this point. In the past year, I've cooked a lot of dinners. And I've roasted a lot of chickens. And I don't think I've ever really photographed the process. But, tonight probably shouldn't have been the night that I started taking photos. Or at least, not with this bird.I get what I deserve, I know, when instead of just buying one of the pretty little 3-pound Purdue chickens that are debeaked, fed animal products, and left in a cage all the live-long day, I decided to buy something labeled...... well....
Fowl. That's right. And it was a MONSTER. I was assuming it was just a chicken who y'know, got to hang out a little bit before it was killed and wrapped and sent to my grocery store. However, I have since realized that this is probably not the case. My first misgivings came when I unwrapped the .... we'll just keep calling it a chicken, because it's not a duck or a turkey, and it's too big to be much else. SO, when I unwrapped the chicken and found the neck attached, but no giblets, I was a little concerned. Then, the skin concerned me. It was very thick. However, it's been a long while since I've roasted the chicken, and the last time I did I had consumed a fair quantity of Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka with Alyssa first, so I'm not exactly sure that it's the best frame of reference. Regardless, I salted it, stuffed butter and garlic cloves and bay leaves inside the skin, and shoved a lemon, an onion, and various herbs in the cavity, as per usual:

When it was time to cook, I heated the oven to 425, with the roasting pan inside. I rubbed the chicken down with olive oil and added salt and poultry seasoning to the outside. Then, when the oven was hot, I put it in, breast-side down, for about 15 minutes, then flipped it to breast side up for 15 minutes. This helps improve the brownness of the skin.
Then, I reduced the heat to 400, dumped the potatoes, carrots and onions in, and sat the beastly birdie on top.
After about 40 minutes (total cook time, 1 hour 10 minutes) I did all my typical tests -- stabbed it to see how the juices ran, listened for the crack of the skin, wiggled the leg, and eventually decided the beast was done.
(Why, you may ask, didn't I just use my probe thermometer, which would have told me precisely whether it was done or not? Becuase the battery finally died and we're out of AAA batteries, of course.)
I pulled it, let it rest, and added a little flour and stock to the veggies left in the pan, to turn them into a gravy-esque thing.
Here is the beautiful beastie, looking just about right:

See? Golden-brown skin, nice and shiny. Actually, the most gorgeous chicken from the outside I've ever created.
But then.... I tried to cut it open, and I couldn't cut through the darn thing. It took TONS of effort to cut through the legs, the skin was either perfectly crispy or absolutely inedible. It wasn't cooked all the way through even though it got half an hour at a 25-degree higher temperature than I normally ever roast a chicken at. I'm not sure what this beast was.... but I do know it's heading toward the soup pot, because there's nothing else I can do with it. It's not a chicken. It might be a mutant. It might be a half-chicken, half moose. I'm not sure. But this beast was not a chicken. I know how chickens react.

That being said, one of the more boring things about the "eating alone" tendencies I harbor is this: I could eat the same 6 or 7 things, in rotation, for the rest of my life. Obviously I would like some variety now and then, but basically, if I could eat roast chicken, macaroni & cheese from the box, tomato soup/grilled cheese, chicken fingers, cheeseburgers, scrambled eggs, pizza, and I'm sure there are a couple others, I'd be a happy camper. I'm very basic.

Obviously this would be the most boring blog in the world if I ate those 7 things all the time, so we are always looking for new things to do with food. But, in the end, I'd probably rather roast a chicken sometimes.

A real chicken - no more of this "Fowl" business.

Oh Laurie Colwin...

2009-03-09T20:43:00.002-04:00

I'm sitting on the couch, post-hot yoga, and it occurs to me that I definitely missed out on one of the finest things about living alone, when I lived on my own.
Eating whatever weird shit you want, without worrying about feeding it to others.

I'm currently eating about 4 spoonfuls of cold rice, with left-over aji verde from Pio Pio, mixed in. It's delicious. It's amazing. I'm sad there's not that much rice left, not that much aji verde left. I'm holding until Jesse gets home, so I can make a pizza. But for now, I'm eating rice with aji verde.

I remember being ashamed about eating those boxed noodle soups by Taste of Thai. I should have just enjoyed it. You are only 22 and single and living alone in New York for a finite amount of time. And that means eating Lucky Charms for breakfast, eating Salsita Chipotle on everything, eating boxed noodle soups and boxed risotto if you really want to. And making wonderful things when you want to, but still. I never got to indulge the ridiculous side of me who loves to eat salad with hot sauce, anything wtih balsamic vinaigrette on it, loves anything ramen-esque (but not ramen) and will eat anything as long as there are scrambled or fried eggs involved. Or cheese. I'll eat anything cheese-related.

But now, I think about wholesome foods, or at least foods that I can feed to someone else without worrying that he'll die of malnutrition. Like I won't make the delicious french fries with cheese and gravy and roasted garlic that I found on Serious Eats until we're both exercising. Even though let's face it, that sounds like heaven.....

Regardless.

It is now time to wait, and to make real dinner when I can. nom.

We have had a casualty.

2009-03-05T21:33:00.009-05:00

I'm obsessed with cumin, among other things.
I love it. It's so nice and warm, while not being too spicy. It brings the warmth to indian food that I always try to recreate in my chili, with great success, happily. Cumin = joy.
Or at least, it was...... until tonight. *sob*

I know it's my fault, but sometimes I overstack things in the spice cabinet - it's an oddly shaped cabinet with only 3 shelves, one of which is too high for me to reach. So I jam spices in and stack them on top of each other and I opened the cabinet and it happened so fast and the cumin just jumped and...

Well, I'm sure you know how the story ends. Cumin all over the crevice between the mixer and the wall. Cumin smell everywhere but no actual cumin anywhere. The lid cracked, and the cumin spilled out, and the jar didn't break (happily) but the cumin is wasted and it was just...... Well, we'll let the picture speak for itself.

Needless to say, I need to replenish my spice stores. Especially since I used up all the curry powder I had trying to salvage the potato-pumpkin Mulligatawny soup I tried to make. Let this be a lesson to all improvisors: Potatoes suck up flavor, and they don't share. Even if you boil them in some yummy broth that is all curry-fied, they will suck up the flavor and not share it with the party. SO if you are making a soup that involves potatoes, don't add 4 if you're planning to puree. Just add 2. TRUST JOHANNA. She will not steer you wrong. So now, I'm hoping that the other woman in my life, Goya Salsita Chipotle (shhh, don't tell cumin), can save this soup. If she can't do it, no one can. Well, presumably a long long simmer can, and some tumeric, and I'm not going to lie, I definitely scraped all the cumin off the countertop to dump into the soup pot. I'm hoping. Because otherwise, I've wasted the end of my pumpkin, and 4 potatoes, and a box o' stock, AND my cumin, and my curry powder. Basically..... I'm really hoping for some magic here. Otherwise, my dinner and Jesse's dinner will be the rest of hte beer and the rest of that tube of cookie dough I haven't been eating since we got back from the store.

As far as you know.

UPDATE: A good long simmer and a good bit of salt and a visit with Miss Salsita definitely did some magic with the soup. Next time... I'm only bringing 2 potatoes to the soup party. And I'm going to conquer curry paste, by shopping in a neighborhood with no ethnic profile - searching for Patak's Curry Paste in a largely Jamaican/Caribbean neighborhood is not fun -- they had 16 brands of coconut milk, 8 million things with Scotch Bonnets in them, but no curry paste. So... unitl I learn to make my own, I'll just buy curry paste. And more cumin. :(
BUT!
The soup is good. Not as good as H&H's but considering I combined 2 recipes and didn't really follow either.... I get what I deserve.
Next time, my dears.

Next time.

Apparently I obsess.

2009-03-05T13:06:00.004-05:00

I DID make Carbonara last night. It was just about as good as usual - I wish we'd had a different cut of pasta though. I really favor Orechiette in my carbonara, although everyone else says either penne or linguine. Screw them. Someday (maybe tonight) I'll post the step-by-step. But really, how much do you need to know about Boil Pasta. Crisp Bacon. Sautee lots of garlic, red pepper flake and shallot with bacon, add stock/wine, add pasta, egg yolks and pasta water ,eat as much as quickly as possible.

I mean, other than knowing that vegetarians and vegans are screwed -- there's absolutely no way to make this without animal products or bacon. So people who keep Kosher are screwed too. Sorry guys, I'm usually more sensitive.

Last night I was browsing Tastemakers (I think - I have the site bookmarked, I'll link tonight) and they had a post/picture of an Indian Potato Soup - with curry, coconut milk, potatoes..... and I nearly swooned.

Today, I was perusing the menu at Hale & Hearty Soup, and saw Mulligatawny!!! Glee!!!! So of course I ordered some and devoured it. Out of sheer glee. And while reading last night, and eating today, I kind of got to wondering whether I could add puree'd pumpkin to a curry-flavored soup... because mashed potatoes and mashed butternut squash have similar textures, and pumpkin is a similar COLOR to butternut squash and.... you can see where I went.

Then, after eating my delicious, creamy orangey mulligatawny soup.... I'm totally hooked. I'm totally figuring out how to make Mulligatawny soup and add pumpkin into it and just be..... happy.

Poor Jesse. Hope he likes orange.

Read this article

2009-03-04T12:50:00.002-05:00

http://www.slate.com/id/2212816/

No really. I mean it. Read this.

I'm afraid this is the next place where crazy stage parents will take their kids - cooking lessons/online cooking shows. Watch the "In the Big Kitchen With Food" thing - just watch how this kid uses a food processor. My food processor's shredding blade came with orange tape over it that said "WARNING THIS BLADE IS SUPER SHARP AND WILL CUT YOU." I was afraid to use it for a while. I'm still very ginger when I handle it. This kid is smashing zucchini into it. I'm terrified for his fingers the entire time - all it takes is one slip, and the foodpro tips over and the blade flies out and slices him.

Also - mom is whispering cues from off-camera. Why are you doing this to your kid?!?!?!

Seriously. Take off the "stage parent" pants and just let your kid be a kid. Let him help you bake cookies and accidentally drop the eggshells in - just wash your eggs first. But don't try and increase his palate or her palate when they have no capacity for it.

And please. No kid really understands the subtleties of foods. I wish they did. But they are pretty much just parroting you back to you. I promise.

dumbasses.

Haiku

2009-03-03T18:39:00.002-05:00

Or.... the workin' late, feelin' hungry blues. Packin' it in and heading home soon, look for a catch-up of last night or perhaps my long-awaited carbonara situation later this eve.

Left-over pasta?
Reheat polenta-beef pie?
Or Carbonara?

Indecision leads
to grumbly stumbly, unless
boyfriend makes a choice.

I love canned pumpkin
enough that I will sneak it
anywhere I can.

A long time coming

2009-03-01T22:12:00.006-05:00

Two words for you, my friends. Canned Pumpkin.

I'm sure there are more words I could give you, but these are the vital ones. Here are a few more: Sausage, Sage, Cream, Broth, Penne Rigate. Amazing. Outstanding. Delicious. I've been thinking about this recipe for ages. Since June, when I had a chance to make it but missed out because of a random babysitting job.

This is an awesome recipe and it totally goes along with my pumpkin obsession.
Here are a few fun facts about me: I don't really like all things pork related. I mean, I really really like bacon. I'm not 100% in love with most other pig products, although I will try them, obviously. I'm coming around to sausage, in no small part because of this recipe. Browned sweet italian sausage, onion, garlic, sage, chicken broth, and canned pumpkin. Tossed with whole-wheat penne. Basically, it was intense. I even had seconds. Topped with tons of grated parmesan. Even cold, it's delish. Make this recipe. Check it :

Photo Heavy

2009-02-18T22:35:00.014-05:00

If you want, go back one entry and click on the link to the Gnocchi recipe that I linked to. Keep it open in a separate tab (you do use Firefox, right???) so that you can refer back. This one is gonna be photo-heavy, with little room for explanation. We'll do our best.

(Meyer) Lemon Gnocchi
"1 pound of potatoes peeled and cut into 2-inch dice."

"Shake over moderately high heat until dry...Rice the hot potatoes in an even layer..."
(Sorry, homey don't own a ricer. BUT, I have a food processor with a grating blade. Last time, Jesse and I pushed the potatoes through a sieve, and that sucked. So this time, the foodpro had its way with the potatoes, and it worked fine. Just make sure they're VERY dry before you start)

"...whisk together the egg yolks with the lemon zest, 1 teaspoon of olive oil, and the salt, and pour over the potatoes..."

"...Gently roll the dough into four 1/2-inch-thick ropes. Using a sharp knife, cut each rope into 1/2-inch pieces. Roll each piece against the tines of a fork to make ridges...cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate."

Paraphrasing the rest, you cut almost a stick of butter into a half-cup of chicken stock, and whisk to make a sauce. Boil the Gnocchi for 2 minutes (about a minute, they'll float, boil 1 minute more) then let them cool, and sautee them in butter.
Really let them pick up some gorgeous color. It'll help them taste better and look prettier.

Then, it's just a matter of adding some chopped parsley to the sauce, and dousing the gnocchi in said sauce. The result is supposedly 8 appetizer-sized portions. But we? We don't need no steeenking appetizers!!!
NoM NOM NOM!!!!
100 posts in. Thanks for reading, kids. I'm hoping to branch out, try some new things, eat som new foods. We're having fancy nibbles/tapas for the Oscars when Leah comes to play, so there's that!! And now, it's getting warm again. We'll have summer and cookouts and beach trips and all sorts of fun stuff to look forward to. GLEE!!!

Wow. Lame.

2009-02-16T12:31:00.005-05:00

Ok, so I fully admit. I backed off blogging for an entire 2-week period, despite my month-old resolution to blog 3 times a week.
I was poor. We barely had any food. We were scraping by. But I'm back. And I'm going to update one and all about our fantastic Valentine's Day Weekend meals. GET EXCITED!!

On Saturday, we had a late brunch. And a reprisal of Cafe Lub. Which is the cutest thing in all get-out, just so we're clear.
At Jesse's request, Cafe Lub involved chicken fried steak, biscuits, and mimosas. I think the fact that he dipped the steaks in the egg, and I dipped them in the four made them even better -- most things taste better with teamwork.
Especially things that are really really awful for you, but are so tasty and yummy and come with gravy on top and biscuits to dunk in and fizzy mimosas to wash them down.....

Last night for dinner, we had a wonderful first-try on something that I will be making over and over and over again. Shrimp Scampi. It wasn't as good as Sorrento's, but since Nick would stab me if I ever asked him for a recipe, I'll have to approximate. I used Tyler Florence's recipe, sort of.

1 box of linguine. Boiled in salted water. Drained and about a cup of the pasta water reserved.
1 big shallot and 4 garlic cloves grated on the microplane so all the juice goo stuff was collected. That sauteed for a few minutes in 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of olive oil with a pinch of red pepper flake.
A pound of medium shrimp (tails on, shells off, cleaned, deveined) were seasoned with salt and pepper and sauteed in the buttery garlicky shallotty goodness until they were just pink. They were fished out and reserved keeping them warm -- put them in a bowl and cover with a pot lid. Then, half a cup of dry white wine went into the skillet with some lemon juice. Tyler asks you to squeeze in a whole lemon, but that was too much for me. Start with half. Taste, and decide.
When the wine and lemon juice come to a boil, add in 2-3 tablespoons of butter. I'd vote for 3. It makes a difference.
Once the butter is melted in, add a bunch of chopped parsley, put the shrimp back in, toss, and then add the pasta. The sauce should be a little gloopy. Add about half a cup, tops, of the reserved pasta water. Toss around until the water kind of reduces off a little.... the sauce should be creamy and coat all the pasta and shrimp with lovely buttery garlicky goodness. If it's too gloopy still, add a little more water to thin it out.

Serve. Pepper would probably be good. NO CHEESE. Sorry, kids. You'll thank me later.
I promise.

Tonight, I'm making one of the first recipes I ever tried to make in this blog, or at least one of the first I photographed. I think this time will go better. Maybe I'll even photograph the whole way along, you lucky people!!! :)

I'm back. Maybe for good. I hope. :) Here's to post #99!!!

Blogging is FUNdamental

2009-01-31T11:35:00.002-05:00

Here are some fun facts about me, for post # 98.

I have this interesting habit of playing pretend. If I really want a certain ingredient, like frozen broccoli, but I have another frozen vegetable instead, I will cook in the same manner, using the other frozen veg, and firmly pretending that the other frozen veg is broccoli. I'm always a little surprised when I bite into my food and it's NOT what I expected, but since I was ignoring the facts all along, I get what I deserve.
- Case in point: The other night I tried to make a variation on my Auntie Beth's yummy broccoli-rice casserole. It had to be a variation because it was 10 pm and I didn't have basically any of the ingredients, except rice. So I used my rice cooker and the handy steamer attachment to cook the rice and defrost some frozen spinach, I reduced some milk and a splash of chicken broth, seasoned it with salt, pepper, cumin, and a teeny bit of nutmeg, and shredded the last of my yummy leerdamer cheese. I put some parmesan into the milk sauce, mixed the rice, spinach, and Leerdamer together, poured the milk sauce over, and topped it with parm and breadcrumbs. Baked at 400 for 20 minutes.
The whole time, I was imagining that my frozen spinach was, in fact, frozen broccoli. I was surprised when it wasn't. Even though I encountered its non-broccoli-ness every step of the way. But it was tasty. And bonus points for being an easily identifiable foodstuff: a casserole.

I often say in my job that the level of work I've put in has earned me a cheeseburger. Or, "I deserve a cheeseburger". I really believe that payment in cheeseburger would work for me as a bonus incentive. I'm not saying I earned the calories. I'm not saying anything about how food can be earned in the psychological sense. I mean in the strictest physical sense, working till 8pm two nights in a row earns me a cheeseburger, and somebody needs to get on that.
- Case in point: Last night, Jesse and I went to Bonnie's, which is Jesse's burger place from back when he used to live in the neighborhood. My burger place is DuMont Burger, and we are both fiercely loyal. Like, even though Bonnie's is less fancy and has quicker service and more places to sit, I will always prefer a DuMont burger. ALWAYS. Even if Bonnie's is just as good. So last night, sicne Bonnie's is closer to our apartment, and DuMont Burger is in Williamsburg which is close to nothing unless you live IN Williamsburg....we went to Bonnie's after I got out of work at 8pm, and had cheeseburgers. And for the first time in history. Seriously. I finished my entire cheeseburger and the majority of my fries. I would have eaten them all if Jesse hadn't been filching them off my plate, allegedly to scoop up the last of the amazing spicy mayo/french fry sauce they have. It was brilliant. It was delicious. When I took the first bite, I realized that I really, truly HAD earned a cheeseburger. Nom.

That's enough fun facts for now. I'll be back some other time, possibly tonight, with more fun and food.
Inching our way to the big 1-double-oh!!

Full disclosure part deux

2009-01-28T21:09:00.003-05:00

I'm not, honestly, 100% sure what I just ate for dinner. I mean, I know what the elements of the food were. I know what went into my food, so empirically, I do know what I ate for dinner.

But knowing what went INTO a dish isn't the same as knowing what the dish......is.
Let me explain, before you all stop reading.

Last night, Jesse and I went out for Restaurant week. I think I've written about restaurant week before, but in case you're just picking me up, here's the jist: NYC loves their restaurants. New York knows that restaurants are expensive. So, to thank the New York faithful who continue to pay tons of money for the pleasure of eating fancy food, the New York restaurants pick a 12-day period in January, and again at the end of July, where fancy famous restaurants offer fixed-price 3-course menus at lunch and dinner.
In the past, we have gone to Steak Frites, Aspen, and Butter. This year, we went to Zoe. It was delicious. I need to give this place its own blog, but regardles, I have to discuss the mussels that I had as a starter. They were steamed in a red curry coconut broth. The broth would have been a fabulous soup all on its own. In fact, when I replicate it, I will serve it with rice and make it a soup. I will make it soup without the mussels. The coconut milk and red curry paste were so perfect, and I've only ever had mussels steamed in white wine, so it was pretty different for me. But it was delicious. I would have eaten just the mussels all night. But, fortunately, we also had delicious entrees and paradigm-shifting desserts. Life is good.

However, Jesse has either come down with a stomach bug, or contracted a mild something-or-other from the restaurant. So he is not eating. I therefore had to fend for myself.
As I've previously stated, I'm not big on cooking for one. Unless that one is Jesse, or someone else that I love. I'm not so good at cooking for just me. I'll usually just make a big plate of spinach and call it a salad, or scramble an egg, or make a grilled cheese if I'm feeling fancy. I'm clearly not very good at taking care of myself. But, tonight I was also starving, and basically needed some food.

So I made.... something.
I started out simple. Hashbrowns. Basically an excuse to eat 2 leetle red potatoes - I have no shame.

Then, I steamed the left-overs of a bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables, and melted some butter in a frying pan. I threw 1/4 of a cup of rice in, stired it around a bit, and then added a can of Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes with green chiles. I added about half a cup of chicken stock, and let it simmer away. I added probably another half-cup of chicken stock over the cooking, until the rice was cooked. Then I stirred in the steamed formerly-frozen veggies, and a whole ton of shredded "taco" cheese.
I put a couple fried eggs and some more cheese on top. I ate it. It was yummy. It wasn't a casserole. With beans it could have been huevos rancheros sans tortillas. With chicken, and baked, it would have been a casserole. My original idea was to make it a scramble, but we only had 2 eggs and that would have been dwarfed by the quantity of other stuff.
I'm going to be eating it tomorrow for lunch, hopefully.

Hopefully Jesse will be feeling better by tomorrow. Because I don't like ie when my love is sick. And of course I don't like cooking for one.

Woohoo!!! Celebrate!!

2009-01-24T15:04:00.006-05:00

This is my 100th post.
Just so we're clear on this. That's huge. Because that means that roughly every 3-4 days since I started this blog, I've posted food talkings or food ramblings or recipes. That's a lot more frequently than I talk to my mom, a lot more frequently than I hang out with most of my friends, a lot more frequently than I keep track of putting my clothes away after work.

In celebration:
No, I did not take this in a chip shop. Not even in Chip Shop. This was taken in my own apartment, on my plate, a picture of fish, and chips, that I cooked in my kitchen.
Trust me when I say this. It is worth the effort. It is worth the lingering scent of frying. It is worth the small grease burns I received. The only way it would have been better is if I had let it drain properly, possibly if I had floured before dredging. But basically.... this was fantastic. Delicious. Frying potatoes is worth the time. Frying the fish is absolutely fantastic. The recipe I used wasn't really a recipe. I used 2 cups of flour, salt, pepper, a beer, and buttermilk. Basically, I poured in the beer, the batter looked like a dough, so I added buttermilk until it looked like thin pancake batter. Then, I dunked the tilapia filets, and dropped then in some 375-degree vegetable oil until they were golden brown. About 5 minutes. Tilapia cooks quickly. It's delicious.
The potatoes I sliced about a quarter-inch thick, and then cut them into fries. I fried them for 10 minutes, salted them, and left them to drain on a sheet of paper bag in the oven in a 225 degree oven afterwords.
The whole thing was dleicious with some HP Brown sauce and another Toasted Lager or two. The grease hangover will come. But for now... I am totally happy that I undertook this as my hundredth post.
Tonight, it will be fried chicken. NOT deep-fried. Just my traditional way. Maybe for post 101, I'll photograph the whole process, so you can see what I do and why my fried chicken is so good that my Oklahoma-born boyfriend requests it and calls it the best he's ever had. (He could be just being nice, but he's not like that. Seriously.)
Stay tuned!!

*EDIT* Blogger lied. This is not my 100th post, but my 96th post. Harrumph. Apparently, they count "drafts" as "posts". Even the abandoned ones that are nothing more than a title. So... I lied. But not really. We'll just celebrate again on my ACTUAL 100th post. So there!!

The inevitable slowdown

2009-01-22T19:45:00.003-05:00

This week, I have been.... uninspired. To say the least. I've cooked. I've done things. The recipes are mostly out of books. I'm just... not wowed lately.
On Monday, Fresh Direct stretched their delivery policies to the limit. Saying that they will deliver between 8 and 10 has meant in my experience, that they're coming around 8:30, 9:00 latest. This particular Monday, Fresh Direct's drivers arrived at, no joking, 9:57pm. Amazing.
So once we got the groceries, and tucked them away, I set about making dinner. Sauteed turkey cutlets marinated in lemon juice and herbs, and sauteed green beans.
The turkey was pretty straightforward - honestly, it was 2 lemons' worth of juice, some thyme and sage, salt, and pepper, marinated for 10 minutes and then sauteed in olive oil.
As I've mentioned, I have a....problem with overcooked green beans. So I blanched them in salt water, shocked them in ice water, and then sauteed them in butter with lemon zest, salt and pepper.
The turkey breasts got to rest while I made a quick sauce of chicken stock, cream, and a little bit of butter. It was pretty tasty, especially a couple days later on a bed of spinach cold at lunchtime.

On Tuesday, we had miniature meatloaves with gorgonzola gravy, and proscuitto smashed potatoes. I was not wowed by this meal. From now on, I will make my own meatloaf, as opposed to following Rachael Ray's recipes. Because this meatloaf was a lot like a hamburger and not much like meatloaf. It was very intensive and dirtied a lot of pots. I would recommend that if you make this, do not make 4 mini meatloaves, sear them, and then bake it. Make 1 big meatloaf and bake it. It won't be a 30-minute meal, but it'll be better. Then you'll only dirty 1 frying pan, 1 saucepot, and 1 stock pot for the potatoes, and 1 cookie sheet for the meatloaf.

Oy. The meatloaves tasted a bit like hamburgers, only y'know.... made of veal and sirloin.... and drowned in a gravy that didn't really have enough time to develop any flavor. This is a common complaint with Rachael's recipes. I think this one is better done by oneself. Don't follow Rachael's recipe 100% if you're making this. Use it as a guideline, and season. seriously.

Wednesday, yesterday, I made Baked Eggs with Bacon and Tomato Bread Salad.
This is another Rachael Recipe, but this one was pretty good. I tried to beef it up, so to speak, because I didn't have a microwave to defrost the package of frozen spinach. So I added some sliced mushrooms, half an onion, and a couple garlic cloves to a skillet. When they were all nicely sauteed and stuff, I added fresh spinach, and some proscuitto shredded up. That all sauteed for a bit, before adding some chicken stock and cream. However, the double bulk of frozen spinach would definitely have soaked up more of the stock/cream than my 5-ounce package of fresh spinach did. Then, that mixture was seasoned (of course) and spooned into 2 small oval casserole dishes that will someday be used for creme brulee.... 2 eggs got cracked into each dish, the whole thing got covered in cheese, and it was baked for about 12 minutes in a 400-degree oven.

The salad was amazing. A couple slices of bacon, and some proscuitto, sauteed until crispy. 4 slices of bread, toasted up and then rubbed wtih a garlic clove and buttered. Then, cubed up, tossed with halved cherry tomatoes. The bacon drained and a quarter of an onion sauteed in the bacon grease and a little olive oil. Bacon tossed with the tomatoes and bread chunks. 2 tablespoons of balsamic went into the skillet with the onion and bacon grease. Then, a lot of black pepper and 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
The dressing got thrown into the bowl with the bread, bacon, and tomatoes... NOM!!!

Now tonight, I think we're having pasta with burst cherry tomatoes, green beans, and garlic. Tomorrow, Fish & Chips. Saturday, Fried chicken. CHECKIT!!

Here we are again!

2009-01-18T21:05:00.004-05:00

Last night, I had cooking school!
Marla came over and I taught her to make Walnut Crusted Chicken, which I cooked for her almost a year ago now. Instead of the Goat cheese mashed potatoes I made last time, I used gorgonzola. Otherwise, incredibly similar.

We were incredibly classy, drank some Bud Light, and played a little Rock Band after the flour flew and the chicken cooked. :) It was a lovely night, and now Marla can cook this dish for several of her friends who are excited about it. I'm glad to hear that people are excited about Marla's explanation of my food!

Tonight, we used up the left-over walnut chicken breast, as well as a bigol' can of crushed tomatoes that was in the cabinet from last week's Tortilla Soup situation. I made a simple tomato sauce -- 3 garlic cloves, 1 shallot, the can of crushed fire roasted tomatoes, salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of sugar. I boiled some whole wheat pasta (Barilla. It. is. deeeelicious.) and when the sauce was all bubbly and yummy, I threw the cut-up chicken in. When the pasta was done, I drained it and mixed it in with the sauce, chicken, and some cheese. I've suddenly learned how to take decent photos of my food with a crappy camera, so we'll see more photos with some actual quality. Get excited!!

Full disclosure

2009-01-16T20:38:00.003-05:00

I like cake batter more than I like cake. I like it a hell of a lot better than I like cupcakes. I'd rather just take the cake batter, and a spoon, and go to town. That being said....
these ones were pretty good, if I do say so myself. And oh-so-simple. Yellow cake, and, I'll admit it, Chocolate Fun-Fetti icing.
Enjoy. :)

I make good

2009-01-14T21:50:00.004-05:00

Mid week post. Here we go.
I love planning recipes. I love figuring out what we're going to eat. I love sitting with Jesse and talking about the week's food, because he has some interesting ideas about flavor, about texture, about food in general. The last time we ordered groceries, Jesse decided that we should have Chicken Tortilla Soup. Mind you, he had never consumed said dish, nor had he any idea what was in said dish. But he requested it. And I live to serve. OR at least, to come up with 7+ meals a grocery trip.

Sunday, January 11
So Sunday, it was Chicken Tortilla Soup. I used a recipe that I found on Epicurious -- which reminds me, if you're not a member of Epicurious, shame on you. Shame shame shame. Join now. NOW.
I didn't really do the recipe the way it said to. I didn't want to buy chiles. I didn't want to buy fresh tomatoes. I don't know what on earth epazote is. So.... I went old school. I bought canned fire-roasted tomatoes with diced green chiles (I suppose this would be the spot for Ro-Tel?), I used homemade chicken stock, I used parsley, and I used tortilla chips. I'm a rebel. I'm a half-asser. I'm a crazy lady. You love it.
I did some shoddy math and I'll admit that. I used a whole 28-ounce can of crushed fire-roasted tomatoes. AND a 15-ounce can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes with green chiles. You should use JUST 1 15-ounce can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes with green chiles (or Ro-Tel) and NO BIG CANS. So I just mixed together the cans of tomatoes with the appropriate amount of other ingredients (couple-two-tree big sprigs of parsley instead of whatever epazote is) and let it go. I crumbled in tortilla chips. I used the blender. I used my own stock instead of stock-in-a-box but you could totally use the boxed. I just happened to have a big orange bowl of it in the fridge.
I don't know what cooking the tomato mixture in the oil did for it. But I fully respect that it was supposed to do something. In the end, it was way more tomatoey than it was, I feel, supposed to be. But I still enjoyed it. Garnished with chopped avocado, shredded cheese, and tortilla-chip crumbs, and served with cheesey biscuits, it was ..... well.... nom.

Monday, January 12
This was risotto night. As we all know, I love making risotto. I will put anything in a risotto that I can think of. Monday, it was beef broth (boullion cubes.... don't judge), marsala, red chard, sauteed mushrooms, cannelini beans, and gorgonzola. It was amazing. I didn't take a picture. I was too busy eating. I'm sorry.

Tuesday, January 13
Again, I'm sorry, no photo. Quiche. Pie crust was made in my new food pro from a few entries back, and I love it. So easy. So fast. So wonderful. My favorite thing about pie, or quiche, or tart, is always the crust. This crust was lovely. The filling was not my best, but by far not the worst. Caramelized onions, thick-sliced rind-on bacon, swiss cheese, egg, cream, parsley. Pretty good. Even better with HP Brown Sauce the next day. No lie.

Wednesday, January 14
There's some saying that necessity is the mother of invention, and invention is the necessity of mothers. Invention is also the necessity of girls who have nearly-empty fridges and don't want to have "Mus-go" night (when my mom would have left-overs for dinner, she called it mus-go night, becuase everything must go). So... as any 20-something would, I reached for the peanut butter. For my birthday last year, my mom got me a 6-pack of PeanutButter & Co.'s gourmet peanut butters. One of them, which we never opened, was their "The Heat Is On" -- spicy peanut butter. So tonight I made spicy peanut-garlic noodles. I boiled roughly 3/4 of a pound of whole-wheat spaghetti, and minced 3 cloves of garlic. When the pasta was almost al dente, I sauteed the garlic in olive oil for a few minutes -- 2 or 3 tops. I added the garlic to about 3/4 of a cup of the spicy peanut butter, which you can make by taking plain ol' smooth peanut butter and adding hot sauce, chili powder, cumin, and red pepper flake to your taste. Then, I added a cup of the pasta water, and the drained pasta. I shredded in a few leftover baby yellow carrots, and called it dinner. :)
I know, it looks like beige pasta. It looks boring. I assure you, it's not. It's spicy and delicious and it's almost like cold sesame noodles, which I (not-so-secretly) secretly love. Try this. Seriously. And bonus points for mixing your own spicy stuff with plain peanut butter, because then it's exactly as you like it.
And we all love that!!

Technically, this is two posts in one.

2009-01-11T13:25:00.004-05:00

So I missed 3 posts in one week, but not really. Y'see, nobody counts Mondays as posting days -- especially not the first Monday back to work after a long break. And anyways, Saturdays shouldn't count, especially not this past Saturday, because I was cleaning. I did laundry. I picked up my floordrobe and put it all in the closet or the chest'o'drawers. That's gotta count for something, even if it's not actually blogging.
So this is the third post of last week, and the first post of this week. Sunday's a good day to start things over, right?

Wednesday, January 7
Our friends Steele and Laura came over for dinner!! I got to use my food processor!! I got to make ORZO!!! And Steele brought some of his amazing HOMEBREW!!!
It was a good night.

For dinner, I cooked a variation on Chicken Kiev, and orzo with spinach pesto. Mmmm....
For the compound butter, instead of shallot, garlic, and thyme, I used minced onion that had been rehydrated (why chop an onion when you're only using a tablespoon?), I think a small garlic clove, parsley, salt and pepper. And Butter. Obviously. I whirled it all around in my food processor Tuesday night, so that the flavors could get all comfy with each other overnight in the fridge. Then, I wrapped it up in parchment paper and let it sit.
Wednesday, Steele was incredibly helpful and smashed the crap out of the chicken breasts for me. I put 2 rounds of compound butter, a few spinach leaves, and some swiss cheese inside the chicken breast, and then rolled them up and proceeded as usual. They got to sit in the fridge for about an hour while we waited for Laura and Jesse to show up... which I think only helped things, because the recipe actually tells you to let them sit for about 4 hours after you've rolled them up - but who the hell has that kind of time??
They were baked as usual. WHile they were in the oven, I boiled the orzo and made the spinach pesto - about 2/3 of a bag of spinach, 1 garlic clove, some parsley, and salt, pepper, and cheese. Olive oil. A little lemon zest. WHIIRRRRLLL in the food-pro with some olive oil drizzled in until it was all delicious.

Thursday, January 8
Beer and pizza were required for watching the BCS title game -- Steele's homebrew, my cast-iron skillet pizza, and the Sooners..... sad. :(
The pizza, however, not sad. Delicious. I made my traditional pizza dough, no beer added because as much as Steele's delicious beer makes me want to bake, I wanted to drink it, not waste it in pizza dough. So, the crust got some flavor punch instead from some garlic powder and dried parsley. After it rose, I heated up some olive oil with 3 cracked garlic cloves, some red-pepper flake, and more dried parsley.
Once I formed the dough in the skillet, I brushed the bottom crust with the oil (which I never remember is not a good idea unless you're GRILLING the pizza - always makes it oily.), then topped it with sliced mozzarella, sliced tomato, spinach, thinly sliced shallot, more of the flavored oil, more torn mozzarella, and shredded parm. I baked it, sprinkling more parm over the crust at various intervals, and then.... finally.... nom!!!
Too bad the Sooners didn't do as well as the pizza. There's always next year, and at least I got to see the Sooner Schooner run around once! :)

Friday, January 9
This dinner was seriously whelming. So whelming, in fact, that I didn't want to take photos. The side dish was delicious and I will definitely make it again, but the chicken part wasn't as awesome as I was hoping.
I took 2 chicken breasts and seasoned them with salt and pepper, poultry seasoning. I cut pockets in both, and stuffed them with swiss cheese and sauteed mushrooms. I wrapped bacon around them at put them in to bake. Then, I sauteed some shallot and garlic, and added some chopped-up Red Chard. When it was all soft and darker green, I added about a cup of total liquid, which is too much. 1/3 of a cup of chicken broth, and 2/3 of water. I let that simmer away for a while, and then added about half a can of cannelini beans, with the liquid that was attached to the beans. And of course, salt, pepper, some red pepper flake. Usual suspects for when I make greens.
It simmered away until most of the liquid was reduced. I added about a tablespoon of butter and some grated parm, and served it with the chicken breasts.
I need to cut a bigger pocket in the chicken, I need a more flavorful filling, and I need to season more. Probably a stronger cheese. Maybe use skin-on chicken breasts if I can find them, I don't know. Something to work on. Jesse just suggested butterflying the chicken breasts, then stuffing and folding them over like a book. This is a good plan. We won't abandon this one just yet.

Saturday, January 10
The good old standby. RoniCheese. I used pre-shredded "seriously sharp" Cabot cheddar, and pre-shredded Kraft "nondescript swiss" cheese. I used tri-color radiatore. You may not know this about me, but I have some negative history with tri-color pasta. When I was in college, every time I'd buy the tri-color cheese tortellini from Barilla, I'd boil them in broth and eat them as a sort-of soup. And every time, the spinach ones would be undercooked. Spinach pasta and I have been at odds for a long time.
This time, however, the spinach pasta knew its role, and knew it was destined for some delicious cheese sauce bathing, so it cooked up properly and was pretty darn delicious. DuMont Burger uses radiatore pasta in their heavenly Mac & Cheese - the one that inspired me to make my own so I didn't have to pay 14 dollars every time I wanted some.... which is all the time.
I think I prefer the old standard of Cavatappi pasta, gruyere and ementaller cheese -- although the Leerdammer we had last time I made it was spectacular, so maybe we'll go with that instead of ementaller in the future.
In any event. This one was pretty good, and I can't complain. Especially because I'm about to go eat the left-overs. NOM!!!

Until next time. :)

A few thousand more words

2009-01-06T21:08:00.009-05:00

I get bogged down with the pressure of blogging. I cook something. I take photos. I sit down or don't sit down but suddenly somehow it's 11:30, I've gotten completely wrapped up in a Law & Order, SVU mini-marathon on TBS or an hour of Diners, Drive-ins & Dives on Food Network, or the like.... and I've failed. Yet again. To blog.
Jesse offered me a less ambitious goal for the new year's resolution. 3 blogs a week. I can handle 3 blogs a week. IT's way less pressure than 7 blogs a week, way more likely I'll keep up with it. If nothing else, I can do what I'm about to do and just post a crap-ton of pictures.

Flashback!!!!
December 23. Big Plate o'Yum.
Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes, exchanging Christmas gifts with Jesse, making candy, wrapping gifts, etc etc.

Where else would you find a young, pretty 20-something on the first Friday night of 2009??
Of Course!
In her apartment....

...baking cookies on a whim. Trust me on this one: don't substitute shortening for butter. Even if you just bought butter and don't want to use up 2 sticks in one go. Use the butter. Becuase shortening is easy, it's friendly, it's always at room temperature.... and 30 minutes later, your cookies are hard as a rock and you're disappointed. Plus, they don't get all brown and yummy.

Continuing the trend of ugly but delicious food....
Java pot roast from Crockpot365. If you try this recipe, definitely use salt. Season the meat. Don't use balsamic. Just because it says "vinegar" on the bottle does NOT mean it's the same thing. I'd recommend using wine if you don't have Red Wine Vinegar. But the balsamic definitely left an extra *twang* that you're not always looking for to go along with a half-package of cream cheese.

And then, there were two great loves in my life....
My brand new (ok, ok fine.... refurbished) Cuisinart Food Processor that also has a blender caraffe!!!!!! (the other one is Jesse, so we're clear) which enabled me to make......
SPINACH PESTO!!!! Glee!!!
I am honestly ridiculously excited for the oncoming pesto-ness. Pesto with basil, with parsley, with spinach, arugula, piscachios, walnuts, hazlenuts, roasted red peppers, sundried tomatoes --joy. Plus, I can make milkshakes and my own mayonnaise (yes, I know using the blender would be cheating....) all sorts of amazing things.

Which brings us to tonight, when I made tomato soup and panini...all comforty-like...
True story: halving canned tomatoes and roasting them at 325 for half an hour ish really DOES make them taste better!! And if the sugar in the juices doesn't burn your parchment paper, you could probably roast them longer and it would make it even better. Not that I know anything about the juices of the canned tomatoes burning the parchment paper. Nope, not this expert cook. certainly not.

Alright. Round one complete. Next time.... round 2. Hopefully figuring out how to post recipes and pictures without getting all bogged down and stuff. Or at least ingredients. Procedures..... something..... I hope. :)

Wrap up, move up, catch up.

2009-01-02T18:37:00.002-05:00

I love homey comfy foods. I've mentioned this before, I'm sure. But I do. I love foods that are rich and savory and simple and....delicious. They're not always the most photogenic foods, although I will admit to the occasional beautiful roast chicken. But most of the things I love to make aren't "money-shot" foods. They're just darn tasty.
Recently, we've had a lot of that. A couple weeks ago, I made a bangin' meatloaf. I used both beef and veal, sauteed carrot, celery, shallot and mushrooms, bisto, marsala wine, egg, crumbs, and parm. It was delicious. I'm not sure why it was so good.... but it was bangin'.
I made a roast chicken on Monday, one of the better ones I've ever made, and also one of the most winged ones ever -- I literally had no idea what I was going to do with it until I started doing it. Luckily, the amount of Firefly Sweet-Tea vodka that Lyssa and I had consumed throughout the day did not compromise the quality of the chicken. I salted it inside and out, sprinkled pepper and poultry seasoning over the skin and smeared it with olive oil. I snuck a pat or two of butter under the skin on each side of the breast, and a bay leaf. I stuffed half an onion and half a lemon in the chicken's cavity, and put it in my pre-heated casserole dish breast-side down, flipped it after 10 minutes, gave it another 10, and then added in some baby yellow carrots, turnip, onion, and garlic cloves that were all tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper.

Marvelous. And it's making a marvelous stock as well.
I also had a go at eggplant parm, which is funny because I've never cooked or eaten it before it my life. Luckily, parm is a pretty standard procedure, and baking breaded eggplant smothered in sauce and mozz was something I was down for.

Yesterday, to properly bring in the new year, I made New Years Lucky Lentils -- in some traditions, specifically the ones I ascribe to since Jesse doesn't like beans, lentils are eaten on New Year's day, because they resemble coins and are said to bring luck and money. They were ugly. But delicious.
I'm sure that this is a lot like how to cook collards, but having never had collards, I had to go my way. So -- an onion, and a rib of celery cooked until softened in some butter and olive oil. Then, garlic and proscuitto were added, while Red Chard was prepped. Salt was obviously added. The chard was sweated and softened and cooked down until it was time to add the lentils. These got sauteed sort of with the chard and the stuff, just generally trying to convince them to suck up some of the buttery vegetabl-y goodness. Then, about a quart of chicken stock and a couple red pepper flakes went in. It simmered for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour. Served over rice, it was delicious, but as I said before....ugly.

Tonight, it's burgers. Tomorrow, soup I think, from the stock I'm making tonight. Also, we have pot roast, in the slow-cooker, on schedule.

I resolve to blog more, try new things, give you pictures.

1,000 words

2008-12-21T12:31:00.002-05:00

Perfectly-made falafel. 2 cans chickpeas, 1 partially drained, 1 fully drained. 1 teaspoon baking soda. 3 big tablespoons flour. Hot sauce. Parsley. Cumin, curry powder. Garlic. Shallot. Salt. Pepper. Mashy mashy with a potato masher.
Form into balls.
Roll in seasoned breadcrumbs.
Deep-fry in vegetable oil or sunflower oil or any kind of oil you feel like.
Try to not drool into the oil.

And then.... nom. Amazing. I have no more.

We have a winner

2008-12-16T21:31:00.009-05:00

Last night, I made an old fave. One that I haven't made in probably 6 months.
Penne alla Vodka with Chicken Meatballs. Yum!!
And because I haven't had any batteries, and I suddenly got some really good batteries for my digital camera, I took pictures!! Aren't you excited? So, a photo-heavy entry it is.
Step 1: Meatballs are made and pan-fried:

These end up a little funny shaped, because they get cooked on one side until they are golden and gorgeous..... and then they get all turned about and golden and gorgeous on other sides:

Mmmmm..... Golden brown and gorgeous.

The sauce is onions and garlic sauteed together until they get all soft and pretty. Then, you add vodka, tomatoes, cream, salt, pepper, and eventually, the meatballs. Mmmm!!!

Then, you add the cooked pasta straight in, mix it all up, and plate. NOM!!!!

Also, this was a gratuitious chance to show off my Le Creuset again.

I love this meal. I love Penne Alla Vodka. Especially with chicken meatballs. And when the vodka is Georgi.

Enjoy!!

And here I'm drinking milk.....

2008-12-14T18:41:00.003-05:00

Sunday is generally the day that I catch up on all the food blogs I haven't read during the week, pick out new recipes that I want to make or want to read again, and troll for new food bloggers that I don't read yet. We'll get to Sunday in a minute.

Saturday, Jesse and I were busy. We went out to brunch at Essex, the perpetual favorite, where I once again, for probably the millionth time, got the spectacular Mexican Matzo Brei. The table of tourists next to me asked me what it was, and one of them ordered it. It's delicious. Scrambled eggs, tortilla chips, all manner of veggies and cheese, with black beans and pico. Amaaaaazing. Mmm :)
After that, we walked up to the Union Square Christmas Market, and did some Christmas shopping. GLEE!! I love Christmas, and sending people gifts, and all that fun stuff. Combining giving people gifts, with a big meal, is the best idea ever. Trust me. My favorite holiday. Evar. Then, we headed to Target, to procure lights, ornaments, and the various acoutrements that accompany one's first Christmas tree. And, from a vendor on Atlantic..... THE TREE!!!! :)
We came home, set it up, and set our penguin topper atop the branches. It looks beautyful. I promise, I will post a picture once there are wrapped presents under it. :) We watched Rudolph and Charlie Brown Christmas. And then I remembered that I should probably get around to making dinner. So, I baked 2 butternut squash, for soup.

I cut them in half, scooped out the seeds, and poured butter with cumin and curry powder all over them, on the cut side AND the outside. And of course, liberal salt and pepper. I baked them at 440 for about 45 minutes.
(and then I cut Jesse's hair. I love at-home haircuts).

When they came out, I let them cool and diced up a shallot (small) and half an onion, and a stalk of celery. I put those in a soup pot with some olive oil to sweat out, and added a little salt. When the squash were cool enough to handle, I poured the last of my chicken broth (a cup and a half tops) into the soup pot with the aromatics.
After that went in, I started peeling the squash. Are you supposed to peel butternut squashes before baking? I always peel after. I dunno. So anyways, I realized that pulling off hte peel by hand was too slow. So, since they were mush already, I just grabbed a spoon and scooped out the flesh, into a bowl with all the juices and residual buttery goodness. I added that to the stuff already in the soup pot, stirred, and added 2 cups of water, as well as more salt, pepper, cumin, and curry powder.
All that came up to a bubble, I tasted, re-seasoned, and then, busted out my immersion blender. Off the heat, I buzzed the soup up. It's nice. Even more savory than last time. I think the stock was superior. Fresh Direct recently started carrying another brand of boxed stock, which is WAY better than College Inn's watery-looking stuff. Much thicker, cloudier, chickenier. Smells better. Looks better. Yields better results. I'm sold.

Today, after fiddling around for a few, I came upon a post at Cooking After Five, for Homemade Oreos. She got the recipe at Smitten Kitchen, which is where I got it from as well, when I made them today.

Both CookingAfterFive and I made a rookie mistake, making cookies that were way too big. Deb at Smitten Kitchen's recipe makes, reportedly, 25-30 sandwich cookies. I got 16. Next time, using JUST a teaspoonfull, no rounding, and I'm smashing them down. These did not spread and thin out that much at all. Also, it explains the OVER ABUNDANCE of cream filling I have left over. Next time.... and there will be a next time.... I'll do better.

Argh. I was trying to post a beautiful photo that Deb took of her cookies, but Blogger and I are having a fight. I'm going to go eat another Josie-O. Dunked in milk. So there.

...Ain't nothin' wrong with that!

2008-12-11T20:32:00.003-05:00

Cornbread, immortalized by Chris Rock in "No Sex in the Champagne Room", is one of those things I should really make more often, considering how much I love it. And how easy it is. I made some off the back of a bag of cornmeal today while I was bored. And I was rewarded with some deliciousness. I'm sitting here, contemplating eating the rest of the pan, knowing I should save it for Jesse, or at least for us to share. It's difficult.
This cornbread is pretty dead simple:
1 cup of cornmeal, 1 cup of flour. 1/4 cup of sugar, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, 1(admittedly, heaped) teaspoon of salt. 1/4 cup of shortening cut into the dry ingredients. 1 egg & 1 cup of milk beaten together. Added to the dry mix. Swipe, swipe, swipe, allow for lumps, don't stress. Bake 22 minutes at 425. Nom!!

I'm making a lentil-and-kale dish to accompany some lovely salmon filets for dinner tonight.
The lentils went into a pot with 2 slices of thick-cut bacon, half an onion, and 2 chopped up garlic cloves. about 2 cups of water and a cup and a half to 2 cups of chicken broth. After 15 minutes, I added a few chopped-fine leaves of lacinato kale, and some red pepper flake and salt.

The salmon, I'm planning to just pan-cook, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. I don't go for fully-cooked salmon. Medium-rare is fine with me. :)

Mmmm.... lentils and cornbread. Yum!

But of course

2008-12-06T13:00:00.002-05:00

So Giada DiLaurentiis is on tv, and that gives me half an hour to blog, because I can't really stand her and I don't feel the need to watch while she's on. So.... blogging.

This week was rough food-wise, because I've been working late every night. But this coming week will be spectacular (I hope)

Monday night I worked till about 8. I don't like working till 8. On my way home, I was feeling very bummed out, because I didn't want to eat left-over red beans and rice, and because I didn't want to have worked so late and.... anyways. I stopped at the grocery store next to the subway station, trying to see what they might have for dinner. I found a pound of London Broil (not a cut, but a mehtod, I know!) for ridiculously inexpensive. So I decided we would have, essentially, steak au poivre on the cheapy-cheap. London Broil, frozen french fries, pseudo-au poivre sauce. YUM!

I sprinkled the steak with olive oil, salt, pepper, and my uncle's dry rub (again, it appears to be granulated onion, garlic, rosemary, and possibly cayenne). I let it hang out for a while, turned on the oven for the french fries, and when everything was hot, I put the fries in the oven, and the London Broil under the broiler.

I sauteed some shallots in butter, and then added the left-over cognac from when I made Steak Au Poivre last time. I didn't flame it, instead just letting the alcohol boil off a little. Then, I added half and half, instead of cream, simmered it a little, and ta-daaaa, everything was ready!! Yum.

Tuesay, I worked till 8 again, and we ordered a pizza.
Wednesay, we had Velveeta shells & cheese. Don't judge me. I worked till 8.
Thursday, I made some bangin' biscuits. They're my basic biscuits, stolen from Alton Brown. I added a huge hunk of grated romano cheese too, because I wanted to have savory cheesey biscuits. And they were delicious. I added a quarter cup of extra milk because I was trying to compensate for the cheese adding bulk. I didn't need to, and ended up dusting with way more flour than generally necessary. BUT, I baked them in the cast-iron skillet and they came out delicious!!! :)

Last night, I made chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. It was delicious. There are 2 CFS' left in the fridge, as well as some mashed tato and some gravy. I'll probably be having one of them for dinner tonight, since Jesse will be out at a surprise party and I'll be home alone watching the Big 12 Championship Game in hopes of seeing the Sooner Schooner run around the field after a score. :)

I'm a nerd.

Tomorrow night, we're having friends over for Mulled Wine and Macaroni and Cheese and Football and Rockband and Beer and ..... joy. :)

In which I hang my head in shame

2008-12-01T20:12:00.002-05:00

Ok. I admit it. I fell right off that wagon. The one I was back on. I tripped, and I fell off. I can't even remember what I made, specifically, over the week and a half since I've last posted. Let's see. I know that I made chicken fingers on Friday the 21st, Chickpea and Leek soup and bread on Saturday the 22nd, Red Beans and rice, which deserves and will hopefully get its own post, on Sunday the 23rd.
Monday the 24th I made Chicken Cordon Bleu, and Tuesday the 25th I believe we ate left-overs. Wednesday, we departed for MA, and had pizza from Sorrento's after the journey. Thursday was a day of much cookery, involving roll-baking, pie-making, and risotto-crafting. Saturday around midday I made a wonderful turkey hash which will find its way onto the menu at 2 chairs during the holiday season. It was so easy too.... shallots and garlic in butter, then turkey and mashed potatoes mixed together in the pan, and pressed down so they got a little crusty. 2 eggs on top. Delicitude.
Saturday night I made Mac & Cheese, complete with a vegetarian version for my brother, which was pretty awesome despite not posessing any pancetta. I learned from my earlier mistake with the risotto, and tasted the vegetable stock compulsively, and the cream sauce compulsively, to make sure it wasn't too sweet to be delish. I am happy to say that it was comforting, or so I hear from my mom. The regular came out as it always does.... well. :)

Tonight was supposed to be left over red beans and rice, but when your ghetto grocery store is carrying London Broil for 4 dollars a pound, you get on that. So we're having modified steak frites.... London Broil, french fries, and a sauce of some sort.

And now, with 3 and a half weeks till Christmas, we're in a serious stretch, and we're approaching the fist anniversary of this blog. Scary, but true!!!

In which it's delicious

2008-11-19T23:15:00.002-05:00

The boiled kale was great. It really was. And in an amazing turn of events, I managed to make perfect toast. Like.... it was gorgeous. Beautiful toast.
Of course, it got all sogged up with the broth and the slippery kale and the egg yolk and the melting gruyere.... but still. For a minute, right between when I pulled it out of the broiler and when I smeared it all over with a garlic clove -- just golden, still soft, but crispy too.... it was wonderful.

So, the recipe, in case you didn't click on the link to Orangette.
1 medium yellow onion, diced.
2 tablespoons of butter and about the same of olive oil.
2 finely sliced garlic cloves.
A pinch of crushed red pepper flake.
Reportedly, about 8 ounces of kale. I used a bunch of Lacinato kale.
About 4 cups of a combo of water and chicken stock.

Put the oil and butter in a pot to melt up, and then add the diced onion while you're slicing the garlic and stripping the kale leaves away from the woody stems. When the onions are clear, but a little soft, add the garlic and a pinch of red pepper flake. Start slicing your (well washed) kale leaves into little ribbons - I did this by rolling them all up together and then slicing them perpendicular to the longest part (aka I took a leaf, stood it up, rotated it 90 degrees so it was lying on its side, and then cut it across so that my knife was going up and down)

Add the kale to the pot, with some salt, and toss it all around until the kale is all wilty. Then, add the water and stock until your kale is covered by about 1/2 an inch. Or until you get sick of it and have decided that it's done regardless. Not that this is when I stopped pouring in water or anything.... of course not.
Bring the liquid up to a simmer, and cover the pot while turning the heat down a little. You want it, apparently, to keep simmering and not boil. Whoops.

After about half an hour, fire up your broiler, slice your bread, and get your eggs out. Taste the kale - you might need to add salt. I sure did. Toast the bread up, and fry a few eggs. Perhaps get out the left-over hunk of gruyere that's in your fridge from Mac & Cheese making last week. To plate, grab the bread from the broiler and rub it all over with a garlic clove.
Put it in the bottom of a soup plate.
Spoon the kale and some broth over it. Shred some gruyere over (or parm/romano/whatevs), and then top with a fried egg. I'd recommend sunny side up -- Jesse's plate looked much more beautiful with the sunny-side eggs than my over-"quick before the top cooks too much" egg. More gruyere is always welcome here.

Nom.
I brought out a second slice of gorgeous toast for dipping and soaking and the like, because the first piece got really soggy really fast.

And to my darling reader in Tulsa, OK -- I promise that as soon as I have more batteries for the camera, I will take more pictures. For now, they're being utilized by the drums. Smooches.

In which there is no ketchup

2008-11-19T13:09:00.003-05:00

I'm going to post this lunchbreak, to catch up to where we should be. I'm not going to backdate, even though i kind of want to. SO I'll admit. I broke National November Blog Posting Month or whatever it's called. But I got halfway through. Legitimately. And I'm not giving up and letting it go for the rest of the month, even though It'll be tough because Thanksgiving is coming. But regardless.... here we go.

Monday. November 17th.
The plan had been to use the left over pork shoulder cooked on Sunday and do something fabulous with it. But since it was bad, there was no help there. And we didn't really have much else in the way of.... food. Because when the plan ends, you need another plan ready to go.
So I turned to the staple of frazzled cooks everywhere.

Fritatta.

I had eggs, potatoes, an onion, and I scrounged up some pancetta slices. I even had some cheese left. (Honestly, I had a ton of cheese left). So, I shredded my potato and half the onion on my grater, and put them into a pan to cook like hash browns. These potatoes are weird, and kind of wet, so I had to press them out with a paper towel to get some of the moisture out so they would get a little crispy, instead of just mushy. I sliced up the pancetta into similar shapes as the potatoes and onion, and I got them in the pan as well. While everything got happy, I whipped up 6 eggs and some cream. Y'know, to ensure that we would still get our caloric intake for the meal.
I poured them in, on too high a heat, but whatever, and began to scramble. Added a little hot sauce, salt, and pepper. A little curry powder went in with the onions and potatoes.
It was good. I put shredded cheddar and the feisty romano on top. We finished off the boxed soup from last week, and had a small salad. Deeelish.
And of course, we had some ice cream with salted caramel sauce on top. Naturally.

Tuesday. November 18th.
The original plan for Tuesday was to have Pizza. Wall*E had arrived on BluRay and in honor of hte Captain of the Axiom and his desire for a pizza plant, we were going to order a pizza. But some things went crazy with our finances (ahem, holler student loan payment going up unexpectedly) and while we sort of have the money for pizza, it's all tied up in savings accounts and suchlike. Not accessible. So regardless.... we made pizza instead.
We didn't have much, so I worked with what we had.

Basic Pizza crust, sprinkled with mozzarella. Half a thinly-sliced onion. Garlic cloves smashied. Arugula. Gorgonzola crumbles. Olive oil over the top. Baked at 425 for about 20 minutes. Delicious. INcredible. You'd never know this was a refrigerator clean-out instead of a planned meal. In fact, I probably shouldn't have told you.
Strike all of the above. This was a totally planned pizza. We wanted to make our own. And we thought that the above ingredients would go perfectly together. And they did. Teh End.

Tonight, I think we're having boiled kale, inspired by Orangette, probably some others, Rachael Ray, and basically, my desire to be warm. I've wanted this for days, and I've never even had boiled kale before.
So, you'll get a post tonight, my loves. I promise. I'm back on the wagon.

In which we have a roast

2008-11-16T23:47:00.002-05:00

So my original plan for tonight's dinner was to do something fun and fabulous with the remaining Pork shoulder that I hadn't turned into yummy pork tacos last week.
I was researching different things to do with the porky goodness, when I ventured to remove it from the fridge. It had gone bad. I didn't realize that pork could go bad so quickly. I was used to chicken, which you can put in the fridge for a week and it's ok. But, this huge hunk of pork was not ok. I had to throw it out.
This wouldn't have been such a huge problem if my dearest Kristin wasn't coming over for dinner tonight!! So I ran to the store next door, which thankfully has really really ghetto pricing, and bought a pork loin roast. It was kind of fab. I used a combination of a Tyler Florence recipe and a Nigella Lawson recipe, because among other things, I've never cooked roast pork before. I had mixed Tyler's rub before I bought the smaller roast, so I went for it, even though Tyler's rub is for pork shoulder, which means tougher meat out of which one needs to coax juices. It had a lot of salt in it. So, I rubbed it all over the pork, and set it to marinate like Nigella and Tyler recommended. I roasted it according to Nigella's instructions, although eventually I needed to pour some water into the roasting pan because things were getting a little dry. But in the end, it was pretty delicious and I'm sure that if I were to do something else, like butterfly it, rub the inside with flavored butter and herbs, and then tie it up and roast it with the butter stuff on the outside too, it'd be even better. The flavor didn't appear to soak into the meat all that much. I didn't slit the meat to allow the flavor to get in. I'm nto sure what the real issue was But basically, I'm ok with it. And we had mashed tatoes, and salad, and I got to see my girl for a while and talk. It was good.

Roast Pork a la Tyler and Nigella
Tyler Florence's marinade:

4 pasted garlic cloves (I used my microplane)
A handful of oregano (I used parsley since I didn't have oregano fresh) chopped up fine.
A tablespoon of salt for each pound of the meat.
A tablespoon of coarsely grated black pepper
2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil (I used olive oil)

Nigella Lawson's marinade:
6 tablespoons olive oil
4 pasted garlic cloves
1 teaspoon salt
6 bruised peppercorns
6 crumbled bay leaves

In both cases, you rub the marinade all over the meat, contain it, and leave it to sit for as long as you can. Tyler recommends cutting slits about an inch deep into the fatty part of your pork shoulder, and I would also recommend doing this if you've got a pork loin roast, to let the flavors get more inside the meat. It was probably too salty, although all the salt created much juiciness. Pork just doesn't really taste like much without some flavorant.

So once the marinating was done, I used Nigella's roasting method, although I have a bone to pick with it.
She says to slice up 1 onion and put it in the bottom of the roasting pan, and then put 10 bay leaves on top of the onion, and the pork on top of that. Then, you roast for an hour and 45 minutes, at 400 degrees, basting regularly with "pan juices".
#1 - my onion burned up.
#2 - I had no pan juices. Maybe this is a result of the salty marinade crust thing. Maybe I should have added 3 more tablespoons of olive oil to the pan. But there was nothing with which to baste this sucker. So I had to just pour in some water eventually, to keep the onions fron burning so badly that they set off my smoke alarm or made the porky goodness taste like burning. I welcome any and all input for why the hell this happened.

Regardless, once the pork came out an hour and a half later, it was juicy and tender and the juices ran out and created a lovely little jus thingie that I spooned over the pork and the mashed potatoes to feed my hungry friend and my love.
And now I've said good night to my friend, and taken out the smelly trash. My fridge no longer stinks, and I'm much happier about all the rest of this stuff. Now.... to bed, and byebye till tomorrow!!!

In which I win

2008-11-15T21:42:00.003-05:00

So I just created a recipe. Like, a muffin recipe. I worked it out in my own little brain and I made it and it's pretty darn delicious.
Shock. Awe. Amazement.

Apple Pecan Muffins, with a Salted Caramel Drizzle.

they didn't come out perfectly. They're a bit moister than I'd like, although that can be adjusted either by baking longer or by adding a touch more flours. I'm pretty confident. Plus, I could have created a drier applesauce by not ignoring the author's indications regarding the right amount of water to go into the saucepan with the apples. I need to not get over-confident. I need to remember that I don't know how to intuitively make everything. Like applesauce. Also, I should probably research apples to see which ones hang onto themselves a little bit better while cooking, because McIntosh and Gala are went to mush. And I probably should have held out a little longer while making the caramel drizzle. I pulled it before it got the right color, so it just looks shiny atop the muffins, instead of caramel-y. But.... next time.
Howevs. Here is my recipe. Tweak if desired.

Step 1. Applesauce
I borrowed the particulars of this from the recipe in Bon Appetit for Chaussons aux Pommes (apple turnovers).
4 apples. I used 2 Gala and 2 McIntosh, feel free to pick your faves. Peel, core, and chop up into chunks. Put in a saucepot with 1/4cup of water. Bring to a boil, and then cover and simmer until the apples are soft. Mash them with a potato masher. Let the applesauce cool.

Step 2. Pecans
I like roasted pecans. So I put them on a cookie sheet, and toasted them up in a 350 oven for a few minutes, then reserved them and let them cool too.

Step 3. Muffins
Preheat the oven to 350 and grease your muffin cups.
Put the following in your mixer's bowl:
1 3/4 cup applesauce
1 stick softened butter
1 cup brown sugar
Mix until everything is light and fluffy. If you have little bits of butter showing in the mixture, that's ok too, I had that.
Once everything is incorporated, add 3 eggs, one at a time. This bit is very wet, and there will be batter flinging all around regardless of how careful you are. Accept it. Scrub your walls.

While the Butter/Applesauce/Sugar are mixing together, in a separate bowl, combine the following:
3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Mix these to combine.

Once all the wet ingredients are combined, take your mixer bowl off the stand, grab a spatula, and start adding in the dry ingredients a little at a time. Don't over-mix.... once you can't see the flour in the batter anymore, add some more. When you can stand your spatula up in the batter and it doesn't tip over, it's done.
Add the chopped up pecans. I probably added about a cup.

Depending on the type of apples you used, you may not need all the flour, and that's ok.
I used an ice cream scoop to get my batter into the muffin cups. These don't rise that much, so you can fill the cups right up to the top. You can totally use the paper liners if you want to, but you don't have to.

Bake them for 23 minutes, and then test by sticking a toothpick into the center of one. It probably won't come out clean. These took around 25 minutes for me. Maybe longer. Keep testing and adding on a minute or two. I wasn't watching the clock, sadly, as much as I was watching my caramel sauce. Cool them in the pans for about 10 minutes, and then take them out and cool them on a rack.

Step 5. Drizzle.
Make the Salted Caramel sauce:
1 cup of sugar
4 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons light corn syrup.

Put those 3 into a pot, stir until the sugar is dissolved, and then cover and cook for 3 minutes.
Uncover and boil until the caramel is a golden amber color, shaking the pot to make sure it doesn't burn. When it's a golden amber color, remove it from the heat and amass the following ingredients:
1/2 cup Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt.

After 30 seconds off the heat, add the cream to the caramel. This will bubble up, don't be scared. Be brave. mix in the cream, then add the butter and salt. It's delicious. Let it cool.

Once everything is cooled down, drizzle the caramel over the muffins (put the cooling rack over a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie sheet) and let it sit for a few.
Enjoy!!!

They're so good. I'm pretty satisfied. And I see the potential and it's infinitel I'm trying it with bananas and walnuts next. GET EXCITED!!!!

In which we light it up

2008-11-14T23:51:00.002-05:00

It's going to become a muffin situation in here tomorrow, which will carry through the week. Hopefully it'll be a good one. I'll be posting.
But tonight, I saw Quantum of Solace, which I recommend to everyone regardless of whether I know you or not. SEE THE MOVIE. It's good. And Daniel Craig is beyond sexy. But that's not the point of this blog.
I just roasted a pepper on my gas burner. It was a pretty amazing experience. It went so well that i'll probably roast another one if we have pizza guests tomorrow like I'm hoping we will.
I put the pepper on the burner, directly on the gas element, and I turned it round and round. I think tomorrow I might want to broil it instead, but maybe not because I'm not sure I can get it close enough to the heat. I need to find the perfect set of tongs for htis - obviously metal would be ideal (no melting the head of hte tongs) but it gets hot so fast. Maybe metal heads and coated handle? Something?
Someone come up with an idea for me. Please.
For now, I'm going to rinse the skin off my pepper, chop it up, boil some spaghetti, and sautee some spinach in garlic and butter. Probably a shallot if we still have one. And then, I'm going to mix it all together with the spaghetti and add some romano and call it dinner. NOMMMM!!!

IN which we follow up

2008-11-13T22:07:00.002-05:00

Well. The taco soup is delish. I had some for lunch today. I've had more for dinner. I think I will second Leah's potential for bathing in it.
However, I'm exhausted so I won't be bathing in it tonight. This morning, I got up and baked muffins to bring in for the birthday breakfast we had for my boss. The muffins were, luckily, a HUGE hit. So huge that I had to pass on the recipe to one of hte other managers. She is a huge fan of these things. My boss literally called me into her office to write the recipe down for her friend (the other manager). She then asked me where the recipe came from. The truth is, I kind of made it up. I took a banana bread recipe, and tweaked it around and swapped the bananas for pumpkin, and the walnuts for chocolate chips, and messed with the seasonings, and the amount of flour and..... basically I created a recipe. I'm kind of proud. I'll post it later, but right now, I'm going to bed because I am le tired. Or at least, going to read "How to Eat" by Nigella in bed. :)

In which we're cutting it close

2008-11-12T23:37:00.002-05:00

Ok. So we just got back in from a movie (JCVD) and it's after 11 and I have to get up at 5:30 to make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for work tomorrow because it's my boss's birthday.
But I need to post.

I'm making Leah's Taco Soup tonight. Here is the recipe, in her own words. I'll be back tomorrow to tell you how it went.

If I could only have one meal for the rest of my life, it would probably be this. I would consider bathing in it. I call it "taco soup" but it is probably closer to a chili. It makes A LOT. I usually end up snacking on it all weekend and freezing leftovers. It takes about 10 minutes to make---the longest part is cooking the meat. The rest is dumping cans in a pot. Oh man, I think I will make this on Saturday!

Leah's "Taco Soup"

1 lb ground beef (I use turkey. Tastes the same!)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can Ro-Tel
1 can kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
1 can hominy (tastes like little cornbread balls in the soup!)
1 pkg taco seasoning dry mix
1 pkg Hidden Valley Ranch dressing dry mix

Brown the meet. Pour off the grease. Add chopped onion and cook on medium heat until tender or 5 minutes. Add all the cans (do not drain. You want the juices.) Add taco seasoning and ranch dressing mix. It's ready to eat but if you let it simmer 20-30 minutes it's even tastier!
Serve with your favorite toppings. Good with cornbread. We like fritos, chopped onion and shredded cheese. I add a few dashes of hot sauce if I'm feeling feisty.

Editor's note -- I have no idea what Ro-Tel is. I had to Google it, and I couldn't find it at Whole Foods or on Fresh Direct. But Muir Glen makes fire roasted diced tomatoes wtih chipotle peppers, and I feel like that's close enough.

The onions just went in. For the first time ever, I'm not salting, because I know that canned beans and stuff are very salty. SO, I'll tell you about the deliciousness as soon as I can keep my eyes open long enough to post it tomorrow. :)

In which the cupcakes steal the show.

2008-11-11T22:32:00.002-05:00

So tonight for dinner, I made Musty Crusty chicken, and Wild Rice risotto. The risotto was a little weird because despite my most nurturing efforts, wild rice has a harder bran coating, or whatever, and therefore doesn't absorb stock the way that arborio does. So.... I had to improvise, and pour in a few ladles of stock, cover the pan, and let it bubble for a few, then come back to it and repeat. It took a darn long time. And yet, it was pretty good. It just doesn't get soft the way I want it to. Ever.

But the real star of tonight's show was this delicious recipe for Chocolate cupcakes with a Salted Caramel frosting.
I of course messed around, and made a different chocolate cake recipe, because I didn't have the amount of butter necessary for her cake recipe. And I didn't make the same frosting recipe (not the caramel. I followed the caramel recipe exaclty) because I didn't want to use 2 sticks of butter AND a package of cream cheese to frost cupcakes that just Jesse and I were going to be eating. That seems a bit rich.
So I took a page from Half-Assed Kitchen's book and made babycakes (mini cupcakes), because I call Jesse Babycakes.
These took ages. I always am wary of making cupcakes, because they always take for darn ever. You have to bake them, and because I only have 1 mini pan, you have to do the shuffling act and bake the batter in waves. And then you have to let them cool. And then you have to make the icing. And then once the icing sets up, you have to ice the cuppycakes.
It's so much work. And, I'll admit this freely, I always want the cupcakes a lot more when I start baking them than by the time I finish. But, regardless, Jesse wanted these cupcakes and I wanted to try and make caramel, and eat cupcakes, so cupcakes were made.

They're good. The frosting is pretty good, but I think that I need to keep more of the caramel sauce for the frosting next time. Basically.... it's good and there's room for improvement.

Also.... beware. Salted Caramel sauce is going to be playing into my daily life. Everywhere. Any chance I get. Ice cream. Brownies. Toast. Get excited!!

Until tomorrow.....

Lunchtime Links

2008-11-11T13:01:00.002-05:00

Hello there, readership.

I decided that since I usually spend my lunch hour in the pursuit of left overs and ESPN.com, I would today post a few links to food blogs that I thoroughly enjoy.

Feast away::

http://alladither.typepad.com/halfassedkitchen/
The Half-Assed Kitchen. Perfect for me, my life, and my readership. She's smart, and not too fussy. It's awesome.

Also, this post from Orangette (does anyone NOT read this girl???) is pretty much making me wish it was still tomato season. Does anyone have a hothouse where they can give me a few tomatoes??? Anyone??? ..... I thought not. Anyways -- Molly got it from Luisa at the Wednesday Chef, but since it's already linked, I don't have to do the double linking thing. Whew.

This isn't actually food related, but I love the pictures of this woman's fridge, and wish it were my own. I wish I was this well-prepared, not to mention that Jesse could y'know, make duck confit and that I had enough zipbags and whatnot to make and freeze that much stock, etc.

That's all I've got for today, but I think that's pretty good for a new section.
Check back sometime next week for another edition of Lunchtime Links!!

In which we mix it up

2008-11-10T20:21:00.002-05:00

Ok, so part of the beauty of havving a written-down, planned-out menu is that you don't have to think about what you want for dinner. You thought about that a few days ago. You have bigger things to think about. Like.... knitting fuzzy slipper socks for a friend who needs some warmth and love right now. Or building a website. Or thinking up Christmas gifts. Seriously. Better things. Bigger things.

But this week, we kind of lightened up on the whole "weekly menu" thing. We made it on the fly while trying to get our order in before 11pm on Thursday night. I didn't write it down, although I have a pretty good idea of what was supposed to be on it. Burgers Friday, Pork tacos Saturday, Bleu-cheese Stuffed chicken Sunday.... after that, the dishes were sort of malleable and I'm not sure exactly which one was supposed to go with what day. So tonight I gave Jesse a rundown of the choices, and his pick for tonight was macaroni and cheese. Smart boy.
Tonight's roni featured extra sharp New York cheddar, and Cave aged gruyere. Cavatappi pasta.
I learned some things from this roni. I learned that I'm unsure as to the nature of such a strong gruyere and such a strong cheddar dancing together. I'm not sure if it's exactly a happy partnership. I learned that Cavatappi is my new favorite pasta for cheese sauces.... because they're big thick hollow corkscrews, so sometimes you'll get a noodle that's covered in AND filled with cheese sauce..... and it's amazing to have the cheese sauce squeeesh out when you bite. I learned that the Romano cheese I used as the top crust cheese is exactly the kind I should always be using. I learned that Jesse will go out and buy flour for me if I realize right when I should be adding it to the pancetta/shallots to make the roux..... that I'm all out of it.
I think I need to work more on the cheese partnership. Maybe a milder cheddar, or not so strong a Gruyere. Maybe.

It was good though, and now I have to go pick up the needles and get to knittin. But I wanted to keep up. I wanted to not blow the Na No Blo Po Mo Fa So La Ti Do or whatever the acronym is.

So now, time to "click the pricks".... I love old Scottish sayings!!!! :)

In which we improvise

2008-11-09T20:26:00.002-05:00

Tonight's recipe was sort of off-the-cuff.
I'd seen a recipe for gorgonzola-stuffed chicken breasts on Epicurious, and was intrigued. But I felt like that was putting a lot of pressure on the Gorgonzola to flavor the chicken. Gorgonzola doesn't need that much pressure in its life. So, I decided to help it out a little. I added some spinach. And I wrapped the chicken breasts in Pancetta. Like you do. :) Who doesn't love a little pork fat?

Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Pancetta:

2 big bone in chicken breasts with ribs. Skin on is preferable, unless you're grossed out by that.
About 2 ounces of Gorgonzola crumbles (or domestic bleu cheese, I'm not picky)
2 handfulls of spinach
4 slices of pancetta (you can totally use bacon too. stick with the same 2 slices/breast ratio)
Obviously, just double all this stuff if you have more than 2 people to cook for.

Season the chicken breasts on the outside with salt and pepper, and using a sharp knife cut a pocket into the upper portion, opposite the ribs, of the chicken breasts. Put a little salt and pepper into the pocket. Leave the chicken breasts to sit, and wash your hands.

Grab the handfuls of spinach, and scrunch all the leaves together, kind of rolling them up together too. Slice them perpendicularly, so that the leaves turn into long ribbons. Mix together with the bleu cheese crumbles.

Cut the slices of pancetta in half. (or grab the bacon slices - 2 per chicky as noted above).

Preheat the oven to 350.

Stuff the spinach and bleu cheese into the pockets you've cut in the chicken breasts. Stuff in a lot of it.... it's ok if it spills out. I promise.
Wrap the pieces of pancetta or bacon around the chicken breasts. If you're fancy, you can use toothpicks to secure it. If you're not, don't worry. Just tuck the pork product under the chicken breasts and put the end-side down in the baking pan.

Put the chicken pieces in a baking pan. I used a silver one that's the perfect size for brownies. Put them in the oven, at 350, for about an hour. If things start looking dry or crackly, you can drizzle with a little olive oil. But basically, just put them in the oven and wave at them every now and again. After an hour, check to make sure the juices are clear, and NOM!!!

I also made some sauteed spinach, which was just as simple as putting some butter, garlic, and shallot in a pan, and then adding several handfuls of chopped up spinach. I tossed it around, added a little olive oil, salted and peppered, and when I was just about done, I splashed on a teeny bit of balsamic. Next time I'll probably add more. Or even some white wine vinegar. Just something a little acidic to offset the other flavors.

It was delicious. And a good kickoff. Tomorrow we're scheduled to have Musty-Crusty chicken I think. Or maybe it's Leah's taco soup. Regardless, we're having musty-crusty chicken, taco soup, pizza, mac & cheese, and left over taco pork this week. Stay tuned!!

In which I moonlight as a butcher.

2008-11-08T20:17:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, when I first endeavored into pork cookery, Leah suggested I make these bomb pork tacos. They go in the slow cooker. They're a lot like pulled pork. I know that Jesse likes pulled pork, and that I like tacos. So.... we ordered some pork shoulder from Fresh Direct, so I could make them. I have a tiny slow cooker. It's the perfect size for two people, but most slow-cooker recipes are not written in base-2, so I'm always trying to figure out how to scale stuff down for size if nothing else.

Fresh Direct decided it was going to be funny. When I ordered 1 boneless pork shoulder from them, they projected the size at about 5 1/2 pounds. So, I planned to cut it in half and use the other half for some other slow cooker recipe.
The pork shoulder we got was SEVEN POUNDS!!!
So this morning, there I was, sawing into a 7pound pork shoulder, trying to get a hunk off that would fit in my ittybitty crock pot.
I finally managed it, and set the thing up to cook.

Fast-forward eight hours. I pulled the pork out in chunks (because it was so tender that it fell apart.... WIN) and shredded it, like the recipe said. But then, the recipe said to pour a half-cup of the liquid from the cooking over the pork, and serve.

That liquid did not look to me like it would enjoy being poured straight over hte pork. So, I did what anybody who's like me would do. I poured it into a saucepan, reduced it a little, pureed it with my immersion blender, and then put the pork into the sauce and let it stew for a few minutes, to really infuse it with the flavor of the sauce stuff. I stand by that decision, because it was delicious.

We had these in wraps with shredded spinach and cut up tomatoes, and ricotta instead of sour cream or other cheese. Ricotta serves the purpose of both. It was..... delicious and fabulous.
And luckily, I now have tons of that left over, and probably 4 pounds of pork shoulder still sitting in my fridge waiting for me. Maybe even more. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I'm definitely open to suggestions!!!

In which I'm the Breadwinner

2008-11-07T21:37:00.001-05:00

For some reason, all the early-waking and late-sleeping of the past week has really gotten to me. So when I got home from work tonight, instead of following my immediate plans, which were to start bread dough and get things ready for tonight's burgers, so that things could be all set by the time groceries got delivered and before Band Practice (!!) -- I decided to lie down on the couch and read a few blogs that I really respect.

Cut to Jesse coming home an hour and a half later, to me sound asleep on the couch with my laptop open in front of me. Fabulous.

Luckily, I was figuring that I still had about 2 hours before the groceries would come, so I set the bread dough. And then, about 3 minutes before 8, the buzzer went, and teh Fresh Direct guy showed up!!! I was amazed -- we had scheduled the delivery for between 8 and 10.
So I kind of forced the bread to rise faster by covering the bowl with foil for a while, which traps all the heat and moisture and gets the yeasties on overdrive. Then, I let it relax and covered it with a tea towel for a few more minutes, and then, punching time!!! I knocked it down, made 2 rolls, and turned the rest into a loaf. I love making rolls.

So they went for a quick second rise, and then, into the oven. Meanwhile I mixed up the burgers. Pretty basic stuff - shallot, garlic, worcestershire, hot sauce, salt and pepper. I put the last of our swiss cheese on them, and called them dinner. It was pretty spectacular. I absolutely love homemade rolls. They're so much better than regular burger buns.

And in a few minutes, we will have band practice with some Harpers. And then.... tomorrow we hit the slow-cooker once again. GLEE!!!

In which we Thai it up

2008-11-06T23:32:00.001-05:00

No cooking again tonight, because it was my dear friend K's birthday dinner!! We went to Thai on Two for some delicious Thai food, that was incredibly cheap. This was most definitely the kind of Birthday dinner I could get behind-- $15 a person! :)
However, we ordered groceries tonight so that the plan can continue, which means that starting tomorrow, we will have real food to talk about. I will recommence with the cooking and the actual blogging. Get excited!!!!

In which nothing much happens

2008-11-05T21:18:00.000-05:00

Today kind of sucked. It started out so great, so bright, so exciting!!! The whole world was glowing, and everybody that I saw was happy because finally, FINALLY the good guys won. And yet, today I ended up so miserable because of where I work and who I work with that all I could muster tonight was soup from a box, and grilled cheese sandwiches. I swear I'm getting it together, but today..... today sucked.

Of course, once I opened the box of soup, I added cumin, cury powder, garam masala, and hot sauce, as well as salt and pepper, to the soup. Because what's tomato and roasted red pepper soup without a few embellishments??
The sandwiches were basic grilled turkey and cheese. A little mustard on the inside of the bread, right next to the cheese, and the turkey. It was good. It was satisfying. And on a day where I basically hate everything that involves my job.... and the only bright spot is the president-elect of our country.... soup with grilled cheese is probably just what I needed.

We the people....

2008-11-04T22:36:00.001-05:00

Ok, I'm so nervous I can barely type. I'm so excited that I can barely sit still. I'm counting down the minutes until 11pm, when they close the polls on the West Coast and call California for Barack. I'm dying. I need this to happen.
Let me back up.

We got up and got to the polls at 5:30 this morning. We happily finished voting in time to come home and eat oatmeal for breakfast. On the way to work I booked it to Starbucks to get my free "I Voted" coffee. :) I love free things. We also had plans to go to Ben & Jerry's after work, to get our free I Voted Ice cream.
However, when we got to the Ben & Jerry's on 3rd ave, the line was even longer than it had been to vote this morning. So....we skipped out on the ice cream. And instead, we went to Pommes Frites and had delicious french fries. This does, of course, mean that all I cooked today was Oatmeal. But I'm too excited right now about the prospect of the future of our country to really worry about whether or not I cooked today aside from Oatmeal.

YES WE CAN!!!

Monday, Monday

2008-11-03T20:44:00.000-05:00

Today, I was a little lazy food-wise. We weren't really sure what the plan was, we hadn't made another grocery order/menu, we were kind of in limbo. So, I had to improvise.

I knew that we would be getting up REALLY early tomorrow to vote, so obviously I didn't want to make something that would take a long time either to cook or to eat. In the end, I opted for breakfast sammiches. They accompanied our television fare of The Daily Show/Colbert Report perfectly. They will also go well with what we watch next - SNL's Presidential Bash!!!! :)

So anyways. Breakfast sammiches. I made Alton Brown's biscuits, and while those were baking and cooling, I fried eggs, and sizzled up some sliced turkey. Then, I split a biscuit for each of us and topped it with a piece of cheese, some sizzled turkey, and the egg.

It wasn't fancy. But it was yummy!!!

In which we epic fail.

2008-11-02T17:14:00.002-05:00

Ok. So I missed blogging yesterday as the start of NO JO Mo or whatever the heck it's called. But it was for a good reason!! I promise! I was throwing a party, and I didn't really cook except for breakfast, and then making dip and guacamole.

Fail. But I made mulled or spiced cider. And that was a win. Especially with rum poured in.
A gallon of cider, a gallon of apple juice. Two orange peels. 3 cinnamon sticks. 6 whole cloves. Simmer. Forever. All day - this only gets better as it simmers, and it makes your house smel all pretty and it's very nice. And then you add rum and it just becomes an even more beautiful thing.
Today, I'm making carbonara for dinner. Lots of carbonara. Because it is delicious and we are hungry kidlets.
And it's cold, and let's face it, it's always better when you're eating dinner out of one dish with two forks. And you're sitting all snugged up on the couch in your *remarkably* still clean post-party place. :)

Update: The Pumpkin Chronicles

2008-10-29T13:22:00.002-04:00

Ok, I've kind of decided to enter into that whole NoNaBloPo or whatever it is, where you commit to blogging every day in November.
Admittedly, food blogging Thanksgiving when I'm going to my Mom and Dad's house is going to be a bit rough, but maybe this year they'll let me help more with the cooking!! :) Glee!!
But anyways, I'm going to try. And to get myself all up in the sperrit, I'm mentioning this now, while I'm on my lunchbreak:

I am eating reheated pork chop and pumpkin polenta, and it's official. I am a convert. I am obsessed. It didn't get dry, it didn't get gross, the polenta is just about as wonderful as it was last night (not quite though, because it's microwaved and well.....we know how I feel about that).
I'm obsessed. I'm totally adding canned pumpkin to basically everything that I can. I am a canned pumpkin lover.
I will take and attempt any and all suggestions that I deem reasonable. I might even make chocolate pumpkin bread. Glee!!!

Ok, back to finish up my delectable delicious pumpkin polenta.

Envy me.

In which we are whelmed

2008-10-28T20:35:00.002-04:00

Since my first foray into the world of non-cured pork went so swimmingly, I decided to get tricksy and go for a second shot. This time, I changed basically everything except the cooking method. And y'know what? I liked them better the other way.
Balsamic and Sage Pork Chops with ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS PUMPKIN POLENTA!!!!
Recipe calls for 4 1-1/2 inch thick boneless center-cut pork chops. What you need to do, in my opinion, is get them with the bone in. Or, in retrospect, maybe just go for the thickness which the recipe recommends, which might have been my mistake.
You heat up olive oil in a big skillet. Meanwhile, you preheat your oven to 375.
Drizzle about 2 tablespoons (a few big glugs if all your measuring spoons are *cough* dirty) of balsamic vinegar in a bowl, as well as dropping in a chopped up garlic clove (or a shallot if *cough* for the first time in history, you find yourself out of garlic), 5 or so chopped up sage leaves, and some chopped up parsley. Drizzle in some olive oil too. Sprinkle in some salt, and some pepper of course.

About this time, also put about 2 and a half cups of chicken stock(or vegetable stock), and a cup of milk into a saucepot. Add some salt and pepper. Open a can of pumpkin PUREE (NOT pumpkin pie filling!!!!!) and add it into the milk/stock mixture. Stir and put it over hte heat until it starts to simmer. While it's getting all warm and friendly, swirl your pork chops around in the balsamic/garlic/herb mixture, and drop them in your skillet with your olive oil. Sear them for about 2 minutes on each side. After your 4 minutes are up, you're going to want to put them in the oven for a few minutes, until they're cooked through.

Just before you put the chops in the oven, pour a box of quick-cooking polenta into your stock/milk/pumpkin mixture. Whisk like crazy, and then put your chops in the oven in your skillet (wrap the handle in tinfoil, or even better, get a silicone skillet-handle-cover like I did!!!). Whisk whisk whisk and when it starts to get thick, add butter, parmesan, more salt, more pepper, and my secret best friend for this: ricotta. About a tablespoon of the ricotta. More if it's not creamy enough for you.
I definitely had to add more milk a couple times. Polenta is good like that, though. It will take all the buttery, milky love you give it and absorb it. And it will give you back something even more amazing.
As an aside, I am now a canned-pumpkin convert. I'm probably going to make macaroni and cheese with some really sharp cheddar and pumpkin in the cheese sauce. Yum!! Also, this is a SAVORY DISH, people. Don't go adding any brown sugar, maple syrup, etc. You can do that to your pumpkin pie filling. But your canned pumpkin is a beautiful thing in this polenta.

So basically, you take your chops out when they feel done to you. Mine felt like when I poked them they gave a little and then sprung back. Mine were also pretty anemic pork chops. But that's ok, because it meant I got to eat more polenta!!

In all seriousness, I didn't love the pork chops. They were ok. They were not great. They were too thin and a little dry, because they were so thin. The seasonings were nice. I think, if given the choice, I would have done something involving a creamier sauce, and maybe finished with balsamic instead of marinating them in it. But, for a first try, this created many new ideas and learning opportunities. AND a really bitchin' dish of polenta.

I'm honestly already thinking about ways that I can use this in breakfast tomorrow. Pumpkin porridge. Mix it in wtih our oatmeal. Eat it cold while no one's looking. Cut it into squares and fry it in butter. I don't know. But I officially need more pumpkin polenta in my life.

In which we veer

2008-10-26T01:57:00.003-04:00

I know that this is a blog about cooking.
But it's also a blog about food, and food is something with which the majority of the females I know have a contentious relationship. 98% of us have said the phrase "I shouldn't eat this" or some form of it at one time or another. And really, if we're being honest here, it generally doesn't keep us from eating whatever it is. We say we shouldn't, and then we do, and we feel badly about ourselves because of it.
The majority of the girls that I know have body image problems. We think we're fat, or that our bodies are imperfect. We think that losing 15 pounds, or growing 3 more inches, or whatever it might be, is going to make us perfect, make us happy with our bodies. But honestly.... the kind of things that we're angry with our bodies for are the kind of things that won't change by losing 15 pounds or growing 3 inches.
My body has changed shape significantly over the past 5 or 6 years. Only one of my readers knew me then, and frankly, she's my mom. Through it all though, I've never had a problem about food. I mean, I've been happier since I started cooking for myself. I've discovered better things, and I feel like I'm eating better, because I know what's in my food.
No matter what else I worry about regarding my weight/shape/etc, I never worry about food. I blame myself for getting chubbier than I was before, but I don't think about cutting down on the butter intake. I don't resolve to join a gym, or work out in any other way. I just get mad at my body for not metabolizing as quickly as it used to. Weird.

It's not pro-active. In fact, it's hardly active at all. But I'm still not mad at food. I understand that I can eat whatever I want, as long as whatever I want is in moderation. I need to remember to moderate a little better, but in general I'm ok. I just need to remind myself of that from time to time. My doctor told me that I'm in perfect health. I need to be a little more active, but I'm healthy. I'm strong. It's time for me to enjoy myself and not blame my body, or my food.
Maybe it's that time for all of us. To just be healthy, to be active, and to not blame our bodies for what they're made to do. Let's try and just... be happier. be healthier. be calmer. be prouder.

2008-10-21T21:41:00.002-04:00

Cooking activities have occurred over the past week, never fear. I'll try to bust out a recap as coherently as possible. Stop me if I go to fast.

Monday

I love long weekends. I don't love long weekends where Jesse has to work and I don't, but I love when he comes home.
The best part about having Monday off? Laura and Steele came over, bearing beer and wine, movie theater snacks, and movies. I had thrown together a Crock Pot Roast that I found on a very fabulous blog that I have been trolling for ideas lately since I realized that my crock pot is a ROCK pot!!!
The pot roast fed 4 people. It was tender enough to shred and fall apart. It involved a powdered packet of grill seasoning, a powdered packet of Italian dressing mix, and a powdered packet of ranch dressing mix. Next time, I'm making my own spice blend.
If I had a bigger crock pot, I would have been able to add more veggies. I would have been able to get a bigger roast. Which would have been nice because next time, I want left-overs. But, I recommend this. It's pretty basic. I'm a big fan. :)

Tuesday

We had fried chicken. It was Jesse's request, and of course I complied. We're working on a side-project right now, which will hopefully be up and live soon for you all to enjoy, and since he's going to be doing a lot of the work on it.... but not getting a lot of the credit.... I'm going to acquiesce to most of his food requests for now. :)

The fried chicky was pretty good. It's generally pretty good. It wasn't transcendent, but I'm content to make good fried chicken.

Wednesday

Jesse had plans on Wednesday night, that involved bicycles and a bar. Not together. So I bought some mussels, some cambazola bleu cheese, and some bread, opened a bottle of wine, and had myself a party!!
Actually, it wasn't much of a party, but it was still nice.
And then Jesse came home, and that was nice. :)

Thursday

My friend Marla came over for dinner!!! I made this recipe from Rachael's website -- it seemed like a really good way to embrace both the lingering warm (white wine instead of red) and still aknowledge the snap to the air. It worked out brilliantly, although it had no leftovers, which was sad because it was damn delicious. I did not use frozen pearl onions. But basically I followed the rest of the recipe.

Friday

We like to do a Friday night burger. It's a nice end to the week, and a good kickoff to the weekend. And this week was an especially good week for a burger, since after work I picked up a Zipcar to go to the Fed Ex pickup place and get our copy of ROCK BAND 2!!! Woohoo!! Burgers and rockin' were most definitely in order. So burgers and rockin we engaged in.
I made Rachael Ray's Thanksgiving turkey burgers. The best part of these things, by far, and these were delicious burgers, was the cranberry-mustard spread that you spread all over the rolls. It's delicious. I plan to make this and smear it on everything. Toast. Kittens. Sandwiches. Anything.
It's delicious. It's literally 1/4-cup of whole berry cranberry sauce, and 2 tablespoons of grainy mustard. I used less mustard. It was glorious. Make this. spread it on..... anything. Seriously. You will thank me.

Saturday

This doesn't really have to do with food. But it's my blog, so I'll do what I want.

GO SEE NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST!!!!!!! We saw a Saturday matinee. It was wonderful. GO see it. Seriously. Why are you still reading. Work is not as important as this movie.

Ok. Till next time.

In which it comes full circle

2008-10-12T12:36:00.003-04:00

My parents came down to Brooklyn yesterday, to visit. I was pretty excited, because after 24 years of my mom and dad cooking for me, and me coming home to see them, it was happy for it to come around and for my parents to come see us, in our house.
I decided that I would make my RoniCheese for them - it's easy because I've made it so many times, and it's always delicious, and it's something they've never had my way. I also planned to make an apple pie, because my dad loves apple pie with sharp cheddar cheese -- it's a New England thing, try it sometime.

They came down and their visit was a lot of fun. They brought Chloe, which was wonderful because of course I love any chance to see my puppins:
She's checking life out, getting used to the Brooklyn vibe.

After a nice walk in the park and a lovely afternoon of guacamole, chips, and fried pickles at my father's request, we set in to the pie-making and RoniCheese making.
I actually timed it just about perfectly, putting the pie in as I started making the macaroni and cheese. I finished the roni under the broiler as the pie was finishing baking, although I had to throw a little broiler at it after the pie came out.
My parents loved the food. They loved it. My dad loved it so much that his first remark, after a mouthful, was ..... "This is damn good."
That means a lot, because it was said in a tone of absolute honesty. And it was a new one for my dad, who generally has two settings, His cooking and Everybody Else's cooking:
His Cooking: "This is pretty good, huh??? Hey! This isn't bad!!"
Everybody Else's Cooking: "That's ok. Yeah, that's fine"
Heheh we tease him about it. But, it's true.

He loved it so much that he didn't give Chloe any noodles until almost his second helping. He hardly spoke until his second helping, at which point he started asking questions.
My mom really loved it too, but she was of course pre-conditioned to love it because I made it, which is a carryover of the Christmas Present Principle (you are my kid and I love you, so I will love anything you buy/make/give me). I'm really proud of it - it was delicious, the Asiago that I used on the top was perfect, and basically, it was a win. Even Chloe thought it was nommy.
I was so happy to cook for my parents. I was so happy to help them understand that this really is what I'm best at, and it's the best way I can show people that I love them.... have them sit at my table and eat something I made with them in mind.

I was so happy to hear my mom say that she was proud of me for our place, that she was happy about how these events had turned out, that she was happy to see us here and like this.

And I was happy to see my dog!!!!!

In which we get stuffed

2008-10-12T10:47:00.007-04:00

Ok, so I'm not the world's biggest appreciator of pork. My mom makes pork chops with cream of mushroom soup and they're good. Gie makes pork chops some other way, and they're good. The occasional pork roast finds its way onto my plate when it's cooked for me, and I'll eat it.
But like so many things which I don't love wildly, I've never cooked any pork products with the exception of bacon.
My friend Marla and I were discussing cooking one day, and she mentioned that she made a mean pork chop. I remembered my friend Alyssa (a fellow Pretty Girl) telling me about some pork chops she once stuffed with pancetta and proscuitto. Leah mentioned pork tacos to me. Basically, I was thinking pig when I went to the store on Tuesday to try and figure out what we'd eat for dinner. On the train, I thought again of stuffed pork chops. For a while I was fighting the image of cornbread, asiago, and sage, which of course is a traditional stuffing but wasn't really what I was thinking for stuffing these chops. Eventually, I got to spinach, asiago, and mushrooms.

I consulted Alyssa to find what kind of chops she used, bone in or boneless, etc. I consulted Leah for any input she might have vis a vis cooking pork. And then, I procured my spoils and began the process. The rundown is as follows, before the photos: I sauteed garlic and sliced mushrooms, with a little lemon zest, then added the spinach and several handfuls of asiago.
I let that cool while slicing pockets into my pork chops (I sliced along the line of fat that is opposite the bone).
I salted and peppered the inside and outside of the chops.
I seared them for about 4 minutes a side, then put them in the oven to finish cooking (400 until my internal temperature thermometer went off).

I made mashed potatoes, and somehow managed to make them perfect. I think this was the result of a lot of pepper, plenty of butter, not too much milk, and no cream. Or something. ANyways, it was brilliant.

And now, the images:

In which I cook to help myself will the Red Sox into the ALCS

2008-10-06T22:30:00.005-04:00

Basically, I'm stressin. The Sox lost last night. They need to win tonight, because I don't wan them to have to go back to Anaheim or LA or wherever the hell the Angels' stadium is....meh.
I don't want to type too long because I'm afraid that it'll upset the balance, so here's some pictures instead:
Fried Pickles... Yer doin' it right!! See?

God Bless Heinz Dill Pickle chips.

Also:
Ain't no thing but Alton Brown's chicken wings.

Also, big shout out to Jon Lester, Dusty P is still my boy, and stupid grocery store, eff you for only including one drummette in the package of chicken wings. But big ups for stocking Heinz pickles.

In which I make a leap

2008-10-05T08:07:00.004-04:00

When I was a kid, I remember my mom occasionally making use of her CrockPot. I remember one special dish that she used to make that for some reason was the most delicious thing I'd ever had. I used to ask for Crock Pot Chicken, but of course, I would ask when Mom asked, "What would you like for dinner?" and by then, trust me, it was too late to begin making Crock Pot Chicken.

Today, the original plan was for me to be circumnavigating Manhattan (traffic free, thankfully) on a bicycle, to benefit MS research. However, today dawned rainy and cool, and the idea of a relatively inexperienced bike rider traveling 30 miles in a bicycle in the rain and on wet streets is frightening at best. At worst, it might cause me to never ever want to ride a bicycle again, because I have reasonably creaky knees (result of an unfortunate situation where an opposing rugby player decided my knee needed to go a way that knees do not normally go, plus a lifetime of ballet) in the cool and damp, and it raises the possibility of me getting in a crash, and the weather is still miserable as of this writing.
Anyways. The original plan was for me to be on a bicycle for 30 miles, starting at 7:30am. After I survived the grueling bike ride, I was to pick up my friend Kim from home, and bring her back to my house, where I would recuperate and we would hang out and talk about her upcoming wedding (gleeee!!!!!!!). I figured I would be too exhausted and possibly too sore to stand around cooking dinner, so I decided that we would have Crock Pot Chicken for dinner.

I'm a little frightened of recipes that rely heavily on canned or pre-made ingredients. I don't like condensed canned soups (with the exception of Campbell's Chicken Noodle), and I'm not a fan of granulated gravy mixes. This is purely a personal choice, and I don't judge anyone for using them... I understand that canned cream of mushroom soup is basically an ingredient these days in its own right, and I definitely understand that when you need to get dinner on the table for family and kids post work and pre homework, canned cream of chicken soup, some veggies, chicken and rice is a casserole that requires no thought. In fact, I just came up with ten different variations while typing that sentence.
That being said, I'm not wild about things that can last in a can up to 5 years.

Happily, I'm not riding a bicycle on wet streets for 3 hours this morning. I've been awake for 3 hours. I've washed several dishes, and I decided to make the Crock Pot chicken becuase I already had the ingredients and I'm pretty sure I don't know how else to use Cream of Mushroom soup and powdered gravy.

So basically, here is the recipe:
Chicken pieces - this recipe calls for boneless, but I like bone in. I used drumsticks and thighs.
Powdered chicken gravy - 1 packet
Canned cream of mushroom soup - 1 can
White wine or chicken broth - 1 cup
Cream Cheese - roughly 1 package.

You put the chicken pieces in your crock pot and sprinkle the chicken gravy powder over like so:
Then, you mix together your canned soup and your broth (didn't have any white wine to hand) and you pour it over the chicken business, throw the lid on your crock pot, turn it on low, and walk away. Just walk away. 7 1/2 hours later, you come back and add the cream cheese. 30 minutes after that, you remove the chicken, whisk the sauce until smooth, return the chicken to the rock pot, and serve the lot over rice.

Here is a picture to prove that instead of making a bechamel and mixing in mushrooms, and using poultry seasoning, ground herbs, and real salt, I used canned soup, canned broth, and powdered gravy mix:
I'm excited, nonetheless. I hope this is as good as I remember it. Also, I'm using my brand new rice cooker to make the rice for tonight!!! :) Bonus points for this rice cooker meaning that we can now try making sushi, because while I make bitchin' risotto, I'm not so good at regular old ....rice. And I'm certainly afraid of making sticky rice for sushi.
SO, here it is. There it is. Everywhere it is.

I'll be back at a reasonable hour to let you know how the food went! And how Kimmy's visit went!!! :) GLEEE!!!!

In which I learn to like squash

2008-10-01T21:52:00.002-04:00

I'll be the first to admit, I don't actually like butternut squash. I think it's disconcerting when a vegetable's most commonly-served state is puree. Puree sweetened with brown sugar and maple syrup, no less. Bleh. I'm all for mashed potato, mashed turnip, any other mashed vegetable you offer me, as long as you make sure there's plenty of salt and pepper, and NO BROWN SUGAR!!! I LOVE brown sugar, except in vegetable applications.
I stand by this.

I definitely pushed my squash puree around on my plate at Thanksgiving and Christmas the entire time I was growing up. Around my senior year of high school, I learned that I could put gravy on it, mix it in with my mashed potatoes, and almost convince myself it wasn't there. But I just. didn't. like it.
About 5 months ago, I ventured into my local Hale and Hearty Soup, and had their butternut squash soup. It was recommended to me by someone behind me in line. It wasn't bad, although I remember it needing a lot of pepper and salt. Nary a hint of brown sugar or maple syrup. Encouraging.

Since then, I'd been thinking about how that soup needed some cumin. I think everything needs cumin. I love cumin.
I've been adding cumin, garam masala, and curry powder to things lately... and thinking about adding them to other things. Witness, my meatloaf. So today, I decided to buy a butternut squash, and on a whim, bought some turnips. I had promised Jesse an apple pie, so I got the apples and flour for that as well.

I started out by halving and roasting the butternut squash, and cutting the turnips into chunks. I brushed them with curry butter.... 3 tbs butter and some curry, cumin, and garam as listed above. To taste, obviously. I brushed the veggies, sprinkled them with salt, and put them in to roast for 40 minutes at 425.

When they came out, I let them cool.

When I started making the soup, I cut up a carrot, a stalk and a half of celery, and half an onion. I cooked them until they softened in butter and olive oil (about a tablespoon of each). I added more of the seasonings listed above, and of course, salt. Then, I added the soft smushy veggies, which I cut up into chunks. Then, I added a lot of chicken stock, and let it simmer. I re-seasoned, and eventually, I pureed. (In retrospect, this is all reminiscent of the roasted tomato soup I made a while ago.) Then, I added a little coconut milk, and re-seasoned.

As you can see, yet again, nary a hint of brown sugar and maple syrup.

This is honestly, delicious. I'm really proud of it.
If seasoned differently, it could make a respectable sauce for a veggie lasagna - It could go over rice with some chicken and slake your curry craving. Basically, it's versatile. And it's happy.

Please undertake this. The roasting doesn't take too long, and you could definitely do the majority of the soup prep during the roasting. Try this soup. You will like it. I hope.

In which we celebrate.

2008-09-28T12:59:00.004-04:00

Jesse's birthday is tomorrow. But Monday is a tough day to be celebrating birthdays. SO, instead we celebrated food-wise yesterday. It was really fun.

We started off with Cafe Lub's inaugural Saturday Brunch. The centerpiece of this brunch was Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls. I will admit that I'm a bit mystified by this recipe. I've made it 4 times now. I'll admit right off the bat that I'm a good baker, and I have an especially good sense with yeast bakery. And yet... This recipe has never worked for me the way it should. The "rise until it doubles in volume" never happens.... on Friday night I let it rise for 3 hours, because of an impromptu nap. And still.... not doubled in volume. The cinnamon rolls couldn't even rise to fill the round glass pie plates I put them in this time (I don't have a glass 9x13 inch baking pan). I will admit that this time I used whole wheat flour instead of regular flour -- screw you Whole Foods and your absurdist baking section!!!! But still. I think next time I'm mixing the yeast in before I add the second bit of the flour. Or maybe I'll prime the yeast with a little of the sugar and some water. I just don't think my yeast wants to rise in the room temperature setting of the recipe.
Anyways. The cinnamon rolls were delicious after the proofing and the baking and the rigamarole. They ended up filling the pie pan while baking. It was delicious. Cafe Lub's inaugural Saturday Brunch was a success. I think the Mimosas might have swayed the jury. Or the bacon, which I think was perfect. The secret is to put it under your broiler WHILE the cinnamon rolls are in their last 10 minutes of baking. Flip the bacons at about 3 minutes left and then let them bake under the broiler (I know, I know.... but it WORKS) for a few minutes after the rolls are out, until they're YOUR desired level of doneness.

Then, for dinner, we went fancy again. Sometimes, you just need to turn it out.
Jesse requested an old favorite for his birthday dinner -- Steak Au Poivre. I turned to Alton once again, and was not let down.

However, first, we started with an arugula salad, vinaigrette made with dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, and olive oil, topped with rounds of fried goat cheese.
I got the basic plan from another cooking blog that I read and lurk on, Cooking After Five. She got it from Ina Garten. I thank them both.
After the salad, we got down to the Au Poivre.
I didn't use tenderloin steaks, because a pound of tenderloin steaks last night was 30 dollars. It's almost pay day. I didn't have 30 bucks to spend on JUST 1 pound of steak.
I used top sirloin steaks, I think, which were perfect and lovely and I wish I hadn't been too hungry to take a picture.
I ground the peppercorns in my coffee grinder. I would recommend flaming the cognac only to supervised beginners, or people without wooden cabinetry, because it's fucking scary. I've done it twice now, and each time the flames have leapt up and I have somehow feared for my life. But I'm also confident that I won't burn the place down. I have an exhaust hood, and I used my grill lighter. I was much farther away from the flame than last time, which we wont' talk about it. There was no chance that I was going to light my cabinetry in the old place on fire. As far as you know.

For dessert, after the steak frites au poivre (because honestly, I'll never pass up a chance for french fries to soak up the au poivre sauce) I made a Red Velvet cake. Sans red food coloring because I'm afraid of dying my food. I had bad enough luck with roasting beets turning my chicken pink.

I had cake difficulties.
Clearly, I haven't baked enough cakes lately. IN fact, I haven't baked a cake since my roomie's birthday last November. Honestly, it's time to get back on the cake thing.
The cakes stuck to the bottom of the pan, but they were delicious. I got the recipe from Bon Appetit. I had to use a third of the frosting to stick together the two layers, because they were crumbly. I then frosted the cakes normally. The cake is delicious. I'm still really happy with it. I just wish I'd used parchment to line the bottom of the cake pan, and I wish that I'd let them bake a couple minutes longer, so the bottom would have been a little dryer. But then again, I was going to crumb coat and flat-top it anyways. So honestly, I'm disappointed but not entirely.
Here is a picture of the cake:
The frosting on the top is WAY thicker than I realized. Basically, I'm just out of practice in the area of cakery. SO, I am laying down a challenge to my friends.
Please come up with excuses for me to bake cakes. ANY excuses. It's a Tuesday. It's a pay week. Somebody's visiting. Make up an obscure holiday. ANYTHING. I'm going to buy some parchment paper to line the bottom of the pans. And we're going to have a cake situation at 2014. You heard it here first. I'll need some volunteer diners. Come on over and eat some cake with me. :)

In the immortal words of Tim Gunn....

2008-09-26T20:39:00.002-04:00

Make it work.

On Wednesday night, I made yet another bangin' risotto. I also had my first foray into braised greens. Basically, it was a night of fabulousness.

Red Wine Risotto with Beet Greens

I guess step 1 for this risotto is:
Roast a chicken with beets, new potatoes, carrots, and onions.
Realistically, of course, you could just buy a bunch of beets from any grocery store, and remove the green tops... or even just buy beet greens. But roasting a chicken also gives you the chance to make risotto with homemade stock, and trust me, it makes a difference.

So you roast the chicken the night before (I can't believe I don't have a blog on this. I'll post one, I promise), and you boil the carcass with an onion, quartered, a carrot cut into big chunks, a celery stalk cut into chunks, some herbs if you have them, and 3 or 4 peppercorns. Boil them until it smells delicious, skim the fat, and put it in the fridge.

Next night, you cut up the beet greens, slice up 4 cloves of garlic, and braise the greens : put the sliced garlic cloves into a big pan iwth some olive oil, and cook gently until everything smells heavenly. Then, throw in the greens, and some salt. IMMEDIATELY add some red wine and some broth. The greens are tough and bitter. They need to cook down and soften. Bring the liquid to a simmer, and let the greens cook until the liquid has all cooked away. Add some butter about 5 minutes after you add the liquid, and stir it in to make things all tasty and delicious.

While you're simmering the greens, you should also be starting the risotto and for the stock, you can use your own homemade stock, and it will be delicious. When everything is finished, you stir the braised beet greens into the risotto, right about the time you add the last bit of butter and the parmesan. And then.... we have glee.
It is delicious. Try it.

Bird's the Word.

2008-09-23T20:09:00.002-04:00

As many other bloggers, and NeoYorquinos in general, have no doubt noticed, it was cool this weekend. The first few days of fall have not disappointed. In fact, yesterday and today were stunningly pleasant, and prompted the following statement from a friend:
"When you start thinking about tights and soups, it is the beginning of a good thing".
I don't necessarily share her love for fall, but then again, I'm the girl who can come up with a new list of favorite things about New York with every passing week, let alone season. September is just bogged down with memories for me, and I find it hard to bear the weight of the nostalgia while moving through the month in a cheerful fashion.
Then on Sunday, during the partypartyparty, I drank an amazing red wine. I saved the bottle, so we can get it again.
I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy red wine.
I mean, we drank some when we drank our way through the hurricaine a few weeks ago, but that wasn't so much for any reason other than... y'know.... it was cheap and 4 bottles of white wine seemed a bit excessive.

Last night, as you may have read, I made a meatloaf. It was.... to quote Jesse.... Bangin'. It really was. I brought some for lunch today. If we had bread, I would be bringing meatloaf sandwiches for lunch until it was all gone.

Meatloaf is, I'll admit, a cold weather food. It really is. And I love it. I probably spend the last week or so of hot hot weather wishing it was November, so I could be thinking about soup and turkey and not about how to cook without making my place a sauna.
Then, I had a hell of a day at work today, and at 3:30 I didn't even care about eating dinner. I just wanted to buy a bottle of red wine and get into bed. I think it was the chill in the air, the last day of wearing a dress with no tights, all that plus the workday.
I decided on my walk to the wine store that I couldn't let Jesse starve. So, I made the snap decision to roast a chicken and some vegetables. It's comfort food. It's good with red wine. And it takes an hour to cook, which definitely gives us time to work through one bottle of wine. Heh.

I'm pretty satisfied with this roast chicken. I've made it a lot of times, and every time it's been pretty fantastic, and like fried chicken, it's gotten better each time. I love roast chicken. It makes abysmal days better. And with roasted potatoes, shallotts, garlic cloves, and beets, life should be good.

Mind you, in late October, I'm going to be wishing it was July again. And you can all shake your heads, point me back to this entry, and remind me that in late September, I was happily roasting chicken and drinking red wine.

Party Party party party party redux!

2008-09-22T19:40:00.003-04:00

Happily, the BBQ was a wonderful time.
7 people (one of whom wasn't drinking) went through an impressive amount of foodstuffs and beverages. 16 or 17 burger patties, 5 or 6 hotdogs, a bag of tortilla chips, a jar of salsa, a bowl of guacamole, the majority of my Beau Monde dip, 30 beers, 2 bottles of wine, half a vodka watermelon, and the bulk of the bottle of vodka that didn't go into the watermelon. And 12 rootbeers.

It went great. People drank a ton, they loved my food (possibly because they were drunk), the people who came got along great, I got to cook on my grill... And that was an excellent addition. I mean, most of the time when people have to cook during a party, they're left all alone while everyone else has fun. But last night, people came outside to talk to me at differing stages while I was lighting the grill or cooking or whatever. It was nice. Plus, it got me a chance to hang out with people individually, which is always awesome even at a big party. I like to have the chance to talk to people 1 on 1.

It was great. It was so much fun, and I'm so happy that we did it.

And now, tonight, we're having meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The meat loaf is part ground beef, part ground lamb, seasoned with curry powder, tumeric, garam masala, cardamom and cumin -- very curry-esque.

I love meatloaf, ps. I've never had a bad meatloaf, and so I would make it several times a month if I could. It's easy to change and you can probably make it a hundred different ways, at least. My first try at meatloaf (the first time I ever ate it, I made it) I used Bisto powder and mixed it in red wine and poured all that in...I nailed the texture, but according to Jesse and Kristin, it wasn't the meatloaf they were used to...
But I loved it.
And I'm pretty optimistic about this one. Smells nice so far. :)

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Party party party party

2008-09-21T14:29:00.002-04:00

As some of you may remember, 2 and a half months ago, we endeavored to have a cookout on the 4th of July.

The summer blew up in our faces, and caused that not to happen.

We are just now getting round to having that cookout. Today.

Most of our friends bailed on it, which makes me sad. Because we bought a crap-ton of food and now people either can't come, or they're coming late, or leaving early, and like.... Meh. I feel disheartened.

But, anyways, we are having a party and I made bread for dip, and guacamole and orzo/vegetable salad, and we bought pre-made burger patties which I KNOW is a sin, but they were cheaper and more precise than buying the pounds of ground beef and trying to do it ourselves. However, I am going to apply some taste-inducing stuff TO the pre-made ground beef patties, since they're.... y'know, just ground beef. It's the best I can do.

I'm excited. I thought it started half an hour ago, but I just checked the invite, and I totally told everyone 3. Goober = me.

But, excited to see whoever shows up also = me!!

In which we dish.

2008-09-11T12:37:00.003-04:00

We've had some good cookery as of late.

Monday night, we had a Rachael Ray creation -- Chicken Marvalasala, and Pappardelle with Rosemary Gravy. I really love chicken marsala, and this was a bit of an un-orthodox take that tickled my fancy. The chicken's not breaded, and it requires 3 different pans to make this. The first one, I'm happy about. The second created some frustration for me. BUT, regardless, it was delish and I messed with the gravy for the linguine a little bit -- I didn't have rosemary or tomato paste. So, I used a tablespoon of canned fire-roasted tomatoes instead.... it was delish. We were eating it cold out of the serving bowl later that night.

Tuesday night, we had pizza. The crust was magnificent. The toppings were red pepper pesto, mozzarella, kalamata olives, and garlic cloves. I baked it at 450. The garlic cloves actually got soft and sweet. The pizza didn't get oily. The cheese was nicely brown. In short, this was a happy pizza. We ate the left-overs for breakfast the following morning.

Last night, we had my macaroni and cheese, with broccoli. We used orechiette pasta, and instead of gruyere and emmenthaler, we used medium and sharp cheddar. Instead of pancetta -- thick cut bacon. It was amazing. The bacon. Sooo beautiful. And so nice to find when you take a big bite -- a bit of pasta, cheese, broccoli, and bacon.
I threw the broccoli into the cooking pasta with about 30 seconds left before al dente. Just to get it up to temperature and cook it a little. It cooked a little more in the cheese sauce/broiler combo.
Tragically, I had to put it in the microwave today at work. I hate microwaves. My favorite way of reheating my mac is to put it in a skillet with an ovenproof handle (or a handle wrapped in tinfoil) with some butter and milk or cream. I smush everything around so that the sauce can become cheese sauce again, and then I sprinkle some shredded cheese and breadcrumbs over the top, because I love the crisp, and I broil it for a few.
The crisp has now been re-named the Sog for today. Mope.

Tonight, we will again venture into Rachael Land with an Olive Frittata and Rach's Mom's 15-minute Tomato and Bean Stoup.

We discovered Saturday that the best time to plan a menu is when you're starving. We flipped through one Rachael Ray cookbook and found a million options for food this week. Generally it's like pulling teeth because we generally plan while well-fed. Clearly, starvin'Marvin' is the way to go.

Heh.
Friday is Turkey Burgers, and Saturday is Chili. Mmmmmmm fall is in the air.

In which I make a better butter.

2008-09-08T12:51:00.002-04:00

I know. My title makes you think that I'm a blasphemer. Admit it. It's ok.
I'm not.

I'm a truth-teller.

A couple weeks ago, I was thinking about how to make toast more nutritious. I mean... don't get me wrong, I love me some toast. In a big way. Toast + Me = love. And toast with plain old butter is a beautiful thing. I mean it.

But there's not so much benefit to eating toast first thing in the morning -- you eat breakfast to give your body some calories to burn throughout the day -- to kickstart your metabolism, as it were. And while butter does provide some necessary calories, it's not enough. So I was thinking of foods that are high in good calories, good fats, vitamins, etc... and that are mushy.

I came up with Avocado.

Avocado has tons of good fat and good healthy calories, AND it's mushy and spreadable. Not to mention it's deliciousness. And since it's mushy and spreadable, it would go well WITH butter to encourage the melt-itude AND the smush-itude and the yum-iosity.

So on Saturday, I took our avocado, and some butter, and I created a concoction.

Joh's Avocado Butter:
1 medium ripe avocado (a little past ripe is still ok. smushy is key)
1/2 stick salted butter at room temperature (salt is key to bring out the yum of the avocado)
2 pinches salt (small pinches)
5 grinds black pepper
Zest of 1/2 lemon.

Cut open the avocado, take out the pit, and scoop out the green flesh into a bowl. Smash it up with a fork or potato masher. Add your soft butter, and smush with a fork or potato masher to combine. Add the salt, pepper, and lemon zest. A little chili powder is not misplaced here.

Roll this up in plastic wrap.... tightly. You want it to look like a fat cigar. Put it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up.
After about 15 mintues, take it out of the freezer and transfer it to the fridge. You don't want it to ACTUALLY freeze.

This is delicious spread on toast. Especially if it's home-made bread to begin with. It would also be amazing on a simply grilled piece of fish, as a flavorant. Once the fish comes off the grill, plate it and cut off a round of the avocado butter and put it on top of the fish. Done. Deliciousness.

I really really think that this should be attempted by one and all. It's good for you!!! And yum-tastic. Promise!!!

I actually cooked some stuff that I want to post pictures of over the weekend, but for now, I'll do a quick rundown.
On Friday I reached a state of joy involving my fried chicken. I found the proper ratio of flour to panko to make the coating the way I like it. I used the right oil. And possibly MOST amazingly, I found the perfect vessel for it.

My blue Le Creuset casserole dish has been seeing the light of day a lot more lately. It was the pot in which I made some yum-tastic risotto wtih excellent results, most recently. And then, on Friday, I realized that the perfect pot in which to fry some chicken would NOT be my cast-iron skillet (iron oxide breaks down oils and causes them to become unhealthy) but, my enameled cast-iron Le Creuset!! The enamel kept the iron oxide from getting into the oil, and the casserole is the right size, and the chicken fried beautifully, which is in no small part thanks to the fact that my stove is no longer on a 37 degree backward tilt....
I used a little too much oil, because I was thinking of my cast-iron skillet and how I never had enough oil. But if that's the only problem I had... then I'm ok with that. I'll take too much oil (Since it wasn't greasy.... I drained it properly) over it burning because of too little oil.
I made biscuits on Saturday to mop up the left-over gravy from Friday night.
Sunday we had late-night Carbonara. Mostly because we wanted something cheap after we went out and had brunch and got silly.... and also because Fresh Direct was supposed to make a delivery between 10 and 11:30, and didn't come until after 12:30. Frustrating.

Anyways. Tonight I will hopefully post some pictures of all this stuff. And of other things of which I took photos yesterday, if I'm so moved. If you're so lucky.
And so on.

In which the times, they are a'changin'...

2008-09-03T20:16:00.003-04:00

Hey kids.
I'm contemplating a new layout and a new theme behind the blog. I think the name might even change from Life is Nommy to something else. I'll be sure to keep you posted -- you'll be the first to know. Maybe the second -- Jesse will be the first because he's going to have to help me do the fancy shmancy stuff.
However, in the interim, I will do my best to keep updating. We've had an interesting month of August. Basically, it was peppered with a week of us being able to afford groceries, and a week of us not being able to afford them, rinse and repeat. I made risotto and soup, we had fabulous friends over and I mistakenly tried to use one pound of ground beef to make 4 burgers.... which I will never do again.
Saturday our ship righted itself, mostly. I ordered a bunch of groceries from Fresh Direct. We had steak on Sunday night after our groceries were delivered -- beautiful thick boneless shell steaks grilled, with sauteed green beans and shallots - I grated lemon zest over the top and tossed right before serving.
It was lovely.

Monday was an adventure.

It was our anniversary - we've been together for two years. Strange.... and wonderful. For our anniversary, we decided to have lobster for dinner - it's my favorite fancy food. We had been planning it for a few days, but hadn't gotten around to actually calling and ordering any from anyplace.
Monday morning, I woke up at about 9am (on Labor Day. EWW!!!) and decided to get up and call Whole Foods to make sure I could get some lobsters from them.
Apparently I missed a memo.

Selling live lobsters is against Whole Foods' principles. I didn't realize grocery stores HAD principles. So, back to the drawing board. I called Gourmet Garage. Nope - we don't sell those.
I checked Food Emporium's website - very expensive.
Jesse reminded me about The Lobster Place in Chelsea Market -- I leapt with glee and proceeded to call them over and over trying to get someone to confirm for me that they were open. I checked Chelsea Market's website - no word that they were closed. However, I couldn't get an answer on the phone.
Eventually, I just decided to go find out for myself.
I started with the grocery stores near my house - one's fish counter wasn't open on Labor Day. The other didn't have a department for fresh fish - only frozen.
I went to Union Square. I started walking west.
Garden of Eden was out of lobsters.
Several grocery stores along 14th street didn't have lobsters.
Chelsea Market, and therefore The Lobster Place, was closed.
Balducci's, a super-shmancy grocery store didn't sell them.
The Food Emporium I passed didn't sell them - only frozen lobster tails.
I went back to Garden of Eden, and was told that they had another store at 23rd street. I called Jesse and asked him to find the address.

I went in, and finally procured, three hours, 9+ grocery stores, and the start of my only sunburn of hte summer later.... two beautiful lobsters. For an exorbitant price. But.... they were worth it.

I am a lobster purist. So, I boiled them in heavily salted water, showing no mercy and no notice if they DID scream, which I don't think they did. I had to hold the lid down when one of them tried to fight being boiled alive. He could not escape me.

It was delicious.

It was the perfect end to an anniversary. A day where we went out and played frisbee in the park, walked around, got outside, and I got righteously sunburned. Of coruse, my dress had matching deep v's in the front and back, and I only got sunburned in the inverted triangle of open skin on my back. Which means that shirtless or in a tank top, I look VERY silly. But, it was incredibly well-earned. I loved every minute of it. And one sunburn in an entire summer, even a pretty righteous one, is ok with me if it's earned on a gorgeous day with my boyfriend celebrating two years together and many many more to come.

until next time.

In which I give in to temptation

2008-08-18T12:53:00.002-04:00

I will admit it, I am highly suggestable. One post like this one on Smitten Kitchen, and I'm dead meat. So of course, I casually slid dishes into our weekly menu that will feature slow-roasted tomatoes. I'm sneaky.
Jesse and I went grocery shopping on Saturday, and we stopped at the Union Square Greenmarket, because we have a lot of tomato-heavy dishes, plus a sangria, in the plans and what better way to make yummy dishes than with actual ingredients from an actual farm, instead of from Whole Foods? So, we bought a pint of little yellow teardrop tomatoes, a pint of red cherry tomatoes, and one big honking ugly/beautiful green heirloom tomato which I will be using in a tomato/red onion salad tomorrow night.
Anyways.
Saturday night we made mussels, and hit the mother lode as far as live ones are concerned -- we had a grand total of 3 casualties in the whole 4 pounds of mussels!! I was shocked, to say the least. And thrilled. Ecstatic. Gleeful!! So I used the same recipe as I've used in previous efforts and had similar success. The sauce-to-bread ratio was much better this time. Basically, everything was just more wonderful this time. Happydays.
While we were enjoying some good food this weekend, we were also trying like crazyfolk to put our apartment to rights. I have painted the kitchen archway, and the stripe on the living room wall. My clothes are put away. All the bookshelves have been built by my wonderful, handsome boyfriend, as have a filing cabinet and a set of shelves. Books are being unpacked. Slow-roasting tomatoes for 3 hours was the perfect preparation, considering that I could set them up and leave them while unpacking.
After htey finished, Jesse made me a pie crust, and I made a quiche with the tomatoes as the centerpiece - egg, bacon, shallots, green peppers, some pulverized roasted garlic cloves from the slow-roasting, and gruyere, lots of shredded gruyere, with the tomatoes dropped in, cut-side-up after the egg mix went into the blind-baked crust. It was great, and we had left-overs for brekkie this morning. Good times.
To use up the rest of the tomatoes, I made soup. When I put the quiche in, I also started sweating some celery and another shallot. When they got all soft and clear, I added about 2 cups of chicken stock-in-a-box, and when that boiled, the tomatoes and garlic cloves that were left. That simmered for about 15 minutes, and then I blended the whole thing up with my immersion blender! Woohoo!
Once the blending was complete, the quiche came out of the oven, and while it was cooling I poured some milk into the soup, to cut the acid and thin it out a little.
We had the roasted garlic and tomato soup as a first course, and then the quiche. And of course, we topped off the night with amazing ice cream sundaes!! Please, if you ever see Herrell's Peppermint Hot Fudge in a jar at Whole Foods (or anywhere else...) BUY IT!!! It will change your life, I swear.
Ok kids, until next time, in which we lasagna-fy enchiladas!

In which we hit perfection.

2008-08-14T12:34:00.003-04:00

Hi folks.
I have returned to the blogosphere!!!

Since I last gorged on photos, I have indeed cooked. McDonalds has not infested my life. We're still good. We just happen to have had a few crazy weeks, a lot of weekends spent not at home, or not home much, and as such, no really regular shopping or cooking. BUT, cooking has happened. We had burgers one night, I made mussels with my family at Cape Cod, grilled pizzas with family and friends at my parents' house the weekend before.... I've made risotto and soup and chicken marsala. Two nights ago, I had a huge craving for fried eggplant rounds, but couldn't for the life of me remember to buy eggs.... so we didn't have fried eggplant rounds. But I did master falafel, finally.
Now, this was my style falafel. AKA, not what you find in your local Falafel spot. I shape them into patties and I don't deep-fry, and I've come to believe via the evidence on Tuesday night that self-rising flour is indeed the best method for making falafel (I use it as a binder, and to coat the patties before frying.) -- I've tried bread crumbs of all ilks, seasoned, unseasoned, panko, fresh, whatever, but self-rising flour does everything better, and without compromising the texture, which is what I like second-best about my falafel. Basically, I'm really proud of these.
2 cans chickpeas - smash them with a potato masher.
About a tablespoon of minced onion - I reconstituted dried, because I had it for dip and had a little left over.
A minced clove of garlic, I think.
Cumin, Garam Masala, Curry Powder, Tumeric, Chili Powder, Salt.
A few sprinkles (probably 3 tbs total) self-rising flour.
A little water (only if it dries out.)

Smash, mash, and mix all the above ingredients together, and heat your oil (I used almond oil because it's good for high-heat cooking. Pick your fave) in your skillet.
When a little flour fries on contact, form the first patty, and pat it gently into some extra flour. Use a spatula to put it into the oil, because the oil will splatter and give you grease burns otherwise.
Put down a few more, depending on how big your skillet is and how much your stove tilts one way or the other. Don't add too many or the oil will lose too much heat.
Let them get a nice crisp on the first side. Leave them longer than you think you need to. Then, flip. They should stay together and flip easily if you've left them long enough. If not.... don't flip them yet!
Take them out when they're crispy on the second side, and then put them on a cooling rack that's on top of a paper-towel-covered cookie sheet. This way they don't sit in their own grease.
Eat with mango chutney if you're feeling snazzy, or in a pita with some veggies. Delish.

Last night, we went to see the Dark Knight which was awesome and terrifying and amazing all at the same time. Then, we went to Pommes Frites for a nutritious dinner of french fries and sauce. I had the Irish Curry, which is the best sauce possibly....ever. Jesse had Lemon-Dill Mayo. Also yummy. THEN, we caught the Dessert Truck in Astor Place, which was exciting because until last night, it was basically something I'd heard about from others, but never seen, because I went to school in the Bronx, now live in outer Brooklyn, and work in Midtown. Not where the Dessert Truck hangs out. But I've now had one of the top-5 BEST Creme Brulee's in my life, from a truck on the side of the street. (FYI: of the other 4, 1 was at French Roast and 3 were in Paris.)

In all, last night was basically perfect. I had 3 of my 4 favorite food groups -- Potatoes, Brown, and Dessert (the other group? Beer.) That's right. Potatoes. Brown food (like bread and chocolate). And Dessert (does this need a qualifier?) In a gorgeous city on a gorgeous night with my wonderful boyfriend.

I hit it. :)

In which we get lots of pictures

2008-07-22T23:07:00.009-04:00

Ok, so this post could be about lots of things. It could be about the splurge dinner that we had last night, and it will be a little. It could be about the amazing job I did of caramelizing a red onion. And it will be. It will also be pictures of all the food I've neglected to post photos of over the past week, and for my adorable readers, who are both harpies, and Harpers, some pictures of my adorable kitchen.

We begin with parmesan-crusted chicken. As you may recall, it was served with a salad on top instead of alongside.
I think that dredging in flour, as the recipe suggests, would make the coating stick better after the eggwash, but for a first try at an old favorite, it was quite the tasty.

Next up on our roll of photos will be several photos of our grilled pizza Sunday night, complete with pictures of my grill, Jesse, and the gut that I develop when sitting in a hammock holding a plate in my lap. I'm not ashamed.

The nommy grilled pizza that we made. Well.... one of them. We split the dough into two pizzas so that we could grill them evenly.

And here's my grill!! My daddy painted it green for me, which is good because a character like me can't have a plain-colored grill!!

And here is Jesse!! Happy to be eating!!

And here I am with my hammock gut. Sexy.

Last night, we had Poor Man's Au Poivre, although really only a rich man could afford it. Rachael Ray calls it Pepper-Crusted Beef Tenderloin with Mushroom-Marsala Gravy, and Roasted Asparagus. And I think we all call it "Nommy". Unless you're a vegetarian. In which case, I pity your life choice. Anyways, it was a lovely dinner, albiet a bit... warm for last night. Although, since we ended up soaking up the cream sauce with hunks of bread after the tenderloins were gone, I think it was well worth it:
Tonight, I took some pictures of our kitchen while making Farfalle with Chicken, Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions, and Goat Cheese. Here they are, with no real explanation unless it's incredibly necessary.

We have a wine rack above our fridge. Seriously. Built in. Be jealous, or afraid, which ever. We also have a full-sized stove, in a New York City apartment. I'm in heaven.

And those would be my cookbooks. In a cabinet. No, not all of them. But some. Enough? Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.

And of course, tonight's dinner:
Enjoy, kids!!

In which let's face it.... life is pretty good.

2008-07-21T18:57:00.002-04:00

Wednesday night, I made the parmesan-crusted chicken breasts. One big issue with it was that the recipe called for dredging in flour, egg, breadcrumb/parm combination. I have not had the means or ....moolah to buy the basic staples of life yet (flour, sugar, cornmeal, brown sugar...) so I had to double up on the breadcrumbs and nix the flour. The meal was delicious anyways. On top of the thin-pounded, breaded and cheesed chicken breasts, was a salad of mixed greens and citrus vinaigrette (don't get scared, it just means lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper). I threw shaved parmesan on top, and called it dinner.

Thursday we were supposed to have mussels, because it would be quick and easy and since we were moving everything we own out of our basement and into our living room so that our owner could tile our basement floor. We're still waiting, in all honesty, for that to be finished. But at any rate, Whole Foods was out of mussels, so we had to let it go. Soup and sammiches it was.
Friday we were out being crazyfolk, and missed out on dinner, but that was in the plan. Saturday we ended up missing dinner but not as planned -- we got invited to go hang out with some friends and play Monopoly, which was really fun, and ended up lasting until we got home at 4am.

Sunday, we had pizza on the grill. Pizzas made with Whole Foods pizza dough, and olive oil steeped with red chili flake and dried basil, mozzarella, tomatoes, pepperoni, shallots and garlic.

Tonight we're having a bit of a splurge, which I'll write about later. Also hopefully, I'll be posting pictures of last night and Wednesday night's dinners later tonight. Because I took them. I swear!!!

In which I (finally) get my groove back

2008-07-16T13:00:00.002-04:00

Miraculously, we got the gas turned on in our apartment on Monday as promised. We had grocery shopped banking on this being the case, but like most things we've banked on with this apartment, it could have easily gone to shit. It's a relief to be able to cook on my stove. Grilling is something that I like as an alternative, but my little kettle grill can't handle actually cooking on its top. So we have to be judicious. And cook in side. GLEE!!!!!

Monday night we kept it pretty simple. We have a salad of endive and blue cheese, with a basic vinaigrette, and pasta. Angelhair, with a "sauce" that was only a sauce in that it got poured over the pasta. Olive oil and butter, two smashed garlic cloves, and a pinch or two of red pepper flakes. Let it sizzle until the garlic starts to smell really nice, then fish out the cloves and pour over pasta. The garlic flavored the oil just enough, but neither of us were eating a whole garlic clove.

Tuesday night, while watching the All-Star Game (GO AL!!! GO RED SOX!!!), we had Honey-Lime Glazed Salmon, with Warm Black-Bean etc Salsa.
I can't find a link to this recipe, anywhere, so I'm going to give the basics from memory. It can be found in Rachael Ray 365:No Repeats. You start by chopping up a red onion (I used a shallot) and two cloves of garlic, and starting them cooking in 2 tbs of olive oil, with some cumin, crushed red pepper flake, salt and pepper. While that's happening, you combine the juice of a lime with 3 "tablespoons" (glugs) of honey, and some chili powder. Roll your salmon filets around in that to get them all coated, and then put them in a medium-sized skillet with 2 more tbs of olive oil in it. I like fish not cooked all the way through to "well done", so I would say about 3 minutes/side. While that's getting happy, chop up a bell pepper, add it to the shallot and garlic, and add about half a package of frozen corn. Toss that around, and add about a quarter to half a cup of chicken stock. Let that cook for a few more minutes, while you mind your salmon and open and drain/rinse a can of black beans.

Add the black beans, take the salmon off, and when you've got the salmon on the plates, put some chopped up cilantro and some baby spinach in the veggies. Toss it around until the spinach wilts, and serve it up alongside. I suppose you could also wait a little longer to start the salmon, and then serve the salmon on top of the veggies. If you're feeling fancy.

It was pretty darn nommy. I'm really happy that we went for this.

Tonight, we're having the Parmesan-crusted chicken with salad.

Then, we'll make another menu for the rest of the week, because shopping on Monday was as bad as we feared, so we have to go shopping again on Thursday to start the new routine.
I will, of course, keep you posted!!

In which I admit defeat.

2008-07-10T12:34:00.003-04:00

Ok, I'm not going to lie. It's really hard to get excited about grilling every day. It's really frustrating to have to light a grill and hope it stays lit and finish cooking in the dark every single night. And I know, It's only Thursday, right? I've only had to cook on the grill 3 nights. But god. All I want is a dish of pasta. Or some Mac & Cheese. Some steamed vegetables with brown rice. Soup. Something that doesn't require the smell of charcoal smoke. Something that is not solely a meat product. Something.... different. I can't bake. I can't roast. I can't sautee or blanch or anything.
And I mean, in theory there are a million different things to grill, and a million different ways to make things taste. But frankly, I'm still sick of it. Especially considering that I had to wait until yesterday to get the check from the brokerage reimbursing me for all the money I spent last week on a hotel and restaurants. So I was broke, which meant that I couldn't get nice ingredients. I couldn't buy a piece of mahi mahi or a whole salmon or something to cook. On Tuesday, I bought a chicken and asked the butcher to butterfly it for me, so I could make Bobby Flay's Rosemary Bricked Chicken. It was pretty good, but it is very frustrating learning about grilling by doing. I don't know if I was using too few charcoals, or wasn't letting enough air get in, or what. But basically, the chicken was supposed to cook for 8-10 minutes on each side. This chicken cooked for 8 minutes on the first side, and about 20 minutes on the other side. And in the end, Jesse may have gotten food poisoning from it anyways, even though I used a probe thermometer to ensure doneness. But somehow, there was still a pink bit that invaded Jesse's chicky leg.

stupid chicky.

Along with the chicken, we had grilled vegetables (sort of. I mean, they were cooked, but the coals weren't all that hot and I was tired and hungry) and boxed couscous (I heated the water to a boil, dumped in the couscous, covered the pot, and took it off the grill to sit on the kitchen counter.)

Last night, my sick boyfriend and I attempted to eat baked potatoes. I had trouble with this as well. I'm having trouble lately with keeping the grill hot. What am I doing wrong, Grill-experts??? Should I have to add more coals after 20 minutes? What's up?! Argh.
I can't wait till I can grill only by choice. I can't wait until we can resume our routine of grocery lists and menu plans and weekly shopping. I miss it. I miss the familiarity. And, I miss being able to cook inside. BIGTIME.

Until next time, friends, when hopefully I will post a happier entry.

In which we feel the Thrill of the Grill

2008-07-08T12:53:00.002-04:00

We have finally, sort of, moved into our new apartment.

Sort of.

Over the weekend of the 27th through the 29th, Jesse and I moved all our stuff except for the big things into the new apartment. On Monday the 30th, I was called at work by the head of the brokerage, and told that we couldn't actually STAY at our apartment. So basically, we were forced to abandon our stuff and go to a hotel for 3 days. And this, kids, is New York. Our options were either:
1). Get a room in an expensive hotel in Manhattan for 3 nights, or,
2). Get a room at the Holiday Inn in Weehawken, NJ for $30/night for 3 nights.

Since Jesse was working and I was on vacation for the 1-3 of July, we decided to get a hotel in Manhattan. Because since I couldn't be spending my vacation setting up our apartment, I preferred Manhattan to spending my 3 days off in the great state of New Jersey. Seriously.

Luckily, all of our things remained safe. Jesse checked the apartment every night, making sure that the builders (who were only there on Tuesday, and possibly only to drop off our appliances, which didn't fit in their slots) didn't go through anything of ours. I think that not being able to unpack made it a lot easier to secure our things, since all our boxes were taped shut, and it would have been really obvious had either a box gone missing, or one been opened that was previously taped. Plus, there were no drawers to rifle through, since they were still full of clothes and shrink-wrapped (easier than packing the clothes up).

So, we spent a lot of time eating at restaurants, and saw Wall-E, and I wandered the city a lot, checking out Tompkins Square Park, East River Park, and other places where my fellow homeless people hang out. It was enlightening. Finally, we were allowed back in on Thursday night, to find that our fridge worked (although it didn't fit its cabinet, so was in the middle of our kitchen) but our stove did not (no gas. as of this writing, no gas until 7/14. Which means no hot water, no hot showers, and no indoor cooking until 7/14).
Friday, we enjoyed free pizza and free beer while watching the Macy's Fireworks from a friend's office building on Water Street.

Saturday, in a change of plans, my parents came down to New York. They brought my puppyface Chloe for a visit (she's a Bernese Mountain Dog. Not really a puppy anymore.... she's 2). They also brought a hammock for our back yard that folds up into a duffel bag, and..... MY GRILL!!

That evening, we made steak and corn on the cob on the grill. The steaks were wonderful - I just sprinkled them with Salt and Pepper, and let them rest for about 10 minutes before putting them on. The corn, since we couldn't boil water, went on the grill wrapped in foil with a pat of butter. I think it probably cooked for about 10 minutes, maybe only 8, I flipped it over halfway through.... but basically, the corn gets sort-of steamed, sort-of roasted, sort-of basted with the butter. It's delicious and I personally greatly prefer the texture to that of boiled corn.

The next morning, I used the grill to heat the water in my teakettle for coffee, and in conjunction with my cast-iron skillet to make eggs, and last night I made burgers from pre-made frozen patties that my parents bought at Costco and brought down for us for our freezer. Have I ever mentioned that I never made real burgers (aka smushed up ground beef, etc) until this past year? I never did. We always ate pre-made patties. And I still think they're ok.

In summation, we're going to be eating a lot of grilled food in the coming days because we can't cook indoors. Which is good because it gives me a LOT of chimbly practice -- I'm really good at starting fires. I just need to remember to start cooking before it gets too dark to clearly see my food. Because the embers, they don't give a lot of light. So.... live and learn.

Until next time!!

In which we are Souper Powered

2008-06-28T00:21:00.003-04:00

So since we're moving, and trying to dirty as few dishes as possible, and since we don't have any appliances at the new place, and won't for an indeterminate amount of time.... food has been pretty lax of late.
Wednesday night, we made the pizza I'd planned on making Tuesday night but gotten home too late. Unfortunately, the mozzarella we bought got left on the table overnight, and since our apartment is a sauna, this lead to it becoming a semi-melted, oily blob. Not good eats. So we used Jack cheese instead, left over from the Cheesy Chips from the NBA Finals last week. Also, red-pepper pesto, green peppers, and Kalamata olives. It was pretty damn delicious.
Last night, we ordered pizza, with pepperoni and green peppers, and ate it off paper towels or with our hands, because every dish in the apartment (roughly) was still dirty.
Tonight, we had soup and grilled cheese -- hence the Souper Powers. It wasn't great -- the soup was weird, and made with sweet-corn, which it didn't say on the label. However, we used up the whole container, which is nice because that reduces the waste.

Tomorrow, we'll have pasta, cooked in my Dutch oven and eaten out of the ugly greenish brown soup plates that I'm giving away. Sunday, I have no idea what we'll eat, since we'll be moving more stuff, after a trip to Jersey to Ikea, and we'll have no stove or fridge.

And Monday...

Monday I'll probably order pizza, and eat it alone in my empty apartment, as I clean it out and scrub up all the mouse poop and spackle the holes and clean the toilet/bathtub, and throw out the last trash.

And Tuesday, hopefully, we'll be in. Appliances, bars on the windows, locks on the doors, in. Preferably paint on the walls. But if not, it'll come.

My parents will come down on Friday, bringing my dog and my grill. My mom tried to convince Jesse that a charcoal chimney was not the way to go -- rather, she advocates buying single-use bags of charcoal that you just...light on fire.
We'll take it under advisement, but I think that we'll probably stick to big bags of hardwood charcoal and a chimbly.

And by then, hopefully, life will be in swing. Comfortable, even swing.

In which we've gotta go fishin'

2008-06-24T22:26:00.002-04:00

I started trying to post this last night. I failed. I was really tired, and I just wasn't feeling it. So today, to make up for everything that I've failed you guys on, I'm posting today!!

Also, I'm a horrible cliche. I've come home from work, and I'm sitting on the couch, in my underwear, drinking a beer. It's a great way to be. Trust me. Now if only my woman would come home and cook me dinner. Oh wait....

Anyways.
Because we've been racing around trying to find out if we can move, and generally acting like nutcases, there has been cooking, but no time for my typical writing about the cooking. So, I will do my best to catch up.

Sunday night we made a dish that Jesse and I had been thinking about for a few days, and something that I've been thinking about for almost 2 years.
First.... a quick story. When I first moved to Brooklyn, my father came down to help me paint my room and bring down the last of my stuff. After we finished, we went out for a late lunch, at this little bistro with an outdoor garden just down my street. It's called Fada, in case you wondered. My dad got pasta bolognese, and I got a Nicoise salad, with seared tuna.

It changed my life.
I've spent all my bistro meals since just hoping for something like that.... and so far it hasn't been replicable.

So, when Jesse suggested an entree salad with fresh tuna for a meal this week, I decided to go for it because I was hoping to replicate that salad. It didn't go quite as well as planned, but that's because I think that salad was a lost chord. Anyways.

On Sunday night, we went for that salad again, roughly. We had baby spinach, arugula, tomatoes, and the tuna. We drizzled the tuna with olive oil, and sprinkled it with salt and pepper before searing it for about 90 seconds per side. We got about half a pound, which was definitely the best way to have luxury tuna on a budget. It was beautiful, and when it was sliced and laid on top of the salad, I felt really proud of what we'd made.
We also had boxed tomato and roasted red pepper soup, to which I added a special combination of salt, pepper, cumin, curry powder, and chili powder. It is lovely, and it makes everything taste kind of warm and homey.

Monday I went into Whole Foods on a lark, and found out that they had corn on the cob, 3 ears for $1!! This is a good start to the season. So, I bought some corn, some wild rice, and some chicken cutlets, and made dinner when I got home -- I started by replicating my wild rice risotto, only I cooked it even slower than usual, and I've come to the conclusion that the wild rice stuff just doesn't get mushy and creamy like the arborio rice does. But, it was still pretty yum-tastic. I also boiled the corn, and made Musty-Crusty Chicken.

Don't worry, it's not nasty.
Musty-Crusty Chicken :

Chicken Cutlets -- get as many as you need to feed the people you're feeding. Two big ones fed 3 of us.
Dijon Mustard -- I used Grey Poupon, and I'm not afraid to name drop. You enough to coat the outside of your cutlets.
Bread Crumbs -- Again, you need enough to coat and crust the outside of the cutlets. I used Panko, but a combination of bread crumbs and Panko would work well too, as would just breadcrumbs. Put them in a pie plate, or in a big pile on a plate, or whatever, and season them with salt and pepper.

I put my big pan on about medium heat, with some olive oil.

I sprinkled Salt, Pepper, and Poultry seasoning on both sides of the chicken cutlets. Then, I took my jar of mustard, and using the same hand each time, I scooped out a couple fingers full of mustard, and threw it onto the chicken, not touching it. Then, smear it around with your other hand. I suppose you could do it with a spoon or a spoon-u-la, but I'm big on touching my food.

When both sides are coated, smash the chicken into the pile of bread crumb-age, so that it's well-coated on both sides. Then, put the chicken cutlets into the pan, and let them fry. They should be golden brown and deeeelicious on both sides.... I'd suggest covering the pan for a little while to promote the cooking of the chicken from the inside.

The corn is pretty self-explanatory.... boil a big pot of water and have your boyfriend shuck the corn.... or you can do it, but why? Anyways, when the water boils, throw your shucked corn in there for 8-10 minutes, and you'll have corn on the cob.

IT was great.

Last night's dinner plans changed when we got home from Whole Foods at 10:30 and the pizza dough was still frozen. So, I made fried eggplant rounds.

Fried eggplant is a beautiful thing, but I've learned that it's a bit of a dicey thing. Salting the eggplant is essential, to draw out some of the water that's hiding inside the eggplant on the sneaky-sneak. I sliced it into about 1/2 inch thick slices, round-wise. Then, I sprinkled it with salt and let it sit for about half an hour. Then, I rinsed it off and patted it dry. Like making basically anything fried, I dipped the slices in egg, and then in a combination of bread crumbs and panko which was seasoned with salt and pepper. You really have to pack the breading on, I've learned.

I fried them in olive oil. I would not recommend frying these in olive oil. Use sunflower or vegetable oil. However, these were pretty darn good. I kind of love fried eggplant a lot. And now that I know that I can do this quite well, I'm totally doing this again. Expect to see this at Two Chairs, if you're there. And go for it. It's delish.

We're working on dirtying as few dishes as possible, which we're going to have to do, since we're moving this weekend and we're trying to pack our dishes up as soon as posisble. And everything else. So expect limited posts until we're settled. But after that.... expect amazingness. I hope.

In which .....

2008-06-19T21:17:00.003-04:00

There are very few circumstances which render me incapable of wanting to cook.

I truly believe that just about everything is improved by food. Not always the same type of food, but always food. And if I can make something just a little bit better by cooking for someone, then maybe I've fulfilled my purpose in life.
And generally, if it's someone else that's suffering, there are a short list of things that will keep me from bringing them food. Namely, if I don't know where you live, or if getting you the food requires crossing a continent or an ocean. Otherwise, try and stop me from cooking for you. The love that I feel for someone is never more apparent, never more clearly expressed, than when I have made them food.

Maybe that sheds a little light on something inside me.... maybe it also explains why when I am miserable -- when I'm upset and hurting, the last thing I want to do is cook for myself. I'll cook for those I care about, I'll make them food, but I can't cook for myself when my heart is breaking. I can't even think about it. Maybe that means that I don't love myself nearly as much as I love others. It probably does. But when I'm this sad, I can't even begin to think about healing it.

No one died. Don't worry. Jesse didn't break up with me. According to the sage advice of the woman at the brokerage who doesn't know anything about me, except my bank account number, there are worse things going on in the world right now. But for me, being told that the woman at the realtor's office is "90% sure" that we'll be able to move into the apartment by the first of July is pretty fucking bad. Especially because y'know.... I have a job. Jesse has a job. We can't take off a random day in July at a moment's notice to supervise movers. We either have to be able to move, or hope that our landlord will give us another few weeks, month, whatever it ends up being. I don't even know what to do with that information.

And I feel bad. I feel badly that even if food is offered, I don't even want to eat it. I had to put a beautiful chocolate bar on the dining room table, because even though Kristin bought it for me as a gift.... I can't eat it.
Food doesn't heal me the way I hope that it heals everyone else.

I feel badly. I feel badly that I'm not making dinner. We had a beautiful dinner planned -- a salad with rare tuna, just lightly seared. Spinach, the lovely bunch of arugula I picked up, a red pepper, some roasted tomatoes, and the tuna. It would have been wonderful. But it would have been a waste. I'm glad we didn't eat it.

I know that Kristin can cook. But I still feel badly because I feel like I *should* be making dinner. I should suck it up, be tough, and make dinner - not the tuna because even if I'm sucking it up I couldn't waste that. But I suppose I could take the loose cash in my bag and go buy some eggs and make a frittata. I could at least make scrambled eggs. But I can't. I'm just too drained. I'm too sad. I'm too..... everything. And too nothing.

Time to go back to the drawing board with the P.T.B. And this time, beg. Yeah. Let's do that. Anyone that has a good relationship with the Powers that Be (PTB), please beg on my behalf. On our behalf. Since we already have to cancel our 4th of July barbecue, because we won't have furniture, we could use a little PTB favor. So... yeah. Any help would be greatly appreciated on our behalf. Thanks.

In which I REALLY break tradition

2008-06-19T07:43:00.003-04:00

Actually, I suppose I sort of kept a tradition. Also, yes, I am blogging at quarter to eight in the morning. Don't ask questions.

On Tuesday night, in case some of you missed it, the Boston Celtics clinched the NBA Finals. They gleefully stomped on the Lakers for about 3 hours, and Jesse and I watched the whole thing! Well, except for the parts where I was preparing food, or getting beers. And because I was feeling saucy, I decided I would try and recreate my Superbowl feast, at least the best bits, for two. I also wore my Wes Welker jersey, which I still say is good luck, even though I wore it during the Patriots' disastrous Super Bowl game.
It's funny -- I sat in our apartment, shaking wtih joy and fear during the World Series, never 100% sure the Sox would win. I made a bunch of food and ended up having several people over for the Super Bowl, never 100% sure the Pats would lose. Because in my lifetime, the Red Sox have screwed up bigtime, and the Pats have just been awesome since they started winning in the 2000's. But the Celtics? I didn't know what to expect with this game, since all my life they've just.... kind of sucked, barring the first 2 years (3 championships?) of my life. I didn't have a frame of reference.
So I made guacamole and cheesy chips (aka tortilla chips with cheese sprinkled over, broiled) for the first half, and while doing that I started making Alton Brown's Buffalo Wing recipe, which basically takes about 2 hours to make and is SO worth it. Especially since I started it about 20 minutes before tip off, and we had wings for the second half. Basically, I created most males' (and several girls I know)sports fantasy - chips, wings, and beer, while watching the NBA Finals at my house with my boyfriend.

AND THEY WON!!!

And the wings were deelish as always. Alton doesn't let me down.

And last night, I re-made my Penne Alla Vodka with Chicken Meatballs, only this time I used turkey. And I didn't have any fresh parsley to hand, which probably lessened my joy a little bit. But it was still pretty good.

And tonight, the plan is to have a salad with pieces of seared tuna on top after we get home from Blind Tiger, where we will hopefully meet Zak from Schmaltz and have some Coney Island Beer!!!

In which I rock out with my Quinoa out.

2008-06-15T18:57:00.010-04:00

Last night, I made some yummy steak.

I love making steak. Last week's endeavor with the flank steak went so well that I decided to essentially replicate it, with a skirt steak. Let's make the note now that a skirt steak is even thinner and even fattier than a flank steak, and I didn't notice that in time to adjust my methods.

I started out by marinating my steak -- I used salt, pepper, my uncle's "dry rub", which is basically onion and garlic powders, as well as thyme, rosemary, and possibly something else... and I added red pepper flake, which I love. I rubbed all this into my steak, and then put it in a Ziploc bag, with olive oil and a little Worcestershire.

Then, I let that sit, in the fridge, while I cooked up the other "mixed grains" packet that had caughtmy fancy at Trader Joe's on Wednesday night. I mixed that with some vinaigrette that I made with too much mustard, white balsamic, olive oil salt and pepper.

While that was hanging out in the fridge, I got out my trusty Lodge griddle pan, which is flat on one side, ridged on the other, and 100% cast-iron. It's heavy as hell, and a wonderful piece of equipment. I highly recommend it, and it's seen its fair share of use this weekend, between pancakes x2, and the steak. Here are some action shots:

It probably cooked for about a minute and a half too long, which isn't sacrelige, but it definitely comes close. I like my meat on the bloody side of medium rare, as I've said before, and I'd say about 3 minutes per side should have been fine. I did 4 on the first side, 3 on the second, and I think I would've been happier if I'd cut it back. But anyways.... I let it rest for about the same amount of time that I'd cooked it, hoping that it would stay really really juicy and the like. And it did, sort of. Anyways, I was happy because the flavors in the marinade mirrored the flavors in the vinaigrette, and that's really all I'm looking for - flavors that go together.
I brightened up the couscous/Quinoa/Orzo mix with some Key Lime juice, from real Key Limes that I'd thought about making a pie with - but seeing how little juice you get out, I've decided that they're better in their purest format -- shoved down the neck of a Corona.

Until next time, kids -- keep eating, and check out the fact that one post back, Zak from Schmaltz brewing commented!!! If you're in the city, or have access to his beer, get some, and I'm not just saying this so he'll find out I linked him again and read/comment more. (At least, not TOTALLY!)

In which it finally cools down a little.

2008-06-14T14:39:00.002-04:00

Tuesday night, I made a delicious pizza.

I'm a little weird, in that I will freely admit that it's too hot to cook, and then go ahead and make a pizza from scratch. For some reason, it seems less hot to let dough rise and then throw it and the toppings into a 450 degree oven. Honestly, it would have been cooler to just boil some pasta, steam some vegetables, and drizzle the lot with olive oil and parm. But of course, I'm a moron.

Luckily, we did discover one of the benefits of hot weather. It helps make beautiful pizza dough. Between the heat of the water I used, and the heat of the apartment, that dough doubled in size with a quickness, and it definitely didn't have the typical problem of not being stretchy. Because it was hot - apparently Jesse puts it in the fridge sometimes, and we've come to find that doesn't yield the best results. Also, I definitely didn't use as much flour as I should have, because it was so hot out and for some reason, it just didn't need as much flour.

I stretched the dough after it rose, and covered it with a sliced yellow tomato, some asparagus and green beans, and parmesan, and some smushed garlic cloves. It baked at 450 for probably about 25 minutes, long enough to turn the apartment into a sauna. It was miserable, but the pizza was delicious. I love making pizza.

Wednesday night, we went shopping and found out some effing frustrating news. Apparently our new apartment won't be ready tomorrow, which is when we were promised it. It's when I signed a lease for. And yet, we don't get to move in, which basically screws us over in terms of moving and painting and getting unpacked and stuff. So, Wednesday night we were legitimately in need of some liquid refreshment. We met our friends at Kettle of Fish, and imbibed a few pints of Coney Island Lager (Sword Swallower, primarily) before arriving home around 11 pm.

I set some chicken breasts, which I'd pounded pretty thin, to marinate in a very similar marinade to the one I did for the Flank Steak last entry. Then, I decided I wanted to try and make a risotto out of a wild and brown rice blend I'd been intrigued by at Trader Joe's. So, I prepared the risotto in the usual way, except that I didn't add any mushrooms or bleu cheese. I just added a lump of butter and some shredded parmesan at the end. I think that since this rice isn't like arborio, it needed a little more stock, a little more time. Maybe some water. But the roommates concurred that the chewiness added something to the risotto. I'd recommend trying it sometime. Make sure that you sautee it enought.

Thursday night, I made panini. It was supposed to be soup and sammiches, but it ended up just being panini. I made some tuna salad, with a little mayonnaise, a little olive oil, green pickle relish (because I didn't have any dill pickles), chili powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. I put some butter on my grill pan and put the bread down with some meunster cheese. I put the tuna on top, another slice of cheese, and another piece of bread. Then, to make it a panino, I put a small skillet with a can of chickpeas on top, to smush the bread. Obviously, flip, butter the pan, repeat. They were pretty yum-tastic.

Last night, we were supposed to have steak again (because it was so good last time), but instead we met some friends for delicious drinks, and then delicious dinner. And then, we went back to our friends Laura and Steele's apartment and had some of Steele's latest home-brewed beer. So, tonight, we will have the skirt steak, with possibly a mixed-grain salad and some young field greens..... or just with our bare hands. Y'know, whichever.

In which I catch up.

2008-06-10T18:39:00.002-04:00

On Friday night, I made a delicious dinner. It was the last night before a heat wave, although I didn't know that yet. All I knew was that since my plan to make dinner got foiled on Thursday night, I had a chance to make two glorious compatriots together on Friday night: Flank Steak, and Gorgonzola-Walnut Spaghetti. I modified both of these recipes, as I am wont to do, from Rachael Ray's excellent cookbook, Cooking Round the Clock.

I got home and marinated the steak. I can't remember exactly what I used, but I can approximate.
2 chopped garlic cloves, a few healthy pinches of salt, several grinds of black pepper, chili powder, Worcestershire sauce (I used a TON, because the bottle was more full than I expected. Oops. Still good), a few splashes of Balsamic Vinegar, and about 1/3 cup of olive oil.

I put the above in a plastic Ziploc bag (a big one), and stuck my lovely 1 pound of flank steak in there to hang out at room temperature, while I started the pasta.

I brought the water to a boil for spaghetti, of course.
While that was happening, I put 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and 2 of butter into a big skillet. I dropped in 3 smashed (not chopped, just crushed) garlic cloves and about half a cup of chopped up walnuts. I cooked them on about medium heat, probably a little lower, until the garlic cloves turned golden brownish. Stir them occasionally, so that the walnuts don't burn. Because burned garlic, burned walnuts, it's just not happy. This took about 5 minutes. Possibly longer.

While that was going on, I also heated up my grillpan, which is basically just a large round skillet, very thin, with ridges like a grill. I put it over screamin' hot heat, which is a technical term. When the water from the pasta pot vaporized basically the second it was dribbled over the pan, I put the steak on. I was eyeballing it, and I didn't want to undershoot the timing and have to cook it too long on the second side, so I left it for a solid 4 minutes on the first side. This went on about the time that the garlic was starting to get brownish.

I pulled out the garlic cloves, and poured in half a cup each of chicken broth and cream. You stir that around and bring that to the bubble. About the time this is happening, you should be flipping your flank steak.

(underlying all this is the fact that when the water boils, you should salt it and drop your spaghetti, about half a box)

When it bubbles, add about 6 ounces of Gorgonzola crumbles. This equates to about 3/4 of a tub if you have an 8-ounce tub, or you can always bust out your kitchen scale if you're being fussy. Basically, I just dumped in enough to make me feel good. As it's melting, you should probably be draining your pasta, and taking your flank steak off after its second 4 minutes, to rest on a plate for at least 4 minutes to let the juicies redistribute.

Once the gorgonzola is all melted, crank on a bunch of black pepper. Taste it to see if you need salt. Shake the hell out of the pasta in the colander, and dump it into the big skillet. Toss it all around and divide between two plates.

Wait until you can't stand it any longer, and then cut your steak against the grain (whatever that means). Apparently it makes it more tender. I'm going to go with just slice it thin and you'll be ok. I'm not going to lie, kids, I like a bloody steak. Medium-rare is A-OK with me, and since I generally pull steaks before they hit medium-rare because I'm afraid of a medium-well steak, I usually end up on the rare side of medium-rare. Which is also fine with me. One of the best things in the world, in my newly-formed opinion, is the combination of steak juices and the gorgonzola cream sauce of this pasta. It's a match made in heaven. Seriously.

I didn't take any photos of this dish, mostly because I was too hungry to. And because it disappeared all too quickly. But, trust me, the steak was perfect.... nicely crusted on the outside, still a beautiful pinky-red on the inside. I was thrilled. Thin steaks are tough, because it's hard, of course, to get them done through, but still delicious quickly. Things can get out of hand if you're not paying attention. Luckily, I was. Yummmm!!!!

Ok, better luck next time, In which I discuss our pizza for dinner tonight. :)

In which you can call me late to dinner.

2008-06-09T20:57:00.002-04:00

After an amazing day at Coney Island, where you bet your ass I rode the Cyclone, AND the Wonder Wheel, AND ate a Nathans' HotDog, Jesse and I came home to a sweltering apartment. It was too hot to do anything. It was too hot to cook. It was too hot.... to live.

After a little while, I made a pie crust, so we could make the quiche that was abandoned on Tuesday night. I was nervous about its worth as a crust, because the butter and shortening definitely went from cold or frozen respectively, to kind of melty pretty fast. I hoped that it would firm up in the fridge.... but it didn't really. It was pretty soft, but since I rolled it out on the plastic wrap, I was able to wrap it around the rolling pin and get it into the pie plate. While it blind baked, I used my customary cooking method for the green beans and asparagus, putting the asparagus in about 1 minute before the green beans. I threw them all into a bowl of water in the fridge.

I was also chopping up a clove of garlic and half a red pepper. I sliced the asparagus and green beans, and sauteed them with the garlic, the pepper, and some butter, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I didn't want them mushy, I just wanted them flavored, and I wanted to be able to chew the asparagus. So, after they were quickly cooked, I took them out to cool while I whipped up the eggs and cream. Then, I pulled hte crust, took off the foil and beans (which were in there to weight down the crust while it cooked, so it didn't puff. If I'd left the crust raw, it would've been mushy at best and it would've taken longer than the eggs to cook. Big mess) and poured in the batter, as well as a healthy dose of gorgonzola crumbles. It baked for about 25 minutes, and then I took it out to cool a bit. During the cooling, a thunderstorm happened!!!

I ran into our room to look at it, and ended up falling asleep. Before I'd eaten. That's right. I definitely slept through dinner. Granted, it was already 10 PM. But still. I slept through to this morning. I guess that's what I needed, but I'm still really tired. Strange. And it's still too hot to cook. Rough.

Anyways. Jesse said the quiche was delicious. I had a piece this morning for breakfast. It was inspired. And I just had a piece cold out of the fridge because I am hungry but don't want to turn on the stove. Deeelish. :)

In which, yet again, I've fallen behind.

2008-06-05T20:42:00.003-04:00

I admit it. I have recently lost my habit of blogging as things happen. I'm sorry, readership (all 4 of you). I will do better.

On Sunday, I did not make Macaroni Cheese. This is because it was hotter than bejeepers on Sunday. SO, instead, I made mussels steamed in white wine, the recipe for which, complete with photos, you can find.... here. Jesse and I ate on our roof, looked at the sunset, looked at Brooklyn, took some pictures, drank some wine, and generally were.... happy. I'll post photos probably tomorrow night. It was wonderful.

Me in my natural habitat The View.

And, the reason I cook at all: Us:

Monday night, I did make macaroni and cheese. And I did photograph most of it. I'm going to post pictures of this as well, with small descriptions, so you all know what went down.

And here they are!!!!

Step 1). Saute chopped-up pancetta, and shallot in a little olive oil:

Step 2). Add a little more olive oil to the pancetta/onion, then add some flour to make a roux that looks like this:

Step 3). Add the chicken stock and milk/cream combination outlined in my earlier RoniCheese post, to get something that looks like this:

Step 4). Have your boyfriend grate the cheese:

Step 5). Add the cheese to the cream sauce once it starts to bubble

Step 6). When pasta is done cooking, add it to the sauce and stir it around before pouring it into a baking pan:
Then, put the pasta under the broiler after you sprinkle it with breadcrumbs and grated parmesan, until it looks like so:
and.... Mangia!!!

Tuesday night, we cleaned. Jesse, K and I cleaned up the common spaces of our apartment after we grocery shopped, so that we could start the packing and the moving mindset (our lease ends on the 30th). It took a while, so we just reheated the roni cheese from Monday night. Still yummbly.

Last night, I made salmon and string beans. This salmon is probably the weirdest recipe I'd ever heard of, courtesy of my mother. We once had a bag of frozen salmon filets from Costco. They were beautiful, and one hot summer night while I was home from college, we decided to eat them. I didn't have any idea how to cook salmon, and the only way my mom could think of was to slather the top with mayonnaise, sprinkle it with dill, wrap it in foil, and bake it for 18-20 minutes. I'll admit, freely and openly, that I was grossed out by the theory. I eat as little mayonnaise as possible.
But, we did it, and this was amazing. It's been a go-to for me. I've varied it with a vinaigrette, with just olive oil, dill, and lemon, lots of ways. Basically.... I love this preparation.
So, last night, we made it. And I cooked string beans the best way I know how -- throw them in simmering salty water for about 2 minutes, 3 at most, and then pull them right out and throw them in an ice water bath. Along with keeping them green, this also keeps them crispy, because it stops the cooking. It's the best and only way to cook fresh green beans, in my humble opinion. Then again, I have a vendetta against a mushy vegetable.... so don't take my word for it.

But.... it was teh noms.

Tonight, I planned something although I wasn't sure if I'd be home or not... it's my nanny boss's last night of chef school, and there was some talk of the other babysitter covering tonight.

Alas, this is not the case.

However. That means that tomorrow, we can basically have tonight's dinner AND tomorrow's dinner. Tonight, we were meant to have marinated flank steak and my potato salad. Tomorrow... gorgonzola & walnut pasta. NOW, we can have both!! Tomorrow!! Yay!!!

Stay tuned.

Also, I'd like to take this quick break to announce a couple things.
1). I'm moving over the course of this month, so I think that the entries for a while might just be a few photos and a quick desription. I'll maybe come back later to edit and write about the recipes.
2). You'll all get to see pictures of my new kitchen, complete with built-in wine rack above the fridge, as soon as we move in.
3). I WILL BE THE PROUD OWNER OF A GRILL FOR MY BACK YARD!!!! It's at my parents' house. My dad is painting it green for me, and maybe making me a table.... with wheels possibly. YAAAAYYY!!! Be prepared for all the misadventures that come when this girl tries to lite her grill with the chimbly for the first time. Also, this is a Brooklyn back yard, so no comments from all you suburbans with your acres of grassland, m'kay???
4). Let's all take a moment to send some vibes of comfort, love, and happy-- the likes of which you get from a yummy comfort food -- to one of my most awesomest readers. Thanks all.

In which we get a rant.

2008-06-01T01:52:00.004-04:00

Ok. There are many things I love in my life, and a few things that I hate. I hate being so tired that my head nods unbidden I hate that I accidentally knocked my French Press off the kitchen table about 40 minutes ago while trying to spread out pizza dough, smashing it into pieces and cutting my hand twice in the process. I hate asshole members of RedSox Nation who chant "Yankees Suck" even still, especially in venues not involving the Yankees. For example, the jackass in the Sox hat last night at Cheap Shots yelling at the bartender that the Yankees sucked. You make me look bad. Also, when you're in Tampa Bay, don't start a Yankees Such chant. Especially if you're in Tampa Bay for a Patriots Game!!!!!

And then, I hate my apartment's stove. I hate it for many reasons. The most basic is that its cooktop is tiny. Its 4 burners just don't have enough space to breathe. Also, even when I turn the smallest burner on the lowest setting, it's still enough flame to scorch chili onto the bottom of my stockpot. That's just goddamned ridiculous. Furthermore, the floor is not even in my apartment, and the super couldn't be bothered to level out the stove, so it's not even. It tilts toward the front. Which means that stuff doesn't cook evenly. Also also, its oven is very flimsy. And it makes the room INCREDIBLY hot. Basically, I hate this stove. I also hate the lack of counter space in my kitchen. I cannot WAIT until we move. I cannot wait until I have a corner sink, and a hood with a fan, and another fan in the kitchen too.... I cannot wait for counter space. I cannot wait for a level floor and cabinets, and a kitchen that's up to regulations. As much as I love who is here.... I do not love this kitchen.

I also kind of hate working till midnight because my nanny bosses work in the food industry and "11:30" is a malleable concept. But I kind of like it because Jesse and I get to engage in "bistro dining", aka eating after midnight, because on Saturday nights, I get home wired, and cook. This is relevant, I swear. Also our dining plan got screwed up this week, with all the lease-signing/going out for Burgers and fries at Dumont Burger, going to see the Sex and The City Movie/going out after ness, and the "new apartment not being ready yet" ness. So basically, tonight we made Wednesday night's planned dinner, since we ate at Dumont Burger and tomorrow, we'll make Friday's planned dinner. Which means that today, we made pizza with tomatoes, goat cheese, olives,garlic, shallots, and parmesan. And I'm just starting to eat it now, at 2:16am.

Jesse made another stellar crust, while I was finishing up at and traveling home from work. When I got home, I stretched it and flattened it out, and the french press smashing ensued.... and then I finally got it set up and docked (which means I poked holes in the part that the toppings would be on, so it didn't puff up too much.) and started by sprinkling some parmesan on it. Then, I added sliced tomatoes, goat cheese, and whole black olives. Then, in a moment of inspiration, I added smashed garlic cloves, and a sliced shallot. Then, more parmesan. I baked at about 425... and it was DEEEEELICIOUS!!!! And kind of pretty.
Here it is cooking. The crust always ends up really thick on my pizzas. Apparently I didn't learn enough as a pizza wench back in high school -- I don't know how to stretch a pizza properly. I'll have to learn.

Anyways. It came out beautifully, and I was really happy about it. I love tasty food, and these flavors rocked out with their stuff out. It was nommy!!!!
Yaaaay pizza!
Hopefully, tomorrow, I will post photos of my nommy mac & cheese, so you can all see what I mean when I cook it. Hee. You should be happy.